The BBEG ascends to godhood, and rather than kill you, grants you eternal life, but not eternal youth, and sets about making your life a living hell....
Your True Love, who you have sworn a magically binding oath to protect at all costs, is finally forced to marry the BBEG, who will have her slain if you interfere in their lives henceforth...
This strawman, again? Really? After it was already pointed out?
So, yeah, we won't mind if you disengage, because you pretty obviously are not engaging with what others are actually saying, but instead are speaking to some fiction you have constructed.
While DMing today, a PC died today, 2nd level on the cusp of 3rd. It was partially good DM rolls, partially poor planning. The battle:
The PCs attacked a xvart lair then left to take a 1 hour short rest. Xvarts aren't stupid, and they regrouped the bulk of their forces in a central war room while directing a force to trail the PCs and block any escape. Rather than infiltrating the lair and taking it room-by-room, 5 2nd level PCs faced a very deadly encounter of 13 alert xvarts, 1 xvart warlock, and 1 giant tick. Given the PCs had killed a sacred whiptail centipede, destroyed the centipede hatchery, and insulted their deity, this wasn't a battle where prisoners were going to be taken. It wasn't a glorious death that anyone will write stories about.
I generally don't like pulling punches in my games and roll in full view. In doing so, I can't fudge away a character death when the dice do their thing. I'm not inclined to because if players catch on the DM is going to intervene every time death is near with a convenient plot device, it'll cheapen the experience. After all, why roll in combat when you know the DM won't really let you perish, perhaps because you wrote an awesome backstory that fits with the campaign?
Still, it stinks. I can tell she was bummed, and there's not many options for low-level characters. A few weeks ago, I pulled a DM intervention for another gamer whose character died at 1st level due to a really unfortunate random encounter roll. Thanks to befriending some fey, they quested and got hooked up with a druid reincarnate, and a hefty IOU. It was good times and in the past I've turned low-level death into a quest.
Should I intervene, again, though, with another convenient story plot device given I just did so? I've got ideas, but it feels contrived to do this twice in a row and so quickly.
I don't fudge the dice, but if a PC dies I ask the player if they want to turn death into a different penalty. It's the only way for players with very different expectations to play at the same table.
In my opinion, the character death part is a red herring. This question is really about DM precedent.
This is the second death. The first death was fudged. Does the second player have a reasonable expectation that this death will be fudged too? Is there a possibility that she will regard the DM as "playing favorites" if this death is not fudged?
I think it's very important that, when a DM is considering reversing precedent like this, that she be super-clear to the group that she is reversing precedent, that the first decision was a mistake, and hence-forth things will work in a new way. Ideally you consult with the group and come to an agreeable conclusion about how you will handle it in the future, so that no one is surprised at the outcome of the third death.
This strawman, again? Really? After it was already pointed out?
So, yeah, we won't mind if you disengage, because you pretty obviously are not engaging with what others are actually saying, but instead are speaking to some fiction you have constructed.
Sorry mate, you might want to be a bit less competitive about this. As far as I can tell, your contributions to this discussion have been as ridiculous as the contributions you seek to criticize. Very poor form from a mod.
In my view, the circumstances in which a character died in the original post are perfectly fine. The issues the OP is really concerned about are those to do with the relationships at the table when it happens. So, maybe instead of everyone arguing, quite irrelevantly, about whether character death should be a thing or not, maybe some advice about how to handle the relationship side when it does happen would be more appropriate.
Mind you, I won't give any such advice. I can't abide whiney, pouty teenage-esque sooks who throw tantrums when their fake persona is knocked unconscious, stabbed through the heart by an assassin, and then their body is eaten by ghouls to prevent any hope of being raised...
Wow, a bit harsh even for me...
The question is more is whether any character death should be meaningful or not.
For me, this is entirely a matter of circumstances and events surrounding the circumstances. Was the character reckless, roleplayed badly, took horrific decision or was it simply a stroke of bad roll.
I am not adverse to TPK a group when they played badly. But a streak of bad luck do happen. In these cases, if something can be done without going overboard, I might be tempted to let the survivors find a scroll of revivify, raise dead or something along the same lines. In the case of a TPK, it rarely is a streak of bad luck resulting in a cascade failure but a serie 9f bad choices and decisions. In that case, I do not back down and the result will be a TPK. But before it goes there be sure that I will have questionned their decisions. Most of my players now know that when I ask:" Are you sure about X or do you do something more?" Or the dreaded "Is that all? Or Don't you forget something?". Be sure that they know that they are about screw up big time.
But if the events that lead to a TPK is just a serie of bad luck from everyone; I often offer them to create a rescue group to save their characters. Guess what? Almost every single time, they end up playing the rescuers for good...
So yes, sometimes character's death can bw meaningless. Bad things happen all the time in the real world and for the sake of immersion, it should too in games.
I will agree that it's a bad idea to fudge dice rolls, or intentionally have intelligent monsters make bad decisions, to prevent a character death. That's the sort of thing that will take the tension out of the game, if the players suspect the DM is doing it.
But once it does happen, finding a way to bring the character back to life, if that's what the table desires, is just a plot twist, an adventure pivot, with stakes of its own (including, quite possibly, a time constraint.). The key thing is to not guarantee that the character can be brought back to life. You gotta make them work for it.
As a DM, I always start any campaign with a session 0, in which I tell my players how I run my campaign, what I expect of them as players, and how I handle pc deaths.
I tell them that I never fudge, and that after 1st level the gloves are off. If they make bad decissions in battle, no miracle will pop up to save them unless they make it happen themselves.
