I was curious how you guys envisioned the rules for dying from old age worked? Aging effects come up occasionally in the game, like with the ghost, but there are no rules for what can ultimately happen.
— Tim Eagon (@Tim_Eagon) December 8, 2017
The description of each character race says how long a member of that race usually lives. As a character nears the end of that life span, a DM should consider when death might visit the elderly person. #DnD https://t.co/hfPNf2JzVJ
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) December 8, 2017
"a DM should consider when death might visit the elderly person."
Literally, I hope. Bonus points if you convey that Death is speaking in all caps with no quotation marks, like the Death of Discworld.
— Tony Sladky (@UnitedShoes) December 8, 2017
In my home campaign setting, Death is a person. Beware of her cookies. #DnD https://t.co/N4moGehslj
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) December 8, 2017
As far as I can tell, Faerun doesn’t really have an equivalent to The Grim Reaper.
I guess the closest thing would be an agent or avatar of Myrkul, the God of Death. He doesn’t really collect souls that I’m aware of – he just kind of goes around being a boogeyman and trying to get people to be freak out about death and be afraid of it. He’s not the actual conduit of death, most of the time.
He sometimes materializes beside open graves wielding a scythe during funerals, just to mess with people, but that’s as close as he gets to the Grim Reaper.
Seemingly in direct opposition is Kelemvor, the God of The Dead. Subtle difference, but important. Kelemvor wants people to NOT be afraid of death, and to accept it peacefully and even happily, because it isn’t just “The End” – it is quite literally a new beginning, since there is actually an afterlife to go to.
(Although a lot of the possible afterlives suck and really SHOULD be feared, and even the “good” ones are actually pretty shady when you really think about it…)
Basically Kelemvor is the guy who looks after one once you’ve died. Kind of a weird thought, caring for the dead, but there you have it.
Meanwhile, Myrkul doesn’t really… do… anything. Which is friggen’ weird. He just runs around going “Boo! Death is scary! Be afraid! Don’t touch my priests, or they’ll kill ya! Why do I have priests? Just because! They don’t do anything except tell people how scary death is, and kill them if they get all touchy feely!”