Don't Fear the Reaper

In my new D&D group, there are a few members that haven't really played a lot of pen-and-paper RPGs before.  There's the Coworker, who is picking up polyhedral dice for the first time, and the Son, a 15-year-old who was taught to play by his Dad and is still experiencing all those first-time highs and lows that come with trusting dice to determine your character's fate.

Last session the Coworker was absent to rehearse with his band (indie rock group called Prom Date:  look 'em up, they're from Baton Rouge), so the players were a man down as they dug into the meat of the Red Box's dungeon.  The Son is playing a paladin, and because of that he's taking much more damage than the rest of the party; we made sure he knew that meant he was doing well, because that damage wasn't going to his much squishier, finger-waggling friends.

The last encounter of the day was against a bugbear brute with a magic greataxe and some goblin cronies that liked to sneak attack.  Since they were short the Coworker's rogue that left the paladin to soak up a lot of melee attacks, and soon he was on the ground and sucking negative hit points.  That same round the halfling shaman went down from a goblin's throwing dagger, which meant both of the characters capable of healing were now unconscious.

While the wizard and warlock took cover in a doorway and filled the room with freezing bursts and eldritch blasts, the unconscious players began making death saving throws.  The shaman was doing well, but the paladin was not:  before the rest of the party could get to him and get him back on his feet, he had failed two death saving throws and was staring down the barrel at a third.

The dice rolled, skipped off the edge of the map, and came to rest... on an 8.

The first thought on all our minds was:  now what?

The End...


The specter of character death in RPGs is never fun, and it's not supposed to be.  Without the possible sting of failure, without a tangible and effective consequence to a character's actions, the heroic becomes less so.  The fantastic becomes mundane.  The fun decreases, even if you don't want to admit it.

Sure, "god modes" in some games can be very satisfying, especially if you find yourself in an encounter that's just too darn evil or stacked against you to overcome (Doom, I'm looking at you.  You can just go to... somewhere else).  But without the feeling of vulnerability and urgent rush of adrenaline that comes from watching your hit points dwindle toward the single digits and beyond, there's no accompanying surge of victory that happens when you overcome the odds, putting your enemy down before they can do the same to you, and then hurling their mini across the room while howling a cry of pure win.

... just me, then?  Seriously, you had to have been there; it was epic.

...Or is it?


Of course in D&D there are ways to overcome death as you reach the paragon and epic tiers of play.  Higher-level rituals and allies can make death about as big an obstacle as running out of healing surges, and almost as easy to fix as finding a safe place to take an extended rest.

But death doesn't have to be the end at lower levels.  Raise Dead is only a eighth-level ritual, which is not completely out of the realm of possibility for NPCs that players encounter at first level.  Getting one to cast it on your friend is another story, however:  besides the cost in gold to cast the ritual (500gp at least for the component cost), DMs may require players to undertake major quests for the NPCs or their organization as payment for raising their friend.  A DM could even rule that the death penalty from Raise Dead is not fully removed until the quest is completed.

What about times where there isn't a powerful NPC with Raise Dead around, like in the middle of a dungeon?  The most important thing is to keep your player involved in the action:  if there are companion characters for the group, have them play one until their character can be raised.  I personally like to keep a couple of such characters "behind the screen" that I could drop in as random NPCs the players could encounter either exploring the dungeon or trapped inside it, perhaps even as the victims of a near-party wipe themselves.

In some circumstances death can actually be welcome.  Players can sometimes grow tired of their characters, and what better way to retire them than to have them go out in a blaze of glory?  If the character death happens at the end of a session, give the player time to weight their options:  they may actually decide re-rolling another character isn't the worst fate in the world.  Just make sure not to penalize them for doing so; give them similarly-powerful equipment and access to similar resources that their previous character had, such as divine boons or specific feats and backgrounds.

Moving On


Before the Son's paladin failed his third death saving throw, we took a moment to explain that sometimes the dice just don't fall like we want them to, and characters die.  Fortunately, the shaman had been woken up just before the saving throw and was able to grant the paladin a re-roll:  he succeeded, we all breathed a sigh of relief, and they went on to claim victory (and the bugbear's magic axe).

Listening to the Son tell other people at the gaming shop about his near-death experience was also just as cool a moment for me as a DM as it was for him as a new player.