When PCs die...

[Half-orc Bard]

Well my friend isnt good at surviveing and the other players can't cast raise dead and he's ALWAYS dies and I've been letting him make new charectors at the same level and I think I should encorage him to live what's a good way to do that

[holywhippet]

More details please. What are his causes of death? Does he run into melee even though he's only a squishy wizard? Does he never check for traps? Does he never pack enough healing items? Does he decide that mooning the King is a good idea?

[Coidzor]

Oh. Player Characters. You kinda alarmed me for a moment with the thread title.

What are the party roles currently? If he's set on being in melee, Crusader is very good at surviving, it's from the Tome of Battle.

[Half-orc Bard]

Okay the ladt two were he was attacking the summoned monster and not the Psion and the other was when all the players had gone home so I had him fight a T-Rex(an easy fight for him the character was kick-booty) and it swallowed him whole and he had no small weapon

[Half-orc Bard]

He plays melee mostly and now a cleric who doesnt heal

[TroubleBrewing]

Start having actual consequences for dying? Start him off losing a Con point every time, and if he still hasn't learned to not get dead, bump him up to a level lost each death.

We still don't really have enough info. What level are you playing at? How many other players are there?

[Half-orc Bard]

It's level 11 there a favored soul, a sorceress, a NPC warlock(melee,ranged, and has a Cure Critial wounds wand) and him

[Coidzor]

He plays melee mostly and now a cleric who doesnt heal

Does he know how to play the game, then? Because that might be part of the problem.

[Half-orc Bard]

Yah he knows the game well the cleric doesn't heal because the favored soul does and his last character was duel weilding bastard sword it was a great fighter, but he didn't have a shortsword

[Half-orc Bard]

He knows the rules and stuff but he doesn't have much experience actually playing

[Coidzor]

You might want to forward him some useful links on the subject of strategy, or maybe a handbook to serve as food for thought then.

Otherwise, it seems like he'd get a bit more use out of putting it out there and asking questions here himself.

[holywhippet]

Yah he knows the game well the cleric doesn't heal because the favored soul does and his last character was duel weilding bastard sword it was a great fighter, but he didn't have a shortsword

I'd have to blame that death on you then, not him. You set him against an opponent that had an attack he couldn't counter if it succeeded. That would be like throwing a low will save character against a spellcaster specialising in domination type magic. The fact that he had a kick ass character doesn't help when you pit him against something he is vulnerable to.

On the flipside, it sounds like he needs to make his character more versatile. Not having backup weapons or even a dagger is a bad thing for a fighter.

[Half-orc Bard]

I thought he'd have a dagger

[Ezeze]

The beautiful thing about being a GM - I mean, the really beautiful thing - is that you get to see all the other players character sheets!

If you want to be a great GM, I suggest you study them - not only for tactical reasons, but if you look at them just right they will tell you exactly what your players want out of your game.

[holywhippet]

I thought he'd have a dagger

So did he seriously have nothing else he could use? Even things like alchemist's fire or acid flasks could arguably be used to try and get free (at the risk of self harm).

Did he have nothing in his backpack he could improvise a weapon out of?

[Half-orc Bard]

Nope all his money was spent on armor and two bastard swords

[holywhippet]

So wait, are you telling me that a level 11 character spent all their starting money on armour and two swords? They need a talking to regarding versatility if nothing else.

[Tanuki Tales]

So wait, are you telling me that a level 11 character spent all their starting money on armour and two swords? They need a talking to regarding versatility if nothing else.

I'm AFB right now, but is it even possible to spend all that gold on two swords and one set of armor?

[tyckspoon]

I'm AFB right now, but is it even possible to spend all that gold on two swords and one set of armor?

Assuming they're magical then yes, it's really quite easy to do. No good excuse for not having a dagger around (I get an adamantine dagger on every single character as soon as they can afford it, because it's amazing utility along with, you know, having a dagger) but you can easily spend your entire WBL on 2 weapons and armor.

Edit: It gets harder at level 19-20 because of the huge gap between a +10 equivalent and Epic costs compared to your wealth, but I think you can still pull it off with judicious application of +gp enhancements.

[Half-orc Bard]

So wait, are you telling me that a level 11 character spent all their starting money on armour and two swords? They need a talking to regarding versatility if nothing else.

It was level 10 at the time but still he needs versatility

[holywhippet]

By that level a player should be covering the range of possible damage resistances - silver, cold iron, blunt etc. Unless the campaign setting makes it unlikely to run into things which require those kind of weapons of course.

[DabblerWizard]

I just want to point out that PC death doesn't have to mean the end of the character.

In my campaign, I had set up the notion that (most) PCs that die would descend temporarily to the Shadowfell. This is partially based on the lore given by the d&d 4e texts. You can certainly insert whatever other afterlife you wanted.

This way, a player could still play their character, though they'd end up taking on their own mini-adventure to try and get back to the mortal plane. And the Shadowfell, as I conceived it, wasn't just inert. There would be soul-slavers who would try to enslave the PC that had died. Super high level PCs would have an easier time of getting back from death, if they so choose.

As an addendum, deva (which are a 4e PC race) wouldn't descend to the Shadowfell, being directly connected to the astral plane and the deity that gave them permission to enter the material plane.

[Critical]

Isn't an unarmed attack a light weapon, though? Also, a fighter with two bastard swords doesn't really sound powerful to me... You should probably point him to some kind of handbooks for the character classes he wants to play.

[Morghen]

1. You're starting him as a twink. He STARTED at 10? Good grief. How on earth is he going to learn to use any of his powers when he starts with all them? Start a campaign at 1 so he can learn what he's doing.

2. He's just going to have to die a lot to catch up to where he needs to be. In an earlier post, you said that he knows the rules but doesn't have a ton of experience. And in another post you said he was attacking a summoned critter and not the thing that summoned it. If you've been playing for years and years (as a lot of us here have) those kinds of things are just accepted as part of how things operate.

Here's a long-winded example of what I mean:
If I tell someone who was born in the US to take a seat, they'll know exactly what I mean and they'll sit down. If I tell someone who started speaking English a couple of months ago to take a seat, they're going to look at me like I'm crazy.

[random11]

Like Morghen suggested, start a campaign at lower levels.
Not necessarily first level, but also no more than 4 or 5.

If the player is not experienced, give him a little break and replace "be prepared or die" battles with "be prepared to turn a hard combat into something easy".
For example, setting him against an enemy with some kind of damage resistance will teach him to be better prepared next time with other methods of attack.

Also, suggesting him during the character creation that his character is not balanced is a simple direct method.
Warn him from theoretical threats, give him time to prepare (buy backup gear for example) and only then throw in the monster.

[101jir]

You could just go the Dorkness Rising path. More likely you could reintroduce the player with a brand new character that they meet later on, and you might be able to throw on some limitations, but that is not really necassary IMO, since the weakness of this approach (he has to wait until they reach a certain place, suspending the player from playing for a time) can also be considered a consequence to discourage dying. You could also let his character come back as a ghost, minus a lot of abilities obviously from going incorpreal, but also helps protect him in the future since he is now immune to mandane weapons (might not work out balance wise).

[holywhippet]

Isn't an unarmed attack a light weapon, though? Also, a fighter with two bastard swords doesn't really sound powerful to me... You should probably point him to some kind of handbooks for the character classes he wants to play.

It needs to be a light slashing or piercing weapon in order to cut free. Unarmed is a bludgeoning type attack unless you had some natural weapons like claws.

Bastard swords do D10 damage which is the most any standard one handed weapon can do. There might be combos which can do more damage, but it's a fairly good damage dealer without going power gamer crazy.

[JKTrickster]

Actually I disagree with Morghen's approach. Merely starting at a lower level won't probably help this guy.

See I think the problem is that he simply isn't proficient at the game. As in, he literally can't build working mechanical characters with versatile functions and utility purposes.

Starting at a lower level won't help IMO, because playing at level 10 is so different from playing at level 3 or even 5, especially when it comes to equipment choices.

I think you should just run through his character sheet with him - literally tell him things like "No, you don't want to do that." or "Do this, it's better." until he gets the ropes.

[tyckspoon]

Bastard swords do D10 damage which is the most any standard one handed weapon can do. There might be combos which can do more damage, but it's a fairly good damage dealer without going power gamer crazy.

Bastard swords are actually really bad damage dealers, when considering cost of actually using them- Weapon Specialization gives you a better return on damage than moving from 1d8 to 1d10, so why the heck would you spend that feat on being proficient with a Bastard Sword?

[holywhippet]

Bastard swords are actually really bad damage dealers, when considering cost of actually using them- Weapon Specialization gives you a better return on damage than moving from 1d8 to 1d10, so why the heck would you spend that feat on being proficient with a Bastard Sword?

You could spend the feat to use bastard swords and spend another feat to get weapon specialization for them.