Last Words
Wait a minute… I’ve seen that door before! Not only did it soundly defeat The Anti-Party, it’s now dealt a mortal blow to Wizard! One can only surmise who’s next, or what infernal enticement would tempt so many adventurers to folly and doom. (Take it away, Vox Machina!)
We’re not here to talk about eldritch joinery though. We’re here to talk about the fine art of famous last words. And in particular, why it’s absent in your game.
No doubt some of you have already sussed out the point, but it’s all to do with the mechanical divide between alive/aliven’t. In game terms, you are either up and fighting at 100%, unconscious and dying, or dead. Nowhere in there is room for Theoden to gasp out his tragic farewell. The game state is always an either/or between “not dying” and “incapable of speech.” The leaves precisely zero room for speechifying.
One common solution to this biz is to jump outside the system for the sake of the narrative. You might see a GM pause initiative to say, “You’ve been fatally wounded. Do you have any last words before you succumb?” But this mess strains credulity. The Clerics of the multiverse are generally on hand to shoot healing juice into your veins. If you’re alive enough to talk, you’re alive enough to be saved by cure light word. And while it’s possible to suspend your disbelief for the sake of drama, it’s all manner of obnoxious when players miss the memo.
If a player is still in “initiative mindset,” they’re going to be confused by the suddenly-altered nature of reality. “What do you mean it’s too late? Dude’s alive enough to read his last will and testament at us. Why isn’t he alive enough to receive healing?” And just like all the pathos is sucked out of the moment, drained away by a flood or rules lawyering. If Wizard wasn’t already dying, she’d want to.
So what do you think, Handbook-World? Are you happy with the “extra-mechanical death speech” approach? Or does it grind your gears that there’s no RAW way to get in your famous last words? And by the same token, have you ever managed to deliver a satisfying death speech? Whatever your epitaph, let’s hear all about it down in the comments!
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usually it’s a crit that takes a character from „up and fighting“ to „stone dead“ and a bolt through the head doesn’t leave much time for grand speeches.
fitting last characters words would be „don’t bother“ (with resurrection).
otherwise we just assumed that the conversation about it has taken place off screen.
f king typos in the addy
The “please don’t res” thing is a bit fraught as well. If you don’t ask ahead of time you wind up losing the cost of diamonds just to find out “I want to play a new character.”
nah, that‘s what the spell „talk with dad“ is for.
we used it when a depressive NPC follower died and the next of kin where just „meh, whatever“.
Didn’t have a full caster so we paid 150GP in a temple to cast Speak with Dead and plain asked „wanna be resurrected?“
Presumably, such PCs where “do not resurrect” bracelets.
https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.qw-p4EqVLvSQwpdgEaPa1gHaD_&pid=Api&P=0
(Also, I don’t know if this is in the rules, but I think I would rule that a resurrection that fails because the soul itself veto’d it doesn’t cost the diamonds. Other failure causes like curses still eat the money.)
That is in fact what I ruled when it came up.
Speechifying (is that even word?) is overrated.
If the players care even a little bit about realism, the only words that’ll come out of a wounded character’s mouth are “THAT F***ING HURT!”
Or just “CLERIC!” Which is shorthand for “Faster with the cure spells, please!”
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/speechifying
Not sure that “realism” is especially useful here. I mean, we’re talking about the conventions of film and theater, IRL last words:
https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/07/21/famous-last-words-the-dying-utterances-of-11-famous-military-commanders/
the „Medic!“ shouts are usually reserved for the „death by thousend cuts“
if a single shot really hurt my DM makes sure its gets a graphic description that makes the healer pay attention.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay solves this quite well – when you fall to 0 wounds you’ll pass out in Toughness Bonus rounds and then possibly die if you’re injured enough. Assuming no horrendous bleeding (causing faster unconsciousness) or jaw wounds you have time to speak your last words in the event that there’s no healer around.
Plus I’m given to understand that healers in WFR are somewhat unreliable.
So I don’t kill characters often (unless their players are twerps and deserve it), but I do try to give last rites to any characters that snuff it whenever possible. Obviously if they got disintegrated or otherwise obliterated outright, that’s unlikely, but in other cases reaching -10/3 failed death saves is assumed to be “fatally wounded but not insta-dead”. Generally speaking these remarks are either tragic, hilarious, or both, but I instead want to talk about a character’s last words that saved her life.
In Curse of Strahd, the party’s warlock was a servant of Baba Yaga, and was a pretty classic young, Russian-inspired witch. Being young and impetuous, she wandered off during the party’s assault on Castle Ravenloft; while her team was struggling with zombies and traps in chest-deep water in the basement, she stepped into the elevator and got launched to the top of the castle, paralyzed.
She got captured and had her blood drained by Strahd’s minions, and got taunted by Strahd’s lieutenant, Escher. She guessed he was jealous of the attention Strahd lavished on her, and goaded him enough to storm off, livid. She made her escape and got chased through the castle, but wasn’t quite fast enough and got caught again. Strahd decided to outright kill her rather than capture her, but being an “honorable” opponent, asked her for her last words.
The warlock, held off the floor by her throat and bleeding profusely, looked over Strahd’s shoulder, right into Escher’s eyes, and choked out “When I rise, I’m going to outrank you.”
Her final defiant dig made Strahd roar with laughter and drop her to the floor, walking off while an apoplectic Escher vowed he was going to heal the warlock just enough to ensure she wouldn’t rise as a vampire before throwing her off the highest tower. Luckily for her, her team finally rescued her before that could happen.
That’s how a character’s last words saved her life.
Very clever on the player’s part! And a nice use of the villain to enable the ‘last words’ trope. Smart stuff on both sides of the screen.
My method was to have a final message be left in the form of a note my wizard had left in her stuff. An ‘in case you’re going through my stuff after I died’ thing.
I’ve used this trick for the occasional important NPC. It works OK, giving closure without taking too much focus away from the action of a deadly battle.
does the final message, in case someone goes through Wizards stuff, include the words „I prepared Explosive Runes today“ ?
That’s one perk of heroic sacrifices and other circumstances when you know death is imminent: You get a chance to share last words before you’ve taken any HP damage.
Death-as-choice is perhaps the most momentous decision in a PC’s career. “I will retire this character” is a big deal for a player, so it makes a certain amount of sense that it’s paired with the “I will sacrifice myself” decision for the character. Solid workaround. You just have to telegraph to the player that “this will kill you.”
My group generally doesn’t hold with “dying speeches”, we feel that Junior Drama Club stuff should stay in drama club.
Granted they feel the same way with monologuing, to them a monologue start means “roll for initiative” and “we get a surprise round, right?”
However, if circumstances give time for a few words as someone dies, we allow it. But we also don’t always play in games with magical healing, so death is very often permanent, but likewise it’s also pretty rare a PC is dying and not already unconscious or dead.
> we feel that Junior Drama Club stuff should stay in drama club.
I don’t think Wizard would join your group, lol.
When in doubt, resolve the mechanics first then translate that into the fantasy. For that matter, do it even when there is no doubt. Most of our group are drama queens to one extent or another, so its useful to know what youre being dramatic about. That way theres no confusion about whats actually happening and nobody can butt in out of their turn to try and do a thing that the mechanics dont allow, because if they could have done that they had their chance already.
I am currently DMing ‘The Northlands Saga Complete’ by Frog God Games; It is a massive 800 page hardcover campaign published for Pathfinder (although, it is easy enough to adapt to 5e) that revolves around Viking and Scandinavian lore and myth.
Anyways, the adventure incorporates several new optional rules, which I think makes this adventure in particular more fun, two in particular are relevant to today’s comic and discussion:
Death Speech. When a PC or important NPC dies, they can as a free action, regain consciousness to do one of the following things:
– May take a Standard action in order to complete a task interrupted by their demise, after which they die.
– They may make a death speech, a long and poetic summation of their lives; granting the PC’s next character either additional XP or a bonus magic item.
– They may lay a curse upon a foe (as Bestow Curse), or a geas upon a willing ally.
Fate. Once per adventure, players may decide that their character has reached a point where they are fated to die, declaring them a Victim of Fate.
In order to do this the player must give a death speech in character. The following then happens.
– The character gains a +20 bonus to attack rolls, ability checks, and automatically deals double damage with every attack or spell.
– The character takes a -10 penalty to AC, saving throws, and cannot benefit from magical healing.
After the encounter/scene is over, if the character still stands, they can utter one short sentence before dying. Nothing can prevent the character from dying at this point; Not even resurrection spells, or the gods can save the PC, for even the Gods must obey fate.
I think it can be useful to rule that there is a point at which somebody is too badly injured for magical healing to work. I’m playing a cleric with the Medic archetype right now, meaning that this is sort of a question I had to answer if I wanted to write any tragedy at all in her backstory. This is an excerpt:
“These moments stretched out the longest. She could see the life slipping from the woman, dripping out drop by drop.
“A dead woman’s heart didn’t always stop immediately. Sometimes death was slow. Death could be patient. Death could allow for a brief window in which healing magic wouldn’t work, couldn’t work, a window in which the soul was already preparing to depart. The heart could beat, but the spirit was dead. It would not heed pleas or magics for it to linger. It was already preparing for its final dream.
“The medic felt that feeble pulse beneath her fingers, a frail, hopeful, fluttering thing. All it could do was accelerate the pumping of blood out of the body.”
Mekton II has an amusing way to deal with this. When a character’s mecha is blown up with them in it, there’s a table that the player is allowed to roll on, which gives results like: “You never knew what hit you,” and “You have enough time for a long dying speech and meaningful flashback.”
I may have ported the table over to other games on occasion…
While playing Extinction Curse, my cleric got herself braindead’d by critically failing a save to Feeblemind (after just barely NOT having that happen earlier in the campaign. For the class with the best will save in the game, I was not rolling hot on them.) We were also, at the time, in the middle of a defending against a siege, with no time to sit down and spend time and resources on bringing her back to coherent thought.
So, for the time she was incapacitated (and left with an NPC who was bringing her back), I brought in a temporary character- a traitor to the enemy army. With an OOC agreement with the GM, that she would not survive her tenure with the party.
This traitor had a grudge to settle. One of the enemy leaders had, in a ritual sacrifice to gain power, slaughtered her children, as they had been unwilling to join the war effort. When the invading army reached the surface from the tunnels beneath (They were lizardfolk from the Golarion-equivalent of the underdark.) this traitor had seen the beauty of the surface for the first time. A world where starvation wasn’t the norm, and survival wasn’t as much of a constant struggle. And she decided to betray her kin to defend it. Having been a Ranger before her arrival on the surface, her awe at the surface and vow to defend it brought the attention of a deity, who blessed her with an Oracle’s power- the curse of the tempest.
Her death came during the final moments of the siege. With the party toppling the general’s siege tower, her old foe took off on a flying mount- and she spotted him flying off. Leaving the party to fend for themselves, she sprinted off after him, screaming bloody murder the whole way. Once the battle was over, they went after her- only to find that the confrontation between old enemies had ended just before they arrived. My ranger was impaled on stalagmites, her monitor lizard companion torn apart by the boss’s monstrous companion (A sort of demonic pterodactyl-thing.)
Her last words to him as he brought the hammer down to finish her off- “You might kill me. But your army is broken. And as surely as death comes for me, it’s on your heels too. The abyss claims us both, but I shall be waiting for you. With an axe, and a grudge. See you soon.”
For anyone interested in rules supported famous last words, I would heartily recommend Feng Shui. You literally can’t have a Hong Kong action movie style game without the obligatory dying in another character’s arms after giving a final speech. Also, characters don’t die until after the fight iirc, so there’s plenty of time to think of something if you think you’ll be in need of a dramatic speech.
My solutions is usually have downed characters fading in and out of consciousness; so you can cradle them in your arms and hear them whisper their last thoughts Boromir style. This works well if the party don’t have a lot of healing magic, not so well if they do.
Remember when Wicked Uncle died? I told about Assassin’s Creed killing cutscenes. That is how we do 🙂
With how death works in D&D/Pathfinder, there’s not really a mechanical moment where a speech before death makes sense unless absolutely no one has any healing left and are completely incompetent with healing/medicine checks. It’s part of why getting that aspect of roleplay out in the open before the party is in a life or death situation is very important, because there’s no telling when your character will actually get a chance to expand upon on of that.
With Pathfinder I use the next homebrew:
When a character or enemy is going to fall unconcius they can instead Choose Death. This basically means that they remain conscius and alive for one more round of combat no matter how many more damage they take before falling Helpless, not Unconscius that would defeat the whole point, and then they will die in an arbitrary amount of minutes (What feels right at the moment), no healing can help a Character that has Choosen Death since their soul is already leaving their body except Breath of Life (Because is what the spell is for).
This gives me as a GM the posibility to use a boss who was defeated too early one last round, give information to my players by interrogating a dying enemy or being able to introduce dying npcs that shouts their last words before dying without a player screaming: Cure Light Wounds!
From the players point of view it gives them the option to gain an extra round at the cost of dying instead of falling unconscius, or just an extra round if that attack was going to kill them, and even if they then collapse they remain conscius during and after the battle to say goodbye or whatever they want to say.
This is literally something that has never come up in 40 years of DMing. If a player had wanted to have a death speech I would have been all for it and the players would have been fine with it. But none of them ever approached me with the idea.
It’s honestly pretty narrows. Still grinds me gears a little bit though.
Been trying to include this for NPCs (of course, PCs would have been free to use the same thing) – the idea is pretty simple, “dead” in game terms doesn’t mean dead in the English sense, so a fatal wound means you can no longer fight or move, and are beyond healing (barring powerful spells like Breath of Life), but might still have the character showing calm and acceptance of death, facing it with fear, or making their dramatic last speech.
I thought it’s something that *should* be easy to accept. How many times have we seen in fiction the doctor or priest getting to a dying character, and looking sadly at the party assembled to tell them their spell / potion / booster won’t be enough, and the wounded is beyond saving ?
It… didn’t quite work. Players didn’t like the separation of “dead” in the mechanical sense and dead in the normal sense. Something that ought to have felt permissive, i.e., “dead, but still get to give a last speech” instead felt like the GM was forbidding healing. Some of the players accepted it quickly, some didn’t at all. Overall, I felt it was a bad call and haven’t done it again, although I still side with the GM when I encounter a similar situation as a player.
Ah, the infamous door. Doors seem to bedevil my parties, with a special shout-out to the PC who always gets hit by something bad whenever he opens a door (arrows, lightning, explosions, bubonic plague…)
It does always bother me in RPGs when the protagonists get to that dying NPC and I’m like “I’ve got a bag full of heal potions and a high-level White Mage – you’re going to be fine” and then the PCs never use any of that.
I’ve never dealt with this directly, but I would think my players would be okay with “the mechanics say you are dead, do you want to say anything?”. If you need an in-universe explanation, if the character spent any time in bleedout, you can retcon that they muttered the words in that period.
Yeah. Bugs me too.
We had at least one “Lemme die, I wanna new character,” who didn’t make that clear, but nevertheless left an in-game daughter, a kingdom, and a cadre of adventuring buddies without any closure. (No note left behind, nothing.)
In LARPing there was always the mechanic of the “spirit farewell”: if your PC was important enough, you could apply to have their ghost give a last monologue before entering the spirit world.
In TTRPG, the most we’ve seen was the “resurrection first words,” which have ranged from calm descriptions of the afterlife and the gods’ instructions for us to the scream of “AAArrghhh!!! Teeth!!” from a cleric who was eaten by a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing variety of mimic.
“Lemme die, I wanna new character” –> As in so many things with this hobby, communication is key. There must be a middle ground between “I shouldn’t create an awkward social situation so I’ll say nothing” and “I’m not having any fun and your game sucks.” (See next comic.)
I quite like the idea of the spirit farewell. And honestly, today’s topic is a bit of an “old man yells at clouds” situation. If a player and a GM want last words, they’ll bend the rules to make it happen.