DM Series pt 3: Murder Death Kill, Character Deaths in Your Campaign

[Human Paragon 3]

This is part 3 of a weekly series of DM theory threads.

Juris's DMing Series Master TOC Thread

This week's conversation will be about character death. Every DM has to deal with this issue inevitably. In general a character death is a bad thing, and sometimes, though not always, signals a mistake by the DM or the player. But after the 5 stages of grief are over, we have to move on... and think about the future.

It seems that each edition of D&D takes a different stance on character death. In 1e (and to a lesser degree, 2e) character death is expected to be common. Characters should be grateful if they get past 1st level, and if they die, tough cookies. In 3e, character deaths are viewed as an intrinsic part of the game, but a smaller part. Character death in 3 and 3.5 is rarer, and resurrection easier to come by. 4e has been the most protective edition yet, making resurrection even more commonly available and "Dead" an unlikely condition status for PCs of all stripes.

Why is this? Because dying's "not fun." D&D seems to be a bit schizofrenic on this topic, though. If dying's not fun, why have it at all? Why keep it as an important part of the game? Presumably, because players need the threat of death and failure to keep the game exciting, but how dangerous is too dangerous? And how safe is too safe? And in the end, what's more important, danger, or the illusion of danger?

How do you treat character death? Do you throw your players to the wolves and delightedly watch them fight for survival? Do your players come to the table with a stack of blank sheets or prefab characters? Or do your players consider themselves immortal?

How common should resurrection be, and does it trivialize death?

And is character death just an inevitable side effect of adventuring, or can it actually be used as a DM tool to make the game more exciting, engaging and meaningful?

[DarkEternal]

Honestly, unless the characters make a capital mistake I try to keep them from dying. For instance, a few sessions ago the party had a pretty good idea of disguising themselves as the enemy, and bringing a few captives(three of the five players tied with a special knot so they could spring to action quickly if need be). Due to some bad rolls and some good rolls on my part, the enemy saw through the disguise and attacked the wizard in the front(highest Diplomacy skill and quite a few ranks in Bluff) who disguised himself into the leader with two powerful halberd thrusts of which one critted.

I had a really good roll and basically brought the Wizard to -6 immediatelly. Now, I could have slaughtered him the next turn but rather decided to go to different characters with the explanation that he "looked" dead. The rest of the party managed to stabilise him and save him.

It's just one example, but bottom line is usually I won't kill my party members if they have bad luck. If they screw up then yeah, they have to face the consequences.

As for the Ressurection, that depends on the level. Sometimes they could ressurect a character instead of giving the reward for their deeds if the players succeed, though at higher levels, they sort of earned their ressurections and have the money to pay for it, so sure. On lower levels, it's sometimes better to just say goodbye to the character and make a new one unless I see they really got attached to the previous one, in which case there is always some possibility or other to make the character come back to life.

[AtwasAwamps]

I give every player one out. They don’t know this and I won’t tell them. One moment in which I will fudge the numbers in their favor, without telling them I have. In a party of seven, they’ve all used them…three of them were used in a single random encounter. They know I will not be nice. But they haven’t quite learned what that means.

I WILL kill their characters. Yes, you’re supposed to be heroes, but I feel that DnD does do a good job of illustrating that. 4.0 does it best, but 3.5 past level 5 is still a pretty good indicator, with the addendum that certain creatures will just REAM you.

I am in a situation where I’m about to pit my players against honestly intelligent strong opponents. I have a feeling this may be a TPK because they refuse to play cautious or think carefully, but I am not going to pull my punches on them for that. They make mistakes, they pay for them. Long and short of it.

[Human Paragon 3]

Except for certain, exceptional circumstances, I don't have my bad guys or monsters attack unconcious PCs either. It stands to reason that they would be more worried about the characters who are still up and fighting, rather than the guy who's just bleeding out anyway.

I would only have a bad guy coup-de-grace or attack a fallen PC if I was really trying to make a point about the bad guy. Even then, I think my players might be pissed at me.

[valadil]

Honestly I think it varies on the kind of game you're trying to run. I do a lot of story and plot, and I try to take advantage of character backstories. That type of campaign doesn't lend itself to a rotating door of new adventurers. Even if I did kill off PCs, the players would quickly tire of coming up with new backstories for them.

But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good dungeon crawl too. It's just another type of game. There's something to be said for having a static set of challenges and coming up with a party that is able to overcome all of them. I like that. It's just not the game I'd run.

I do feel that if a game is going to have combat, death needs to be available. As soon as I know a fight can't kill me I lose interest in it. As soon as I know a GM won't kill me, winning fights becomes meaningless. I don't need to see a PC die. They can live through the whole game. But I need to think the option is there.

[subject42]

Player death in a campaign isn't a bad thing as long as the DM and the players have the same expectations of danger. Before each campaign, I talk with my players and ask them what levels of deadliness they're comfortable with.

Right now we're playing an "every encounter has a 50/50 chance of somebody ending up unconscious, and a reasonable chance of somebody ending up dead" kind of campaign. Just last weekend our wizard ate a charging critical hit from a raging ogre and dropped in one shot.

If we hadn't all agreed that things like this could happen I think he would have been rightfully angry about an anti-climactic ending like that, but informed consent is a wonderful thing.

[WarKitty]

And then there's when a character commits suicide...

Not, really, this did actually happen in a game I was playing. Fortunately this particular game operated on the rule of cool far more than actual rules. The DM had him challenge death (he lost). He got resurrected naked in a completely different part of the city.

Oh and somehow he managed to get death trapped with us on an extra-dimensional game. Good times.

[Totally Guy]

I've not killed off a player character yet. All rolls happen in the open though and our game world lacks magical healing and resurrection so I expect it'll happen eventually.

I don't want it to happen but I still have to provide a situation that can threaten the lives of the party.

[Human Paragon 3]

How long have you been DMing for, Glug?

[Choco]

I like Dark Sun the best of all the D&D settings, I think that should give plenty of insight as to my views on character death .

I like to vary the danger a bit. Some areas are relatively safe, while in others one wrong move could result in a TPK. This is the one time I throw the PC's a bone, and tell them it will be deadly even if they did not do any research before diving in. Fighting roaming bandits ouside a fortified city? Fairly safe. Going behind enemy lines to assassinate a commander? Yeah, better watch your back and not do anything stupid.

I rarely fudge rolls to prevent a PC from dying due to bad luck, though I have the PC's roll their own damage so really all I fudge is criticals and hits/misses.

As painful as it is for a PC in a heavy RP game to completely rewrite a backstory, trust me it is MUCH more painful for the DM, who has heavily integrated that PC into some major plotlines. "whoops, looks like <x> is no longer the chosen one that will save the world...". I however am more than willing to put myself through that to see the look of horror on the PC's faces as they realize they are screwed .

[Gnaeus]

As a player, if it becomes clear that the DM is holding back and not killing PCs on purpose, I feel cheated. The thrill of combat involves overcoming dangers, and dangers mean that sometimes you get hurt.

If the DM chooses to have us fight intelligent enemies, I expect them to fight intelligently. Sometimes that means focusing fire on a soft or dangerous target. Sometimes that means finishing off a disabled foe before an enemy caster can put him back in the fight. Anything else hurts my suspension of disbelief and my enjoyment of the game.

Also, I like the minigame that is making characters, and if PCs never die, I can only do that once per campaign.

[Human Paragon 3]

As a player, I also hate it when DMs make the game too easy. Occasionally it's fun to annihilate the opponent to show how awesome we are, but if we're breezing through combats on a regular basis without going down or taking damage, that's (and I've used this term before) just lip-syncing.

As a DM I put this to work. Occasionally I let my players destroy stuff to boost their egos and let them use all their wonderful toys, but usually I push them to the limits, and sometimes they die.

I also strictly limit resurrection, and make it as rare as possible. Every now and then I break my own rule, but usually it's when, "Well, the entire plot revolved around this character, so... now what?"

[Choco]

I also strictly limit resurrection, and make it as rare as possible. Every now and then I break my own rule, but usually it's when, "Well, the entire plot revolved around this character, so... now what?"

Let them die and work with it is what I do

Yeah, the PC's failed to stop the villain's plan to unleash an undead plague throughout the entire material plane because he whooped their asses. All that means is the plot switches from "stop the disaster" to "mitigate the disaster and deal with the consequences as best as possible".

The only time death marks the end of the whole campaign is if they fail in the final BBEG fight and the BBEG was doing something like destroying the mulitverse. And win or lose, the campaign would have ended there anyway.

I like to play with no (or at least very difficult) resurrections most of the time, though if they are as common as in vanilla D&D (3.5-4e) then I make sure to keep track of how much money each char spent on resurrections, and remove that amount from their WBL. Eventually it becomes more cost-effective to just roll up a new character with full WBL. This way those truly attached to the characters can still come back.

[Totally Guy]

How long have you been DMing for, Glug?

I have run 30 gaming sessions. 18 were D&D 4E and 12 have been Burning Wheel. D&D was pretty much a combat/story/combat/story progression. Our Burning Wheel campaign is a lot less combat focussed but we still have situations where character death is a real possibility.

In the Burning Wheel game we got close a couple of times. One player character cheated death when a dagger hit him in the chest by having it hit and destroy the MacGuffin in his pocket instead.

It's a good little mechanic that allows you to be saved at a cost if you can also pay the Artha (hero-point type) cost.

[Noedig]

My favorite DM pulls TWO punches. Just two. He runs our 3.5 Undermountain campaign and has a fate point system similar to good karma in SR3. You get 2 points and that is it. You never get them back.

A point doesnt mean that you come off fine and dandy though, you still get the piss beat out of you. You just happen not to die.

He will coup 'd grace a PC if the monster we're fighting is intelligent, like say an abyssal ghoul who always has deathwatch on.

As far as PC's deaths are concerned, he doesnt like to do it, but if the dice say you die, you die.

[Aotrs Commander]

I have, in my 20-year DMing career, only had seven PCs (and one party NPC) die on my watch. Three of those were due to party in-fighting.

The first (ever) was accidental - a "warning shot" in Rolemaster/Spacemaster with the most powerful handgun available - to the back of the head (lucky crit). (The character's player decided he didn't mind, and even declined the offer of being resurrected afterwards.)

The second two were both taken down in sequence by another character in a pair of duels. Normally, I don't allow party in-fighting, but the two dead characters in question had really gone against the tone of the adventure I'd set (basically using the aquatic-setting as an excusewanting to act like CN/CE pirates and murder and pillage. Despite both players knowing full well I don't allow that sort of behavior - period - in my games). So when the good swashbuckler ended up fighting them I allowed it, and to everyone's great surprise, he won both fights, back to back. I called that karma...

The first two PCs I actively killed was again in RM (actually latrer on in the same quest as the first shooting.) In that group there were three players whose characters got along like matter and anti-matter. I had told them, in and out of character, so freakin' stop it and tone it down. After the usual polite "look guys, cut it out, it's not funny anymore" had failed, even after they nearly killed each other in a previous adventure, they were still at it. So I told them they could either cut it out, or I'd have their souls eaten. They didn't cut it out. And so, when the soul-eating Carach came along, I pulled no punches and managed to eat the souls of two out of the three (and one of the party's NPC supporting cast along with them). The last one to go was rather spectacular though, since I rolled open-ended and the bite that killed him (physically and spiritually) sort of splattered him up the walls...
(Ironically, one of the players involved was involved in both incidents above, and both killer in the first and killee in the second...I think he's kinda learned by now...Kinda...)

The most recent occurance was sort of by accident, running a 3.5 version of Dragon Mountain. The (heavily optimised) Kobold archers let fly a barrage of poisoned arrows (Wyvern poison) and hit several times. Two of the PCs dropped rgiht dead, having failed their saves, along with the NPC guide. To my great amusement. Bearing in my this adventure is set for 14th-Epic in level range, and the PCs are so over-kitted it isn't true, I can really afford to not hld back. As it was, all this meant was a shopping trip to Sigil (via Greater Planeshift) and the PCs selling the loot they'd gained in the last encounter - and having enough money to not only True Res all three (including the NPC GUIDE I remind you!!) but buy some more kit to boot. Oy...

As standard practise, I do not generally kill PCs. Note the word "generally" it's the single most important word in that sentence.

I treat the PCs like the protagonists in a TV series. You can expect that, on balance, most of them will be coming back week-to-week, but that doesn't stop the action from being tense. I work on the level of posing credible threat. As long as the players (and their characters) are feeling concerned, then I'm doing my job. I don't have to actually kill anyone periodically to achieve that (though I'll admit, the fact that it has happended helps give me some credibility). Instead, I'll happily except knocking the odd character to negatives. The important thing is to make the players sweat.

I never say, while I've got my DMing face on, anything about not killing you. Outside of the session maybe (and always with the qualifier of "probably won't"); because it's that tiny sliver of doubt that says "he's really gonna kill us this time!" that keeps the players from getting too complacent. (That and they know if they do get too cocky and say "He won't kill us!" I'm liable to do so to prove them wrong.) Basically, I expect the players to meet me half way. I won't generally kill them (unless they do something mind-splinteringly stupid), so long as they don't take advantage of the fact.
Afterall, generally what you want out of a fight is something dramatic, tense and exciting. If the players are on the edge of their seats, you don't actually need to go and kill them if you can present a credible enough threat that ideally forget (or conciously choose to ignore) that you probably won't kill them.

On the other hand, at relatively low levels, to provide some shield against just bad luck, I often include Fate points of some sort. These can be used soley to make you Not Dead (if you fail a against a SoD for example); spending one puts you to 1 hit point above death and stable. These tend to be awarded as quest rewards only, and when they're gone, they're gone. I also curtail the amount given out at high levels, when the PCs have the means to deal with this sort of thing.

I also generally roll behind my screen, and on the rare occasions that due to bad luck or just gauging the combat wrong, I have been known to fudge the odd dice roll. (Generally only to not kill the PCs.) I much prefer not having to do this (hense the aforementioned Fate points) and I find myself doing it much less as time goes on. Of course, the point being the players (let alone the characters) don't know when I've done it. (And believe me, my luck is skewy enough that I can get away with it!)

And occasionally, if the PCs are in a bit of a pinch, I'll adjust the monster's actions a bit (perhaps to less than optimal). For example, the Dragon Mountain PCs, now at level 16, were fighting off a crowd of high-level NPCs (three 20th level specialist archers, two 15th level clerics and a 12th level sorcerer, having had plenty of buff time). The party was split in two by a portcullis and got a bit banged up. I could, at one point, have had one of the clerics cast Blood to Water on the whole party (Con damage at that point would have really hurt), but instead opted to have him do something else not potentially as TPK-worthy. (And they won in the end, and are now at level 17 and giving me the horrors of 9th level spells...)

So, summation then, I find it best that if you can get your players to believe (in-character and out-of-character) that you might kill them, you may not actually have to.

[Jallorn]

I'm of the opinion that fudging the rolls slightly to keep players alive during minor dangers is more fun for most. Dying fight the BBEG, yeah sure, that's fair game, but dying to a kobold who gets a lucky shot? Not usually. I would usually just have the player fall unconsious, but I haven't had the opportunity.

[Human Paragon 3]

"OK, Critical hit. You take 39 damage."

"I'm Dead."

"I mean 30 damage."

[valadil]

I'm of the opinion that fudging the rolls slightly to keep players alive during minor dangers is more fun for most. Dying fight the BBEG, yeah sure, that's fair game, but dying to a kobold who gets a lucky shot? Not usually. I would usually just have the player fall unconsious, but I haven't had the opportunity.

There's dying and then there's dying. In D&D if the players are of a level where resurrection is available, being killed by a kobold is nearly identical to being unconscious. If the player can come back, I don't see the point in watering it down.

[gallagher]

i feel that the best games to play, the most fun i have ever had, were ones where death is a constant threat. always being on the run, or hunted, makes you have to constantly be moving, and allows for many encounters.

but the thing is that when death is always a threat, you have to always be thinking, and always have someone trying to plan something. it also unfortunately forces us to bicker about plans, but when you have two or three guys with a gift for planning and one guy who seems to always have everything in his backpack that you need... well, a creative plan can get you out of alot of situations

plus if death isnt a viable threat at all times, players tend to be foolhardy and border-line stupid, trying to see what they can get away with. for instance, challenging a giant to thumb-wrestling

[Umael]

It depends on the campaign I am running and the players involved in the campaign.

Most of the time, I don't bother with killing the PCs because it is just more fun to torture them.

I blame my first DM (my father) for this one. Biologist, so he didn't have a lot of monsters in his dungeons. Knew a bit about economics, so there wasn't a lot of treasure just laying around. Funny, lots and lots of traps. Toss in a psychological warfare game in sadistic artistry, and those "Resurrection - 200gp" deals were more a lure to scare us than a cause to relax.

[Totally Guy]

If it's ok for the players to die fighting the BBEG but not ok to die by a lucky shot by that random kobold then why is random kobold fight happening?

It's not death with little meaning that would upset me, it's fighting with little meaning. I'd rather skip ahead to the BBEG fight.

Ack! But then when the party get there we'll have not got the required equipment and experience to do that.

So make the random kobold into something less random. Make him part of the situation.

The only time there can be anything close to a random encounter is as a consequence of a failed dice roll. If I want to track a man to his hideout and fail, I'd be happy to fight the kobold. Because I was taking a risk to get something I wanted it ties the encounter into something that was all about me. Which is what I like.

But then, having gone through the encounter I'd have received more experience than if I'd succeeded the tracking roll...

So could we perhaps put an experience value on the tracking that I'd receive for success (and avoiding the encounter) equal to the experience I'd get from fighting the kobold.

[Choco]

If it's ok for the players to die fighting the BBEG but not ok to die by a lucky shot by that random kobold then why is random kobold fight happening?

It's not death with little meaning that would upset me, it's fighting with little meaning. I'd rather skip ahead to the BBEG fight.

Amen brother.

If there is no danger of losing/dying, the fight does not need to be there. Unless it is one of those fights meant to be comical or make the PC's feel powerful and noticed how far they have come along (lvl 18 party ambushed by lvl 1 thugs for instance).

[Reynard]

Well, I my old groups campaigns, death wasn't a problem for most people. We knew what we were doing, and how to do it well, that we only ever faced character death if the DM, whoever it was that campaign, was really pushing hard.

We also had a way of dealing with characters getting out of control: "I'm coming for you". This was sort-of house-rule that was mostly there to spice things up, as the DM would roll a d10 to choose one of the 5 players, then tell them that they were going to die. The DM would then attempt to try and kill that character, and the player would try and stave death off for as long as possible, and both without resorting to cheese. Once/if the DM succeeded, they'd then roll a d8 and chose one of the characters who hadn't been killed yet as the next target.

This may sound horrible and immersion breaking, but it's actually great fun, and we don't use it for serious campaigns. Knowing the DM is out to get you makes you play really well.

[mackejn]

I think it really all comes down to your players. Especially after seeing all the responses in this thread. Granted I'm still a neophyte to D&D, but some people don't mind it and some people hate it. It can be an effective tool as long as it's not over used. I'm thankful to be playing 4e with my buddies because I think 1e and the like would just make me give up out of frustration. If you want me to get invested in a character, you can't keep killing them off. On the other hand, if you want me to really hate your BBEG then kill that character I have an attachment to. It's a fine balance keeping a player interested rather than frustrated.

[valadil]

make the PC's feel powerful and noticed how far they have come along (lvl 18 party ambushed by lvl 1 thugs for instance).

Even this can be accomplished without resorting to random encounters. Let them go beat up someone that bullied them when they were lowbies. That illustrates the same point, and they'll give a damn.

Random encounters can be reworked into no-so-random encounters with little effort.

The easy way to do this is to start out random and link it up to something else that's relevant. In my recent game, the players fought trolls on a bridge. The troll tracks led back to their cave where the PCs would have found (had they followed the tracks) a humanoid skeleton with a backpack full of manacles. Down the road, when they start hunting slavers that guy would have made sense.

Another way to do it is to have the random encounters happen to NPCs. Last campaign I was stuck for combat in an early session. Instead of telling the PCs to leave their castle and have bandits attack, I had the bandits attack a messenger who was en route to the castle. The PCs found out about it and had to ransom or rescue the guy. It ended up being the same bandit fight, but had a whole lot more story than if I gave the players the fight right off the bat.

[Deathrevived]

I have always been a strong proponent of the fact that actions have consequences, and sometimes my players need reminding of this...

Fairly Lengthy Story Example

Spoiler

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A perfect example of this was a game I recently ran, with the party ranger dying in the second plot encounter, one that was supposed to be a mostly rp encounter.

They had just dispatched a decent sized group of soldiers that they thought to be part of the invading army they were hired to stop, in fact the soldiers were the good guys (the PCs were actually hired by a Black Dragon, masquerading as the mayor- major plot point).

Anyways, when the commander of the forces that the players had just killed appeared, he was a high level Kensai (forget exactly how powerful I made him) who was described as highly intimidating in darn near every way. Well when the commander started to speak the ranger got the bright idea to try and shoot him. I even asked the player if he really wanted to attack the big guy, with an even bigger sword, and looked like a walking talk with his giant armor.

Long story short I tried to stop the inevitable, and I thought I had an out when the ranger ran to the monk, who had a circle of non-violence around him, I forget the feat but its from Book of Exalted Deeds I believe.

I rolled the commanders d 20s in the open, and ended up getting a natural 20 for the will save, another natural 20 for his to hit, a 20 to confirm and rolled about 35 damage more than would be needed to reduce him below -10. His reaction was to first get mad at me for killing his character, and then accused me of cheating, though I rolled right in front of him, and that is where the character death issue gets to the worst, in my opinion.

[Sholos]

I've had three deaths in my campaign so far. One was against an earth elemental's lucky crit and high damage (I roll in the open). One was the result of taunting the current BBEG (bad idea when you don't have good AC or HP and he's a cleric two levels higher than the party), and the last was when they simply refused to stop fighting two will-o-wisps which were tearing into them pretty badly. I only felt bad about the first one.

[DanReiv]

Being on both sides of the screen for many years I can safely say that adventures must be challenging and sometimes life-threatening for the PCs.

Where's the fun knowing you will win no matter what, and that you'll probably come back even if you die ?

So in my current d&d campaign (started in 2008) there's no resurection whatsover available. It just doesn't exist.

RP matters a lot since it can easily help or hinder future encounters, which are dangerous at best (I throw some easy encounter at them sometimes, for fluff and stuff, but since they can't loose those they hardly qualify as "encounters" for me)

Hence I take a lot of time designing them, cause I don't want to cause a TPK (they are seasoned enough to recognize overwhelming odds and flee/attempt to bargain) and I almost never fudge dices.

In the end I believe it just help immersion, makes the players more involved and carefull. Once in a while, one of them bites the dust and reroll.

Crowning moments of awesome are more awesome if failure means definitive death.

[Flob]

As a player, I despise dieing. It's a waste of money (we ALWAYS raise dead/ressurect), it's inconvenient (I'll tell you a story...), and a waste of time.

The story is in Eberron. We are in some sort of submarine, and our party consists of; an elven soulknife, a human artificer, a warforged warmage, and me, the human monk. Our submarine gets trapped in a net, and we have to go cut the lines. I easily swim out and cut one, when I spot a "large dark spoltch heading towards me". Guess what? Dire shark. In three rounds, I've been eaten, and everybody else has escaped into the ship after seeing me being devoured. Our party has to bargain with some sea-folk for like, ALL of our cash to get my body to be thrown up by the shark (or DM never has showed mercy like this before).

Now, this wouldn't have been so bad if I was used to death, but I was not. The last campaign we played, I had a character that was simply a tank. Absolute and true, heavy armor, good manuverability, and crazy damage. Never died once, and we went from nothing to level 19. I was king of the world.

You now see why death can suck, in my opinion. Sorry about the rambling.