Ranks of the Fallen

[big teej]

as a dungeon master, how many characters have you killed?
who were they?
how did they die?

so far, I've killed three.

Bartolomew - Half Elf Ranger, slain by the Orc Elites of The Blue Dragon's horde.

Talta-Rama - Human Ranger, Slain by the Orc Elites of The Blue Dragon's Horde.

Agnarr - Dwarf Barbarian, Slain by Orc Brute in the Kython Infestation Dungeon Crawl.

[some guy]

There was an old thread like this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187722), in an old post I described the deaths of the pc's in my long-running campaign.

Anyway, in D&D I killed at least 5 characters (2 campaigns and more than 10 one shots).
2 brought to death by a gnoll war party and a enlarged, enraged, gnoll chieftain, 2 eaten by tendricolosi (several times), 1 fell in lava (together with a lot of treasure)
In Call of Cthulhu, I killed at least 7 characters [including one monstrification, not technically dead, but...] (4 one shots and 1 campaign).
1 shot by mind-controlled party member, 1 clawed to death by decaying sorcerer, 1 sliced open by possesed dagger, 2 clobbered to death by Thing in Swimming Pool, 1 changed into a chupacabra (well, it was not a chupacabra, but that was what the players chose to call it, 1 drained of the essential fluids by a Chosen of Hastur
In Gamma World I killed only 1 character (3 one shots).
Hawkoid Yeti mauled and lasered to death by a Yexil, later his body was crushed by the corpse of the yexil.

[Lord Ruby34]

Ooh, I have some good ones. Not all of these are characters I've killed while DMing but these are the characters that have been killed in all of our campaigns. I just killed most of them.

Ratchet-CE Half-Orc barbarian-Party wizard used gust of wind to knock him into a pit of acid while he was jumping over the one before it.

Laundry list of characters whose names I've forgotten-Killed by party assassin/traitor. He was never caught either.

Demetrius- N Human Wizard-He fought manticores without protection from arrows up. On a mountain. At tenth level. :smallsigh:

Farwd Stoneborn-LN... Dwarf fighter- Knocked off a mountain by a manticore.

Voxin Von Animer- CE halfling rogue/assassin- Used a potion of Fly to try and get away after the rest of his party got ganked. He was chased. By manticores. He actually died when the potion wore off. Right above town. We didn't like the fly ends slowly thing. And we use d10's for falling damage.

Fel Greenhand- LG... Elf paladin- We used a critical fumble deck. Then we stopped.

Hal-Felf- CE Half Elf Ranger- Killed by a good party for being... well CE. And we hated the name.

Nomeg- N gnome druid- Shot with a gnome-slaying arrow. That crit'd. He passed the first fort save. And then we rolled on the crit table. We stopped using the crit chart too.

Haumn -Can't be bothered to rember the last name-- Human monk- Shot by the French Inquisition while the rest of the party had the good sense to try and quickly fortify the tavern. She tried talking. It didn't work.

Naumh- LG human paladin. Caught on fire and fell off a 200 foot wall. Remember our falling damage? Yeah she didn't get lucky.

[nyarlathotep]

Human assassin/ranger/ungodly stupid combination of multiclassing- mount disintegrated while he was 500 feet in the air. The mount was later revived by the party he was not.

Same character brought back as an undead after party failed to find the body and couldn't be bothered to use true res. Was killed by fellow party members after he attempted to kill one of them. Reason for attempted murder was unclear as the other he tried to kill was the one who actually tried to help find his body.

Pseudo Natural human monk - Killed within five minutes of entering the game, because he rolled a natural 1, was on a high place and the boss's attack has knockback.

Human bard killed by god kitten (a different player's fault).

Human bard turned on party after being confronted for abandoning them in the previous fight.

Gnomish healer crushed to death by dying flesh tree (long story).

All of these were the same player. He died just as often in other DM's campaigns (at least 5 other deaths off the top of my head and I DM half our games). He had an irrational hatred of me when I was actually playing and always tried to kill my characters.

[Combat Reflexes]

I've recently caused a near-TPK by ambushing my party (4 characters of 9th level) with two 5th-level assassins. The barbarian/wizard and the druid both rolled 1s on their Fort saves vs. death attack, and the party rogue decided to team up with the thugs to save his own skin :smalleek:

The last PC, Crusader Jack, slew all three of them in a dramatic last stand.

And, of course, I have a long history of Death-by-PC events (opposite alignment, betrayal, being a jerk, 'just for fun', cannibalism, plot-related, etc. etc.)

[Malimar]

Let's see here...

1 - The party, in the street, detected some demons on the roof of a nearby building. The wizard cast Fly and flew straight up... directly into charging range of a winged fiendish minotaur. (The party's warforged gets partial credit for this kill, for having punched the wizard earlier in the day.) (The party later pooled their resources for a scroll of raise dead.)

1 - Only half the party showed up one day, and I didn't adjust the foes accordingly (because they were lying in wait specifically for this party, and because if you can't be bothered to show up then I can't be bothered to not inflict TPKs). The party's warforged knight and human swashbuckler/knight managed to just barely survive long enough for the wizard's player to arrive, and he promptly dropped a fireball, killing the last of the foes but also killing the warforged (revenge!). (The party then used a scroll of reincarnate they had picked up earlier, and the warforged came back as a dread guard.)

3 or 4 - The party came upon a minor boss (a vampire factotum). In the absence of the players taking advantage of his weaknesses, the vampire was somewhat overpowered for his CR. They managed to temporarily Turn him, then they found his coffin and destroyed it. Then he came back. It was at this point that the vampire noticed the party's scout was carrying 8 gallons of lamp oil on his person. The vampire happened to have scorching ray prepared. They were all in a very high-oxygen environment (the plane of air, somewhat different in my cosmology than the standard). The wizard was just out of range of the explosion, the vampire made his saving throw (and was wearing a Ring of Evasion), but the rest of the party died.

1 - Later, after having retreated into a rope trick and rested, the wizard managed to challenge the vampire to a one-on-one duel. The wizard cast a bunch of buffs, polymorphed himself into some obscure creature, and managed, for several rounds, to do just barely enough damage to overcome the vampire's regeneration. It was a close fight, which the wizard eventually wound up losing. By 1 hit point. (The wizard got turned into a vampire and is now a fairly major NPC in the sequel campaign, set in the same world.)

1 - New campaign: an open gaming table megadungeon, where the monsters are distributed according to where they're likely to be, not where they'll always present an appropriate challenge to the players. The players to this day haven't got the hang of making Gather Information and/or Knowledge checks to figure out if they're going to a level-appropriate region. The first game I ran, they ran into a huge centipede (after barely defeating an allip, who left the fighter permanently drained to 2 wisdom). The duskblade went down when he tried to attack the centipede, then the bard went down when he provoked an attack of opportunity trying to get to the duskblade to heal him. (The duskblade stabilized, the bard didn't. They did manage to kill the centipede.)

3 - Similar story, several sessions later: not having made any checks to figure out if they were going to a level-appropriate region, the party ran into three wrackspawns (which had admittedly wandered in from an adjacent, higher-level region), and neglected to run away as promptly as they should have. When the wrackspawns KO'd one character and killed another, everybody else grabbed their fallen companions and tried to run away. The wrackspawns got the fleeing half-orc with an attack of opportunity. Then when the monk tried to retrieve the half-orc's body, they got her, too. (The rest of the party got away and cashed in a favor owed them by an erinyes, who retrieved the bodies and cashed in a favor owed him by a more powerful devil, who cast Raise Dead to bring all three back. Yes, I know, summoned creatures never use abilities that would cost them XP; probably the powerful devil had a scroll on him or something.)

I've been DMing D&D for a little over a year now, and those are 100% of the player kills I've been responsible for. Am I a more dangerous DM than most? (I ran in a different system for ten years previous to starting on D&D, and never once killed a player in that system. Maybe I'm just catching up.)

[marcielle]

I'm here on behalf of my DM for finding inventive ways to kill our lesser Assimar cleric once every level.
Notable deaths - DRUNK to death, sold to demons by own party tiefling (happened after drinking to death but I like to think of it as 2 seperate kills so fast he couldn't even res:smallbiggrin:) and my all time favourite, gored by blue lounge rhino

Notably, the frontlining monk has better survivabilitiy.:smallconfused:

Also funny is when our rouge walks up to a sleeping vamp, shakes him while yelling 'WAKE UP' and randomly gets mauled to death by a dire lap-tiger.

[Rogue Shadows]

Hmm.

Liza, Kizutsu , Jason, Agrael, and Nevan: Level 1 all, killed by Maleficent, a level 20 sorceress, in the first session.

They got better in time for the second.

Liza, Kizutsu, Agrael, Nevan, Relena, Tsukita, and Hateko: level 20 all, killed by Chengabog's 1st form's death, Apocalymon-style.

They got better in time for fighting Chernabog's 2nd form (the final boss of the campaign).

I think I've killed other characters...but I can't remember when.