Death. Until this week, I’d never witnessed the death of a PC. It can have serious short-term and long-term ramifications on your campaign. In a world without easily accessible magic to raise a dead PC, death is final. Your guy dies and it’s time to create a new PC. But in most D&D campaigns magic is readily available (for a price) and you can revive a fallen comrade easily enough. Chances are if a PC dies as part of a long-term campaign you’ll bring him back from the dead, but what about a one-off game?
In a recent Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) game I played at my friendly local gaming shop I sat down with six complete strangers to play a level 4-7 adventure. During the first combat encounter one of the PCs was killed. Dead, dead. We had to decide what was more important, making the best in-game, role-playing choice or making the best out-of-game, real life choice.
Here’s the context of the adventure. Our party was traveling with a merchant caravan from one town to the next. We were one day away from our destination when we came across an ambush in progress. Another caravan had been overrun by monsters. Some people were dead, others were being carried off as captives and a few were still fighting. We immediately joined the fight. It was during this combat that a PC was killed.
The following out-of-game exchanged followed when the encounter was over.
PCs – What are our options?
DM – You can a) continue on to the town, purchase a raise dead ritual and revive your fallen comrade, or b) you can track down the monsters and try to free the captives.
PCs – If we head to town is that it, game over?
DM – No. There are three encounters left. If you return to town and come back, you’ll miss one of the encounters.
PCs – If we press on and pursue the monsters now, is there any chance for reviving the dead PC before the end of the game?
DM – No. If you don’t bring him back now, you won’t have another opportunity until after the adventure is over. If he isn’t brought back now, his night is done.
The in-game, role-playing solution was simple, rescue the captives and revive our comrade later. That’s what the dead character would have wanted. Letting innocent people die because we took two days to get him raised from the dead was not what he’d want us to do. It didn’t make sense to do it any other way.
But the out-of-game decision wasn’t nearly as straight forward. Sure the characters might have done things one way, but how much would that suck for the poor guy who died? We weren’t even an hour into the game and a PC was dead. Considering that this was just a one-off game anyway, did we really want in-game decisions to determine if one guy got to play the rest of the adventure or not?
There we were. Six strangers faced with a tough choice. The player running the PC who died said he’d be good with either decision. I applaud him for that declaration. Had it been my PC that died I’d be asking the party to bring me back as soon as possible.
After a little bit of debating we all decided that reviving the dead PC was the best course of action. It meant that in-game some people would die, but it also meant that out-of-game a player got to participate for another two hours. We all agreed that the real life fun of playing D&D outweighed the in-game consequences that would play out after we brought our dead comrade back to life.
I think one of the reasons we all agreed to the raise dead option so quickly was that his death was not entirely his fault. Yes he ran into combat recklessly, but he was playing a tough, burly, Dwarven Fighter. It’s his job to draw fire and mark foes, which he did. His death at the hands of the party’s Wizard was unforeseen and unexpected. The benefits of hitting six monsters seemed like a fair trade if it meant possibly getting the Fighter too. The Wizard just happened to roll a 20 to hit the Fighter.
Now that we’d reached a decision to bring back the dead PC, we looked to the DM for advice. I was a little bit disappointed with the way the DM handled the situation. Now I want to be perfectly clear that the DM didn’t do anything wrong. He followed the rules. He didn’t pull punches or fudge numbers. Although I might have done things differently, what he did wasn’t wrong. It was just his choice to hold fast to the rules and not throw the PCs a bone given this unlikely turn of events.
We had to figure out the best, fastest way to do revive our comrade. We started brainstorming for any way to raise dead now and push on immediately. Our imaginations went into overdrive.
PCs – Is there any chance that a raise dead scroll is among the goods being transported in the caravan we’re accompanying?
DM – No.
PCs – We search the remains of the other destroyed wagons. Do we find a ritual scroll in there?
DM – No. It was picked clean by the monsters before you arrived.
PCs – Even the secret compartment just big enough for a scroll case?
DM – No secret compartments, sorry.
PCs – We probably knew that this was a dangerous route before we took the job. Could we say that someone bought a raise dead scroll before we left?
DM – No.
PCs – How about this? We load our friend’s corpse on the caravan. We give the merchant enough gold to cover the cost of the raise dead ritual and ask him to go to the church when he arrives in town.
DM– This merchant has never seen 500 gp in one place before. He’s more likely to dump the body, keep your gold and just ride past the town.
PCs – What if we provide a promissory note to the church instead of giving this guy cash?
DM – No, that won’t be good enough.
PCs – Is there any chance that in place of our next treasure bundle we find a coincidentally well-placed raise dead scroll?
DM – No.
I’ll admit that some of these suggestions were a bit of a stretch, but a couple were somewhat reasonable. For a game that encourages the DM to say yes, this DM said no a lot. Considering that this was just a one-off game what would it hurt to just bring the dead PC back to life right there?
In the end we travelled to the town, had the Fighter raised from the dead and returned to the ambush site to try and rescue any surviving captives. When we got back to the scene of the ambush and tracked the monsters to their lair the NPCs were dead. We killed the monsters and then found the person responsible for hiring them in the first place. So in the end we got two more exciting combat encounters out of it and everyone got to participate throughout the whole adventure.
Looking back on the adventure I realized that no mater how appropriate in-game actions may be, it’s more important to have fun playing the game. If in-game consequences mean that one or more players can’t participate then it’s time to reassess the situation. After all, D&D is a game and everyone playing should enjoy the experience. Sitting on the sidelines for hours because your PC died isn’t fun for anybody. In-game death should carry some consequences, but making a player sit out for an extended period of time isn’t the best way to handle it. This is especially true if the game is just a one-off adventure.
Have you experienced character death since the release of 4e? Did you bring the dead PC back to life or just create a new character? Do you agree with the way the DM handled this situation? If you were the DM what might you have done differently?
View Comments (33)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1 2 3 … 5 Next »If I were running a game for a one night thing with a bunch of strangers, and one guy dies... I'd have a scroll sitting around waiting to get picked up. That's just not fun for a guy who left his house to go play some D&D and a dicky Dm is willing to ruin his night because of some bad rolling.
Having said that, now you know that next time you play one of these one shots, you have to go prepared with raise dead scrolls, to avoid dealing with a dm like this guy.
.-= newbiedm´s last blog ..Winner of the signed copy of “The Ghost King” =-.
Whoa, this is an excellent article. There is an absolute (and perhaps necessary) disconnect between realism and pragmatism when it comes to character death, since it probably wouldn't play to have any of the other characters emotionally devastated for the span of the game.
On the one hand, both the player and the DM in me wants death to have some impact in the game, as opposed to a casual, "Yeah, sure, you raise him, he's fine, let's move on," or, "All right, you're dead, roll up a new character, let's move on."
On the other hand, it. is. just. a. game. How much would it suck to be eliminated from the fun by one lousy roll? The players in your game proposed out some perfectly reasonable let's-get-this-back-on-track solutions, and it's a pity that the DM didn't just latch onto one of them.
Still, there is that impact issue. O death, where is thy sting?
I agree with DW. The DM sounds like he was being a bit bull-headed that night - and I agree with the whole death being a detriment ("sting") - I would have probably had the Characters press on with their dead friend and after another encounter, introduced a mysterious character who would revive the dead guy for a price. The party will have experienced a combat without their comrade and possibly realize they need him back desperately. Have the wandering npc ritualist exact a high price - perhaps a magic item - for the cost of a raise dead, then bring the guy back. It would sting a little, but at least one Player would not have had his entire experience ruined... and it makes a better story.
The DM was being a dick. There is no reason in the world that he should have hesitated to introduce a new character for the player of the deceased PC. If he didn't have a back-up character ready to go or an NPC for the player to take over, at the very least given that it was the first combat he could have had the player just change the name on the dead character's sheet and introduced him by having him be a survivor of the initial attack just regaining consciousness, a passerby happening across the site just as the original party did, or any of a number of options. It's not even stretching game-world reality the way having a valuable raise-dead scroll among the cheap merchant goods would be. I would have told the player he could use my character, and walked.
.-= Joshua´s last blog ..Out-RAGE-e-ous Accents =-.
Sounds like a bit of poor GMing there. At the very least having a competent NPC in the caravan that the player of the dead PC could pick up would have been prudent. Had I been running it I would have definitely run with one of the player-proposed fixes.
As for the 'sting of death', eh, in a longer campaign I might worry about consequences, but in a one shot at the FLGS? Play on!
While no one really expects PCs to die, for a one shot adventure like this you need to have a backup plan in place in case someone does. Be it as simple as each player has one "Cheat Death" card which save them but places them at a minor penalty for the rest of the adventure or back up characters (in the game above, a guard from the other caravan who had been knocked unconscious would have worked) or even a 'mysterious stranger' who will raise the PC in exchange for a favor later.
There is no excuse for forcing a player to not have fun because of crazy die rolls.
.-= Sean Holland´s last blog ..Through the Lens of History 6 – Alexander the Great, Part I =-.
The DM was doing it right, but he needed to have stressed the issue better. The Ritual for Raising Dead takes serious time. The players have a choice. Forge on without him, or wait for him to be raised. There should be no short cut for this, and the DM should make it clear that the consequences on the scenario are time based, not event based. It doesn't matter if the ritual scroll was right there, you still would have a failed encounter right afterwords.
In any case, it's not like I don't feel sorry for the Fighter. Friendly fire is never a nice way to fall in battle, and I am sure that they were thinking law of averages and that if he fell he would be in negs, but not dead-dead. In my experience, it almost never fails that you roll that critical when you don't want to see it, though.
In all technicalities, the DM was being incredibly generous by allowing the raise in the middle of the game anyway. If I recall correctly, RPGA ground rules don't allow for them till the end of an adventure...
I've gotta go with the folks who suggested picking an NPC from the caravan. It should have been fairly easy to morph one of those into a useable PC from a template, albeit gimped (there is a penalty for getting your character killed.)
In the context of the RPGA, the DM made the only call he could. While the DM is given a wide latitude in what he can change in a LFR adventure (such as altering combats and tweaking skill challenges) he cannot change the rewards of an adventure such as XP or treasure, which would include any Raise Dead scrolls. Also, it is expressly against the rules to allow someone to run a second character after their first one dies. If you are wanting the kind of flexibility you call for you really need to be running games outside of the RPGA.
Here is the relevant part of the LFR rules:
Character Death
Adventuring can be dangerous business. Your character
might succumb to those dangers and die. However, death for
your character is usually a temporary situation. If your
character dies during the course of the adventure, you and
the rest of your group have two options, provided that the
groups has access to the Raise Dead ritual (either a PC has it
and can use it or the characters return back to civilization),
they have access to the body, and it is possible to return your
character to life.
• Pay the component cost for the ritual. If the group
chooses this option, the cost should be divided evenly
amongst the group (500 gp for heroic tier, 5,000 gp for
paragon tier, and 50,000 gp for epic tier). Using a source
outside the group to cast the ritual costs 20% more than
the component cost. Total cost when using an outside
source is 600 gp for heroic tier, 6,000 gp for paragon tier,
and 60,000 gp for epic tier. A PC that dies and chooses
this method of return gains full (or half, if the party was
defeated) experience points from the encounter in which
the character died, but no experience points for any
encounters that were missed while the character was
dead. If there’s still more of the adventure remaining, the
PC continues to earn experience as normal, and receives a
normal cut of the rewards at the end of the adventure.
• Invoke the Death Charity clause. If the group cannot
afford to pay for the ritual, doesn’t desire to pay for it, or
doesn’t have access to the body, the PC can choose to
return back to life at the end of the adventure. Doing so
forfeits all rewards (including treasure and story rewards)
earned for the adventure except experience points gained
prior to the character’s death (the character receives the
experience point award for the encounter in which they
died). The PC cannot participate in the same adventure a
second time.
Everyone needs to follow the rules for the RPGA to work.
While I'm inclined to disagree with @Kensan_Oni I do agree with a bit of what he is saying. Death should sting a little. However I myself would have made an exception of giving the PC an out of playing one of the survivors. If the ritual of raise dead would have taken to long even if found then give them the easy out of playing another character readily available. It'll keep it within the confines of the game without being to heavy handed on the enjoyment of the player.
I disagree with how the DM handled it because he was putting the rules of the game above the players enjoyment. Which to me, is unacceptable. Have fun with the rules but disregard them when needed.
.-= Tyson J. Hayes´s last blog ..Weekly Question: Why do you roleplay? =-.