Sometimes dying is a good thing

Sometimes dying is a good thing. Yeah that is what I said. In RPGs you take risks and build your characters up to defeat the random chance that the dice will not go your way. That risk makes the game fun for me. In the games I play there is always a chance my character will die. Of course it sucks when it happens but it doesn’t have too. Suck, that is, death can bring up options.

Death in an RPG is a chance for something new; death gives you the opportunity to change how you play. Maybe, next time you have another player back you up before charging down the dark hallway (I am guilty of this). Interesting things can happen when you die, like your group may only have reincarnation available so now you are a kobold instead of an elf. Or, you will see who your “true” friends are around the table, like do they all start arguing over who gets your gear, or do they start collecting money to pay for a resurrection. I know in my home game death gives you a chance to start a new character class 2 levels lower than the one that died.

I made that rule thinking back to past experience where I had died in other people’s games and once dead, I was done for the session, or I had to start over at 1st level. The players never liked it when they did all the work for some 1st level guy, so I never liked that option. Being unable to play at all until the dungeon was over also sucked big time, I swore to never let that happen to players in my home game. When I came up with the 2 levels lower rule, I thought people would just bring back in a paladin, if it was their paladin that died; you know the old twin brother joke people talk about when they game. “If my guy dies, his twin brother will step in and march on.” I found in 3.5e this was not happening, instead the players would build something new and definitely super cheesed.The 15h level paladin died and was replaced by a barbarian/dervish/monk/chessewiz PC. So the players were rebuilding their character to better beat the odds of death in game. If the new combo PC died, they would try another and another. As a DM, I found this amusing, because whole parties would change out over time to the point no player character was recognizable by any NPC that the party had met in the past. This of course messed up all those plot hooks in my Alidor campaign but did make the game very fluid and unpredictable for everyone at the table.

The green eyed man walks into the bar and calls out “I am looking for the elf named Moval” and a player says “I once new a kobold name Moval, who was quite fluent in the elfin language but he died months back, I carry his bow; maybe I can help.”

In a game I play now, the DM placed his own house rule, If you die in combat you are dead until combat is over and then you are returned to life 1 level lower. You can not change characters and the game is only over for you for the duration of the combat. At the end of the session you pay the gold for being returned to life as if by raise dead. All 3.5e stuff BTW. It works to keep the plot going, which is important, but the magic of reincarnation is not allowed (boring) and you can’t change characters (no cheesing allowed). Having died a couple times using this DM’s method, I can say I really do miss my way of dealing with dead PCs. In Alidor, dying ends up being a good thing, especially if you where thinking of trying some new character class.

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