D&D 5E How to deal with player death?

[Horwath]

If your character dies, he/she dies.

In 90% of situation others cannot drag your body around so they will just loot you and if you were a good companion give you a proper burial, if they aren't too busy running away from what killed you.

Roll up new character, if it is not a high level wizard it should not take you more than 10 mins. No it's up to DM to pull Deus ex machina to put your new PC ASAP in the scenarion so you don't sit the rest of the session bored to death.

 

[tglassy]

Well, it was the starter kit, which had a young green dragon in it, and two of the members decided to go search that tower by themselves, and then they found the dragon, and decided to take it on by themselves, and they were only level 3. It was pretty close quarters, and the dragon was supposed to run away when it reached half health, and it did, except one of them, an Eldridge Knight with the Weapon Bond, leapt onto its back and jammed his bonded sword into the dragon's back. Rules say that the bonded weapon can't be disarmed, so I decided that meant he can't be thrown off if the weapon is stuck in the dragon's back. Through a series of amazingly lucky rolls, in which I did not fudge, the darn knight chopped away at the dragon with his other sword until it died. In mid air. And then he rolled a 19 on his dex save, and rode the dragon down to the ground, Legolas style, and came out without a scratch. All in all, it was pretty epic. So much so that I let him add "the Dragonslayer" to the end of his name, cause he basically killed the thing by himself, legitimately.

But, the first moment they saw the dragon, they were standing in the doorway. One breath attack, even if they made their save, would have killed them both. But, I decided to see where it would go, so I held off. I figured it was a young dragon, so maybe it just didn't consider them a good enough threat to use its breath attack.

 

[jasper]

Seems to me like you underestimated the damage of the monster you threw at your players. Dragons are deadly opponents. If you don't want your players to die, don't throw dragon at them..

He said he was a new dm. Plus if I don’t want pcs to die then I throw only social encounters.

Also, a dragon's breath attack is a cone. So unless your players are using terrible positioning, only 1 or 2 of them should get hit by it. And afterwards it is on a long recharge..

New dm, new players and maybe not smart players. Edit to add. Since glass has posted an update. Stupid and lucky pcs. I see nothing wrong with his dming.

As a last resort, you can always have a dragon fly away if it considers its prey not worth its time.

This is where I disagree with you the most. If and only if the dragon was wandering monster, then yes it hears its mom calling. But a planned encounter. No. No. No. Dead pcs and the dragon adds to his horde.

 

[Just Tom]

You're talking about translating a 3.5 character into 5E, right?

In the description of the Vorpal Sword for 5E, it says that it doesn't work on anything that is too large to behead, or on PCs or (IIRC) anyone with legendary actions. In those cases, it just does an extra (IIRC) 6d6 damage on a crit.

So in this case, it looks like the designers anticipated this situation, and specifically designed the rules to avoid that happening. Your impromptu house ruling was right on target.

The DMG says nothing about sparing PCs from the effects of vorpal blades. The only limitations listed are creatures immune to slashing damage, creatures with no heads, have no need for heads, has legendary actions, or is too big to be decapitated.

Why would a vorpal sword ignore PCs? What other magic does?

 

[pdzoch]

Character Death is part of the game. Without the risk, the game is well… not much of an adventure. The death of the character is not the end of the character. I reward dramatic deaths, especially a poignant or witty dying words that drive the story. (I’ll give a bonus to the player’s next character). The return of the body to the ancestral home becomes and adventure. SO can the search for a cleric to raise, resurrect, or any number of magical means to bring the character back to life. Each group reacts differently, but I rewards those groups who role play well these events. Sometimes it is with solemnity, sometimes it is with humor.

As the soonest break, we will roll up a new character for the player. This is often a chance for them to try something new if they are not going to raise the dead.

To that end, I try to design my adventures so that these major life threatening encounters are the capstone of the session so that IF the unfortunate does happen, there is already a naturally planned break in the gamming to work on a new character if desired.

I am quick to add an NPC that can be temporarily used to balance to party and give the player something to do until the old character is raised or a new character is rolled. These NPCs are not fully fleshed out, and the players never gets attached to them. It is a different experience for the player to play a temporary NPC, but they get a chance to look behind the curtain to help tell the story and unfold events during the game, which can be its own type of fun.

I’ve had numerous new player characters introduced to the game group by being rescued during a monster encounter by the original group (not all player characters meet in a tavern BTW). My favorite addition was the druid ornithologist who was fleeing a flock of angry axebeaks he got too close to during one of his field studies. Very funny scene: seeing the elderly druid running over the hill into sight, then suddenly the axebeaks crest the hill in a flock afterwards.

I run numerous adventures for younger players whom character death is traumatic. I give them the same explanation that I give older player before we start. I tend to be judicious with the monster roles then except when obviously bad decisions are made. There are still some tears involved. But having some experienced younger players in the group really helps. This is where the NPC job sometimes does not help. Having a handful of pre-gen characters ready is REALLY useful. Thankfully, the D&D website has a bevy of archtypes pre-generated for levels 1-10 for quick insertion.

 

[Mercule]

You joke, but... I lost one of my regular group to brain cancer a while back. Talking about how to handle grief among a gaming group might make for a good thread, honestly.

Agreed. We lost one of our college group over a Thanksgiving break to a weird allergic reaction. The funeral was over before we even knew about it (his folks didn't really know us -- it was college).

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Arial Black]

How to deal with player death?

Call an ambulance, the police, the player's family.

Probably best to cancel this week's game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The DMG says nothing about sparing PCs from the effects of vorpal blades. The only limitations listed are creatures immune to slashing damage, creatures with no heads, have no need for heads, has legendary actions, or is too big to be decapitated.

Why would a vorpal sword ignore PCs? What other magic does?

Maybe that part is just in the Balor's write-up, then. Why would they bother wasting space on describing the effects of magic items used against the PCs, when monsters use their own rules that completely ignore the existence of magic items? It's far easier to simply say that a Marilith's sword attacks count as magical, than to say that she wields magical swords, after all.

It's worth noting, the actual underlying rules are fairly consistent. It's just the presentation of the rules, as though PCs were somehow inherently different from NPCs, that is absolutely atrocious. Suggesting that the world actually works differently for PCs and NPCs, as the books appear to do, is highly misleading.

 

[iserith]

Probably best to cancel this week's game.

I say press on. So-and-so would have wanted it that way.