u/SimilarBig6391

Homebrew world. It's been a month or 2 ago when this situation happened. The group is stranded on a Large Island, It is roughly 2k miles Square, all nasty jungle and swamp. Anyways to the point.... 2 of the original players had to drop out due to personal reasons. So a few of the other players were running their characters which all are 6 level. one was a Cleric and the other is a Rogue/Artificer. But anyways, I as a GM never pull punches when it comes to NPC's. I consider the Artificer and cleric as npc's now. Well they just happened to get ambushed by a Giant Praying Mantis is the swamp. By the dice roll it targeted the cleric and was able to use it's ablity "Sudden strike" and attack the cleric which it was successful and then grappled the cleric and retreated up the tree. the group made a few successful ranged attacks, but the Mantis was able to retreat up to a height of 70 feet in the tree. Once it got up there it began to bite/feed with it mandible (EX)+0 to bite, 1d6+1 damage. Well...... I rolled a nat 20 ( our house rule is if you roll a nat 20 and confirm with another nat 20 it bumps up the crit modifier) I rolled 4 nat 20's in a row, which honestly didn't do a crazy amount of damage (47 damage), So I wasn't all that worried about the Cleric not surviving. but then someone crit the mantis (killing it) and it released the cleric from 70 feet up and I allowed a reflex save to grab limbs on the way down and he failed and the fall damage killed the cleric. would any of you handle that differently even though it was a npc's? do they need a cleric? Doesn't all groups. I have made some changes to the game and added some cure wands here and there to compensate for the loss. I'm not a big fan of having players play characters that aren't theirs. So that is why I let the death happen the way I did. Just curious about how others would have played this out.

PS. the party was never upset about the loss of the npc, It actually turned into a cool emotional moment in the game.