February 11, 2024 • 72 mins
Step into the realm of the unknown with us and our erudite companion Wyatt Griswold, as we confront the often eschewed topic of mortality in Dungeons & Dragons. Through the veil of this episode, we promise an expedition that not only debates the merits of character demise but also enlightens you on how such finalities can enrich your gaming experience. Grasp the concept that the true weight of adventure lies in the risks and decisions that come with the looming specter of death, lending a more profound meaning to every action your character takes.
Wyatt and I unravel the complexities of player deaths, examining how varying levels of experience between Dungeon Masters and players dictate the approach to this delicate matter. While we traverse this tricky terrain, we share insights on setting clear expectations and employing compassion when dealing with the potential heartache of a fallen hero. By striking a balance between challenge and enjoyment, we navigate the nuances of when to let a character's story culminate and when to potentially reverse their fate, ensuring the game's inclusive spirit endures.
As our odyssey nears its end, we address the controversial phenomenon of Total Party Kills and the resurgence options that can twist a campaign’s tale in unexpected ways. We challenge you, our fellow adventurers, to stoke the embers of creativity by sharing your inventive death mechanics, which may just become part of our future discussions. Join us on this epic venture where we celebrate the journey, honor the fallen, and maybe—just maybe—learn to embrace the reaper as an old friend in the grand saga of Dungeons & Dragons.
Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you are interested in seeing more content like this check out our YouTube! We also post weekly game articles on our Patreon and have an active Discord community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Alright, everybody.
Welcome back to DMI, welcomeback to Dungeon Master
inspiration.
I am the Joe 2o here and wehave Wyatt Griswold once again
with us, absolutely every singletime I will be here without
every single time.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, it's gonna be great.
You're gonna be hearing lotsfrom me, I'm sure lots from
Wyatt Griswold, everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We today are gonna be talking about a little bit of a
different topic.
We're gonna be moving on to adifferent kind of subject, to
move away from some of the stuffWe've been talking about
recently, and I'd like to talkabout death today.
Now, death is an interestingconcept because it's something
that a lot of DMs are afraid of,some things a lot of DMs are
(00:43):
afraid of and it's sort of seenas a bad thing in the in the D&D
community as a whole roughly, Iwould say.
But it is actually, I think, anintegral part of the game.
That adds emphasis both to theeveryday gameplay and Also
emphasis to every singlecharacter With which enters your
(01:06):
game and I think a big part ofit is.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
This is for me and death in D&D Death has no
finality.
In D&D I mean by base rules andI don't follow these.
I make this a lost magic or forsome reason.
I take this out of all of mygames because I hate it.
You can go to any town andspend 500 gold at the town
center or the town shrine andresurrect Anyone and I hate it.
(01:32):
I don't think that that's howthe game should be, and
especially if you're playing oneof the older books that or
you're playing in an old settingthat was more prevalent in the
past.
Death was not a thing in theD&D world in the past, and the
only way to guarantee someonecan't be resurrected is by a red
wizards blade and or like anecromancer's blade, and I
dislike that.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I think it's just bad for the game and if you have a
homebrew setting, you don't havered wizards, which is rough,
but why?
It kind of brings up one of thefirst things that I think is
very important with death, whichis the fact that Death doesn't
(02:14):
mean it's the end of a character.
So why don't we do death?
Why do a lot of DMs not dodeath and try and avoid putting
the players in a scenario inwhich death is possible?
Maybe it's not likely, but it'spossible that a character, if
(02:35):
they make the wrong choices,does end up dead, and A lot of
that has to do with how both theDM and the players Get invested
in any one character, whetherit's an NPC or whether it is a
player character.
You get so invested in thatcharacter that you don't want to
(02:55):
see them die.
However, this opens upadditional avenues, so I think
first we should start with whatkind of why.
It was talking about a littlebit, which was how do you
circumvent death?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So there's a couple of ways to circumvent death and
I I know before the episode wekind of discussed a little bit
of a game plan.
I want to talk from the leastamount of players all the way up
to most amount of players.
So when you have one playerthat dies, I think it's really
important to question If youwant to bring that character
back from the dead.
(03:31):
In the real world we have thiswhole thing where when you pass
away, unfortunate truth issometimes there's going to be
Things you're gonna want to dothat you're not gonna get to do.
There's this whole kind offinality of death that is really
hard to cope with and makes itkind of rough.
But in D&D characters it'sgonna be the same thing.
You're not gonna get to go makeit through your whole character
(03:53):
arc sometimes, and I think thatthat's where it can have a lot
of value and an impact to theplayers.
Maybe you haven't gotten toyour redemption arc yet and that
can be hard.
And I think that that'ssomething where it's
understanding the setting of thedeath.
If the death happens and one ofyour players chooses to
sacrifice their character so therest of the party can live,
(04:17):
unfortunately, don't bring themback, have them do another thing
.
Don't Undermine that, unlessthe whole party is gonna go on
an adventure to save theirfriend.
That's where I would do that.
But if the character, forexample, like you're letting
someone play a child in yourcampaign and they get knocked
out because they have those hitpoints because they're a kid and
you follow the optional rule ofthem having lower hit points,
(04:39):
maybe the whole party makes adeal with the devil to bring
them back to life.
And that's one where nowthey're all trying to hide that
from that little child whilethey're all being cursed
themselves.
And that can be a story pointand really push forward your
campaign rather than just beingoh, we're gonna retreat to town
and bring them back to life.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, absolutely, and Similar to what Wyatt was
saying with, like the devil iswhat?
If there is something that theparty then has to accomplish in
Order to bring that player back,maybe they have to take the
body to somewhere Important orsomewhere which they can bring
(05:19):
the body to the plane that thesoul is on, like the Shadow fell
, and so you have to take thebody, get to shadow fell.
From there you have to find thesoul, put them back together
and then that player characteris back to life.
The consequence of this is theplayer died, but the real cost
(05:44):
now is a, the danger that youput the players Into in like the
shadow fell, and be the amountof time it takes for them to set
things right Now.
That's if you want to bring theplayer character back.
What if you don't?
Or you don't want to give thatSort of out per se and you want
(06:07):
the death to be meaningful andyou want it to just end.
Some of the best characters,some of the ones that stick with
people long after the campaignends, are the ones who are given
a.
They just take one for the team.
They sacrifice themselves forthe greater good.
They sacrifice themselves forthe rest of the party to go on.
(06:30):
That's totally fine.
It's totally fine that thatcharacter may never come back
again.
This opens up some avenues forevery other player, because now
Every single player characterhas to grapple with that loss
(06:51):
and each player character couldfeasibly do it in a different
way.
Alternatively, if this is asituation where a villain has
killed that player and they havegotten away with it, or maybe
they don't get away with it, nowthey hate that person even more
(07:12):
.
So let's say they don't getaway with it.
We save the day.
At what cost we lost a dearfriend.
This changes up the entiredynamic like that, put in a snap
sound effect.
I can't snap snap for me.
There you go, put that in, putthat in like I did that, but.
But on the other hand, let'ssay that villain gets away.
(07:35):
The party dynamic has foreverchanged, the party themselves
has changed and now they have avillain that they need to get
even with and that's somethingwhere it's going to be dependent
on your setting.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Now, another way you can do this and this is kind of
just a general concept, so I'mgonna mention it here at the
beginning is I ran a campaignwhere the party was adventures.
They were true adventures, likethink is a kind of anime
adventures just out fightingmonsters for the sake of
fighting monsters to savehumanity.
And like keep trails clear,like Serving the community by
(08:15):
destroying things, not reallyhaving a big bad in an
adventurer's life in a dungeonor some life trying to make
money doing this and fightingmonsters and having adventures.
It's a dangerous life, it's notone.
So what I did is I made myparty a bunch of tables and we
sat down and we made charactersin 10 minutes, 10 minute
(08:37):
character sheets.
You're not as invested in thecharacter.
Then you have that rotatingrealm of a table and like
obviously I let them customizethem as they wanted, but we did
it in short frames of time sothey weren't as invested and the
character grew as they playedit.
But they always knew that therewas a chance that that
character is gonna die.
They're gonna make a newcharacter sheet and they
actually, in order to make itnot feel as bad.
(09:00):
They always had two charactersheets at all times, so if one
died, come back up, swap intothe new character it was.
It was realistically somethingwhere it was a rotating
character, but it also made itfeel so, so real because I did
it in a dungeon and campaignwhere if you're on the 20th
level and you step into a trap,you might lose one, two, three
(09:23):
people.
Not everyone's gonna die.
Tbk's weren't common in that.
Because their adventuresthey're gonna be thinking, well,
this is gonna be a trap.
They're gonna have those thingsin mind, especially when they
were lower levels and the higherlevels of the dungeon and they
didn't know what I had packingfor them.
They died a little morefrequently but as they got
deeper they got more experience.
They were less likely to die.
(09:43):
The ones that stayed in theparty the whole time but also
that reflected their level,their experiences, adventures
and really the stories and thescars on those characters made
them feel Real and they weretruly invested in every
character, even though they knewthey could lose them at any
time and they already had thenext one prepared.
Nobody had a throwawaycharacter where they were like I
want to feel fine if this justgets tossed in the trash.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And that that, right there, that's the weight that
happens, that's given from death.
Because if, let's say, death isnot possible in any combat,
then a You're not gonna bethinking as optimally as you
(10:30):
could, you're gonna, you'regonna be making a lot more
mistakes.
Because what does it reallymatter if there's no sense of
danger, if we can just castmagic and swing swords to win,
well then it makes the adventureFeel less impactful.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And so I'm gonna.
I'm gonna button here for amoment.
This is something where thispodcast like realistically, we
have a decent size audience now,but it's geared towards both
new and veteran A veteran dm's.
If you are a new dm but yourgroup has played lots of games
and it's just your firstexperience DMing, this is a
(11:18):
situation where I would notrecommend, I would avoid killing
, because if you are brand newto the game, and so is your
entire group, and you havesomeone where this is their
first or second campaign, you'regonna kill a character and
they're gonna be like well, thissucks, I spent four days
dreaming of this character andit's their first characters,
when they want to remember fond.
So that's where I avoid death.
But if you're a veteran group,that's on like your 20th
(11:41):
campaign and you've got hundredsof hours, warn your players.
Be like look, I want to do ahigh death campaign, we're gonna
do it this way and we're justgonna.
If people die, people die, westart again and older dnd
players people have been playingit for a couple of years are
gonna be Okay with that.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, this is not an episode that advocates for you
to send players to the gauntlet.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I mean that can be fun.
But that could be very fun,just warn them though.
Like, yeah, and it's aboutcommunication.
A lot of being a good dm iscommunicating, which, even if
you don't have the bestcommunication skills, as long as
you're transparent with people,people are very, very forgiving
, I would say, especially withinthis community.
This community tends to be apretty forgiving and a pretty
(12:27):
open one.
So that's, that's kind of myfeelings, at least in my
experience.
Yeah and if you start dnd, likeI did and where we just finished
a video on new players For newplayers, if you're starting
where I am, where you want toget your friends into it and
none of you have ever played itbefore and because you're the
(12:48):
one who came up with the idea,you have to DM for the first
time.
So I would recommend doing is,if you think the party's gonna
die, just hone it back likeyou're brand new to this or be
like hey guys, I'm sorry, Ididn't mean for it to be a tpk.
I'm learning with you can to do, just want to rewind before the
encounter and I give me a dayor two to change it and we'll do
(13:09):
a little more story thing or gotwo rounds back or something
like that.
Yeah, and and give them thoseoptions and kind of try to be
forgiving with both yourself andthem, because you're new at
this.
That's where I had to start andit's it's hard and it's
frustrating, but you're learningwith the players in that kind
of a situation, like I was in,and that's where death, death
(13:31):
should be something you ignore.
And, joe, you played in acampaign with me a one shot
where I literally told you no,you don't die.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah like.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You can also do that if you don't want death I.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I had a.
I had a player, um, in onecampaign where we were like
right at the end and it wasclose and instead of us being
like, well, let's do the math,let's figure it out, I just said
, nope, that player is fine,because that person in real life
would be Pissed at me if Ikilled the character.
They would be so upset theywould be crying for a week at
(14:08):
minimum.
They still send me art of thatcharacter.
That campaign has been done fortwo years, um, and so it's in
that situation where If somebodyis attached to a character that
much, if they're just the onlyone to die, create that round.
If the player character, uh, ismore kind of on the fence, I
(14:36):
would say keep the death and ifyour player is new to the game,
don't kill them.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
It's not worth it.
It's not worth it because,realistically, you want them to
keep playing the game.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, because then you have another player and and
that's when your first characterdies in a combat.
You don't know how to use yourabilities optimally, you don't
really know what you're doing.
You're kind of fumbling throughcombat, even though for us like
a lot of us who are veterans itseems really really simple
combat so easy.
I can Realistically make ahundred damage happen at level
(15:15):
three pretty, pretty easily.
Let's, I've done it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I'll hold on.
Let me just drink this, uh,this cup of coffee lock.
Which is a that?
That's?
That's a power gaming strategy.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Don't do it, yeah, like coffee locks, uh, padlocks
are another one, sorcery densare another one.
Like if you are a experiencedplayer and you are level three,
you can make a Miracle happen.
That being said, if you're abrand new player or you're
playing something for role play,they're not going to be able to
figure that out like, and a newplayer Realistically doesn't
(15:51):
have the tool set and theknowledge of spells and
abilities.
And even if they're playingsomething simple like a
barbarian or a fighter, I mean,it's hard to remember what all
the abilities do.
Like.
You may not Optinally use youraction surge to be able to get
the maximum amount of attacksoff.
You may not be have grabbed afeat level level one.
If you're trying to do a maxdamage output With a variant
(16:14):
human, you may have chosen aweaker race because it's fun and
it's what you want to do andyou may have not.
Even if you, even if you didknow to power game as your first
character and grab varianthuman and grab a feat, you may
have grabbed a feat like tavernbrawler where it makes
Improvised weapons better ratherthan something like Warcaster
or lucky or one of insert X.
(16:37):
Broken Feet here becausethere's a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
There's a lot of them .
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And so that's where you need to forgive those
players, otherwise they won'tkeep playing the game, because
death can ruin an experience ifyou're new and you don't know
what you're doing, because youfeel like the dm didn't give you
a chance.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So so kill your players.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
No, no, that's not what I said just not the new
ones kill your veteran players,kill your veteran players.
And realistically.
If you're playing a campaignand you're introducing it, you
know you have new people.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Bring two of your friends who know how to power
game and have them be there toprotect the, the, the dnd babies
you know would be a cool ideais if you had, uh, you had like
one power gamer and you had themas, like you know, clearly that
power, that power gamer orveteran, would be a A sort of
like the leader of the party.
(17:32):
You know, let's say, you gotthree players, uh, or four.
We'll use four players.
Maybe one has played a littlebit before, two are new and then
one's a veteran.
The veteran's going to takemore role playing charge, kind
of going to be more of theleader of the party, um, but
maybe, whether it's I would evenplan it Uh, maybe after a few
(17:56):
months into the campaign youkill the veteran player and Now
that party has lost theirGandalf, that party has lost
their Dumbledore, that party haslost the Obi-Wan, the character
that was central to them beingable to Figure out.
(18:18):
You know, what are we gonna bedoing?
What are we trying to do?
How are we gonna save the world?
And by losing that, now theentire party has a huge problem
and maybe that guy makes a newcharacter, but maybe that
character is more inexperienced,or maybe that veteran player.
That's the whole input.
(18:39):
That was the whole plan thatthey had for that campaign, but
that's a cool idea.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So I'm gonna toss in an idea that's kind of
Interesting with the finality ofdeath and how you should use
death.
What if, if you do allow themto resurrect, every time they
resurrect they lose two levels?
How would you feel about thatbeing a cost for coming back to
life?
And bringing the character backis dropping levels, because
(19:06):
that can be horrifying, becausethe rest of the party is not
gonna go.
All right, let's go back to thebeginning area.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
There's there.
I think that's a neat idea.
The big problem that I see withthat idea, though, is Having to
go back.
What if you didn't write downhow many hit points you gained
from those two levels?
I have a player who does that.
I didn't tell him to do that,and he's a new player for this
campaign.
He's never played before but hedoes it, and that would work
(19:34):
for him.
But most of my other playersare gonna be like I don't know
if I gained eight hit points orseven hit points.
You know you could easily do afew of the changes, but then
what if you took an abilityscore improvement and you don't
know what that improvement isanymore, or something like that.
I have, however, seeing I thinkthis is in the Tal'Dorei reborn
(19:56):
book some rules on what happensif you resurrect more than once.
This is an optional rule that,basically, your body gets weaker
and weaker.
You have like minuses toStrength or dexterity, or maybe
your mind, your brain, literallyIs a little more mushy.
(20:17):
So your Wisdom, yourintelligence, when you roll
those skills, you have tosubtract a bit from those skills
, because your body hasdecomposed a bit and it's become
a lot weaker in between youbeing revived and then this
continues on.
If that character dies two orthree more times, it gets harder
(20:38):
and harder, or for that Personto play the character so my
issue with that is that it is alittle too punishing for my
taste.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Mm-hmm, if I was gonna do something like that
with stats, like realistically,if that's a wizard you get, you
get boned.
Yeah, you get boned hard, butwhat you could do instead that I
think could be a little bit funis there's one stat that only
affects one thing in the entiregame of D&D Constitution,
constitution, because there areways of resurrecting people
(21:10):
where you don't need the bodyeither yeah so what if every
time that you resurrect somebodythey lose three Constitution
and I say three specificallybecause that's Realistically an
ability score improvement givesyou two.
So if you're constantly puttingit into constitution so you can
be resurrected again and again,then you can't really remove one
(21:31):
.
Removing two makes it net even,which feels kind of weird.
Three guarantees no matter whatyour player does, it's always
going down every time they'reresurrected and you lose more.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Then you gain from a level up.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Absolutely, and there's this rule in D&D that a
lot of new DMs don't know aboutbecause it's, and I think it's
on a Page in the like hundredsnumber of the DM handbook, and I
think it's mentioned in the PHP2 if any stat falls to zero,
your character dies.
Constitution you're not gonnabe a obliterated for having a
(22:05):
constitution.
That is in it.
Like, realistically, if yourconstitution is too, you're not
completely screwed.
It's gonna be hard, but there'sitems that give constitution to
.
There's a belt of fortitudethat gives ten constitution.
There's ways to make it happen,but then your players on a
ticking time bomb or they can'tcome back, so I Think there are
(22:29):
interesting ways to do it.
That being said, you kind ofhave to decide what the rules at
the table are and if you havenew players and veterans.
Regardless, it's something thatI feel like should be covered
in session zero.
Before you start the campaign,talk about how the resurrection
system is gonna work if there'sa chance characters come back
(22:50):
when they die.
If they don't, and Be honestwith them in advance on how
frequent you think they should,that they should prepare for a
character to die.
What are your kind of thoughts,though, on that avenue?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, this is definitely one of those session
Zero session, negative one style.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
This is.
This is what I'm expecting.
This is how we're gonna dealwith Death.
Can you do this at all?
Is this gonna be a case by casebasis?
That's actually why in therules it's written the.
The resurrection Spell iswritten a certain way.
The spell itself Says that ithas to be a willing soul.
(23:36):
The soul has to be willing toreturn to the body.
You cannot forcefully even ifyou do the ritual successfully
you cannot force that soul backto that body.
If that person, that personwants to stay dead, they are
dead.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
That's half true, because there is the temple
Route.
Very God forcefully does it toyou which, to have a God
Forcibly bring someone back fromthe dead, by standard rules
only recover Only requires alevel 7 paladin or cleric to go
(24:15):
to the temple and as long asthey have good favor with the
God, they can pay a retributionof 500 to a thousand gold pieces
to forcibly resurrect someoneand don't need the body.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And that's something that isn't very common but it is
in the possible that says therules is written, and then that
would be something that at thestart of a campaign this one
seems it'd be a little harderbecause this is a more niche
rule.
This is one that I havecontinuously forgotten, because
it's so niche that, hey, youcan't do this.
(24:50):
You will not be allowed to dothis.
If you try and take a body to atemple, you cannot revive it
that way.
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Actually do like that .
The rule is in there, though,as I've used as a story piece
before, where my players askedwell, this character, we
accidentally killed a monsterthat we wanted to bring back for
intelligence.
It was one of the high rankingofficials, the big bad, so we
missed it.
How could we get him back, toget information out of him?
Well, you could go to a templeand your cleric, who is level 9,
(25:24):
can go and pray to their deityand ask them for either Claire
Vaughn needs to meet the personor if they'd be willing to
resurrect them and theninteracts with the, with the god
of the cleric, and it gives thecleric a nice story moment and
he gets to feel as though hetruly helped.
The party and paladins can doit too.
I would.
Personally, I would let anykind of religious cast or do it
like.
I feel like even a warlockcould do it with their patron
(25:47):
and maybe even a sorcerer,depending on the origin of the
sorcerer.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Maybe maybe your draconic sorcerer, tiamat
Bahamut obviously more Bahamut,probably, than Tiamat.
But I Think, yeah, it's acase-by-case basis and in that
situation that really works wellbecause that creates role play,
(26:12):
that creates the interactivity.
That Is why we play the game.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I Feel like if you're gonna have a sorcerer, do it.
One way you could kind ofFinaigle it.
Where the sorcerer is able todo it is if they are Looking for
help from Like an archfiend orsomething, or let's say that
(26:38):
they're.
They're an asymar.
Let's say they're an asymar, sothey're basically an angel.
Realistically, any God may,very well, if they're half as
more.
Take that request because ofwho they are and also just for
viewership.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
What if they're an asymar?
All right.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Okay, we'll keep saying as a mar.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
But what I know people get upset about and
they're like oh, it's a mar.
I think it's a samar, but Idon't know.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I don't know that's.
It's one of those things.
And again, for me, I've beenplaying for a long time, but I
did learn this entire game fromreading the book.
So you're gonna get some ofthat of like man, this is a
weird funky word that I, I don't, I don't know, and I I'm gonna
just pronounce it this way, andnow it's so just ingrained in me
that it's never coming out.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah.
Is it a deku not?
Or is it a deku not?
I would say deku not say I saydeku not, but I think you're
valid for saying deku, not justlike you're valid for saying
Asymar or asymar.
But anyways, you're sayingabout yeah resurrecting.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
If you're like from one of these more like
religiously entwined backgroundsor Something like that, you
might be able to do it.
What you could actually do, andand I'm gonna mention this
because I think that they're soimportant because they have such
a strong history in D&D's loreif you're running a Mindflare
(28:01):
campaign, maybe one of yourcharacters is a mind flare.
Maybe they have the dead bodyand they implant it with a
tadpole and this is kind of anot rules as a written, this is
more of a humbrew thing Maybethat player gets resurrected as
a mind flare and it's one freeresurrection, basically, but
they lose their race in theirentire racial abilities change.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, or in the Wild mount book there is the.
It's not a race, it's also nota feat, but there is In the race
section near the tortles.
I forget the name of it, but itbasically is this person has no
(28:47):
soul, but their body got backup and it's.
It's very much similar.
It's very akin to like the darksouls, undead or the, the Elden
Ring style.
(29:07):
You are dead, but when you takehumanity or you get enough
runes, you feel a little morelike you're alive, but you are
an undead being.
It's not necessarily a zombie,but you're even registered as an
undead.
And they have a thing where, ifthey get knocked down and
(29:30):
they're rolling death savingthrows, if they get a 19, that
actually counts as a success.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Weird.
I like that.
Yeah, I think there's a coupleof interesting ways to do it
where, like, the player losestheir soul or something.
But again, all of this isindividual.
If you lose one player, you dothis.
Once you start losing two,three players, the story really
does change.
And I would say, if you'relosing two, three players in
(29:58):
levels one through three, likenot not trying to throw shade,
but like you should be tweakingyour encounters.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, if you're having too many deaths, that's
not fun.
That devalues your game almostas much as I would say having no
potential of death, becausethen you start to try and get
detached from your characterbecause then they're too afraid
of death.
Or, alternatively, are theystill gonna want to play your
(30:34):
game?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Now actually a fun kind of idea that I that I
actually ran with at one pointand this is a campaign that,
unfortunately, I wanted to haveyou in but it didn't work out
time wise, I banned allNecromancy spells.
There was no Necromancy spells,necromancy was a lost.
So I took the time and I I gotweathered paper and I rolled
(30:57):
them and I made textured it soit felt like old paper and it
was.
It had burnt ends.
So it was all fancy and I putevery single Necromancy class
spell into on those pages.
I printed them out and I rolledthem and so they were actual
scrolls and so as you were goingthrough the dungeon you could
open chests and there was achance to find a lost magic and
(31:19):
one of them did you find?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
did they find cure wounds?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
they did find cure wounds, but it took a long time.
Cure wounds was one of the onesthat I really hid, because I
didn't.
I wanted it to be interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Necromancy wasn't something that was available for
context for viewers that don'tknow in older editions of D&D
cure wounds and I think, healingword to we're both Necromancy
spells so is false life actuallyfalse life.
False life is still onNecromancy spell.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah there's a lot of really interesting things,
because there's so many healingspells that are Necromancy and
that was struggle.
That was a struggle, bus butthen it's.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
It's like finding the item of the dungeon Zelda.
It's like once you get curewounds you're like, oh my god,
our lives have just gotten somuch better like.
I could imagine playersgenuinely crying tears of joy
and and just being so excited tosee a spell scroll for cure
(32:19):
wounds now what I did for thatcampaign.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
That was actually really fun and I can go more
into depth with people likeleave comments I they're
interested in this.
I actually attach each andevery spell to a spell modifier
so cure wounds only had onespell modifier could be cast off
of it.
I wasn't always the one for theclass that it was from, but
anyone could learn the spellonce they found the scroll.
(32:43):
So almost like wizard, like ifthey're studying the spell but
they innately kind of learn itlike a sorcerer would.
So realistically my sorcerermight be the one with cure
wounds.
Well, the cleric doesn't haveit and the cleric has.
I know it's not a necromancerspell but like fireball or
chilling touch yeah these kindof things, that these mismatches
(33:03):
that people weren't kind ofexpecting, and it was a lot of
fun.
I actually really liked thatroute of going because then so
like for one of them, I thinkwhat was it called I'm trying to
remember which spell I did itwith.
I actually think I did it withhim flicked wounds, which is
another cleric spell.
I think I made it based onConstitution so they ended up
(33:25):
giving it to the barbarian.
So it was kind of fun andeverybody really liked it.
But in that campaign to makedeath feel more real, the
resurrection scrolls were theonly way to bring people back
from the dead and every time youdid it they burned.
And when I got that weatheredpaper I made sure I got one of
(33:45):
the ones that was like flashpaper so went poof and literally
we would light them right thereon the table all that's cool.
Yeah, and I really liked thatand I'll get into kind of some
of the stuff I did for likecampaigns, like that and props,
but like I thought that was abrilliant way to do it where
there were only so many of thescrolls I think in the campaign
(34:08):
total there were six there's sixchances to come back from the
dead.
There was no other way to bringsomebody back and they didn't
even have healing spells.
That was a rough slug but itwas fun how many did they use?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
they used three.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
They didn't find two and there was one leftover oh
god, they were probably.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
They were their, their butts most of them
clenched when they used thatthird one and they're like we
only have one more.
Oh my god, but that's.
But that's the fun, that's,that is that value that we've
been talking about.
That, like, all we have left isthis one resurrection scroll.
So if two more people die in aWyatt Griswold campaign which is
possible, we could genuinely bescrewed like, and that that
(34:58):
that fear keeps players investedmore than you know alongside.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Hey, I like my character, because I really like
my character well, the seconddeath of that campaign was
really stressful because of thefact that they had a rogue who
was a lawful evil character andhe didn't tell anyone that he
had picked one of them up, sothey thought they only had one.
They had no idea how many werein the dungeon.
And then they were like theywere like to bring him back from
(35:27):
the dead or not and theystarted searching his body to
decide whether he was a value.
And when they and then theyfound the scroll and they're
like, oh we have two of course.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Oh, and it was really funny.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
But then the whole party was mad at him for hiding
that he had found one in a chestand he lost his scroll, while
the lawful good fighter kept theother one away from him and so
it was constantly this point ofcontention where he wanted to
keep one for himself so that hecould resurrect himself for
nobody else right and I liked it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, and then that that creates like party in the
like conflict in the party.
That's good.
Conflict in the party, you know, it's not that like one player
is upset at another player, it'sthat player characters are
upset at another playercharacter, and that's.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
That's the good shit oh yeah, and it was.
It was a really fun way to havea campaign.
I have really fun memories ofthat one and it's been years
since I played that one.
That was like when you and Iwere still working together all
the time and I miss thosecampaigns because it was, it was
(36:40):
a lot of fun.
It was a lot of fun but there'ssome challenges with running a
campaign like that, because thatdoesn't account for TPKs.
Tpks are the ones where thingsstart to get really different
yeah, tpks.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Tpks are a less desirable thing than death.
I would say dance, you can kindof move on from.
Tpks are tougher and I thinkwith most TPKs you let you
rewind the clock.
However, I think it alsodepends on the context of the
(37:20):
TPK.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
So so do you actually want to know when I'm most okay
with TPKs?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
yeah, when your time, when are you most okay with it?
Speaker 2 (37:30):
final boss lights really the end of the campaign.
I think it's the best time forTPK because, realistically, your
heroes might not save the day.
What happens if they all getwiped out and if you have your
party die at the end of thecampaign?
Realistically, let's start overin the shadow realm, level.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
One again, like realistically we're going to the
next one, if, if people don'tfeel done with the character
yeah, you just move into thenext one for sure I, when it
comes to TPKs, at least at thefinal boss, I feel like I owe
the players a bit of fulfillmenton a promise.
(38:14):
So a lot of times in likestories, stories start with a
promise.
This is from Brandon Sanderson,who's a professional writer.
He's written quite a number,quite a few nonfiction or, sorry
, fiction books and BrandonSanderson, you know, has talked
about in this class that he didonce that he taught about like
(38:37):
romances, the promise ofromances.
Two characters get together,indiana Jones.
What is its promise?
By time you already get toIndiana on the plane with John
and then he goes back to.
Harvard, where Yale, wherever heteaches at.
You know that basically theentire movie is gonna be.
Indiana Jones goes on a funadventure for a historical
(39:01):
priceless treasure and he mightnot get it, but he'll get out
with his life and it's a funadventure along the way.
So I feel like I promise myplayers a satisfying conclusion
to a story, just like you woulda satisfying ending to a final
fantasy game.
So I wouldn't TPK on a finalbig bad boss, because I feel
(39:27):
like that.
That is the crescendo, theclimax moment where they save
the day and then that's the end.
So I wouldn't do it, but Idon't think it's a bad idea see,
my thing is is.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I don't view it like that.
I view it as an experience, anadventure and for my final
bosses, I want them to feel likethis immovable mountain that
has to be toppled I mean, thinkKaido from one piece if there
wasn't a Luffy to fight him like.
That's what I want it to feel.
Like is I want you to feel likeyou're the ashura samurai.
(40:03):
If you all die and fail, youfail like realistically.
Then we go to an epilogue and Ialways have two epilogues
written, one first they won andone first they fail.
And if the player, like in theepilogue, has to be satisfied,
if the players die, the worldcan't be like, oh, nothing
(40:26):
happens.
If they die, the world goes toruin.
No one have time to get thereanother kind of interesting idea
.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Puffin forest actually did this for one of his
campaigns where his playerslost against the final boss, but
they decided that they weregonna come back and basically,
instead of starting a newcampaign with the same
characters again or just sayingTPK, that's the end of it, they
(40:56):
basically had all the charactersseparated.
They had to get back togetherand then, once they got back
together, they tried again atthe final boss.
It was basically instead of anew campaign in which it's from
the ashes of the failed party ofthe first campaign, or a retcon
, it was a extended arc.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
It was a final final arc before they finally beat the
big band, which is another coolidea another way to do it is
where the players resurrect, atthe town, where they're praying
for the success of the players,because in D&D the prayers of
people have value.
So, realistically, if there's abunch of people worshiping them
(41:40):
basically and praying for them,believing in them, that has
magical power in D&D and thatmight resurrect them.
So there's there's ways toretcon it in D&D lore, but I
don't, I don't know.
I think it depends on yourgroup, which one you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah and also this is just TPKs at a big bad.
So let's talk about the badTPKs.
I think if you're in the middleof a random calm combat and you
accidentally TPK your party, Ithink you should, for the most
part, retcon it.
But I think you can kind ofplay it by your a little bit.
If you're in a boat and it's awooden boat, in lava and your
(42:23):
wild magic sorcerer castsfireball on themselves
accidentally with wild magicsurge, retcon that, retcon that
one.
But when it's something likeyou're fighting a villain or you
know, maybe it's some likeweird situation where you didn't
(42:43):
intend to TPK but like theparty didn't see the way out and
they all die, in that situationyou keep going kind of like
what Wyatt mentioned earlier iswith his everybody in the shadow
realm.
You can place all of the playercharacters somewhere else in
the world.
(43:04):
It's a planar game.
So what if they die and all theplayer characters are sent with
no items but there's theirlevels to avernus?
What if they're sent to theshadow fell?
What if they're sent far beyond?
What if, maybe the God whocollects souls to take them to
(43:27):
one of these realms?
What if he's been kidnapped andso your character has just been
in between.
What if, a month after theevents, some random item that
they had brought them all backto life and they're literally
crawling out of their coffins?
These sort of things are a turnin the game dramatically, but
(43:56):
then make it interesting.
Especially I love the Avernusone because that one it's it's
kind of like Kratos in God ofWar 2 on the PlayStation 2.
There's a moment where he diesafter being, I think, cast out
of the Greek Pantheon and heliterally crawls up out of
(44:22):
Tartarus on the bodies ofalready dead people in the
underworld and he crawls all theway up back to the world of the
living.
And imagine if, let's say avillain, let's say he's pompous
I'm sorry, party, but it's overfor you and he kills them.
(44:44):
That solves that.
Let's just move forward.
I have much bigger goals thanmine now.
And suddenly, after maybe a fewmonths of playing IRL, your
party gets out and they returnand they see that villain that
killed them the first time andthey get to see that villain
(45:07):
react in a really satisfying wayand the party feels satisfied
because they had to literally gofrom hell and back to get back
to where they were after the TPK.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So do you want to know a fun one that I actually
had?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yes, I do, yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
There's a part, there's a campaign I want to run
where you slam yourselfdirectly into the final boss
level 5 and you instantly alldie.
Yeah and then you're in theshadow, felt, and the whole goal
would be to re-level up to apoint where you're all big
enough and you're wizard or yourspellcaster can cast wish and
(45:48):
they wish for you to come backto the moment where you died.
And then, and then he's like Ijust killed you all.
And then your pompous, arrogantjerk, thinking that he's
fighting a level 3 party, getssmacked by a level bunch of
level 15 adventurers and it'sreally fun because it makes the
final boss feel really like ohmy god, he just used power word
(46:10):
death on all five of us.
How are we gonna deal with this?
and then you're in a bay wildfor like 10, 12, 13 levels.
Yeah, you pop back and then youkill it.
It feels better and also thenit burns that spell slot so they
can't use wish in the fight.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
That's a smart idea yeah and then they can't use
wish in the fight.
Yeah that's.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
That's.
That's one of my spells I don'tlike is I don't like wish,
because you can wish for a lotof things in D&D and like.
I don't like telling players no, so I don't want to be like oh
man, you use your ninth levelspell slot to wish for more
spell slots.
I don't, I don't like tellingthem no to that.
I feel, bad when I tell playersno, so I try to circumvent them
(46:57):
being able to ask me for thingsthat are horrific.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, wish is one of those things that like.
Really I haven't dabbled in alot because it's easy to to fall
into a trap.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, you can wish for anything.
Basically you, the only thingyou can't explicitly wish for in
D&D is to be a god, because aninth level spell is not strong
enough to make you a god.
There is a spell that can makeyou a god, but it was only ever
cast once, and when it did itbroke the weave, and so in D&D
(47:29):
lore.
That's why you can't become agod, because there was a spell
that did that once.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Is that the story of the guy who tried to cast a
tenth level spell and it brokeeverything?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
He cast a tenth and a twelfth level spell.
He cast a tenth level spell toinstakill a god.
He basically did a power worddeath on a god and then he cast
a level 12 spell to take itsplace as a god and that broke
the whole weave.
So when the gods of time andmagic slipped it all back
together, they took away theability for mortals to cast
(48:03):
anything above ninth level.
That being said, key word inthere is mortals, so if you're
running a campaign, you canalways have a god cast like a
level 14.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, or maybe like, maybe, like that's what your
main villain of a campaign islike trying to do.
Is he's trying to Voldemorthimself lich style or in by some
other mean, or maybe he triesmultiple different plans to
become immortal and then, bybecoming immortal, he tries to
(48:33):
cast a higher level spell andthe party has to stop him, or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, I definitely really like that idea.
I think that there's just somuch to do with how you can make
death feel good in a campaign,though it just it's really
challenging to kind of balanceit with, like in a conversation
in a setting like this.
It's really hard yeah because Idon't.
I don't know what these like,what the tables environment's
(49:00):
gonna be.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah and that's that's where conversations like
this are really fun, and I hopethat we inspire people, but I
can't really tell you what to doin your setting and that's, I
think, the importance of likewhy you listen to this, why you
listen to a whole bunch ofpeople on in this in the D&D
community, is they are allgiving you different ideas, and
(49:26):
I think Matt Colville put itreally well once.
He said I'm not telling youthrough his DM videos how to run
the game, I'm giving you ideas,I'm presenting you with
thoughts for you to react with.
And whether that's wow, I thinkthat's a really good idea and I
(49:48):
really like that, or it's Ireally hate that idea.
Here's how I would do itinstead.
That pushes what we do already,makes it even better or we
learn.
It doesn't work.
And here's why it doesn't work,and that's, I think, the really
(50:08):
fun thing and why you shouldn't.
You should listen to otherpeople so you can get those
ideas, and I hope that that ishow this is treated and that's
exactly why, like when we weresitting down and planning this
podcast and everything I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Like again, I agree with them you shouldn't be
telling people.
That's why we named the podcastDungeon Master inspiration and
we named the YouTube channelDungeon Inspiration.
It's meant to inspire you, nottell you.
And if you have other ideas onhow to run death, leave them in
the comments, because I want toexpand and learn and if I see
one that I really like, I'llmake a short about it and give
you a shout out now.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
One thing that we do take a hard line on here is Wild
Magic Sorcerer is the best andmost optimal class, and that if
you aren't playing one, this isa waste.
You're wasting your time in D&D, and this is an objective truth
, thank you yeah, of course andwith the next episode we're, and
with that we're gonna wrap upthe episode.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
So thank you everyone that listens.
Again, we are so grateful forall of our patreons and our
subscribers.
You really make it so that wecan do this.
If you have anything you wantto leave, please drop a comment
down below.
We would be happy to read them,and I hope you have a great
rest of your day and I'm kiddingyou, you, you, you you.
Alright, everybody.
Welcome back to DMI, welcomeback to Dungeon Master
inspiration.
I am the Joe 2o here and wehave Wyatt Griswold once again
with us, absolutely every singletime I will be here without
every single time.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, it's gonna be great.
You're gonna be hearing lotsfrom me, I'm sure lots from
Wyatt Griswold, everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
We today are gonna be talking about a little bit of a
different topic.
We're gonna be moving on to adifferent kind of subject, to
move away from some of the stuffWe've been talking about
recently, and I'd like to talkabout death today.
Now, death is an interestingconcept because it's something
that a lot of DMs are afraid of,some things a lot of DMs are
(00:43):
afraid of and it's sort of seenas a bad thing in the in the D&D
community as a whole roughly, Iwould say.
But it is actually, I think, anintegral part of the game.
That adds emphasis both to theeveryday gameplay and Also
emphasis to every singlecharacter With which enters your
(01:06):
game and I think a big part ofit is.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
This is for me and death in D&D Death has no
finality.
In D&D I mean by base rules andI don't follow these.
I make this a lost magic or forsome reason.
I take this out of all of mygames because I hate it.
You can go to any town andspend 500 gold at the town
center or the town shrine andresurrect Anyone and I hate it.
(01:32):
I don't think that that's howthe game should be, and
especially if you're playing oneof the older books that or
you're playing in an old settingthat was more prevalent in the
past.
Death was not a thing in theD&D world in the past, and the
only way to guarantee someonecan't be resurrected is by a red
wizards blade and or like anecromancer's blade, and I
dislike that.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I think it's just bad for the game and if you have a
homebrew setting, you don't havered wizards, which is rough,
but why?
It kind of brings up one of thefirst things that I think is
very important with death, whichis the fact that Death doesn't
(02:14):
mean it's the end of a character.
So why don't we do death?
Why do a lot of DMs not dodeath and try and avoid putting
the players in a scenario inwhich death is possible?
Maybe it's not likely, but it'spossible that a character, if
(02:35):
they make the wrong choices,does end up dead, and A lot of
that has to do with how both theDM and the players Get invested
in any one character, whetherit's an NPC or whether it is a
player character.
You get so invested in thatcharacter that you don't want to
(02:55):
see them die.
However, this opens upadditional avenues, so I think
first we should start with whatkind of why.
It was talking about a littlebit, which was how do you
circumvent death?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So there's a couple of ways to circumvent death and
I I know before the episode wekind of discussed a little bit
of a game plan.
I want to talk from the leastamount of players all the way up
to most amount of players.
So when you have one playerthat dies, I think it's really
important to question If youwant to bring that character
back from the dead.
(03:31):
In the real world we have thiswhole thing where when you pass
away, unfortunate truth issometimes there's going to be
Things you're gonna want to dothat you're not gonna get to do.
There's this whole kind offinality of death that is really
hard to cope with and makes itkind of rough.
But in D&D characters it'sgonna be the same thing.
You're not gonna get to go makeit through your whole character
(03:53):
arc sometimes, and I think thatthat's where it can have a lot
of value and an impact to theplayers.
Maybe you haven't gotten toyour redemption arc yet and that
can be hard.
And I think that that'ssomething where it's
understanding the setting of thedeath.
If the death happens and one ofyour players chooses to
sacrifice their character so therest of the party can live,
(04:17):
unfortunately, don't bring themback, have them do another thing
.
Don't Undermine that, unlessthe whole party is gonna go on
an adventure to save theirfriend.
That's where I would do that.
But if the character, forexample, like you're letting
someone play a child in yourcampaign and they get knocked
out because they have those hitpoints because they're a kid and
you follow the optional rule ofthem having lower hit points,
(04:39):
maybe the whole party makes adeal with the devil to bring
them back to life.
And that's one where nowthey're all trying to hide that
from that little child whilethey're all being cursed
themselves.
And that can be a story pointand really push forward your
campaign rather than just beingoh, we're gonna retreat to town
and bring them back to life.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, absolutely, and Similar to what Wyatt was
saying with, like the devil iswhat?
If there is something that theparty then has to accomplish in
Order to bring that player back,maybe they have to take the
body to somewhere Important orsomewhere which they can bring
(05:19):
the body to the plane that thesoul is on, like the Shadow fell
, and so you have to take thebody, get to shadow fell.
From there you have to find thesoul, put them back together
and then that player characteris back to life.
The consequence of this is theplayer died, but the real cost
(05:44):
now is a, the danger that youput the players Into in like the
shadow fell, and be the amountof time it takes for them to set
things right Now.
That's if you want to bring theplayer character back.
What if you don't?
Or you don't want to give thatSort of out per se and you want
(06:07):
the death to be meaningful andyou want it to just end.
Some of the best characters,some of the ones that stick with
people long after the campaignends, are the ones who are given
a.
They just take one for the team.
They sacrifice themselves forthe greater good.
They sacrifice themselves forthe rest of the party to go on.
(06:30):
That's totally fine.
It's totally fine that thatcharacter may never come back
again.
This opens up some avenues forevery other player, because now
Every single player characterhas to grapple with that loss
(06:51):
and each player character couldfeasibly do it in a different
way.
Alternatively, if this is asituation where a villain has
killed that player and they havegotten away with it, or maybe
they don't get away with it, nowthey hate that person even more
(07:12):
.
So let's say they don't getaway with it.
We save the day.
At what cost we lost a dearfriend.
This changes up the entiredynamic like that, put in a snap
sound effect.
I can't snap snap for me.
There you go, put that in, putthat in like I did that, but.
But on the other hand, let'ssay that villain gets away.
(07:35):
The party dynamic has foreverchanged, the party themselves
has changed and now they have avillain that they need to get
even with and that's somethingwhere it's going to be dependent
on your setting.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Now, another way you can do this and this is kind of
just a general concept, so I'mgonna mention it here at the
beginning is I ran a campaignwhere the party was adventures.
They were true adventures, likethink is a kind of anime
adventures just out fightingmonsters for the sake of
fighting monsters to savehumanity.
And like keep trails clear,like Serving the community by
(08:15):
destroying things, not reallyhaving a big bad in an
adventurer's life in a dungeonor some life trying to make
money doing this and fightingmonsters and having adventures.
It's a dangerous life, it's notone.
So what I did is I made myparty a bunch of tables and we
sat down and we made charactersin 10 minutes, 10 minute
(08:37):
character sheets.
You're not as invested in thecharacter.
Then you have that rotatingrealm of a table and like
obviously I let them customizethem as they wanted, but we did
it in short frames of time sothey weren't as invested and the
character grew as they playedit.
But they always knew that therewas a chance that that
character is gonna die.
They're gonna make a newcharacter sheet and they
actually, in order to make itnot feel as bad.
(09:00):
They always had two charactersheets at all times, so if one
died, come back up, swap intothe new character it was.
It was realistically somethingwhere it was a rotating
character, but it also made itfeel so, so real because I did
it in a dungeon and campaignwhere if you're on the 20th
level and you step into a trap,you might lose one, two, three
(09:23):
people.
Not everyone's gonna die.
Tbk's weren't common in that.
Because their adventuresthey're gonna be thinking, well,
this is gonna be a trap.
They're gonna have those thingsin mind, especially when they
were lower levels and the higherlevels of the dungeon and they
didn't know what I had packingfor them.
They died a little morefrequently but as they got
deeper they got more experience.
They were less likely to die.
(09:43):
The ones that stayed in theparty the whole time but also
that reflected their level,their experiences, adventures
and really the stories and thescars on those characters made
them feel Real and they weretruly invested in every
character, even though they knewthey could lose them at any
time and they already had thenext one prepared.
Nobody had a throwawaycharacter where they were like I
want to feel fine if this justgets tossed in the trash.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And that that, right there, that's the weight that
happens, that's given from death.
Because if, let's say, death isnot possible in any combat,
then a You're not gonna bethinking as optimally as you
(10:30):
could, you're gonna, you'regonna be making a lot more
mistakes.
Because what does it reallymatter if there's no sense of
danger, if we can just castmagic and swing swords to win,
well then it makes the adventureFeel less impactful.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
And so I'm gonna.
I'm gonna button here for amoment.
This is something where thispodcast like realistically, we
have a decent size audience now,but it's geared towards both
new and veteran A veteran dm's.
If you are a new dm but yourgroup has played lots of games
and it's just your firstexperience DMing, this is a
(11:18):
situation where I would notrecommend, I would avoid killing
, because if you are brand newto the game, and so is your
entire group, and you havesomeone where this is their
first or second campaign, you'regonna kill a character and
they're gonna be like well, thissucks, I spent four days
dreaming of this character andit's their first characters,
when they want to remember fond.
So that's where I avoid death.
But if you're a veteran group,that's on like your 20th
(11:41):
campaign and you've got hundredsof hours, warn your players.
Be like look, I want to do ahigh death campaign, we're gonna
do it this way and we're justgonna.
If people die, people die, westart again and older dnd
players people have been playingit for a couple of years are
gonna be Okay with that.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, this is not an episode that advocates for you
to send players to the gauntlet.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I mean that can be fun.
But that could be very fun,just warn them though.
Like, yeah, and it's aboutcommunication.
A lot of being a good dm iscommunicating, which, even if
you don't have the bestcommunication skills, as long as
you're transparent with people,people are very, very forgiving
, I would say, especially withinthis community.
This community tends to be apretty forgiving and a pretty
(12:27):
open one.
So that's, that's kind of myfeelings, at least in my
experience.
Yeah and if you start dnd, likeI did and where we just finished
a video on new players For newplayers, if you're starting
where I am, where you want toget your friends into it and
none of you have ever played itbefore and because you're the
(12:48):
one who came up with the idea,you have to DM for the first
time.
So I would recommend doing is,if you think the party's gonna
die, just hone it back likeyou're brand new to this or be
like hey guys, I'm sorry, Ididn't mean for it to be a tpk.
I'm learning with you can to do, just want to rewind before the
encounter and I give me a dayor two to change it and we'll do
(13:09):
a little more story thing or gotwo rounds back or something
like that.
Yeah, and and give them thoseoptions and kind of try to be
forgiving with both yourself andthem, because you're new at
this.
That's where I had to start andit's it's hard and it's
frustrating, but you're learningwith the players in that kind
of a situation, like I was in,and that's where death, death
(13:31):
should be something you ignore.
And, joe, you played in acampaign with me a one shot
where I literally told you no,you don't die.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah like.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
You can also do that if you don't want death I.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I had a.
I had a player, um, in onecampaign where we were like
right at the end and it wasclose and instead of us being
like, well, let's do the math,let's figure it out, I just said
, nope, that player is fine,because that person in real life
would be Pissed at me if Ikilled the character.
They would be so upset theywould be crying for a week at
(14:08):
minimum.
They still send me art of thatcharacter.
That campaign has been done fortwo years, um, and so it's in
that situation where If somebodyis attached to a character that
much, if they're just the onlyone to die, create that round.
If the player character, uh, ismore kind of on the fence, I
(14:36):
would say keep the death and ifyour player is new to the game,
don't kill them.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
It's not worth it.
It's not worth it because,realistically, you want them to
keep playing the game.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Yeah, because then you have another player and and
that's when your first characterdies in a combat.
You don't know how to use yourabilities optimally, you don't
really know what you're doing.
You're kind of fumbling throughcombat, even though for us like
a lot of us who are veterans itseems really really simple
combat so easy.
I can Realistically make ahundred damage happen at level
(15:15):
three pretty, pretty easily.
Let's, I've done it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I'll hold on.
Let me just drink this, uh,this cup of coffee lock.
Which is a that?
That's?
That's a power gaming strategy.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Don't do it, yeah, like coffee locks, uh, padlocks
are another one, sorcery densare another one.
Like if you are a experiencedplayer and you are level three,
you can make a Miracle happen.
That being said, if you're abrand new player or you're
playing something for role play,they're not going to be able to
figure that out like, and a newplayer Realistically doesn't
(15:51):
have the tool set and theknowledge of spells and
abilities.
And even if they're playingsomething simple like a
barbarian or a fighter, I mean,it's hard to remember what all
the abilities do.
Like.
You may not Optinally use youraction surge to be able to get
the maximum amount of attacksoff.
You may not be have grabbed afeat level level one.
If you're trying to do a maxdamage output With a variant
(16:14):
human, you may have chosen aweaker race because it's fun and
it's what you want to do andyou may have not.
Even if you, even if you didknow to power game as your first
character and grab varianthuman and grab a feat, you may
have grabbed a feat like tavernbrawler where it makes
Improvised weapons better ratherthan something like Warcaster
or lucky or one of insert X.
(16:37):
Broken Feet here becausethere's a lot of them.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
There's a lot of them .
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And so that's where you need to forgive those
players, otherwise they won'tkeep playing the game, because
death can ruin an experience ifyou're new and you don't know
what you're doing, because youfeel like the dm didn't give you
a chance.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So so kill your players.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
No, no, that's not what I said just not the new
ones kill your veteran players,kill your veteran players.
And realistically.
If you're playing a campaignand you're introducing it, you
know you have new people.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Bring two of your friends who know how to power
game and have them be there toprotect the, the, the dnd babies
you know would be a cool ideais if you had, uh, you had like
one power gamer and you had themas, like you know, clearly that
power, that power gamer orveteran, would be a A sort of
like the leader of the party.
(17:32):
You know, let's say, you gotthree players, uh, or four.
We'll use four players.
Maybe one has played a littlebit before, two are new and then
one's a veteran.
The veteran's going to takemore role playing charge, kind
of going to be more of theleader of the party, um, but
maybe, whether it's I would evenplan it Uh, maybe after a few
(17:56):
months into the campaign youkill the veteran player and Now
that party has lost theirGandalf, that party has lost
their Dumbledore, that party haslost the Obi-Wan, the character
that was central to them beingable to Figure out.
(18:18):
You know, what are we gonna bedoing?
What are we trying to do?
How are we gonna save the world?
And by losing that, now theentire party has a huge problem
and maybe that guy makes a newcharacter, but maybe that
character is more inexperienced,or maybe that veteran player.
That's the whole input.
(18:39):
That was the whole plan thatthey had for that campaign, but
that's a cool idea.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So I'm gonna toss in an idea that's kind of
Interesting with the finality ofdeath and how you should use
death.
What if, if you do allow themto resurrect, every time they
resurrect they lose two levels?
How would you feel about thatbeing a cost for coming back to
life?
And bringing the character backis dropping levels, because
(19:06):
that can be horrifying, becausethe rest of the party is not
gonna go.
All right, let's go back to thebeginning area.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
There's there.
I think that's a neat idea.
The big problem that I see withthat idea, though, is Having to
go back.
What if you didn't write downhow many hit points you gained
from those two levels?
I have a player who does that.
I didn't tell him to do that,and he's a new player for this
campaign.
He's never played before but hedoes it, and that would work
(19:34):
for him.
But most of my other playersare gonna be like I don't know
if I gained eight hit points orseven hit points.
You know you could easily do afew of the changes, but then
what if you took an abilityscore improvement and you don't
know what that improvement isanymore, or something like that.
I have, however, seeing I thinkthis is in the Tal'Dorei reborn
(19:56):
book some rules on what happensif you resurrect more than once.
This is an optional rule that,basically, your body gets weaker
and weaker.
You have like minuses toStrength or dexterity, or maybe
your mind, your brain, literallyIs a little more mushy.
(20:17):
So your Wisdom, yourintelligence, when you roll
those skills, you have tosubtract a bit from those skills
, because your body hasdecomposed a bit and it's become
a lot weaker in between youbeing revived and then this
continues on.
If that character dies two orthree more times, it gets harder
(20:38):
and harder, or for that Personto play the character so my
issue with that is that it is alittle too punishing for my
taste.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Mm-hmm, if I was gonna do something like that
with stats, like realistically,if that's a wizard you get, you
get boned.
Yeah, you get boned hard, butwhat you could do instead that I
think could be a little bit funis there's one stat that only
affects one thing in the entiregame of D&D Constitution,
constitution, because there areways of resurrecting people
(21:10):
where you don't need the bodyeither yeah so what if every
time that you resurrect somebodythey lose three Constitution
and I say three specificallybecause that's Realistically an
ability score improvement givesyou two.
So if you're constantly puttingit into constitution so you can
be resurrected again and again,then you can't really remove one
(21:31):
.
Removing two makes it net even,which feels kind of weird.
Three guarantees no matter whatyour player does, it's always
going down every time they'reresurrected and you lose more.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Then you gain from a level up.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Absolutely, and there's this rule in D&D that a
lot of new DMs don't know aboutbecause it's, and I think it's
on a Page in the like hundredsnumber of the DM handbook, and I
think it's mentioned in the PHP2 if any stat falls to zero,
your character dies.
Constitution you're not gonnabe a obliterated for having a
(22:05):
constitution.
That is in it.
Like, realistically, if yourconstitution is too, you're not
completely screwed.
It's gonna be hard, but there'sitems that give constitution to
.
There's a belt of fortitudethat gives ten constitution.
There's ways to make it happen,but then your players on a
ticking time bomb or they can'tcome back, so I Think there are
(22:29):
interesting ways to do it.
That being said, you kind ofhave to decide what the rules at
the table are and if you havenew players and veterans.
Regardless, it's something thatI feel like should be covered
in session zero.
Before you start the campaign,talk about how the resurrection
system is gonna work if there'sa chance characters come back
(22:50):
when they die.
If they don't, and Be honestwith them in advance on how
frequent you think they should,that they should prepare for a
character to die.
What are your kind of thoughts,though, on that avenue?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, this is definitely one of those session
Zero session, negative one style.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Hey.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
This is.
This is what I'm expecting.
This is how we're gonna dealwith Death.
Can you do this at all?
Is this gonna be a case by casebasis?
That's actually why in therules it's written the.
The resurrection Spell iswritten a certain way.
The spell itself Says that ithas to be a willing soul.
(23:36):
The soul has to be willing toreturn to the body.
You cannot forcefully even ifyou do the ritual successfully
you cannot force that soul backto that body.
If that person, that personwants to stay dead, they are
dead.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
That's half true, because there is the temple
Route.
Very God forcefully does it toyou which, to have a God
Forcibly bring someone back fromthe dead, by standard rules
only recover Only requires alevel 7 paladin or cleric to go
(24:15):
to the temple and as long asthey have good favor with the
God, they can pay a retributionof 500 to a thousand gold pieces
to forcibly resurrect someoneand don't need the body.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
And that's something that isn't very common but it is
in the possible that says therules is written, and then that
would be something that at thestart of a campaign this one
seems it'd be a little harderbecause this is a more niche
rule.
This is one that I havecontinuously forgotten, because
it's so niche that, hey, youcan't do this.
(24:50):
You will not be allowed to dothis.
If you try and take a body to atemple, you cannot revive it
that way.
Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Actually do like that .
The rule is in there, though,as I've used as a story piece
before, where my players askedwell, this character, we
accidentally killed a monsterthat we wanted to bring back for
intelligence.
It was one of the high rankingofficials, the big bad, so we
missed it.
How could we get him back, toget information out of him?
Well, you could go to a templeand your cleric, who is level 9,
(25:24):
can go and pray to their deityand ask them for either Claire
Vaughn needs to meet the personor if they'd be willing to
resurrect them and theninteracts with the, with the god
of the cleric, and it gives thecleric a nice story moment and
he gets to feel as though hetruly helped.
The party and paladins can doit too.
I would.
Personally, I would let anykind of religious cast or do it
like.
I feel like even a warlockcould do it with their patron
(25:47):
and maybe even a sorcerer,depending on the origin of the
sorcerer.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Maybe maybe your draconic sorcerer, tiamat
Bahamut obviously more Bahamut,probably, than Tiamat.
But I Think, yeah, it's acase-by-case basis and in that
situation that really works wellbecause that creates role play,
(26:12):
that creates the interactivity.
That Is why we play the game.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
I Feel like if you're gonna have a sorcerer, do it.
One way you could kind ofFinaigle it.
Where the sorcerer is able todo it is if they are Looking for
help from Like an archfiend orsomething, or let's say that
(26:38):
they're.
They're an asymar.
Let's say they're an asymar, sothey're basically an angel.
Realistically, any God may,very well, if they're half as
more.
Take that request because ofwho they are and also just for
viewership.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
What if they're an asymar?
All right.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Okay, we'll keep saying as a mar.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
But what I know people get upset about and
they're like oh, it's a mar.
I think it's a samar, but Idon't know.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I don't know that's.
It's one of those things.
And again, for me, I've beenplaying for a long time, but I
did learn this entire game fromreading the book.
So you're gonna get some ofthat of like man, this is a
weird funky word that I, I don't, I don't know, and I I'm gonna
just pronounce it this way, andnow it's so just ingrained in me
that it's never coming out.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah.
Is it a deku not?
Or is it a deku not?
I would say deku not say I saydeku not, but I think you're
valid for saying deku, not justlike you're valid for saying
Asymar or asymar.
But anyways, you're sayingabout yeah resurrecting.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
If you're like from one of these more like
religiously entwined backgroundsor Something like that, you
might be able to do it.
What you could actually do, andand I'm gonna mention this
because I think that they're soimportant because they have such
a strong history in D&D's loreif you're running a Mindflare
(28:01):
campaign, maybe one of yourcharacters is a mind flare.
Maybe they have the dead bodyand they implant it with a
tadpole and this is kind of anot rules as a written, this is
more of a humbrew thing Maybethat player gets resurrected as
a mind flare and it's one freeresurrection, basically, but
they lose their race in theirentire racial abilities change.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, or in the Wild mount book there is the.
It's not a race, it's also nota feat, but there is In the race
section near the tortles.
I forget the name of it, but itbasically is this person has no
(28:47):
soul, but their body got backup and it's.
It's very much similar.
It's very akin to like the darksouls, undead or the, the Elden
Ring style.
(29:07):
You are dead, but when you takehumanity or you get enough
runes, you feel a little morelike you're alive, but you are
an undead being.
It's not necessarily a zombie,but you're even registered as an
undead.
And they have a thing where, ifthey get knocked down and
(29:30):
they're rolling death savingthrows, if they get a 19, that
actually counts as a success.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Weird.
I like that.
Yeah, I think there's a coupleof interesting ways to do it
where, like, the player losestheir soul or something.
But again, all of this isindividual.
If you lose one player, you dothis.
Once you start losing two,three players, the story really
does change.
And I would say, if you'relosing two, three players in
(29:58):
levels one through three, likenot not trying to throw shade,
but like you should be tweakingyour encounters.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, if you're having too many deaths, that's
not fun.
That devalues your game almostas much as I would say having no
potential of death, becausethen you start to try and get
detached from your characterbecause then they're too afraid
of death.
Or, alternatively, are theystill gonna want to play your
(30:34):
game?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Now actually a fun kind of idea that I that I
actually ran with at one pointand this is a campaign that,
unfortunately, I wanted to haveyou in but it didn't work out
time wise, I banned allNecromancy spells.
There was no Necromancy spells,necromancy was a lost.
So I took the time and I I gotweathered paper and I rolled
(30:57):
them and I made textured it soit felt like old paper and it
was.
It had burnt ends.
So it was all fancy and I putevery single Necromancy class
spell into on those pages.
I printed them out and I rolledthem and so they were actual
scrolls and so as you were goingthrough the dungeon you could
open chests and there was achance to find a lost magic and
(31:19):
one of them did you find?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
did they find cure wounds?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
they did find cure wounds, but it took a long time.
Cure wounds was one of the onesthat I really hid, because I
didn't.
I wanted it to be interesting.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Necromancy wasn't something that was available for
context for viewers that don'tknow in older editions of D&D
cure wounds and I think, healingword to we're both Necromancy
spells so is false life actuallyfalse life.
False life is still onNecromancy spell.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah there's a lot of really interesting things,
because there's so many healingspells that are Necromancy and
that was struggle.
That was a struggle, bus butthen it's.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
It's like finding the item of the dungeon Zelda.
It's like once you get curewounds you're like, oh my god,
our lives have just gotten somuch better like.
I could imagine playersgenuinely crying tears of joy
and and just being so excited tosee a spell scroll for cure
(32:19):
wounds now what I did for thatcampaign.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
That was actually really fun and I can go more
into depth with people likeleave comments I they're
interested in this.
I actually attach each andevery spell to a spell modifier
so cure wounds only had onespell modifier could be cast off
of it.
I wasn't always the one for theclass that it was from, but
anyone could learn the spellonce they found the scroll.
(32:43):
So almost like wizard, like ifthey're studying the spell but
they innately kind of learn itlike a sorcerer would.
So realistically my sorcerermight be the one with cure
wounds.
Well, the cleric doesn't haveit and the cleric has.
I know it's not a necromancerspell but like fireball or
chilling touch yeah these kindof things, that these mismatches
(33:03):
that people weren't kind ofexpecting, and it was a lot of
fun.
I actually really liked thatroute of going because then so
like for one of them, I thinkwhat was it called I'm trying to
remember which spell I did itwith.
I actually think I did it withhim flicked wounds, which is
another cleric spell.
I think I made it based onConstitution so they ended up
(33:25):
giving it to the barbarian.
So it was kind of fun andeverybody really liked it.
But in that campaign to makedeath feel more real, the
resurrection scrolls were theonly way to bring people back
from the dead and every time youdid it they burned.
And when I got that weatheredpaper I made sure I got one of
(33:45):
the ones that was like flashpaper so went poof and literally
we would light them right thereon the table all that's cool.
Yeah, and I really liked thatand I'll get into kind of some
of the stuff I did for likecampaigns, like that and props,
but like I thought that was abrilliant way to do it where
there were only so many of thescrolls I think in the campaign
(34:08):
total there were six there's sixchances to come back from the
dead.
There was no other way to bringsomebody back and they didn't
even have healing spells.
That was a rough slug but itwas fun how many did they use?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
they used three.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
They didn't find two and there was one leftover oh
god, they were probably.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
They were their, their butts most of them
clenched when they used thatthird one and they're like we
only have one more.
Oh my god, but that's.
But that's the fun, that's,that is that value that we've
been talking about.
That, like, all we have left isthis one resurrection scroll.
So if two more people die in aWyatt Griswold campaign which is
possible, we could genuinely bescrewed like, and that that
(34:58):
that fear keeps players investedmore than you know alongside.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Hey, I like my character, because I really like
my character well, the seconddeath of that campaign was
really stressful because of thefact that they had a rogue who
was a lawful evil character andhe didn't tell anyone that he
had picked one of them up, sothey thought they only had one.
They had no idea how many werein the dungeon.
And then they were like theywere like to bring him back from
(35:27):
the dead or not and theystarted searching his body to
decide whether he was a value.
And when they and then theyfound the scroll and they're
like, oh we have two of course.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Oh, and it was really funny.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
But then the whole party was mad at him for hiding
that he had found one in a chestand he lost his scroll, while
the lawful good fighter kept theother one away from him and so
it was constantly this point ofcontention where he wanted to
keep one for himself so that hecould resurrect himself for
nobody else right and I liked it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, and then that that creates like party in the
like conflict in the party.
That's good.
Conflict in the party, you know, it's not that like one player
is upset at another player, it'sthat player characters are
upset at another playercharacter, and that's.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
That's the good shit oh yeah, and it was.
It was a really fun way to havea campaign.
I have really fun memories ofthat one and it's been years
since I played that one.
That was like when you and Iwere still working together all
the time and I miss thosecampaigns because it was, it was
(36:40):
a lot of fun.
It was a lot of fun but there'ssome challenges with running a
campaign like that, because thatdoesn't account for TPKs.
Tpks are the ones where thingsstart to get really different
yeah, tpks.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Tpks are a less desirable thing than death.
I would say dance, you can kindof move on from.
Tpks are tougher and I thinkwith most TPKs you let you
rewind the clock.
However, I think it alsodepends on the context of the
(37:20):
TPK.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
So so do you actually want to know when I'm most okay
with TPKs?
Speaker 1 (37:27):
yeah, when your time, when are you most okay with it?
Speaker 2 (37:30):
final boss lights really the end of the campaign.
I think it's the best time forTPK because, realistically, your
heroes might not save the day.
What happens if they all getwiped out and if you have your
party die at the end of thecampaign?
Realistically, let's start overin the shadow realm, level.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
One again, like realistically we're going to the
next one, if, if people don'tfeel done with the character
yeah, you just move into thenext one for sure I, when it
comes to TPKs, at least at thefinal boss, I feel like I owe
the players a bit of fulfillmenton a promise.
(38:14):
So a lot of times in likestories, stories start with a
promise.
This is from Brandon Sanderson,who's a professional writer.
He's written quite a number,quite a few nonfiction or, sorry
, fiction books and BrandonSanderson, you know, has talked
about in this class that he didonce that he taught about like
(38:37):
romances, the promise ofromances.
Two characters get together,indiana Jones.
What is its promise?
By time you already get toIndiana on the plane with John
and then he goes back to.
Harvard, where Yale, wherever heteaches at.
You know that basically theentire movie is gonna be.
Indiana Jones goes on a funadventure for a historical
(39:01):
priceless treasure and he mightnot get it, but he'll get out
with his life and it's a funadventure along the way.
So I feel like I promise myplayers a satisfying conclusion
to a story, just like you woulda satisfying ending to a final
fantasy game.
So I wouldn't TPK on a finalbig bad boss, because I feel
(39:27):
like that.
That is the crescendo, theclimax moment where they save
the day and then that's the end.
So I wouldn't do it, but Idon't think it's a bad idea see,
my thing is is.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
I don't view it like that.
I view it as an experience, anadventure and for my final
bosses, I want them to feel likethis immovable mountain that
has to be toppled I mean, thinkKaido from one piece if there
wasn't a Luffy to fight him like.
That's what I want it to feel.
Like is I want you to feel likeyou're the ashura samurai.
(40:03):
If you all die and fail, youfail like realistically.
Then we go to an epilogue and Ialways have two epilogues
written, one first they won andone first they fail.
And if the player, like in theepilogue, has to be satisfied,
if the players die, the worldcan't be like, oh, nothing
(40:26):
happens.
If they die, the world goes toruin.
No one have time to get thereanother kind of interesting idea
.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Puffin forest actually did this for one of his
campaigns where his playerslost against the final boss, but
they decided that they weregonna come back and basically,
instead of starting a newcampaign with the same
characters again or just sayingTPK, that's the end of it, they
(40:56):
basically had all the charactersseparated.
They had to get back togetherand then, once they got back
together, they tried again atthe final boss.
It was basically instead of anew campaign in which it's from
the ashes of the failed party ofthe first campaign, or a retcon
, it was a extended arc.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
It was a final final arc before they finally beat the
big band, which is another coolidea another way to do it is
where the players resurrect, atthe town, where they're praying
for the success of the players,because in D&D the prayers of
people have value.
So, realistically, if there's abunch of people worshiping them
(41:40):
basically and praying for them,believing in them, that has
magical power in D&D and thatmight resurrect them.
So there's there's ways toretcon it in D&D lore, but I
don't, I don't know.
I think it depends on yourgroup, which one you're gonna.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah and also this is just TPKs at a big bad.
So let's talk about the badTPKs.
I think if you're in the middleof a random calm combat and you
accidentally TPK your party, Ithink you should, for the most
part, retcon it.
But I think you can kind ofplay it by your a little bit.
If you're in a boat and it's awooden boat, in lava and your
(42:23):
wild magic sorcerer castsfireball on themselves
accidentally with wild magicsurge, retcon that, retcon that
one.
But when it's something likeyou're fighting a villain or you
know, maybe it's some likeweird situation where you didn't
(42:43):
intend to TPK but like theparty didn't see the way out and
they all die, in that situationyou keep going kind of like
what Wyatt mentioned earlier iswith his everybody in the shadow
realm.
You can place all of the playercharacters somewhere else in
the world.
(43:04):
It's a planar game.
So what if they die and all theplayer characters are sent with
no items but there's theirlevels to avernus?
What if they're sent to theshadow fell?
What if they're sent far beyond?
What if, maybe the God whocollects souls to take them to
(43:27):
one of these realms?
What if he's been kidnapped andso your character has just been
in between.
What if, a month after theevents, some random item that
they had brought them all backto life and they're literally
crawling out of their coffins?
These sort of things are a turnin the game dramatically, but
(43:56):
then make it interesting.
Especially I love the Avernusone because that one it's it's
kind of like Kratos in God ofWar 2 on the PlayStation 2.
There's a moment where he diesafter being, I think, cast out
of the Greek Pantheon and heliterally crawls up out of
(44:22):
Tartarus on the bodies ofalready dead people in the
underworld and he crawls all theway up back to the world of the
living.
And imagine if, let's say avillain, let's say he's pompous
I'm sorry, party, but it's overfor you and he kills them.
(44:44):
That solves that.
Let's just move forward.
I have much bigger goals thanmine now.
And suddenly, after maybe a fewmonths of playing IRL, your
party gets out and they returnand they see that villain that
killed them the first time andthey get to see that villain
(45:07):
react in a really satisfying wayand the party feels satisfied
because they had to literally gofrom hell and back to get back
to where they were after the TPK.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So do you want to know a fun one that I actually
had?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yes, I do, yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
There's a part, there's a campaign I want to run
where you slam yourselfdirectly into the final boss
level 5 and you instantly alldie.
Yeah and then you're in theshadow, felt, and the whole goal
would be to re-level up to apoint where you're all big
enough and you're wizard or yourspellcaster can cast wish and
(45:48):
they wish for you to come backto the moment where you died.
And then, and then he's like Ijust killed you all.
And then your pompous, arrogantjerk, thinking that he's
fighting a level 3 party, getssmacked by a level bunch of
level 15 adventurers and it'sreally fun because it makes the
final boss feel really like ohmy god, he just used power word
(46:10):
death on all five of us.
How are we gonna deal with this?
and then you're in a bay wildfor like 10, 12, 13 levels.
Yeah, you pop back and then youkill it.
It feels better and also thenit burns that spell slot so they
can't use wish in the fight.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
That's a smart idea yeah and then they can't use
wish in the fight.
Yeah that's.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
That's.
That's one of my spells I don'tlike is I don't like wish,
because you can wish for a lotof things in D&D and like.
I don't like telling players no, so I don't want to be like oh
man, you use your ninth levelspell slot to wish for more
spell slots.
I don't, I don't like tellingthem no to that.
I feel, bad when I tell playersno, so I try to circumvent them
(46:57):
being able to ask me for thingsthat are horrific.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Yeah, wish is one of those things that like.
Really I haven't dabbled in alot because it's easy to to fall
into a trap.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, you can wish for anything.
Basically you, the only thingyou can't explicitly wish for in
D&D is to be a god, because aninth level spell is not strong
enough to make you a god.
There is a spell that can makeyou a god, but it was only ever
cast once, and when it did itbroke the weave, and so in D&D
(47:29):
lore.
That's why you can't become agod, because there was a spell
that did that once.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Is that the story of the guy who tried to cast a
tenth level spell and it brokeeverything?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
He cast a tenth and a twelfth level spell.
He cast a tenth level spell toinstakill a god.
He basically did a power worddeath on a god and then he cast
a level 12 spell to take itsplace as a god and that broke
the whole weave.
So when the gods of time andmagic slipped it all back
together, they took away theability for mortals to cast
(48:03):
anything above ninth level.
That being said, key word inthere is mortals, so if you're
running a campaign, you canalways have a god cast like a
level 14.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, or maybe like, maybe, like that's what your
main villain of a campaign islike trying to do.
Is he's trying to Voldemorthimself lich style or in by some
other mean, or maybe he triesmultiple different plans to
become immortal and then, bybecoming immortal, he tries to
(48:33):
cast a higher level spell andthe party has to stop him, or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, I definitely really like that idea.
I think that there's just somuch to do with how you can make
death feel good in a campaign,though it just it's really
challenging to kind of balanceit with, like in a conversation
in a setting like this.
It's really hard yeah because Idon't.
I don't know what these like,what the tables environment's
(49:00):
gonna be.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
Yeah and that's that's where conversations like
this are really fun, and I hopethat we inspire people, but I
can't really tell you what to doin your setting and that's, I
think, the importance of likewhy you listen to this, why you
listen to a whole bunch ofpeople on in this in the D&D
community, is they are allgiving you different ideas, and
(49:26):
I think Matt Colville put itreally well once.
He said I'm not telling youthrough his DM videos how to run
the game, I'm giving you ideas,I'm presenting you with
thoughts for you to react with.
And whether that's wow, I thinkthat's a really good idea and I
(49:48):
really like that, or it's Ireally hate that idea.
Here's how I would do itinstead.
That pushes what we do already,makes it even better or we
learn.
It doesn't work.
And here's why it doesn't work,and that's, I think, the really
(50:08):
fun thing and why you shouldn't.
You should listen to otherpeople so you can get those
ideas, and I hope that that ishow this is treated and that's
exactly why, like when we weresitting down and planning this
podcast and everything I mean.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Like again, I agree with them you shouldn't be
telling people.
That's why we named the podcastDungeon Master inspiration and
we named the YouTube channelDungeon Inspiration.
It's meant to inspire you, nottell you.
And if you have other ideas onhow to run death, leave them in
the comments, because I want toexpand and learn and if I see
one that I really like, I'llmake a short about it and give
you a shout out now.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
One thing that we do take a hard line on here is Wild
Magic Sorcerer is the best andmost optimal class, and that if
you aren't playing one, this isa waste.
You're wasting your time in D&D, and this is an objective truth
, thank you yeah, of course andwith the next episode we're, and
with that we're gonna wrap upthe episode.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
So thank you everyone that listens.
Again, we are so grateful forall of our patreons and our
subscribers.
You really make it so that wecan do this.
If you have anything you wantto leave, please drop a comment
down below.
We would be happy to read them,and I hope you have a great
rest of your day and I'm kiddingyou, you, you, you you.
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