I’m new to role-playing but in the 4e campaign I’ve been playing I had a rather frustrating experience with death. We are doing a Dark Sun game and were confronting some bandits on silt skimmers. My character is a sorcerer and as the battle started I noticed everyone had ended up fighting the group on the left, and the group to the right was closing in fast. Not wishing to get bottle necked and being the closest to that side I started firing off spells, hoping at least one of my allies could break away and help my out when the bandits boarded us. Suffice to say that with all of them taking on the boss that didn’t happen and I quickly was backed into a corner despite my best efforts to fix my tactical blunder (I have notoriously bad luck with dice). I ended up unconscious and rolling my death saving throws when Lady Luck decided to kick me while I was down. The boat got hit by something (can’t remember what) and my body fell off the front of the still moving boat. Yes I was run over, but since I was hurting already the DM was nice and didn’t actually damage me… until I got lucky with a saving roll and woke up. I tried swimming out from under the boat but it was hopeless. I died one turn away from safety. I wasn’t happy about it, I struggled really hard to get through that and just missed my chance. But luckily after a game or two with an NPC I was revived… Only to die again two sessions later. I was stuck in a prison with magical wards and my personal arch nemesis sent four warriors in to grab me. I fought back but with no support (everyone was in different cells) and no magic (Last time I had seen those symbols it was implied I’d get fried for casting a spell so I didn’t feel it was a smart risk) I didn’t last long and my dead body was dragged out just as my companions finally started breaking out and getting the guards. I was revived again but we had to break for the summer, so I really haven’t gotten to play my own character for quite some time.

Anyways the point of this very long post is that while I can see people’s points about death needing to be “meaningful” nothing is more frustrating than dying a pointless death. Especially my second death was this way, because as our last few sessions progressed I realized I would have been able to participate in the final fight if I had seen what the DM was planning. I should have gone with the guards or made a break for it, because the four I was fighting by myself were the most powerful on the field. I lost the chance to take down my personal nemesis because of bad luck and not reacting as my DM expected. And if that had been it for my character I would have been fairly bitter about this next campaign and might even had just walked away. I don’t think I’m a wuss, but it would have been better to leave than to have had that kind of cloud floating over the group as we set out for a new adventure.

The problem I’ve always had with easy ‘bringing back the dead’ is not with the PCs but with the NPCs. Take the first Neverwinter Nights. If you die, as I remember it, you just wake up back at the temple … but if an NPC dies, that’s it, it’s over. The whole reason your ally betrays you is because someone is tricked into committing a crime, for which they are executed … and the betrayer doesn’t even think to have them resurrected, which would have solved the whole final act issue.

So many plot threads can be short circuited by an easy resurrection system.

Then again, if we were to take a page from MMOs, I could compare the rather harsh death system from Everquest to the mild death system from World of Warcraft … if you don’t get a buddy to raise you in EQ, you’ve got to physically make it back to your body to get your stuff, while in WoW, you just run back as a ghost until you’re close enough.

Further to consider MMOs, let’s say that if you died, that was it, you had to start over. RPGs are very much like MMOs in that regard, they don’t have single player ‘save games’ along the way to fall back on.

In the end, I agree with my best friend … death in an RPG should never be random, unless you’re playing a ‘life is cheap’ kind of setting. If a player dies, they should die for a good reason … essentially rendering any raise dead spell moot (or with serious consequences).

You are correct. D&D is not tailored to kill low level characters. With a decent DM it is really tailored to cultivate low level characters and grow them into vibrant mid and high level characters with influence in the realm. A couple of things to watch for; when a DM is designing an encounter for 4 lvl 5 pcs and decides a CR 5 creature is perfect for the encounter there should only be that one creature, anything more would up the EL (Encounter Level) and most likely end with severe consequences for the party. Another common mistake is for the party to not have a good plan in place during battle. Take advantage of the terrain, flanking, bottlenecks…stuff like that. I doubt that it is just a problem with unlucky dice rolls killing player after player so I would guess that the adventure is unbalanced in some way. Bottom line is that even inexperienced player can form a balanced party and have tons of fun if everyone, PCs and DM is doing their jobs well.

As our friend Mr. Araujo I´m also brazilian, and we are looking forward for the World Cup Championship this June. Go Brasil! heheh

Good night, sr.

Adriano Cardoso

Players may never end up feeling they just died and that was the end of it. Let them save the day in some way. Even if it happens “just like that” you can always as a DM make it purposeful. In the next dungeon the players may learn that an evil mage had cast some sort of curse, causing the player to fall into his death, and then you can easily have the story continued in the memory of the dead player, while the party hunts down the witch. Relatives are always useful to make up new stories. Didn’t the players forget some important item on the body, that they later learn about?

Keeping the dead player alive in the continuing story is always fun, and make the player feel his lost character remains a part of the game. At least for some more dungeons until he has put his new character in place.

I use the same technique when players choose to leave the game and make new characters. I often recommend the players to create a new character when they have reach their goals. (They do have individual goals, right?) Then you can carry on the player as an NPC. The players will love it. They know their old friend who settled down as the local mage, shopkeeper or just from time to time hear about the stories regarding the famous warrior fighting in the wars far away.

Put another way, by “meaningful death” I mean the opposite of death being an irrelevant or momentary setback to the players. I want death to be a meaningful consequence of players’ choices in my games.

And all credits was given and I’ll link it to the original.

Thanks a lot for permition and continue with this amazing articles.

That is possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Yes, you may. As long as credit is given and a link to the original provided, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with this.

Thanks!