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How to Handle a Character’s Death and Its Fallout in D&D
- Rayne Bakcheious
- Aug 7
- 7 min read
Death is an important part of life, and if you’re leaving it out of your D&D or other TTRPG games, you may find that your story lacks the stakes needed to keep players invested. But a character dying can cause upheaval in your storylines and sometimes hurt feelings as well. If you’re new to it as a DM or GM, this is how I handle character death at my table.
This blog won’t speak to the mechanics of death, just how to deal with it within the plot of your games and the social environment of your player group — so it’s system agnostic advice.
When to allow a character’s death in D&D or other TTRPGs
If you’re reading this preemptively, the first way you could deal with a character’s death is privately. The DM screen is there for a reason, and we have all fudged a dice roll to keep a character alive when everyone (including you) gets in over their heads. Miscalculations happen, and some days the dice just aren’t on your side, but it doesn’t mean someone has to die over it.
Unless it’s an important event in the story, I personally would just not let the players know that they almost died. If the players haven’t intentionally sought out something dangerous, my unwritten rule is that nobody dies outside a “boss fight”. I save character deaths for important story moments to help make sure that when they happen, they mean something.
Some good ideas to have in your back pocket for avoiding untimely character deaths are:
Enemy takes someone captive
Bigger enemy enters and attacks the first enemy
Saved by NPC who dies in their place
Enemy’s weapons breaks somehow
Something distracting happens in the environment
Fudge a roll
Ret-conning after a character's death
If you’re new to running games, don’t beat yourself up over any of this. We’ve all been there, I for sure have, that’s why I have advice to give. Especially if you’re playing D&D 5E in the lower levels, it’s so easy to kill characters. They have like 5 hit points.
Asking for a re-do or ret-con is absolutely something you can do; there’s no shame in going to your players and saying that the combat/event didn’t go the way you had planned. Remind them that you’re new and ask if they’d be alright resetting to before that moment and trying it again. You could even play it as one of the characters having a terrible vision of what could befall them.
How to deal with reviving a character
As The Mummy taught us, “Death is only the beginning.". If your world has access to magic, divine (or demonic) intervention, fae bullshit, advanced alien tech, mystical artifacts, the power of friendship, or any other life-saving literary devices, there’s no reason you can’t bring a beloved character back from the dead.
The key is to not make it cheap. D&D handles this by literally having the revival spells have expensive spell components, but it’s up to you as the DM to not give your players access to unlimited diamonds. However, there are other ways that you can impress on your players that true death is still a possibility in your world. Or that resurrection comes with a price.
Some possibilities:
Resurrection or revivals have even stricter restrictions or more expensive components. They need to have the body blessed or preserved in a special way. The resurrection rituals could take weeks or require a terrible sacrifice.
Souls never come back from death the same. Their attributes or skills shift/lower, they lose memories, or gain permanent disabilities.
Returning from the dead is extremely taboo or illegal in that society. If anyone finds out, there will be repercussions. Learning these magics/techniques will be extremely difficult.
Legends say a spirit/demon/secret society hunts down anyone who comes back to life. Your players will need to defeat them or live a life on the run.
When they come back, they lose a death saving throw or other valuable commodity. Now they only have to fail two to die again, and if they ever lose all of them — that’s it.
If you do choose to alter revivals, announce how it will work up front when your campaign starts and outline the rules for your players. If it should come up in play, talk it out with the table out-of-character before anything is done in-game. Make sure it’s what the player wants; some players may be sad at first and then excited at the opportunity of creating a new character. They may not want to have the character revived.
How to let a character’s death impact your story
If you and the player decide that it’s best for the story that this death stays permanent, don’t rush by that moment. As an adventurer, it’s likely that they died a traumatic death, and it will have an effect on the rest of the party and any NPCs that knew them. Make sure to think about how your NPCs would react to them dying and if it might change any of their attitudes, actions, or goals.
If there’s space in your timeline for the story to get derailed a bit, I’d recommend that you allow that to happen. Create a mini-funeral arc that allows both the players and the characters time to process the death. Maybe they take some time to return their fallen comrade’s body to their loved ones or go on a quick revenge mission to avenge them. This also allows time for them to meet whatever new character gets added to the party.
If your party is on a very tight timeline and has to press forward quickly with the main storyline, or you’re using a prewritten campaign and don’t feel comfortable deviating that much — I still recommend taking a little time to honor a party member’s death. In this case, you might have a “flashback episode” and spend all or part of a session having an in-game funeral where the characters get to talk about their favorite memories of the deceased character.
You could even do small scenes where you allow players to create an extravagant memory that was never part of an in-game session. Then let them play it out and have a small goodbye between them. Having been part of one, it’s a session you never forget.
How to support your players through a character’s death
I want to preclude this with a reminder to talk with your player before making a character’s death permanent. If they’re not done telling that character’s story, try to work with them to find a satisfying path to resurrection.
A character's death can not only be traumatic for the other characters, but sometimes the players as well. When I was playing a Tomb of Annihilation game years ago, we went through a couple TPKs and other deaths, but one of them really didn’t sit well with us. We had been messing around with a trap and got one of the party members sealed in a small stone room. No further checks to be made, no spells up our sleeves, just three feet of stone between us and our friend.
Having to just walk away from him hit us harder than any other character death, and when we were getting together the next week, it was still bothering me. I don’t know what came over me when I saw the cake in Jewel, but I took it up to the counter and asked the lady to please write “R.I.P. Porphyry" on it. She was probably confused by my laughter, but so it goes.
Now you don’t have to get your players a cake if a character dies, but as an adult, you can just get one anytime and ask them to put anything (within reason) on it. However, you choose to do so, you should honor the emotional and time investment that a TTRPG character is. People often put a lot of themselves into their characters, and it’s nice to know they were seen and loved.
How to handle character death in a one-shot
My rule of “no one dies outside a boss fight” is especially applicable to one-shots. If they’ve gone through all the trouble of making the character and making time to play with you — it sucks to have a character die early. When homebrewing your one-shots, always try to stack the most dangerous elements toward the end to help prevent this.
If a player is about to do something that would likely cause their character to die, be very upfront with your warnings. Restate what you think the character is about to attempt, and check that the player is fully aware of the likely consequences. Because TTRPGs rely so much on shared imagination, it’s really easy for something to get missed, and they may not be aware of the danger in what they’re attempting.
For example:
GM: “So just to reiterate, you’re going to attempt to jump from the balcony on the 12th storey onto the getaway car. Unless you’ve got an ability I’m not factoring in here, from that height it will probably kill you…”
Player: “12th?!? Oh, I thought this map said the 2nd floor. Ok, no, can I try to shoot it with a tracker instead?”
But if you’re in the big boss fight, everything’s on the table. If you can, try to let the player find a cool moment for their character to deal damage as they die or sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the party. Letting your characters die a glorious death is half the point of a one-shot, so don’t hold back.
Practice makes perfect
Make sure to give yourself the grace to not get this perfectly right every time. Character deaths are an emotionally charged event, and tensions can get high. If players are upset, again, talk it out outside the game. We’re all here to have fun, and if a ret-con or revival is what it takes to make that happen, it’s really not that big of a deal.
If you feel like you just haven’t gotten enough TPKs under your belt and want to try for some more, I highly encourage you to check out TTRPG Pickup Con. We run one-shots of all varieties every month for gamers of all experience levels. Check out our website to get an invite to the Discord or submit your game today!
Hi, thanks for reading! I’m Rayne Bakcheious, a semi-professional game runner and designer working in Chicago, IL, and online. I run story-driven TTRPGs in a variety of systems, all with an aim towards player collaboration and creating a one-of-a-kind adventure.
If you want to play at my table, I’m available for private events, online game running, and in select public venues. Reach out today for availability!
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