Character Death, woe or wow?

Last night I played a particularly long session of my weekly Pathfinder RPG game. During this game I killed a player character. Well that’s not quiet accurate. I wasn’t gunning out for him; it was a mixture of chance and strategy.  Scar, the half-orc dragon blooded sorcerer rolled a 1 on his saving throw and died from the maximized Acid Ball (the enemy wizard’s version of Fireball). This was actually a replacement character of the player; his regular character got transported to the other side of the world and was pretty much out of the picture. Which means his character was not strongly integrated into the campaigns plotlines so his loss, while sad (he was an interesting character), is not disastrous. There was a time when I felt like that, when the death of a player character was a disaster. Now I like to see it as an opportunity.

Come and take a walk with me down memory lane…

I didn’t use to be a killer DM! When we played Basic D&D, or AD&D, 1^st or 2^nd edition, I rarely killed characters. I can’t remember any death back in the day that did not serve the story. I used to give lots of breaks, the dice might have killed a character but I’d use DM fiat and leave the character badly wounded. Somebody would get the chance to help them just in the nick of time and they would survive to fight another day.

The only random death I can remember was late into my AD&D 2^nd edition campaign when a player character, an avariel wearing a Helm of Brilliance, failed a saving throw after a fireball and then had to save for the helm, he rolled a 1 and he just blew up like a small tactical nuke. The explosion not only killed the character but most of the undead around him and an NPC. To this day the moment is a memorable one at my table, fondly remembered as the “Fried Chicken Incident”!

(Coincidently the same player that rolled the 1 for the avariel was playing the half-orc that died last night, sorry Pierre…)

My campaigns integrate a lot of character’s back stories, so the death of a player can truly affect the flow and feel of the campaign.  Up until 2000 I looked at character death as something that should only occur to serve the story, never randomly. When I was planning my new D&D 3^rd edition campaign I asked my players for feedback on what they expected of the new campaign. One player put his thoughts in writing and something shocked me. The player told me he would like for the campaign to be more lethal, to allow the death of characters; otherwise he felt there was no real danger.

I took a long hard look at my DMing style and decided to embrace change and became a Killer DM, ever since I decided to “let the dice fall where they may!” Over the last ten years I’ve killed at least one character for every player that’s sit at my table. One of my players has the record of 13^th character deaths over ten years. Don’t think I relish this. I still hate what a character’s exit from a campaign does to storylines. That’s why I’ve slowly integrated ideas and tools to help characters survive.

My current campaign is a pirate inspired, high adventure, swashbuckling romp (or at least that’s what I’m shooting for). We use action points and the excellent Swashbuckling Cards (with judicious weeding mind you!) to allow players swing from chandeliers, jump from balconies, and for raging barbarians to pull down wooden scaffoldings (tip of the hat to Carlos for last night’s daring!). We have house-rules in place that allow players to use those resources to turn certain death into a near death and survive.

Still some players don’t like to do this and believe that if the dice have dictated their death, they shall stay dead, no last minute rescue through the use of action points, no resurrection. To them dead is dead. I used to go crazy when this happened, but now I try to think of this as an opportunity, a chance to integrate a new character into the campaign.

It may take some rethinking strategies; some reworking of plotlines, but it can be done. I’ve begun to integrate ideas from script writers in ensemble TV series and build in exit points into plots so characters can exit the campaign gracefully without too much fuzz. It doesn’t always work, but any campaign is a work in progress.

What do you think? How do you deal with character death in your games?

PS – I’d like to dedicate this post to my players, past and present, they make it possible for me to tell these tales and do that which I enjoy so much.