Quote from Wtfdndad >>

The thing about death in D&D, there are so many ways out with spells and abilities that other characters possess, not to mention circumstances and etc. Any one who says permanent character death is a fact of  D&D life, please realize: that is your opinion, not a fact.

It's a fact, not an opinion. Although there are ways out under a variety of conditions such as Resurrection, those conditions are not always able to be met, and therefore it is possible that permanent and irrevocable death CAN happen in a D&D game. It may be rare that it is truly, completely permanent, but it is possible.

As a practical matter, what usually happens is, the character dies at low level, and the player makes up a replacement. Eventually the party gets high enough level that they could find a way to Wish or otherwise Rez the old character back, but the player is now attached to the 2nd character and doesn't want to go back anyway, so it stays, well... permanent.

Permanent character death is purely DM fiat. End of story. While there may be a limit to what players can do, that doesn't apply to the DM.

Quote from Wtfdndad >>

Permanent character death is purely DM fiat. End of story. While there may be a limit to what players can do, that doesn't apply to the DM.

 True. You can play candy coated D&D with a prize in the package. Or you can play not always fresh and sometimes has a worm inside D&D.

lol, The weapon is a published wizard of the coast weapon. (It's in the Avernus campaign and the player asked for it-I saw no problem with it. It did add flavor to the campaign).

This is the kind of thing that happens in D&D that makes a cool story. "Remember that guy we used to adventure with years ago, who got turned into a lowbie devil? Wonder what ever happened to him?"

It's one of the stories we tell around the tavern table after one of our long adventures... Not something to freak out about to be sure.

Here is the thing: everything that happens in D&D is just RP fodder -- it gives you something to RP about. The more remarkable, the better. It's a shame more people don't view it like that.

Quote from Cage2099 >>

lol, The weapon is a published wizard of the coast weapon. (It's in the Avernus campaign and the player asked for it-I saw no problem with it. It did add flavor to the campaign).

 Just because it is official content doesn't make it good =)

Yes, but players have to be allowed to make stupid mistakes and then suffer the consequences sometimes.  Otherwise, what's the point in being a GM?

Yes, but players have to be allowed to make stupid mistakes and then suffer the consequences sometimes.  Otherwise, what's the point in being a GM?

I would agree with you except I would edit the last sentence... not "what's the point of being a GM?" but rather, "What's the point of playing D&D?" If nothing bad can ever happen to the character then... where is the tension in a scene? It should come from the fact that a bad outcome is possible. If only good outcomes are possible, we may as well just play the game Candy Land. (Actually, come to think about it, bad things can happen even in that game, like going back halfway down the board right before you were about to win.)

I'm not saying every game has to be a bloodbath, or every (or even most) death needs to be perma... but if there is no chance of characters actually, forever, dying and being taken out of the campaign (i.e., the real true meaning of death in an RPG -- the character is not playable ever again), then there is no real chance of tension, because you always know you will be OK in the long run.

I guess some folks may not want to have any tension in their D&D game, but to me, tension is part of the fun. It's where all the drama and, well, coolness of D&D comes from. And at the base of it, is that characters can, and sometimes do, die, and stay "forever dead."

I was being a little tongue in cheek, but yes, the main point is that failure should always be a potential outcome.  There has to be an element of risk involved in playing.

If you don't mind me posing a different type of question, would the remaining members of the party even be interested in taking on a potentially lengthy and dangerous quest to rescue their former party member's soul from this damnation? Would the other players be alright in detouring from the current trajectory of the campaign to accomplish something like this? I ask this because ultimately, aren't they the ones who would have to decide if they wish to embark on such an endeavor on this character and player's behalf? Unless all of this is meant to happen "off screen" as it were.

Quote from BioWizard >>

Yes, but players have to be allowed to make stupid mistakes and then suffer the consequences sometimes.  Otherwise, what's the point in being a GM?

I would agree with you except I would edit the last sentence... not "what's the point of being a GM?" but rather, "What's the point of playing D&D?" If nothing bad can ever happen to the character then... where is the tension in a scene? It should come from the fact that a bad outcome is possible. If only good outcomes are possible, we may as well just play the game Candy Land. (Actually, come to think about it, bad things can happen even in that game, like going back halfway down the board right before you were about to win.)

I'm not saying every game has to be a bloodbath, or every (or even most) death needs to be perma... but if there is no chance of characters actually, forever, dying and being taken out of the campaign (i.e., the real true meaning of death in an RPG -- the character is not playable ever again), then there is no real chance of tension, because you always know you will be OK in the long run.

I guess some folks may not want to have any tension in their D&D game, but to me, tension is part of the fun. It's where all the drama and, well, coolness of D&D comes from. And at the base of it, is that characters can, and sometimes do, die, and stay "forever dead."

 Have you ever seen a good action movie where none of the main characters die? I have, that can be your D&D game. Have you ever seen a good action movie where everyone dies except one main character? I have, that can be your D&D game.

There is no "you're doing it wrong because there is no element of danger if you don't have character death", there can be plenty of consequences and tension, etc. If you feel that killing PCs is fun and the players enjoy it too, you know because...realism; then go ahead and do that. The people I play with feel that fun is in the long game, the whole campaign as a story. If you permadeath out of that, that wouldn't be fun for us. Can players die? Yes. Is there a chance to bring them back? Most likely.

Have you ever seen a good action movie where none of the main characters die? I have, that can be your D&D game. 

Yes, but everyone in the audience knows (and every character in the movie knows) that if someone in the action movie dies, that death is permanent. With very rare exceptions (such as when you "think" the character died by they didn't because you didn't see the body, as in the old comic book trope), we know that IF a character dies in a normal action movie, then that character is dead, and not coming back.

I'm not arguing that characters actually need to die or even perma-die in a campaign. I'm arguing that if actual forever-death is not a possibility, then some level of tension is lost from the campaign.

Take Champions, for example. In that game, most damage is non-lethal, characters get KO'ed but generally not killed, and a character almost never dies, either hero or villain, in that game. Indeed, for my entire run playing that game from 9th grade through college, there was only ONE time when a character (an NPC villain) died to actual die rolls (killed by another NPC villain with a one-shot, in front of the PCs, to scare them), rather than "GM Fiat." Before that, and after it, we had characters who died as part of a storyline, but with regular die rolls in Champions, it is almost impossible to do enough body to outright kill a character in combat -- even a starting character. However, well all knew that if enough damage were done in combat to cause character death, there was no coming back. There are no "raise dead" spells in Champions -- there is no mechanism (other than GM Fiat) for bringing characters back. Tangler, the villain the Crimson Claw beheaded with a single 6D6 HKA attack, never returned to my game. He was gone forever.

We had several characters die without rolls over the years -- due to the way the story went. And when it happened, it was permanent. They did not come back. For example, in the scenario in which we retired our high school hero team before we all went off to college, at the end of the final fight, the big boss villain pressed a button that started the volcano they were inside of erupting, and in the resulting explosion, all the heroes disappeared. I then said, "You can decide if your character made it out alive or not." Two of the players chose to have their character survive, one refused to say what happened, and one said "she died."

That was player choice. But.... once that character was dead -- she stayed dead. When those four guys came back each summer to join in my game, the other three were able to bring their characters back into it (from across dimensions) but the 4th guy, although he played other characters with us, could not play Psiana, because... she was dead. And before anyone complains that this was "mean" to that player, he never asked to bring her back. 

Quote from Wtfdndad >>

Permanent character death is purely DM fiat. End of story. While there may be a limit to what players can do, that doesn't apply to the DM.

I get that you don't like killing your PC's but saying that character death is always DM fiat is not only completely wrong but also with the way you phrase it, it sounds like you're telling other people how to run their game. What if the characters know the BBEG of the campaign is an ancient red dragon and immediately run to its cave at level 1? Now a TPK is always the DMs fault and outside of extreme circumstances shouldn't happen, but not killing a few of the characters in this situation is DM fiat. 

Sincerely, a DM who's only had one PC death and it wasn't permanent.

It's not death that wtfdnddad is saying is DM fiat... it's that the death is permanent. Strictly this is true. The DM decides whether resurrection is possible, in most cases. The DM can say, that it is, even if the rulebook says, that it isn't. The DM can choose to provide the surviving party members with a mechanism of getting the character back to life, or can choose not to do so. In that sense, it's all DM Fiat.

Quote from Wtfdndad >>

 Have you ever seen a good action movie where none of the main characters die? I have, that can be your D&D game. Have you ever seen a good action movie where everyone dies except one main character? I have, that can be your D&D game.

One of the most popular shows of all time had that happen in season 1. Game of something...?

Chinese cinema often has the hero not only NOT get the girl, he also dies.

Dumbledore - dead

Severus Snape - dead

Dobby - dead

Boromir - dead

Theoden - dead

Haldir - dead

William Wallace - dead

Almost the entire team sent to Save Private Ryan - dead

Romeo and Juliet - dead

Mouse and Switch - dead

Wolverine - dead

Tony Stark - dead

T800 - dead

Everybody on the Nostromo except Ripley - dead

Everybody in the marine platoon from Aliens, except two people and an NPC - dead

Maximus Aurelius - dead

Shall I go on?

Whoops, Rogue One - everybody dead.

Quote from BioWizard >>

At least you didn't do what Matt Colville does... when a character dies he takes the character sheet from the player and rips it in half.

 My DM makes us write on the sheet how the character died and then adds it to a binder he keeps. The book of the dead. 

Quote from David42 >>

Quote from BioWizard >>

go see Bel/Zariel/Whoever to petition for the soul back.   Get given a quest that is morally dubious they have to do.  Of course the soul comes back first, so that the player can carry on but the team have to sign a contract so they must fulfil their side.

 

I like this idea. A LOT. They are beholden to Zariel/etc. now. Definitely make the quest be something highly immoral. They have to murder a king with a hellfire weapon, to give her his soul to replace the PC's or something. Maybe a good king, better yet a king the players like. Let's see how far they'll go to get their friend back. (And how far the friend will go to save his own life at the expense of another.)

The more I think about it, yes, I think that some aspect of this quest should be "life for a life," and that it must be an INNOCENT life that he has to take to replace his own in hell. Let's see just what kind of moral fibre this character is made of.

 This suggestion might sound fun to the DM ..

.. but to a player who is really invested in and happy with their character .. it would be the worst form of torture. Why would you do that to a friend?

 

 

 This.  I generally don't want my characters back after they die (I don't dig resurrection), but if I did this would all be a really massive buzzkill.  I'd be very unhappy with this solution.

Quote from BioWizard >>

At least you didn't do what Matt Colville does... when a character dies he takes the character sheet from the player and rips it in half.

 In 4e we had a character die, and we came up with this idea to caulk our wagon Oregon Trail style, and give the player a viking funeral in the river.  We took the character sheet out to my balcony and burned it.