It should go without saying that death is an important part of RPGs. Not just the death of monsters and bad guys, but death of characters. That isn't to say that character death should be particularly common (though in some games it is), but it should always be there, lurking in the background. After all, the rules for death and dying don't just apply to the bad guys. For an RPG to really feel engaging, you need the threat of death, or the players' actions aren't realistic: "Oh man, this dragon is hitting us pretty hard! If we don't kill it soon, we may all end up... going unconscious for 8 hours and then having to try again."
In this post, I'll talk about PC death from both sides of the GM screen, NPC death, and raising the dead.
As a GM, you don't want to be killing your players off all the time. It makes it hard to run a coherent campaign, and it may drive off members of your gaming group. But you also need the threat of death looming in every battle or it feels inconsequential and easy. This is a difficult balance to strike, but it must be done.
The various editions of D&D have gradually increased the difficulty of killing players. In 1st and 2nd Ed., 0 hp meant death, but there were optional rules and homebrew rules that gave characters a pocket of hp below 0, allowing them to recover from otherwise fatal wounds. In 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder, that idea of negative hp was incorporated into the core rules (in 3.X, you die at -10 hp, in Pathfinder you can go to your negative Constitution value), including rules for bleeding out or stabilizing while unconscious. In 4th Edition, they have the "3 strikes and you're out" death save rules, and you can go to negative hp equal to half your total (which is a lot). Plus, the growing power and hp of the player characters from edition to edition just makes them harder to kill in general. In Pathfinder, most classes have higher hit dice than in 3.5, and in 4th Ed. the players have ridiculous buckets of hit points and healing surges. It can be argued that the safety net has grown a little too big: during Rikkit's climactic battle with his enemy, Blackhide, Rikkit was knocked unconscious and healed back to consciousness at least four or five times in a row, to the point where the player thought it was a little weird that he wasn't dead yet.
So player death is less likely to happen in any given battle, but it is still a possibility. The question for the GM is: when is it okay for a player to die?
Generally speaking, you want to keep players from experiencing pointless, mundane deaths. It's okay to bend the rules and fudge the numbers to avoid this. Killed in the first round of battle by a kobold rogue's sneak attack? Well, maybe just knocked out. Run over by a cart while crossing a street? Very Dostoevsky, but no, you were knocked out of the way just in time. Swept away by the current after a natural 1 during a routine river crossing? Oh, turns out there's a rock down there, make a reflex save to grab hold of it as you pass.
Once, my players were fighting the wax effigy of a dead queen and her six ghoul retainers in a tomb. The party wizard was alone against three ghouls whilst the rest of the party dealt with the other monsters. The wizard was paralyzed and by all rights the ghouls should have all delivered a coup de grâce and began feasting, but that would have been an inglorious death. Instead I had each of the ghouls make an attack against the paralyzed wizard and broadly hinted that if she didn't get some assistance from the rest of the party, she would be dead meat next round.
You should allow a player to die during a particularly difficult or climactic battle, while performing a risky maneuver, or as the result of doing something stupid. I think it's the stupid one that comes up most often for me.
As a GM, I have only ever presided over three PC deaths:
The party - a wizard, a druid, and a ranger - were hanging out in a city. While the druid's player was outside grilling steaks for us, the ranger (whose player gets bored easily) decided to contact the local thieves' guild to arrange a hit on the druid's badger companion. He succeeded in finding some thieves, but during the meeting something about his offer skeeved them out and they ran. Later, when the party broke into a thieves' guild hideout, one of the thieves there pointed and said "There's that crazy guy who tried to get us to kill a badger!" The druid held onto this bit of information until the time was right, and he knocked the ranger off of a mast and killed him.
In another campaign, the party was fighting their way through the tower of a paranoid wizard, besting many devious traps and guardians on their way up. In his abandoned bedroom, they found what appeared to be a spellbook, but when the party wizard opened it to read it, a loud voice boomed out "THIEF!" and he was knocked into negative hp by explosive runes. After being healed to just above 0 hp, the wizard opened to the next page of the trapped spellbook and was killed by a second explosive runes spell.
I should note that a good GM should never bend the rules to ensure the death of a player, no matter how stupid or wrong-headed he may think the player is being. People get away with stupid stuff all the time.
Of course, the world of RPGs is governed not just by the GM, but by the dice. And sometimes, the dice really want someone dead. Sharp minded readers may remember the sad death of Crowdance. Filth fever is not the most glorious way for a character to die, but by all rights he shouldn't have. Crowdance had a formidable constitution and a good fortitude save, but he rolled more 1s, 2s, and 3s on his saving throws than I have ever seen in close conjunction. Once it was up to the dice, there was nothing I could do without compromising the integrity of the game.
Each GM will have his own line for whether or not a PC should be allowed to die. Some will leave it entirely up to the dice, and I respect that - I try to do it as much as possible, but I can't help but fudge things behind the screen in dire circumstances. Some will think I should have found some way to intervene and keep the druid from killing the ranger who tried to kill his badger. Some will think I should have replaced the book full of explosive runes with an actual spellbook. Some will think I should have had Crowdance wander into a benevolent, mid-level druid who could cure his disease. In the end, it is up to the GM, but he should always remember that it is not the goal of the GM to kill his own players.
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On the player side, death is an interesting opportunity. If you are a high enough level, your party may be able to afford to raise you from the dead through magic. This should not be looked on as simply a bigger, more expensive band-aid; dying and returning to life should be a major experience, one that shapes your character in ways you may not have been otherwise.
I once played a dwarf rogue in a Norse-themed campaign. Unfortunately, this dwarf met his end on the blade of a skeletal champion's greataxe. Specifically, the skeleton rolled two natural 20s in a row and beheaded me. Fortunately, I had gotten on Odin's good side earlier by carrying a holy symbol of Odin out of a dank dungeon. Thanks to a 00 roll on a d100, Odin took notice and reincarnated me. After that divine experience, the dwarf rogue decided that maybe after this adventuring stuff was over he'd retire and build a temple.
In my campaigns, I like to emphasize that resurrection is an extremely painful and strenuous process, as your soul is wrenched from the outer planes and stuffed back into a corporeal body whilst your bones, muscle, and skin are all knit back together. In older editions, a resurrected character had to succeed on a "system shock" roll or perish, and you could only be brought back to life a number of times equal to your original Constitution score.
When a fellow character - or even a beloved NPC - dies, it can initiate a quest to return that character to life. Preserving all or part of the corpse, raising the necessary funds, obtaining a sufficiently valuable diamond for the ritual, and seeking out a high-enough-level cleric to cast the spell are all obstacles that must be overcome and could lead to interesting adventures (I think Order of the Stick did a good job with this in one of their storylines. If you like overly-wordy D&D-themed stick figure comics as much as I do, check that out). The death of the DMPC Sir Hardrig in my sandbox campaign became a major driving motivation for one of the characters.
Finally, and perhaps most obviously, character death gives you a chance to try out a new character concept. It's sort of a consolation prize, but hey - not all deaths can be feasibly reversed. If you were really attached to the character that died, you can try it again in a new campaign or (as is often the case, it seems) introduce a new character who is suspiciously like your old one.
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Well that's about it. Character death is generally something to avoid dishing out willy-nilly, but not something to prevent altogether. It is an important part of the game that cements the idea of *consequences* in the game world, plus it can lead to a lot of different character opportunities and, of course, interesting stories your gaming group will refer back to over and over again.
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-your reincarnated d20 despot
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