CustomDeathMessages

Context-aware death messages, sounds, particles and screen effects for Minecraft servers.

CustomDeathMessages replaces vanilla death notifications with a fully configurable messaging engine. Choose different messages per damage cause, permission group and world, add hex colors, audio and particle effects, titles and action bars, and decide exactly who sees or hears each effect.

Highlights

• Per-cause, per-group and per-world messages - different texts for falling, fire, PvP, projectiles and every Bukkit damage cause, with default, vip and admin groups.
• True hex colors - &#RRGGBB and <#RRGGBB> are rendered correctly instead of being displayed as text.
• Independent broadcast modes - route messages, sounds, particles, titles, action bars and the darken-screen effect with GLOBAL, WORLD, RADIUS or VICTIM_ONLY.
• Epic deaths - a configurable chance for a special message, custom sound, particle burst and a lightning strike at the death location.
• Conditional messages - show a line only when a condition matches, using placeholders such as {distance}, {biome} or {victim_effects} with AND/OR and comparison operators.
• Rich placeholders - victim, killer, weapon, biome, coordinates, time, cost and more, with optional PlaceholderAPI expansion support.
• Optional integrations - PlaceholderAPI, Vault (death message cost) and Essentials (nicknames), detected automatically.
• Safe reloads - /cdm reload validates the whole configuration first and aborts on errors instead of applying a broken setup.
• Built-in previews - /cdm test <cause> shows the final message without dying.
• Minecraft 1.8 - 26.3 - modern and legacy builds generated from the same code base.

Requirements

Download the Modern JAR for Minecraft 1.21 - 26.3 and the Legacy JAR for Minecraft 1.8 - 1.20.x. Both builds share the same configuration files, commands and features, and never need to be installed together.

Sounds, particles, titles, action bars, biomes, potion effects and colors are resolved at runtime, so the same configuration works across versions. Renamed sounds and particles (for example EXPLOSION_LARGE on 1.16 and EXPLOSION on 1.17+) are translated automatically.

Installation

1. Download the JAR that matches your Minecraft version and place it in plugins/.
2. Restart the server.
3. Edit plugins/CustomDeathMessages/config.yml and messages.yml.
4. Run /cdm reload.

Existing configuration files are preserved across updates.

Documentation

The full reference lives in the GitHub Wiki:

• Installation and upgrades
• Commands and permissions
• Complete config.yml reference
• messages.yml, groups and conditional messages
• Placeholders
• Building from source
• FAQ and troubleshooting

Links

• Source code
• Wiki
• Issues

License

Released under the MIT License (c) 2026 SicklySurgeon.