Fellow DMs, any tips to get players to care for their characters?
My players currently have the mindset, that a character death is not an issue because they can just roll up a new one. 

At our table, if you die and come back as another party member you are at a lower level than the original party.  And if they died out in the field and no one bothered to try to rescue them, revive them, etc.  They have to wait until they find a town or something suitable to try to recruit another party member... they don't just get to pull out Sheet #4 and go, "Hi guys!  Need a hand?" and jump into the fray.  Always downtime if you die...

And then, you could always bribe them.  Make it some kind of important mission where they have a higher incentive if there are no casualties and no team members left behind to trace back to the quest giver.  Significantly higher reward.  You hope you don't have to do that all the time, but if there is a better reward, a lot of players will change behavior just to get more virtual currency.

Or maybe a strong Session 0 where they actually create bonds between them.  Though, not every group really wants to get into strong roleplay.  Some like the Adventure of the Week mentality of Adventure League where having different people every week is fine cause the player is in it for themselves.  Just don't let them carry over items if that is the case (and if you aren't playing Adventure League with a group like that it is worth looking into it as there are some good guidelines).  At that point it is a hack and slash and requires a lot less work on your part...

I am not sure it's possible to change that attitude by any action you take as a DM.

As a general rule, we can't make other people care about something just because we do. Trust me, if we could, then as a college teacher, all my students would have As or at least Bs, because I would be able to get them to care about their grades as much as I do.

One thing you can maybe give it is time. If the PCs live for many adventures and get to a high enough level, sooner or later some of the players will become attached. But before that time goes by, I don't think you can do anything yourself to make it happen.

If the players dont want to care for their characters, and you want them to care for their characters, have an out of game discussion about what all of you want and what makes it more fun for each of you to play in that way. Perhaps you can ask them to try to play a way that you would like for a few sessions to try it out. I think the only thing that gets players very into their characters is if they feel like they put a lot of thought and time into making the character the way they are.

This is an interesting challenge.  Yes, your players -- or any of us-- can always roll a new character. In fact, I suspect that some, perhaps many, of us have characters we have made, but never played.  Your players might well see their characters in this light-- as an interesting concept they wanted to try.   The trick will be to get them invested in their characters.  I'm not sure how to do that in a combat heavy campaign, but a couple of things that work with roleplay are as follows:

1) Encourage the players to develop their backstories.  Putting more time and thought into characters will make them feel less disposable. It will also give you potential encounters and plot hooks.  "Wait, we're going to Riverside?  Isn't that where Brillan is from?  I wonder why he left.  Maybe someone there knows him."  Use friends, family, rivals and mentors as recurring NPCs.  
2)  Encourage relationships.  This doesn't just mean romance. Two PCs could be siblings or childhood friends.  On the other hand, you could have two rivals constantly trying to one-up each other.  Think of Legolas and Gimli counting orcs killed at Helms Deep.
I hope these suggestions help.

My characters had a mass die off of three characters out of the four due to a really dumb tactical approach and poor use of abilities during combat at the Shrine of Savras / Dragon of Icespire peak.  They had amassed significant wealth and magical items.  I gave them the choice of making new characters at the same level (so 6th level XP) or losing all their coinage and most of their magical items with the exception of the primary magic items they had received at the beginning of the campaign.  They opted for the latter, and luckily it wasn't too much of a story stretch to have their various factions revive them and for them to be indebted to those factions.  This also makes my story hook for the trilogy following Icespire peak easy as hell for me!

I happened to have a player who was not happy with their character and they became reckless with them. Eventually the character died and they re-rolled another. It happens. I have also stated at a few points during the campaign that players can change out characters providing it was sort of at a good moment to do so. Like if they were in a city or even town. Never in a dungeon or out and about. When letting players change out characters I will usually only let this happen once during the campaign. If they die, well thats different. It kinda sucks though when a player is trying to kill off their character. This can cause issues for the whole group.

You can't force people to care about their characters. Your players probably come from a video game mentality in which there are unlimited respawns or retries from a save.

It's possible to build a campaign from that. The bodies change but the mind remains. Kind of a reincarnation thing with the PC spirit moving from body to body when they die. So have them keep their mental stats but change up the physical with new incarnations. 

You can levy a half exp penalty, because the new body doesn't have the same muscle memory.

HOLY MOLY.

You shouldn't play DnD. You should play Paranoia instead. Every PC has 9 clones because the world is that dangerous and death is expected. You can find the game on various sites.

Quote from Wysperra >>

You can't force people to care about their characters. Your players probably come from a video game mentality in which there are unlimited respawns or retries from a save.

It's possible to build a campaign from that. The bodies change but the mind remains. Kind of a reincarnation thing with the PC spirit moving from body to body when they die. So have them keep their mental stats but change up the physical with new incarnations. 

You can levy a half exp penalty, because the new body doesn't have the same muscle memory.

HOLY MOLY.

You shouldn't play DnD. You should play Paranoia instead. Every PC has 9 clones because the world is that dangerous and death is expected. You can find the game on various sites.

 

 Paranoia is awesome fun. :D

Quote from Wysperra >>

 

You shouldn't play DnD. You should play Paranoia instead. Every PC has 9 clones because the world is that dangerous and death is expected. You can find the game on various sites.

 

Last time I played, we lost three clones just in the mission briefing :D

Never played Paranoia but it sounds like a blast.

Another game you and your friends could consider is something like Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC). Or even original "three books" 1975 D&D. Those games are much more brutal and expect characters to die and be replaced. DCC even starts you out with 4 PCs because they expect 3 of them to die by the end of the first adventure. In fact, the whole purpose of the adventure is to "weed out" the weaker characters.