DMing with Charisma

The death of a character is rarely a happy event. Sometimes it’s a well-deserved comeuppance for terrible play (he said, glaring knowingly at the mirror-man sorcerer), but usually it’s a series of unplanned circumstances that leave the player and the campaign in a lurch. So what’s a good DM to do?

There’s a style of play based on the contention that the DM is the campaign’s primary antagonist, and that he or she should treat the players with the same antagonism. Characters are challenges to be overcome, and the death of one is the intentional result of some difficult, unbeatable, or outright spiteful encounter. This is the style of Gary Gygax and a number of old-school adventures, including but not limited to the infamous Tomb of Horrors. If that’s the type of game you enjoy running, there’s nothing else to say about a character death. You won! Don’t let reading this post cut into your celebration time! Go frolic!

For the rest of us, the ones who actually play D&D, a character death is more accidental than predictable. It’s often the result of bad luck (rolling a series of failed Reflex saves, even though you succeed on a roll of 6 or higher), unexpected effects (a high-damage explosion that occurs when a creature dies), an unusual battlefield situation (somebody left the wizard alone with three ogres), or a combination of the above. A DM may know ahead of time that a battle will be difficult, but a lot of battles are difficult and don’t get anybody killed. It’s far more likely that nobody predicted that the rogue would fail to climb the wall, or that he would take maximum falling damage on the way down, where he lands next to a wraith that the players didn’t see.

Different DMs react in different ways to the threat of death. Some will subtly (or egregiously) alter events so that the situation is survivable, like by allowing a save where one shouldn’t exist or having a monster use unwise tactics to keep a weak player clinging to life. Other will let the chips fall where they may, holding the players responsible for decisions and luck just like monsters, because this adds the real threat of loss. Both points are valid, and I’ve used both in different situations.

What I really want to talk about is how to deal with the death after it happens, no matter how it came about. Depending on the character, the players, the campaign, and the immediate situation, you and your players have a lot of options.

The biggest question is whether to let the death stand at all. D&D has a lot of resurrection magic, and most parties of a sufficient level have access to it. If the party wants their ally back, has an appropriate spell or ritual available, and meets all of the requirements, a death might only last for an hour or two before the party is nearly back to full strength. Even if the players aren’t ready, they can carry their friend around until they can prepare the spell, or until they can get to a town where somebody can cast it for them (feel free to give them an NPC for the interim, so that the player of the dead character has something to do). This is convenient, but it does make death cheap.

If you like bringing the character back but think raise dead is too easy, you’re fully within your rights as a DM to require some sort of quest or sacrifice. Perhaps the spell only works in a certain place or with a certain strange component based on the creature who killed the character. Perhaps resurrection magic is rare and requires the aid of a mysterious hermit or the permission of a god of death. For sufficiently evil players, maybe a life can only be granted by an equivalent death, and the players have to find somebody to kill. The quest could also be on the other side. Imagine the characters can revive their ally immediately, but to prove that the character is worth coming back to life, he or she must perform some task as a spirit. This is a good time for a one-on-one session with the player, or for a quick side story as spirit allies (run by your other players) assist the character on their journey back to life. This redirects the campaign to a new temporary focus, but it makes death meaningful without being permanent.

Another option I like is allowing the character to return, but having them somehow wrong. Maybe a devil piggybacked on the soul as it returned from death, and now the character has an infernal influence helping to drive its actions. Maybe the character didn’t come back fully, taking a permanent penalty to something related (like a -2 to saves against fire for a character who died to red dragon breath). Or maybe the only way to bring them back is as something grotesque, like making them undead, putting their soul into a construct, and the like. It keeps death meaningful by applying an ongoing effect, it doesn’t necessarily derail the current plot, and it opens new roleplaying opportunity, but some players really don’t like the potential for a life-long character trait based on one bad fight or even one bad roll.

Perhaps your players aren’t in a situation where they can revive their ally. For example, if the character drowned in lava, the lack of a body prevents all but the rarest, most powerful resurrection magic. It could also be as simple as the player leaving the game or wanting to take the opportunity to change to a new character. In that case, you should be fine with letting the character stay dead, letting the other characters mourn or move on appropriately, and planning for the potential addition of a replacement character. This doesn’t mean that the character can’t come back later in some form, like being revived by an enemy as an undead minion or transformed into a saint in the afterlife and willing to help the players from another plane. It does mean that the players think the change would be more fun than focusing on their dead friend, and it’s the DM’s job to allow players that fun.

I’ve rarely seen a bad approach to a player death. Even if you disagree with your players on how much meaning death should have, or if some players disagree with others on whether or not to revive a character, there’s still opportunity for role-playing, world-building, and general fun. Really, the only way I know to turn a player death into a negative experience is to make the players feel bad about the death of the character by continually reminding them of their failure or blaming them for getting into a situation where death was a possibility. Chances are they feel bad enough about it without you. As strange as it sounds, I’ve actually seen a DM do this, and the only thing it accomplished was making the players like the DM less.

I’m usually of the opinion that death and revival should be interesting. I don’t like the cheap resurrection of high-level D&D, which typically has a high cost but only applies an uninteresting blanket penalty to rolls; 4th Edition made it even worse by turning the “high cost” into pocket change except at very early levels. My generic go-to is to make the remaining characters physically retrieve the dead character’s soul from a holding place in the afterlife, though some campaigns don’t work as well with that construct. If my players really really wanted simple resurrection, I might allow it, but they might change their minds the first time the campaign villains come back from the dead.

I’ve talked a few times about designing sessions for balanced parties and how hard it is. But some parties don’t have the luxury of being balanced. Sometimes, nobody wants to fill a certain role, or there just aren’t enough people to hit every base. Even missing a regular player for a session or two changes the dynamic of play. How do you build a session, adventure, or campaign when you’re missing something the game expects?

Here’s a link to part 1 of this article, about 4th Edition. 3rd Edition has more roles (also, I made them up), so they’re harder to cover. However, they’re not as explicit in the rules, and traditionally they’re less necessary than in 4th. Each party member is expected to have more than one role, and most classes can fulfill most roles. Still, if something is missing despite all that, there’s something you can do.

When I’m missing a role in 3rd Edition, sometimes I ignore it. After all, it’s not as though all combats are designed for a balanced party, and it’s more realistic that sometimes a party with no diplomat will still have to talk to somebody. But when I do make changes, here’s how I tend to design:

• Control

  Controllers mess with the battlefield by keeping monsters separated, limiting their effectiveness, or protecting allies. A party without a controller will get in over their head, often before they realize it, so try to be open about giving them opportunities to back away and try to get a more advantageous situation. Keep away from tons of low-level monsters that somebody with area effects could normally disable or impede, because the party may not be able to do that any more. Try planning encounters in waves; fighting fifteen orcs is far more daunting than fighting three sets of five orcs each that appear every few rounds.

• Damage

  Designing for a party without a damage role isn’t that difficult because you’ve probably already done it. If a party’s primary source of damage is a rogue, then a fight against undead means that the party doesn’t have a damage-dealer. The same goes for a party with a sorcerer fighting a high-level outsider with Spell Resistance, a two-sword ranger fighting a monster with DR against slashing or any of the above fighting a golem. One option is to plan on other sources of damage, like unusual terrain (not much can survive a lava pit), traps the party can co-opt, or limited-use magic items. Another is to accept that damage will be low and give monsters low health to compensate, perhaps increasing their Dexterity or Strength as much as you decrease their Constitution, or decreasing monster damage so neither side is outpacing the other.

• Defense

  The defender role isn’t as hard and fast as it is in 4th Edition; rather than a mark, a defender in 3rd Edition just soaks attacks that could otherwise have gone toward squishier characters. A party without defense is rare because somebody usually likes having high AC, but that party would obviously take more hits in a given fight. Be wary of monsters with Power Attack or similar features, because while a -5 penalty to attack for +10 damage is incredibly meaningful when they hit on a 15 or higher, it’s not that much of a problem when they hit on an 8. Expect players to use smarter tactics, like cover and choke points, to limit the amount of damage they take, and plan on shorter days because the party healer is likely to be much busier.

• Diplomacy

  A party without diplomacy will do a lot of punching and not a lot of talking, and when they do talk they’ll probably be bad at it. The key is to not make the party feel put upon for missing this role. That is, if the party is bad at high negotiations and political intrigue, don’t give them a series of adventures based around it. Having the occasional haggling or bartering session is fine, but remember that the players designed a less-talking-more-hitting team because that’s the sort of kick-in-the-door game they want to play. Unless they really want to feel evil, avoid monsters that like fleeing or surrendering, and lean toward monsters rather than NPCs with class levels.

• Healing

  In general, without a healer you can also expect a lower amount of party satisfaction. When a player goes down, they usually stay down, and that player gets to sit back and watch while other players fight and complain about how hard combats are. They also get to do less in a day and rarely enter fights at full strength, so the dissatisfaction builds and builds. I suggest you really encourage players to reconsider a party without a healer, because it’s generally less fun for everybody involved. If this is impossible, a lot of the notes from the last post apply here: lean toward low-damage monsters, allow strategic (between fights) healing to make up for the lack of tactical (during fights) healing, and expect fewer fights per day. One difference is that having many, lower-level creatures here is a good idea, because damage and attack bonus scale more quickly in 3rd than in 4th.

• Nature

  Obviously, parties without a nature role will be bad in the wilderness, so count on them to try to find ways around it (teleporting, taking a vehicle, hiring a guide, or simply avoiding quests outside civilized areas). You can also expect them to have trouble with monster knowledge, since Knowledge (nature) covers six creature types. Nature characters also tend to be mobile, whether it’s because of lots of skills like the ranger, great ability scores like the barbarian, or outright flying like the druid. Parties without mobility make have to approach obstacles in more blunt ways like punching through them, and even a simple castle wall can be a significant challenge, so keep that in mind when designing non-combat challenges.

• Stealth

  Stealth is kind of a mixed bag. Parties without stealth tend to deal with problem head-on because they don’t have a second option, but they also tend to stick together because they have less opportunity to split up. Generally, remember that the party will be together most of the time and likes it that way, so don’t expect them to leave each other. Stealthy characters without spellcasting also tend to thrive on focused fire, so keep in mind that a party without stealth is more likely to split their damage (intentionally or otherwise). The same notes on mobility apply here as they do with nature, above.

Pathfinder basically has the same roles at 3rd Edition. There is one other thing I want to address in a future post, which is how to deal with a temporary change in a party rather than a general session design strategy.