When to Kill Off Your Own Characters

Populating an army with characters who have names and personalities really brings miniature battles to life for me. But five years into using my Cobalt Scions Space Marines on the regular, it was starting to strain credulity that none of those characters had popped their clogs.

Reasons not to kill off characters

I will always be reluctant to kill off characters who have faces. I'd have to remove the head and paint a new face if I wanted to keep using the mini. I'm really proud of some of those faces. Then there's the characters, like First Sergeant Tyvus, who are helmeted but have their names lovingly painted onto their armour. Plus of course there's a question of how many emotionally distinct characters I can write for the same group of marines, and every time someone dies, I have to come up with something new. Now that there's a sergeant for all ten squads of the Third Company, plus all the command staff, there's a lot of individuals running around.

Side note: the current officers of Third Company characters are all on the Beard Bunker's 40K sector wiki.

Ways to kill off characters

As I see it there's three main approaches, but by all means add more in the comments section.

Method 1: Spotting the Perfect Moment

This method is a response to in-game events, where a battle or a moment will feel so much more impactful if a character is dead, rather than getting a Marvel-esque mauling from which they miraculously recover. Drew did a fantastic one of these a year or two ago, where her Swooping Hawk Exarch got taken out by Trazyn, and she just felt, in the moment, that it'd be much more interesting if the exarch had died. Trazyn naturally stole the Exarch's waystone, and this became a bargaining chip that spawned various situations both in roleplay and in battle. Drew then converted and painted a whole new Exarch as a replacement, thus earning herself narrative points for maximum effort.

Host Taliesin grapple with the Arch Troll of the Necrons - more context in Oops New Army: Necron Edition

Method 2: Dead By Design

This is where you decide the reason for a character's death in advance, either during creation or in response to narrative events.

Long time Beard Bunker readers might recall the campaign that started this very website: the Hochland campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. When I created my Hochlanders, my Lord choice was Templar Grand Master Erhard von Rüdiger, a callous general only too willing to pay for victory with the blood of his soldiers. It transpired the Order of the Silver Drakes had a secret: the supposedly enchanted Blade of the First Knight, wielded by all the Silver Drakes' Grand Masters, was in fact a perfectly mundane sword. The real magic was the Templar Grand Master himself. Since the founding of the Order, one Grand Master had passed a 'boon' on to their successor: the curse of Vampirism. With the succession in place, the outgoing Grand Master would take the Long Walk out into the Drakwald Forest to find a warrior's death. The idea had always been that a successor should be nominated before the current Grand Master became too detached from his humanity, but von Rüdiger held on too long, and became callous, unimpressed by all who might replace him.

Erhard von Rüdiger

This, obviously, was not something that could be sustained indefinitely; the intention was always to sunset von Rüdiger at an appropriate moment. When the Silver Drakes' secret was finally revealed during a roleplay session, von Rüdiger fled into the Drakwald to seek out his fate, bringing the Order into grave disrepute but ending the Vampiric line. His sword was later held aloft by the Norse Warlord Volgin during the Siege of Fort Schippel as a trophy, confirming his fate to the people of Hochland.

When a character is dead by design, as von Rüdiger was, it's possible to make their exit central to the plot. His exit was done in roleplay sessions rather than pitched battles, but if you were sticking to wargames you could absolutely play through a character's last stand, perhaps even boosting their stats as they lose wounds to represent their reckless and ultimately fatal determination.

A 40K example of being Dead by Design

Tom: I created Lieutenant Colfaen back in 8th edition for the Samalit IX campaign, back then my army was still Firstborn.  He didn’t actually see any action.  Shadow Captain Yiraka and my other Lieutenant, Lieutenant Nykona, did most of the battlefield leadership; Colfaen was more engaged in intelligence and coordination, and spent most of the campaign in reserve on the Strike Cruiser.  As the intelligence master of the 5th company he did then feature occasionally in our Inquisitor roleplay, so we started to get to know him.

Firstborn Lieutenant Colfaen

When 9th edition rolled around, Covid was in full swing and playing Warhammer was limited, but as things started to open up Andy and I kicked off Crusade with semi-new armies.  For him it was Necrons, getting all the new Necron models into his army, and for me it was restarting my Raven Guard in Primaris.  I picked Colfaen to cross the rubicon primaris and be the leader of this small Primaris strike force that was investigating a Pariah Nexus-style deadzone.  

Once I got him onto the table a new side to his character emerged, as someone who would recklessly throw himself into combat to protect the men under his command, through vigorous use of Heroic Intervention.  As a phobos Lieutenant armed with only a combat knife he got an impressive array of kills, but took a lot of damage in return.  The emergent story seemed to be that of a gifted intelligence and strategy officer, but one who was not actually that good at leading in the field as he was unwilling to see his men get hurt, even if it was in service to the overall victory.   

Primaris Lieutenant Colfaen

In 9th edition the Space Marines had a special rule that meant if you got enough Battle Scars, which meant dying a bunch of times in battle, the next time you got a Battle Scar you could remove the character from your roster and replace them with a Dreadnought with the same level of experience.  Pretty quickly I could see where Colfaen was going.  He was being heroic, but it was going to get him killed.  Perfect.

It finally happened during a big epic battle against Andy’s Alpha Legion, Colfaen was slain and rolled another Battle Scar.  So, technically I have voluntarily killed off a character, but even in death he still serves.

Dreadnaught Brother Colfaen

Method 3: Let the Dice Tell the Story

In certain campaigns, we'll have injury rolls for units taken out of action. This makes things both more exciting and a lot more stressful as you do your best to avoid having to make injury roles for your favourite little dudes. 

A good example of this would be the look on Tom and Drew's face when Captain Lucullus was jumped by a Lictor during the Battle of Melia's Reach campaign. He is functionally my protagonist character, and has been in my Cobalt Scions army since the very beginning. But we'd agreed ahead of time what the injury tables looked like, so I just had to roll. Suffice to say, some dice rolls generate huge amounts of suspense, and that's just not possible if you don't put yourself in these positions. It risks going out like a chump, but that's life. We are, most of us, one steering wheel twitch away from a sudden and disappointing exit. And trust me when I say arrangements like this make you play wargames completely differently; your Space Marines might know no fear, but you bloody well do. It's rare to see a tactical retreat in regular wargames, but with an injury/death roll in play you'll be far more circumspect about jumping into a meat grinder unless you're sure it's absolutely necessary.

So Lucullus might have sat out the rest of the campaign, but he was lucky to survive at all. That's just what the dice said, and it gave us the added juice of his less experienced Lieutenant having to take the wheel.

If that all sounds intriguing, then I suggest you click the link above and read both Tom's prep notes, and the players' journal.

Captain Martellus Lucullus

Hybrid method: roll dice following a suitable moment

There are plenty of moments that happen in games that could be the end of a character, and to an extent they feel more real when they have occurred organically. In my Cobalt Scions' bitter rivalry with Harvey's Night Lords, one sergeant suffered more than most: Lytanus Cato.

During a raid on a Night Lords outpost (read: a game at Warhammer World), Lytanus and his squad were set upon by the Night Lords' Chosen. At the time, Second Squad were on the cusp of elevation to the ranks of the First Company (they had a lot of Crusade upgrades back when we were still using those), and yet the Night Lords made short work of them. Lytanus never spoke of what was done to his squad members, but what could not be denied is that he was un-manned by the situation, and fled in genuine fear even as Chapter Master Drusus fought on alone (i.e. Cato failed a very passable battleshock test at a narratively perfect moment).

Following the battle, Cato was stripped of his Terminator Honours and told, in no uncertain terms, that he had best not imbue his new charges with the same cowardice he had shown in battle. Never a great conversationalist, he subsequently became yet more withdrawn, but continued to serve faithfully, hoping that he might one day earn redemption.

Sergeant Lytanus Cato, pointing people in the right direction since 2020.

A year later, during the (currently ongoing) war for the Lachesis system, Cato was leading his new brothers during the final battle for the agri-world of Sudhata. The battle was going well; the Night Lords were clearly past the point where they could hope for victory. But when Night Lords know they cannot win, they will always strive to twist the knife on their way out (particularly if Harvey is extra annoyed about my Hellblasters). Consequently, a squad of Night Lords Terminators teleported down behind the Scions' lines, and charged Cato's squad.

The ensuing combat went largely as you'd expect, but between this being the end of the fighting on Sudhata, and liking the idea of the Night Lords doing lasting damage even if they'd been robbed of their strategic goals, I told Harvey I'd roll a dice. On a 4+, Sergeant Cato lives to see another day.

I rolled.

The terminators proceeded to impale poor Cato on a chainfist and use him as a meat shield when Captain Lucullus mounted a furious counter-charge.

A brutal end for a long-serving sergeant, but they can't all be heroic last stands, and it was a fine way of deepening the enmity between the two factions. I may yet reuse Cato's model with some mild repainting, if and when I add some Intercessors from the reserve companies, but it felt like committing to the bit required a new sergeant.

I got out my bits box and went to town. It was a fun little mini project between units, and I really like the resulting model.

Sergeant Aelius Pyrrhos

It seems unwise to kill off my characters too frequently, given all the issues I outlined at the start, but all my other Scions seem so much more alive now that one of them is dead.