PC Death Ruining Your D&D Game? Fix It Now!

Ever had a PC die in the middle of your Epic campaign in D&D and have your entire game ruined? Me too! Here are five ways to avoid it happening again! USE WITH CAUTION!

Today we are talking about PC death and how it should not affect your campaign.
How do you handle it when you have warned a PC about the dangers of following a certain
path, but they follow it anyway and they die?

Do you just let it be or do you handle it differently? There is absolutely nothing wrong with
letting it be and allowing your player to create a whole new character to bring into the
campaign, however, if you are running an epic campaign, bringing in a new character may
be disruptive to the game. Furthermore, if you were running a player-based campaign and
decisions were being made for the PC that died – it may derail your campaign.

Figure out how the character died – alone is always easier. Then what do you do? Try these:

• Fade to black
o The last thing you see is your enemy smiling as darkness slowly fills your
vision.

• Daydream/nightmare
o It was all a dream, now do it again but different.
o You too GM! Do it different the next time.
o By doing this, you will have to completely change the encounter so that the
player thinks that it really was a dream.
o You cannot do this more than once in a campaign.

• Welcome to hell
o The PC wakes up in hell and must escape. Other PCs are fellow souls trapped
down there.

• Reincarnate
o Or revive or return to life or ignore death and simply come back.
o This means that you should also revive or resurrect the nemesis from time to
time.

• Divine intervention
o Let a passing god, demi-god, angel or devil need a favour in exchange for the
PCs life.