If you’re playing Torchbearer, characters are almost certainly going to die. That’s the nature of the beast. But what then? By default, you start a new character at level 1. I’m a fan of that myself.

But there are alternatives!

Some of you have managed to raise your characters to level 5 or even higher. And some of you have met an untimely end in bad circumstances. After playtesting this a bit on our end, we wanted to give you a view into how we view death at Burning Wheel HQ. Behold:

Playtest rules for meeting death in Torchbearer.

Good luck. And remember, death is often a mercy.