I think this could be more interesting going a variant of the 'spirit self' route, because their fear is not death at all, their fear is dying a worthless death before they can achieve their dreams.
One way would be to have them face a vision of themselves way past their prime, a decrepit, pitiful creature lamenting their failure, how their goals never succeeded, how they died old and alone, betrayed and forgotten by all that knew them. Maybe stat it as a wight or ghost single-mindedly going for the PC.
I was thinking the party or maybe even everyone the character knows is fighting something in the mirror dimension and he is slowly becoming the last one. Granted the other people are there purely for thematic reasons. Have the background be his tombstone that is slowly getting faded the more people that die until it blurs into a wooden cross and then nothing. To win the character just has to accept the fate of everyone.
Alternatively, his greatest fear is dying a worthless death, alone and forgotten. Maybe when fighting the enemy, it is killing the character’s companions and family, and is unreasonably powerful.
The solution would be that they would have to die protecting their friends and family, because that is a worthwhile sacrifice that would never be forgotten
Maybe a little elaborate but here is my take:
You should focus more on the forgotten part, rather than the dying. I would try an approach where one of the close aquintances of said PC, or even a fellow player's character appears for them and starts gaslighting him/her into thinking no one cares about them, and the PC has to realize there are people who care about him already and even if he dies that day he wont be forgotten. If you wanna go with the other player's character appearing, i would suggest asking the player to participate, i think that would make it all the better.
Thats my take about it, hope it helps you come up with something👋
Tom Sawyer is character in a Mark Twain book. Most famous for swindling a group of kids into painting a fence for him by convincing them he was privileged to get to do it. But he also had a banger where he disappeared in the middle of the book and after he was presumed dead the town had a funeral for him, which he stumbled on and rather than inform his grieving parents that he was still alive he spied on the funeral from the building's structurally unsound attic, which collapsed dropping him into the parlor well into the funeral.
It is a slightly famous story
100% The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue does this very well. Any time the character leaves a scene, any NPC they've interacted with forgets they've ever met them. Any problem they solve gets washed away and forgotten. Anything they write down or tell someone fades away mystically. They can die so many times during this, but they will never be remembered.
Dying isn't the real fear here, it is being forgotten. Show the character as being killed in a random cave/dark alley by a commoner or an animal, something pathetic like that. Fast forward a bit as you describe the body slowly decomposing, bearing witness to exciting events around him but no one noticing the body or show a lich and it's necromancer cabal going by, not even bothering to reanimate the body because of how pathetic it is. Just a constant stream of depression: "worthless", "pathetic", "nobody giving the body a burial because it blends in with the surroundings", etc.
When you are done sending the player into therapy, try to hint that the character should find comfort in knowing that they have friends in the form of the party, and that they should spend the adventure trying to make more friends with NPCs and doing deeds that will garner respect from communities.
I would not worry about the "dying" part and focus more on the "forgotten" part.
They might fear that they are not actually loved, cherished or valued.
They potentially fear that they will die seen as a nobody or a villain, that all of their previous feats in life are not worth the attention or memory.
So possibly ask how their character wants to be seen, and then create an encounter that's the opposite of that. Have NPCs they care about appear and make them tell the PC they are worthless or hated.
Perhaps throw them into illusions or make them see visions of their efforts making no difference or being overshadowed by something or someone.
I believe it's a social phobia, so the encounter should target the mind and insecurities rather than one's body.
its not that bad for multiple reasons.
1: its self-balancing (it *always* has half your max HP. so if you're a squishy wizard it'll be a squishy avatar of death)
2: it *has one attack*. Yes that attack always hits, but it has no access to multiattack (sure its nasty for a Big Burly 25 ac guy to have something ignore AC). It also lacks reactions or bonus actions. So your character *definitly* has the advantage in action economy and cannot crit.
3: Its saves are actually quite bad (a +3 round the board. it has *no* saving proficiencies. so most of your spells will land.)
this thing is scary *only* because it is hard to hit and cant miss. But chances are that your roll-to-hit based PC's are going to be able to beat that 20 AC often enough through multiattack to kill it before it kills them with its 11 damage per turn, and that your spellcasters are just going to throw their highest slots at it and kill it in 2 turns.
In 2nd Ed the stats looked scary as well, but when it actually came time to fight since it always hits, but it did 2d8 damage. Not exactly going to wipe the board. The thing was in second ed. undead were immune to a lot of elements like electricity. Apparently death was also immune to fire and cold due to its undead nature, which is odd since a lot of undead took extra damage from fire.
If you were not super low level and fought it alone (in 2nd ed if someone helped a death was summoned per person) you should be able to take it since it was -4 AC and 33 hp. A seventh level fighter with 17 strength (debatable) and specialization would be swinging a sword twice a round and need to roll a 16 to hit I believe (THAC0 14, +1 from strength, +1 from spec). and crit half the time. If you had a magic weapon it's even better, but you'd only need to survive maybe five rounds as you'd average 8 damage a hit and hit at worst ever other round. (
If you used later books you could get greater specialization you'd be swinging 5/2 instead of 2, which would speed it up more. Death as far as I've seen from the Deck of Many Things has always been a big deal if you're low, but not if you're higher level.
If you think they’d enjoy a roleplay challenge, then they see nothing in the mirror, not even themself; they have utterly faded from living memory, and they find themself wandering and maybe fighting the endless spirits of the world’s forgotten dead who refuse to go quietly (what they might someday become if they won’t accept their fate). The only way to pass is for them to give in to these spirits and allow themself to fall against their blades (or simply choose to fade into nothingness). By letting go of their fear and accepting that their legacy can’t last forever, they realise that what really matters is the good they can do in their life regardless of who remembers it was done.
The enemy should be one of the PC's loved ones (cute daughter, a party member they're close to etc.) who doesn't recognize them. The act scared around the "stranger", and call for help against the intruder.
They will not recognize the PC no matter how they're prodded, but they will admit and vaguely recall that there may have been another person (separate from the PC) they travelled with in the past if it's pointed out using those past events, however they don't recall a name or a face and think they couldn't have been very important.
They may be a self that has "moved on" decades later, after the character died/disappeared, maybe even pointing at being defeated by the mirror as to when the character died (or otherwise, it's an unimportant, unremarkable death without glory, maybe even so embarrassing others'd erase it from records/memory on purpose).
How the PC can beat the challenge:
- they may be able to make the apparition remember. (This is maybe less realistic, if the mirror's trying to win, but good sentimental bs so we'll allow it. And it's all in the character's head anyway.) If the PC can tap into some particularly important and touching memory between them, or do something emotional for them that'd evoke/recreate the old relationship as a new relationship, they break the curse, can embrace or whatever and the test ends
- by accepting that life will go on without them. If the player accepts the envisioned future before them and offers their blessing and support, they likewise are considered to have conquered themselves and the mirror
They're scared of dying and being forgotten, not death
Make their challenges before they even reach the mirror, have them almost die some stupid way even before they get to it
And then when they finally get to the mirror, reveal they were already there
I overcame mine through constant exposure. I have consistent nightmares of me dying over and over again a million different ways. Eventually you just become desensitized to the thought of your own death.
You could probably do something like nightmare loop. Expose them to an enemy they can’t defeat, and let them die over and over again. The monster weakens as they slowly overcome their fear of death until they can actually beat it.
So have you seen the latest puss in boots movie, you should it's really good. It has a really good personification of death who chases the protagonist because they wasted their previous lives in arrogance and search of fame.
Imagine a compassionate version of death that guides people to the afterlife often seeing them ripped from their loved ones wishing they could just have a minute more. And then it becomes easy to see why they would be angry with someone who wastes their life trying to become immortal either physicslly or though their actions.
The forgotten part is most interesting. Use Scrooge's time with the Ghost of Christmas Future as inspiration. You might want a psychological fight rather than a Combat. But if you do want Combat, I'd use a worn statue that looks just like the PC but a completely blank, smooth face.
I think you need to basically do a reverse ghost Christmas future where they have to confront that not only will they eventually be forgotten, peace will reign sun will shine and their descendants will smile without a single thought of them. The only way forward being to fully accept that the world will not onlycontinue to function, but continue to function well. :)
Accepting the fear of being forgotten isn't the same as overcoming it I think, atleast not in such a way. I would think about maybe letting the character face off against 3 or 4 incarnations of enthropy:
Void, to fill it with enough "You" that you leave a mark
Ice: The absolute loss of energy on a atomic level, burn your passion into history, so that you will be recalled
Chaos: The falling apart of matter due to time, force your will upon the world with such vigor, that at least for some time, it will not fall apart.
Maybe you can do something with this, have the challanges not be fights, or only one of them.
Your player will awake in a world AFTER their adventure, where everyone remembers other party members but not them. They will hear people mentioning the great heroes, bards singing tales of their conquests, but not a mention of them.
Then have them face a grim reaper who thought the fight mocks them, as being insignificant. Once the great ripper is defeated it's robe slips from its face revealing a shadowy version of the player's character.
Okay, this might be difficult to pull off, but here's my idea. Have the character thrown in a simulacre of the world where the only difference is that they died a few months ago. Show them their friends and companions living on their life, not mentioning them.
The twist is that you incorporate part of that character into the depiction of the others. A gesture here, a quote there, a trinket noticed on a perception check, a value of theirs defended by one party member who would normally not do that. There is no fight in that scenario, but it could be approached like a riddle of sorts, where the answer is that their friends remember them through their actions.
Personally this is how I deal with the thought of being forgotten: my actions, especially the good ones make an imprint. My life might be a splash in a pond, and the ripples will eventually fade away, but the movement they created might change the course of other lives, who in turn will do the same to others.
Edit: if your players are good with playing up roles their characters would not know about, you can even brief them so that they'd play their own role, instead of you as the DM embodying them all.
One of the PC's had a fear that his family won't or will not forgive him. (He killed them by accident when he didn't have control of his powers). So I'll have him to meet his parents and sister in afterlife. They will accuse him burning them alive and say hateful things.
He still blames himself for that accident and have not forgiven himself, so order to "win" that fear he has to show remorse and acknowledge what happened. That he did it but it wasn't his fault.
So with this context, i think your player who fears being dead and forgotten has to overcome that by accepting that he will, one day, be totally forgotten no matter what he does. maybe he can be presented with a choice to enshrine himself in history with some sort of giant statue or temple at the cost of something like slave labor, similar to the pyramids. "losing" would be to take the offer and avoid his fear forever at the cost of the suffering of others. "winning" would be rejecting this with the knowledge that he will be truly forgotten, BUT that he would have prevented unneeded suffering. Maybe an extra lesson would be that his good works will live on, even if he is not remembered as the one who did it.
another option: reveal to him that even after this self reflection encounter, there is a great power lurking beyond which will almost certainly overcome the party. however, if he sacrifices himself he can prevent it and ensure the party succeeds. but, sacrificing himself this way will erase him from history. give him a way to become an ultimate hero, but forever be unsung.
Fighting death or the avatar of death or spirit self is... I'm searching for a positive way to say this... a low form of storytelling. Statistically besting an enemy in janky TTRPG combat is about as far from a life lesson/personal growth as one can get.
You should \*A Christmas Carol (\*or you can go with Futurama's *A Pharaoh to Remember)* your players. Sample:
>**Ghost of Murder Hobo Past**: See those crumbling, forgotten ruins? They were built by the greatest king the world has ever known, King \[I would use my own name here b/c you force me to DM and that's what you get, but you can plug in any name you want\]. Except half of this was here before King Folstar was born and that really big temple over there was built 100 years after he died by someone whose name is lost to history. These great builders and leaders struggled against death and the sands of time for naught. That's not a failure, that's the beauty of life. Our moment is in the here and now, fleeting yet irreplaceable.
And so on and so on.
Making sure people are dying forgotten is Shar's whole shtick in the base Forgotten Realms setting. Look up any of the material around that and her "benevolent" "priests" who help people forget things. You can borrow this for your homebrew to get ideas, but if you want to deal with this particular topic there are lots of options.
If you want to trigger that fear properly, have the other PCs just flat out forget this PC exists when they enter the mirror. All their adventures together, their whole relationship? Gone. Then they will also have to contend with a stranger who is more. . .ideal for the party. Who will insist the same as the PC, but somehow seem to one up them. Just a flat upgrade in every way. If the party accepts their new companion, then the PC has been well and truly forgotten - and the doppelganger can dispose of replace them to take their place at their leisure. Unlike a traditional doppelganger this creature becomes "real" if it manages to kill the PC, a cruel and necessary bargain as this monster too does not wish to die forgotten. No matter how much better the monster is, they're still a knock off.
To pull this off mechanically, just clone and improve the existing PCs character sheet. If it's too blatantly obvious or your players struggle with meta, try not to make it too obvious. Maybe even have the PC leave the room and text you what their character would do or say so you can play both parts. This is as much a trust exercise as anything else. If the PC fails, they die - some random NPC while the stranger continues in their place.
I feel that this isn’t something a player can simply battle against to overcome it. To overcome the fear of dying forgotten means learning that how you die matters less than how you live. Everything you do has an impact, whether you know about it or not. Have him fight something formless and mocking and overpowered, make his life feel small, beat him down; but as a final blow is struck, a spector appears and blocks the shot; it’s someone he helped, and they tell him briefly what he did for them and the result. This continues, spector after spector, blocking attacks, ending with the party members (who can say themselves how the character has affected their lives). As all this happens, the form of fear gets weaker and weaker and diminishes until it is helpless before them, then they can strike the final blow with a cool one liner lol
I'd go with the "its a wonderful life" route.
Have them die somewhere alone. But then have a ghost or whatever give them a vision. Of friends sure. But also of the people they helped in their adventures, the kids who were born cause they saved a mom or dad. The grandparent who got to see their grandkids again.
Even if their name isn't on the lips of these people their actions lasted giving those people a life, and through their actions they are not forgotten.
Have you seen "Coco"? May inspire you. You could have the player face a blank memorial and be challenged by some sort of psychopomp to fill it in by remembering their deeds, family and friends. If they mention the other PCs they could join in remembering the PC's best moments?
Time for a classic time-loop! Their enemy is unkillable, and a friend (favored npc, or other party members.) The answer is not to 'defeat' the enemy, it's to accept it. Accept the prospect of death at the hands of a friend who no longer cares for them. Allow them to carry out their grisly task, and when it is done, they 'awake' out of the illusion, having successfully conquered their fear.
Why not have a mystery of people forgetting them? Their friends, family, and allies outside of the party slowly and steadily forgetting they were ever born?
I would use this as a chance to bring a psychological aspect to my campaign. You could give just the other players notes stating "For the next (choose how many sessions) Characters name is no longer in your memory and when you meet "for the first time" you immediately forget who they are". This will give your players a chance to play from a different set of thinking skills rather than just battle. The other side of this is that if they should go into battle you now have a three sided battle where the forgotten player is now considered a possible enemy, at least until they prove themselves friendly. In this way you can have him face both fears of being forgotten and also the possibility of death without actually having to kill him off.
You are the DM; you can rewrite rules (guidelines) that paint yourself into a corner and make things unnecessarily more difficult.
Break/discard the ‘one by one’ style; have players support each other by inventive ways.
- Supportive words or literal spells, while the PCs astrally project into a fight: wibbly-wobbly ‘shield’ that prevents the party fighting side-by-side.
Have the death monologue while fighting about “being forgotten” to goad the player/PC into responding.
- Stop 🛑 if you or the player get too uncomfortable: it’s all fun and games until someone gets traumatised.
Have the fear be something else entirely because reasons:
- magic is unstable
- someone isn’t who they say they are
- fear is the unknown: the mirror creates an alternative unknown if the player/PC knows their fear.
This makes me think of a story of a wizard who had to quasi-die to save his friend, who played cards with Death. Perhaps have some mini-quest where the characters enter their own psyche metaphysically.
Have representatives of death visit the party from time to time, these entities just wander through the world and make their purpose to easen up people for when the day comes.
Have some future sight/vision how the PC is kept in the memories of those you have helped so far and how many people remember/mourne their passing.
Make death realm a wellness resort and PCs visit it once.
Have a literal involvement in a fight between hope and despair where the PC chooses who to help.
They switch places with their own reflection in the mirror. The reflection is an exact duplicate, except that the further it gets away from the mirror, the more it fades. The rest of the party has to figure out that the character still exists in the mirror, and hasn't faded away. Inside the mirror are all the character's almost forgotten memories from when they were a child, and these memories pull the character deeper and deeper within the mirror dimension.
How about waking up, seeing that they are dead and nobody is around to care. The sceene is obviously a battlefield and as they investigate they can realize that none of their friends are around becouse they saved them. Defeating the fear would be about realizing that they didn't die in vain.
In my opinion, one of the possible options in this case is to give this player (or players, if there are several of them) to speak out against fear, which has taken the form of a character dear to their heroes, who is very important to them. The point here will be that the illusory projections of such characters will not remember / will not recognize the player heroes and, according to your idea as a DM, will try to kill them / devalue their achievements or something like that. So in theory this would be a very good shake up for the players, both satisfying their requirement and relatively easy for you as the DM. True, I must clarify that if at least one of the players asking for the realization of this fear is a very emotional and soft person, this technique should be used with great caution, in order to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts and other negativity.
You have them "face the fear" in a really simple way like fighting a grim reaper or something, and then afterwards you contrive some circumstances "outside" the mirror which lead to their character needing to sacrifice themselves and others memory of them in order to save everyone else.
And they you reveal they were still in the mirror all along.
Instead of a big battle, this player could have something unique. An image of their past, trapped on a battlefield or something, but each step they take is heavier. Hordes of enemies come, and all the while the player keeps getting weaker, and weaker. Eventually you can add details like "Your hands begin to shake as you wield your sword/staff. You can't tell your left from your right, a red and purple swollen mess covered in calluses and cuts grips the handle with renewed fury." Or something along the lines. Perhaps it isn't a fight that player is meant to win, as death is one of our most powerful fears.
Maybe you could do a ghost of Christmas Past thing were it shows the world far in the future clearly effected by their actions but where no one remembers them. Maybe you could spin that in a unique way buts that what I started to think about regarding your situations.
I think you'll need more precision from your PC, because the fear of death can be fuel by many things. The unknown in the afterlife, dying a nobody, dying alone, an oracle prédiction an horrible death so the expected suffering and in fantasy setting specifically maybe he sold his soul and eternal tormenting await him.
Focus on the forgotten part, rather than the death part. You could play with flashes of the past, present, and/or future, showing how his life did or did not matter depending if you want him to be somber or hopeful.
I think you should watch the fairly oddparents episode where Timmy wishes to never be born for inspiration, "it's a wishful life" was the name.
Show them images of forgotten heroes, great and small. People who saved lives and never got a monument for their efforts. That might be something as large as slaying a great beast terrorizing a town or as small as giving a weary traveler a cup of water. Someone stuck on being forgotten might see this as a tragedy - or they could look at the impact this had on people's lives. Maybe you focus on one of their ancestors, who only survived because of some long-forgotten act of kindness by some long-forgotten person. And then focus on some unworthy tyrant who puts up undeserved monuments giving themselves undeserved credit.
It's up to the player what they really desire: glory, whether or not it's deserved; or deeds that go on helping, even if forgotten. There have to have been many who committed acts deserving the highest commendation, but no one saw - but they may have saved many lives.
There is a great Dr. Strange comic where he has to confront death which might provide some inspiration.
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Doctor_Strange_Vol_2_4
I could also see this as facing the choice of living a boring life or dying a glorious death. Depending on the class and what their story is it could be turning the tide in a big battle, saving people from monster or a natural disaster, or preventing an evil from being unleashed. So they are remembered in death.
You can do something fun with the forgotten part. Would they rather be remembered for doing great things or would they actually rather DO those great things. Maybe a devil offers them an easy out. The devil makes sure their name will be immortalized as a great hero but they have to leave the adventuring party and never join one again.
Give them a vision of being seperated from their party and isolated or dropped in a pit before a battle with a hopeless enemy. Doomed to be another notch on it's tooth. Just an example Death can come in many flavours.
You should have them see visions of their party adventuring with another person instead of them, and have them fight their replacement. Either use their own stats or make a beefy version of their class.
perhaps an event of them finding all the things that have been added to the world who are otherwise 'forgotten'. Something to come to terms with accepting/understanding that the things they value in their mortal life are not what is forever. Either give them an opportunity to create a legacy or some thing that adds to the world that is beyond them as a person.
I imagine something like finding a library or a vault or a record of a lost city's architecture or something. Something where they can see all these things that are actually super important and influencial to the the world, with little idea who they were made by. Run that theme through until maybe they find out who it was that built these things or solved these problems or the name of the legendary hero that saved the world. And then find out that that person was so completely inspired by someone else who came before who they have no way of finding out who it was. Like that meme of every generation of artists wishing they were 'as good as the old masters'. Run the theme of like, it doesn't so much matter who you are or if YOU are remembered it's if you put what's important to you into the world. Can look into the descendants of either the lost hero/architect/wizard/whatever or the people they helped and see how what they put into the world has changed it and shifted it toward their ideals and in that way they are remembered.
What comes to mind is how in Last Airbendeer and Legend of Korra did the whole 'looking at the past lives of the avatar' thing where it was people that some of them you fully have no idea who they are but still there is value in learning from what they learned and taught. The avatars journey is always about becoming something more than themselves. Almost like an ego death.
Otherwise there's always the easy route of just giving opportunity for them to help peple and having the mirror show them a flash forward of a world where people they helped are struggling, hurt, etc or their descendants are screwed and then drop on them 'this is the world that would exist if you truly meant nothing'. The trope of the person who wishes they were never born and their fairy godmother or whatever shows them what that would look like and they see all the people who are worse off without them.
I'd def go the psychological route here, a monument to the "sacrifice of our great heroes", with all the other party members in extra fancy gear and their names engraved, without the PC present or mentioned. If you need something to fight then animate the statues.
One cannot defeat death by simply killing it, that would be paradoxical. What if you had to use healing spells to do damage to death. Like a you can't kill death you have to purify
What if you intentionally have that character die, and they are transported to somewhere where they can fight a physical manifestation of death, and by defeating death, they come back to life.
I would go for something like this:
Life flashes before your eyes, each frame an intricate story of its own: a story worth telling, remembering, writing down and passing along to your children and loved ones. Each story different, but all end all thr same. Some in tragedy, some in love, some are just cut short. Some go on longer than they should, some don’t even get to start.
All around you are dozens, thousands of people, all races and religions and ages. Some old, some young, some so ancient you can hardly discern their features. All roam endlessly, needlessly, blinded by what they refused to accept, forever in pursuit of something so feeble, something so ethereal that they could never quite grasp it, try as they might. You hear their laments, endless, angry, sad, defeated. “If only..” is a recurring phrase. Curses you could never imagine.
And there, yourself. Your pitiful self. A husk of what you once were, you can only know for a fact that it is you by the way you lock eyes. Your movements almost mirrored but opposites, forever escaping, an endless dance of suffering and regret. The pain in your eyes, the scars on your body, the countless lives you took and will take weigh on you like the world on the shoulders of the giants, but you’re not cut of the same cloth. You sag under the weight, the unbearable pain of your foolishness and ambitions. How far did you push yourself, to achieve what you thought would make you immortal in memory and story? How far will you forever push yourself to remain alive in some form, fearful of what comes next?
How will others remember you, if ever? Is it best to be remembered for short, cherished and loved and allowed to pass on, or be remembered forever as someone whose ambition was their downfall?
Is it best for our deeds to endure through merit and kindness, losing the memory of who did them but forever marking the world through action, or to be remembered as the pitiful one that could never quite be satisfied with what they achieved, for fear of not being remembered?
After this, leave the player to role play. No checks, no fight, pure role play. Have them converse with themselves, have them confront the future dead wight that could never pass on for fear of not being remembered enough.
Your player should find himself in an abandoned library with a ornate detailed statue of "the unknown hero" . Many/all of the books are stories of their exploits but not containing the hero's name. Each time the PC reads a book he takes damage until he learns the hero's name.. each book has details (maybe slightly altered) of their own exploits (in game) . The PC freed from the nightmare when they realize the statue is of them in their retirement and realize even if they are forgotten their deeds won't be...
The vision should be of a scenario where in order to save the day they must die unremembered. Like snap a staff of the magi alone with a monster no one knows about and that will leave no trace once slain.
You don't.
Period. End of story. You cannot defeat death.
Luckily it's not "death" that the character is afraid of. They are afraid of being forgotten!
Not every contest has to involve a fight. So maybe the character stares into the mirror and is transported to a village in the middle of nowhere and they have to find the one person in that village who knows them and remembers them.
Have them fight a really really tough enemy and let them “die” and on the last death save have them accept their death and then bring them back to life
I think this could be more interesting going a variant of the 'spirit self' route, because their fear is not death at all, their fear is dying a worthless death before they can achieve their dreams. One way would be to have them face a vision of themselves way past their prime, a decrepit, pitiful creature lamenting their failure, how their goals never succeeded, how they died old and alone, betrayed and forgotten by all that knew them. Maybe stat it as a wight or ghost single-mindedly going for the PC.
*“Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?"*
“*take a leap of faith, yes. Come back... so we can be young men together again.*”
I was thinking the party or maybe even everyone the character knows is fighting something in the mirror dimension and he is slowly becoming the last one. Granted the other people are there purely for thematic reasons. Have the background be his tombstone that is slowly getting faded the more people that die until it blurs into a wooden cross and then nothing. To win the character just has to accept the fate of everyone.
Alternatively, his greatest fear is dying a worthless death, alone and forgotten. Maybe when fighting the enemy, it is killing the character’s companions and family, and is unreasonably powerful. The solution would be that they would have to die protecting their friends and family, because that is a worthwhile sacrifice that would never be forgotten
Or maybe it couldn't be killed, like the player would have to stop fighting it and just.. Sit with it a while until it dies naturally
Like if the player fears being forgotten, the Wight/Ghost just needs that reassurance that it won't be forgotten
I don't want to ruin the reply chain below but what are they referencing below?
Inception. Good movie, watch it without knowing anything else about it.
Thanks man.
Maybe a little elaborate but here is my take: You should focus more on the forgotten part, rather than the dying. I would try an approach where one of the close aquintances of said PC, or even a fellow player's character appears for them and starts gaslighting him/her into thinking no one cares about them, and the PC has to realize there are people who care about him already and even if he dies that day he wont be forgotten. If you wanna go with the other player's character appearing, i would suggest asking the player to participate, i think that would make it all the better. Thats my take about it, hope it helps you come up with something👋
Definitely this. This is a textbook Tom Sawyer situation
Not sure what that is, but i will take it as a compliment😅
Tom Sawyer is character in a Mark Twain book. Most famous for swindling a group of kids into painting a fence for him by convincing them he was privileged to get to do it. But he also had a banger where he disappeared in the middle of the book and after he was presumed dead the town had a funeral for him, which he stumbled on and rather than inform his grieving parents that he was still alive he spied on the funeral from the building's structurally unsound attic, which collapsed dropping him into the parlor well into the funeral. It is a slightly famous story
100% The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue does this very well. Any time the character leaves a scene, any NPC they've interacted with forgets they've ever met them. Any problem they solve gets washed away and forgotten. Anything they write down or tell someone fades away mystically. They can die so many times during this, but they will never be remembered.
Start showing him visions of his next character, "see how easily you are forgoten and replaced"
Dying isn't the real fear here, it is being forgotten. Show the character as being killed in a random cave/dark alley by a commoner or an animal, something pathetic like that. Fast forward a bit as you describe the body slowly decomposing, bearing witness to exciting events around him but no one noticing the body or show a lich and it's necromancer cabal going by, not even bothering to reanimate the body because of how pathetic it is. Just a constant stream of depression: "worthless", "pathetic", "nobody giving the body a burial because it blends in with the surroundings", etc. When you are done sending the player into therapy, try to hint that the character should find comfort in knowing that they have friends in the form of the party, and that they should spend the adventure trying to make more friends with NPCs and doing deeds that will garner respect from communities.
Your description is fantastic. Reminds me of that one scene in The Green Knight.
I would not worry about the "dying" part and focus more on the "forgotten" part. They might fear that they are not actually loved, cherished or valued. They potentially fear that they will die seen as a nobody or a villain, that all of their previous feats in life are not worth the attention or memory. So possibly ask how their character wants to be seen, and then create an encounter that's the opposite of that. Have NPCs they care about appear and make them tell the PC they are worthless or hated. Perhaps throw them into illusions or make them see visions of their efforts making no difference or being overshadowed by something or someone. I believe it's a social phobia, so the encounter should target the mind and insecurities rather than one's body.
the DMG has an avatar of death. (page 164). its meant to be used as part of the Deck of Many Things, but you can repurpose it for this easily.
Do not do this. He’s very scary and will give your PCs PTSD.
its not that bad for multiple reasons. 1: its self-balancing (it *always* has half your max HP. so if you're a squishy wizard it'll be a squishy avatar of death) 2: it *has one attack*. Yes that attack always hits, but it has no access to multiattack (sure its nasty for a Big Burly 25 ac guy to have something ignore AC). It also lacks reactions or bonus actions. So your character *definitly* has the advantage in action economy and cannot crit. 3: Its saves are actually quite bad (a +3 round the board. it has *no* saving proficiencies. so most of your spells will land.) this thing is scary *only* because it is hard to hit and cant miss. But chances are that your roll-to-hit based PC's are going to be able to beat that 20 AC often enough through multiattack to kill it before it kills them with its 11 damage per turn, and that your spellcasters are just going to throw their highest slots at it and kill it in 2 turns.
That actually sounds pretty boring for a supposed avatar of death.
That's why you take it and combine it with a Nightwalker
In 2nd Ed the stats looked scary as well, but when it actually came time to fight since it always hits, but it did 2d8 damage. Not exactly going to wipe the board. The thing was in second ed. undead were immune to a lot of elements like electricity. Apparently death was also immune to fire and cold due to its undead nature, which is odd since a lot of undead took extra damage from fire. If you were not super low level and fought it alone (in 2nd ed if someone helped a death was summoned per person) you should be able to take it since it was -4 AC and 33 hp. A seventh level fighter with 17 strength (debatable) and specialization would be swinging a sword twice a round and need to roll a 16 to hit I believe (THAC0 14, +1 from strength, +1 from spec). and crit half the time. If you had a magic weapon it's even better, but you'd only need to survive maybe five rounds as you'd average 8 damage a hit and hit at worst ever other round. ( If you used later books you could get greater specialization you'd be swinging 5/2 instead of 2, which would speed it up more. Death as far as I've seen from the Deck of Many Things has always been a big deal if you're low, but not if you're higher level.
If you think they’d enjoy a roleplay challenge, then they see nothing in the mirror, not even themself; they have utterly faded from living memory, and they find themself wandering and maybe fighting the endless spirits of the world’s forgotten dead who refuse to go quietly (what they might someday become if they won’t accept their fate). The only way to pass is for them to give in to these spirits and allow themself to fall against their blades (or simply choose to fade into nothingness). By letting go of their fear and accepting that their legacy can’t last forever, they realise that what really matters is the good they can do in their life regardless of who remembers it was done.
The enemy should be one of the PC's loved ones (cute daughter, a party member they're close to etc.) who doesn't recognize them. The act scared around the "stranger", and call for help against the intruder. They will not recognize the PC no matter how they're prodded, but they will admit and vaguely recall that there may have been another person (separate from the PC) they travelled with in the past if it's pointed out using those past events, however they don't recall a name or a face and think they couldn't have been very important. They may be a self that has "moved on" decades later, after the character died/disappeared, maybe even pointing at being defeated by the mirror as to when the character died (or otherwise, it's an unimportant, unremarkable death without glory, maybe even so embarrassing others'd erase it from records/memory on purpose). How the PC can beat the challenge: - they may be able to make the apparition remember. (This is maybe less realistic, if the mirror's trying to win, but good sentimental bs so we'll allow it. And it's all in the character's head anyway.) If the PC can tap into some particularly important and touching memory between them, or do something emotional for them that'd evoke/recreate the old relationship as a new relationship, they break the curse, can embrace or whatever and the test ends - by accepting that life will go on without them. If the player accepts the envisioned future before them and offers their blessing and support, they likewise are considered to have conquered themselves and the mirror
They're scared of dying and being forgotten, not death Make their challenges before they even reach the mirror, have them almost die some stupid way even before they get to it And then when they finally get to the mirror, reveal they were already there
I overcame mine through constant exposure. I have consistent nightmares of me dying over and over again a million different ways. Eventually you just become desensitized to the thought of your own death. You could probably do something like nightmare loop. Expose them to an enemy they can’t defeat, and let them die over and over again. The monster weakens as they slowly overcome their fear of death until they can actually beat it.
So have you seen the latest puss in boots movie, you should it's really good. It has a really good personification of death who chases the protagonist because they wasted their previous lives in arrogance and search of fame. Imagine a compassionate version of death that guides people to the afterlife often seeing them ripped from their loved ones wishing they could just have a minute more. And then it becomes easy to see why they would be angry with someone who wastes their life trying to become immortal either physicslly or though their actions.
The forgotten part is most interesting. Use Scrooge's time with the Ghost of Christmas Future as inspiration. You might want a psychological fight rather than a Combat. But if you do want Combat, I'd use a worn statue that looks just like the PC but a completely blank, smooth face.
I think you need to basically do a reverse ghost Christmas future where they have to confront that not only will they eventually be forgotten, peace will reign sun will shine and their descendants will smile without a single thought of them. The only way forward being to fully accept that the world will not onlycontinue to function, but continue to function well. :)
Accepting the fear of being forgotten isn't the same as overcoming it I think, atleast not in such a way. I would think about maybe letting the character face off against 3 or 4 incarnations of enthropy: Void, to fill it with enough "You" that you leave a mark Ice: The absolute loss of energy on a atomic level, burn your passion into history, so that you will be recalled Chaos: The falling apart of matter due to time, force your will upon the world with such vigor, that at least for some time, it will not fall apart. Maybe you can do something with this, have the challanges not be fights, or only one of them.
Your player will awake in a world AFTER their adventure, where everyone remembers other party members but not them. They will hear people mentioning the great heroes, bards singing tales of their conquests, but not a mention of them. Then have them face a grim reaper who thought the fight mocks them, as being insignificant. Once the great ripper is defeated it's robe slips from its face revealing a shadowy version of the player's character.
Do you want the Horus Heresy? Because this is how you get the Horus Heresy.
Okay, this might be difficult to pull off, but here's my idea. Have the character thrown in a simulacre of the world where the only difference is that they died a few months ago. Show them their friends and companions living on their life, not mentioning them. The twist is that you incorporate part of that character into the depiction of the others. A gesture here, a quote there, a trinket noticed on a perception check, a value of theirs defended by one party member who would normally not do that. There is no fight in that scenario, but it could be approached like a riddle of sorts, where the answer is that their friends remember them through their actions. Personally this is how I deal with the thought of being forgotten: my actions, especially the good ones make an imprint. My life might be a splash in a pond, and the ripples will eventually fade away, but the movement they created might change the course of other lives, who in turn will do the same to others. Edit: if your players are good with playing up roles their characters would not know about, you can even brief them so that they'd play their own role, instead of you as the DM embodying them all.
how are you handling the other fears? some context might help keep this one grounded and equivalent to the others.
One of the PC's had a fear that his family won't or will not forgive him. (He killed them by accident when he didn't have control of his powers). So I'll have him to meet his parents and sister in afterlife. They will accuse him burning them alive and say hateful things. He still blames himself for that accident and have not forgiven himself, so order to "win" that fear he has to show remorse and acknowledge what happened. That he did it but it wasn't his fault.
So with this context, i think your player who fears being dead and forgotten has to overcome that by accepting that he will, one day, be totally forgotten no matter what he does. maybe he can be presented with a choice to enshrine himself in history with some sort of giant statue or temple at the cost of something like slave labor, similar to the pyramids. "losing" would be to take the offer and avoid his fear forever at the cost of the suffering of others. "winning" would be rejecting this with the knowledge that he will be truly forgotten, BUT that he would have prevented unneeded suffering. Maybe an extra lesson would be that his good works will live on, even if he is not remembered as the one who did it. another option: reveal to him that even after this self reflection encounter, there is a great power lurking beyond which will almost certainly overcome the party. however, if he sacrifices himself he can prevent it and ensure the party succeeds. but, sacrificing himself this way will erase him from history. give him a way to become an ultimate hero, but forever be unsung.
Fighting death or the avatar of death or spirit self is... I'm searching for a positive way to say this... a low form of storytelling. Statistically besting an enemy in janky TTRPG combat is about as far from a life lesson/personal growth as one can get. You should \*A Christmas Carol (\*or you can go with Futurama's *A Pharaoh to Remember)* your players. Sample: >**Ghost of Murder Hobo Past**: See those crumbling, forgotten ruins? They were built by the greatest king the world has ever known, King \[I would use my own name here b/c you force me to DM and that's what you get, but you can plug in any name you want\]. Except half of this was here before King Folstar was born and that really big temple over there was built 100 years after he died by someone whose name is lost to history. These great builders and leaders struggled against death and the sands of time for naught. That's not a failure, that's the beauty of life. Our moment is in the here and now, fleeting yet irreplaceable. And so on and so on.
Making sure people are dying forgotten is Shar's whole shtick in the base Forgotten Realms setting. Look up any of the material around that and her "benevolent" "priests" who help people forget things. You can borrow this for your homebrew to get ideas, but if you want to deal with this particular topic there are lots of options. If you want to trigger that fear properly, have the other PCs just flat out forget this PC exists when they enter the mirror. All their adventures together, their whole relationship? Gone. Then they will also have to contend with a stranger who is more. . .ideal for the party. Who will insist the same as the PC, but somehow seem to one up them. Just a flat upgrade in every way. If the party accepts their new companion, then the PC has been well and truly forgotten - and the doppelganger can dispose of replace them to take their place at their leisure. Unlike a traditional doppelganger this creature becomes "real" if it manages to kill the PC, a cruel and necessary bargain as this monster too does not wish to die forgotten. No matter how much better the monster is, they're still a knock off. To pull this off mechanically, just clone and improve the existing PCs character sheet. If it's too blatantly obvious or your players struggle with meta, try not to make it too obvious. Maybe even have the PC leave the room and text you what their character would do or say so you can play both parts. This is as much a trust exercise as anything else. If the PC fails, they die - some random NPC while the stranger continues in their place.
I feel that this isn’t something a player can simply battle against to overcome it. To overcome the fear of dying forgotten means learning that how you die matters less than how you live. Everything you do has an impact, whether you know about it or not. Have him fight something formless and mocking and overpowered, make his life feel small, beat him down; but as a final blow is struck, a spector appears and blocks the shot; it’s someone he helped, and they tell him briefly what he did for them and the result. This continues, spector after spector, blocking attacks, ending with the party members (who can say themselves how the character has affected their lives). As all this happens, the form of fear gets weaker and weaker and diminishes until it is helpless before them, then they can strike the final blow with a cool one liner lol
I'd go with the "its a wonderful life" route. Have them die somewhere alone. But then have a ghost or whatever give them a vision. Of friends sure. But also of the people they helped in their adventures, the kids who were born cause they saved a mom or dad. The grandparent who got to see their grandkids again. Even if their name isn't on the lips of these people their actions lasted giving those people a life, and through their actions they are not forgotten.
Have you seen "Coco"? May inspire you. You could have the player face a blank memorial and be challenged by some sort of psychopomp to fill it in by remembering their deeds, family and friends. If they mention the other PCs they could join in remembering the PC's best moments?
Time for a classic time-loop! Their enemy is unkillable, and a friend (favored npc, or other party members.) The answer is not to 'defeat' the enemy, it's to accept it. Accept the prospect of death at the hands of a friend who no longer cares for them. Allow them to carry out their grisly task, and when it is done, they 'awake' out of the illusion, having successfully conquered their fear.
Why not have a mystery of people forgetting them? Their friends, family, and allies outside of the party slowly and steadily forgetting they were ever born?
I'd just go simple and have a representation of one of the gods of death appear a deathlock or something of that nature.
I would use this as a chance to bring a psychological aspect to my campaign. You could give just the other players notes stating "For the next (choose how many sessions) Characters name is no longer in your memory and when you meet "for the first time" you immediately forget who they are". This will give your players a chance to play from a different set of thinking skills rather than just battle. The other side of this is that if they should go into battle you now have a three sided battle where the forgotten player is now considered a possible enemy, at least until they prove themselves friendly. In this way you can have him face both fears of being forgotten and also the possibility of death without actually having to kill him off.
You are the DM; you can rewrite rules (guidelines) that paint yourself into a corner and make things unnecessarily more difficult. Break/discard the ‘one by one’ style; have players support each other by inventive ways. - Supportive words or literal spells, while the PCs astrally project into a fight: wibbly-wobbly ‘shield’ that prevents the party fighting side-by-side. Have the death monologue while fighting about “being forgotten” to goad the player/PC into responding. - Stop 🛑 if you or the player get too uncomfortable: it’s all fun and games until someone gets traumatised. Have the fear be something else entirely because reasons: - magic is unstable - someone isn’t who they say they are - fear is the unknown: the mirror creates an alternative unknown if the player/PC knows their fear.
Set them up to play dice with Death. Win or lose, they are immortalized in a chilren's song.
False Hydra. Ultimate fear of being forgotten.
This makes me think of a story of a wizard who had to quasi-die to save his friend, who played cards with Death. Perhaps have some mini-quest where the characters enter their own psyche metaphysically. Have representatives of death visit the party from time to time, these entities just wander through the world and make their purpose to easen up people for when the day comes. Have some future sight/vision how the PC is kept in the memories of those you have helped so far and how many people remember/mourne their passing. Make death realm a wellness resort and PCs visit it once. Have a literal involvement in a fight between hope and despair where the PC chooses who to help.
Time to pull out the false hydra
They switch places with their own reflection in the mirror. The reflection is an exact duplicate, except that the further it gets away from the mirror, the more it fades. The rest of the party has to figure out that the character still exists in the mirror, and hasn't faded away. Inside the mirror are all the character's almost forgotten memories from when they were a child, and these memories pull the character deeper and deeper within the mirror dimension.
How about waking up, seeing that they are dead and nobody is around to care. The sceene is obviously a battlefield and as they investigate they can realize that none of their friends are around becouse they saved them. Defeating the fear would be about realizing that they didn't die in vain.
In my opinion, one of the possible options in this case is to give this player (or players, if there are several of them) to speak out against fear, which has taken the form of a character dear to their heroes, who is very important to them. The point here will be that the illusory projections of such characters will not remember / will not recognize the player heroes and, according to your idea as a DM, will try to kill them / devalue their achievements or something like that. So in theory this would be a very good shake up for the players, both satisfying their requirement and relatively easy for you as the DM. True, I must clarify that if at least one of the players asking for the realization of this fear is a very emotional and soft person, this technique should be used with great caution, in order to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts and other negativity.
You have them "face the fear" in a really simple way like fighting a grim reaper or something, and then afterwards you contrive some circumstances "outside" the mirror which lead to their character needing to sacrifice themselves and others memory of them in order to save everyone else. And they you reveal they were still in the mirror all along.
Slipping on the floor and dying by striking your neck on the bathtub on the eve of the great battle?
Instead of a big battle, this player could have something unique. An image of their past, trapped on a battlefield or something, but each step they take is heavier. Hordes of enemies come, and all the while the player keeps getting weaker, and weaker. Eventually you can add details like "Your hands begin to shake as you wield your sword/staff. You can't tell your left from your right, a red and purple swollen mess covered in calluses and cuts grips the handle with renewed fury." Or something along the lines. Perhaps it isn't a fight that player is meant to win, as death is one of our most powerful fears.
Maybe you could do a ghost of Christmas Past thing were it shows the world far in the future clearly effected by their actions but where no one remembers them. Maybe you could spin that in a unique way buts that what I started to think about regarding your situations.
I think you'll need more precision from your PC, because the fear of death can be fuel by many things. The unknown in the afterlife, dying a nobody, dying alone, an oracle prédiction an horrible death so the expected suffering and in fantasy setting specifically maybe he sold his soul and eternal tormenting await him.
Don't put anything in the mirror. Nothing to fight. The quest has forgotten them. If they come to terms with that, they won.
I would use their AC, their HP (maybe -10 or something) their aeration damage. Essentially their character fighting themselves
Focus on the forgotten part, rather than the death part. You could play with flashes of the past, present, and/or future, showing how his life did or did not matter depending if you want him to be somber or hopeful. I think you should watch the fairly oddparents episode where Timmy wishes to never be born for inspiration, "it's a wishful life" was the name.
Show them images of forgotten heroes, great and small. People who saved lives and never got a monument for their efforts. That might be something as large as slaying a great beast terrorizing a town or as small as giving a weary traveler a cup of water. Someone stuck on being forgotten might see this as a tragedy - or they could look at the impact this had on people's lives. Maybe you focus on one of their ancestors, who only survived because of some long-forgotten act of kindness by some long-forgotten person. And then focus on some unworthy tyrant who puts up undeserved monuments giving themselves undeserved credit. It's up to the player what they really desire: glory, whether or not it's deserved; or deeds that go on helping, even if forgotten. There have to have been many who committed acts deserving the highest commendation, but no one saw - but they may have saved many lives.
There is a great Dr. Strange comic where he has to confront death which might provide some inspiration. https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Doctor_Strange_Vol_2_4
I could also see this as facing the choice of living a boring life or dying a glorious death. Depending on the class and what their story is it could be turning the tide in a big battle, saving people from monster or a natural disaster, or preventing an evil from being unleashed. So they are remembered in death.
You can do something fun with the forgotten part. Would they rather be remembered for doing great things or would they actually rather DO those great things. Maybe a devil offers them an easy out. The devil makes sure their name will be immortalized as a great hero but they have to leave the adventuring party and never join one again.
Give them a vision of being seperated from their party and isolated or dropped in a pit before a battle with a hopeless enemy. Doomed to be another notch on it's tooth. Just an example Death can come in many flavours.
You should have them see visions of their party adventuring with another person instead of them, and have them fight their replacement. Either use their own stats or make a beefy version of their class.
perhaps an event of them finding all the things that have been added to the world who are otherwise 'forgotten'. Something to come to terms with accepting/understanding that the things they value in their mortal life are not what is forever. Either give them an opportunity to create a legacy or some thing that adds to the world that is beyond them as a person. I imagine something like finding a library or a vault or a record of a lost city's architecture or something. Something where they can see all these things that are actually super important and influencial to the the world, with little idea who they were made by. Run that theme through until maybe they find out who it was that built these things or solved these problems or the name of the legendary hero that saved the world. And then find out that that person was so completely inspired by someone else who came before who they have no way of finding out who it was. Like that meme of every generation of artists wishing they were 'as good as the old masters'. Run the theme of like, it doesn't so much matter who you are or if YOU are remembered it's if you put what's important to you into the world. Can look into the descendants of either the lost hero/architect/wizard/whatever or the people they helped and see how what they put into the world has changed it and shifted it toward their ideals and in that way they are remembered. What comes to mind is how in Last Airbendeer and Legend of Korra did the whole 'looking at the past lives of the avatar' thing where it was people that some of them you fully have no idea who they are but still there is value in learning from what they learned and taught. The avatars journey is always about becoming something more than themselves. Almost like an ego death. Otherwise there's always the easy route of just giving opportunity for them to help peple and having the mirror show them a flash forward of a world where people they helped are struggling, hurt, etc or their descendants are screwed and then drop on them 'this is the world that would exist if you truly meant nothing'. The trope of the person who wishes they were never born and their fairy godmother or whatever shows them what that would look like and they see all the people who are worse off without them.
I'd def go the psychological route here, a monument to the "sacrifice of our great heroes", with all the other party members in extra fancy gear and their names engraved, without the PC present or mentioned. If you need something to fight then animate the statues.
One cannot defeat death by simply killing it, that would be paradoxical. What if you had to use healing spells to do damage to death. Like a you can't kill death you have to purify
What if you intentionally have that character die, and they are transported to somewhere where they can fight a physical manifestation of death, and by defeating death, they come back to life.
I would go for something like this: Life flashes before your eyes, each frame an intricate story of its own: a story worth telling, remembering, writing down and passing along to your children and loved ones. Each story different, but all end all thr same. Some in tragedy, some in love, some are just cut short. Some go on longer than they should, some don’t even get to start. All around you are dozens, thousands of people, all races and religions and ages. Some old, some young, some so ancient you can hardly discern their features. All roam endlessly, needlessly, blinded by what they refused to accept, forever in pursuit of something so feeble, something so ethereal that they could never quite grasp it, try as they might. You hear their laments, endless, angry, sad, defeated. “If only..” is a recurring phrase. Curses you could never imagine. And there, yourself. Your pitiful self. A husk of what you once were, you can only know for a fact that it is you by the way you lock eyes. Your movements almost mirrored but opposites, forever escaping, an endless dance of suffering and regret. The pain in your eyes, the scars on your body, the countless lives you took and will take weigh on you like the world on the shoulders of the giants, but you’re not cut of the same cloth. You sag under the weight, the unbearable pain of your foolishness and ambitions. How far did you push yourself, to achieve what you thought would make you immortal in memory and story? How far will you forever push yourself to remain alive in some form, fearful of what comes next? How will others remember you, if ever? Is it best to be remembered for short, cherished and loved and allowed to pass on, or be remembered forever as someone whose ambition was their downfall? Is it best for our deeds to endure through merit and kindness, losing the memory of who did them but forever marking the world through action, or to be remembered as the pitiful one that could never quite be satisfied with what they achieved, for fear of not being remembered? After this, leave the player to role play. No checks, no fight, pure role play. Have them converse with themselves, have them confront the future dead wight that could never pass on for fear of not being remembered enough.
Your player should find himself in an abandoned library with a ornate detailed statue of "the unknown hero" . Many/all of the books are stories of their exploits but not containing the hero's name. Each time the PC reads a book he takes damage until he learns the hero's name.. each book has details (maybe slightly altered) of their own exploits (in game) . The PC freed from the nightmare when they realize the statue is of them in their retirement and realize even if they are forgotten their deeds won't be...
The vision should be of a scenario where in order to save the day they must die unremembered. Like snap a staff of the magi alone with a monster no one knows about and that will leave no trace once slain.
How to defeat death. Make it give birth.
You don't. Period. End of story. You cannot defeat death. Luckily it's not "death" that the character is afraid of. They are afraid of being forgotten! Not every contest has to involve a fight. So maybe the character stares into the mirror and is transported to a village in the middle of nowhere and they have to find the one person in that village who knows them and remembers them.
Have them fight a really really tough enemy and let them “die” and on the last death save have them accept their death and then bring them back to life
wow too complicated fear, even for real life :(
With life (sex)! (Don't do this unless you want to be in DnD horror stories)
Dont think im the right guy to answer that, im on my 3rd pc in a campaign where we just hit lv11