Adventures involve risk, with consequences that can be as catastrophic as the death of a single character or an entire group. Given the degree to which players get attached to their characters, character death can be an emotionally charged situation. It might even be a hard limit for some players (see “Ensuring Fun for All” in chapter 1), so it’s worth having a conversation about how to handle character death at the start of a new game.
The best way to avoid hard feelings connected to the death of a beloved character is to make sure the players know you’re being fair. Keep these principles in mind:
Don’t Cheat in the Monsters’ Favor. Rolling dice in front of the players when a situation is especially deadly is one way to communicate that you’re not cheating in the monsters’ favor or singling out a single character for punishment.
Don’t Make It Personal. Don’t punish a character for a player’s behavior or some personal grudge. That’s probably the quickest way to undermine your players’ trust in you as DM and as a fair arbiter of the rules.
Provide Fair Warning. Let characters face the consequences of their foolish actions, but make sure you give enough cues for the players to recognize self-destructive actions. You might want to ask a player, “Are you sure?” before committing a character to a potentially fatal course of action.
Fair Encounters. Your players have to know that you’re fair in designing encounters. It’s fine to throw tough encounters at them and sometimes to let them face monsters they can’t beat. But it’s not fair if the players have no way to know they can’t win the fight or have no way to escape.
You can adjust the lethality of your campaign using the encounter-building guidelines in chapter 4. If your players enjoy games that test their characters to the utmost and are prepared to create new characters at a moment’s notice, consider using high-difficulty encounters over and over, with little opportunity for rests between encounters, to create a more lethal adventure. Conversely, using only low-difficulty encounters is less likely to lead to character death, especially if characters have ample opportunity to rest during the adventure.
If you and your players agree to avoid character death in your game, you might consider an alternative: a character who would otherwise die is instead “defeated.” The following rules apply to a defeated character.
Comatose. The character has 1 Hit Point and the Unconscious condition. The character can regain Hit Points as normal, but the character remains Unconscious until they are targeted by a Greater Restoration spell or experience a sudden awakening (see below).
Sudden Awakening. After finishing a Long Rest, the character makes a DC 20 Constitution saving throw. On a successful save, the Unconscious condition ends on the character. On a failed save, the condition persists.
When a character is reduced to 0 Hit Points, the player sometimes has to sit out one or more rounds of combat with nothing to do but roll Death Saving Throws. One way to keep a player involved in the game is to prompt some roleplaying along with each Death Save. You might ask the player to describe a memory that surfaces in the character’s mind while hovering near death. Consider these possibilities:
On a Successful Death Save. A memory that inspires hope and courage. A beloved person who would urge the character to cling to life. A thought of something to live for. A favorite childhood memory.
On a Failed Death Save. A memory that stirs up shame or grief. A beloved person who is already dead, beckoning the character to join them. An experience of weariness or despair.
You can also reward a player who describes a memory or something else occupying the dying character’s thoughts with Advantage on the Death Save.
When a character dies, either from failed Death Saves or from an effect that kills the character outright, consider giving the player some ownership over the character’s final moments by asking what the character’s last words are or how the character greets death.
When a character dies, consult with the players to decide what happens next. Some players are perfectly happy to make new characters, especially when they’re eager to try out new options. A new party member should start at the same level as the other characters in the party and have gear of similar value.
It’s also possible for dead characters to be brought back to life. The most common way is through spells such as Revivify and Raise Dead. It’s up to you to decide how easy it is for characters to access those spells if they can’t cast them. The Player’s Handbook offers suggested prices for spellcasting services.
Sometimes death—even the death of an entire party—is just a passage to new adventures.
Misadventure can wipe out an entire group. (You’ll sometimes hear players refer to this as a “total party kill” or “TPK.”) Such a catastrophe doesn’t have to end the whole game—rather, it presents an opportunity to take the game in a new direction. Consider these possibilities.
Everyone makes new characters, and the campaign starts anew. This might be the most drastic option, but it allows for new stories and fresh character dynamics.
The characters find themselves before a council of deities who are arguing about the characters’ fate. The characters must convince the council to return them to life.
The dead characters wake up in Hades (see chapter 6) and must find a way to escape the grim underworld and return to the world of the living.
The characters wake up in cells, kept alive and imprisoned by their foes for some purpose.
A powerful individual finds the adventurers’ bodies and has them raised from the dead, putting the adventurers in the debt of their rescuer. What if the adventurers wake up decades after their death, returned to life by a Resurrection spell cast by someone who believed they had an important role to play in this future era?
The players create new, temporary characters who are tasked with retrieving the bodies of the fallen heroes, so they can be raised from the dead or given proper burials. If the dead characters have Bastions (see chapter 8), the stand-in party could consist of hirelings from those Bastions.