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?

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