Suddenly, time seems to slow down. The arrows rain down like slow pebbles, skipping

across a lake rather than the hail of death they'd been seconds before. Lightning

crawls across the sky, achingly slow, reaching for that next empty space. These demonlings

rush about, and all the while your eyes remain fixed on Elloween. You see her

grip at her stomach. feeling around the blade that runs right through her abdomen.

The demon, the demon facing her lifts his impaled sword that the demon facing her

lifts his impaled sword so that Eloine is at his eye level. The demon laughs and then

callously pulls her off his sword with one massive hand. He smiles a pointed

grin at you and then tosses her behind him. into the swarm of demonlings. Dungeons

and Dragons is a very fun game with very dynamic emotions and experiences. We all

come to the table eager to experience things that we've never experienced. Sometimes

we do experience things that we've been through before, and when that happens

there's a 50-50 chance that...

the experience is nostalgic or traumatizing. Welcome back to How to be a Better DM, the

official podcast of Monsters.Rent. I'm your host today, Justin Lewis, and I wanna

talk to you about a pretty hard subject, death. Today's episode is probably gonna be

a little bit triggering for some people, so if you know that talking about death would

put you in a bad place. Today might be best to skip this episode. We have other

episodes you can listen to. You can go back and listen to our other ones. But today

I'm talking about Dungeons and Dragons and death. In the real world, people generally

avoid the topic of death. For most people, it causes a lot of discomfort. In the

world of D&D, our characters provide death for many an NPC. yet when faced with

their own demise, players beg and plead with a DM to not make it so. That can

be pretty hard as the DM. Should you cave into your players' desires and let them

live on? Or should you let them play out? If they die, they die. Still other DMs

Still, other DMs decided to play the part of the villain and rain down death as

those demons I was talking about did. It's all a really complicated decision. It's

all a really complicated discussion, so without further ado, let's get into it.

First, let's talk about the basic rules of death. In the Player's Handbook, the

rules of death state that when a player character falls to zero hit points, they fall

unconscious and begin death saving throws. For those of you who aren't familiar

with death saves, here's a quick refresher. the unconscious character maintains their spot

in initiative, or an initiative is created whenever someone falls unconscious

and needs to make death saving throw. This is because it is an instance where time

matters, right? The order of operations matters. And whenever this unconscious character's

turn comes around, they roll a d20.

If their result is an 11 or higher, then that is considered a success. Three successes

stabilize their character, and they remain unconscious but are no longer dying.

If their result is a 10 or less, then that is considered a failure. Three failures

and their character dies. I know some DMs that decide that 10 or higher is a success

and lower than 10 is a failure, but that's up to the DM. If the result of the D20

roll is a natural 20, that's a critical success, and the character immediately stabilizes,

gains one hit point, and is conscious, and can proceed with their turn. Although there

are many differing rules surrounding that particular part, and people play it a

bunch of different ways. And if the result is instead a natural one, then that

just counts as two failures. So if you roll a natural one, two failures, and then

the next turn you roll a seven, then your character dies. And obviously there's

a lot of room here for additional homebrew rules that can make death saves even

more fun. For example, one of my favorite homebrew rules that I heard on Instagram is

that the death saves have to be rolled privately between the player and the DM. And

that player cannot make the results known to the other players. They cannot speak,

in fact, because guess what? They're dying. I heard this rule from an interview

on Dimension 20 with a guest, and I think it's excellent. find when people do

death saves, you know, the entire table is very well aware. So, you know, they,

they think, oh, well, you know, that person has two successes. I don't need to heal

them. Right. But if they don't know that it makes everything much more intense

and the stakes much higher.

But, regardless of what you decide to do, there's an even more important question

that you need to answer first. And that is, is death allowed at your table? Before

your players even come close to dying, you need to decide whether or not character

death will be allowed. And you might scoff as you listen to this thinking, well

of course my characters can die, there are no true stakes if they can't. Maybe? Maybe

not. Death is a very powerful plot point. The Fellowship of the Ring would not

have had half as much emotion if we all didn't think that Gandalf had died halfway

through. Anakin Skywalker might have had a harder time transitioning into Darth

Vader had Padme survived. Death is a very powerful tool for the storyteller and,

with great power, comes great responsibility. One of the biggest responsibilities you have

as a dungeon master is making sure that your players are generally very happy,

right? And this is why you need to be under, this is why you need to be aware

of triggering events. Because D&D can sometimes be a mirror in which we can see

reflections of our normal lives, we sometimes must be careful as to what we put

into that mirror. I know that's kind of a bad analogy, but for example, if a loved

one of your players has passed away recently. that having someone die in their

session

Because D&D can sometimes be a mirror in which we can see reflections of our new,

of our normal lives, we sometimes have to be careful about what we put into that

mirror. Yes, that's a bad analogy. But here's an example. If a loved one of one

of your players has passed away recently, then having someone die in their D&D session

might not be the right thing for them. Before you make any sort of decision, ask your

players what sort of things they want to have in their D&D game. You know, they get

to choose just as much as you do what happens. You can ask them about all sorts of

topics and themes to include in the D&D campaign, but definitely make sure death

is one of those questions. Ask them, is it okay if your player character dies? Is

the risk of that okay? Because some people, they just don't want to deal with it.

So, assuming your players have opted to avoid the inevitability of death, you now

have to do some fancy footwork to make the story believable and worthwhile. On

one hand, having a table that can't die is fun because the players know that they

have some pretty powerful plot armor. but that can quickly make the game a little

boring. It's not a big deal to fight a lich if you know that your player won't die.

So to make the stakes still high, even though the mortality rate is low, here

are a few things that you can do. Number one, collateral damage. Assuming your

player characters are developed and have been able to form important relationships

with other NPCs, those NPCs can become the targets of your villain's malicious attempts.

also known as the Lois Lane tactic. Superman is impervious, so Lois Lane, his lady

love, often comes under the gun of Lex Luthor. Likewise, with your heroes, they

can save the NPC in distress who really is just an innocent bystander...or are they?

Number two, unintended consequences. Another method you can try is to add tangential

consequences anytime a hero quote unquote dies. For example, let's say a particular

deity has decided to favor the party. This deity essentially prevents any party member

from fully dying. The death saves are still rolled, but if the character would

die, the patron god steps in and prevents them from dying miraculously. The god, however,

gives his boon with some strings attached. Now the party has to do some sort of quest

for the god in return for being preserved. Another consequence could be madness. The more

often a character should be dead but isn't, the more insane the character becomes.

You can really spice this up with some fun voices that only they can hear and

other things. Really, your options for random consequences are endless. And in

my opinion, making it so your players can't die is a pretty interesting twist to

surprise them with if one of their characters is meant to die but then doesn't.

Number three, loss of limb or ability. You could require that every time a player

would normally have died, they simply roll on a permanent injury table, losing a

hand, leg, eye, or just suffering some minor wound. This particular method really

only works for a short period of time because if it really was long term, then after

they lose a limb, combat would become harder, making the chances that they fall unconscious

and do death saves again, go up, which in turn would make them lose another faculty

and thus create a vicious cycle. So with this particular one, you will need to

make sure there are ways to prevent furthering loss of limb or ability.

Of course, there's nothing written down that you have to even do any of these

methods. You could simply just decide that none of your player characters die. I

think for very young groups, like maybe below 10, this would be an okay situation,

but If you do decide that none of your PCs die, then you might also need to consider

whether enemies die as well. Like will your game just be one of all non-lethal

damage? Or will your player characters be able to kill NPCs without dying in return?

I think for most tables, this just isn't a situation that would please people,

but it can be done. So now that we've talked about preventing player character death

from happening at your table, we need to be talking about... we need to talk about

letting it happen. After your table has decided that they do want to let nature

be nature, and those things that die will simply pass on to the next existence,

you need to answer a few questions. One, you do need to answer, what type of experience

will it be? You don't really need to consult your players, but if you want some

of their input, that's fine. You need to decide what sort of game experience a character

death will be. You see, in video games when you die, you usually just pause for a

second looking at your dead body, and then a screen pops up allowing you to choose

to revert to the last save, or the start of the level, or some other predetermined

point. D&D usually isn't like that. Though I suppose you could make an interesting

game mechanic that reverts certain things to a certain point if a character dies.

And honestly, I think that would be pretty fun, you know, making it a lot more

video game-like and having saves where if they die, then they have to revert. But

in that case, you'd probably have to make dying a much bigger possibility. Anyways.

Usually though, the character dies, and then in the next session, the player introduces

their new character in a fun and interesting way. In some D&D groups, the player might just

create a carbon copy of their previous character and call them just a different name,

you know, going from a Benry to a Lenry, right? Viva La Dirt League has a whole

comedic sketch on this in their D&D logic videos, and honestly, it's pretty funny.

But really, it's up to the DM whether that sort of shenanigan will be allowed. And

for some players it's really just more about loving a specific class race combo

and playstyle that they just want to keep playing, right? And that's okay. For

the most part though, players will create a new character when they die without

any problems. You, as the DM though, need to understand the mood of the table and

the playstyle of the group. to correctly portray an individual death scene. For example,

if your table is generally a table that laughs much more than they are serious,

then making a death scene funny might not be a bad thing. Even on a particular day,

if the party seems to want to just goof off, then go ahead and goof off with them.

But if your party is of the more serious type, then you absolutely need to treat the

character death with all the gravity that you can muster. We play these characters

week in and week out. We know that they are not real and that they are just make

believe, but surprisingly, when we play them, they start to feel real. We find

ourselves doing things that, quote unquote, the character would do, that we would

never do. So when a character dies, you need to be careful not to make light of

the situation in case one of your players is not yet ready to let go of them.

How is that for being grave?

Honestly though, because it is a touchy subject, I would err on the side of being too

serious rather than making light of a situation that could be difficult for one

of your players, that could resent you even subconsciously and decide that they

don't want to play with you anymore, which is a loss in my book. And simply because

death, talking about death can trigger anyone, I would say be careful and tread lightly.

The next question is, will I, the DM, actively cause death? Another consideration

that you will need to make as the dungeon master is whether or not to actively

seek the destruction of your players. Obviously, whenever combat comes up, every

DM does, quote, their best, quote, to kill the players. But this question is really

a deeper decision. There are times when one player goes down and the DM needs

to think about whether the enemy would continue attacking the downed player to finish

the job or if they would divert their attention to other targets.

In some instances, the downed player would become a bigger target because they are

downed. When a DM acts like this, players will naturally be angry. As a DM, you

need to understand the decision you make and be able to defend it. In my opinion,

only do this if you know your players would still play with you after. You don't

want to have to find another D&D group just because you thought a particular enemy

would not hesitate to go for the kill. Now that we've killed your player character,

you also need to decide whether or not that player can return to the game. Whether

or not that character can return to the game. In many games, the group can pursue

resurrection of the downed individual. And you need to decide if that's going to be

an option at all. And if it is, how easy or difficult it is to make it happen.

And how one might go about resurrecting a fallen friend. For some campaigns, the only

that the spell requires. Once your players have access to the spell, they can

decide that you... Once your players have access to the spell, you can decide that

this is all that's needed to revive a character that's died. Or you can make things

a lot more difficult. For example, if you desire, you can choose the resurrection

spell from any player character's spell list. Ahem.

For example, if you desire, you can choose to ban the resurrection spell from any

player character's spell list. You may decide that NPCs can still cast the spell,

so now the PCs would need to find an NPC that likes them enough to resurrect

one of them. Or perhaps you decide that only high-ranking clerical NPCs can cast

Resurrect. This would make the quest of finding someone who can perform the spell

and is also willing to do so for the party much more difficult.

Still, other DMs might choose to make resurrection the object of larger quests. You

might decide to have your party seek after the Fountain of Youth, or seek divine

favor with a hard to please deity. Or you can have your party try to find a magic

item that restores life, much like the latest D&D movie. However you do it, if

you do decide to make...

If you do decide to make bringing a character back to life more difficult or

engaged, I would encourage you to make a story arc or a quest out of it. In D&D,

resurrection should be a very theatrical and earned event, meaning that if you just

give it to your players, they won't really appreciate it as much. Make it an adventure

that way. Make it an adventure. That way, when the players do- make it an adventure.

That way, when the player character does come back, there will be many opportunities

for role playing, both on their side and on the side of the other players.

Now, assuming that one of your player characters have died, and that they aren't

going to be resurrected anytime soon, you obviously need to help that player who

lost their character make a new one. Here again, you need to make some decisions.

Are they the same level as the other players? How will they enter the game? How

do you help them re-establish relationships with the other players? Let's talk about all

of these and more. For the most part, character creation after death is just like

making any other character. Have the player try and think of something original.

They may want to do the same class and maybe even the same race, but encourage

them to give their new character some different personality traits. You don't want

a carbon copy of the old character just because that makes things weird. you don't

want a carbon copy of the old character because that just makes things weird. If your

party has been adventuring for some time then they've probably accumulated some

magic items. You'll need to decide whether or not this new character will meet

the party while already possessing some magical items of their own or not. Lastly,

you'll need to help your player come up with proper motivations for their character

that will lead that character to intersect with the rest of the party and hopefully stay

with them. As I've said before, one of the hardest parts of D&D is getting player

characters to meet and then decide to travel together amicably and hopefully become

friends. I've also said that an easy way to mitigate this is to give the new character

a connection or a tie to an existing character. their cousins with someone in the

group, or they grew up in the same town. That connection doesn't need to be big

unless you want it to be, and in fact I would actually opt for a smaller connection

that still allows the characters to have their own adventures and storylines while

making a sort of introduction to the rest of the party. If nothing else, you can

always opt for a simple galvanizing event. Soon after the new character joins the

party, have them all face some sort of danger together where their goals become

the same by default, usually survival, right? Facing down a large and dangerous monster

qualifies perfectly. This should theoretically help the party become a team, if only to destroy

a present threat. However you do it, make sure that everyone feels included. And

an experience like this should align a lot of their motives and incentives so that

they do choose to spend some time together, right? And after that, you simply

need to keep things rolling until friendship forms between the characters.

If you aren't interested in death in your game, or even if you are interested,

there are a few other outcomes that you can introduce to your game that will be

similar to death in their scope and effect but won't necessarily be actual death.

They'll be just as permanent, but no one has to die. For example, in my campaign

I'm running, my players faced a creature that could petrify them. I chose to make the

process of becoming unpetrified a much more involved process rather than just

allowing them to find someone who could cast Greater Restoration. Instead, they

needed to travel somewhere, beat something, and acquire a magic item that would then fuel

the spell to unpetrify their characters. In similar ways, you could have an enemy who

casts sleep on players that forces them into a deep sleep, or you could use banishment

in a similar way. These are fun ways to have a death-like experience with a character

while still allowing the player to reclaim the character in a way that is earned

and fun for everyone at the table and makes more sense than full resurrection.

When considering using methods like these though, make sure your players are open

to it and that it's either randomly directed or if it is targeted to a specific

character, then there is a narrative reasoning behind it that enhances the story.

Well, we've certainly talked a lot about death, but you know as they say, memento

mori. As you go back to your D&D campaigns, or start new ones, consider the consequences

of death and what it would mean to your players. Make sure everyone is on board

and having fun, and remember to do everything for the purpose of a better story.

Hopefully these tips have helped you. Thanks for joining me here on How to Be a Better

DM, the official podcast of Monsters.Rent. Let's meet back here next week for another

amazing episode, but until then, let's go ahead and roll initiative.