this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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So I’m curious about this kind of thing.
I’ve been playing since the blue box days (on and off but have been interested in getting back into it). In the games I’ve run and the groups I’ve played with, we’ve generally played in such a way that the PCs don’t get killed off if we’re doing a long running campaign. For one off games that has everyone with a new character and is finished in a couple of sessions, we will sometimes play with PC deaths, but for ones where players actually take their characters from level 1s on up, we take the plot armor approach.
I’ve considered it appropriate because I see D&D as interactive fantasy literature rather than a game that people can lose. If a player wants to quit, we can Tasha Yar them out of the story, but otherwise we manage it so that they end up wiping and getting another go (eg, the way it works in a game like WoW), or whatever works for the storyline.
If you do have character permadeath in your games, do you have the player just roll another 15th level whatever and join the party as a new character? Does role playing get affected by that?
We just had our first character death in the campaign I'm in. Our DM gave us the choice. We were in a situation where we could be TPKed, so he told us, we could choose, die, or be Deus ex Machina'd.
Most of us chose to continue playing our same characters. The other players didn't feel like it would be a satisfying death. I let my character die though.
He's a Warlock that got his powers by swearing an oath of service in exchange for his patron saving his sister, who had been caught in a cave in. When he died this time, his patron was there, and I decided it would make sense for him to make the same choices again. He swore further oaths in exchange for his patron saving his friends.
So now, he's the only one that died, and the other players have to deal with that. The Paladin is angry, and upset with himself, because he feels like it's his job to sacrifice himself for his friends, not the other way around. The Bard is reeling, because he grew up a bastard in a noble household, without any real connections, and now, the only person he'd ever really grown close to is dead.
To further complicate things, the Bard took up my Warlock's holy symbol, which is an enchanted amulet that gains power as he "saves" the souls of others in service of his patron. He had basically been charged with being a missionary for an unknown, probably evil, maybe god. The Paladin really didn't like that, but now the Bard is staked on it, because, to believe that my Warlock is in a good place, he has to believe in my Warlock's religion.
And now, I get to come in as a totally new character (a Bladesinger Wizard, and the surprise husband of a local rebel leader), in the middle of all of this, while they're dealing with their grief and confusion, and I have to make them like and trust me so we can fight off an army that's marching on the forest we're hiding in.
Plus, my original character will now be coming back as a villain.
We do player death beacause D&D is interactive fantasy literature. Death isn't losing, it's just another part of the story
Exactly my take on it as well. In a fantasy setting, death isn’t necessarily the end. There are ways to be revived, raised, etc. Plus in a game without any stakes, what is the fun?
That sounds like it was done perfectly.
Thanks! It's been super fun. We've had two sessions since my Warlock's death, and, even though there hasn't been any combat, or other traditional D&D encounters, I think they've been our best sessions so far. The Bard's player actually cried, and we haven't even done the funeral yet.
It just so happened that, while we were exploring the dungeon where my character died, they found some statues, and he mentioned that that's what his people (a dwarf clan) do for their dead. So now the Bard is going to try to carve him a statue to bury him under. It's gonna be great