A question about Dungeons & Dragons

[Nackl of Gilmed]

I've never played DnD, but I'm interested in giving it a go at some point. Just wondering about a specific question that's occurred to me, and Googling it only came back with all those horror stories of good Christian kids compelled to sin and suicide.

Anyway the question is: if your character dies in a game, are you expected to retire that character and start anew next time, or do you just bring them back?

 

[Ace of Spades]

As with most things in DnD, it depends on the DM. Sometimes they'll make a quest where your comrades rescue you from the underworld or some equivalent of that, or you just re-roll a character.

 

[artanis_neravar]

It depends on the DM (Dungeon Master) any rule in the books are just guidelines. The DM is god, and thier rules usually go

 

[alloneword]

Your DM (because most do this in my experience) will only allow the deceased character to come back to life if a True Resurrection spell is cast. Material components aside this is sometimes tricky to pull off.

However! As a rule of thumb you should always keep dead characters because you never know when you are going to have the opportunity to play them in another game with another DM etc. I can tell you personally that my "Retired Characters" binder is getting larger with each passing month.

 

[larysalove]

Our DM has us create a new character. Character dies, unfortunate to be you.

 

[Nightmonger]

I recommend trying out a podcast called Critical hit (find it on itunes or through http://www.majorspoilers.com/) it is based on the current edition (4th) and has both newbie players and veteran players in the game they take you through the basics and it has a very good story it is hours of entertainment (literally hours average episode length is about an hour and a half they are now on episode 96) Check it out !!! and that goes for everyone!!

And to answer your question it does depend on the DM/GM and the context in which your character dies and also your own opinion if you want the character to die and move on your DM/Gm should respect that and vice versa for the other side of the coin

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

It depends upon the DM, as said before in this thread and will be said countless times after. A DM may allow you to bring back a character (there are spells in place to allow such a thing) or they may make you roll up a new one.

 

[Nackl of Gilmed]

That's very interesting, how much influence the DM and the players have over things like that. I'm definitely gonna check out Critical Hit. Thanks for the answers, Escapists.

 

[DaJoW]

There are spells to resurrect you, but in general it's good to have a backup character from the start. That way, if you die and there is no resurrection to be found, you can just jump right back in. It's pretty dull getting killed in a non-resurrectable manner and then just watch the others play for an hour or two :/

 

[imperialus]

Depends, mostly on the level of the party and the resources that they have access to as well as the edition you are playing.

In 1st edition Clerics have access to a 5th level spell called raise dead and a 7th level spell called resurrection. In order to cast a 5th level spell though a Cleric needs to be at least 9th level. We're talking years of playtime to reach that point. Even then it's not a sure thing. The dead character needs to make a special saving throw to actually come back to life. If he fails that then you're out of luck. Sometimes DM's will have NPC clerics who can be paid to bring characters back to life but you're looking at thousands and thousands of goldpieces to do so.

In 4th edition, it's quite a bit easier. Raise dead is a level 8 ritual (still high but characters advance faster in 4th ed) that costs 680 GP with a component cost of 500 GP. Buy the ritual, perform it and you're buddy is back and kicking.

2nd edition was a lot like 1st and 3rd edition (and by extention pathfinder) falls somewhere in the middle.

For the most part in earlier (pre 3rd ed.) editions of D&D dead was dead. You rolled up a new character. Generally DM's would let you have the new character begin with between 60 and 80% of the experience you had when you died (or 60-80% of the average experience of the rest of the party) but there were no hard and fast rules for this. I even had DM's who made me start again at 1st level which really stung.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Hmmm, was about to s

 

[nukethetuna]

In general, the DM I play with makes it so if you die, your character is gone for good, but eases that by giving us a lot of chances to avoid outright death if we're not being complete retards.

But like everyone has said, pretty much up to the DM and rulebook.

 

[Nieroshai]

It depends on the DM. With my DM, the rule is that you must stay dead until the rest of the party can take you to a temple and revive you. I've also played where "death" is actually being severely wounded and incapacitated, and after the dungeon or before if the party wishes, they drag the fallen player to a medic. Permadeath is done too, in which case you'll have to make a new character, but most DMs think this slows a game down and will try to find an excuse for you to survive.