How do you handle a player death at mid-session or towards the end of a campaign, specifically when it would be difficult to throw in a replacement character with a boat-load of XP and some ramshackle reason as to why they're there ? Do you have the player sit out or what?

Re-roll. I wouldn't exclude anybody. Lando showed up in Empire. Nothing wrong with a new PC.

38 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Re-roll. I wouldn't exclude anybody. Lando showed up in Empire. Nothing wrong with a new PC.

I would say Lando was an NPC that became a PC when a new player joined the game. More than once I've asked a new player how thye would feel about taking over an established NPC, and they're usually fine with it. Allow them to build the character from scratch, as long as if fits with what the group has already learned about him.

"So this Lando guy, could he be a badass pilot?"

"Sure, Billy Dee. Really all we've seen so far is that he's slick and charming, so whatever you want to add to that is fine."

Never let "ramshackle reason" be an argument against adding a new PC to replace a dead one. Everyone is at the table to have fun, and to exclude someone just because their character died is extremely uncool. Just tell the other players, "you meet this guy in a cantina/jail cell/starship crash/whatever, and you decide to let him team up with you. We can sit around arguing about how "realistic" that is, or we can all get on with the game and enjoy our evening". Realism should never win out over everyone getting to have fun.

Talk it out with the group and the player whose character has recently met their demise.

As a player , I would prefer to sit on the sidelines until a new PC can be introduced organically. That and the player may need some time to mourn.

And at other times that same player may want to insert a new PC immediately.

This may actually be a topic more appropriate to be had among your group. Players can be pretty smart people and they may come up with a solution or consensus that works best for all of them.

22 minutes ago, Krieger22 said:

Never let "ramshackle reason" be an argument against adding a new PC to replace a dead one. Everyone is at the table to have fun, and to exclude someone just because their character died is extremely uncool. Just tell the other players, "you meet this guy in a cantina/jail cell/starship crash/whatever, and you decide to let him team up with you. We can sit around arguing about how "realistic" that is, or we can all get on with the game and enjoy our evening". Realism should never win out over everyone getting to have fun.

Go the Paranoia route. No matter where the Troublehooters are, the replacement clone shows up - a rocket from Alpha Complex, a drilling machine bursts up through the ground, they parachute into the dungeon. How did they get there? "I'm sorry, that information is restricted." "But we're on a space bubble billions of light years from civilization" "Are you questioning Friend Computer?"

Or, more seriously - don't kill them. At least not for the moment. Let them finish out the game with the old character with the understanding that there will be an amazing blaze of glory for him to throw himself on at the climax, saving the party and the day. And the new guy will come in at the start of next session.

. . . . and then be sure to quickly write in a blaze of glory that will shake the pillars of heaven.

Not having killed off any characters yet as a GM, I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't put everything on pause mid-session while one player builds up a PC. At the least I'd hand them an NPC to run for the rest of the game so the session can move on.

There are so many ways to avoid actual PC death, I'm kind of surprised when I hear about it coming up. It's far simpler to, say, capture even a single PC and then run a simultaneous rescue/breakout (splitting the party) to keep everyone involved.

Ya, we'll be discussing it if it happens. I'm just interested in everyone else's experience.

If you've ever read Darths and Droids, then the GM regularly hands over NPCs to players when their PCs die. Of course, that's using a made up system, where presumably PCs and NPCs are made using the same method, but still.

If you absolutely wanted to avoid a reroll or taking over a NPC you could have the dead PC's near-dead body reclaimed by the BBEG. It steals the threat of death and any serious consequences of battle, but it's an option I suppose.

The BBEG could throw the PC in bacta. Retconn that the PC was hanging onto life by a string. Then have it be a rescue mission to save the revived PC. Maybe cost the PC some XP as a death penalty (if you're going to bend the rules a bit might as well make it hurt a little, right?).

Not something I would do. Death needs to be a reality of the game, that is, unless a PC's death is a scripted event (which should only be done with the player's consent or request). So, while I don't recommend it, in the end, it's really up to you and your players.

I've had to do this on occasion, and it's worked best for us to talk with the group and see if a commonality can be found in existing PC backgrounds or from other aspects of the story so far. I usually find the average XP of the remaining PCs and let the new character be built to that spec.

It's a bit difficult to do this mid-scene if the group is in hyperspace or something, but there's almost always a way to get a new PC into the game quickly. We see happenstance bringing together important characters all the time in canon, no reason a GM couldn't pull the same!

11 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Re-roll. I wouldn't exclude anybody. Lando showed up in Empire. Nothing wrong with a new PC.

This.

I actually assume that Anakin is a replacement character for when Qui-gons player decided he didn't like Qui-gon after the first session and wanted to reroll.

For me character death is a "when it happens, where it happens" sort of thing. Unless the character IS the macguffin of the adventure in which case deus ex machina will come into play in some form.

In our group, when the character dies, the player accepts the fate of the dice (or their bad choices) and comes up with something new while the rest of the group soldiers on without that particular skillset. Once the character has a framework (or semi-complete character). I'll work them into the story as narratively as possible and move forward from there, giving leeway on dicerolls/gear/ etc to the new character for things that come up. Once the session ends they can then formalize the character and define those blurry edges.

I would only hold off a death until the climax as a scripted event that the Player was 100% in agreement with.

I did not have a PC death experience yet, but had one of my PCs asking me to go for a new character just before the campaign climax. She picked a Wookie character, which seemed like a good idea at the beginning, but was then struggling as she wanted to be more invovled in social encounters and grifting.

The problem was that we were playing through the Long Arm of the Hutt and were in between two sessions with the story well underway. The PCs were on a ship on the way to Tatooine and were working on the plan to get into the Hutt's palace and kill the poor bastard. It was difficult to introduce a new PC and get rid of an existing one just like that.

We've set down with the player to build a new PC, but agreed that she would carry on with the existing one for a session or two more until I find a moment for her to switch to the new PC. She did not know when and how this would happen to keep things ineresting. I've actually convinced her that killing off the existing PC on purpose would not be the best solution (not to have a wookie with a death wish at the table), but did not rule that this can happen completely.

Here is how I've dealt with this:

Our PCs where in the middle of the climactic fight with their Hutt nemesis and his minions inside the palace. There were quite a few NPCs around (like in Jabba's palace in Ep VI) - servants, bodyguards, bounty hunters and all sorts of fringes etc. some of them fled, some joined with Hutt's forces to fight with the PCs, some just tried to hide.

It was a tough battle - the PCs would have eventually prevailed but high cost. The wookie PC was cornered and almost incapacitaed and I thought this would be the perfect time to introduce her new PC. Just when the gravely wounded Hutt was about to make a final (and most likely critical) attempt to take the Wookie with him to the grave, a cloaked figure jumped out unexpectedly from one of the booths to shoot off the chain holding a huge chandelier, which crashed on the hutt killing it.

This was our new bothan thief PC. Helping out the PCs in trouble and getting shared obligation over killing a hutt was a neat way to inroduce a character to the group, so everyone was happy about it.

I took control of the wookie as NPC - he decided not to venture with the party but get back to his family (though I may re-introduce him as NPC once again in future).

I've found PC deaths to be rare using this system. We've had one, but it was a narrative development/decision having nothing to do with dice rolling.

The new Savage Rifts has a new mechanic that I think I am going to steal called Blaze of Glory. Basically in SW the character declares a blaze of glory, and by the end of the session they are going to die. They receive extra Bennie's to see them through, and when the player decides it's time for their character to die the player and the GM narrate what happened. One of the examples that SPF gives is a big suit of powered armor gets "killed" buy this giant combat robot. With the powered armor got the robot would make short work of the rest of the party. So the powered armor trooper declares blaze of glory. For his death the player says that he is able to survive, charging up and grappling the robot and sets his nuclear reactor to explode killing off the robot too.

In Star wars the best Glaze of Glory example I can think of is the A-Wing pilot crashing into the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer.

Salcor

I hate resurrection and cheating death in any system. I would much prefer death over the gm going soft to spare my feelings and as a gm I feel that not including death removes some of the emotional pathos and drains all the tension and feelings of accomplishment from combat. So I'm biased, but I say kill the pc if it comes down to it. But make it as badass as possible. We're not here to role-play slowly dying of a disease on a hospital bed.

I can get a pc killed, take 5 to 15 minutes to mourn, and then stat up a new guy before the end of the session and some players may be like that, but others may need help. If they need a break, let them take a break. Some people may prefer to just watch for the rest of the session; they are with friends after all. After the combat or whatever event got the pc killed is over, you can have your best player help the mourning pc make a new character while you slow the pace of the session to a crawl; give the other pc's some time to for unimportant role-playing, maybe hold a service for the dead character. Encourage everyone to think of ways their pc's might already be connected to the new character, so that they have a reason to trust the new guy (Think of Lando and Han as mentioned above... actually that might be a bad example for trust). Then have everyone think of reasons that they need the new guy, so they actually want him/her around.

As for the amount of xp to give the new character, well that is solely based on your judgement of the player. Some people would have no problem playing a beginning character and could even make the character useful in an experienced party, but most players won't be like that. I would suggest giving at least some extra xp, up to the xp level of the dead pc, especially if the player made the death heroic and awesome and didn't sulk (too much) over it.

On 25.1.2017 at 5:54 PM, Lukey84 said:

How do you handle a player death at mid-session or towards the end of a campaign, specifically when it would be difficult to throw in a replacement character with a boat-load of XP and some ramshackle reason as to why they're there ? Do you have the player sit out or what?

Nothing wrong with bringing a new one in, but there is naturally always the option to just give the player an npc as intermediate solution for the rest of the session.

Player got killed without escape pods, nor ejection seat during a large space battle? Congratulation, you keep playing now as Admiral Ackbar and are in control of the battle. Here have fistfull of yellow dice, because that dude certainly has leadership and warfare on 5 and his presence is 3, while his int is 5. Have fun. Just let me get out my armada minis to show you a more clear picture of the battlefield now that you are commanding the home one and the battle. *g*

At least some NPCs should always be avaible, even when you might not always have fan favorites like Ackbar at hand. This works btw as well when the group is splitting up during the campaign, if there are some npcs tagging along, you can hand them out, upgrade maybe one of the minion soldiers who tag alone to rivals or upgrade one of the PCs droid into being a little more active on his own as one player takes over control of that character.

But keep in mind not to overuse this either, you still usually don't want to wipe your group, nor do you want to play 6 months of your campaign slit up which everyone having a bunch of npcs to play, because usually players do enjoy playing their own characters. Still, it a nice tool to keep everyone entertained when their own characters are not avaible.

Just will leave this link here to the relevant episode of Matt Mercer's youtube blog talking about PC deaths. most of the tips are quite obvious, but for any new GM it is still a very useful and inspirational resource.

One of my players died in combat. To be fair, it was at the climax of the adventure and he went up against a very difficult NPC without a lot of support. He came back next session with a new character and we worked the new character's backstory into the overall campaign.

It's important that PCs not die at anti-climactic moments but it's important to the tension of the game that a player not feel invulnerable. Player characters shouldn't die because they slipped on a narrow ledge but they shouldn't walk into a boss battle showdown and be 100% confident they're going to win. If you want to avoid deaths at an inopportune time in the game, don't have the PCs go up against the adventure's primary nemesis at the half-way point in the session .

However, if for some reason a PC is killed, I suggest:

1. Pause the game.
2. Solicit the players for feedback regarding how they want to continue.

One of three things will happen:

1. The game will continue while the player with the dead character works on a new player character. When the character is ready, the player will rejoin.
2. The player with the dead character will continue in the campaign using a pre-existing ally NPC.
3. The game will break early so that the player can jump right in with a new character next session.

Personally I am a firm believer of the dice being the arbiter of death; some characters go out in a blaze of glory, some die having their throat slit uncermoniously; it adds a certain grit to our Age of Rebellion campaign where death can be around every corner. Death isn't frequent, but it's shocking when it does happen.

Last session we were holding a important front in With Friends Like this; without any particular spoilers the battle was really vicious and the Mandolorian PC ended up getting swarmed by an increasing number of stormtroopers; the progressive advantages, crits and minor wound damage was wearing him down, up to the point where he took a grenade to the face that blew his helmet off and took his eyesight. Our PC's fought our way to within short distance of him and we were shouting for him to come this way but given his no nonsense personality know that we couldn't take on that many, so he took his staff, jabbed it streight into the repulser generator of the lift and send him and all the storm troopers aboard to a lavary death. What made it surprising was when it happened; the character had lost everything, his succession rites to his clan; his family and we had expected that he would have shot at taking those rights back. But instead he became a tragic hero that died with dignity, despite the bolts pinging off his armour.

That scene was unintentionally planned; but when it came around to his slot we had a breath discussion of what would happen; he was still saveable, but figured that if he didn't do something to delay the advance that the remaining active members of the squad would die.

On the flipside, the Wookie of the party Galdaos stumbled upon Mara Jade on a Hutt Badge in the amidst of assassination. Being the only one who could respond he went to fight her off, only to get stabbed with a poison that staggered him, and hit with a crit "The End is Nigh", basically she cut his throat and left him to bleed out as the PC couldn't make any check to heal. His last action as a PC was to gurgle in the com that the bridge had fallen, which enabled the party to stop the ship hyperspacing right into the sun...

Fortunately I have not had this happen yet, but my advice would be to let the Player get into the action again quickly.

There are at least as many ways to do it, as there are to leave your lover. One of the easiest would be a character that is an old acquaintance or relative or something of the party: the deceased character's twin sibling, a former business associate of another character, ... whatever. As long as there is one (or more) character who can vouch for him, there is quick acceptance in the party.

There is nothing wrong with having players create backup characters in advance just in case their character is killed or otherwise rendered unplayable. Some players even enjoy making a variety of different characters, especially if given more than the basic starting XP to spend (as starting characters tend to look very similar if everybody in the group is a proponent of spending as much on Characteristics as possible).