Saturday, October 8, 2011

PC Death

The death of a player is something that all gaming groups have to deal with at some point.  Whether it is due to malicious DMing, poor rolls, or just plain old stupid roleplaying, there are a couple of things that need to be considered.
A)  Can the body be recovered?
This is a pretty big thing when you think about it, as most forms of resurrection require the body (or at least some chunks of it) to work.  This also matters for the items the body had on them; if the player wants to make a new character after death, but the party still has access to everything the dead PC had on it, what is the DM to do?  I really feel that the players and DM should, right then and there, make an agreement on whether or not to take items and leave them.
B)  Does the player want to be resurrected, or do they want to make a new character?
In a reality, death is a pretty annoying thing to have happen as a PC.  From experience I can tell you that it makes you feel like the character that you built is weak, and that you should build a new character.  This should be avoided; it's more than likely that you died not due to character weakness, but to a few bad dice rolls or bad situation that escalated beyond the party's control.  Stick to the character, it's part of the game.
C)  This is an odd one; did they die epicly?
I know for a fact that, after a sufficiently epic death (see Gandalf vs Balrog) that I wouldn't want to be resurrected, and that I would be perfectly happy making a new character after that, so that the legend could live on.

Well, that's my opinion on PC death, more may be added later.  For that one guy reading this, I'll be sporadically putting more stuff onto here.

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