 Good morrow and all that noise. Welcome back to a show that cares about you as much as you care about it. Five minutes of mediocre interest and then it's over. Afterwards, you might as well be dead, which is a journey that we will be following the branching paths of, as we peek behind the veil of the ones that have failed their death saves. As always, keep in mind that the majority of this is only my opinion, and if you think that heaven is a place that you'll get into, well, believe what you want. But with that out of the way, let's begin. Don't ever laugh as a spud goes by, for you may be the next to fry. Ha! So death is a mechanic of the game that gives most D&D adventures their meaning. For a lot of people, there's no reward without risk, and the fear that their character might not come back again is an ever-present danger that gives their life excitement. I mean, what's heroic about dimension-doring onto the back of an angry dragon and rolling dexterity to grab onto it, if a failure just means that you'll fall 500 feet into a cushy bag of plot device? If you're playing an action-packed campaign, then the danger can only be real if the punishment is real as well. So what happens after you roll a 1 on that acrobatics check, and then have a slow-motion fall into the abyss, contemplating your life and the choices that ended it? Well, if you're a wimpy virgin DM, you'll just hit your head on a rock and wake up again in one to four hours. But if you're a cool, Chad DM that understands that D&D is all about killing players, then it's time to do this. As far as mechanics go, a character is alive for as long as they can keep that sexy HP bar full and girthy, but as soon as it hits zero, your character will flop around on the ground and you'll have to start making death saves. For those of you not in the know, death saves are a mechanic that was introduced in 5th edition as a way of easily tallying whether a person dies or not, with the basic idea being that you'll roll an unmodified D20, and if it rolls a 10 or higher, you get a success if you roll a 9 or below. That's failure, and you'll need three successes or failures to either stabilize and spend the next few hours as a leather salad, or rise up as a Holy Spirit and peace out of the mortal plane. Also, a nat 20 wakes you up with 1 HP so that you can keep on fighting, and a nat 1 doesn't kill you immediately, since that was ruled as not fun. That being said, all you need is somebody to gift you a small loan of 1 HP, and you'll be back in the fight with all your successes and failures wiped clean. So the death save system is pretty forgiving compared to the earlier systems of bleed out into the negative HPs, and if you hit negative 10, you die. Or my favorite edition of Oops, all mortal wounds, because nothing says, I'm gonna have a good time, then dying spontaneously and with no remorse. Guess you should have min-maxed, huh? Of course, death isn't the end if your party's level is high enough, because even at level 5, your divine spellcasters have magic capable of ripping your screaming soul out of God's warm embrace, and into the war zone that you just got exploded in. Why we don't have PTSD about traveling to heaven for all of 2 seconds before being told that our friend paid to get us out is a question that can only be answered with, it's magic, don't think about it. As for the in-game explanation, a character that dies has their spirit lifted out of their body and shunted into the ethereal plane, a realm between the living and the dead, traveling for a few short Jeremy Baramese before getting deposited in one of the many different planes of the outer realm. See, if you watch my outer planes guide, then you'll know that the outer planes consist of the Astral Sea, the 17 planes of existence that correlate with a certain type of alignment, with the top being totally good, the bottom being totally evil, the sides being chaotic and lawful, and all the other planes being some mix of the two of them, much like an alignment chart. Depending on what alignment your character was in life, they'll end up going to whatever heaven or hell awaits them, so if they were good but a little chaotic, then they'll end up in Arboria. If they were mostly chaotic but a little evil, they'll go to Pandemonium, and if they were absolutely god-lawful, they'll get turned into geometry and serve the one in the prime in Mechanus. Now, that system is all well and good as long as you care about alignment systems, and don't think they're trash like I do, but that process is thrown out the window if your poor soul happened to be a devout worshiper of some god. In that case, the spirit of the fallen faithful will get vacuumed up into whatever dimension their celestial pimp daddy lives in so that they can spend their afterlife in eternal swaggitude with their capital G. So even if you don't belong in the Twin Peaks of Mount Celestia normally, your devotion to your god convinced them to give you an all-access VIP past so that you can chill with the cherubim. And that's great for you, but some people don't get off so easily. In some cases, when a soul has unfinished business, they can subconsciously cling to the place of their death, straining against the forces of the universe trying to move them into the afterlife until they're locked inside the material plane as a spooky ghost. I've talked briefly about ghosts in my Undead Guide, but the general idea is that until the task for which that spirit has decided to loiter in the material plane for is completed, it will remain forever in or around the place of its death or the subject of its unresolved feelings or an item significant to them as they spend their time creaking floorboards, tilting paintings, and starring in the scariest horror game in the world that you can watch me play on twitch.tv. Once their unfinished business is resolved, they're finally free to peace out to the outer planes, but until then they are either unwilling or in some cases unable to move on, stranding them in a strange and unsafe territory until their task is done, a task that may never be completed. Worse yet, if the spirit is destroyed before it can be sent to its final resting place, its essence is scattered, and the person that once was is gone for good, no resurrection possible. For them, the story is over, and oblivion is all that awaits. Although some spirits that stick around do so with a specific mission in mind. They come back with a vengeance, and unlike in 2013, this spirit of vengeance is badass. The Revenant is a powerhouse of fury, bringing down doors, walls, and fortresses to get at the sole target of their aggression, a figure that they are acutely aware of at all times and are relentless in their pursuit of. Unlike some other spirits, a Revenant knows what it wants, and no matter what defenses are put up to stop it, it will never stop trying. Even if it's struck down and destroyed, it will reform the next night and continue as if it were never harmed. For this poor soul, there is only one door to salvation, and it's through their target's chest. And then, finally, there is the glitch in the Matrix. The soul that passes go, collects $200, and keeps playing. For some, it's because a big elf in the sky stored their spirit in a bean jar, and decided that now was the time to give it back. And for others, it's because a vindictive vampire wants to do creepy thing things with them. I'm talking, of course, about reincarnation. The phenomenon in which the soul starts to float upwards, and then goes, Oh, sorry, and slides right back down into the material plane, entering the body of a newborn and living on as a completely new person. While their old memories may or may not be intact, their behavior as they grow up usually resembles the same behavior that their past life had at around the same time. Reincarnation is usually reserved to races that do it as a gimmick, such as the aforementioned elephant bean jar, but it really can be done by any culture or religion that practices it, since, per the lore, religious people go to wherever their faith is meant to send them to. So if their faith just straight up sends them back to the material plane, there's not much you can do. They just pulled a gamer moment. Sorry you didn't expect anyone to munchkin eyes dying. But that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, ring the bell, do all that stuff, check out my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon, so that I can finally die. But yeah, Davi out.