KYRON45
Hero
I think its more like a time share that they just cant get out of.
D&D General Your Character Died! Who's Fault Was It?
- Thread starter CleverNickName
- Start date
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
With all the complaining about death saves, easy healing, etc. on these forums, I'm not surprised that nobody blames the rules. But I am surprised that more than half of us are taking responsibility for our own actions. 
Will Brandiman
Explorer
I'm going to blame the DM for my last character death. Our party was fighting a Beholder. The DM hadn't read the eyebeam rules properly and we were taking half damage on a successful save for the disintegration ray. The fight had been going on a while and we were all low on hit points and other resources when I was targeted by the disintegration ray for the third time. I needed a 16 to save and rolled 15. I needed 46 hit points to survive. I had 45 and was therefore reduced to 0 hit points and disintegrated.
To be fair to the DM, he called me a couple of days later and said he'd just realised that he'd been applying half damage on a save so my character would have had considerably more hit points when the final ray hit and offered to let the character survive. I declined however, as we'd been playing it that way throughout the entire fight and them's the breaks. It would have felt a bit anti-climactic to just retcon it. I do miss poor Otyn though. RIP brave dwarf!
To be fair to the DM, he called me a couple of days later and said he'd just realised that he'd been applying half damage on a save so my character would have had considerably more hit points when the final ray hit and offered to let the character survive. I declined however, as we'd been playing it that way throughout the entire fight and them's the breaks. It would have felt a bit anti-climactic to just retcon it. I do miss poor Otyn though. RIP brave dwarf!
I am a forever GM so I can only write about last time a PC died in our campaign.
That was for sure my fault as GM (and somewhat the dice).
We currently play Shadowdark so it is D&D adjacent.
Random encounter while PC was passing a bridge. Roll on random encounter table gave a troll, that was hostile and close. Troll acted before wizard, climbed up and crit with claws causing the wizard to become unconscious, hit with bite. Next turn the troll jumped off the bridge with wizard still in mouth, happy with his meal.
That was for sure my fault as GM (and somewhat the dice).
We currently play Shadowdark so it is D&D adjacent.
Random encounter while PC was passing a bridge. Roll on random encounter table gave a troll, that was hostile and close. Troll acted before wizard, climbed up and crit with claws causing the wizard to become unconscious, hit with bite. Next turn the troll jumped off the bridge with wizard still in mouth, happy with his meal.
CellarHeroes
Explorer
Old age.
Just today! It really was random chance- aka the dice.
Poor initiative rolls put half the party last in line after a large group of orcs, and an ogre- whose rolls put THEM in initiative order 3, 4, and 5. Worse, that half of the party was the FRONT half, and blocking the cave entrance. Thus all the monsters concentrated their attacks on them. The orcs rolled well. The fighter and cleric rolled poorly on their damage rolls, hurting, but not dropping anyone.
This left the rogue and wizard to hopefully save the day.
They did their best, but 7 orcs and an ogre is a lot of attack rolls... The Fighter dropped in round 2, and it cascaded from there. They nearly pulled it off, but ran out of HP, before the orcs ran out of attacks.
Imo, it was a very low attack roll on a Melfs acid arrow, that kept the ogre in the fight- which kept the orcs from fleeing. Ultimately leading to my Wizard getting KO'd after the rest of the party was dropped.
Poor initiative rolls put half the party last in line after a large group of orcs, and an ogre- whose rolls put THEM in initiative order 3, 4, and 5. Worse, that half of the party was the FRONT half, and blocking the cave entrance. Thus all the monsters concentrated their attacks on them. The orcs rolled well. The fighter and cleric rolled poorly on their damage rolls, hurting, but not dropping anyone.
This left the rogue and wizard to hopefully save the day.
They did their best, but 7 orcs and an ogre is a lot of attack rolls... The Fighter dropped in round 2, and it cascaded from there. They nearly pulled it off, but ran out of HP, before the orcs ran out of attacks.
Imo, it was a very low attack roll on a Melfs acid arrow, that kept the ogre in the fight- which kept the orcs from fleeing. Ultimately leading to my Wizard getting KO'd after the rest of the party was dropped.
Bacon Bits
Legend
Pretty universally, I've had characters die when (a) I (or we) did something we knew was risky but felt was necessary at the time, and (b) the dice went against us. Everything from, "well, it might be trapped, but I think it's worth the risk" followed by failing a save, to "oh, I've got to distract these giant wasps from swarming the other PCs!" and then getting crit several times in one round through a Shield spell.
Sword of Spirit
Legend
Honestly, I don't tend to blame anything when one of my characters dies. If they died in an interesting or funny way, I'll laugh and smile about.
If course, resurrection magic has always been an option in every D&D game I've been involved in, though not without hassle or cost (we don't run it as cheap or easy as 5e default). So it's a setback, detour, or cost, but not an end per se.
That being said, you didn't have my option! Last time a character died is to a roper in that second adventure in Tales from the Yawning Portal (can't recall the adventure name at the moment). I put the blame where it belongs--the monster!
If course, resurrection magic has always been an option in every D&D game I've been involved in, though not without hassle or cost (we don't run it as cheap or easy as 5e default). So it's a setback, detour, or cost, but not an end per se.
That being said, you didn't have my option! Last time a character died is to a roper in that second adventure in Tales from the Yawning Portal (can't recall the adventure name at the moment). I put the blame where it belongs--the monster!
