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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3522035" data-attributes="member: 18280">IM-not-so-HO, no good can come of the DM artificially keeping NPCs alive.  I'd call that a failure of worldbuilding (possibly and adventure preparation) for sure.  If your world/adventure can't survive the death of an NPC (no matter how important), then you haven't given enough consideration to how that NPC fits into things to show how his/her death affects the area/adventure/world.Sure, you might have imagined a major fight with the BBEG in Chapter Three of your story arc, or you might have imagined that the Good Guy Wizard was always going to be around to meddle with/control the PCs.  But the PCs aren't supposed to have a DM hammer controlling them, and they aren't supposed to necessarily follow your clever Adventure Path Outline either.A well made setting -- be it a dungeon, a city, or a world -- makes it easier for the DM to swing with the changes the PCs cause, but that doesn't mean that the DM will avail herself of that utility.  The PCs are supposed to change things.  They are supposed to inteact with the world.  If they can't leave things different than how they found them, what's the point?(Though I very much doubt that anyone on this thread thinks that the PCs should be in a world/adventure made like a ride at Disneyland, where what you can see, touch, choose, and effect is all tightly controlled and largely illusory.)</blockquote>