What other methods can you think of to give a character’s death the proper gravity? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
I'd like to see you do a series similar to your "many ways to make a character" series. Call it "many ways to make a villain" and show us how to make villains from quotes, species, classes, backgrounds, etc.
Now I want to do a humorous twist on the near-death experience where the character encounters another character's ancestors on the other side. "Oh boy, this is awkward. See, we were really expecting to meet Hargoth here, what this his track record and all... look, it doesn't matter. The point is..."
My character in the middle of their death saves was contacted by the Archfey of the Feywild domain she was in. They offered her a second chance, to get back into the fight in exchange for memories of what she treasured the most. She gave up her memories of the time she spent back home with someone important to her, only to survive the battle and come back to said person with no recollection of their shared moments. It broke the other person's heart, and now my character's trying to set things right. The moment was small but it was a big deal to me, and I'm glad my character's decisions led to more conflict which I like.
A player wanted to play a new character in our campaign. He wanted his character to die, and go out properly, swinging. So I gave him a martyr's death, the villain used a poison to kill him in a RP scene.The poison slowly paralyzed his character, and he got a good lick in before he went down. The party was doing a seance, and found his ghost fighting off evil spirits before a final goodbye and heading off to heaven. It was so touching two players ended up crying and missing him. They had a funeral for his character two sessions later, and he was so shocked and touched by it all. He already brought in his new character, but because of his character's death the party swore to avenge him. He really did die a martyr. My players are so sweet and gushy. One of them often says "A character dying does not mean the end of that character." and after these moments I can see what they mean. I've been enjoying these videos, thanks for the constant inspiration.
Meanwhile, my last character death was me investigating inscriptions (one of two things the DM highlighted in his description of the room) and without even making some sort of investigation type check, got one shotted by an incorporeal creature with a "if the target hits 0 HP from this" type attacks. No death saves. No being unconscious. Just "i wanna check out those inscriptions" "you die." I dont play with that DM anymore
I had a character die in the first session of a campaign I was in. I had made a sorcerer, a class I was new in, and I wanted to make him a pyromancer. I had a loose backstory tied with another player at the table (a friend who had been the GM for my first ever dive into TTRPGs), he was a wizard and I was a sorc. We were tasked with clearing out some monsters from an old fort on a hill. We killed the kobolds that were outside and started to move in when there was suddenly a pit-trap that collapsed. The pit trap filled the hall that we were walking down and the only way past was to either jump across or shimmy around the narrow ledge that it created in the floor. Both required an athletics or acrobatics check, both relied on my dump stats. I chose to shimmy across and failed my check. I fell into the pit. I fell several feet and was impaled on the spikes below. Being level 1 and a sorc, I had maybe enough hit points to survive the fall, but not the spikes below. I immediately fell unconscious and *technically* died (based on 3.5 rules). But the DM was gracious and allowed the party to try and save me. The Paladin of Pelor tried to lift me off of the spike to heal me. Medicine check, nat 1. By all rights I should've been dead, but the DM allowed the Paladin to try one more time. Once again, medicine check, once again nat 1. I played that character for maybe an hour and he died. I had been joking the whole hour about arcane casters being squishy and glass cannons. I found out that night. Obviously, being session *ONE*, the DM let me roll up a new character, but it had to be a different class because he only allowed classes to be played once unless there was a good reason. So I quickly rolled up a barbarian, which I played for a few sessions but it just wasn't jiving with me. There was never a send off for my first character, he just fucking died and we all moved on so I could keep playing. Which I appreciate in the moment, but feel robbed looking back. RIP Tim the Enchanter, renowned pyromancer.
Back in the days of 2E, we didn't have these newfangled "death saves"; you were positive HP, at 0 HP, negative 1 to 9 HP, or dead at negative 10 (or greater) HP. I was playing Alannin, my 11th level high elf wizard, whom I had been playing since 1st level, when a purple worm burst forth from the ground underneath his feet*. Not having anything to get himself out of danger, he was swallowed; it was readily clear he was not getting out of this alive. So, he did what any wizard worth their spellbook would do: intentionally broke his Staff of Power (retributive strike) inside the beast, killing them both. * = the DM had foreshadowed the imminent arrival of the critter by describing increasing vibrations in the ground Not quite what you were going for in this one, Mike, but, it felt close enough to relate the story.
Great video! Not just because of my characters near death shout out of course. Really good! I suspect this topic will come up again in regards to a certain demystified video involving a letter. I’ve actually been considering having my character have a sort of last will on them but he’s still torn of that basically just leading the survivors right to his real world problems and making them cursed to deal with that whole situation 😅
This is super useful advice. I started a pre-written adventure which has been more combat oriented then I’m used to so I’ve been worrying about a PC dying during a random encounter
Mike. Legit. One of the first videos on my channel is audio from when I decided to run death saves as a contest with Death for your soul because 'death saves are boring'. This video is very validating lol
On the bit about CPR you might call that a dumb choice but 1) If his heart stopped, CPR could possibly keep him alive until medical attention gets there. 2) Sometimes, even trained soldiers act irrationally in high stress situations. Imagine a character watching their friend go down and even though there is nothing they can reasonably do to help, they fall back on WHATEVER medical training they have. It's like when a dnd character fruitlessly uses a healing spell even when everyone at the table knows the target is already dead. It's for dramatic effect
I think the most important part of a scene like this is to think about the location that you visualise their mind being in, maybe a monk is on the steps up the mountain to their temple, seeing the location of the party behind them down the stairs and their monastery above them, if they die they reach the top and their master asks them if they want to stay there contemplating the land below or if they have reached a peace willing to go into the building fully as an example. The location visualised here is something that exists in the world, all it conveys is the aspect of staying behind and clinging to life or moving on abstracted away from what the afterlife looks like.
Great video, Mike! I'd like to take the opportunity to share how I handled a PC death in our first campaign. The PC was a tiefling rogue, and I had noticed that the player wasn't that excited anymore, he mentioned he was playing around with character creation in DDB and was really set on playing a Cleric after the campaign was over. Also of note, this player would play the PC as a very harsh and restless character, always running ahead of the group, which lead to several sub-optimal combat situations, one of which presented me with a choice: he was facing three Wil-o'-Wisps in closed quarters, with the rest of party more than a dash away. The PC went down and I had the opportunity to use their "Consume life" bonus action, but since this is a Play-by-Post group, I reached out to him privately and asked if it was ok to kill him off, which he agreed straight away. He got really excited with the opportunity to be honest. So, the PC got killed, the others players were shocked (we only told them recently, half-way into our second campaign) and led to a memorable moment, on their way back to town the druid took the tiefling's body and performed a ritual in which the body was cremated and then turned into a stone/crystal. As the druid wrote a pretty decent description I didn't even ask for any checks or the like, it was really awesome.
This video is really helpful, now this is something I would like to do on a game and not just the usual "throw the dice and see if you live". Thanks a lot Mike.
Great video, hope you're enjoying your holiday. Would love to see a video on the line between a constructed story and sandbox if it's sounds like something you'd be interested in
I now want to manufacture a scenario where a character dies, does in fact skid to a halt in front of the temple, and the priest just sighs, tromps out, rezzes them the next round and grumpily sends them back into the fight XD sounds like a challenge!
I've been playing in a campaign for well over a year now and I'm the first in the rather large group to have TWO characters die. The first was sad and really cool RP wise but it was early in the campaign and it wasn't too over the top. My second lasted several levels, and became a very important person among the characters AND players. So much so that when they died, there was a will, a funeral, a wake, one character nearly left the town, another got a form of madness, while others named magic items after him and it was the most AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL character death that I've EVER had. It was amazing, thats one reason I love character death in d and d. Also you can be a fan of a series of works without liking or agreeing with the writer or director etc
I really had to hold myself back well akshually-ing Mike about Transformers lore when he started bringing up the supposed worldbuilding problems of Sam's near-death experience, since that scene is still bad from a narrative and structural standpoint, and let's face it, defending Revenge of the Fallen is not the hill anyone wants to die on.
The voices of their relatives is a really cool idea. I've had a few deaths in my campaign recently, and I'm always looking for news ways to make it satisfying.
I’ve only had to roll once for a death saving throw. It was a tough fight and one where I could not move or my party squishies would go down next. So I took the hit and was downed and made my first and, so far, only death saving throw. The dm asked me for a memory or thought that I had, some wish. I hadn’t yet wanted to go too much into my character’s full backstory and it didn’t feel right in the moment. However, in the town previously a kind textile merchant had given us free supplies. The only thing she asked of us was to send her back a souvenir from the next place we visited as she was much to old to make the journey herself. My party at the beginning of that session had actually made a purchase of such an item. So I had my character recall his promise and said he really wanted to go back and fulfill his promise to that kind woman (because a huge part of his personality and moral code is to return the kindness shown to you with sincerity and in abundance). Luckily I was gotten up by my party by the time my next dice saving throw would happen. By the way, I did pass that throw. If I hadn’t I would have actually made my “memory” more negative in tone. Or maybe relieved. I hadn’t decided and was winging it. But yeah, I didn’t get to reveal too much backstory because I never needed to make another throw. I still haven’t and I have played at many tables now with many characters since I took up this hobby. And I’ve certainly played some very difficult encounters too so I could very well have had to at any time. That just my experience and I’ll probably just wing it if I have it happen again.
I'd like to point out that this varies somewhat by amount of investment at the table. My shortest-lived character showed up directly after one of my very first characters got killed (due to me being a dumbass), and then this new character lived two half-sessions IIRC. Got eaten by a giant tree -- grabbed by tentacles, pulled into its mouth, managed to climb out, happened to still be in range and got immediately eaten a second time. I'd basically missed or misinterpreted all the signs that this giant tree was a Big Bad Thing that we should stay away from. Everybody else at the table got it; I just ran in and climbed the thing, thinking it was the one safe place in a city full of chaos. The death was kinda hilarious and I didn't mind *too* much because although I'd put a lot of time into making the new character, I hadn't really invested time into the character *at the table* actually *doing* stuff. So having a particularly weighty death scene wouldn't have jived with how the death felt to me as a player. After the session: GM: In all fairness, never in a million years would I have expected you to *climb* it. (This was apparently before I'd established the fact that my characters will climb just about anything. So much so that one particular character's introduction to the team involved the team asking them "do you climb?" and me going "no, why?" and them going "welcome aboard!") P.S. Eventually our group took to getting those party-poppers that put streamers everywhere, and when it looks like a character is going to actually die, we get them ready, and if the death happens, everyone fires theirs at once. It's the right kind of celebratory vibe for our table, which has never taken this stuff too seriously.
I have two ways to keep things dangerous and interactive: 1. Homebrew that means no Unconscious or incapacitated by hitting 0 hit points. You can still act, at a cost. Don't remember the details right now, and I haven't tested it much yet, so no copy-paste of my homebrew today. 🤓 2. I try to have a plan for the not unlikely scenario that a character, or even the whole party, dies. Ending the character's story should be the player's choice, not mine, so options are made available.
Something I noticed while watching this is a lot of these death experiences are peaceful. But Dnd and other systems often have quite terrifying stuff on the other side. Plenty of creatures prey on souls or simply torment them. So what if the character's dying experience is watching them close in or directly fighting them while struggling to live. If they die the implication then is that their adventures are still continuing. And if they get revived, especially after some time, they haven't just been waiting. Their story has still been progressing, changing them.
My first time killing a PC was an instant kill in a Call of Cthulhu game I ran. They started a fight with a farmer with a shotgun, didn't finish the fight before he got a shot off and he blew one of the characters away. Felt sorta bad about it but I managed to get them a replacement PC pretty quick since it was a one shot.
In defense of Transformers 2, something I never thought I'd say, part of the plot is how Sam got zapped by a leftover shard of the McGuffin from the first movie which caused him to a little crazy due to a lot of information being inside his head and to know where to find the new McGuffin. So yes, robot ghosts showing up and materializing stuff just for him and bringing him back to life because of that make sense. That said, it doesn't make the movie itself better and it's still a poorly written mess.
One of my worst moments playing RPG was the death of my character, since it did not felt satisfying or fair. It was in a Chthulu-like homebrew system, so death was on the table and expected. In the most recent arc, the dm made a npc flirt a lot with my character, so I went along and they got close, few sessions later, the BBEG of this new arc created a monster that could paralize everyone on if you made a save, and paralyze + damage if you fail, so there we were, everyone watching him monologue and kill this npc. I was furious (in character) and pretty sad both character and me. Few sessions later, we are raiding this BBEG place, and my character got the power to see the future as a blur if I kill someone specific concentrating on this power. Using this, I saw that the BBEG was gonna appear with his creature again and kill my chacater this time, and told the party, we were careful, but in the end, got paralyzed again, and the BBEG told me to chose someone to die, me, one of the 3 other party members or one NPC that was with us. We tried to buy time for reinforcements to arrive, but in the end I was pissed with the situation and just chose my character to die. The moment I die, reinforcements come, and the BBEG flees. I asked the DM if I could make another character, but he said only in another season (about 6 months, we played weekly). I asked if my character could have left a note for the party, he allowed, i wrote it, the party told me the note never came up. Few sessions later, the party told me they found NPC that got close to my character, she was alive and being mind controlled, and that only made me sadder, and I couldn't do anything about it. It has been 2 years since this campaign, the GM is one of my best friends, and both me and him really learned a lot from this, about our differences in style of play and GMing, and how to respect the way the other likes to play, if one of his characters dies in one of my games, I know he will not make another character for exemple, he will just live the game, thats the way he likes to play.
I've always had the hardest time coming to any hard conclusions about how I, personally, want gods/afterlife/spirituality to work in role play. Especially in words that Have gods. That was one of my favorite things about Cyberpunk as a kid, no gods just tech. Because if my personal fantasy was allowed to write the rules they would not be there
About the transformers reference. I dont remember much about the movie, so I might be wrong but ......spoiler alert . . . . . . . . didn't Sam have a piece of that shard (that grants machine life) in him? That may explain why he went to "robot heaven". Though, now you mentioned how it was all plot and no heart, I do kind of agree on that point. Im not sure why Sam of all people was able to considered worthy. He has done several things not worthy of a leader (or whatever the requirement was).
could we potentially get a video similar to how you’ve spoken about Keylith about Laudna? i’ve noticed a lot of people don’t liking her and part of me feels like it’s a similar situation to the dislike of Keylith due to Marisha being in a relationship with Matt
My players actually don't mind how death saves are by default. I do still try to add a bit of flavor to the scenario, but for the most part, just the fact that someone went down ramps up the stress of the situation by a factor of ten. Something I've done recently to add to that is I've also had the player who's unconscious roll the death saves in secret and give only me the result, so the rest of the party have to really make split decisions on what to do. The gremlin like glee I've gotten from the players who're down and the sheer fucking panic from those who are still up has been really funny to watch. As far as death goes, we haven't had many moments like that, but the few moments we have had have had immense impact, to the point where after the fact we have to take 5, take a breather, then come back and play it out. Giving everyone time to breathe, process, and sort out how they feel and how their characters would feel is really important. Especially after such emotional highs.
This video came a touch too late for my table, 3 level 6 PCs just died(including mine), two of them having been in the campaign since day 1 at level 1.
My biggest confusion here, is why you think Robot Heaven and Human Heaven would be different places... obviously the robots in transformers have souls that are the same kind of souls as humans, this isnt complicated
First time I killed a Pc……🤦🏻♂️ monster threw a disintegrate he was super close to a artificer and had a paladin aura… was also saving with advantage…rolled two 1’s….. deathly silence but I will say the table got way more involved after the fact.
Hey Mike, and anybody reading this, I got a question, and I don't know if you've made a video on it before, or if you would, but can you help? I'm not sure if this is one or two questions, but here we go: so, I was in a group for a while, a very small group, the DM, and three players, counting myself, and I only really knew two of them, the DM, who I'm very slightly acquainted with, and my best friend, Alex, who I met the DM through. Alex passed away very suddenly last year, and I haven't been able to play since. At first it was that I didn't want to play, but I THINK I'm ready, but I don't have any more friends that play DND. Do you have any advice on where to go to find a new group? I've never played with people I didn't know well, or at least met once or twice IRL, and I'm a bit nervous of playing with a whole group of people, I don't know. Also, I don't know where to go to find a new group. I think I'm ready to play again, but I don't know where to start. If anybody has any advice, both for where to find a new group, and how to deal with playing with a group of complete strangers, I'd really appreciate it. I love DND, but I also am very nervous about melting well with the group, and not having a real in into the group, because I've never had to deal with that situation before. I'm also nervous, because, although I THINK, i'm ready, I don't know how I'll handle actually playing DND again since Alex passed away, and I'm nervous about accidentally throwing all my crap at people I don't know. Thanks for your help strangers. I very much appreciate it.
Those movies hurt as an autistically powered super transformers fan. Like so much of the rest of the franchise rules and that's what it's known for. It's sad.
Weird how this video makes me want to kill off a character. 😈 Actually I do mean this, I like the idea of spending more narrative energy on the death, in advance of the death even. Great ideas.
What other methods can you think of to give a character’s death the proper gravity?
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That Princess and the Frog/Cowboy Bebop joke really got me, nice job
I also enjoyed that 😂
It took me OUT
I'd like to see you do a series similar to your "many ways to make a character" series.
Call it "many ways to make a villain" and show us how to make villains from quotes, species, classes, backgrounds, etc.
So... we're not going to discuss mister November in the background there? No? Alright then.
We can and I think sir Nov is hot.
lol just came here to the comments looking for a mention of that hot calendar, looking forward for December *wink wink*
Lol
Glad I wasn't the only one 😁
@@koboldqueen3055 agree!
What’s to discuss? Hot is hot.
Now I want to do a humorous twist on the near-death experience where the character encounters another character's ancestors on the other side.
"Oh boy, this is awkward. See, we were really expecting to meet Hargoth here, what this his track record and all... look, it doesn't matter. The point is..."
My character in the middle of their death saves was contacted by the Archfey of the Feywild domain she was in. They offered her a second chance, to get back into the fight in exchange for memories of what she treasured the most. She gave up her memories of the time she spent back home with someone important to her, only to survive the battle and come back to said person with no recollection of their shared moments. It broke the other person's heart, and now my character's trying to set things right.
The moment was small but it was a big deal to me, and I'm glad my character's decisions led to more conflict which I like.
A player wanted to play a new character in our campaign. He wanted his character to die, and go out properly, swinging. So I gave him a martyr's death, the villain used a poison to kill him in a RP scene.The poison slowly paralyzed his character, and he got a good lick in before he went down. The party was doing a seance, and found his ghost fighting off evil spirits before a final goodbye and heading off to heaven. It was so touching two players ended up crying and missing him. They had a funeral for his character two sessions later, and he was so shocked and touched by it all. He already brought in his new character, but because of his character's death the party swore to avenge him. He really did die a martyr.
My players are so sweet and gushy. One of them often says "A character dying does not mean the end of that character." and after these moments I can see what they mean. I've been enjoying these videos, thanks for the constant inspiration.
Meanwhile, my last character death was me investigating inscriptions (one of two things the DM highlighted in his description of the room) and without even making some sort of investigation type check, got one shotted by an incorporeal creature with a "if the target hits 0 HP from this" type attacks. No death saves. No being unconscious. Just "i wanna check out those inscriptions" "you die."
I dont play with that DM anymore
that's just shitty
I'm curious. Was there a "to hit" roll? A damage roll? Were you at full health?
Sadly this sounds like a DM who had some kinda issue with you and got rid of you in a shitty, passive aggressive way
I had a character die in the first session of a campaign I was in. I had made a sorcerer, a class I was new in, and I wanted to make him a pyromancer. I had a loose backstory tied with another player at the table (a friend who had been the GM for my first ever dive into TTRPGs), he was a wizard and I was a sorc. We were tasked with clearing out some monsters from an old fort on a hill. We killed the kobolds that were outside and started to move in when there was suddenly a pit-trap that collapsed. The pit trap filled the hall that we were walking down and the only way past was to either jump across or shimmy around the narrow ledge that it created in the floor. Both required an athletics or acrobatics check, both relied on my dump stats. I chose to shimmy across and failed my check. I fell into the pit. I fell several feet and was impaled on the spikes below. Being level 1 and a sorc, I had maybe enough hit points to survive the fall, but not the spikes below. I immediately fell unconscious and *technically* died (based on 3.5 rules). But the DM was gracious and allowed the party to try and save me. The Paladin of Pelor tried to lift me off of the spike to heal me. Medicine check, nat 1. By all rights I should've been dead, but the DM allowed the Paladin to try one more time. Once again, medicine check, once again nat 1. I played that character for maybe an hour and he died. I had been joking the whole hour about arcane casters being squishy and glass cannons. I found out that night.
Obviously, being session *ONE*, the DM let me roll up a new character, but it had to be a different class because he only allowed classes to be played once unless there was a good reason. So I quickly rolled up a barbarian, which I played for a few sessions but it just wasn't jiving with me. There was never a send off for my first character, he just fucking died and we all moved on so I could keep playing. Which I appreciate in the moment, but feel robbed looking back.
RIP Tim the Enchanter, renowned pyromancer.
Back in the days of 2E, we didn't have these newfangled "death saves"; you were positive HP, at 0 HP, negative 1 to 9 HP, or dead at negative 10 (or greater) HP. I was playing Alannin, my 11th level high elf wizard, whom I had been playing since 1st level, when a purple worm burst forth from the ground underneath his feet*. Not having anything to get himself out of danger, he was swallowed; it was readily clear he was not getting out of this alive. So, he did what any wizard worth their spellbook would do: intentionally broke his Staff of Power (retributive strike) inside the beast, killing them both.
* = the DM had foreshadowed the imminent arrival of the critter by describing increasing vibrations in the ground
Not quite what you were going for in this one, Mike, but, it felt close enough to relate the story.
And here I thought this day couldn't get any better, a SuperGeekMike video AND a Matt Colville Designing the Game?? Sign me up!
Great video! Not just because of my characters near death shout out of course. Really good! I suspect this topic will come up again in regards to a certain demystified video involving a letter.
I’ve actually been considering having my character have a sort of last will on them but he’s still torn of that basically just leading the survivors right to his real world problems and making them cursed to deal with that whole situation 😅
😂 I love how resigned you are at having to reference Harry Potter doing something correctly. That frustration is just too real.
This is super useful advice. I started a pre-written adventure which has been more combat oriented then I’m used to so I’ve been worrying about a PC dying during a random encounter
Mike. Legit. One of the first videos on my channel is audio from when I decided to run death saves as a contest with Death for your soul because 'death saves are boring'. This video is very validating lol
On the bit about CPR you might call that a dumb choice but 1) If his heart stopped, CPR could possibly keep him alive until medical attention gets there. 2) Sometimes, even trained soldiers act irrationally in high stress situations. Imagine a character watching their friend go down and even though there is nothing they can reasonably do to help, they fall back on WHATEVER medical training they have. It's like when a dnd character fruitlessly uses a healing spell even when everyone at the table knows the target is already dead. It's for dramatic effect
I think the most important part of a scene like this is to think about the location that you visualise their mind being in, maybe a monk is on the steps up the mountain to their temple, seeing the location of the party behind them down the stairs and their monastery above them, if they die they reach the top and their master asks them if they want to stay there contemplating the land below or if they have reached a peace willing to go into the building fully as an example. The location visualised here is something that exists in the world, all it conveys is the aspect of staying behind and clinging to life or moving on abstracted away from what the afterlife looks like.
Great video, Mike! I'd like to take the opportunity to share how I handled a PC death in our first campaign. The PC was a tiefling rogue, and I had noticed that the player wasn't that excited anymore, he mentioned he was playing around with character creation in DDB and was really set on playing a Cleric after the campaign was over. Also of note, this player would play the PC as a very harsh and restless character, always running ahead of the group, which lead to several sub-optimal combat situations, one of which presented me with a choice: he was facing three Wil-o'-Wisps in closed quarters, with the rest of party more than a dash away. The PC went down and I had the opportunity to use their "Consume life" bonus action, but since this is a Play-by-Post group, I reached out to him privately and asked if it was ok to kill him off, which he agreed straight away. He got really excited with the opportunity to be honest. So, the PC got killed, the others players were shocked (we only told them recently, half-way into our second campaign) and led to a memorable moment, on their way back to town the druid took the tiefling's body and performed a ritual in which the body was cremated and then turned into a stone/crystal. As the druid wrote a pretty decent description I didn't even ask for any checks or the like, it was really awesome.
This video is really helpful, now this is something I would like to do on a game and not just the usual "throw the dice and see if you live". Thanks a lot Mike.
Great video, hope you're enjoying your holiday. Would love to see a video on the line between a constructed story and sandbox if it's sounds like something you'd be interested in
I now want to manufacture a scenario where a character dies, does in fact skid to a halt in front of the temple, and the priest just sighs, tromps out, rezzes them the next round and grumpily sends them back into the fight XD sounds like a challenge!
I've been playing in a campaign for well over a year now and I'm the first in the rather large group to have TWO characters die. The first was sad and really cool RP wise but it was early in the campaign and it wasn't too over the top. My second lasted several levels, and became a very important person among the characters AND players. So much so that when they died, there was a will, a funeral, a wake, one character nearly left the town, another got a form of madness, while others named magic items after him and it was the most AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL character death that I've EVER had. It was amazing, thats one reason I love character death in d and d. Also you can be a fan of a series of works without liking or agreeing with the writer or director etc
I really had to hold myself back well akshually-ing Mike about Transformers lore when he started bringing up the supposed worldbuilding problems of Sam's near-death experience, since that scene is still bad from a narrative and structural standpoint, and let's face it, defending Revenge of the Fallen is not the hill anyone wants to die on.
The voices of their relatives is a really cool idea. I've had a few deaths in my campaign recently, and I'm always looking for news ways to make it satisfying.
I’ve only had to roll once for a death saving throw. It was a tough fight and one where I could not move or my party squishies would go down next. So I took the hit and was downed and made my first and, so far, only death saving throw. The dm asked me for a memory or thought that I had, some wish. I hadn’t yet wanted to go too much into my character’s full backstory and it didn’t feel right in the moment. However, in the town previously a kind textile merchant had given us free supplies. The only thing she asked of us was to send her back a souvenir from the next place we visited as she was much to old to make the journey herself. My party at the beginning of that session had actually made a purchase of such an item. So I had my character recall his promise and said he really wanted to go back and fulfill his promise to that kind woman (because a huge part of his personality and moral code is to return the kindness shown to you with sincerity and in abundance). Luckily I was gotten up by my party by the time my next dice saving throw would happen. By the way, I did pass that throw. If I hadn’t I would have actually made my “memory” more negative in tone. Or maybe relieved. I hadn’t decided and was winging it. But yeah, I didn’t get to reveal too much backstory because I never needed to make another throw. I still haven’t and I have played at many tables now with many characters since I took up this hobby. And I’ve certainly played some very difficult encounters too so I could very well have had to at any time. That just my experience and I’ll probably just wing it if I have it happen again.
What a weird coincidence for you to release all your videos related to death in the time between my grandma's death and funeral
Oof I’m sorry to hear that. Hope you are doing okay, I know this has to be a difficult time for you.
I'd like to point out that this varies somewhat by amount of investment at the table. My shortest-lived character showed up directly after one of my very first characters got killed (due to me being a dumbass), and then this new character lived two half-sessions IIRC. Got eaten by a giant tree -- grabbed by tentacles, pulled into its mouth, managed to climb out, happened to still be in range and got immediately eaten a second time.
I'd basically missed or misinterpreted all the signs that this giant tree was a Big Bad Thing that we should stay away from. Everybody else at the table got it; I just ran in and climbed the thing, thinking it was the one safe place in a city full of chaos.
The death was kinda hilarious and I didn't mind *too* much because although I'd put a lot of time into making the new character, I hadn't really invested time into the character *at the table* actually *doing* stuff. So having a particularly weighty death scene wouldn't have jived with how the death felt to me as a player.
After the session:
GM: In all fairness, never in a million years would I have expected you to *climb* it.
(This was apparently before I'd established the fact that my characters will climb just about anything. So much so that one particular character's introduction to the team involved the team asking them "do you climb?" and me going "no, why?" and them going "welcome aboard!")
P.S. Eventually our group took to getting those party-poppers that put streamers everywhere, and when it looks like a character is going to actually die, we get them ready, and if the death happens, everyone fires theirs at once. It's the right kind of celebratory vibe for our table, which has never taken this stuff too seriously.
I have two ways to keep things dangerous and interactive:
1. Homebrew that means no Unconscious or incapacitated by hitting 0 hit points. You can still act, at a cost. Don't remember the details right now, and I haven't tested it much yet, so no copy-paste of my homebrew today. 🤓
2. I try to have a plan for the not unlikely scenario that a character, or even the whole party, dies. Ending the character's story should be the player's choice, not mine, so options are made available.
Something I noticed while watching this is a lot of these death experiences are peaceful. But Dnd and other systems often have quite terrifying stuff on the other side. Plenty of creatures prey on souls or simply torment them. So what if the character's dying experience is watching them close in or directly fighting them while struggling to live. If they die the implication then is that their adventures are still continuing. And if they get revived, especially after some time, they haven't just been waiting. Their story has still been progressing, changing them.
My first time killing a PC was an instant kill in a Call of Cthulhu game I ran. They started a fight with a farmer with a shotgun, didn't finish the fight before he got a shot off and he blew one of the characters away. Felt sorta bad about it but I managed to get them a replacement PC pretty quick since it was a one shot.
In defense of Transformers 2, something I never thought I'd say, part of the plot is how Sam got zapped by a leftover shard of the McGuffin from the first movie which caused him to a little crazy due to a lot of information being inside his head and to know where to find the new McGuffin. So yes, robot ghosts showing up and materializing stuff just for him and bringing him back to life because of that make sense. That said, it doesn't make the movie itself better and it's still a poorly written mess.
One of my worst moments playing RPG was the death of my character, since it did not felt satisfying or fair. It was in a Chthulu-like homebrew system, so death was on the table and expected. In the most recent arc, the dm made a npc flirt a lot with my character, so I went along and they got close, few sessions later, the BBEG of this new arc created a monster that could paralize everyone on if you made a save, and paralyze + damage if you fail, so there we were, everyone watching him monologue and kill this npc. I was furious (in character) and pretty sad both character and me. Few sessions later, we are raiding this BBEG place, and my character got the power to see the future as a blur if I kill someone specific concentrating on this power. Using this, I saw that the BBEG was gonna appear with his creature again and kill my chacater this time, and told the party, we were careful, but in the end, got paralyzed again, and the BBEG told me to chose someone to die, me, one of the 3 other party members or one NPC that was with us. We tried to buy time for reinforcements to arrive, but in the end I was pissed with the situation and just chose my character to die. The moment I die, reinforcements come, and the BBEG flees. I asked the DM if I could make another character, but he said only in another season (about 6 months, we played weekly). I asked if my character could have left a note for the party, he allowed, i wrote it, the party told me the note never came up. Few sessions later, the party told me they found NPC that got close to my character, she was alive and being mind controlled, and that only made me sadder, and I couldn't do anything about it. It has been 2 years since this campaign, the GM is one of my best friends, and both me and him really learned a lot from this, about our differences in style of play and GMing, and how to respect the way the other likes to play, if one of his characters dies in one of my games, I know he will not make another character for exemple, he will just live the game, thats the way he likes to play.
I've always had the hardest time coming to any hard conclusions about how I, personally, want gods/afterlife/spirituality to work in role play. Especially in words that Have gods. That was one of my favorite things about Cyberpunk as a kid, no gods just tech. Because if my personal fantasy was allowed to write the rules they would not be there
About the transformers reference. I dont remember much about the movie, so I might be wrong but ......spoiler alert
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didn't Sam have a piece of that shard (that grants machine life) in him? That may explain why he went to "robot heaven". Though, now you mentioned how it was all plot and no heart, I do kind of agree on that point. Im not sure why Sam of all people was able to considered worthy. He has done several things not worthy of a leader (or whatever the requirement was).
could we potentially get a video similar to how you’ve spoken about Keylith about Laudna? i’ve noticed a lot of people don’t liking her and part of me feels like it’s a similar situation to the dislike of Keylith due to Marisha being in a relationship with Matt
I also came to see people's reaction. All I can add is.
Mike you saucey little minks... well played sir. Well played.
You have mastered the art of seamless sponsor transitions. It's impressive
My players actually don't mind how death saves are by default. I do still try to add a bit of flavor to the scenario, but for the most part, just the fact that someone went down ramps up the stress of the situation by a factor of ten. Something I've done recently to add to that is I've also had the player who's unconscious roll the death saves in secret and give only me the result, so the rest of the party have to really make split decisions on what to do. The gremlin like glee I've gotten from the players who're down and the sheer fucking panic from those who are still up has been really funny to watch. As far as death goes, we haven't had many moments like that, but the few moments we have had have had immense impact, to the point where after the fact we have to take 5, take a breather, then come back and play it out. Giving everyone time to breathe, process, and sort out how they feel and how their characters would feel is really important. Especially after such emotional highs.
This video came a touch too late for my table, 3 level 6 PCs just died(including mine), two of them having been in the campaign since day 1 at level 1.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
My biggest confusion here, is why you think Robot Heaven and Human Heaven would be different places... obviously the robots in transformers have souls that are the same kind of souls as humans, this isnt complicated
First time I killed a Pc……🤦🏻♂️ monster threw a disintegrate he was super close to a artificer and had a paladin aura… was also saving with advantage…rolled two 1’s….. deathly silence but I will say the table got way more involved after the fact.
Movies are a hard on to get inspiration on scenes since many ignore the lore or don't have any logical lore to begin with.
Hey Mike, and anybody reading this, I got a question, and I don't know if you've made a video on it before, or if you would, but can you help?
I'm not sure if this is one or two questions, but here we go: so, I was in a group for a while, a very small group, the DM, and three players, counting myself, and I only really knew two of them, the DM, who I'm very slightly acquainted with, and my best friend, Alex, who I met the DM through.
Alex passed away very suddenly last year, and I haven't been able to play since. At first it was that I didn't want to play, but I THINK I'm ready, but I don't have any more friends that play DND. Do you have any advice on where to go to find a new group? I've never played with people I didn't know well, or at least met once or twice IRL, and I'm a bit nervous of playing with a whole group of people, I don't know. Also, I don't know where to go to find a new group. I think I'm ready to play again, but I don't know where to start.
If anybody has any advice, both for where to find a new group, and how to deal with playing with a group of complete strangers, I'd really appreciate it. I love DND, but I also am very nervous about melting well with the group, and not having a real in into the group, because I've never had to deal with that situation before. I'm also nervous, because, although I THINK, i'm ready, I don't know how I'll handle actually playing DND again since Alex passed away, and I'm nervous about accidentally throwing all my crap at people I don't know.
Thanks for your help strangers. I very much appreciate it.
I mean, robot heaven and human heaven are obviously the same... why would they be different?
Well I would like to watch this video that you made but UA-cam won't let me
What are your thoughts on making Death Saving Throws hidden, with only the player and the GM knowing the answer?
3:07 greys anatomy as an example?
I just want to see robots go to human heaven
Those movies hurt as an autistically powered super transformers fan. Like so much of the rest of the franchise rules and that's what it's known for. It's sad.
I like PC death as a DM and player. It's bot a big deal at all to me.
Weird how this video makes me want to kill off a character. 😈 Actually I do mean this, I like the idea of spending more narrative energy on the death, in advance of the death even. Great ideas.
Character death is bad
Spending an entire game session dead is worse
🥳❤️👍🏿
Is this a sign I should kill off some of my players characters?? 😅