Magical items of dead PCs

[ShadowMaster]

What do you do with magical items a PC has when he dies? I mean, when a death occur and a PC decide not to come back to life using that character but, instead, with a new character; do you let him create a new character with all the gold he is supposed to have (DM Guide) and let the party share the dead pc's equipment?

If yes, is that a little unbalancing doing so? After 5 or more different PCs death you end up with 5 times more magical items than usual.

 

[IceBear]

Then you, as the DM, make sure that the PCs have trouble finding new magic items until its appropriate for them to find some - based on the wealth per level charts in the DMG (or in my case, based on my gut feeling for the campaign).

IceBear

 

[Plane Sailing]

I allow the PC's to redistribute the dead guys items exactly as their characters wish.

When the new character is prepared I (as the DM) will assign a few magic items to him, normally a bunch of potions and/or scrolls and one or two more powerful items. I normally keep within the limits of an NPC of that level.

I would never allow the player to specify his own magic items - death is supposed to be a DISadvantage, I would think! I carefully play and placed all the magic which gets found in adventures, I would do the same for new characters coming in to the adventure.

Cheers

 

[Bobbystopholes]

When the PC dies, decide what you want to bury him in, then sell or split up the rest. My DM plays where you can only be raised once, then you are dead forever. He also gives the PCs the starting gold suggested in the DM guide for the new PCs starting level. It's like he was with another adventuring group until he met the campaigns group. He should never take away from the games main group.

 

[Jeremy]

That's generally a sticky situation. Making the fallen player come back as a PC of the lowest level currently in the group helps for us, but that's because of the level disparagy. As for a surplus of magical items, Monte Cook recommends every major adventure module have at least one creature that can permanently destroy a magical item (sunder, rust monster, disintegrate, various oozes, nimble fingered thief, scroll of disjunction) though I have yet to gain the DM-ballz to try that.

Though I did recently have a dragon snatch a PC away, and though they managed to recover the body later, the items are now snuggled comfortably in a pile of gold.

 

[kreynolds]

Magical items of dead PCs...

...get charged towards Weeble's character wealth at full value!

Seriously though, I don't care what the surviving party members do with the gear. If they can keep it without going over their wealth limit, so be it. If they wanna recover it from the belly of a beast, I won't stop them.

As far as the player creating a new PC, I can't say that I use any set rule. Sometimes I bring them in at the lowest level. Sometimes the highest. Sometimes I let the player roll for their level.

 

[Belares]

This post is way to easy to intrepret. The character dies, he loses all equipment, unless the other players think he just be buried, cremated, or whatever with all the items the character possesed. The dead character, unless speak with dead is used used, HAS NO SAY!

Ahem, with that said the new character that is rolled up will come with whatever the DM allows. If the other players want to give the new guy the +4 keen axe that he secretly has been coveting, well it is that players choice. NUFF SAID

 

[ShadowMaster]

huh?

I think I've been misunderstood. Here is some clarification about my thread:

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Do <b>YOU</B> let him create a new character with all the gold he is supposed to have (DM Guide) and let the party share the dead pc's equipment?
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More than all:
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If yes, is that a little unbalancing doing so? After 5 or more different PCs death you end up with 5 times more magical items than usual.
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My main concern is about the balance issue. I know that, as the master, I can do whatever I want and bring the new PC nude or with a full +5 set of equipments.

My question is, what do other DM do in case of everybody in a group die, one after the other, and bring a new pc with a new set of magical item PLUS all the other equipment that the now-dead character had.

 

[Weeble]

Re: Magical items of dead PCs...

...get charged towards Weeble's character wealth at full value!

Yeahhhhhh!!!!
Cut him to shreads.

If that PC died alone with no immediate rescue attempt, well, those items should be NPC or monster property. A good adventure I would say.

 

[Crothian]

When a character dies and doesn't want to be resurected our party tends to do things a little differently. We play good aligned people. So, we like to take the characters wealth, including the magical items, and return them to the characters family and also inform them of their loss. This is an important part of our game and a great way to role play something different that adventurers rarely seem to do.

The Player then makes up a new Character. I useually allow it to be of the same level, but with less magic then a normal character of his level would have. All of the magic is assigned by me based on suggestions by the character.