When do you award experience to Dead characters?

[William_2]

Yes, I agree that the intent of the rules is clearly to determine if the PC group as a whole won an encounter, and if so, reward each member with the XP as calculated when those members entered the encounter. Death, while unfortunate, should hardly be regarded as a type of failure for heroes...
Besides, since the point here is that they are brought back from the dead, the “failure” might amount to no more than missing a few seconds of a fight followed by some downtime- wherever D&D people go when they die, which is tremendously unclear to me, as is why they would want to come back...but I’m drifting off.

House ruling is always good, but I don’t think the rules are unclear on the basic question here, but instead quite explicit. And the whole flavor of the game should, to me, make it clear that a heroic death might earn more of whatever “XP” is than a not-quite-so-heroic living.

 

[iwatt]

Yes, I agree that the intent of the rules is clearly to determine if the PC group as a whole won an encounter, and if so, reward each member with the XP as calculated when those members entered the encounter. Death, while unfortunate, should hardly be regarded as a type of failure for heroes...
Besides, since the point here is that they are brought back from the dead, the “failure” might amount to no more than missing a few seconds of a fight followed by some downtime- wherever D&D people go when they die, which is tremendously unclear to me, as is why they would want to come back...but I’m drifting off.

House ruling is always good, but I don’t think the rules are unclear on the basic question here, but instead quite explicit. And the whole flavor of the game should, to me, make it clear that a heroic death might earn more of whatever “XP” is than a not-quite-so-heroic living.

Well, the case in point that spawned this thread is that the PC that died had already overcome the obstacle. She had detroyed the leader of the orc warband with a claw swipe, and was brought down by an unfortunate critical hit by a mook (greataxes are great in the hansd of the DM ). The cleric who was the last man standing easily cleaned up the last mook. It was a case of evry bad luck. If I didn't roll in the open I would have probably fudged it since they'd already won. It was three Level 7 PCs against 70 orc War1s 10 orc War3, 2 adept3, 1 cleric 5 and one Rgr2/Fight4 leader.

So for all intents and purpose the PCs had already overcome the challenge, and it was a fluke that she died (a 20 and then a 19 to confirm==>3d12+12).

 

[werk]

Page 41 of the DMG (3.5) includes the section on "Death and Experience Points". Briefly, the dead get their share, after being raised, and after appropriate level loss.
...
Besides, since the point here is that they are brought back from the dead, the “failure” might amount to no more than missing a few seconds of a fight followed by some downtime- wherever D&D people go when they die, which is tremendously unclear to me, as is why they would want to come back...but I’m drifting off.

You're right, them's the rules! I retract my unintentional house rule.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If the dead do not earn a share of xp, then logically the PCs who survived get a bigger reward for allowing one of their comrades to fall in battle.

I say if they defeat the encounter, give them the xp. A level hit is a level hit. Why nickel and dime the unfortunate PC?

We also use a level based formula to calculate the xp loss.