People sit around a table to play a game of Dungeons & Dragons to have fun. Heroic deeds, exciting adventures, and hilarious moments are all part of the experience — but so is death. The risk of player characters dying adds important stakes to a D&D story, but because it feels terrible to have your character die as a player, that makes it very difficult for Dungeon Masters to navigate that aspect of the game.
The latest episode of Critical Role’s Campaign 4 proves this. Episode 37 of Campaign 4, “Death to Tyrants,” is all about character death. Without going too much into the details of the campaign’s complex plot, one of the characters, Wicander “Wick” Halovar (played by Sam Riegel), is the target of an assassination attempt orchestrated by his family.
The entire episode consists of four long combat rounds in which Riegel’s character gets downed (reduced to 0 hit points or less) multiple times as his friends try to save him. However, there comes a moment when Wicander’s fate seems sealed as Riegel fails one last death saving throw. DM Brennan Lee Mulligan’s decision at that moment was interesting, to say the least.
It made me reflect on how hard it is for a DM to balance the “fairness” that should be present in a D&D game with the natural impulse to preserve a story and its characters, making sure everybody goes home happy. What is the best way to handle character death, especially if that character is important to the story? Watching the episode, it seems Mulligan was trying to give Riegel every advantage possible to make sure Wicander survived his ordeal.
At the beginning of combat, Wicander was hit by a Hold Person spell (cast by his own sister!), which is a nasty way to start. The spell inflicts the Paralyzed condition, meaning that every attack hitting the target from within five feet is a critical hit. Once a character is downed, critical hits cause them to automatically fail two death saving throws; after three failed saves, the character is dead for good.
Hold Person requires a Wisdom saving throw when it’s cast. If the target fails, they roll again at the end of each of their following turns to try and break free from the spell (from 5th edition onwards, D&D tends to be more lenient with this type of spell). When it came to Wicander’s first turn after being hit with the spell, Mulligan suggested that Riegel could delay his turn (an action that no longer exists in the 5th edition rules or in the 2024 update but remains a common house rule).
Extract — continue reading at the source.
