Feeling Responsible for a Party Members Death and dealing with Survivor's Guilt

[Spo]

Just had a gaming session where one PC died and three others are feeling guilty over it. This is WaterDeep Heist Spoiler warning.

First our party (all lvl 4) [only 4 could show up in this session]
Human Monk Drunken Style
Minotaur Barbarian Ancients
Gnome Wizard
Dwarf Life Cleric
NPC Bela-something (head of the gauntlet faction)

Our party found the clues leading to the wig shop and knowing the necromancer now had the stone. We went into the sewers with Gnome on Minotaur's shoulders and all 5 of us saw two secret doors facing each other. One had noise of combat coming from it and the other was quiet. Minotaur and gnome opened the former with the cleric opening up the latter.

Cleric with Monk and Bella saw a room full of skeletons and Minotaur and gnome saw a kenku fleeing up the stairs and humans and skeletons fighting each other with the necromancer and evil druid in the mix. Gnome threw a bead from a fireball necklace at the crowd killing all but the necromancer and one skeleton. Minotaur places gnome on the ground and starts chasing the kenku.

Cleric, monk and Bella starts fighting skeletons.

Gnome is trading spells with necromancer who only has cantrips left. Monk leaves Cleric and NPC Bella to deal with the skeletons believing those two can handle the undead. Monk goes through the door where she heard the fireball explosion and takes out the remaining skeleton in that room and assist in subduing necromancer with a couple none lethal kicks to the face.

Necromancer is now unconscious and monk asks where minotaur is and is directed by gnome to the stairwell that he took and monk left gnome alone to quickly pursue the minotaur and kenku.

While cleric and NPC Bella are wrapping up their fight and Monk and Minotaur find themselves facing gazers after getting the stone, gnome explores the rest of the underground lair. What she finds is a mimic and is attacked.

Cleric and NPC Bella are first to come upon the combat between gnome and mimic and join in and eventually monk and minotaur make it back and join in the scuffle as well. Unfortunately, gnome is stuck for while then eventually swallowed and dies before group can kill the creature. Cleric out of spell slots.

PC for Gnome deciding if they'll stay dead or roll another character. Naturally, minotaur feels guilty for leaving the gnome behind while it chased the kenku. The monk feels guilty leaving the gnome alone while they went after the minotaur. The cleric feels guilty not being able to rescue their teammate.

The party has really jell'ed together and our DM has brought Waterdeep to life for us so the gnome's death was impactful.

HAs any of your character's felt responsible for the death of another party member?

[ImproperJustice]

It’s a shame the group is feeling guilty, but a positive that they care for one another.
Is there a patron or a connection with a temple that may employ a powerful enough caster to cast Raise Dead?
Was there any body left?
Otherwise, if the players are tight knit, then they should do well bringing in another ally (with some good rp along the way).

One critique for the gnome player: I wonder if his fate would have been different if he had tried to rejoin the rest of the party vs. exploring the complex solo?

PC deaths tend to be pretty rare in our games, but when they do happen it can be pretty impactful.
Having a high level cleric with access to divine intervention has gone a long way towards minimizing PC death.

[MThurston]

Never split the party. Never split the party.

This happens a good amount. I have seen people looting while combat is still going on.

[Wildarm]

It's great that your characters all cares for each other, perhaps IRL as well. Lots of options available for you all to atone and perhaps a learning experience for all as well.

- If you've got high ranks in any of the factions you can petition them to help you.
- You could also take out an loan from some of the more nefarious factions and pay for a raise dead. Use the planned gold from the vault as collateral.
- Or you could have the person roll up a new character. You're all low level so it's not a huge loss by any means.

No matter what I'd have a good conversation with the group on lessons learned. Don't wander away from the group in a dangerous area. Bad things can happen fast in 5E when a character is alone. Something as simple as a botched stealth roll can end up having you jumped by a half a dozen CR appropriate monsters. That will usually kill a character at Tier 1 before you have a lot of GTFO options.

[Keravath]

It is great that the other players/characters care about the fate of the gnome.

However, none of them should feel guilty. The gnome had at least 4 choices, they could have joined the minotaur and monk to see if they could help in that fight, they could have joined the NPC and cleric to see if they needed any assistance (keep in mind that the gnome CHARACTER actually knows nothing of what is going on elsewhere - either of these other fights could have been going poorly), the gnome could have also decided to wait for their party members to return and then explored the complex together. However, in this case, the gnome decided to explore on their own. Perhaps they felt safer than they should have since the skeleton and necromancer had been defeated but any unexplored area can be potentially dangerous with traps/creatures/possibly deadly situations. Choosing to explore on their own was the highest risk choice that cared the least about how the fights the other characters were facing might be going. In this case, the gnome died by misadventure and none of the other characters are at fault unless they knew that the gnome wasn't competent enough to be left on their own in a dangerous dungeon and make appropriate decisions.

If the character could be trusted to make their own decisions then the death in this case was simply the result of a poor decision in a dangerous location and the other characters will likely have learned some valuable lessons from the death of a friend who made a bad decision (exploring without backup).

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From a meta gaming perspective, the party has just learned one of the more common tenets of adventuring, try not to split the party and NEVER go exploring without backup unless you don't have a choice.

If it wasn't a mimic, the gnome could have ended up in a trap, facing another much more powerful creature or in some other situation which is deadly when encountered by yourself. Even just something easy like a couple of giant rats could have likely killed the gnome exploring on their own. In this case, the party split into three separate groups and in some ways they were lucky it didn't turn into a TPK. The minotaur who chased the kenku was lucky that the kenku didn't have three friends upstairs to help them. The other fights were also lucky that reinforcements didn't show up. Engaging multiple forces simultaneously is another way that encounters can go side ways very quickly.

[Sigreid]

Are the players feeling guilty or the characters?

If characters, let them enjoy roleplaying the wailing and beating of chests.

If players, remind them it's just a game and character death is an important part of it being a game and not a story.