You Have Died.

The character is dead. What do you do? This is not an easy question to answer, because despite there being rules around death and resurrection, there is little in the way of guidance story-wise. That is left to the DM, or at least requires some reading up on the campaign setting of your choice. Just telling the player they are dead and that’s the last they get to know about it is very anti-climactic especially in a setting with gods, magic, and planes of existence. Something I always do is assume that party members have had “the talk” at some point during their travels together about what they want done if they die. This way, when the character dies unexpectedly, there is a reason the party makes the choice about what to do. Usually it’s either “bring me back” or “leave me dead”, but the details can be decided at the time, not worried about when everything in the game is going great.
Obviously what you do is going to be dependent on the setting you’re in. I usually play in Forgotten Realms which really opens up the possibilities of anything happening. There is enough magic to explain anything that happens, so even though there aren’t rules around what happens when you die, there is plenty of room to make something up. I will even break the rules of how the magic works in the game to create a better story, given how dramatic death can be. The value of doing this is for the sake of the story; no one wants their character to just disappear without any kind of closure, so having something be described is great. Here are some examples of things I have had happen in my games after someone died:
- A church agreed to use a reincarnation spell to bring back a party member who was also a scholar. If they agreed to translate a tome in the church vault when they woke up, the church would re-kill them and do a proper resurrection to bring them back as their original race.
- The party went to a church to have a resurrection done. During the ceremony, the souls of the other party members were accidentally ripped from their bodies as well, and the entire group (originally dead party member included) were sent to a demiplane where everything was giant sized. They had to escape, Jack and the Beanstalk style.
- A character immediately returned as a ghost, and was stuck on the island the party had been exploring. Together they found a hidden artifact that was trapping the spirit, and after destroying it, they returned to their body.
- A character’s soul was sent to a long line of souls waiting to be judged, but while waiting, they were approached by some devils. The character was a tiefling, and discovered that their great-great-great grandfather was a Pit Fiend of some reknown, and they were invited to come visit the kingdom of his ancestor. He walked a hellish marketplace, dropping his great-great-great grandfather’s name and getting some cool magical gear before being returned to life.
- A trickster fey approached the waiting soul of a recently dead character and offered them a deal. The fey would return them to the world as a skeleton, with glowing blue eyes, and without the ability to talk. If the skeleton could somehow get the party to recognize that this was their fallen comrade, he would get his life back. If they did not recognize him, and killed him instead, then the character would serve in the fey’s court for 1000 years before having their soul laid to rest.
- When a church refused to bring a character back from the dead without the full cost of the spell being paid, a friendly stranger claiming to be from a lesser god’s church offered to do it for very cheap. When the character comes back to life however, the lesser god tucked away a 2nd consciousness in the character’s mind, one of an avatar that they wanted to be among the mortals. The character has strange symptoms over the next couple game sessions until it is revealed what is living int their mind.
- A character is offered the chance to become a powerful archon for their god. If they accept, they cannot be resurrected. The god will allow them to go and aid their party once per year. (Basically for the occasional quest in the campaign, the player could bring in an archon and roleplay as that).
I’m not a fan of death that brings people back weaker than the rest of the party, since this encourages people to just make new characters that do not have those penalties. I also prefer not bringing in new characters as much as possible so that party dynamics are not lost. Obviously this isn’t a problem if the story is shaped around it and you have players who are really good at roleplaying the change of characters, but usually the player will either keep the person dead, or I will give them something interesting that happens.
