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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

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GameMastery Guide / Nonplayer Characters / Life of an NPC

Dead Ends

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 86
Sometimes the death of an NPC leaves the player characters at a dead end, especially if the NPC dies before passing along some information that is vital to the progress of the adventure. The PCs might kill an NPC they were supposed to interrogate, or an unlucky die roll might claim the NPC’s life too soon. This situation is not so much of a nightmare as many GMs might think, and there are many ways to deal with it.

Dying Words: If an NPC has information to give the PCs—and if she regards them as friends and allies—the information can be passed on with the NPC’s dying breath. A message like this will be short—probably no more than a half-dozen words—and there will be no opportunity for the PCs to ask questions. “Look behind the altar” or “Beware the third pillar” work well as dying words, but “The leader of the Merchants’ Guild is secretly the high priest of an evil cult” does not.

Searching the Body: Searching a dead NPC’s body can provide the PCs with a handwritten note or some vital object that might allow them to piece together the information they might otherwise have gained from the living NPC. Again, there is no opportunity to ask questions, and the PCs will have to make sense of the information for themselves. In the event of death by particularly destructive means, a page or two might be blown clear. The PCs will have to act quickly but might be able to recover some information.

Speak with Dead: If the PCs are able to recover a dead NPC’s body, the spell speak with dead allows them to ask a number of questions, depending on the caster’s level. Ghostly Visitations: If all else fails, the PCs might receive a visit from the dead character’s ghost, or have a vision in a dream, which conveys about the same amount of information as dying words. Such supernatural messages should be brief and rarely used, lest they lose the feeling of supernatural portentousness.