Comments on: Character death is NOT the end

By: Brandes Stoddard

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 21:27:00 +0000

Also this guest post by the lovely and talented Rabbit Stoddard, from 2016. 😉

Death Is Not The End: https://www.tribality.com/2016/05/27/death-is-not-the-end/

By: Colin McLaughlin

Colin McLaughlin — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 17:30:00 +0000

As a companion piece to this article, check out a post here a few months back on some alternate resurrection rules for 5e:

https://www.tribality.com/2017/11/30/alternative-death-resurrection-systems-5e/

By: Manos Ti

Manos Ti — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:17:00 +0000

For the game I’ve got to run the last two years, in the case of a TPK I’ve come up with the following ideas:

a. The PCs keep on adventuring in the otherworld, where their souls are trapped. Actually, they will keep on the same basic story as in the material plane, but from a different perspective.
b. All the players get to choose a follow-on character. This new character is somewhat allied to their previous character (or at least someone else of the party) and they are looking for the whereabouts of the deceased character. All of these follow-on PCs are drawn to the site the original PCs died and the fun resumes.

Both of these ideas assume the players want to keep on playing in the same campaign.

For single character deaths (we had three up until now), only one of them has been reserved for future resurrection (by his evil twin brother, who was a PC and turned against the other PCs and now is a recurring PC villain) and each of these players had to roll a new character.

By: Dave(s) 4 Goombella

Dave(s) 4 Goombella — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:09:00 +0000

Sometimes, a memorable death is the perfect capper to a player character’s personal story arc: a heroic self-sacrifice, an aggressive hothead being undone by their own recklessness, or a series of misfortunes so improbable and comical that you can’t help but laugh.

But it’s always disappointing to lose a character in an anticlimactic way, especially if it’s a character whose personality you’ve really nailed in a way that only happens with a small fraction of the characters you’ve rolled over the years. I think it’s great to encourage GMs to look beyond the black-letter rules, and offer creative ways that the character’s story can continue beyond death, in a way that’s appropriate to the setting.