D&D General Typical procedure after character death?

[Oofta]

We used to divvy up treasure but then we'd get

Player 1: "Gee looks like Bob's in trouble."​

Player 2: "Huh. Too bad we couldn't help him" looking forlornly at the healing potion in their hand.​

Player 1: "I get his ring."​

Player 2: "Dibs on his cloak."​

 

[jaycrockett]

Personally I think it's important that a player can keep playing their character if they want. There isn't a way to stop it mechanically, since they can just roll up a clone, which leads to a lot of dissonance. I would just knock out/defeat/capture the character instead of killing, until a raise dead mechanism was available.
When I ran 3rd edition and a character was raised, I just gave him a negative level, less complicated than actual de-leveling. Then they could lose the negative level after a few sessions, at an appropriate time.
I personally don't like bringing in new characters over first level, as characters created at a high level are very different than characters developed from scratch and grown over time.

 

[Fanaelialae]

We used to do this in the 1E & 2E days, it was mandatory. But 9 out of 10 times it spelled certain doom for said 1st level PC if the party was any level over 3. Compound that with the fact that in order to stay alive you had to play pretty cowardly and stay out of combat most of the time which meant less XP so it took forever to advance I think its probably alot more feasible in 5E and maybe even 3E.

We used to do this as well, although we were more forgiving with respect to XP (a character standing WAAAY back with a bow or sling or tossing rocks was considered to be "participating" and would therefore get a full share of XP). While this could have been admittedly abused, I can't recall that it ever was, and was really just reserved for characters who were significantly below average level.

Ultimately, though, the newbie would level up very quickly (assuming they survived) to somewhere within the vicinity of party level and mostly stall out at that point. In the interim the party members were stuck babysitting this lowbie until he was leveled enough to be relatively competent, which wasn't much fun for either the "babysitters" or the "baby". The character would remain below party level for a long time, making it likely that one death would result in a spiraling series of deaths for that player.

The fast leveling, babysitting, and "death spirals" were undesirable. For us, this culminated (during 3.5) as an arms race between the DMs and the players, where players would try to create unkillable PCs, and the DMs would then come up with even deadlier ways of challenging those PCs. In the end, we just decided to stop doing things that way, which lead to characters coming back at the same level.

Mind you, that only applies to PCs. If someone wants to bring Wilhelm the stable boy along on adventures, he's going to have to start from scratch. Bringing PCs along, however, isn't really optional.

 

[iserith]

Per the thread title: What is your typical procedure after a character in the group has died?

Does the player immediately roll up a new character and join right away or do they sit out until an "appropriate point?" (or something in between)

Do players typically have backup characters?

Do characters joint the group at the same level, a lower level, 1st level?'

What about equipment?

These questions are just guidelines/suggestions - the main question what does your group typically do after a character has died?

The players in my games almost always have backup characters which are already written in such that it's easy for them to be brought into play if their other PC falls.

 

[Draegn]

The extremely ugly cleric/wizard takes the "beautiful" parts of the body to make a flesh golem. It's how he gets his romantic dates without having to go to the old Roll a D12 inn of the Shady Lady.