Ever felt really guilty as a DM?

[Darth_Versity]

So I was talking with my mates about our favourite games, and one session in particular came up as the best game ever, apart from one player who was really dissapointed. The scenario was a wizard of thay that had managed to recreate Karsus's spell to steal a gods power. The pcs started at lvl 1 and reached 13. 4 of them made it to the end with they're original pcs without dying once.

So they reached the final fight and were facing the wizards protecters while he tried to finish the ritual. I rolled high on initiative with the orc and charged the fighter using a full power attack with leap attack. It wasn't particularly optimised, his attack bonus was abysmal with the penalty. I rolled a natural 20. I then confirmed the critical, with a greataxe. 1d12+41x3. 147 dmg. He currently had 132 hp.

He missed out on that battle and the final showdown. I've never felt so guilty, and unfortunate rolls arn't even my fault.

So have any of you had things happen that cause you a stir of guilt?

[Snowbluff]

Yeah, this has happened to me a few times. I rolled so well the first few times I DMed games I almost TPKed every time.

You have to keep in mind that this sutff happens. The game is built around random rolls, as much as optimizers like me try to avoid that fact. Really, the player was just unlucky. To keep this from happening you might want to make some backup characters for them to play in the event of critical existence failures.

[sol_kanar]

Well, it was the first time that I put my PCs against an enemy that had access to a "Save or Die" spell, a finger of death (it was a Slaad with CR 15, and the PCs were level 13). I directed it against the PC that had the highest Fortitude modifier...and she rolled a 1.

From that day on, I started disliking "Save or Die" effects :-(

[GnomeGninjas]

I was introducing a new person to the game in a duo adventure with my brother, after they killed a few kobolds and before they really started on the adventure I had them fight a ghoul, it killed everyone including the person's riding dog, thankfully he is still interested in the game.

[Rejusu]

My DM ended up destroying one of the PC's (a barbarian) equipment once with a rust monster (it was either that or some acid monster, my memories foggy on exactly how it happened). The PC happened to also be the DM's girlfriend. I'm sure he felt a little guilty about that considering how he apologized about it. Especially because she decided to reroll after that.

[Hylas]

I invited a player who was interested in the game. Unfortunately she was self-centered enough that she kept demanding that I change things around to benefit her. The group eventually fell apart due to her arguing with me over who got 7sp. After that I wasn't able to get anyone together to play again.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

This is when I fudge things...I roll damage and so forth behind a screen. I wouldn't fudge it THAT much, but I'd probably have left the guy at <10 hit points: low enough to REALLY feel threatened, and to really challenge the party, but not low enough that they couldn't react to save him.

People dying that soon into climatic battles is something that, for my player's fun, I tend to avoid. If that happened, I *might* decide that I'd kill him during the fight, since he'd have died anyway...but I'd let him survive for a few more rounds just so he didn't feel he hadn't contributed.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Yes, when a favoured NPC died of old age. the campaign was done and while the big bad was defeated and everyone was celebrating, the wise old mentor shuffled off on his own and quietly passed away with a smile on his face, when they found him the players were pretty upset. I'd always known that living to see the BBEG defeated was the only thing keeping this old man going but I still felt really bad when I saw the players reaction.

[Slipperychicken]

Yes, when a favoured NPC died of old age. the campaign was done and while the big bad was defeated and everyone was celebrating, the wise old mentor shuffled off on his own and quietly passed away with a smile on his face, when they found him the players were pretty upset. I'd always known that living to see the BBEG defeated was the only thing keeping this old man going but I still felt really bad when I saw the players reaction.

Probably could have worked better if the BBEG killed him, or you gave him an old wound (intentionally hidden, because he wanted to die) to die from, or he poisoned himself (or better yet, asked his student to do it for him). Old age doesn't (AFAIK) just take you right from battle-ready to dead.


EDIT: Oh, you meant how sad the players felt about his death. Nevermind then.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Probably could have worked better if the BBEG killed him, or you gave him an old wound (intentionally hidden, because he wanted to die) to die from, or he poisoned himself (or better yet, asked his student to do it for him). Old age doesn't (AFAIK) just take you right from battle-ready to dead.


EDIT: Oh, you meant how sad the players felt about his death. Nevermind then.

He definitely wasn't battle ready, he was venerable aged and mostly acted as an advisor for the PCs due to the fact he had a total of 6HP :p

[Caedes]

I was DMing a super Good Campaign. Which meant my PCs were fighting many vampires and demons. I had one PC that was playing a LG Pally and was very RP oriented. He had written a ten page story on how he became a pally to protect his little sister in their little hamlet near Waterdeep. And that she was still living there thanks to his efforts.

Well... It did not take long for the BBEG (A Vampire Monk) to find out this information about the heart on his sleeve paladin. And sent one of his minions to "warn" the PCs of an impending attack on the Hamlet.

Well. The damage was already done. The BBEG had turned his little sister to a child vampire. Who upon seeing her older brother embraced him and then promptly took two levels from the poor guy (at that point he was lvl 7 so reduced to lvl 5 by his kid sister.)

The CG Barbarian promptly dropkicked the child/vampire/paladin destroyer/ over a nearby cliff. While the paladin refused to act because it was his sister.

Because he was a LG Paladin of Lathander he also temporarily lost his holiness cause he went against the Dogma of Lathander concerning undead...

I felt a bit guilty (because the player was visually distraught over these events), But every time I look back at his pleading with the Barbarian who Putted the child vampire off a cliff... Well I can't help but smile.

[Blisstake]

The wizard player is feeling useless after not being able to do anything to this demon. After a while, he finally makes his SR check with a chain lightning, and then I roll reflex and it's a 1. He rolls for damage, gets really high numbers, and just when I'm about to congratulate him, I see

Immune: Electricity

on the stat block :smallsigh:

[huttj509]

I was DMing a super Good Campaign. Which meant my PCs were fighting many vampires and demons. I had one PC that was playing a LG Pally and was very RP oriented. He had written a ten page story on how he became a pally to protect his little sister in their little hamlet near Waterdeep. And that she was still living there thanks to his efforts.

Well... It did not take long for the BBEG (A Vampire Monk) to find out this information about the heart on his sleeve paladin. And sent one of his minions to "warn" the PCs of an impending attack on the Hamlet.

Well. The damage was already done. The BBEG had turned his little sister to a child vampire. Who upon seeing her older brother embraced him and then promptly took two levels from the poor guy (at that point he was lvl 7 so reduced to lvl 5 by his kid sister.)

The CG Barbarian promptly dropkicked the child/vampire/paladin destroyer/ over a nearby cliff. While the paladin refused to act because it was his sister.

Because he was a LG Paladin of Lathander he also temporarily lost his holiness cause he went against the Dogma of Lathander concerning undead...

I felt a bit guilty (because the player was visually distraught over these events), But every time I look back at his pleading with the Barbarian who Putted the child vampire off a cliff... Well I can't help but smile.

Assuming the atonement wouldn't be excessive, that actually sounds like a really good "paladin falls" story. Well, assuming the precepts of Lathander were well spelled out.

[Caedes]

Assuming the atonement wouldn't be excessive, that actually sounds like a really good "paladin falls" story. Well, assuming the precepts of Lathander were well spelled out.

His atonement was not excessive. He eventually had to destroy his own sister.
It was just his Roleplaying was sooo good and overall impact was so strong, it twinged my normally stone like DM skin.

[Ganorenas]

Did he get to make a knowledge check to know the immunities? :smallsmile:

Recently, my players entered a large battle with about 200 orcs attacking a town, mostly level1 mooks and a couple higher ups against a town full of level1 mooks and them...

One of these players always thinks himself invincible, due to his build, which is based on high ac (i could only get him on a 20 from the mooks)
So he decided to 1-man army it, left the walls and setup shop in the trees to jump the first orcs that came by... so 100 mooks come in, i was fine with it, since they are meant to be mooks and the bosses were actually going to be teleported in behind enemy lines for some carnage while the mooks took arrows and such from the npcs, so the players wouldn't be bored with single hit kills...

I rolled 15 dice total agaisnt the 1man army, 5 were natural 20s', he want down within the first 3 rounds of the orcs showing up... since i felt bad that rolls screwed him they left his bleeding corpse alone until the end... but i still felt bad that he wasted his time and lost a percentage of exp for being downed (houserule). The others enjoyed the ploy and happily fought the bosses with the guard captain :smallsmile:

[godryk]

During the first session of the story I'm currently running I killed all the PCs.

One of the players was unable to assist (the cleric), so I made up a story for the rest of them (a fighter, a monk and a rogue, all 5th level). They had to travel from their boss' guild headquarters to the town where the whole thing was supossed to start. At some point, after brief talking with random villagers, they learned that a gang of ogres was roaming the road and charging travellers with a 'protection toll'. These news failed to impress the PCs, who decided to continue their journey anyway. It didn't take too long for them to run into a couple of toll-collecting ogres. Of course they refused to pay any fee and proceeded to kick their ass effortlessly.

However, news of this event reached the band's ringleader, a powerful barbarian. The ogre barbarian succeeded at going undetected near the party at night and he hide in the high grass. Eventually he attacked them during the rogue's watch shift. He frenzied and charged into her. He acted before her and caught her flatfooted. Then everyone woke up and the fighter had to put his armor on.

Long story short: the ogre had one more attack than they did, 10' reach and 75% chance of hitting most of them. He finished the the rogue pretty quickly and the fighter had some bad rolls so, even though they were consistently hitting the ogre, he ended up winning the damage race.

This was a big downer for everyone and I felt like I had failed them or something. As it was the first session and we hadn't even started the real story, after a week of pondering I used some super DM fiat and let them wake up in a some village nearby, stripped from their belongings. The cleric, who was waiting for the party, worried after a significant delay and used Status to find that the party was badly hurt and resting in some place. With some allies' help he made it to the village. When they recovered, they asked for revenge so I let them ambush the ogre ringleader in his cave and set up a nicely thought strategy to defeat him and take his belongings back.

You see, I'm a fairly unexperienced DM and I sometimes had some trouble setting encounters against enemies with classes. Of course practice makes perfect and after some sessions I'm getting slightly better. Now I'm more aware of checking the % chance the PCs have to avoid a melee hit or pass some save. However, I felt really guilty for a couple of sessions and didn't throw anything really challenging at them for some time.

[Karoht]

I put a lot of backstory into a minor NPC, all on the fly, over the course of several conversations and some town gossip. Enough backstory that it made the PC's suspicious that he was a villian. Party Sorcerer hit him with a surprise Empowered Maximized Disintegrate. He was a Butler. With all of 1 HD and his highest stats were a 12 Dex, 14 Wisdom and Charisma. He got hit with a bucket of D6.
The party then forced one of the other maids in the house to clean up the bits. She puked twice and fainted several times. This was followed by them telling her she was fired, because they'd just killed her boss (the actual boss).

I felt pretty horrible for these NPC's. All because I gave one of them some backstory. Ouch.

[Larkas]

This is when I fudge things...I roll damage and so forth behind a screen. I wouldn't fudge it THAT much, but I'd probably have left the guy at <10 hit points: low enough to REALLY feel threatened, and to really challenge the party, but not low enough that they couldn't react to save him.

People dying that soon into climatic battles is something that, for my player's fun, I tend to avoid. If that happened, I *might* decide that I'd kill him during the fight, since he'd have died anyway...but I'd let him survive for a few more rounds just so he didn't feel he hadn't contributed.

Same here. See, I have this d20 that has the bad habit of always rolling 19 or 20 (and ONLY when I'm DMing :smalltongue: ), so I learned pretty soon that I had to "fix" the rollings to avoid killing people needlessly. In the OP's example, for one, I'd have left the character with -9 HP, maybe stabilized on the next round.

That said, I've felt guilty as a DM many, many times. One of those was because of blowing up the Prime Material Plane just after the players finished a heroic quest, even though it was the WRONG quest. It was the longest running campaign I ever had, and no game was ever the same with this group =/

[JonRG]

*innocent butler gets vaporized*

:smalleek: I'm suddenly reminded of when Xykon met Redcloak and his brother. :smallamused:

Though wouldn't the butler have just turned to dust?

[SimonMoon6]

Well, it was the first time that I put my PCs against an enemy that had access to a "Save or Die" spell, a finger of death (it was a Slaad with CR 15, and the PCs were level 13). I directed it against the PC that had the highest Fortitude modifier...and she rolled a 1.

From that day on, I started disliking "Save or Die" effects :-(

Yeah, I've been there as a player. Back in 1st edition, I was playing a ranger/druid character that the DM was building up as "The Chosen One" (to be fair, we each had our own solo adventures where we kicked ass). And then I faced a beholder and faced a save or die spell and I rolled a 1.

So... no more Chosen One. The DM had to back pedal and gave some reason why I survived anyway. And that's when I started to realize the problem with save or die effects.

[Karoht]

:smalleek: I'm suddenly reminded of when Xykon met Redcloak and his brother. :smallamused:

Though wouldn't the butler have just turned to dust?
Two answers to this question.
RAW says yes. DM who didn't read the spell completely (me, I was new) and creatively interpreted the overkill said 'he went splorch.'

[Greyfeld85]

Two answers to this question.
RAW says yes. DM who didn't read the spell completely (me, I was new) and creatively interpreted the overkill said 'he went splorch.'

Which, admittedly, is a much cooler and more graphic effect xD

[Toy Killer]

I've always been hesitent to use Golems, on the basis that unless you set it up right, 90% of Magickers are useless against them.

It's hard to know weather or not a golem will be present at any particular location, unless the adventure is based on the idea of the golem-builder, So wizards aren't likely to pick them up on their divinations. A golem is easily confused with statues (or in flesh golems cases, zombies) and even if noticed, doesn't mean that sorcerers have any learned spells that will work against 'that' particular golem.

Plus if you mix the golem group (like 10 goblins and 1 clay golem) so the mage has something to do while the party is battling the golem, you're inviting the mage to getting kicked while he's unsported.

I just feel like it's a lose/lose in any case...

[Spyder_Bait]

I was DM of a game that was set in ancient greece. The pc's were sent to an island looking for a princess that had been kidnapped. Long story short the island that they were own was the wrong one but the port where they docked had been overtaken by giant insects as they were going through the town they split up and decided to check each building. one of the fighters went to look in the tavern, the hopolite went to a grain store with the rouge character and, the archer and bard stayed in the centre of town incase somebody needed help. The hoplite and rouge got caught up with a tussle in the grain with some oversized overfed grain weevles which should of been easily pigsticked by the hoplit but the part i felt guilty for was the fighter that went into the tavern he walked in and critically failed the spot checks to spot the giant spiders lurking in the rafters. When he was upstairs one decided to ambush him. He dealt with this great realizing he had been poisend he held onto the spider that had landed on his back and decided to dive out of the upstairs window. He only just succeded at his jump roll to go through the window but his dex rolls were comprimised by the spider and as he fell he critically failed on the landing and then critically failed the critical check landing on his neck driving the spiders fangs deep into his neck and cracking his spine. The way i described it to him he took three times the amount of damge to the health he had left. I felt that bad that i killed his charecter by they creature placements that i had the gods resurect him through a gift they delivered.

[danzibr]

Did he get to make a knowledge check to know the immunities? :smallsmile:

Recently, my players entered a large battle with about 200 orcs attacking a town, mostly level1 mooks and a couple higher ups against a town full of level1 mooks and them...

One of these players always thinks himself invincible, due to his build, which is based on high ac (i could only get him on a 20 from the mooks)
So he decided to 1-man army it, left the walls and setup shop in the trees to jump the first orcs that came by... so 100 mooks come in, i was fine with it, since they are meant to be mooks and the bosses were actually going to be teleported in behind enemy lines for some carnage while the mooks took arrows and such from the npcs, so the players wouldn't be bored with single hit kills...

I rolled 15 dice total agaisnt the 1man army, 5 were natural 20s', he want down within the first 3 rounds of the orcs showing up... since i felt bad that rolls screwed him they left his bleeding corpse alone until the end... but i still felt bad that he wasted his time and lost a percentage of exp for being downed (houserule). The others enjoyed the ploy and happily fought the bosses with the guard captain :smallsmile:
It actually sounds like this guy deserved what he got. If he fights 100 dudes for sure he'll die, unless the mooks do really terrible damage.

During the first session of the story I'm currently running I killed all the PCs.

One of the players was unable to assist (the cleric), so I made up a story for the rest of them (a fighter, a monk and a rogue, all 5th level). They had to travel from their boss' guild headquarters to the town where the whole thing was supossed to start. At some point, after brief talking with random villagers, they learned that a gang of ogres was roaming the road and charging travellers with a 'protection toll'. These news failed to impress the PCs, who decided to continue their journey anyway. It didn't take too long for them to run into a couple of toll-collecting ogres. Of course they refused to pay any fee and proceeded to kick their ass effortlessly.

However, news of this event reached the band's ringleader, a powerful barbarian. The ogre barbarian succeeded at going undetected near the party at night and he hide in the high grass. Eventually he attacked them during the rogue's watch shift. He frenzied and charged into her. He acted before her and caught her flatfooted. Then everyone woke up and the fighter had to put his armor on.

Long story short: the ogre had one more attack than they did, 10' reach and 75% chance of hitting most of them. He finished the the rogue pretty quickly and the fighter had some bad rolls so, even though they were consistently hitting the ogre, he ended up winning the damage race.

This was a big downer for everyone and I felt like I had failed them or something. As it was the first session and we hadn't even started the real story, after a week of pondering I used some super DM fiat and let them wake up in a some village nearby, stripped from their belongings. The cleric, who was waiting for the party, worried after a significant delay and used Status to find that the party was badly hurt and resting in some place. With some allies' help he made it to the village. When they recovered, they asked for revenge so I let them ambush the ogre ringleader in his cave and set up a nicely thought strategy to defeat him and take his belongings back.

You see, I'm a fairly unexperienced DM and I sometimes had some trouble setting encounters against enemies with classes. Of course practice makes perfect and after some sessions I'm getting slightly better. Now I'm more aware of checking the % chance the PCs have to avoid a melee hit or pass some save. However, I felt really guilty for a couple of sessions and didn't throw anything really challenging at them for some time.
And for this one, it sounds like you did an awesome job.

[Rubik]

rougeMy brain kind of just stopped interpreting words after about the fourth iteration of this.

[Longcat]

If there's one thing I absolute despise, it's dice fudging (in either direction). Therefore, I always roll openly when I DM, and the rolls count.

As such, there's nothing I ever regret.

[Keneth]

In a word: No. If the characters aren't prepared for an obvious eventuality, like a character dying due to good rolls on your part, then there's no reason to feel guilty about it. Now if you purposefully made an encounter that is tailor made to kill a character (or even the whole party), then you might feel somewhat guilty, but then again you were planning on it.

[killem2]

As a newish DM (going into our 4th session later this month), I felt really bad when I sent the party of level 2's against a shadow, and there was a wizard (me) who had horrible states could barley land a ranged touch attack, an elven hound (i let the ranger have it as a non companion to start), and a cleric.

otherwise no other magical weapons.

They survive, but it made the rest of the dungeon really drag because it had a lot of undead, and some of the main heavy hitters had ability damage.

Looking back, I don't feel guilty anymore, it was a learning experience and turned out really to be a nice challenge.

[Gnaeus]

Before I frequented the boards, I thought CR meant something. I unintentionally TPKed the party with an unbeatable monster because its CR was the same as monsters they had been curbstomping for the last 3 games. :smallfrown: Sorry guys.

[bokodasu]

I felt a little bit guilty, once. Sort of. I enjoy making the occasional overpowered encounter that is completely and obviously avoidable, and then seeing how the players deal with it. Oddly, they still haven't learned to avoid them, but they have at least learned that when something looks overwhelming, it probably is.

Except there was a new guy at the table, who, after seeing this monster tear an orc into pieces and hit and the party barbarian for 90% of his HP, decided he would step up to the front line (instead of sensibly trying to hide behind someone else, which is what everyone else in the party was doing). He got ripped in half - I think it did over twice his total HP in damage. And he had worked really hard on his character background and everything. So there was kind of a twinge there, but then the other players pointed out he had been a bit silly about the whole thing and I got over it.

[killem2]

I felt a little bit guilty, once. Sort of. I enjoy making the occasional overpowered encounter that is completely and obviously avoidable, and then seeing how the players deal with it. Oddly, they still haven't learned to avoid them, but they have at least learned that when something looks overwhelming, it probably is.

Except there was a new guy at the table, who, after seeing this monster tear an orc into pieces and hit and the party barbarian for 90% of his HP, decided he would step up to the front line (instead of sensibly trying to hide behind someone else, which is what everyone else in the party was doing). He got ripped in half - I think it did over twice his total HP in damage. And he had worked really hard on his character background and everything. So there was kind of a twinge there, but then the other players pointed out he had been a bit silly about the whole thing and I got over it.


This would get a huge laugh at my group. Because if they saw a barbarian do that to an orc, then yeah you can bet that they would be high tailing it.

[danzibr]

My brain kind of just stopped interpreting words after about the fourth iteration of this.
Maybe it was a red character.

[Sturmcrow]

I was running a game one time, I had spent the early part of the day talking to my gf at the time who was finally on her way back to CA, I told the group hey I am in such a good mood this session will probably be great for you, lots of treasure... easy fights!

1 hour later half the party was dead from an even CR fight with some Driders. They bunched up and the Driders dropped a couple fireballs at the start of the fight, I rolled really well and dropped a bunch of PCs

:smallfrown:

[eclipsic]

I DM'ed for a 2E arcane trickster-ish type character who needed to retrieve an object from a den of lizard men, who were not exactly evil or anti-human in this campaign, but I pretty much represented the challenge as "They will not give up the thing without fighting", so the arcane trickster-ish critter ended up burning the entire tribe to death.

That was almost 15 years ago, and I mentioned an encounter in the current game to that player, and he shuddered and said, "Please! no more lizard men! I'm still not recovered from when I had to burn that entire tribe to death."

[Darth Stabber]

Guilt is a useless feeling reserved for lesser mortals. If I TPK, so freaking be it. In my current game every encounter for the past 8 sessions has been at CR = EPL + 2-4, and they aren't optimized, and they like it that way (and I am really shocked that no one has died). I want to impress upon them that I have no problem killing one of them off without a second thought, but they keep pulling victory out of their hind ends. I take no joy from doing it, but knowing that they could die at any time impresses a certain sense of seriousness and tension in combat.

As soon as they finish this side quest they are going to find a beloved NPC laying dead in a pool of his own blood, rent to pieces, beyond the hope of anything shy of resurrection, and it will tear at their heart strings and I will laugh maniacally. Regret and worry are like a rocking horse, they give you something to do, but they don't get you anywhere. You are the GM, a certain level of sadism is acceptable, even desirable.

[maxrz]

Recently I had a group of 3 face an omnimental. Thanks to some help from Pazuzu they managed to kill it in rather nice condition. Next comes the four elementals. Their only chance to win was if all three actually did stuff. Well their Psion had two options, use a bunch of energy powers and do 12d6+12 per round, or do save or dies (Psychic Crush), off a high knowledge check he found it would be better to do SoD's versus the actual damage on at least two of them. He died. The Water Elemental had to roll a 13 or higher to pass the SoD or he was killed. 7 rounds later the elemental was still alive. 7 failed Psychic Crushes later, he was out of power points and dead.

Statistically, thats a .164% chance to happen, but it did. He would have killed one, taking averages, had he gone with energy powers.

I didn't feel guilty, but the Psion thought I should have. Hey, that's the nature of the game.

[Silva Stormrage]

Worst thing for me as a DM was the final BBEG of a campaign. I made him apparently too strong and the players just folded against him. I thought that they would be able to destroy him and have a nice finisher to the campaign. (The BBEG was a former player turned evil who had destroyed them around 3 times before this so it would be satisfying to defeat him for once).

[Adindra]

i felt really guilty two sessions ago when after a fight with a adult white dragon my level 5 pc's (a battledancer ,a barbarian, a dread necromancer, and a wizard but he missed that session) fought a cr 7 snow ooze (may have been cr6 i dont remember but one of the two) and the barbarian kept cutting it in half and splitting it which made the fight much harder. In the end the ooze manages to kill the battledancer outright and she looks at me and says with the saddest voice i have ever heard "but...i never die"

instantly i felt like a jerk, but bad rolls are bad rolls and thats what happens :smalltongue:

[ChimingCopper]

My DM has done many terrible things to my characters, because we both firmly believe that change and growth only come with great suffering.

That being said, she only feels guilty about one instance.

On a bad roll of the dice, which seems to be a common thread of these stories, she killed my cleric's horse. We had built up that the cleric was very fond of his horse, which was a plain, patient, brown farm horse they had liberated from a bandit camp. He had persisted in riding this mare even when presented with better options, of which there were many, considering he was noble. Poor Coriander was eaten alive in front of him, by humans under a sleep spell that caused them to dream they were voraciously hungry.

PC deaths? Hardly a twinge. Terrible things happening to PCs? Nothing.

One innocent horse?

She still apologizes every time Coriander is brought up in conversation, and had her DMPC paladin go with him to purchase his new horse (a plain, patient, brown, actually riding trained mare, name of Cardamom).

[Morithias]

One time there was an annoying DMPC named Olivia, an annoying mary-sue healer with the vow of peace.

Needless to say my players hated her, so they eventually quite the campaign ONE battle before the final boss..

...who was going to be revealed that Olivia was actually an evil Ur-priest using a magical ring to emulate the vow of peace.

They were all pissed that they didn't get the chance to kill her...I felt kinda guilty for throwing out my campaign notes, so they're never going to get the chance to murder the annoying Princess.