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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7288370" data-attributes="member: 53980">I think it's very much a play preference. I have one player who loves hardcore style video games. He never takes issue with losing a character.Another player is one of the finest roleplayers I've ever had the pleasure to game with. He takes character death pretty hard (in a mature way).I remember back in 3e, one of us died (I don't recall who) and was given the opportunity to be resurrected by a lesser Titan whose aspect was death, at the cost of a boon. That boon ended up costing us dearly, as the Titan ended up asking us to kill a godling who we also owed favors to (owing favors to dark entities isn't a good idea, but it was a tough campaign and we needed all the help we could get). We ended up pulling it off via a bit of time travel (which the DM hadn't actually intended for that purpose) but it cost us two party members, one of whom died as a result of the battle, and another who sacrificed himself to seal the paradox we created (we could have opted to avoid the sacrifice, but it would have put the entire party at risk of a tpk).In that same campaign, that second player I mentioned kept losing character after character. Mostly because he prefers making fun and interesting characters over optimized ones. We could tell that he was seriously frustrated as a result, so we (players) ultimately helped him build a virtually unkillable monster, and he put an amazing RP spin on the character. It worked, and that character ended up epic (both in level and personality) but I do still sometimes wonder whether it was the right thing to do. I mean, a large part of the beauty of RPGs is getting to create and play your own character. As great as that character was, we'll never know what he might have done without our intervention.I also disagree that you can't kill characters in 5e, unless it's a tpk. I'll agree that if you play CaS rather than CaW, it is unlikely. However, in the latter case it can (and likely will) happen. In a 5e campaign,the first friend I mentioned was playing an illithid (Homebrew class/race combo). We were around level 10, and he had previously drawn one of the enmity cards from the Deck of Many Things. The DM rolled a double nat 20 for a random encounter (worst possible result) and determined that the card's effect had come up, and we were ambushed by a gith hunting party. It was a hellish fight. Focus fire took the illithid out in the first round or two. The gith offered to let us withdraw as long as we left the illithid, but we refused. I almost turned the fight around with a hypnotic pattern, but the dice did not favor us and most of them saved. Ultimately, we were forced to retreat and they plane shifted away with their trophy. Not only was he dead, but completely unressurectable (at least by the means available to us). There was talk of a rescue mission, but after extended investigation we deemed it too risky, and that was that. (That player, meanwhile, deemed it a fitting end and happily rolled up a new warlock.)We've used various options in the past, but presently we allow the player to reroll with full XP but only a small amount of treasure for the new character. It's generous, but we've had issues in the past with level disparities diminishing some players enjoyment of the game, and for now this has been working fine. It isn't as though there aren't downsides. All of the previous character's accomplishments are lost to the player. NPCs who were happy to help the old character have no such attachment to the new one. While they'll likely be amicable to the new character simply by association to the party, they certainly won't feel they owe him anything. In a very real sense, the player is starting from scratch, despite that his character sheet is largely equivalent. (Obviously this doesn't apply to all players out there, but it does with my table.)I've considered alternatives. I find the concepts in the Phoenix Dawn Command RPG interesting. Therein, your soul is bound to an ancient artifact. If you die, you will return to life the next morning, and moreover your experiences in the artifact grant you more power each time. In other words, dying makes you more powerful. The catch being, it can only bring you back seven times (after that your soul is permanently bound to the artifact). It's a tricky thing IMO. The most frequent source of single character death that I've seen at my table (apart from occasional unwise decisions or absurdly bad luck with dice) is the one player who nobly sacrifices their character to save the rest of the party. Personally, I think that's the sort of thing a player ought to be rewarded for, but I haven't come up with a good way thus far.Overall, I don't really think that there's a right way or a wrong way to handle it, assuming it works for the table and the player.</blockquote>

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