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Lord Loss
2009-07-19, 05:01 PM
Post tales of your most victorious character deaths ever.


Our party rogue, a half-dragon halfling and one of my first characters, (me :smallbiggrin:) singledhandedly infiltrated the ship of Lord Cateran, an evil Beholder-worshipper, very corrupt lord. Now, I later learned we were actually supposed to do a little recon, fire a few shots with our cannon, and flee. This hsip was to be the centerpiece of the next 4 levels of adventuring. Of course, being me, I rolled a bunch of great rolls, was near the Lord's private chamber, and sneaking in, rolled a natural one on entering the room in which he was. All the guards (15+ ogres, orcs, and drow with class levels) turned towards me. I was completely surrounded, but I pulled ot my flaming aroows and started firing randomly all over the ship. I got four arrows per shot and four attacks per round (including the one provided by a feat). So, full round action: Fire at the lord's desk, fire at the wall behind him, fire at the door behind me, fire at the ceiling. It was a surprise round, and i won initiative. Fire at two remaining walls, fire at Lord's chair. Fire at floor below me. Die gloriously. The ship burned down.

AslanCross
2009-07-19, 05:11 PM
I was playing Prisoner of the Castle Perilous, using two characters (nobody wanted to play a caster and I've never played one, so I wanted to try it out).

One of my characters was a Wizard/Cleric/Geometer/Silver Flame Pyromancer. He was mostly utility, but his high-level slots had some metamagicked spells. His Arcane Thesis was fireball.

The final boss of the adventure is a simulacrum of Acererak, pre-demilich. Said lich has grown incredibly powerful on his own by sucking out souls using the tower he lives in.

The lich rolls initiative right before my wizard. The DM casts Time Stop and fires off three Delayed Blast Fireballs beside me, THEN casts Gate beside me to summon a Balor. Conveniently he forgets to set the timer on the Fireballs.

I calmly walk away from the fireballs and instantly kill pseudo-Acererak with an Empowered Maximized Explosive Smiting Energy Admixed Fireball.

He dies instantly.

The dread wraith in the room attacks me, dropping my CON to critical levels. My HP is down to 18. The Balor steadily approaches me, threatening to rip me to shreds.

On my next turn:
-Celerity
-Power Word Stun on the Balor (by now it's been reduced to less than half HP by my party members)
-Maximized Sacred Orb of Fire (Silver Flame Pyromancer class feature turns the damage into sacred damage, piercing the Balor's immunity)

The Balor's death throes consume my wizard as he yells "IT WAS WORTH IT!!!!"

Harperfan7
2009-07-20, 12:41 AM
2nd level fighter went through a room of 12 orcs and hobgoblins before finally going down against the last orc. Nothing really special, just me and the DM looking back at each other like, "I cannot believe this is happening". It was cool.

EndlessWrath
2009-07-20, 01:36 AM
The entire campaign for my character (his personal goal) was to take vengeance on his brother for the murder of his entire family. I spent long hours planning out how to do this and spent many meetings training and getting ready for it. Finally the day comes when my character stands before him, declares his challenge to the death and dukes it out. He makes most of his hits and hits harder then ever before. Finally the man drops below 0, but inside him is a demon.. and when he dies it activates an avatar state... It created an explosion and a starfall effect that ripped through my characters chest...yet he fought on... his hands burning from pure energy of the demon. In the end, he did not survive 3 rounds with the demon till he died. but after the beasts temporary release, it was to taxing on the brothers body and he died. I exacted the revenge that i had spent 1 year and 2 months planning (for the character it was 7 years).

Pretty epic in my eyes, but not so much in my comrades, who failed to slay any of the opposing group and did not like watching:smallfrown:

-------------------------
in a much lamer fashion...my character in a single adventure was a halfing rogue level 1 and fought a bunch of constructs... which had dr to piercing and slashing.. so i had to use a lit torch. improvised... i failed most of my attacks. Finally the boss was a dragon made out of gold pieces. immune to fire.. sneak attack, and dr 5 (i could only deal 5 damage.. at max) to piercing and bludgeoning versus a party of 7 adventurers. I saved the fighter (who eventually killed the dragon) by hurling a stone (borrowed a sling) onto the dragon with a crit which got its attention. i was eaten and killed instantly. the rest of the party mourned my loss like a kid dreads christmas morning.:smalleek:

Zeta Kai
2009-07-20, 05:37 AM
A couple of years ago I was running an Epic campaign with my regular group at the time. The BBEG was finally revealed to be an avatar for the God of Entropy (GoE). His plans had been repeatedly thwarted by the party, & each time he upped the ante. So after being prevented from literally destroying the planet, he decided that his final master plan would be to kill the sun using crazy epic magic. The party managed to find him & destroy him...

...But not before he succeeded in halting all fusion reactions in the sun. Faced with the end of all Life as We Know It™, the party's cleric (who was prepared for such a prospect, with his god's help) decided to sacrifice himself & reignite the sun. After a tearful goodbye to him party, the party wizard teleported him to the center of the dying star.

It worked. Life as We Know It™ was saved. The GoE was sealed for all time. Campaign over. Bittersweet Ever After.

Lord Loss
2009-07-20, 05:47 AM
A cleric died. Reigniting a SUN?!?!? Holy Chicken! All you guys have better stories then me... :smallfrown: :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

A friend of mine' high level barabrian/totemist/ totem rager was on the top of a cliff. Evil army (Including BBEG) at the bottom. Horde of Kythons at the top. '' I jump off the cliff towards The Thurum Highpreist and stab him. Rolls a 20 on jump check. Rolls a natural 20 on his attack. The sword is Vorpal. You do the math.

Raynn
2009-07-20, 10:08 AM
Slightly less cool because he came back but my brother and I were playing MnM; his character, Isiah Washington, was a traveller jumping from parallel reality to parallel reality with little or no chance of getting home.
He stumbles on to a world with a more Russian America but not communist, it's Russian element was around before communism became a threat. He makes a deal with The Iron Man, which in this world is actually a robot posing as a human in a suit, who is in charge of the superheroes of that America to attack a super-terrorist's base in Alaska which in this world is part of Canada so they can't intervene if he gets caught.
The only reason he does it is because he's paid in diamonds worth about 10,000$.
HE proceeds to teleport hundreds of feet over the base and falls till he's splatters over the bases roof.
His logical reason for this being that they would bring him inside so long as he stayed dead long enough and he wouldn't have to bother sneaking in.
Sadly for him he resurrects, because he has a healing factor that would make Wolverine cringe, too soon but stays unconscious he wakes up in a cell he can't get out of with his diamonds taken and a bomb in his stomach.
He was a vary malicious "Hero" so it was karma more than anything else:P

Anxe
2009-07-20, 10:08 AM
The most epic death I've had in my 9 years of playing and DMing was when one of my players' characters was a low-level Archer. The party had been invading a cave filled with Orcs and found themselves outmatched when they reached the central cavern. The party of brave adventurers decided an advance to the rear was the most appropriate option. The Archer was the lowest on the initiative order, so he was left behind surrounded by Orcs. The three rounds they took to kill him bought enough time for the rest of the party to get away. He killed 10 Orcs during their retreat.

Overlord Xeam
2010-01-20, 11:01 PM
My most epic death was when our party was fighting our way through this system of towers ment to open planar rifts if they were networked. So we had make it to the top of these things and destroy the projectors at the top of em. We were on the 3rd tower and we were about to make it to the top when we hear a crack and a balor and 2 marliths appeared out of nowhere to stop us and so we fought a battle to make it to the top. Finally we killed all of them when I realized that the balor hadn't exploded so I looked around and the balor was crawling to one of our incapacitated party members, his skin bubbling from the explosive force welling up inside of him, he was going to explode on our friend and kill him and we can't ressurect in this campagin so I was bewildered of what to do:smalleek:. In a split second descion I belowed in rage :smallfurious: and charged the balor with all my magical and physical strength grappled him and slamed him and myself through the stone wall and off the 100 foot tall tower to explode and crash on the ground to save my friend. It wasn't all bad... after the rest of the party had defeated the threat and closed the rift they erected me a monument for my heroic sacrifice. :smallwink:

Calenestel
2010-01-21, 03:33 AM
Most Epic character death? Weeell... The most epic is not EXACTLY a character death. More an NPC death. But it comes close.

After a long chronicle our group faces of against the evil mastermind, some kind of necromancer. Can't remember exactly anymore. Anyway. The CN human barbarian wins initiative and declares: "I switch sides. I attack the sorcerer." Pointing at ME. He had an vorpal greataxe with enhanced crit capabilities, so you'll understand why I went "Eeeep". However the Barbarian rolls a 1 and the DM rolls on her very own "Fumble Table" declaring: "You hit your nearast ally in the head." The axe slips from the traitor's grasp, flying across the room and kills the enemy instantly! The DM then stops us from killing the traitor explaining that to us it seemed like he had never switched sides, simply thrown his greataxe at our mutual enemy!
After all this the best part is imagining our characters profound sense of anti-klimax.

The most epic TRUE character death on the other hand must have been when the group's wizard makes a last stand. In a cavernous dungeon. To make sure the entire rest of the party gets out alive. Against a BALOR!

Aure Entuluva!
Calenestel.

Iceforge
2010-01-21, 03:59 AM
My first character ever suffered a quite horrible death at the hand of the other players, but it felt epic.

It was AD&D, with a few houserules (I think, I do not know the AD&D rules, but you died at -11hp, not at -10hp, and I think that was a house rule)

I had a concept and had my characters statistic made by the GM, I played a 'Holy' Warrior devoted to a quite violent diety.
I Adventured with the party, which largely consisted of other pretty evil minded characters.
During our exploration of a Dungeon we came across a force-like barrier, and the parties Cleric and Mages tried their best magic to break down the barrier, so we could cross it, but eventually gave up. We adventured down another path and found an old underground temple, which had its holy symbols removed a long time ago and a connected library where we set up camp for the night.
I sneaked away from the party and back to the barried, kneeled infront of it, and prayed to my God to let me past, drew my sword and stepped into the barrier, and I passed it and found out what was on the other side and that I could take the party with me through the barrier. I went back, but before reconciling with the party, I went to the temple to say a prayer of thanks to my God for giving me such a blessing.
The parties drunken arrogant dwarf warrior came in while I was praying and started dismissing my God, telling me I was worshipping a fraudulent God, which didn't really exist.

This fueled a lot of anger from my warrior, who did not hesistate to draw my sword and start hacking away at the unarmed dwarf (the player had forgot that he previous unpacked all his things, so the GM ruled that his gear was in the library)
He started backing away, with me furiously taking swings at him.
We enter the library, where the other characters are meet with the sight of me swinging furiously away at the dwarf.

The parties NPC companion, a ranger, starts firing silver arrows into my legs.

First one hits, and I am told I need to do a save to continue on, if I want to keep advancing on the dwarf. I make a save and success.
The dwarf is by now not focusing on getting his weapon, but on protecting himself from my attacks, as the second arrow hits and I succeed at my 2nd save.
The party's barbarian (half-orc? not sure) starts running towards me like an angry quarterback, while another player (theif) picked up a crossbow and my legs was hit with a 3rd silver arrow and a crossbow bolt, I make a very high difficulty save and continue swinging away on the dwarf.

Immediately following that, the barbarian jump full weight and speed into my legs, wrapping his arms around them and trying to put me off balance. I make another high difficulty save to remain balanced and yet another to be able to move forward with the heavy big barbarians weight around my legs and I make yet another swing at the dwarf, putting him to -10hp, as the cleric and mage enters the room.

The cleric runs to cast heal on the dwarf, while the mage casts a spell to put me down unconscious, a save I do NOT make.

Having only missed killing the dwarf by 1 hit point, they are afraid of me (their characters don't know what happened), so they put me inside a big bag (the kind you get potatoes in), and ties 100ft of rope (my own rope) around me, and to top it off, the mage casts a spell on me that makes me cough up snails for 24 hours.

The Dwarf is restored to health and he tells the others I attacked him without any provocation.

My "trial" following that consists of them untying the rope and pulling the bag off me and my head being immediately chopped off by the dwarfs big axe

dsmiles
2010-01-21, 05:18 AM
Not very epic, but...

I once killed a Huge Ancient Red Dragon (yes, AD&D 1e) by accidentally teleporting into it's heart...instakill...for both of us...:smallfrown:

Calenestel
2010-01-21, 05:55 AM
Not very epic, but...

I once killed a Huge Ancient Red Dragon (yes, AD&D 1e) by accidentally teleporting into it's heart...instakill...for both of us...:smallfrown:


Wow... Just wow. If noone else think that epic that is just sad because... That is the greatest character death I've EVER read about. Not only is it a good way to die (taking a huge ancient dragon with you) but it ALSO is immensly comical.
I am in awe.

Aure Entuluva!
Calenestel

Lioness
2010-01-21, 06:18 AM
One of our party members got killed by something...CR14. Thanks to enervation, he was level 6

He shall be remembered bravely. It wasn't entirely epic, but it was pretty sad.

Bayar
2010-01-21, 06:49 AM
"No, Friend Computer, YOU ARE the commie mutant traitor." Then my last clone was vaporised.

Totally worth it though.

Gnaritas
2010-01-21, 07:20 AM
However the Barbarian rolls a 1 and the DM rolls on her very own "Fumble Table" declaring: "You hit your nearast ally in the head." The axe slips from the traitor's grasp, flying across the room and kills the enemy instantly!

This sucks, not only is it sad that a party member is a traitor, what is even worse is that a one can lead to an instant kill. At least i assume he did not even roll for damage, since the BBEG should not be killed in one blow. Also, if he attacked the BBEG he would have insta-killed a party member....how about that for Most Epic D&D Character Death Ever.


I played a 'Holy' Warrior devoted to a quite violent diety.
I Adventured with the party, which largely consisted of other pretty evil minded characters.

Oh yay, another inter-party battle coming up.

Heliomance
2010-01-21, 08:45 AM
For the capstone of our campaign, we invaded hell. On our journey through hell, we took out about 6 pit fiends (at level 15), took the Lord of the Nine down to <20 HP, and did serious damage to the devils' supply chain, setting their nefarious plans back by millenia. We then ran for it. As I was holding the portal open for everyone to escape, the Lord of the Nine showed up again. he taunted us for a few seconds, then the Pit Fiend next to him drops invisibility just in time for us to hear him say, "I Wish you dead." DM's ruling, a Wish spell to kill someone deals 1000 points of untyped damage, split u among as many targets as you like, Ref half. Only the Druid failed his save. The Rogue Evaded it. Everyone else took half damage to the face and survived. We dragged the Druid's body through the portal and closed it behind us in a hurry.

Calenestel
2010-01-21, 09:01 AM
This sucks, not only is it sad that a party member is a traitor, what is even worse is that a one can lead to an instant kill. At least i assume he did not even roll for damage, since the BBEG should not be killed in one blow. Also, if he attacked the BBEG he would have insta-killed a party member....how about that for Most Epic D&D Character Death Ever.


Now now... Let's not be rude. Yes, it was kind of sad. But in a comic way. At least we in the gaming group thought so.

Well, anyway. I hardly remember the gaming session in every vivid detail anymore. But I do remember that the Insta-kill was due to the axe's vorpal ability and that everything was according to how the DM was mastering her dungeons, so to speak.

I, however, would have played it differently, as you may say. I would have at LEAST rerolled the fumble roll. But hey, every DM has his/her own way of managing things. And we did have a barrel of fun.

Aure entuluva!
Calenestel

Calenestel
2010-01-21, 09:03 AM
Oh, I forgot one thing.

A character being a traitor isn't sad. It can be frustrating. Even offensive (if done wrong). But it can also give a LOT of roleplaying and many good memories. If done right.
I look forward to my next gaming group with a mole/traitor. If it's done right.

Aure entuluva!
Calenestel

Tavar
2010-01-21, 09:13 AM
Well, this was for the Neverending Dungeon Crawl, down in the PbP forum. The character in question had decided to rest, though he had been warned that the results could be unpleasant. This is what happened to him;


You wake up slowly, noticing immediately that something isn't right. You look towards the door, and start in shock. Your faithful wolf, or what you assume is your wolf, lies near the door, a desiccated corpse, drained of blood. Standing next to it, is the sorcerer you killed, smiling broadly, pointing behind you. Glancing backwards, you see that the rear wall is gone. Instead, you see a hellish landscape, and, in the distance, a imposing figure sprawled over a throne of skulls, pools of blood at his feet. You hear movement, and have but a moment to prepare before you are pushed off the edge, with the sorcerer's shout following you down.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

dsmiles
2010-01-21, 12:50 PM
Wow... Just wow. If noone else think that epic that is just sad because... That is the greatest character death I've EVER read about. Not only is it a good way to die (taking a huge ancient dragon with you) but it ALSO is immensly comical.
I am in awe.

Aure Entuluva!
Calenestel

I swear, we had to stop playing for about 45 minutes, we couldn't stop laughing. Having a few beers in us didn't help any...every time we would stop laughing, somebody would yell "TELEPORT!" and we would all start again.

I miss that gaming group.

Sprainogre
2010-01-21, 12:57 PM
We were retrieving this artifact from beneath a temple to the death god in a friends home brewed world. It had been a nasty dungeon, and we'd gone through a lot of resources, but we got to the MacGuffin. Huzzah! We snagged it and were just leaving the super creepy inner sanctum, when the coffin in the corner began to open. You could see it on every one at the table's face: crap, vampire! Sure enough, rising from the her coffin, came a geared out vampire. As the DM began to recite the flavor text, I caught a few points. I also DMed a lot, and new the MM pretty well, so it didn't take me long to realize this was the Shadowdancer vampire out of the MM. Probably juiced up a bit to boot. Now, fully rested, with all our spells and items ready to go, we could probably take her. It's be a hell of a fight, and we'd lose PC's, but we could do it. As is, not a chance. However, I was playing the Paladin.

We all ran of course, but I stopped in the door and told them to run for sunlight, I'd hold it off. The vampire strolled up to me, annoyed at my obvious holy symbols, and not wanting to leave me behind to outflank it. After all, not like she couldn't catch up to the rest of the party. I took a swing, and as expected, missed on a decent roll. She slashed me pretty good. I responded in the next round with burning the last bit of my lay on hands in a touch attack. That pissed her off. She decided I was just enough HD to make a good vampire minion. So, I went full defensive and held her off. It worked to, I bought the party nearly a minute worth of rounds before I was brought to 0 hp, and told by a gloating vampire that it was time to try the other side of the alignment coin.

I took my final action to fall on my own blade, doing enough damage to die on the spot. I had a smug grin on my face though. Held off the bad guy and deny the forces of darkness a new soldier monkey? Good way to go.

Iceforge
2010-01-21, 06:12 PM
This isn't one of mine, but a friends I remembered now and I think it is one of the coolest way anyone has gone out.

He was attending a school where all the students was living there; It was for 1 year only. He joined a DnD group, and at the end of the year, their long 1 year campaign had to come to an end.

They had played with really slow advancement, so they where still low level, but really enjoying themselves, according to my friend, I think they was around level 5.
The party consisted of:
My friend - Brute Barbarian
A dwarf fighter, the drinking buddy for my friend in the game
Evil Wizard
Lawfull Good Cleric
The Fallen Paladin, brother of the Cleric, but had become fallen due to the works of the Wizard, who made him drop his faith and become evil slowly, but steadily.

So to end the year with a bang, the GM decided to take them out with a Dragon, and as they left a big pyramid like structure (with long stairs, leading up to a massive wooden door), they encountered a red dragon in the forest right outside; Now, I can't remember if I was ever told the age catagori of the dragon, but as I understood it, it was at least mature adult.

The fight breaks out; The dwarf, the paladin and my friend, the barbarian, charge the red dragon head on, while the cleric hangs back to perform heals. Meanwhile, the Wizard is hidding nearby, waiting to see who the battle turns out in favour too, hoping to jump in and aid the winning party in the end and be spared that way.

The Dragon notices the Wizard in the bushes and thinks he is going to cast a long casting time spell and snaps over in one attack wastes the Wizard, while a kick from one of it's legs smashes the fighter to the side, knocking him unconscious.

Following that, my friend retreats from combat to aid his unconscious friend, while the cleric is focusing on the paladin, who is tanking the dragon, but without much success.

Seeing how the paladin is not going to last much longer, my friend (the barbarian) makes a swift decision: He must save the dwarf and their keg of ale, so he picks up the ale over one shoulder and the dwarf over the other, and starts running for the temple.

As he is running, he hears the deathcry of the paladin, as the dragon finishes him off, soon followed by the cries from the cleric, as the dragon eats him up like a snack.

He is starting to run up the stairs, as the dragon turns around and furiously follows after him, running across the ground rather than flying due to the distance being so short.

My friend makes it inside the temple, the dragon hot on his tails, and he throws down the dwarf and the keg of ale, and graps the door to shut it behind him, but it is just a wooden door, it won't hold a dragon out for long, so he decides to slam it shut on the nose of the dragon, hoping to buy extra time to get further inside the temple, where he and the fighter will be safe from the dragon.

He rolls to hit...20.... 20.... 20... and as they was playing with instant death optional rule, he kills the red dragon. The group cheers (specially the dwarf) and the GM just goes "Well, good hit... but there is a tiny problem; Thats the only exit, and you got an enourmous dead red dragon corpse blocking it now. Despite your heroic kill, the corpse blocks any escape and you both die of starvation a week later"

Nobody whined about that DM fiat through, as they knew the campaign had to end, but taking out an extremely high challenge on your way out, which you was not supposed to have a chance against... thats epic.

Zeta Kai
2010-01-21, 06:21 PM
If that were an ongoing game, I'd have cried foul. But as a campaign-ending session, I say kudos & good show, sir.

Shademan
2010-01-21, 06:29 PM
SNIP SNIP

I took my final action to fall on my own blade, doing enough damage to die on the spot. I had a smug grin on my face though. Held off the bad guy and deny the forces of darkness a new soldier monkey? Good way to go.

YOU! You win a golden internet of paladinhood!
that is indeed EPIC!

Drakevarg
2010-01-21, 06:39 PM
Mainly because my characters don't often die, I haven't got much by way of epic deaths.

My best one would be the time I boarded a pirate ship that for some reason used shield walls for boarding parties, pulled a Thermopolaye on their boarding ramp, a process that included slicing someone's tower shield completely in half, then boarding the ship so that I could find their gunpowder-equivalent supply and light it in the name of Awesome. Unfortunately I'd scared the pirates so much that they abandoned ship and lit the stuff themselves... with me still on board.

FlamingKobold
2010-01-21, 07:54 PM
I have so many of these... But my favorite, as a DM, was a group of 100 kobolds with no class levels that took down a level 18 party (It was a low magic campaign setting, but still).

I did everything by the books, didn't change rolls at all or anything. Also, the PCs weren't stupid by any means. They had outsmarted a Lich, stopped complex assassination attempts, tracked down vaguely referenced artifacts and so much more. But 100 kobolds with 7 days of prep time can get a lot accomplished in a mine shaft.

It was almost a TPK (The monk survived, somehow). But he managed to get all the bodies onto a sled and run away. He ended up getting out with 7 HP left. I almost got him. The monk then avenged their deaths by persuading the king to send 4000 soldiers to kill all the kobolds. Sadly, even the ingenious kobolds couldn't stand that much sheer firepower.

And yes, I love kobolds way too much.

Alex Ashgrave
2010-01-22, 10:01 PM
My death was due to the DM not looking up Dimension Door rules properly. That and he plays to kill all PCs. Curse him.

Anyways, the party (Feral Gargun Fighter, x2 Human Clerics (one male one female) and a Grey Elf Wizard-me) end up in a house. A sentient house from hell. That can plane shift at will and stop use fleeing by putting a wall of unbreakable bricks around our escape routes. We only had 1 item each-a weapon of our choosing-the rest of our stuff was taken from us.

Demon possesed halfing is sneak attacking every round, hiding in the darkness while I prattle on with my speech(which clued the male cleric in), searching for her and avoiding the litterally hundreds of traps until the fighter finds her and starts beating the stuffing out of her (after a command spell and a light spell revealed her to us.) She grabs onto him and D-Doors into a room that will explode, an insta-kill. I, knowing we wouldn't survive without him-and having figured he would go for the gargun use my readied action to cast Benign Transportation and switch places with the Fighter, just before the trap was triggered. My last words were "Oh....lived to long....This is my honour everyone."
My level 3, 16 HP Wizard. Takes 129 damage. And those were poor rolls.
Gone.

The Fighter and the male Cleric immediately set out to avenge me-the Cleric bellowing "This is for the Elf!" and the like. Meanwhile, the second cleric (female)-who had been following my character as he was somewhat of a mentor pulled a big "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" before recovering his scarf (Which was left on the stairs) and keeping it.

They survived-as the Gargan lifted them to the second floor through the large hole made by the explosion so they could get to the halfling without another death-to the DM's great annoyance.

Best heroic sacrifice I've made.

Rhiannon87
2010-01-22, 10:24 PM
Awesome story of epic win

I took my final action to fall on my own blade, doing enough damage to die on the spot. I had a smug grin on my face though. Held off the bad guy and deny the forces of darkness a new soldier monkey? Good way to go.

This, my good sir, is how you play a frelling paladin. That is AWESOME.

Raiki
2010-01-22, 10:36 PM
This was actually done by one of my players, not me, but it wins, hands down.

Playing in a low level gestalt game, where the party consists of all gestalted favored-souls.

One player was a goliath barbarian/fighter//favored soul, One was a rogue//fs, one was a warlock//fs. They were at about level 5 IIRC, and fighting an Elder Black Pudding (ECL 12 gelatinous cube). Considering that they were all gestalted healers I knew they could win a war of attrition against this thing. However, that battle style just didn't seem to appeal to them. After duking it out with the pudding for about 10 rounds, they were all pretty messed up, but the pudding was almost dead. The Goliath is at 0 HP, the rest of the party is in negatives, and dropping. So the goliath, rather than healing herself or anyone else, casts Balor's Nimbus (Cleric spell that lights you on fire) and charges headlong into the pudding. Pudding dies of fire damage, goliath dies of acid damage, the rest of the party eventually succumbs to their wounds.

It somehow managed to be a Total Party and Monster Kill.

That's the closest I have to Epic anyway.

Saintjebus
2010-01-22, 10:41 PM
This was the first character I ever played. I was a elven wizard, and like most new players, I started out with blasting. First session, the DM gave me a ring that did random things to fire spells. Sounded good to me! We go to fight against some vampires, and I used a searing ray. Ring activated, and upped my damage by about 50%. I thought, "Well, great! I like this." Next round, put a fireball with the edge 30 feet away from me. Ring activates.... and rolls 00 on the percentage dice. DM looks at his table, looks back at me, and says, "Roll it again." I roll it again. 00 again. The DM laughs, and tells me that my 20 ft radius fireball is now a 60 ft radius fireball, doing double damage. That thing hit everyone in the party, and all of the enemies. When it was over, the whole party was pissed.... at a pile of ashes. The only thing left was that damn ring- which the rest of the party threw into the ocean.

Admiral Squish
2010-01-22, 10:57 PM
Best death ever: I was playing a psion. A very blasty psion. VERY blasty. Kinetecist.

Let's start with the fight beforehand. The party was on the ground, I was riding a young bronze dragon. The Party was exploring the scorched remains of a village. Suddenly, it's a salamander ambush. Six of them on the ground. I tell the dragon to dive to get me in range. But suddenly a huge-sized vulture from hell attacks the dragon and me coming screaming out of a cloud bank. I summon an astral construct with wings and we get going.

The dragon and the vulture trade blows while I make concentration checks to keep the summon. The party below is mostly melee-ists and they're fighting salamanders as best they can. When the summon is done, I order it to attack and cast a fully-augmented energy ball (cold) on the vulture. The astral construct hits it with an airborne haymaker and I freeze it. It plummets, only to be replaced by a second vulture, which spits some kind of acid attack at me, which hurts like hell. I retaliate with another energy blast, and it too plummets out of the sky. Turning my attantion back to the fight below, none of the salamander are dead, though they are a little beaten up. I get the dragon to dive, order my astral construct to make a dive attack on the salamander most away from the group, and cast a fully-augmented energy missile (cold) on the rest of the bunch. EVERYTHING dies in that one fell swoop. We congratulate each other and head off to town.

Next morning, we wake up to find and ARMY of salamanders camped outside the town, howling for bloody retribution. They scream for the death of an ice-mage who slew their scouts. Of course, they their scouts lit the place on fire, but they're not very interested in FACTS. So, I tell the rest of the party to wait inside the gates and I will go meet the boss. I lay down an energy retribution (cold) on myself before I head out there, though.

I go out, and the salamanders take me to their leader, a HUGE fiery bastard. Negotiations go south quickly. My character isn't exactly polite, though, so it's not really unexpected. As the salamander king get ready to get down to business, I interrupt his speech with a maximized, fully augmented mind thrust. 150 damage tears through his cranium and he goes down HARD. his guards move in to attack, getting a faceful of cold damage for their trouble but scoring some nice hits. Energy missile (cold) on all the guards in the tent, and they go down pretty easy. Love that cold vulnerability. I stride outside the tent and open up with energy balls, energy cones, all augmented to the maximum. The rest of the party comes out of the gates, swords a-swingin' and arrows-a-flyin'. I'm under heavy assault from all sides, energy retort is helping as I'm getting pounded with arrows and spears from all over. Needless to say, I didn't last long. Three or four turns later, and as a last action, I cast an overchanneled, widened energy burst that pretty much leaves a frozen crater in the enemy's ranks. A 160-foot circle of frozen death. The damage from overchannel put me out, though. good thing, 'cause I have like 3 PP left and they would have killed me anyway. The rest of the army ran off in terror at that point. I don't exactly know what my kill count was, but I'm pretty sure I killed like 200 'manders on the way out. Can you say epic? 'Cause I can. EPIC.

Kristof
2010-03-17, 12:19 AM
This was my brother's character from 4th edition.

A High level Githyanki Bounty hunter fights what's left of my party for the night, a Drow Rogue (Nox), a Halfling Cleric (Haloran) and a Dragon Born Paladin (Gehesh), on the bow of an airship while a Red Dragon Circles, setting fire to it. After almost pushing upending the Dragonborn over the edge and killing the others, the Bounty Hunter (Past bloodied from the encounter) teleports to the Dragon's back and begins to monologuing about their struggle being in vein as they are about to die when the airship crashes to the ground. As the Dragon circles the airship the Dragonborn (with help) quickly removes his armor, summons an Obsidian Steed and before the Dragon and rider are able to pull away, leaps onto the Dragon's back, Impales the rider with his Greatsword (a crit, killing the Githyanki) and lift the sword and rider above his head, tossing the body aside. The Dragon being at an odd angle to attack the Dragonborn goes into a dive, to attempt to gain momentum to shake the new rider, the rider swinging at it's neck the whole way down. That was the last the saw of Gehesh, until...

Three days later during a service to "a noble Dragonborn paladin who had sacrificed himself to save his comrades", Gehesh walks through the crowd (only a handful knowing who he is), pulls his armor off of the alter, and without a word, walks to a nearby inn for a meal and a night's rest.

Not exactly a Death, but he had so many opportunities to die, He actually intimidated the Dragon into landing safely, and then made it swear an oath to Bahamut that he from that day forward would do no wrong. Nailed every roll. I wanted to start jacking up DCs to make it end not so perfectly, but it's still a story players that weren't even in that game talk about.

DwarvenExodus
2010-03-17, 02:07 AM
The most epic TRUE character death on the other hand must have been when the group's wizard makes a last stand. In a cavernous dungeon. To make sure the entire rest of the party gets out alive. Against a BALOR!


Dear God.
We have found Gandalf.

Lycan 01
2010-03-17, 02:20 AM
I've... uh... only died in DnD once. And... I'm not sure if it really counts, since the DM was terrible... and it was his way of getting back at me for asking too many questions and knowing the game better than him. But... uh...

I kinda... got nuked... due to the chemical reaction... caused by lighting mushrooms on fire.

Yeah...

Give it a minute to soak in...

SethFahad
2010-03-17, 02:24 AM
So, full round action: Fire at the lord's desk, fire at the wall behind him, fire at the door behind me, fire at the ceiling. It was a surprise round, and i won initiative. Fire at two remaining walls, fire at Lord's chair. Fire at floor below me. Die gloriously. The ship burned down.

Sorry if I'm spoiling things, but surprise round is eather a standard action or a move action, not full round.

Drend
2010-03-17, 07:20 AM
Playing a pseudo-Forgotten Realms game. Character name is Melchor the Magnificent, LVL 6 Elf Wizard, whom I was rather fond of. He had a 17 charisma, and had previously walked into a "gay bar" by mistake to gather information, beside an elven sorceress with 21 charisma. He became the laughing stock of the party afterward, after the sorceress embellished the experience to the rest. (remember this reference)

We were tasked with identifying, infiltrating, and eliminating a group of Death-god cultists trying to cause havoc around the area, without angering the ancient black dragon in the nearby swamp. We had found a way in, but our rogue fumbled an open lock, and got nailed by the poisoned trap, and died 2 minutes later to a rather nasty poison. (Didn't help that he had 8 constitution, and 2d6 con damage was the secondary damage.) This alerted the cultists to our presence. We beat them back and decided to rest there for the night.
During our sleep, on my watch, more of the cultists reptilian and amphibious slaves and allies arrived. Most of the party failed the listen check to come out of reverie/wake up, including our half-orc bard. My allies woke up one at a time over the course of the 5 rounds I was single-handedly fighting these villains away, with my paltry 9 strength, a scavenged longsword, and a large wooden shield I'd found. I was down to cantrips, a few worthless low level spells, and had a flaming sphere roaming around to help, and the last one standing, when the bard woke up. I got hit with a lucky critical, and downed. Our awkward bard, played by my younger brother, got up started to attack, and was offered a chance to surrender. Wakka was then asked who was the most powerful of the party, and she pointed at me, and was subdued and bound.
We woke up in different prison cells. We had all been stripped to our skivvies. The only thing that saved us is that everyone else played a female, and Wakka told them I was so powerful. They had designs to use me, since they usually killed the males, and sold the females into slavery. We shortly found out that we had 2 other prison mates, one claiming to be a princess from a far off land, the other an Alu-Tel'Quessir. After about an hour of whispered messages, a guard came down and began shouting at us to be quiet, and brought a chair down. My last sleep spell put him out for the time being, and we attempted to escape.
Our main front liner was a female elven monk named Kirra. After 6-7 minutes of her beating on the door trying to break it (never rolled better than a 5 on her sunder attempts... Several nat 1's. Worst I've ever seen that player roll.), we attracted the attention of the other guard. Now, haughty Teu-Tel'Quessir wizard that I am, I couldn't help but poke fun at our Ar-Tel'Quessir monk for being inadequate. She got me back by telling our captor, a rather ugly cycloptic ogre with sight problems, after several rather dirty remarks, that I was a beautiful elf maiden, and convinced him, despite all of my objections. She further convinced him that the bosses wouldn't miss just 1 of us, despite the orders not to touch the women. (I personally believe the sorceress was throwing some charm/suggestions his way, too.)
He opened the door and grabbed me, attempting to do foul things, and completely out matching my strength. I did manage to hit him in the face with an acid splash (2 left), which backed him up, and then start a flaming sphere to roast him. I had been planning to use the sphere to burn down a door, but mine was steel... I then started searching the sleeping guard and the still cooking ogre-kin for keys, but only found a few. The Princess, the sea elf, and the sorceress were the only ones I could get out. I then used my last acid splashes to melt off the hinges to the monks door, and told her to free the half-orc, who unceremoniously kicked down the door (nat 20 STR check, 16 STR, Door had 5 remaining HP). We all looked at the Orc in pure frustration, because she could have done that at any time... Anywho, we start up the stairs, looking for a guard room, apparently go the wrong way, and encounter our old friend the were-crocodile, and decide that running is a better plan than fighting in only our undergarments, with no spells or weapons remaining. We escaped and found a small sea cave to hide in nearby.
The sea elf said she was going to her people to find help, and dived into the water. During the night, I got left to guard duty again, worrying how I'm going to survive without a spellbook, much less a weapon and supplies, and a freaking Scrag comes climbing out of the water.
I start making as much ruckus as I could to wake everyone, to no avail... Again. He starts advancing on me as the sorceress wakes up. She starts throwing rocks at it, as I'm running around trying to keep it from hitting me. He corners me 3 rounds later, and the only thing on the floor I can use is an old humanoid bone. I pick it up trying to keep it off of me. At this point, the monk has woken up and is running at the troll to try to save the 2 casters. The princess is doing everything she can to wake the bard, but that stubborn orc just won't rise.
Just as it kills Melchor, the formerly Magnificent, Wakka wakes up, and the sea elves arrive with help. Too late. I had been rent in twain by this things claws (-36). Wakka gets up, comes over to look at the carnage, and says "Well at least he died with a bone in his hands."

tiriricasmk
2010-03-17, 08:40 AM
it was my first time playing D&D and i created a barbarian so dumb he couldn't comunicate in any way with another person
so the DM laughed at me when i tried to talk and eventually made the whole village think i was a murderer and go chasing after me...after a few seconds i realized there was nothing i could do so i made the barb take of his clothes and started the chicken dance(because you know,people dont like killing crazy dudes)
then i got arrested and the other prisoners killed me :smallannoyed:

Patar420
2010-04-28, 09:56 PM
Well my story would have to be when my group decided to help a lady of some castle find this rebelion group. We went off to find this group so when we entered their headquarters we didn't want to go in cuz we were afraid of traps, I was a cleric by the way, my best friend a barbarian that was really impatient. So i decided to send in a scout which was a cat that i carried around. Anyways later we were caught by the rebels and were told that the lady was actually a succubus :O scary. So we traveled back to the castle and decided to confront her. Well we had to infiltrate her castle and open the front gates so the rebels could come in, I disguised myself as a guard and walked into the castle opening the gate, well the barbarian thought i was taking too long but i had just left so he went racing down the guards quarters and smashed their door open, nearly killing a guard with the door. The guards woke and they were afraid of what was going on most of them hid under their beds and others started preparing themselves for battle. The barbarian raged and started killing them all, since we were playing pathfinder (which is awesome) he had an animal fury special ability which gave him a bite attack so he decided to use it on one of the guards and critted... he tore the ear off of the guard. Everyone started laughing because he pulled a mike tyson, so we ended up killing the succubus but I almost died cuz of his impatientness. We still talk about it today.

JGoldenberg
2010-04-28, 10:14 PM
Well my story would have to be when my group decided to help a lady of some castle find this rebelion group. We went off to find this group so when we entered their headquarters we didn't want to go in cuz we were afraid of traps, I was a cleric by the way, my best friend a barbarian that was really impatient. So i decided to send in a scout which was a cat that i carried around. Anyways later we were caught by the rebels and were told that the lady was actually a succubus :O scary. So we traveled back to the castle and decided to confront her. Well we had to infiltrate her castle and open the front gates so the rebels could come in, I disguised myself as a guard and walked into the castle opening the gate, well the barbarian thought i was taking too long but i had just left so he went racing down the guards quarters and smashed their door open, nearly killing a guard with the door. The guards woke and they were afraid of what was going on most of them hid under their beds and others started preparing themselves for battle. The barbarian raged and started killing them all, since we were playing pathfinder (which is awesome) he had an animal fury special ability which gave him a bite attack so he decided to use it on one of the guards and critted... he tore the ear off of the guard. Everyone started laughing because he pulled a mike tyson, so we ended up killing the succubus but I almost died cuz of his impatientness. We still talk about it today.

Ah Grimble Grimm, one of the best Barbarians the world will ever know.

But Patrick, this is for character deaths. Grimble still lives, biting off the ears of poor npc guards and giggling as he does so. But since it's already up here, I'll clarify the story a bit and then give my own about a character that died.

Okay then, the story of Grimble was during a premade adventure at our local convention (For anyone in Ontario, http://phantasm.pfga.ca/), and the barbarian was noted to be very impatient. So after a round after the Cleric left to look around, I decided to play my character as I was supposed to. I charged down the hall screaming as loud as I could and kicked the door off the hinges into the wall 10 feet ahead of it, almost beheading a guard with the damn thing. Before any of them could react I demoralized them with an intimidate check and then did the infamous Mike Tyson. Which the GM allowed me to roll another intimidate roll, which caused the remaining guards to hide under their beds. At this time, the Cleric was surrounded by a Succubus and some elite guards, so the rest of the players rushed to go save him as it was obvious that Grimble had no troubles with the pleading guards begging for their lives. Grimble isn't one for mercy though.



Anyways to keep on topic

No one likes Gnome Illusionists it seems, they're right up there with Kender from my experience, especially Gnome Illusionists who's spells didn't work.

I played a Gnome Illusionist in a group where the DM had us choose a flaw. Nym Coppergear as he was known, could not cast his spells as intended. An illusion of an Ogre would turn into a clown, or stuff like that.

These incidents tended to attract more trouble than it was worth and the party, having chose flaws that were pretty minor in comparison (like the Fighter choosing Shaky Flaws so he'd suck at Ranged), couldn't stand the fact Nym was more of a liability than anything, and bugged the DM to kill off Nym. The DM absolutely loved Nym, finding him hilarious, but got tired ofthe party's bitching and finally had Nym stepped on by a Giant.

Morth
2010-04-28, 10:20 PM
Kobold Ranger based on splash weapons who was hit into a chandelier in a tavern while still having a bag full of oil on him. It blew the tavern up, and got the survivors of the party arrested for arson. Good times.

Dust
2010-04-28, 10:37 PM
Playing in a very loose-and-fast-with-the-rules campaign, and most of us were rather optimized. The only one who WASN'T was the barbarian, who we'll call Krymm. Rather, Krymm worked his butt off to get his STR stat as high as conceivably possible, but wasn't very good at it - the GM allowed him a few leniencies with the rules.

Whenever we asked, Krymm would just shrug and insist, "I need to be stronger."

He was a good guy, we all liked him.

So the end of the campaign rolls around, and we're preparing for the final showdown with the Big Bad. We arm ourselves to the teeth with magic equipment and scrolls. When we arrive at his Doom Lair™, we discover it's a citadel that's riding on the event horizon of a dimensional black hole, and he's stocked it full of Devils.

We battle our way through the citadel and come face-to-face with the BBEG for the...third time, in the campaign, still having no idea what to expect. He starts dropping homebrewed spells on us left right and center, sundering our equipment magically while he gloats about how we'll be powerless to stop him, you know how it goes.

Except, he's right. It's a battle we're quickly losing, and though it was hard fought, the lot of us are either KO'd or otherwise out of comission- personally, I'm stuck dealing with a Maze spell.

The only one left standing is Krymm, and the GM's got an odd sort of look on his face - you can tell he regrets ending the campaign with a TPK, but he's not the sort to pull his punches. So he gets ready to finish off the last man standing, pulling the same cheap tricks as he did with us. Destroy equipment, prismatic spray, KO. Except he only gets to the first part before Krymm starts managing to clear a path through the Devils. Sure, they're less than CR10, but this is an UNARMED character with only a few lingering buffs plowing his way through the legions of hell.
We start cheering, the GM gets serious, and the wizard is low on spells. And Krymm is making every single saving through as he WADES across the room towards the BBEG.

"Tell the world never to forget..." Krymm roared, bull rushing the BBEG. "WHO...WAS....STRONGER!!"

Nat 20 on the bull rush. Nat 20 on a grapple check. Ridiculously high strength check roll just for flavor, and Krymm and the Big Bag go crashing through the simple stone wall of the citadel and out into the dimensional chasm below. They're both torn apart by the uncontrollable energies of the dimensional rift, and the last thing we hear is Krymm laughing maniacally, triumphantly.

True story.

amaranth69
2010-04-28, 10:46 PM
As a DM in AD&D 1st ed: Through the course of their adventures, the party had earned the enmity of an assassin"s guild. Fleeing to another city, they had gained enough experience that the thief could level up. Back in those days, to level up one needed to have a trainer and spend weeks in training. The thief observed a shifty fellow and took him for a thief. He approached said "thief" about training him, to which he got a reply stating that it would cost around 5000gp. The pc stated that he did not have that much, and was told to go out and obtain it. A week or two later and he had the gold. When he returned with the gold, instead of being trained, the assassin killed him. Maybe not epic, but a learning experience in the very least.

UndeadCleric
2010-04-28, 11:00 PM
I don't die much but my most epic character death was a rogue. There were 5 people in the group, a druid, a barbarian, a fighter, a wizard, and me , the rogue. This story is a semi-TPK.
The whole party fell into a dream. We then went into town and into the inn. The inn-keeeper saw our toughness and asked if we could solve the ogre problem. We were told there was a giant chasm to the south, where the ogre's lair was. When we got there, we lowered a rope to try to descend but the druid wanted to toss a rock down first. He rolled 2 natural ones in a row, so he ended up hitting himself in the head with the rock and his leg tangled in the rope breaking his hip. The whole group pulled the rope but the druid's foot was stuck in a crevasse and we tore the druid in half. The barbarian saw a gathering of people on the floor of the chasm and so he jumped. He crushed 2 rats and his sword went through the top of an ogre killing it. He was immediately killed by the 20-some other ogres there. We were then attacked by a ogre sentry squad. The wizard thought that he had a greater likelihood of surviving if he jumped off the edge. He landed belly-first on a steeple and stayed there to become a rotting carcass. The fighter tried to fight the ogre squad but I sneaked away. He was massacred and I made it back to town, later becoming the mayor of town. Then the group woke up. I told the DM that when I woke up a said "But I liked how that dream ended". I was then killed by my party members.

druid91
2010-04-28, 11:47 PM
Well I was playing a fighter, had pretty much been outnumbered and outgunned as I volunteered to go in and try and off the leader alone. well there I am I just barely managed to get down the hall, am at 2 HP and the big bad starts a monologue on how I can't stop him as he turns on this huge magic contraption that opens a portal to hell, I figure I am dead so decide to go down fighting and pick up a floor tile and throw it at the machine, I get a critical hit and destroy the crystal that focuses the thing There is a huge implosion, killing me, a few hundred orcs, and catapulting the survivors (including the big bad and the fortress we were in) into hell.

Deth Muncher
2010-04-29, 12:49 AM
This was my first and only time playing a barbarian.

There was a hallway in a dungeon that had a teleport trap: every time you would get to a certain point, you'd bamf back to the beginning of the hallway. As we didn't have any rogues, I say "Okay, I'll disable the trap with my axe." The DM looks at me like I've spouted tentacles, and says "Uh...okay. Roll to hit?" (I don't think he even wanted me to make a search check for the mechanism at this point, because it was so ridiculous.) I roll, and do some hefty amount of damage (for our level - I was either level 1 or 3, I can't recall).
DM:Er...okay. You see the trap start to fizzle.
Me: Great! I'll walk through.
DM: As you walk through, the trap fizzles loudly, and you find yourself teleported out of this hallway and, in fact, past the door at the end of the hallway. In front of you, you see a flying skull cloaked in green flame. Behind you are thirty goblins. What do you do?
Me: ...rage?
Everyone at the table: ....BAHAHAHAHAAHAH

I ended up killing a few goblins, but the skull Scorching Rayed me, and the combination of goblins and flaming skull = deadness.

Sindri
2010-05-02, 03:52 AM
We had a mid-level barbarian and a first level gnome in the party during a game of HackMaster, and were fighting a mage and his minions. The mage had some variety of protection from magic, and a Protection from Normal Missiles (like protection from arrows) and was about 30ft and a dozen minions from melee range. The barbarian picks up the gnome and hurls him, short sword first, at the mage. The GM agrees that this is far from a "normal missile," but the mage manages to blast the gnome in mid-flight. The first level gnome dies, but not before hitting the high-powered mage right through the heart.

Soulegion
2010-06-02, 07:21 PM
This is a 2-parter, and covers 2 of the most epic deaths i've seen as a GM. When i was running a Deadlands game w/ my regulars at the time, we got a new player who was running a mad scientist. Soon after introductions, a posse who was hunting the mad scientist (part of his backstory) rides into town. Without missing a beat, the mad scientist pulls out a BUNDLE of dynamite, lights it, and hurls it at the nearest horseman, only to critically fail. The resulting explosion decimated a nearby church, which the mayors daughter was being wed in at the time, killing the entire brides wedding party, including the bride (the players were all aware of the wedding before combat). One of my unluckier players, a gunslinger, dove for cover in a nearby storage shed, planning his next move.

At this point, I pulled out the fatemaker. The fatemaker is a clear D20 which was purchased in a set of 50 purple die (we have no idea why there was only 1 clear one). This die only gets pulled out on special occasions, because, without fail, it only rolls 20s and 1s. (I'm sure you can see where this is going)

The party was in the area searching for a mohave rattler which supposedly was lying dormant somewhere nearby. I rolled the fatemaker, and got a 1. The mohave rattler, which was lying dormant in a tunnel directly under the town, burst out of the ground directly under the feet of the aforementioned gunslinger, dealing lethal damage, and sending his corpse flying onto the roof of a nearby traincar, the same one the party was sleeping in on the way to the town.

After a long battle, the remainder of the party manages to deflect the rattler to a nearby plateau, where it was known to lair at times. The party sleeps for the evening, and the fatemaker comes back out. *clatter* 20. The gunslinger comes back as harrowed during the night. No one had bothered to remove the corpses in the aftermath of the battle, so the gunslinger swings into a window of the traincar below, into the mad scientist's room.

At this point, the harrowed gunslinger's dementia level is through the roof, so after passing a stealth check, proceeds to remove the scientist's head via a 2-foot section of rusty barbed wire he carries around with him.

Ironically, his harrowed powers got him into more trouble than they got him out of, but thats a story for another time.

AstralFire
2010-06-02, 07:25 PM
Bard. Tortured within an inch of her life. Party has no healing, and they have to face a tough encounter. Words of Creation Heroism, she dies from the damage, session ends, the party gets to /actually/ level up instead of temp levels. :smallamused:

Enix18
2010-06-02, 08:00 PM
"No, Friend Computer, YOU ARE the commie mutant traitor." Then my last clone was vaporised.

Being an avid Paranoia player myself, I can safely say that you, sir, are made of awesome.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good epic death stories. Am I doing something wrong if my players don't seem to die that often? :smallfrown:

Makiru
2010-06-02, 11:23 PM
Usually, campaigns I'm in tend to get called off due to DM angst, so I only have two deaths...ever (I even survived a DH game...as a psyker!), and one of them wasn't even permanent!

The first one happened when Kratos showed up and I used a dying party member as a flail to fight him in a quick-time event. Obviously, I lost.

By the way, this was in D20 Future.

After that, though, we went to Hell and were forced to fight for the amusement of Teen Lich. We get through it, eventually, at which point, I kick the brat off a cliff and Ozzy Ozbourne brings us back to life with the power of fire and metal.

By the way, this was a month and a half ago. We've only now gotten to the actual Brutal Legend part of the campaign.



The other time was in a one-shot commoner game where we kept being brought back to life by the power of communism and Ghost Stalin. We were given the mission to go into the undercity and bring back a pie to share with the survivors on the surface. My character, a female azurin with 3/4 of her feats being Shape Soulmeld, took the pie, ate a piece, and succeeded the Fort save to not be poisoned.

Apparently, the old gods saw her completely selfish act as a way to fight Ghost Stalin and started to "beam her up" to Heaven to make her a new goddess. The diminutive, chicken-riding lancer wouldn't have any of that, though, and started to throw chickens at me (we all had Chicken Infested as a flaw). The accordion thief then played Freebird, which made all the chickens pull out lighters and turn into pseudo-phoenixes, which I somehow dodged. With divinity only a step away, the lancer charged.

Nat 20, confirmed, lance + Spirited Charge, dealing three times my max life (so, about 30) and rocketing straight through my chest.

My death was quite displeasing to the gods, however, and they wept tears of blood that quickly drowned the entire planet. Lancer's last words: "It was worth it!"

tl;dr: the world was wiped out over me eating a piece of pie and living. I really don't know how I can top that.

Dairun Cates
2010-06-02, 11:42 PM
Best I've ever done was with a Human Rogue. We ended up in a horribly over-powered fight with some kind of demon. He scared off the fighter, killed off the cleric early, and the Wizard literally had NOTHING that could work consistently on this guy... So, of course, it's up to my two-weapon melee rogue to save the day. Wizard casts invisibility and I start stabbing away like a mad-man.

Well, then the problem comes up. I suffer something like 8-15 damage everytime I hit him. This isn't much, but over a lot of attacks, it adds up.

Well, it eventually came down to this. I've done well over 100 damage to this guy, and he's looking about dead. One more sneak attack will kill him. However, I'm at 0 hp. There's about a 1 in 10 shot he'll roll low enough not to kill me.

So, I either kill the thing and go down in a blaze of glory, or I pray the wizard can do enough dinky damage to the thing before it kills everyone. Considering it's damage, at least one other party member will die before the wizard beats it, and it'll probably be the wizard.

So, I make the calm and logical choice and sneak attack the thing. I die, it takes near max damage and explodes.

So basically, a rogue with something like 70 hp managed to single-handedly take down an infernal monster a few CR above his level.

Then I got reincarnated into a Half-Orc which was oddly favorable since I didn't lose charisma and gained strength.

Consequently, crippling strike is awesome on two-weapon builds.

EDIT: Also, Makiru. I recognize that campaign. I'm in it. Didn't realize too many of my fellow players frequented giantitp. Which one are you again? This is Oyashiro. The one who DIDN'T die.

Makiru
2010-06-03, 12:46 AM
To DC: It's Anthony/Vlaarg/Johnathan/Maru. I just joined today cause I was tired of lurking.

A year or so ago, I ran a group through Bastion of Broken Souls. It's OK as far as high-level modules go. The group finally made it to the Bastion, performed successful diplomacy with the demons stationed there (running a good-aligned adventure with an almost all-evil party makes funny things happen), and were about to enter Ashardalon's room.

The party consisted of a Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer, a half-orc barbarian/blackguard, a petal monk/rogue/drunken master, a formerly wild elf druid (he'd already died twice before for being the target of a prophecy and not being a good druid, he was reincarnated the second time into a female half-dryad), and a dalek wizard (the racial stats to which I will post later!).

Note that BoBS is actually a 3.0 module and had some wonky stats, so I decided to rework Ashardalon from the ground up as a half-fiend, ravenous ancient red dragon with the Xorrvintaal substitutions from MMV. I let the players know this ahead of time.

So, they enter, there's Ashardalon eating souls to not die himself, giving his big speech about how they could join him, etc, etc. The blackguard walks right up to his face and immediately tells him that he came to cut off his head to fulfill a bet. I announced surprise round as the blackguard got hit for 60 damage from Ashardalon's energy aura by starting adjacent to him, then dropping to a bite/claw/claw/wing buffet. In his defense, if the blackguard had remembered to rage first, he might have survived the entire full attack.

Anyways, combat starts, the sorcerer Time Stops and lays three Spheres of Ultimate Destruction before running like the kobold he was. The wizard layed down a sphere as well before hunkering down. The petal and his girlfriend (Leadership and Swarmfighting: they fought better on top of eachother...:smallsigh:) took out his support bard before being swatted down, while the druid did the plot-relevant chant and put up an Anti-life Shell around him/herself and the wizard in an attempt at defense.

Ashardalon is making all the saves vs. the spheres like a badarse and only taking regular damage, and fires a focused Deafening Breath cast from a wand scale to completely vaporize the druid and wizard. He breathes a sigh of relief as the spheres wear off.

And then the two balors from before run in. Yes, the kobold had run back to the demons they had buddied with and got the balors to come finish the job. I offered to just say that they eventually win, but the player insisted I play out the entire thing.

First balor immediately nat 20's with his vorpal sword and lops the dragon's head clean off in what had to be one of the most anticlimactic finishes possible. I was stunned for a good five minutes while the players all lost it because the DM just accidentally killed the BBEG.

Needless to say, when the party got brought back, the blackguard held up his end of the bet.

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-06-03, 02:12 AM
Not mine, but two very classic and epic PC deaths: http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-2764.html

Varis
2010-06-03, 01:08 PM
The most epic death or party wipe would have been at the campaigns finale. We were busy working against the BBEG black dragon, when an army invaded our continent.
The elven nation was attacked first and utterly crushed. Having close ties to its king, we agreed to help. Our task was to stall the enemy army so the remaining elves could flee. With what was left of the elven army we fortified the last remaining keep that stood between the now elven refugees and the advancing army.
We felt pretty confident with 20000 seasoned elves, a keep that prevented teleportation, powerful catapults and magical anti air ballistas. The party was at or close to 20th level.

What followed was our best and most desperate tactical play ever done by our group. We got hit by flights of dragons, we took bombardments from airships so massive they broke up the clouds (and tore the keep to pieces), we beat back assoults on the walls, we charged into an ocean of orcs and ogres to destroy their trebuchets and catapults.
With liberal use of a version of stoneshape and a lot of fighting we somehow held out for 2 days. At that point we had lost 17000 elves, the keep was little more then rubble and the protection against teleport was no longer active. We did a fighting retreat into the dungeon of the keep and made a last stand there. At the end of the 3rd day the last of the party finally fell to the orc armies general (epic barbarian) and his group of high mages, elite soldiers and clerics.

theMycon
2010-06-03, 07:04 PM
Another TPK story- one I've told here before. A DnD campaign I played 3 to 16 (well, 15-but-leveled-shortly before dying).

The battle starts between the four of us (Wiz, NPC VoP cleric, Ranger, and my monk) versus a dozen almost-CR-appropriate on their own demons, two dozen or so drow (half clerics, half soldiers), three actually-CR-appropriate demons, an our-level Sorc (cohort to the BBEG), and the big gal herself, a near-Epic Cleric. We walked in to the dungeon spec'd out specifically for the battle, but the room before the Big Bad mostly existed to drop a disjunction on us and then push the doom-clock to 11:59. Two or three of our items each survived, winners were the ranger's ring of 3 wishes & the cleric's Vow of Poverty.

Three rounds later, it's the ranger & I versus the BBEG, two of the CR-appropriate demons, and whatever soldiers didn't get in our way. I'm permanently blinded (but have a listen bonus in the mid 30's), technically STR damaged to -3 but animated through Bull's Str & Enlarge Person, and had to drop every item I have over 2lb to keep any class bonuses. The Ranger's animal companion is cowering in a corner, and the ranger's player is taking a tape measure to the battlefield to find every spot that lets him hit someone while preventing Line of Sight with the Big Bad. The wizard and cleric are a fine, red mist (chained destruction of some type).

I'm mostly abusing my mage slayer feat+ large size to keep the cleric busy (any pasting any demons who happen to get too close), and the ranger runs out of targets. So he uses an empowered sunburst from his ring; blinding everyone but us (him by virtue of being behind a pillar, myself because I'm already blind) & the big bad, and killing most of the soldiers. The Big Bad is stunned for a round (Drow! Sunlight! Brilliant!), dropping her AC to the point where I can hit her nearly half the time. So I full-attack her armor and crack it. Ranger likes this, and goes again, finishing everything but the Big Bad. I wail on her, ranger shoots, and "oh hey wait she's not stunned anymore." Quickened Divine Something, misses me twice whips him to death. I close, and we trade punches until I get a lucky crit.

She's dead, but there's still the artifact of ultimate DOOM in the back of the room, and I have 5 minutes before my STR goes negative again. I waste a minute trying to carry her body to a fire, but can't do that with 3 str. I take my adamatine glove, pound the artifact into dust, convince the ranger's Animal Companion to eat her, and tie his master's corpse to him, climb on, and say "go!" Then my Enlarge Person runs out; that's okay, we're still in saddle. But the dumb animal fails int check after int check; and I can't even raise an arm to point him in the right direction. I die of thirst before we get out.


(We've later house-ruled that the AC ate me, survived, and stumbled into the treasury right beside the room with the final fight. There, he met the avatar of the devil we saved the world from, and sold his kitty-cat soul in exchange for the ranger coming back. The ranger still had one wish on his ring, so we were saved somehow, but now his animal companion is now irrevocably chaotic-evil.
And I was resurrected inside a hairball.)