The first time a PC died in a game you're in

[Protato]

Tonight, a player of mine had their character killed, not just brought down to 0, but killed outright. They were L3 and playing the 3rd party Wolves of Welton oneshot, where I hope for it to lead to Tales from the Yawning Portal. To make a long story short, the final battle with some magically-empowered wolves happened. A Ranger party member defeated the bosses, but the Fighter and Paladin had ran away. Why? Because the Gnoll Cleric decided not to negotiate with the wolves but instead engage them. The wolves hounded her and reduced to unconsciousness and the Fighter and Paladin didn't want to get involved and risk themselves for such a reckless person. The Cleric's health eventually hit -50 and she died with no save. All's well that ends well though, as the Ranger ended up befriending the wolf pack after defeating the pack leaders, and the Ranger then retired so she could become a leader of the pack.

With my story said, what was the first time a PC died in a game you were in, either as a player or as a DM? Was it stupidity, retribution, or just bad luck?

[Contrast]

I don't think you're running the rules right.

If the cleric was one 1 HP and they took equal to or more than 1+(2*max HP) damage they would die instantly. Even one less and they just go unconscious on 0HP. There's no such thing as negative HP in 5E. Once you're at 0HP you stay there - you're tracking death saving throws, not HP.

Of course once they're unconscious all attacks are made with adv and any hit is a crit and crits are two instant failed death saving throws so there's no way you should be accumulating much damage before just dying...

I imagine dragons are probably the usual cause of instant death. Their breath attacks do a tonne of damage for the level and things like healing word just get people back in the fight on very few hit points.

[Protato]

I don't think you're running the rules right.

If the cleric was one 1 HP and they took equal to or more than 1+(2*max HP) damage they would die instantly. Even one less and they just go unconscious on 0HP. There's no such thing as negative HP in 5E. Once you're at 0HP you stay there - you're tracking death saving throws, not HP.

Of course once they're unconscious all attacks are made with adv and any hit is a crit and crits are two instant failed death saving throws so there's no way you should be accumulating much damage before just dying...

I imagine dragons are probably the usual cause of instant death. Their breath attacks do a tonne of damage for the level and things like healing word just get people back in the fight on very few hit points.

By -50, I meant they took damage after HP was at zero. I thought it was that either you rolled death saves and if they failed all they died, or if they were unconscious and took their HP in damage or more, they'd die. Basically, the wolves, after knocking her unconscious, tore her body apart.

[Sigreid]

In a module the party mad a b line to a locked sarcafagus, ignored the inscribed warnings and the first level rogue was murdered by the troll locked inside.

[Wilb]

Our group's ranger jumped with a rope from a steam dirigible, to hunt some deer because he was bored with the rations. He thought everything was fine because he had a ring of feather fall but he forgot that the daughter of the baron they rescued begged for the ring because she was afraid of heights and he gave it with a smile on his face while claiming that he'd never have a use for it anyways, 10 minutes before IRL.

The cleric nicknamed him "Crazy Lemming" for the rest of the campaign.

[CantigThimble]

By -50, I meant they took damage after HP was at zero. I thought it was that either you rolled death saves and if they failed all they died, or if they were unconscious and took their HP in damage or more, they'd die. Basically, the wolves, after knocking her unconscious, tore her body apart.

Each hit on an unconscious character inflicts a failed death saving throw on them, you don't count the damage. (PHB pg 197) So if the character got hit 3 times after they went down then they would have died regardless of their HP or the damage.

[Asmotherion]

When we first played D&D we had a very different approach to Character Death than nowdays. If a character was killed, it was a casualty; We would roll up a diferent character up front just in case. If we had a chance to get resurected, our seccondary character became an NPC (unless we decided that we didn't want to get resurrected, and continue with our new character). Wile death was a tragic event all the same, it was also a more permanent event; you wouldn't have a chance at resurection for at least a session or two without a Cleric in your Party, and even then, it was expensive and time consuming, so something could go wrong; You would also get back a level below the rest of the party, so that was also an undesirable thing most of the time, and suffered penalties.

Overall, a vast majority of today's players act like DMs owe Plot Armor to their Characters. It is a DM's choice to do so, and a Fun option in certain kinds of Epic/Herroic campains, focused on the Characters, but less so in a more Realistic Campain.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Each hit on an unconscious character inflicts a failed death saving throw on them, you don't count the damage. (PHB pg 197) So if the character got hit 3 times after they went down then they would have died regardless of their HP or the damage.
I'm guessing they're thinking of the Instant Death rule? (AKA the "seriously, you should not have fought this guy, you have no-one to blame but yourself" rule)

[KorvinStarmast]

Basically, the wolves, after knocking her unconscious, tore her body apart. The mechanic for the game is, once unconscious at 0 HP, each attack on you equals a failed death save, and if the attack is a critical hit then it is two failed death saves. With three failed death saves, the character is now dead. It only takes 3 hits by the wolves, or one hit and one crit, to make for final death. Negative HP don't enter into it.
------------------------------

I had a variety of characters die over the years.
One of the more memorable was in an OD&D game where I got hit with the Evil High Priest's "finger of death" spell and failed my save.
Dead. (Thief, 5th level) This happened during a huge battle with a bunch of evil priests, a machine that spit fire like dragon's breath, a party of about 8 characters of levels 4-9, and a few NPC allies .... anyway, I was dead. They took me to a cleric to get a raise dead cast upon me. Paid money they did (mine, and a bit of theirs). You might say that I failed my system shock roll: dead. (Greyhawk).
I think my constitution was 12. I remember that I had about a 75% chance to survive the resurrection attempt, and that I rolled a 78. Heh, the dice can be fickle. The 78 was remarked upon by a few of the party members because the DM was a senior (college) who was due to graduate with the class of 1978. I was a sophomore.
So I rolled up a new character: my first ever druid.

[Lord8Ball]

I was playing the second edition with my Dm who had some weird house rules. I was playing a necromancer specialist wizard at a low level who was apprenticing another player; however, my home and tower got destroyed by a drake and a terrible force from the south was advancing to the northern territories. I am the equivalent of the mayor of the dwarven mining town decided to lead the coming refugees up north. Misc traveling. The town we arrived at was sacked and the corpses I recognized were the victims of malicious spells. We settled in the town with plans to send a few riders up north for aid. Exploration of the towns environs we found a cave with a home and small library of a presumed spellcaster. In the meantime, the town was fortifying defenses and setting up shop. The other characters joined later after they played through individual backstories. Closely inspecting the cave I found a statue of a demon which I had desecrated with the unholy flame from the braziers in the hall which just so happened to unleash the glaberazu. His servant a succubus who was sealed in a book we had was released and incapacitated the party and then I arrived with the demon on my tail and managed to pass my will save vs the succubus. I then covered the eyes of the paladin and managed to break him and the others free. We released the branded prisoners which weakened the demon and eventually managed to beat the final boss of the dungeon. I was then imprisoned even though the others did not know the ciircumstances. The paladin using his god's hammer found earlier in the campaign paladin attacked mountain with it causing an earthquake killing everyone including me inside and harming the city. He then suicided so he could play a new character. He then made a deal with the devil in death to become a shapeshifter at the cost of his soul. The dm used that as a plot point to resurrect me with some clerical abilities for a revenge quest for the god whose hammer was misused. The once paladin decided he wanted to play a wizard and suicided and my quest has completed the instant I got resurrected. The campaign did not last long after that.

[ZorroGames]

My first? Game had just came out and a somewhat dubious war gamer in our club offered to teach me the game. (Yellow caution light burning)

I had been voraciously studying the three slim books, rolling 3D6 repeatedly (and recording them on index cards,) and talking the entire week prior about the game with both USAF and civilian friends.

“Bring all the characters you want.” (Red Danger Light flashing)

Note: Level 1 clerics had no spells, rolled D6 for hps; Wizards rolled D4 for hps and had (today’s terms) one, iirc, spell slot; Fight-ing Men usually had leather, shield and sword, maybe a self bow?

I indicated a stack of about 20 cards I had in my box with rules and dice. “Some of these? There are 20 choose from.”

“Bring them all, why not?” (Alarms screaming but I did not hear them.)

“We pooled money” and bought 4 wagons for our gear and future treasures.

One Half day travel, while camped for lunch, we are ambushed with total surprise by 24 charging Berserkers (essentially 2nd level fighters?) within two regular moves.

Somehow some of us survived, badly battered. Camped that night. Next morning outside the dungeon site we were attacked enroute by about 12 were-tigers. We died.

Sometime I must tell you how my friend Alan Lucien, who had wandered by between war games, made him repeat the adventure with new characters and I learned how to really play the game.

[Contrast]

By -50, I meant they took damage after HP was at zero. I thought it was that either you rolled death saves and if they failed all they died, or if they were unconscious and took their HP in damage or more, they'd die. Basically, the wolves, after knocking her unconscious, tore her body apart.

Worked example -

Bob the Ranger has a max of 20HP. He is reduced down to 1HP during a fight, then gets hit for 20 damage! Fortunately after going down to 0HP, only 19 damage is left so he doesn't suffer instant death and instead is at 0 HP and unconscious.

Scenario 1 - Bob then takes another 2 attacks at melee range which only do 1 damage. Unfortunately any hit from an attack made within 5ft of Bob while he has the unconscious condition is a crit so both attacks are crits and inflict 2 failed death saving throws. Bob remains on 0 HP but suffers 4 failed death saving throws. That's enough to kill him!

Scenario 2 - Bob then takes another 2 attacks, both from ranged attacks, both doing 19 damage! Both attacks inflict a failed death saving throw but fortunately both are just short of the instant death zone. Bob remains at 0 HP with 2 failed death saving throws. He's alive but barely!

Scenario 3 - Bob takes one attack at melee range which does 20 damage! As he's unconscious its a crit, putting him at 2 failed death saving throws. However unfortunately for Bob 20 damage is equal to his max HP so he is slain outright.


So basically damage only matters if you do more than the PCs maximum hitpoints in a single attack. In scenario 2 Bob took 57 damage (almost triple his max HP!) after hitting 0HP but is still clinging on, whereas in a situation similar to scenario 1, 2 damage can be enough to kill him outright.

The reason its relevant that there's no such thing as negative HP is that even a single point of healing is enough to get him back on his feet.

Edit - For reference death rules are P197 (specifically see the 'Damage at 0 hit points' section of the Death Saving Throws para) and unconscious is P292 in the PHB.

[MaxWilson]

I don't think you're running the rules right.

If the cleric was one 1 HP and they took equal to or more than 1+(2*max HP) damage they would die instantly. Even one less and they just go unconscious on 0HP. There's no such thing as negative HP in 5E. Once you're at 0HP you stay there - you're tracking death saving throws, not HP.

The OP could have been running a rule variant. Death save variants are fairly popular among DMs, judging by postings here and on Enworld.


One Half day travel, while camped for lunch, we are ambushed with total surprise by 24 charging Berserkers (essentially 2nd level fighters?) within two regular moves.

Somehow some of us survived, badly battered. Camped that night. Next morning outside the dungeon site we were attacked enroute by about 12 were-tigers. We died.

Sometime I must tell you how my friend Alan Lucien, who had wandered by between war games, made him repeat the adventure with new characters and I learned how to really play the game.

Ahahahaha! That is an awesome way to start a campaign. My first experience with 5E was not quite that brutal but did involve tons of wraiths and demon lords with permanent HP drain on their AoE necrotic damage, which went through walls BTW to drain creatures who weren't in even in the room, and most of the party losing about 60 HP each, permanently in some cases. (Pretty much all of us failed the DC 22ish Con save to avoid having the necrotic damage made permanent, but some of us had earned inspiration which the DM ruled could be spent to overcome a failed save.)

That experience, and the paranoia it engendered, heavily influenced my subsequent expectations for 5E play. I realize that it's possible to run adventures with encounters of merely Medium/Hard difficulty, but I can't get excited about them, either as a DM or a player. If it's not double-Deadly or higher, it feels like a social/exploration incident, not a life-threatening combat.

[Ronnocius]

Tonight, a player of mine had their character killed, not just brought down to 0, but killed outright. They were L3 and playing the 3rd party Wolves of Welton oneshot, where I hope for it to lead to Tales from the Yawning Portal. To make a long story short, the final battle with some magically-empowered wolves happened. A Ranger party member defeated the bosses, but the Fighter and Paladin had ran away. Why? Because the Gnoll Cleric decided not to negotiate with the wolves but instead engage them. The wolves hounded her and reduced to unconsciousness and the Fighter and Paladin didn't want to get involved and risk themselves for such a reckless person. The Cleric's health eventually hit -50 and she died with no save. All's well that ends well though, as the Ranger ended up befriending the wolf pack after defeating the pack leaders, and the Ranger then retired so she could become a leader of the pack.

With my story said, what was the first time a PC died in a game you were in, either as a player or as a DM? Was it stupidity, retribution, or just bad luck?

Two of my players were not there for the fatal session, but three of them were. They assaulted an orc outpost without backup, and they actually had a pretty good chance of winning. However, the dice were BRUTAL, and also they were playing sub-optimally. It was mostly because of a pair of animated armors. Man, those things are REALLY tough against only melee characters.

[mephnick]

God..let's see..go back 20+ years..

The earliest I remember was an older friend of mine ran a little one shot dungeon for my and a buddy. I don't remember what class I was but he was a fighter type with a war pony. By the end of the game this kid loved this damn pony. At the end of the dungeon the DM threw like..an adamantine minotaur construct at us and cleaved that pony straight in half. Naturally we were pissed and died fighting the thing in the pony's honour. Probably an inexperienced/teenage jerk DM call, but we had a blast.

[Armored Walrus]

I TPK'd the whole party the very first session I ran... Well, everyone but the donkey, who got the death blow on the baby white dragon that had killed everyone else.

Edit: I guess you'd call that stupidity, given the options in the OP. But I'll just call it being 14 years old. :P

[Mad Max]

I was DMing for a bunch of my friends, the party was six level three characters, almost all of them new players.

They had made their way into a small fort populated by evil elves, and it was the last session of a quest to stop a wizard from opening a portal into the Feywild. While hiding from the guards, they ended up separating themselves from the druid, with a portcullis between him and the rest of the team.

The druid was caught and knocked out (after a brief fight), and since I didn't want to kill the character so quickly, the guard captain held him hostage to try and take the rest of the group as prisoners. Everyone agreed to drop their weapons except the rogue, who shot his bow and missed (by a fair margin). And so, the druid died.

Amusingly, the rogue had a magic missile wand, and probably could have cleared the room, and saved the druid, if he used all the charges, but he forgot about it.

The druid's player died a few other times, and sometimes it was the rogue's fault. :smalltongue:

[Desteplo]

Lvl4:
A Dragonborn PC got diseased by a giant rat. No one remembered the cleric could cure diseases. The bard (also diseased) and the Dragonborn (fighter) split from the party at half health (since they don’t heal naturally through resting)

They were scoping something out and I threw a throw away lvl 1 rogue thief that dodged their attacks and crit back twice. At this point the bard got pushed off the building. The thief jumped after him.

I let the Dragonborn use a dying action (at 2 failed saves and no successes) he dove and crit the rogue with a body slam. Saving the bard.

[Kane0]

Pretty standard adventure, forget what the goal was. We were in a tomb, raiding it like good adventurers should.

One encounter was against a medusa, one PC got petrified. We didn't have a PC capable of reversing it anyways, but to add insult to injury the medusa knocked the statue over the edge of a pit and shattered it.

That PC got a humpty dumpty gag inscribed on his tombstone, which was the biggest chunk of torso we could find.

[Tanarii]

Me and my brother were about 8 and 6, playing a custom dungeon made by our babysitter. The door leaving the first room had a glass door handle. This was emphasized repeatedly. When I tried to open the door, my first level whatamajig (Elf?) was blasted by lightning, and died.

Apparently as an 8 year old I was supposed to recognize glass was a non-conductor, so lightning. Or something.

OTOH I sure remember my first game of D&D, even though I didn't play an RPG (Dragonroar!) again for two years.

[DarkKnightJin]

My 2nd level Fighter tried to facetank a Boss monster, which had been designed to be fought by the entire group of 5. The Cleric had to stay outside or we'd have all been Blinded. The Warlock wound up Blinded anyway while inside the tomb. Leaving me, the Ranger, and the Bard to deal the damage needed to slay it. The Warlock tried, but he hit the boss maybe once. I went down after some pretty brutal hits. I wound up failing all 3 saves in a row.

Luckily for me, the DM had taken our low level and general 'squishiness' into account, and revealed that he had something planned for each partymember, for when they bite it. A second chance to keep playing the character, if they don't have a suitable replacement in the wings to bring into the game.

I wound up making a pact with a strange, shadow version of myself.. and even with Cha as my dump stat.. My next level is in Warlock.

So, that's going to be quite the unique character.

[Strifer]

Each hit on an unconscious character inflicts a failed death saving throw on them, you don't count the damage. (PHB pg 197) So if the character got hit 3 times after they went down then they would have died regardless of their HP or the damage.

Actually less, autocrit so it counts as 2 failed saves...

[Knaight]

Exactly when every old campaign happened is fuzzy, particularly when tracking freeform as understood by people who didn't know about proper freeform, which is where I started GMing back when I was 6 or so. Still, here's the ones I can remember that were at least early enough to conceivably be first. All of these were early Fudge campaigns, all were fantasy (though there have definitely been casualties in other genres and games since then, especially recently).

Stupidity: I'm GMing a game for my younger brother and a friend, involving a couple of fantasy adventurers. It was pretty generic, and most of it has been forgotten, apart from two scenes. One of these was the TPK that ended the game. The characters got in over their head when they picked a fight with a tribe of giants, and were subdued. Said tribe then proceeded to explain to them that they would forgive the attack, as they were familiar with the lies spread about them and could understand why the attack happened. All would be well. Then one of the PCs decided that talking time was over, time to stab some giants. Said second attack wasn't forgiven.

Friendly Fire: I'm running a game a bit heavy on recurring enemies, most notably a powerful undead spirit bonded to a pool of mercury with a penchant for showing up in various constructed bodies (that appear to be human) and wrecking the PCs pretty badly and a mage with demonic power centered around hellfire and hellwater (an inky substance), including an effective escape technique of transforming into a hellwater form and slipping out through literal cracks. The PCs corner this demonic mage in a cave system, in a large chamber without much in the way of escape routes, and immediately begin throwing around their biggest guns, which in this case is a combination of martial attacks between aggressive and suicidally reckless and higher end battle magic. Injuries are racking up, the cave system is getting damaged, and one clash of steel and magic involves a PC responding to a close range energy blast by rushing in with a shield bash and trying to deflect it. The shield shatters, the blast goes out like a shaped charge up and down, cracking the ground and shattering a stalactite, bringing down a pile of rock on both of them. They're pinned down, severely wounded, and minimally accessible, and the demon mage immediately goes into ink form and tries to flee. At this point another PC decides that they are done dealing with this guy, and that they're just going to shoot the lightning bolt into that whole mess. I point out that the friendly fire will probably be fatal, the player of the PC under the rubble implores this player to have their PC do something different, and the lightning bolt ends up aimed at its original target. It kills the demonic mage, but it takes a PC down with it.

Disposable Character: I think this one was probably the first dead PC, but it's also a bit of a borderline case. I was running a fantasy dungeon crawl game, with a series of dungeons that all had dungeon bosses that were fairly videogamey (to be fair I was also 11 or something, and new at this). One of the PCs got pretty injured, and ended up sitting out a while to heal, so a temporary and more flimsy PC was brought in. This group handles a dungeon, but ends up running intro problems with the boss of the next dungeon, a massive skeletal dragon with a psychic immobilization attack. The dragon manages to pin down the entire party and is ready to kill them, at which point the PC that had been healing arrives on the scene, rushes the dragon, and wounds it enough to break control. That turns the tide of the fight, and they end up winning, but the flimsy temporary PC brought on for a few sessions while the main PC healed did get killed in the confusion.

[Afrodactyl]

We had a shortish homebrew campaign, and our paladin and bard died fighting the BBEG. We then dragged their corpses back through a portal back to the material plane and to the main hub town, pursued by some minions.

From there, my pyromancer warlock was distraught and wanted to give them a proper burial (IE cremate them there and then) and the druid wanted to try to revive them. My warlock was restrained by some NPCs and our monk, and the druid went on a solo mission to steal some diamonds to revive them.

Eventually, the bard was restored through the diamond and a local mage, and the dragon born paladin managed to barter his eternal soul to Bahamut for another chance at finishing his mission, restoring him.

Then the druid got arrested for burglary.

[Baptor]

First PC death in a game I was in?

Me. Very first character I ever rolled and in his very first session - half-elf fighter/mage in AD&D 2nd edition. We were responding to an orc attack on some farm houses. I opened the front door to the house and stepped inside to see if everyone was OK. There was a disintegration trap on the threshold. I failed my saving throw. He didn't last an hour. The end.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

5 minutes into my first dungeon. So me and my party of 1st level characters had to go eliminate this evil religion that had started to spring up. We had made it to a large cathedral in the middle of a swamp outside of the town. Their were a bunch of vines and stones providing a decently easy crossing to the frond doors. Huge snakes were visible in the water. Our party consisted of a high elf wizard (me) a half orc barb. A dwarf cleric and lastly a human ranger. The ranger thought he knew what he was doing and jumped into the swamp and tried to befriend the snakes. As it turns out the snakes were controlled by the priest and the ranger did not in fact make any new friends. So the party continued on without him until they finally reached the front door which the Barb proceeded to knock down setting of a bunch of traps. The traps included a blast of fire, poisonous darts and falling rocks. The barbarian was dead dead dead. At this point the DM said that if we all died in the next few minutes we could restart. We then stupidly decided to walk in... to another trap. This time it was a arcane rune that cast mind cage and we were trapped. The priest and his guards came to sacrifice us to their god but i tried to lie my way out of it saying "Want to buy some cookies? We are just poor kids trying to sell cookies." I didn't work. we were killed and we restarted the dungeon.

[mephnick]

Me. Very first character I ever rolled and in his very first session - half-elf fighter/mage in AD&D 2nd edition. We were responding to an orc attack on some farm houses. I opened the front door to the house and stepped inside to see if everyone was OK. There was a disintegration trap on the threshold. I failed my saving throw. He didn't last an hour. The end.

Damn that was one important farm house, I guess.

[Gilrad]

Death by DM arbitration.

This was a while ago in a 2nd edition campaign. We needed to get the mcguffin from a trapped tomb but our rogue had almost no points in rogue abilities. After much deliberation on how to safely disable the trap, one guy got bored and went for it.

He wanted to trip the trap and then get out of the room before the stone door shuts him inside with the gas. DM started rolling dice. They both rolled exact same on initiative. Dm says the door lands on him. Is he inside or outside the room when it lands? Didn't matter, he then rolled to see what body part it caught, it got him in the head.

[Spore]

My first druid got killed rather undramatically by a critting hobgoblin captain. What made it a bit more interesting was the fact that we introduced Pathfinder's crit cards two sessions ago. The cards said for the piercing damage type that my skull was impacted and I take constitution damage until the wound is healed. Well, the wound was a bit too deep for comfort. Yup, I was the first guy to be killed after 1,5 years of playing with brakes applied. (I have had two other characters die before someone else did add to that list).

But the death was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to drop a character I wasn't incredibly fond of to introduce my favorite character.

[Tanarii]

But the death was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to drop a character I wasn't incredibly fond of to introduce my favorite character.
Starting over from level 1 sucks, but IMO it's still worth biting the bullet and retiring an existing character, as opposed to playing one you don't enjoy that much.

Unless it's a single party game, and the game has already reached incredibly high levels, so it's past the XP curve to linear XP, and you can't realistically survive or catch up. But usually I know long before that if I'm not enjoying a character.

[Spore]

Starting over from level 1 sucks, but IMO it's still worth biting the bullet and retiring an existing character, as opposed to playing one you don't enjoy that much.

If I would have to start from level 1 in a 7th-8th level campaign I likely would have just quit. My DM tossed around the idea of rerolling a level below everyone else but 1st level? Nope.

[Tanarii]

If I would have to start from level 1 in a 7th-8th level campaign I likely would have just quit. My DM tossed around the idea of rerolling a level below everyone else but 1st level? Nope.
Oh. Well in that case why didn't you just retire the character when you weren't feeling it?

As a side not, a 1st level character can mostly catch up with a level 8 character before they hit level 10. But in 5e specifically, I generally agree that mixing Tier 1 & 2 characters isn't the best idea. I was thinking of very old editions, where it was much more common to mix low & mid level characters, and the XP curve was dramatic all the way up to name level.