Hexmage-EN
Legend
Characters died pretty often in Critical Role's first campaign, actually. It's just that it's easy to resurrect characters in D&D (despite Matt Mercer actually introducing house rules to make it more difficult to successfully bring someone back from the dead). The party of the second campaign, in contrast, had two clerics and died much less often because of it.Yeah, in my experience, this Matt Mercer style of intense theatrics but minimal mechanical risk of character death is what I think the majority of players want from the game. Players tend to like their characters and don’t want them to die, they just want the feeling of their character being in danger, so they can overcome that danger and feel like awesome heroes. An occasional character death can be acceptable of course, but it should feel dramatically appropriate when it happens.
Death DC
When a creature is resurrected, a roll is made against a DC, which begins at 10. For each time the creature dies, their death DC is increased by 1.
Rapid Resurrection
When a creature is targeted by the spell Revivify, the caster makes a spellcasting ability check against the target's death DC. On a success, the spell takes hold and the creature is resurrected. On a failure, the creature's death DC is increased by 1, and they can't be resurrected until they are resurrected by a spell with a casting time longer than one action.
Resurrection Ritual
When a creature is targeted by a resurrection spell with a casting time longer than one action, such as Raise Dead or Resurrection, a ritual is initiated in which up to three creatures can contribute in order to call the creature's soul back to their body. The creature makes an ability check with a skill the DM deems appropriate for the action, against a DC that the DM also determines.
For each successful check, the creature's death DC is lowered by 3 for this ritual. For each failure, it increases by 1 for this ritual. The DM makes the final roll against this DC. On a success, the creature is returned to life if its soul is willing. On a failure, the creature's soul is lost, and further resurrection rituals fail automatically.
Only the strongest of magic can bypass this ritual, in the form the True Resurrection or Wish spells. These spells can also return to life a creature whose soul was lost from a failed ritual.
Campaign 1 PC Deaths
Pike Trickfoot: 1
Grog Strongjaw: 2
Vex'ahlia: 4
Percival de Rolo: 2
Scanlan Shorthalt: 2
Keyleth: 1
Vax'ildan: 4 (became a revenant in service to the Raven Queen after being disintegrated by Vecna and died permanently at the end of the campaign, his purpose as a revenant complete)
Campaign 2 PC Deaths
Last edited: