D&D: How do NPCs die?
DMs, how do you decide if an NPC dies at 0HP (like a monster) or drops unconscious and starts making death saves (like a PC)? I'm a newish DM (been playing off and on for 10 years but never run a campaign that had legs until now), and our last session ended with the death of a recently-introduced barbarian NPC at the hands of another barbarian NPC. I made some other missteps but the big one seems to be this death - some of the players were shocked that barb #2 had done enough damage to kill barb #1 outright. I just had #1 die because she hit 0HP, and it hadn't really occurred to me that she should have gotten death saves.
Any rules of thumb for how you handle NPC death/dying? Or, if you're a player, how you would expect/like to see it handled? Happy to provide more context if desired.
Thanks!
Dead if it doesn't matter to the fun, "dying" if it would improve the fun.
IE: Having the players rush to save a beloved NPC that is in a "dying" state could add drama and tension to a story.
Yeah I suppose one answer is to just fall back on the golden rule of D&D (what's most fun/enjoyable). Thanks for the reminder.
My group's general rule, to stay consistent since we all take turns DM'ing, is that when an NPC hits 0 they are dead.
Having a consistent ruling could definitely help. There was a situation earlier in the campaign where an NPC the party had been tracking down was found unconscious, healed, then went down again shortly after and I had him make death saves. I guess that NPC getting death saves and the barbarian in the OP not getting saves was what threw off my players.
+1 to "it depends." Generally, if it's a character players are trying to kill, I won't bother with death saves because the players could just attack them a couple times, but if it's someone the players don't want dead, they will get death saves. This holds true for anything from NPCs to monsters. I've had a kobold make death saves before because the party wanted to interrogate it
Honestly depends on your game and group.
Like the other posts say, you can keep it consistent and tell your players what the rules are, that'd be more fitting in a game where the game is a little more tactical and focused on the combat.
Or if your game isn't all that combat focused then think about what'd be cool or interesting and do that.
If your game is REALLY narrative and not combat focused then abstract whole combats away to a couple of skill rolls and roleplay it out. Or as combats draw towards an obvious conclusion have the enemies either automatically win or lose, or maybe run away.
It's your game, feel free to experiment and try stuff.
I generally hide it in a kind of "if it matters, then it matters" situation
If a player wants to know if someone is dead or merely unconscious, then they can get up close and roll a medicine check. If we've been wishy-washy with time since they fell, I'll go by rule of fun - if it would be more fun for them to get a chance to do something, then sure, they're unconscious. If it's more fun for them to have suffered a loss, then they have died.
It's sort of as if every NPC "falls unconscious" and "makes death saving throws" in the background. Except, without intervention, they will always die. Unless it would be more compelling for them to miraculously recover, then they might, if nobody confirmed they actually died.
The vast majority of the time it makes no difference to the players, and they assume NPCs are dead immediately, and that's generally fine.
I'm also not going to be an asshole about NPCs healing downed companions, unless they're specifically an adventuring crew or something else tactically challenging.
If someone hits zero HP from a three role and gets nicked through their plate mail for their last HP, they can have a death save, as a treat, but if you get nat 20'd with a Warhammer, you ain't coming back.
Roll, weapon, story - but keep story last to avoid plot armor.