When PCs die - how do you handle this?

[cthulhudarren]

My thoughts and ideas.

1) When someone dies, make it dramatic. Roll some kind of hit location die and let the results inspire you. Examples from my game:
a) vine horror strike kills character.. I rolled head so I have the vine shoot into his mouth and explode out the back of his throat. Awesome
b) character falls into dry moat and dies. rolled leg... character falls upon a sharp rock, shattering his tibia (foreshadowing the basketball player injury!) and severing the main artery in his leg.

2) If the dead character survives the recovery, they take a permanent penalty of -1 to a physical stat. And some reminder, like the guy with the shattered leg now walks with a limp.

I think if it goes this way, multiple recoveries will start to drop your stats so low that the character may retire. Just like they would in reality.

[cjfodel]

While running "portal under the stars" ( at FreeRPD day ) had a player whom all of his characters died. One of the other players passed him a character. On he didn't like the stats on, but he did. This low stat made it through the adventer.

After zero lvl I have the new character come in one or two lvls lower then the one that died.

Charles

[Tortog]

@ cthulhudarren> you're right that is an awesome technique and I've used it many times. I would however add the following caveat: "Know your audience." Not everyone is interested in gory or graphic descriptions of the death of their characters, sometimes it just makes a traumatic situation even worse for the player.
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I was running a double set for FRPG day; Imperishable Sorceress leading into Tower Out of Time, and during the first session I had one character die. The dead character made their recover the body roll and took a hit to her strength score, but has the snow white imprint of Ivrain's hand on her chest from where the sorceress killed her with a chill touch spell. The STR point may eventually be healed, but the scar and the memory of walking through the Celestial Forest to meet the Elf King will never fade. Player doesn't know it yet, but the character will be forever at a -1 to any future save rolls versus Chill Touch, and she will never be able to learn the Chill Touch spell... even casting it from a scroll or wand would probably kill the character outright.

The player was momentarily disappointed when the character died; but she was so interested in, and excited by the 'recovery sequence' that I rambled out, that the death of her character was turned into a fun and exciting highlight of the game and a way to add depth to her character.

On a secondary note and well before the above event, I'd saved them from a TPK. There was a misfire result on the wizard's Magic Missile spell that would have killed them all, but since players were so scarce at the FRPG day event I was more interested in keeping them playing. I don't regret it for an instant, because it happened so early in the game and we were so pressed for time that if we stopped and gone on to TOOT then they'd have spent most of their time in explanations of the game and character set up. So I went with the option that gave them more play time. Considering how much fun we had afterward, it was the right decision. Especially since I ended up with a new super villain to use in future stories.

I'm in the process of writing up the narrative and will post it in a few days for any who are interested in reading the details.
I'm hoping to hook up with them before too long and see what they do with TOOT... should be a lot of fun.

[Clangador]

And yet, my games have had a number of character deaths.

Anyone who wants to put the fear of Crom into 1st level PCs need only run James Raggi's excellent Death Frost Doom.

That sounds scary.

[Skyscraper]

And yet, my games have had a number of character deaths.

Anyone who wants to put the fear of Crom into 1st level PCs need only run James Raggi's excellent Death Frost Doom.

That sounds scary.

Yeah, the only worst title could have been "Death Pain Doom".

Might as well simply not enter, says the PC at the main dungeon door.

[themightyeroc]

I'm in the process of writing up the narrative and will post it in a few days for any who are interested in reading the details.
I'm hoping to hook up with them before too long and see what they do with TOOT... should be a lot of fun.

Looking for that write up Tortog.

[Relaxo]

Typically, I cackle.