How do you deal with character death as a DM? [Archive]

supervillan

2013-07-18, 02:53 PM

ooh, yes that's tricky.

I ran a big dungeon once, lost a few PCs along the way. But once past a certain point there was no way to simply introduce a replacement character. Early in the dungeon I could set up a room with a petrified character, knowing the party had the means to restore said character to fleshy life and they could take a hint; or do similar tricks. But the later parts of the dungeon had no easy way to either explain a newcomer, or even to shoehorn one into the dungeon rooms. I had one session where two players basically had to sit it out, and I wasn't happy about it (they were very gracious though).

I think, if you're writing your own stuff, prepare for the eventuality of PC death and build in opportunities for replacement along the way. You might not have to use them, but be ready to. This is generally straightforward in campaign writing. If you're using published material it's much harder to make the necessary edits. Pre-warn the players that they might face a period of inactivity should their character die in a particular dungeon.

Corndog

2013-07-18, 04:26 PM

yeah I may just have to just write in ways for players to participate in every dungeon in case they die

lycantrope

2013-07-18, 04:28 PM

Four options:
1) wait for a rez. Not by the book, in that I have no problem giving free rez to characters if they're willing to help out the caster in some way in return.
2) divine contract. As the player is ascending (or descending) to their respective afterlife, a deity that I feel would approve of their actions in life offers them a rez if they just accept a geas/quest. Death before quest is completed is permanent, and reasonable efforts must be made to advance the interests of the contract.
3) roll a new one up.
4) cheap, questless rez in the form of warforged. Soul stuffed into the robot body. This is the one I most look forward to when the dvati finally loses a twin in combat. My personal dm goal with that character is to have the player playing two warforged swordsages.

Character deaths have, thus far, been well earned, so I have no qualms about messing with the players with creative death fixes. Well earned meaning sneaking into the bandit camp, somehow beating the will save meant to keep you out (and alive), and attempting to engage 3 enemies without alerting the rest of the sleeping party.

KillianHawkeye

2013-07-18, 04:30 PM

As a DM, I deal with character death by cheering and giving a fist pump, or maybe a V-for-victory sign. I would also pat myself on the back, but I can't really reach around like that.

BowStreetRunner

2013-07-18, 04:38 PM

When I DM it is important for me to tie every character into the plot-line - I don't run games where the PCs are just random adventurers who turn up looking for quests. So replacing a character that dies is a lot of work both for me and for the PC (which is why I usually take care to make sure the encounters are survivable). Usually it begins with the new character concept followed by any suggestions I might offer the player to make it workable in the campaign. Once the character is built and approved I will write the new character into the story. Most commonly they will take the place of a key NPC in an upcoming scene and the party will go from there. After introducing the characters I have to make sure to create an impetus for the new PC to actually join the party - but that doesn't have to happen all at once either. The new PC can start out as a 'temporary' addition to the party for a specific mission and I can then work in a longer-term tie-in later in the story.

Fates

2013-07-18, 04:54 PM

I usually have my players create secondary character from the get-go that have backstories, motivations, and a niche within the campaign world. Each player's primary character must have connections with at least one other player's secondary character, and with their own secondary. That way, should things go awry, the substitute fits well into the group and isn't forced into the campaign world at a moment's notice. It also makes for an interesting rule because the secondary characters already exist in the world, and so should, say, the party sojourn in someone's secondary's home-town, they might actually run into that character while the primary is still alive, and the secondary then functions as a contact, or may even help out in a given adventure in the area. It's not for everyone, but I've found that my group really enjoys it.

lsfreak

2013-07-18, 05:14 PM

With the specific instance of being in a big dungeon, there's several options:
- Avoid large dungeons, so that even if nothing else is done, the player is an observer for at most the rest of the session.
- Give them control of a recurring NPC that's with the party, hirelings, followers, etc. I usually try and make sure that any recurring NPC's that team up with the players on occasion have player-friendly stat tables, rather than the highly truncated, idiomatic layout I usually use. This allows them to take control in case of character death while the NPC is with them, but also allows a player a chance to switch things up by controlling a second character for a session or something. Though note that this would only work if a) the NPC lacks much real characterization, so whatever the player does is close enough to in-character for your group's level of roleplaying, or b) your players are paying close enough attention to know how the NPC is likely to react to situations.
- Give them control over some of the monsters for the session.

EDIT: And alternatively, depending on the type of dungeon/quest/whatever, it may be that the party retreats on death to try and get their comrade rezzed or find a replacement before continuing on. After all, it doesn't take a genius to realize that dungeons usually get harder the deeper you go, and going into some place more difficult than "already killed someone," at reduced strength, just severely increased their chances of losing more people.

some guy

2013-07-18, 05:15 PM

"Temporal stasis trap" is one I used. Sole survivor of a rival adventuring party might be one I will use in the future. During games the players and me also plant some seeds for new characters.

Corndog

2013-07-18, 05:25 PM

All of my campaigns are custom. I don't like using preset ones, so that's not really an issue.

One of my campaigns is sort of a feudal/political one where each player is an important knight/noble (they all belong to the same house). So if one of them has to permanently "retire", it's easy to fill in with another member of the house.

My concern is for another one of my campaigns, which will take place entirely in the Underdark. I wanted to make a campaign in which I didn't go easy on anyone... something more mechanically intensive for experienced players. I want to have underwater combat with no breathing items available, combat that takes places when the party is halfway through scaling a steep wall (flying enemies), combat that places while the players are crossing a chasm on a horizontal rope, etc...

My problem with that is, is that it's difficult to replace a person in the middle of a campaign like that.

I appreciate all the posts, though. It's giving me more thoughts on how to approach it

visigani

2013-07-18, 05:26 PM

Companion spirit/spirits.

The player that dies takes control of a companion spirit that can add bonuses, cast first and second level spells *on the player characters*, etc etc... the only trick is the players can't *ask* for anything and the companion spirits resources are limited.

For example, at the start of combat have the companion spirit roll 1d10. Whatever number comes up the player has that many d20 rolls they can use in place of a players roll.

Dave the Fighter Rolls a 2 on his attack... seeing this Frank the Now Companion Spirit player uses up one of his seven d20 rolls and rolls. It comes up a 1... but we're operating under the same rules as the luck domain... and so now Dave actually does worse.
But them's the breaks, kids. Nobody said being a companion spirit was easy. Nobody said it would make you popular. You knew what this was. You knew it. And that's why I don't look at you when we make whoopie.

Lightlawbliss

2013-07-18, 05:28 PM

some guy that followed you in and just now caught up. It's amazing just how long someone can be "lost".

danzibr

2013-07-18, 05:56 PM

As a DM, I deal with character death by cheering and giving a fist pump, or maybe a V-for-victory sign. I would also pat myself on the back, but I can't really reach around like that.
Ahh this literally made me lol. So wrong.

Gavinfoxx

2013-07-18, 06:39 PM

Dave the Fighter Rolls a 2 on his attack... seeing this Frank the Now Companion Spirit player uses up one of his seven d20 rolls and rolls. It comes up a 1... but we're operating under the same rules as the luck domain... and so now Dave actually does worse.

How are two misses different in D&D? They are both misses, and there aren't fumble rules in 3.5e.

KillianHawkeye

2013-07-18, 06:40 PM

Ahh this literally made me lol. So wrong.

Thanks! :smallbiggrin:

Fates

2013-07-18, 10:25 PM

As a DM, I deal with character death by cheering and giving a fist pump, or maybe a V-for-victory sign. I would also pat myself on the back, but I can't really reach around like that.

Heh. If there were any room left in my sig, I'd sig this. Ah, well. You can have a cookie instead.

http://media.tumblr.com/f41ef9d622827cb3efbd8346cc989519/tumblr_inline_mi3ga4NBAn1qz4rgp.gif

CRtwenty

2013-07-18, 11:52 PM

My PCs have pretty easy access to Resurrection spells. Losing a level and paying the material cost for the spell is punishment enough.

Fates

2013-07-19, 12:04 AM

My PCs have pretty easy access to Resurrection spells. Losing a level and paying the material cost for the spell is punishment enough.

Eh, I don't feel that it is, really. I find resurrection magic tends can really invalidate death and cause PCs to be utterly foolish. I usually rule that, barring certain shenanigans and spells like Revivify and Last Breath, it is impossible to be raised more than once.

But that's just me. :smallredface:

Darth Stabber

2013-07-19, 01:20 AM

In my current party the dread necromancer is the healbot, and for an additional cost I would let her raise a partymember as a necropolitan with a create undead spell and all the components needed for a rite of crucimigration (and the attendant level + xp loss).

In general I don't much care about introducing new characters, I am making the whole thing up as I go along, and frequently introduce minor characters, so adding a new party member at some random interval actually wouldn't seem all that out of place.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-07-19, 03:17 AM

For one, we don't do dungeons large enough that you couldn't backtrack out to look for a replacement except if you count underdark excursions. Dungeons that big just don't make sense.

There's plenty of people in the underdark and plenty of them are surface dwellers that were brought down in slave raids by one of the local races.

That said, we've all played games like diablo and WoW where a new guy just randomly showing up is a common enough occurence that we're all pretty desensitized to how bizarre that probably -should- feel.

On ressurections, I'm in the "I don't mind them in the least" camp. So much so that I've adapted the rules from ghostwalk.

When a character dies his soul pulls itself together an ectoplasmic body on the ethereal 5 minutes later (ghostwalk's ghost template.) He can then choose to explore the ethereal, cross into the spirit world, or be drawn into the outer planes. In either of the former cases he can look for a manifest zone to cross back into the material plane. Being on the material means being incorporeal outside of spirit realm manifest zones, barring certain feats or magicks. If your incorporeal spirit is present on the material plane at the time of the casting of raise dead, there's no level loss.

A character could even choose to adventure as a spirit if he wants and take levels in eidolon and eidoloncer, though this tends to really creep out living NPC's since spirits usually stay on their side of the veil; that is, in the spirit realm, the lower layer of the ethereal in my cosmology. The normal ethereal, the top layer of the plane, is the ethereal veil.

supermonkeyjoe

2013-07-19, 04:13 AM

Depends on the campaign and the story and if the player minds rolling up a new character or wants to carry on with their current one.

One campaign had a character have a free reincarnate due to helping out some druids, they came back unbeknownst to the party in a different location as a different race, so a naked human appeared to the party claiming to be the Dwarf that they had just attended the funeral of.

In another campaign a character died, when the party got back to town they found a new guy waiting having been sent by an NPC ally with minor precognitive powers who sensed great danger, he arrived too late to save the dead guy but hey, new PC!

BWR

2013-07-19, 04:52 AM

For the most part I have new PCs hanging around the nearest tavern/authority building/church/whatever. In a world with adventurers, why should there no be more than the PCs around at any one time?

If stuck in a dungeon, perhaps some other party went in there first and they meet the lone survivor.

New PCs do not instantly appear (though I played in one game where they literally came from the gods to help us the round after the PC died), but I usually don't make players wait forever to bring in a new character. That's just adding insult to injury.

Of course, most PC deaths occur in combat, and then you have a player stuck doing nothing for potentially hours while combat rages around them. This has happened a couple of times, and is rather frustrating for the plater.

ericp65

2013-07-19, 10:25 AM

Party has dead character brought back to life...provided the character isn't already on his/her/its last life (is there a rule for the maximum number of times a dead character can be returned to life?).

Or, party goes about looking to hire another character.

BowStreetRunner

2013-07-19, 10:48 AM

Oooh! I just had a great idea for a new spell. Player Character Ally. It's like Planar Ally, but you ask your deity to send you a new party member to replace one you just lost! :smallbiggrin:

Gavinfoxx

2013-07-19, 11:03 AM

is there a rule for the maximum number of times a dead character can be returned to life?.

No, not at all.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-07-19, 03:37 PM

No, not at all.

Well..... kind of.

Barring high-level magic, you lose a level each time you die. After a certain point, you'll be so far behind the rest of the party as to be forced to retire the character or start dying faster than you can level. It's more of a soft limit and a judgement call but it's something.

BWR

2013-07-19, 03:42 PM

High level magic, like spells the same level as the minimum needed to raise you.

Gavinfoxx

2013-07-19, 03:43 PM

Wait, people use magic that causes folk to lose a level? I thought no one did that.

Do stuff like the Revivify+Revenance combo! That works fantastically well. Or contingent spells. Or True Resurrection.

Or those psionic circuitry stuff, like some of the combos here:

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2814

etc. etc. etc.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-07-19, 06:41 PM

High level magic, like spells the same level as the minimum needed to raise you.Anything but true res costs you a level or has a terrifically short window of opportunity. See the comment after the next quote.

Wait, people use magic that causes folk to lose a level? I thought no one did that.

Do stuff like the Revivify+Revenance combo! That works fantastically well. Or contingent spells. Or True Resurrection.

Or those psionic circuitry stuff, like some of the combos here:

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2814

etc. etc. etc.

I didn't say there weren't any ways around it, but all of those are supplemental and either obscure (psionic circuitry), cheesy (craft contingent spell) or high level (true res).

Darth Stabber

2013-07-19, 07:35 PM

Tragak

2013-07-19, 08:03 PM

Some of my favorite ways.

1) Don't have the players roll up new characters after PC death and then introduce the new PC into the existing conflict against the BBEG. Have players come up with replacement characters in advance, use them as NPCs for a couple of times each on the sidelines, and then even if the player needs a new character, this other one is already involved in the story and can be used as the new PC.

2) If the character would die in a specific scene according to RAW, let the player decide if the death scene that already happened was epic enough for her satisfaction, or if she wants to hold on to her character so as to kill her in the next fight instead to make it more epic and important for the story. The character is still going to die, she is "getting out of" anything, but the player is in control of whether the death scene is exciting or boring.

3) If the villains aren't trying to kill the heroes, then it's not an issue. If the villains are doing something long before the heroes get involved, then they might be too busy to bother with "distractions."

The risk in conflict scenes should be some kind of failure, and death can be one of the most extreme forms of failure, but there are also forms of failure that make the game exciting in the sense of "we have to keep playing to find out how they pick themselves up from that" instead of boring in the sense of "we have to stop playing because they're not allowed to pick themselves up from that."

Remember The Empire Strikes Back, how none of the protagonists died, only one was captured, but it was still considered a complete resounding Failure on the part of the heroes? It was just an exciting "what happens next?" failure instead of a boring "nothing happens next" failure.

Or what about Lex Luthor? A level 3-4 Expert vs. a hero with an absurd number of racial HD, spell-like abilities, and a +Yes bonus to his STR, CON, DEX, CHA, and WIS modifiers. Luthor cannot kill Superman. At All.

But neither can Superman waste time - even a second - just beating up the guy when Luthor's plan, and the damage to innocents that would result, is happening somewhere else entirely because Luthor has so many minions across the planet. And that gives Superman stories the chance to be interesting, because a simple mano-a-alieno would be boring becasue there is no challenge: Superman wins.

But having to find and rescue the hostages here, then find and destroy the bombs over there, then find and disarm the warship somewhere else ... Sure, Superman is the most powerful individual on the planet and can do everything somewhere, but Luthor has so many more people under his employ that "he" can do something everywhere.

Suddenly it doesn't matter that Superman and Luthor personally are both going to survive, because Luthor's plan to have violence committed is very likely to succeed - at least partially - and now there's a story about the interesting challenge of stopping as much destruction as possible (and almost certainly failing at a lot of it).

ericp65

2013-07-19, 08:21 PM

TuggyNE

2013-07-19, 09:01 PM

Well..... kind of.

Barring high-level magic, you lose a level each time you die. After a certain point, you'll be so far behind the rest of the party as to be forced to retire the character or start dying faster than you can level. It's more of a soft limit and a judgement call but it's something.

Sort of. Basically, the XP/death ratio needs to be high enough to keep you afloat; at lower levels, not only do you gain more XP per party-level-appropriate encounter, but you lose less XP as you die; this is balanced by being more vulnerable to dying in such encounters, of course, but that can to some extent be avoided by more careful play.

High level magic, like spells the same level as the minimum needed to raise you.

Yes, but as noted, they have a fairly short window of opportunity.

Maybe it was a house rule, but I've played games before (don't recall which version of the game) in which a character could be brought back a number of times = CON -1. There was a time when, as DM, I allowed a character to be brought back twice, and the third death was the final, spirit goes to appropriate Outer Plane, death. Currently and going forward, I place no upper limit on how many times a character can be brought back from death.

Yeah, it was a houserule. For what it's worth, D&D really does have a revolving door afterlife.

AntiTrust

2013-07-19, 10:23 PM

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. There are always powers out there that would be interested in making deals to powerful adventurers. Oh yes, you can come back, but there's a cost. I try to turn a character death into a chance for more storylines if the player is interested in having his character return.

If they don't want to make deals and the group is someplace where new characters are rare I usually put it on the player first to try and come up with a reason for why they'd be there. Chances are they come up with something, but if not I offer the player a few suggestions and let them pick.

rot42

2013-07-20, 01:32 AM

The new PC had been cursed to some monstrous form and compelled to guard the dungeon/remote forest/evil bakery until some specific conditions are met. Exact nature of the conditions can vary with your plot and the preferences of the player from a simple "break the body-break the curse" to "easy-ish monster keeps regenerating until a PC nabs the ruby or throws the switch or whatever" or "whosoever slays the beast becomes the beast". It makes an easy way to introduce plot, gives the player a chance to play with some weird monstrous abilities, and lets me offload some of the complexity of running a combat.

Alaris

2013-07-20, 01:37 AM

For my game, I follow how one of my DMs does it. I tell the player to pick another player's character to know in-game, maybe make a quick history.

They are then introduced in one manner or another (sent to assist by an NPC, happened to be wandering by, or they were previously seperated and are finally getting back together), and the game goes on.

I don't like it to be too complicated... though I usually like to have a way to work them into the story itself, rather than them be a random extra person not at all connected to the plot.

danzibr

2013-07-20, 06:41 AM

Heh. If there were any room left in my sig, I'd sig this. Ah, well. You can have a cookie instead.

http://media.tumblr.com/f41ef9d622827cb3efbd8346cc989519/tumblr_inline_mi3ga4NBAn1qz4rgp.gif
I did sig this.

hoverfrog

2013-07-20, 07:20 AM

In real life games it is quite common among my gaming group to have two PCs per player. We're a small group and tend to split up a lot. If a PC dies they still have their other PC. We've actually lost a third of our party in a single fight before and still had players have a character to play.

If we have a guest player or a player with no character for a time (he's dead, off doing spell research, crafting magic items, building a castle, etc) then they can play an NPC. We usually have a couple who join the party for one reason or another for a short time so there's no issue with that.

Another method is to have a patron for your party send a replacement. If Lord Gethan is paying money for the party to recover the Gems of Alcytor from the Twelve Ruins then he's going to send someone to make sure his money isn't going to be wasted by the party getting wiped out. The same goes for a holy order, druid circle, magic school, thieves guild, monastery, dwarven kingdom, elven realm or whatever organisations the party have in their individual back stories. If their champion falls then they have a vested interest in replacing that champion.

Then there is the lure of family. If Sif Longsword dies then maybe her little brother, Kell, joins the band to avenge her death. If Glamis Goldenbeard is slain by a ghost then perhaps, Edmund Glamisson, takes up his father's sword to continue the family tradition. Who better to keep the new boy alive that his or her former adventuring companions? Never mind that they failed to keep Sif and Glamis alive. :smallredface:

From a character's perspective though it is strange but still reasonable to replace a person who dies. An adventuring party has a mission or acts like a mercenary band. If you don't replace your fallen comrades then you compromise your mission and your own lives. Even if you all started out as children from the same village by the time you've developed the skill to handle a dragon such sentimentality should have been long since expunged.

EyethatBinds

2013-07-20, 07:23 AM

Personally always assumed it was the player's job to deal with death and my job to dish it out.

D20ragon

2013-07-22, 09:53 AM

I've been wanting to do this:run a solo adventure with the player who died,in your worlds version of the afterlife.set a goal,and if he/she succeeds,he/she is reincarnated at a holy/significant spot as a different character one level lower than he/she originally was.they could have vague memories of a life before.

D20ragon

2013-07-22, 09:59 AM

You couldnt do that for all characters though,so hopefully not to many die.:smallsmile:
On that note,I kind of want to run a campaign were the party is killed first thing by a powerful being,(a demigod or something?)but are chosen to travel the planes setting things right.at the end,I think they would confront the being that killed them.

ILetGoOfTheRope

2013-07-22, 12:49 PM

I handle death differently than most dms I tend to have optimized parties and therefore throw very difficult encounters at them and they die quite frequently as a result but we all have a blast. I gave my PCs several potions of ressurection at the beginning of the game. These take 10 minutes to work so they are no good in combat but also they don't incur a -1 level for dieing instead they incur a cumulative -1 penalty to all rolls minimum 1 this applies to d20 rolls weapon damage rolls even all d6s on sneak attacks. One -1 penalty is removed whenever a character levels and one addition may be removed once per level by using greater restoration. This has worked well for my party as they are less likely to back down from an intimidating monster but will still be careful because they don't want the penalty to start stacking it also keeps ppl who sacrafice themselves for the party from hurting too long for it. However if the whole party dies then I just have to figure it out one of my favorites was an very powerful evil cleric ressurected them and told them they all owed their lives to him and that they were now his slaves which made for an interesting side campaign that lasted several months.

prufock

2013-07-22, 01:20 PM

Depends on the situation and the player's needs/wants. If the player is OK with rolling up a new character, the character is dead, full stop. The player can bring in another character at a point that feels somewhat natural.
- In a dungeon crawl, he could be a prisoner, a reluctant villain, a polymorphed or flesh-to-stoned hero, etc.
- In most cases, meeting up with a new adventurer in a town or even on the road is perfectly acceptable.

If the player doesn't want his character dead, I try to make allowances to bring him back. They can pay for some sort of raise spell or they can exchange one for a "favour" to the Mission (a "humanist" church in my home setting).

My players have gathered a few party followers, even (two members have Leadership). I'd allow them to take over the cohorts or even a low-level follower and gain levels quickly to catch up if they so desired.

rockdeworld

2013-07-22, 04:12 PM

Lie to them. Rob them. Drive them mad. And then, when their eyes glisten with shame and rage, drink their tears (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/29/).

Kidding :smallsmile:

Spuddles

2013-07-22, 06:07 PM

How do you deal with character death as a DM?

Gloating, lots of gloating.

Barsoom

2013-07-22, 06:30 PM

it just always feels a little too convenient to have another adventurer waiting inside of a dungeon, ready to join the party as soon as a party member dies

I like having an NPC tag along with the party. If a PC dies, the player can control the NPC for a while, until they reach a place where it's logically appropriate for a new PC to join.

HylianKnight

2013-07-22, 06:32 PM

I know I've "rescued" more than one adventurer from imprisonment in said sprawling dungeons/towers/keeps.

BRC

2013-07-22, 06:35 PM

I usually do an end-zone dance, pop open some champagne, and have a good, hearty laugh as I devour the character sheet.

...Oh.

But seriously, I tend to avoid "Long, Dungeon crawl" style adventures. I'm also usually pretty reluctant to actually kill off a PC, especially at low levels. I find that it does not actually make the game more fun. When characters have died, I've usually tried to spin their Resurrection into an Adventure itself.

Dungeon_Master

2013-07-22, 07:58 PM

depends on where they died. typically they end up reincarnated by a druid or animated as undead. unless they had prior arrangements with a powerful church. sometimes particularly faithful are brought back by their deity, unless their deity does not possess the ability to do so, or if they worship a cause.

I always inform the player "Thanks for playing." and usually will explain what got them dead, and how to protect against such stupidity in the future. unless they were the victim of bad dice rolls, in which case it was simply fate.

death is not the end, often it is merely a setback.

Wonder

2013-07-23, 02:33 AM

Tragak it's a little off topic but i loved your post. :smallsmile:

AuthorGirl

2016-06-30, 10:48 PM

You should rephrase that

"Character Death".

Heh heh, I'm sometimes tempted to cause both.

Necromancy

2016-06-30, 11:05 PM

Thread necromancy much?

LordOfCain

2016-07-01, 09:28 AM

Thread necromancy much?Necromancy commenting on necromancy...

Pugwampy

2016-07-01, 06:04 PM

Meh ...the Hero corpse just gets dragged out the dungeon by their buddies and taken to a temple for raise dead . I charge about 200 gold per level .
In the case of they become evil bandits or just nowhere near any civilisation , I drop raise dead scrolls as part of loot .

This game has way too many elements beyond even the control of mighty DM,s that easily gets players killed . Making death such a final thing actually limits a DM,s creativity . Sometimes I also want to just stretch a bit and pound em . Its enough they pay for their mistakes in gold .

Having a player to make a new character everytime he dies and possibly gets lecture over that is plain demoralizing not to mention no fun . Its the DOUCHE DM,s right of course to run such a "hardcore" game .

As for introducing new players thats as easy as Ogre has a nude hot chick in his stew pot . Lets rescue her YAY !!!