Character Death

Congratulations! You are now a murderer.

Be prepared for this eventuality from the start; decide on house rules and resurrection availability early based on the anticipated style and difficulty level of the campaign.

Be aware of how magic item distribution and loot scarcity will be affected by character death and replacement.
If character replacement is chosen rather than resurrection, and new characters get full level and full equivalent loot only to die again, items can pour into the party.

Therefore, new characters should not necessarily begin with the full equipment value. If they do, then limit the individual purchase value of items to half the max amount to avoid players abusing this opportunity (a level 6 character may have 16,000g to spend which might be enough to afford a +3 weapon or +4 armor, but an 8,000g cap on individual items reduces this to a far more appropriate +2).

It’s often recommended that you control items received by the surviving party if characters die. But this is a dangerous path, potentially involving heavy metagaming. Of the following scenarios, which is more likely? The party buries all the deceased character’s valuables with their body (though if they can’t afford a raise dead spell, they’re no pharaoh). The group keeps their fallen friend’s items, but only long enough to hand them over to the next stranger who replaces her. The surviving party members take magic items from their slain companion to bolster their own resources. “She would have wanted me to have this.”

In order to enforce any action other than the last option, you might need to have a compelling structure in place from the start involving complex hereditary traditions, bonded bloodline magic, or inescapable curses for dishonoring the dead, which somehow doesn’t apply to loot from fallen foes. Good luck with that.

Player expectations regarding character death have changed over the decades. Fellow grognards will recall old D&D editions when new characters began again all the way back at level one. Gradually this moved up to new characters beginning a level or two below the living party members, until now, when characters tend to be expected to begin with equal experience points. If this seems a little soft, then consider penalizing new characters according to the equivalent level of available spell effects. If a character is replaced rather than revived, have the new character suffer the same negative level or monetary deduction as one who was raised or resurrected.

Death should have penalties rather than rewards (unless the campaign is an especially twisted tale of tortured, doomed souls seeking redemption before that final, sweet, merciful release). However, if the penalties prove too harsh, too many deaths will lead to a weaker party with insufficient power for existing challenges, and additional side quests will be required for them to progress.

If the party is able to bring a fallen ally back from the dead, consider the effects of being resurrected. They don’t necessarily have to come back the same. Consider allowing different personality traits or amended powers. Rather than it just being an issue of paying some gold and casting a spell, it can be a role-playing opportunity. Methods of resurrection can be dependent on religions, and the structure of worlds beyond the primary mortal realm. Extra quests or encounters in the underworld may be necessary.

If there is no opportunity to bring a character back, then there can be a major disruption to the story if plot elements were tied to the now-deceased character. This means extra work to write in new characters, and try and transfer the responsibilities of the old ones. This is not always an easy task, so sometimes killing characters may mean killing plot lines. But this is a necessary risk when balancing a story within a meaningful structure of game rules.

The timing of a character death can be especially unfortunate, such as half an hour into a session with no resurrection opportunities. This can tempt a player to create a new character hastily with little or no backstory in order to rejoin the game. This is far from ideal, and allowing it should be a judgment call depending on the circumstances. If there are no available back-up or companion characters to take over, it’s a several hour session, the player’s traveled a significant distance to be there, or they’re paying to play, then let them go ahead and do that. But discourage clone characters, or you may find that a heap of identical dead bards is only funny in someone else’s game.

You have the power to reward survival rather than recklessness, and to judge the difference between acts of heroism, foolhardiness, or fate. But whatever the circumstances that lead up to it, when the worst happens, don’t underestimate the effect on a player’s morale. Have a fainting couch ready. Keep some coupons for grief counseling. And if the player changes their real-life name by deed poll to that of their recently deceased minotaur meistersinger, roll with it.