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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pdzoch" data-source="post: 6923661" data-attributes="member: 80982">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.</blockquote>

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