D&D 5E New DM let Player Die, now what?

[Rocksome]

I'm going to Devil's Advocate on the part of the player.

Describing the 3 humanoids as "humanoids" is a lot different than saying something like "a hideous purple creature that walks upright like a man with a face like that of a spider". If the player heard "humanoid", he may have imagined actual humans, or orcs or elves. If the player thinks he's chasing three humans, and then get's nuked by three hybrid spider monstrosities, he's going to be a little unhappy.

One important lesson to learn as a DM is that only a fraction of what you envision actually makes it across to the players. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant. The DM sees the elephant, but the players only feel the trunk and think it's a snake.

You have to learn to be blunt, and repeat and emphasize important things to make sure that what the players envision matches what's in your head.

I realise that you're only playing Devil's Advocate here, but by the sounds of this players actions I don't think it would have made any difference if the OP had described them as "humanoids", "a hideous purple creature that walks upright like a man with a face like that of a spider", or if he'd described them as "floating round balls with a large central eye and capped by a crown of eyes on tentacles". He was working under the false assumption that he was "safe" and therefore decided to do something extremely stupid and got himself killed. Now I don't know for certain but that's certainly the impression I'm getting: gung-ho and careless.

 

[delericho]

One of my PCs made the decision to run into battle alone with three humanoid characters that had attacked the group along with some spiders. The PC did not know what these things were until they turned and faced him, and they ended up being 3 CR 2 humanoids vs. this level 4 character. The other 5 members of the party chose to deal with the spiders before giving chase to the humanoids.

Unfortunately as a result of this encounter the PC died.

That's a shame. Still, if he will insist on taking on three-to-one odds alone, and if his comrades don't come to his aid, it's not a surprise.

How do experienced DMs deal with a PC death?

The player creates a new character and we move on. At higher levels, his comrades may instead seek to have the fallen PC raised... but that's up to them.

At what point do you take back the death and say my bad, You're still alive, then.

There is exactly one instance in which I've done that: we were at the end of a session and the PCs entered a fight against four Stone Giants. Several rounds in, and one dead PC later, I realised I'd been using the stats for Storm Giants throughout, meaning that the PCs were horrendously over-matched.

At that point, we agreed to end the session and pick up again from the point where the PCs entered the room - essentially allowing a "do over" of that whole combat.

(What the players didn't tell me was that they spent the next week carefully honing their strategies for the forthcoming combat. What I didn't tell them was that I knew they were going to do that, so re-wrote the encounter to feature a different mix of monsters. )

At what point do you say, too much time has passed?

If you don't take it back immediately, don't take it back.

In addition, unless you made some serious mistake with the rules, you need to stick to your ruling on this one. If you don't, and bring back the character because "Bob's unhappy", you're basically making it impossible for you to ever kill off a PC. Because when it happens to Andy or Chloe, they'll turn around and say, "but you brought Bob's guy back..."

Losing a PC sucks, but it happens. Have him create a new character, and move on.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If PCs weren't meant to die, there wouldn't be so many dang ways of raising them

 

[Sword of Spirit]

As an aside, I think it's really interesting that no one thought, hey maybe we can resurrect him...
Thanks!

I always find this baffling when I see how common this (lack of using resurrection magic) apparently is from what I read in online discussions. It is pretty much always a given in any game I have played in or ran that, unless it was established prior to the start of the game, resurrection magic is available exactly as described in the PHB. The players know that. If a PC dies and the player doesn't express a desire to switch to a new character, they start looking for a way to bring him back. If they can't afford it, they generally end up offered a quest by an NPC priest capable of casting raise dead in lieu of payment.

I mean, is this really the exception? Because it seems to me to be the norm in any D&D circles I've been in.

 

[iserith]

I always find this baffling when I see how common this (lack of using resurrection magic) apparently is from what I read in online discussions. It is pretty much always a given in any game I have played in or ran that, unless it was established prior to the start of the game, resurrection magic is available exactly as described in the PHB. The players know that. If a PC dies and the player doesn't express a desire to switch to a new character, they start looking for a way to bring him back. If they can't afford it, they generally end up offered a quest by an NPC priest capable of casting raise dead in lieu of payment.

I mean, is this really the exception? Because it seems to me to be the norm in any D&D circles I've been in.

From what I've seen on forums and in some gaming circles, a lot of people don't like resurrection-type options because they feel it trivializes character death. As well, it seem like death tends to occur more frequently at levels where access to such things is limited (makes sense). The NPC cleric who needs a quest done in exchange for raise dead is always an option (and is mentioned in the Basic Rules), but oftentimes death occurs in the middle of an adventure and the group has a hard time seeing how to make that work in the dungeon or out in the wilderness.

This is why I think it's really important to plan in advance for PC death by having backup characters ready to go both on paper and in the fiction (introduced previously as an NPC and always tends to be within arm's reach of the party) so that if resurrection magic isn't available, you can tap in a new character as quickly and smoothly as possible. No player should be forced to sit there and watch others play unless that's what they want to do.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm going to Devil's Advocate on the part of the player.

Describing the 3 humanoids as "humanoids" is a lot different than saying something like "a hideous purple creature that walks upright like a man with a face like that of a spider". If the player heard "humanoid", he may have imagined actual humans, or orcs or elves. If the player thinks he's chasing three humans, and then get's nuked by three hybrid spider monstrosities, he's going to be a little unhappy.

One important lesson to learn as a DM is that only a fraction of what you envision actually makes it across to the players. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant. The DM sees the elephant, but the players only feel the trunk and think it's a snake.

You have to learn to be blunt, and repeat and emphasize important things to make sure that what the players envision matches what's in your head.

Chasing after three unknown enemies is still foolhardy, even if they were human. What if they were humans? A human can vary wildly in combat capability. Suppose he ran down a trio of 6th level battle master fighters? They would be accurately described as humans. They don't have their stat blocks hovering over their heads or anything. A large volume of character deaths could probably be avoided if more situations were played as if the character were there instead of as a meta-game exercise predicated on the assumption that the character will never encounter anything that he/she is incapable of defeating through brute force.

That attitude in my campaign is a nigh guaranteed death sentence.

If PCs weren't meant to die, there wouldn't be so many dang ways of raising them

YUP!!

 

[Sword of Spirit]

From what I've seen on forums and in some gaming circles, a lot of people don't like resurrection-type options because they feel it trivializes character death. As well, it seem like death tends to occur more frequently at levels where access to such things is limited (makes sense). The NPC cleric who needs a quest done in exchange for raise dead is always an option (and is mentioned in the Basic Rules), but oftentimes death occurs in the middle of an adventure and the group has a hard time seeing how to make that work in the dungeon or out in the wilderness.

Yeah, it's not so much that I personally disagree with the sentiment (I actually make such magic rarer/more expensive/may come with drawbacks) but that I wonder what the norms are in actual D&D play. If the norm was that such magic wasn't assumed one would think they would stick it in the DMG rather than the PHB--assuming the designers picked up on it.

This is why I think it's really important to plan in advance for PC death by having backup characters ready to go both on paper and in the fiction (introduced previously as an NPC and always tends to be within arm's reach of the party) so that if resurrection magic isn't available, you can tap in a new character as quickly and smoothly as possible. No player should be forced to sit there and watch others play unless that's what they want to do.

That's a great way of handling it. Now I'm thinking of having players consider a backup character at level 1 when they make their initial character. Even if I allow raising the dead PCs, just the fact that I ask them to consider making a backup character before the game even starts might make them assume the campaign will be extremely dangerous and play more cautiously.

 

[GSHamster]

Chasing after three unknown enemies is still foolhardy, even if they were human. What if they were humans?

Perhaps I'm not being clear enough. There is a mismatch between what the player thinks is happening, and what the DM knows is happening. And something bad happened.

Now, it's possible that the character would have still died if it had been humans, but there would have been no mismatch. In that case, it's a fair death, and the player may have been okay with that.

The mismatch is on the DM. The very basic job of the DM is to convey what is happening to the players. If a player (who is genuinely trying) does not understand what is going on, the DM needs to improve, needs to be clearer and more explicit.

 

[redrick]

The mismatch is on the DM. The very basic job of the DM is to convey what is happening to the players. If a player (who is genuinely trying) does not understand what is going on, the DM needs to improve, needs to be clearer and more explicit.

This is legit — one of the skills of DM'ing is learning how to give information to your players in a way that isn't boring, isn't information-overload, isn't super contradictory (as much of the stuff made up on the spot can be), and isn't giving away everything to the players. That's a serious skill, and certainly one that I as a DM am still working on.

It's also clear that the OP recognizes, from the very get-go that he is an inexperienced GM learning the game and he's got a player who won't let him rest about, "that time you lied to me about those 3 ettercaps and totally reamed my character." (Because, if I'm understanding correctly, this isn't something that happened recently. This is something that happened many sessions ago.) So I think the advocate for the devil is correct in saying, "there's a place that you could improve," but it's also the responsibility of the players to recognize that their DM is trying his best, which means that they need to step in and ask for information if they think it might impact their decision, and also that they need to let go after a while.

Information mismatch is the worst when it comes to traps, unseen hazards or enemies, or the like. The player doesn't know to ask about things that he doesn't know exist, and it's easy as a DM to gloss over stuff like that. But when it comes to charging into combat against a known number of assailants who are described as "humanoids" ie I-haven't-told-you-what-kind-of-humanoid, the player has enough information to ask for more details. Now, maybe, just like his character, he chose to charge in without paying a lot of attention to those details. "Something on 2 legs is taking my horses and I just won't stand for it!" might have been all that character ever thought. And then he saw the scary spider eyes and then he died from poisoning.

edit: sorry, not trying to be contrarian! As you said, you're playing devil's advocate and you're making a good point. I just know, as somebody who is also somewhat new to being behind the screen, that it's really easy to take this stuff personally and lose a lot of sleep over it, which is no fun.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'd apologize for any miscommunications that may have happened, I've had players tell me they didn't get some info which was actually laid out but they were busy telling stupid jokes or talking to another player, and then say lets move on and try to make sure we are all on the same page in the future. If they were still grinding the axe I'd assume there are going to be more problems with the player and decide if my limited game time is best spent with that player.