Dealing With Character Death as a Dungeon Master

[@mnfrancis]

"And remember … CRIT YOUR PLAYERS" makes me laugh every single time.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Glad someone else finds it funny! Thanks for watching!

[@Mazortan]

Popping a comment for one of my favourite DND content creators A hint that comes before death: make your players roll death saves in secret. That prevents controlled last second heals and yo-yo. If your companion is down - you gotta be worried

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Thank you so much, those words really mean a lot to me! Secret death saves is something I want to try but have always just reverted to public ones, one of these days I’ll give it a try!

[@ZeKiwiOfTheNorth]

I probably have a relatively high kill count, having run West Marches style games for a number of years. I don't think any PC party has ever had a Revivify diamond available, but quite a few have come back, either through resurrection quests or by beseeching dark entities (me) about returning to life with Warlock levels. In my current, more narrative-focused campaign, when a character is unconscious, each time it is their turn to make a death saving throw I ask them to describe a moment of their life that flashes before their eyes, before rolling the save privately. Those that have died have been greeted by a local death god, who asked if they were ready to move on and, when they said no, rezzed them suspiciously well (full health + some spell slots, but with notable scar) and told them to come visit his temple. If they're brave enough (read: stupid enough) to fight a hag and a dragon, he's going to tag them to go on a quest for him.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

That’s awesome, I love the moments flashing before their eyes and the real consequences for coming back! Great ideas, thanks for sharing them!

[@BurningMonkey]

the only character deaths I remember in my many decades of gaming where done by a toxic group as just spite and punishment for me being me glad I am not in that environment anymore

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Honestly, that sounds terrible! No DnD is better than bad DnD as they say, glad you’re in a better group now!

[@YodasTinyLightsaber]

New homemade campaign started a few months ago for us. The first few levels were pretty dicey. I just had them walk into a room with a bunch of diamonds to lessen their chances of permadeath later. Between that and 1 druid and 1 cleric on the group, I think we are going to be OK with avoiding character death.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Rooms of diamonds definitely help deal with death! The early levels are always dicey with death, glad you’ve been thinking it through!

[@MemoristCed]

Good insights and ideas, as always! "EXP attaches to the player, not the character" is a rule I've loved to use for a long time. They may lose the character, but they don't feel like they've lost their progress. And since level loss isn't really a thing anymore, it doesn't cause confusion. I also like to let my players have "alts", but that's so that they don't go SEEKING character death because they got bored with Krog and "have this new character I want to try out". Having an alt prepared and already semi-attached to the story makes getting the player back in the game a lot more smoothly if death DOES turn up, too. (Sorry if this came out a bit scrambled; I'm working on a crossover campaign for some of my groups and my brain is starting to hate language.)

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Thanks for the kind words and the support, always makes me happy! A crossover campaign sounds crazy to run but rewarding to pull off, good luck! Love the “XP goes to the player” way of looking at things, and introducing back-up characters to the story to make their potential addition more seamless is something I’d never thought of. Thanks for sharing!

[@JordoValentino]

Alts are a great option, especially for the player that ends up being GM in most games.

[@JJ-sq1fv]

I swear I thought the title of the vid was “dealing with death” and was thrown off by the thumbnail. Good vid btw very informative 👍👍.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Definitely NOT qualified to make that video! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@bengrace8808]

While I think your points about coming back at a lower level are well made, I would like to argue the other side for a second. For context, I run a game with XP, not milestone, with about mid-lethality (not many go down, but diamonds for revivify extremely rare). My rule is that a new character comes in with 80%-90% of the dead character's XP, receiving more if they give me good plot hooks and/or a good way to integrate them into the current plot. Given that I'm using XP, the party is already slightly cross-level - at the moment, lowest is 6 and the highest is 8; this makes a new character coming in not feel like the single person dragging down the party. Also, starting at a lower level allows someone to get eased in to their abilities. If you were playing a paladin, and now you're getting dropped in as a bard, combing through and getting used to, say, three levels of new spells is a lot better than four. To conclude, if you happen to run a game somehow exactly like mine, level drop on death *might* make sense. Doing it if you're running milestone is absurd, though.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

I was definitely coming at it from the view of a DM who does milestone leveling (myself), so this is an interesting take I hadn’t thought of! I could see how it wouldn’t be as big of a drag on the party/player if there’s already a (small) level difference, and I do agree that learning a ton of new abilities all at once can be daunting. And at the end of the day, I’m sure we can both agree that the best solution is whatever is most fun for the group! Thanks for sharing the other side, I always love hearing other opinions and getting to consider things I might’ve missed!

[@astralaperture4231]

Great advice! I havnt had a character death in my games yet, but im running the Alien RPG this week for the first time, so my death count could go up very quickly! Good luck to the Panthers tomorrow, who do you got for the series winning goal?

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

I can only imagine your count is about to skyrocket! I’ve got Verhaeghe getting the clinching goal, he’s always been so clutch for us! Fingers crossed, always appreciate the well-wishes!

[@lilithname4100]

Thanks for the video, I'm a fairly new dm and a player approached me and asked me to kill their character and Idk how to handle that until now.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

I’m glad I could help!

[@RottenRogerDM]

Tip 1. PC Death is always a session 0 subject. I always have suggested people have a backup pc. Tip 2. And I always been drop another quarter into the slot for a new life. Tip 3 is good. Dancing on the table yelling you lose MF is not cool. But I do have Skully #4 and 151 kills in my Adventure League games. Tip 4. Grief depends on the table. I leave open in my homebrew campaign. And this is a part of the session 0 talk. Tip 5. I have always got the new pc into the action. If the middle of dungeon on the 666th level, the chaos fog drops them in. Think the mists of Ravenloft without the blood sucker. Tip 6. Harumph. Tip 7. YES. YES. YES. Back in 1E you could do a Plus minus 2 in level. But now days it does not work. And I have read online of PC starting back at level one and caught up. But I think that a heavy level of BS play as just a sneeze from a level 7 monster can take out a level 1 wizard. Tip 8. YES. I only do retcons if there is a dead pc on the floor and I MADE A MAJOR RULE MISTAKE. I did this about four times in Adventure League. TIP 9 NO SAVE SCUMMING. SAVE SCUMMING is only for BG3. TIP 10 Thanks for have the time stamps.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Glad you enjoyed the video! Thanks for sharing your input, glad you agree on most points and appreciate your insights! Always good to hear from fellow DMs!

[@jjhill001]

I am a newer DM, all players are experienced. The way I made my story was that they were all the chosen ones. Really awesome. Turns out, despite their experience they are all idiots. Hasn't happened yet but I'm sure it will. How could I deal with that?

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

Here's the secret, Cap: ALL players are idiots! Just kidding! Mostly. But my advice would be that when/if they get themselves in a really bad situation, death doesn't have to always be the answer! You can have them captured, their items stolen, quests failed - and once they realise there are real stakes in your world, they'll hopefully start thinking through things a bit more! Short of that, there can always be other chosen ones. Prophecies are made to be misinterpreted! Hope that helps, good luck with your game!

[@emdotambient]

I'm running a heavily modified Basic Fantasy RPG campaign that I set up to introduce two players to roleplaying. Neither of them had ever played before and I didn't want to kill their characters early in the game before they'd had a chance to really experience the game. BFRPG if played by RAW is very lethal. I mean, no death saves. At 0 HP you're dead. I nixed that rule, but I also gave all the original PCs a "get out of jail free" item that auto-triggered healing when they went sub-zero in HP. All of these had a limited # of charges. Each item was tailored to fit their in-game family so each had different properties. Three of them ended up using them multiple times and it added a lot of great flavor moments to the campaign. Only one of them ran out of charges, thus destroying the item. The rest gave theirs up in exchange for me broadening the game to use supplemental classes that they wanted to play [their gods came down and bestowed special favors upon them in exchange]. It's been over a year we've been playing. They all started at 1st level and are 4th to 5th level now. And the only permadeath just happened to one of their NPCs. Turned into a ghoul. Oops. But the players were really kind of torn up about that. He had become part of the story and there was some emotional investment in the character. I mean it helped that I named him Maurice Pompetusaluv [woo-woooo]!

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

That’s awesome, I’m glad your game is going well! I’ve also used “get out of jail free” items before, especially when I was first learning to balance combat! Sounds like the trade-offs and rule changes have been great for your party, keep killing it out there!

[@GamerTreeProductions]

Great advice. I’m gonna have to kill a couple characters next session to try some of this out.

[@TheBardsCollegeYT]

One of us! One of us!