I’m cautious about this, but considering the world I’m writing in, having no inderlying risk of death would probably cut tension a bit.
If nothing else, a big part is tracking down and potentially handing over one of the core NPCs for execution. Or not. The fun’s come from trying to add stakes to the decision that aren’t necessarily about the NPC in question, so that the decision doesn’t necessarily hinge on “I like this NPC” or “I feel like playing an evil character”.
About what I’d think best; death being the common consequence gets absurd pretty fast when it’s regular people. If it’s even Iron Age and the characters aren’t military and aren’t organized crime then if more than a couple of them die in a year, well, there are lots of reasons that might happen but most of them correspond to one of the Four Horsemen for a reason. Plague?
When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth
.And the reason George RR Martin feeds his cast into a woodchipper but his books sell is that when his characters die it is for a reason. When there’s a deadly disease outbreak in Meeren everyone starts muttering about the Pale Mare because this isn’t Earth so they don’t call it the Pale Rider.
There is actually a Fate/Stay Night spinoff, Fate/Strange Fake, where Gilgamesh and Endiku are squaring off, and then a chapter ends with the girl in a coma whimpering in her dream world about how the thunder is scaring her, and her Servant listens and decides to do something and…
The Pale Rider is on the move
And Gilgamesh and Endiku stop fighting and scram because they can’t fight the concept of Pestilience.
@Jacic - I appreciate your humor, such sacrifices you make.
Speaking of sacrifice, is it bad that I designed a lovable, fan favorite character from the very beginning to be sacrificed in the course of the main plot-arc?
While the character doesn’t die, they are ostracized and driven out as an outcast of society… will the MC accept someone who is dead to everyone else in their life or will the MC accept such an outcast and live with the consequences?
There will be death and mayhem plenty enough surrounding the core characters but I don’t foresee removal of the plot armor they have until later.
shifty eyes I don’t know who you’ve been talking to…
But for real:
I will kill a character if a) It makes sense in the story , b) I planned for them to die or c) Because I specifically want to pull on readers heartstrings. If the dead character is a fan favorite, well sorry but I’m not going to keep them around just because you like them. Sometimes loss sucks and you just gotta live with it.
My current project is a noir murder mystery, so killing at least one character is sort of mandatory.
Current body count is two (not counting characters that died years ago and only appear as memories). In the chapter currently in progress the MC gets the option to increase that total.
there are enough dead characters in video games , that are unwarranted , dont make sense…are just there cose…‘Oh I gotta kill x…cose I cant come up with a better exuse…but yeah I’m a writer’ exuse .
Add to that , killing a character…it mean you can’t use it anymore . (well unless flashback) .
I haven’t so far . I did think about it but…nah . it wouldnt bring anything to the story .
so far…0% character died by my hand . 
The answer to that question depends on the answer to this question and this question alone:
Is the scene where they die awesome?
If the answer is yes, it is great. If the answer is no we swear at Dan Abnett because Gaunt should’ve shot Cuu in the head last book after he killed ‘Try Again’ Bragg and then he would not have murdered the first female Scout Murriel. For reference, the Scouts are the very best of the Tanith First And Only and they mustered out as an all-male regiment and Murriel was a housewife last year and Scout Sergant Mkoll took one week to decide she was Scout material. And Scout Sergant Mkoll is never wrong.
Oh and then Cuu went on to kill a third fan favorite before Gaunt finally killed him. Lots of favorite characters die in Gaunts Ghosts but it’s only those two I’m mad at the author about.
Then a new colonel was introduced at the start of His Last Command and died at the end, but he was leading a Forlorn Hope to let everyone else escape an enormous enemy trap, so it ends with him on the voxcaster inspiring the troops and ordering them to stand their ground and fight until they die. Last line of the narration in his death scene?
“His last command.”
If you write a character so that you can kill them, kill them like that.
Oh dear! Fastens seatbelt
As a general rule I don’t kill my characters unless I must and it’s a result of a consequence. That way when I do choose to kill a character off it’s more meaningful and impactful, and not just for shock value or simply for the sake of having a character die. Also, I like having them around in the world even if they are no longer part of the story. It makes the setting more vibrant and alive.
And having said that, there are a bunch of possible endings in my WIP where every major, minor, and unnamed character except for a select few die. 
In my WIP, no major character dies unless it’s a direct consequence of the player’s choices and actions. That said, almost every single person can die, including the player-character, so there’s that?
In the novel I’m working on, half of the cast dies, but it’s a consequence of the environment they’re in (hostile alien planet + mutiny), not for shock value! And there’s a significance (I hope) to the ones who are left. 
The reason I say I’m too reluctant to kill characters is that I think my fanfic’s Time War Arc should have involved Daleks killing at least one member of Special Assault Division Eight but I liked writing all of them too much. So instead all the deaths were of robot zombies and robot zombie Daleks.
“It could be worse. The Daleks could all be mages.”
“Um…”
“Tell me the Daleks aren’t all mages.”
“Two variants of Skaro Degradation are mages.”
So yeah I think I should’ve killed someone but instead I just had them get beat up or hospitalized for four chapters.
This is true, but also, you can do fun things with people faking their own deaths. Or comas, come to think of it.
A fair point. Not sure I’ve got the chops to juggle a surprise like that when I’ve already got some slightly foreshadowed reveals cooking in the background, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind for the future!
As someone who loves writing apocalyptic/zombie stories, death is pretty essential. The trick with that genre is how to make the death matter and have impact, or how to draw attention to the fragility of human life in a really dark way by killing a character with no ceremony
I think the universal rule is that when you kill a main character what you should be thinking is one of two things: “I really don’t want to kill this character but I have to for the story to work” or if it’s WH40k or A Song Of Ice And Fire “All humans die. Not all of them truly live.” And the later is because that’s what they’re thinking too.
“Men of Tanith! Do you want to live forever?” Is what Gaunt yells to inspire the Tanith First And Only. And then they cheer and they go over the top to rush the enemy trenchline because they do. Because, well, Saint Sabbat died gloriously and millennia later we’re seeing the Sabbat World Crusades and in its darkest hour Saint Sabbat comes by and she charges a Baneblade with a sword and a tube charge by herself and she wins because she’s Living Saint and as the one in Dawn Of War Soulstorm tells you when you click on her, “I died for the Emperor. And by his will rose again!”
Doubtless Sabbat could have had a nice and comfortable life and lived to 170 until she couldn’t afford another round of rejuv and died surrounded by grandchildren and everyone in her hometown would weep at her funeral. And that’s what many people would choose and they aren’t wrong to do so. Sabbat chose otherwise, and she died young and painfully and she lives forever. And so when a colonel in the Verunhive Primary sees one of Heritor Asphodel’s Woe Machines breaking through the gate to allow the teaming swarm of millions of maddened cultists to get in beneath the Void Shield protecting the primary hive spire, he grabs a ton of explosives and he yells his version of “Come on, men*! Do you want to live forever?” And he runs straight at the Woe Machine and he blows himself up and disables it to jam the gates. And he doesn’t get to be a Saint but he does get to have the Bell Of Lost Souls on Holy Terra toll in his honor.
So you can easily go through characters like a woodchipper and the readers will love you.
But if you are thinking “well I’ll kill this character because death makes readers cry” then probably you don’t really care about that character, and readers will see that and they’ll either not care either or they’ll drop the book right then and there and give you a one star review.
And it’s my opinion that while I know this because I love digging into literary theory, everyone in the thread knows it too, and that’s why while I’m going on for paragraphs, everyone else’s posts have generally agreed that you should kill characters sometimes but not always.
Also, I got in an argument on another forum with someone who made freemium games and I told him that I understood the economics but I only play Fate Grand Order and I won’t pick up another one, and he proceeded to explain the concept of using loot boxes to entice players, and because I’ve been out of sorts and rambly and I’ve been in several different simultaneous debates where people responded to me saying something by telling me something I already knew and this time I didn’t at least partially agree with their position I snapped
I told him I knew everything he told me already because I’m not an idiot and I’m not going to play another freemium game because their “welfare 4*” would not be Shiki Ryougi. Then I calmed down and explained that free players call them welfare 4s because every big event has a headlining random drop 5, but because the practices he described to fiddle with odds behind the scenes are illegal in Japan we just look at the mandatory odds tables and we see there’s a 1.00% chance a 5* will drop we don’t realistically expect to get it. So then I described the one from the first Christmas event, who is basically the cool badass evil version of the franchise poster girl Saber (who is on the poster decked out in full plate mail with her glowing sword in her hands so she is my mom’s email avatar now) and it’s a hogfather imitation. So the Welfare 4* is straight up her except she swaps her jet black platemail for a jet black santa outfit and she’s holding a santa sack over her shoulder and has her black and red sword in her hands so, you know, she’s been in my main roster for an entire year.
Then I got a bit snappish and said I don’t play games from companies that think I’m an idiot. Because while I learned this terminology from the fan wiki, I kinda always knew it.
Nope, not at the moment, at least. I generally dislike killing off characters, but with my story, I can’t have death not be explored.
Although… does it really count as a death if they get resurrected later? 
Let me answer that. It absolutely does not count!
I think it depends on when and how the death/resurrection happens, and what sort of effects both have. I would count Spock’s death in The Wrath of Khan as a death even though he resurrects in The Search for Spock, especially because afterward he had to regain his memory and his connections with everyone again.
