Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Junpei 01-04-05, 02:19 PM	Hello there again! :) All PCs know that the life of an adventurer is hard and, sooner or later, one of our comrades may happen to fall under our enemies' blows. Assuming that his player does not want him to be resurrected and instead switchs to another PC, we generally arrange a burial ceremony and pay a last farewell to our former team-mate. But then, after all this stupid roleplaying thing (just joking :P ), our eyes slowly go over all the equipment that, unfortunately, didn't prevent his premature trip to the netherworld, hence starting negotiations or arguments about who will be the next rightful owner of this flaming burst longsword +3 or that nice pearl of power. So, as you can see, we don't show much respect for our deceased PCs' possessions, but that's our style of play and we like it in this way (more or less :D ). What I'd like to know instead is how YOU handle all the items that a PC inevitably leave behind after his death: do you spread them equally among survivors like they were a common monster's loot? Do you bury them with their ill-fated owner? Maybe do you try to find a way to bring them back to your mate's parents/master/church, or what else? I have done a little search on the boards to find a similar topic but didn't find anything, so excuse me if that's a subject already discussed somewhere else and, in that case, I'd like to look at that "somewhere"! :D
UltimateReality 01-04-05, 02:25 PM	First off - I love your username. As for your question, unless the owner made it known that some or all items in question are specifically supposed to go back to certain people or organizations, we generally divide it up as any other loot -- general division according to monetary value, and who can get the most use out of it.
Thoronmir 01-04-05, 02:36 PM	What I'd like to know instead is how YOU handle all the items that a PC inevitably leave behind after his death: do you spread them equally among survivors like they were a common monster's loot? Do you bury them with their ill-fated owner? Maybe do you try to find a way to bring them back to your mate's parents/master/church, or what else? We actually use a combination of all these approaches. A family heirloom gets returned to the family. A beloved item or weapon gets buried with the fallen hero. Usually only minor items (potions, rings, wands, etc.) get divided among the party and, even then, they go to whoever can best use them. The only exceptions are items that are deemed crucial to our current adventure … things we must have to accomplish our goals.
Lincoln Hills 01-04-05, 03:05 PM	...What I'd like to know instead is how YOU handle all the items that a PC inevitably leave behind after his death: do you spread them equally among survivors like they were a common monster's loot? Do you bury them with their ill-fated owner? Maybe do you try to find a way to bring them back to your mate's parents/master/church, or what else?... This becomes an even bigger problem for the DM than it is for the players. I mean, the players just have to do something that "feels right", but the 3.x DM has to consider, "How do I handle the fact that the dead character's player is going to have a NEW character, and all the other PCs will be toting about at least some of the dead guy's valuables? Do I have to re-figure wealth, or do I allow these guys to profit continually by the deaths of their comrades?" - This is why so many DMs equip their arch-spellcasting foes with disintegration. Cleans up all that nasty ol' excess gear. :smirk:
Megrim_Lord 01-04-05, 03:18 PM	unless the player of the dead PC or the PC had any specific wishes, I let the PC's handle it, and then adjust the newcomer's starting wealth appropriately if at all
Shard of Suzail 01-04-05, 04:58 PM	We have had a lot of campaign deaths, with only a few raise deads. Our campaign is quite loot poor and newly made characters come into play with only two magical items (say, magic armour and sword) of their choice. Those items, however, tend to be very simple and usually just give numerical bonuses. So, though you may lose levels, it is a better choice to stick with your character in our campaign, since the loss of xp is outweighed by the advantage of slowly gathering reasonable items. One player got round this, cleverly, with creating a vow of povery monk and he`s one of the thoughest characters, currently. Anyway, our characters recognise that our great quest is a really nasty one. They have all seen a lot of people die, to the point where the party has few remaining qualms about looting the fallen. The last character to die was our mighty half dragon warrior. He had some nice items, since he was our only melee character for a while. When he died, his items were soon put to good use and i wield his bastard sword as my clerical weapon of choice now. In a soft campaign, where elves dance with fairies and bluebirds of happiness grace the trees, then there exists a space for moral wish washyness when it comes to the items of the dead. In our campaign we have given up even burying the fallen. We just strip them of their items and move on. We average one death every three weeks.
Shard of Suzail 01-04-05, 05:00 PM	Well, actually the last character to die was a fighter guide we had with us. We didnt loot him and he only lasted two sessions. He was a tryout character for a player who wanted to get back into the group. We didnt even know his character's name, he was so new. Still, we left his body in a very nasty room where we had, for the first time, to flee an encounter to remain alive. We usually just scrape a win, but this one was beyond us. As i recall, the fighter fellow was killed in two hits. :eek:
Phrennzy 01-04-05, 05:22 PM	Yeah it is pretty dirty the way we deal with it. If a PC dies in our group, they seem to get tossed into a junk pile as garbage. The PC is stripped of anything valuable and that's it. I tried to play up the funeral and how the townsfolk were saddened by the death of the paladin, but the players were just like "Yeah yeah, boo hoo, move on." And so it goes... The Circle of Life...and it moves us alllllllllllllllll
Faragon 01-04-05, 05:31 PM	I'm of the mindset that a character is buried with his posessions, with the following exceptions: - Equipment that the party needs for immediate survival (Rope if there's many chasms, lightsource, a sword if there's people without any weapons like in a breakout, the like) - Equipment that the party is to take to a 3rd party person (ie, relatives of the fallen comrade)
Junpei 01-04-05, 08:07 PM	That's a pretty clever tactic, Lincoln Hills, however the 3.5 disintegrate spell's text clearly states: "(...) A disintegrated creature’s equipment is unaffected.". Don't remember what 3.0 says, though... Anyway, I feel a little relieved: I tought that our party was a little too coldhearted, but the truth is that... well, almost no one of our PCs has a solid background involving alive parents or friends who care for their health nor do they usually possess any item of particularly relevance for themselves. Furthermore, our Master allow new PCs to buy equipment for a maximum of 1/4 of the effective wealth suggested by the DMG, and that's a rather fresh decision (before, we got the standard wealth of a 1st level character no matter what was our real level), so maybe it's comprehensible why sometimes we argue harshly upon an item as simple as a ring of protection +1, or a pair of gauntlets of ogre power... :D
krichaiushii 01-04-05, 08:40 PM	It occurs to me that a fiendish DM would take advantage of those parties that loot and leave the corpses of fallen comrades (versus those that conduct funerary ceremonies of some sort). Undead are fun - ghosts and revenants, in particular - perhaps the former PC believes the rest of the party should have done something for him. Cloned and turned evil by the BBEG (helms of opposite alignment, perhaps). Raised and turned evil by the BBEG (convince him that the rest of the party set him up to die so they could take his stuff. Or a helm of opposite alignment). Hopefully said fiendish DM doesn't have elaborate funerary customs for his assorted religions. That could get painful. Or be fun. Or both. Just some thoughts.
ShadowDragon8685 01-04-05, 08:58 PM	If the deceased has any wishes regarding the disposal of his remains and his belongings, they will be followed, even if I have to resort to Geas/Questing the rest of the party to do it. If he didn't have any particular wishes or desires, but did have next of kin that we can access (and actually gave a rat's south-bound end about him,) then his money or armor and weapon of choice go to them, and we (his faithful companions) put the rest of his items to good use in bringing down the sons of snakes that did him in. If he has no next of kin, or they hated him, we take it all for ourselves, and in good memory use his faithful sword to avenge him. In any case, without desires for the disposal of his remains, we will do so in the most dramatic way possible - if we're on a clifftop, for example, building a huge pyre and letting the wind sweep his ashes to the sea/plains below would be fitting. In a jungle ruin, we'll inter him alongside the long-dead original owners. In a city, we have him buried alongside the nobility and royalty. (By sneaking into the graveyard and using a few spells, if nessessary.)
UltimateReality 01-04-05, 10:28 PM	I tried to play up the funeral and how the townsfolk were saddened by the death of the paladin, but the players were just like "Yeah yeah, boo hoo, move on." I remember in one adventure, a fellow PC died in the basement of a bar, fighting off a green dragon. My character was the only one who contacted the church to get clerics, and tried to move him to a position where they could get at him. (Underground lair with dead halfling=not easy for human Wiz with Str 8.) The entire rest of the party went to do...um, after-adventure stuff like sell loot and get drunk. After that I pretty much gave up. I remember one player tried to make a will for his character too, so he could have his next char be related to his first one and give him some of the equipment. The DM foiled this one by holding off killing him until we were waaay out of town. (That particular PC had financed a few carts, horses, and supplies for our expedition, so that was a bonus for us. He didn't get on too well with his family, which I suppose is why they never came looking for him -- or us.)
Phrennzy 01-04-05, 11:58 PM	I remember in one adventure, a fellow PC died in the basement of a bar, fighting off a green dragon. That's a frickin' crazy bar! :looloo: :crazy:
Tylden 01-05-05, 01:47 AM	In our campaigns we generally bury bodies with the weapons and armor, the rest is divided up between the other pc's. Unless the character states otherwise than we follow his/her wishes.
MonkeyKing 01-05-05, 01:50 AM	In our group we follow a very strict policy on PC deaths: The PC in question is stripped of all useful items (magical or non-magical), their corpse is then rolled under the nearest bush and a little dirt or sand is kicked over them. Should a bush be not fairly immeadiately available the corpse may be disposed of in some other befitting manner, dumped in a river or thrown off a cliff etc... A few words maybe said at this time based upon how loved the character was within the party. The items are then divided into a first come, first save basis then afterwards arguments are presented to further apportion the items based on merit. Once resolved, the adventure is continued and the remaining group eagerly await their next 'wandering' member. Tis the circle of adventuring life: Sun rise, sun set, sun is stripped of all wothwhile possessions... Sun rise, sun set... Yes we have no bananas, bananas, we have none today...
ShadowDragon8685 01-05-05, 02:14 AM	Wow Monkey... That's... Pretty damn callous. If I were in your party, I'd make the ominious threat that none of you guys are euologizing me, even if I have to take you out with me to ensure it... o.o
Junpei 01-05-05, 04:40 AM	That's a frickin' crazy bar! :looloo: :crazy: Heh, maybe the green dragon was the one in charge of brewing the drinks... in Willy Wonka's style... Slurm anyone? :D By the way, during our last game session we were thinking of a way to dispose of our dead cleric of Selune, and finally everyone seemed to agree that cremation was the best option available: however, we're currently exploring miles and miles of stony Underdark's tunnels and there were no wood or oil at hand, so the arcane monk resorted to his... burning hands. Yuck, I could only imagine the stench that the corpse gave off, and how long a burning hands spell may take to completely burn down a medium size creature: guess we must consider ourselves VERY lucky for having not drawn the attention of all wandering monsters in a thousand foot range... :rolleyes:
RabbitoutofaHat 01-05-05, 05:53 AM	We don't even wait for the body to go cold before looting it, if it's possible to win an encounter by prying the wand of fireball from the arrow filled bards hand then we'll do it. If not we grab all we can and run. Assuming we had time to deal with the dead player we'd take enough hair to revive him mulch, burn and bury his corpse. Only after we nab every last possesion on a first come first serve basis. The only time we ever leave corpse intact is for necromancy and thats a rare occurance as most party members are against it, with the exception of the one time a zombie with disguise undead collected his part of the reward.
On_the_wings_of_TPK 01-05-05, 12:13 PM	That's a frickin' crazy bar! :looloo: :crazy: Actually, the local mafia ran that bar. They did business in the sewers. The dragon was a young or juvenile one....everyone was happy to see the dragon go. (Especially the bar owner, seeing as the thing smashed in part of his front wall.) Yeah the bar was kinda crazy. *grins* That's why it was cool. -UltimateReality, masquerading as her DM! :evillaugh (Why is there no ninja smiley? We need a ninja smiley!) (Okay, so really I'm too lazy to log him out, log me in, post once, log myself out and log him in again.)
digoraccoon 01-05-05, 12:36 PM	Slurm anyone? :D : Mmmm... slurm. :D Fry: "Must save friends... but want Slurm." Bender: "Are we boned?" Lela: "Yeah, we're boned."
Bluntpencil2001 01-06-05, 06:50 PM	For practical reasons in DnD, please CREMATE YOUR DEAD! Keep a lock of hair for resurrection purposes if you wish, but to prevent wily necromancers from bringing your dead buddies back to haunt you, please do NOT bury him/her! Or instead of cremation, a good disintegrate spell on the corpse would work well...