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Dire Panda
2013-02-24, 03:39 PM
Given that death is one of the most dramatic things that can happen to a character, I'm sure some of you Playgrounders have stories of interesting PC deaths you're dying (ha!) to share. Doesn't matter if you were the player or the DM, or if they later found a way back from the other side - what are the oddest, most heroic, or otherwise memorable ways a character has kicked the bucket?

I have two for the moment, one tragic and one oddball:

"Daddy loves you"
Probably the grittiest campaign I've ever played in took place in a modern setting, starring a group of vigilantes who'd all been wronged in some way by the same criminal syndicate and were now determined to take them down. The syndicate was involved in most types of illegal activities worldwide, from drug smuggling to sex trafficking, so I decided that the only thing sufficient to motivate my character - a Vietnam veteran with severe PTSD - to chase down heavily-armed criminals across the globe was if they'd kidnapped his estranged daughter. (I should add that this was well before the movie Taken was released)

Anyway, over the course of the campaign, my character had become the group's demolitions expert and heavy weapon guy. We'd disrupted several human trafficking operations, but no matter how many syndicate thugs my (increasingly unhinged) character tortured to death, he was seemingly no closer to finding his daughter. That is, until our group's hacker finally managed to decrypt the contents of a laptop stolen from a Moscow crime boss with syndicate ties. Not only did it have a roster of kidnapped young women bound for the Eastern European sex trade, but it contained information on a plot to sell a Soviet-era hydrogen bomb to a Middle Eastern extremist group.

We spent the next half-hour arguing in-character about which lead to pursue, which ended only when my character - finally at his breaking point - pulled out a pack of C4, strapped it to his chest, and set a four-day timer. "There. We have that much time to save my daughter, or you can find a new demo guy." I should mention I was the only member of the group capable of disarming it - or the aforementioned hydrogen bomb.

Well, that motivated the group, though there was much profanity uttered. Three days later, we'd successfully mapped out the abandoned Soviet-era subway station in which the traffickers were storing their victims, and our attempts at infiltration were going well until our 'face' - who really shouldn't have come on a raid like this - accidentally set off a tripwire alarm. Thugs swarm the party, and we survive, but I roll badly and have a flashback mid-battle. When the smoke clears, the thugs are dead, but so is a kidnapped girl who took advantage of the chaos to run. I'd thought she was an enemy and shot her.

My character, nearly catatonic from grief, makes sure that the dead girl isn't his daughter, then runs to the room where the rest are being kept. We find her alive, but beaten and emaciated - and the tearful reunion is interrupted by our hacker telling us that the security cameras show a whole horde of thugs coming our way from deeper in the station. The only escape route large enough to get all the girls out is sealed by a blast door too thick to blow through, and it's going to take a while for our team to hack the controls. The map, though, shows a chokepoint that the thugs will have to come through. We have no time to set up an ambush, but given the condition of the subway system...

My character turns to his daughter, considers the monster he's become over the course of the campaign, and realizes her life will be better without him in it. He tells the rest of the party to make sure she gets out, and tells her "Be safe. Daddy loves you." He then runs to the choke point, ignoring the protestations of his daughter and the rest of the party, presses himself against a weakened pillar... and sets off the C4 charge just as the incoming thugs open fire on him. That part of the subway collapses, cutting off the incoming attackers and giving the party ample time to open the blast door and evacuate the trafficking victims.

Most of the group was in tears by this point, and the session ended right there. The daughter, once she recovered, underwent intense training and ended up joining the group as my new character - and yes, we did manage to intercept that nuke.

Spit or...
Back in my undergrad years, I ran a short-lived 3.5 campaign whose main antagonists were a cult devoted to That Which is Mother and Devourer, the prime mover and eventual destroyer of the cosmos. Long story short, the leaders of the cult were powerful sorceresses known as the Jesh, who had used a profane ritual to intentionally infect themselves with biomass shed by TWiMaD and take on some of its destroyer aspect. Among other benefits, the ritual granted the Jesh the ability to Swallow Whole foes of their own size into an extradimensional stomach.

Now, by the time of this tale the PCs had seen Jesh in action, so to speak, and so they should have been a bit more cautious - especially considering that the reason they'd infiltrated the nobles' ball in the first place was to warn the queen that the Jesh were trying to abduct and replace her. Since they were having difficulty getting past the clump of nobles and courtiers surrounding the queen, our rogue decided he'd draw away one of the more important guests to help thin the crowd. With his characteristic lack of subtlety, he attempted to seduce the countess.

Yup, natural twenty on top of a decently optimized skill modifier. The rogue manages to be suggestive without being improper, and the two of them retire to the coat closet. In the middle of the act, I have him roll a grapple check. The player was confused, but rolled... and the dice gods were not on his side this time.

Me: "She already has her mouth on part of your body, so she only needs one grapple check to swallow you. You suddenly notice that your entire lower body is inside her mouth, and the rest of you follows a moment later. You take 4 bludgeoning and 6 acid damage."

To his credit, the rogue managed to do some decent sneak attack damage to her innards before being digested - he actually knocked her out with one last, well-executed kidney punch. By the time the other players realized something was up, they'd successfully warned the queen, and her royal guards were searching the castle for uninvited guests. The only unusual thing they found was a countess napping inside the coat closet - clearly she'd had a few too many drinks, and her retinue took her home. Abduction foiled, but at a terrible cost.

It was only later that the other PCs realized what had happened, and took the fight to the countess's castle. The campaign didn't last much longer after that (two of the players graduated), but I reused the setting (with that nation successfully conquered by the Jesh) for what ended up being a three-year campaign.

ArcturusV
2013-02-24, 04:06 PM
Well, this one was memorable more for the players involved, than what actually happened. I was DMing a 4th edition campaign, our party included a Warlord, Monk, Wizard/Shaman, Warlock, and a Swordmage. The Swordmage was... well... a goober. No one really liked him. He refused to give anyone his name. Tried to hide his race even and his class from his team (not so successfully, but he tried). Was kind of a leery pervert who tried to do things like peep on female party members, get them to dress like strippers, etc. Always causing problems like setting fire to a city or unleashing a were-pocalypse on a city.

So they're in a fight against some Goliath Raiders. They came up to this town that was in the middle of a nice loot and pillage operation. Things seem to be going fairly well until an NPC they had with them (Monk's sister) decides she's all jazzed up and is gonna throw down with the big boys (She was a trained bard, though no one knew she was a bard oddly enough, with a few multiclasses). She just terribly botches things and the two goliaths near her just beat the snot out of her. One of them captures her and runs off trying to use the unconscious woman as a half-elf shield against the party while he fled (the other Goliaths were still fighting the party).

The warlock, and the Wizard/Shaman were in position and had the ranged powers, so they were cutting off the guy and taking shots at the Goliath, EASILY handling it. The Warlord, Swordmage, and Monk were holding off the main enemy mass but struggling. Now, the Swordmage Drow that no one liked had a turn. He goes, "Ah ha! A chance at Princess Rescue Sexing!" (Didn't say it, but we could all see that was what was clicking in his mind). Abandons the frontline and his fairly torn up party members to burn all his actions moving towards the "Kidnapped Princess"... wasn't even able to act.

... enemy Goliath turn comes, they just POUND the Warlord and Monk now that they didn't have marking punishments to worry about. Rolled really damned well on it and the Warlord was down in negatives, Monk was cleaving to 2 HP and no means to heal himself. Three enemies set up against them still. Of course the "runner" who had kidnapped the NPC as a hostage was nearly dead, and everyone knew it by my description. Next Warlock turn the goliath in question is put down. The Swordmage did nothing other than burn his action point and all his turn to get over there. The Swordmage decides that what he needs to do is "protect" the unconscious NPC and stand "guard" over her. Most of the players were somewhat suspicious because they know the player in question often would lie to the group then pull me aside and say something like "I'm using stealth to peep on the half-elf warlock or the Tiefling Wizard..." or something. (And he had been caught before).

But the Warlord was down. It was important. The Wizard/Shaman burns an action point in order to get in range to heal the Warlord. They BARELY manage to recover the fight after that, the Monk going down (And getting healed as well by the warlord), and only really survive because the Wizard/Shaman was saving them and I had the last of the Goliaths (Almost wholly undamaged) flee.

After that... for Dereliction of Duty and nearly causing the death of a teammate, and heavy suspicion that the Swordmage in question was doing something pervy to the Monk's Sister while she was unconscious and everyone else was distracted by the battle... everyone just turns on him and kicks his ass. Near simultaneous calling of attacks after the battle was over. "I run over and I Shouryuken his..." "I Winter's blast his..." "I hellish rebuke that...", etc.

What made it extra interesting for me was the fact the Swordsage player in question always stuck to his guns that he did nothing wrong... and he wasn't a pervert... even though he got caught several times trying to be one (And lied about it to other players when I wasn't around and saying I just made it up and he really had a perfectly innocent reason for whatever...). As well as just the gruesome details all the players went into as they attacked him.

The Wizard/Shaman player retired her character after that, grabbed a Paladin since we were lacking a defender now (And no one wanted to pool their money to raise the Swordsage despite his begging). Never looked back except to laugh at it.

Ninjadeadbeard
2013-02-24, 06:03 PM
I wasn't there for the games in question, but I had two friends in high school who experienced...interesting deaths.

The Stupidly Avoidable Death:
A party of Paladins on a crusade. My first friend (let's call him Kyle) was one of them and apparently discovered a shortcut on their travels. This shortcut led the party into a deep, dark cave tunnel.

Somewhere below the earth the party finds a fast-flowing, deep river. And on the other side of the river there was the biggest pile of gold any of them had ever seen. This thing was a small hill of gold coins, just sitting there.

Kyle decides "The orphans shall feast mightily with such a bounty!" and charges into the water to get the treasure. He fails multiple swim checks and drowns due to heavy armor weighing him down.

The interesting part? The Entire Party went in after him, and all drowned as well. The DM was furious since that basically ended the story, and he ruled that 3 weeks after they died their remains washed up on a riverbank somewhere.

The Stupidly Avoidable Death that They Really Had Coming:
My other friend, "Roy" had a game going where he was playing an Elf Rogue. He was a master lockpick, and a bit of a greedy bastard. And it finally bit him.

One day he and the party were looting a dungeon when Roy finds this chest just sitting in the middle of the room, covered in dried blood. Despite the party getting ambushed by wights at the time, Roy decides to check the chest first. As he opens it, he springs a trap, and the chest eats him.

After a few rounds, Roy gets out of the chest, and starts hurling fireballs at the monsters! The rest of the party is confused, and checks Roy out. Turns out he's gotten himself possessed by Baron Blood, a sky-high level sorcerer-turned-ghost. He has several levels on the rest of the party, but is an uncontrollable Chaotic Stupid Evil monster, and can only manifest when Roy is covered in blood.

Well, since the Baron slaughtered all the enemy in one fight, the party figured he was on their side! So they go a while longer together, occasionally finding ways to bathe Roy in blood whenever the going got tough. As I understand it, they got a little out of hand doing this, basically using him as a roving 'I Win' button. The DM apparently was getting sick of it since they were more or less meant to try to get Baron Blood exercised as he was BAD NEWS.

Finally, the party goes toe to wing with some Ancient Colossal Dragon and immediately brought Baron Blood out to take care of it for them.

Baron Blood gleefully slaughters the party with fire and lightning, and then gets the Dragon to Wish Roy's soul away. The two fly off into the sunset to conquer the world. Everybody's dead, BBEG wins, party goes out to find new GM.

Angel Bob
2013-02-24, 06:11 PM
Our group hasn't had altogether too many deaths, because until recently we were a very casual group that really had no grasp of the 4E rules. However, there have been two deaths thus far that I recall.

Fatal Fumble:

Back in our clueless days, our most deadly encounter was easily our fight against a young red dragon (yes, even though 4E solos are so underpowered). This was because two of our group were busy burgling its hoard and leaving us to die, which happened more frequently than we could stand. In any case, just as these two burglars reentered the battlefield, my warlord was below 10 HP and called for them to throw him a magic item. The rogue tossed him a lightning longsword, and the DM called for a Dexterity check to grab it. I failed miserably (after all, I had a history of bad rolls) and was knocked unconscious by the sword. Three failed death saving throws later, and my warlord was dead in the most unglamorous way possible. The irony is that I was also controlling an absent player's paladin, who was at similar HP levels and kept getting dropped by the dragon -- except that I rolled consistent 20s on his death saving throws. This event proved once and for all that our paladin was favored by Avandra.

What do you expect from a CE PC?

The younger brother of the DM from above decided to build a chaotic evil paladin of Gruumsh. Naturally, he killed the first NPC we came across, for which the rest of the party turned on him and knocked him unconscious. The brawl attracted the city watch, who imprisoned him and everyone else (save myself and my brother, who used cantrips and fey step to escape). In jail, the paladin decided they'd never take him alive, so he decided to just "stop breathing" and choke himself. He did.

Since we still had a few hours left in the session and nobody wanted to take the time to write up a new character, the DM let him just bring in the same character, but forced him to be lawful good as a punishment for being stupid evil. The new paladin heard of the murder and reimbursed the victim's family with a good deal of his gold, which is possibly the nicest thing I've ever witnessed a PC do in my D&D experience. Just goes to show that even those who'd prefer to play murder hobos can sometimes do some decent RP.

Rorrik
2013-02-24, 08:37 PM
The Stupidly Avoidable Death:
A party of Paladins on a crusade. My first friend (let's call him Kyle) was one of them and apparently discovered a shortcut on their travels. This shortcut led the party into a deep, dark cave tunnel.

Somewhere below the earth the party finds a fast-flowing, deep river. And on the other side of the river there was the biggest pile of gold any of them had ever seen. This thing was a small hill of gold coins, just sitting there.

Kyle decides "The orphans shall feast mightily with such a bounty!" and charges into the water to get the treasure. He fails multiple swim checks and drowns due to heavy armor weighing him down.

The interesting part? The Entire Party went in after him, and all drowned as well. The DM was furious since that basically ended the story, and he ruled that 3 weeks after they died their remains washed up on a riverbank somewhere.

Reminds me of my first brush with death. We were kids playing my dad's campaign. We had a friend over who was determined to get us all stupidly killed:
First he forgets something in our island hideout and we have to go get it and our row boat drifts away. He then declares unilaterally that the whole party jumps in the canoe to go retrieve it. With 6 of us, it sinks, and we barely get to shore.

If that wasn't bad enough, he proceeded to have the fully armored fighters try to dive for it, almost drowning them. If not for my dad's mercy, they'd have died many times over. He then wanted to spend the day knocking on doors and threatening people. We barely escaped the constables.

To be fair, my dad was being a bit rough letting him direct the whole party without letting us get a word in, but he was also a total maniac.

oball
2013-02-24, 08:46 PM
I had my first character death earlier this year. It was a one-shot Drunken D&D evening, and as such we kept getting distracted by silly things like a William Shatner text-to-speech app, and the DM's cat being a cat.

Eventually, after slaying some giant snakes and a blue dragon and diplomacying our way past a couple of shambling mounds, we finally found ourselves exploring the dungeon proper. Being drunk and impatient, and having an incorporeal character (Unbodied psion), I decided to speed things along and "scout" by simply floating up to closed doors and sticking my head through them. This worked fine, until...

DM: "OK, you stick your head through the door. As you do, you see this turn and glare at you." *holds up MM with picture of a bodak (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/bodak.htm)* "Make a Fort save, please."

Me: *rolls* "Uh... 14?"

DM (to rest of party): "You watch as Kaj floats towards the door and sticks her face through it. An instant later, she simply winks out of existence, and all her items drop to the ground."

Party rogue: "Oh no! ...wait, didn't she have that huge diamond we found in her Handy Haversack?"

Moral: Don't stick your head in where it's not wanted. And even if you don't leave a corpse behind, your party will still loot it.

Erik Vale
2013-02-24, 08:47 PM
Using Heroes instead of DnD, but still.

Disarmed Disarming

I'm playing a Thief that can turn invisible in a fantasy game, a score or so Character points behind the rest of the party. Near the end of a long adventure, we're chasing down Oriuses [the worlds] equivilent of Samuries. The leader of which happily cuts the powerful sword of our leader in half after we gank his two bodyguards.
Slowly we fall back still fighting him with his razor sharp blade, waiting to use a potion/grenade of stasis on him really not wanting him to leave him with his weapon in prison. Damn nobles and their weapons.
My turn comes around, and I take my turn to charge the guy with my spear, and loose my arm for the trouble [High damage roll, dropped me to 1 body, in a game where the highest we had was 20]. Almost dead, one of the town guard staying well out of the way drag me away, bleeding to death while I pray. My character believes strongly in the god of luck, and believes she's dead anyway so wants to help the party.

Finally getting up and grabbing her glaive, I charge the guy describing it as a jump attack aiming at his arm [vengence!] while praying to god to disarm him, and he promptly uses his high speed/held actions to impale me clean though to his arm, dropping me straight down into the dead section. [I deserved it]. However, DM ruled that the sudden dead weight of an entire body [- a arm] held by one arm is to much for the guy, who drops me and thus his sword as he gets beard to the ground by the dead weight. 3 Segments later when the guy gets up, he meets the stasis grenade, and we have one potent sword ready for dragon slaying. And enough money for a resurection but thats beside the point.


Surfice to say, if your about to die, take 'em with you.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-02-24, 09:02 PM
So, this isn't really an interesting death, but what happened afterwards was kind of interesting.

So, I'd built a Warforged Artificer named Jer'ruk, somewhere around level 12, can't remember exactly. He was tricked out with wand sheaths embedded in his arm, an item familiar, wands of repair to keep his health up, all that good stuff.

I played Jer'ruk as a minimalist True Neutral - he had no feelings, no emotion, barely any motivations at all beyond a compulsion to do well at whatever he did, and a vague curiosity about his own existence, the nature of sentience, all of that. He joined the party as they were about to participate in a giant adventurer's tournament thing, planning to use the prize money to fund research into his own origins.

The night before the tournament, the town got attacked by drow. Jer'ruk reduced a few of them to bloody sponges with the wands embedded in his arms, but when the fight spilled out into the street, one of their clerics got off a lucky death effect and killed him.

The party druid happened to have a spell of... something or other. That instant-reincarnation-without-level-loss. So, he used it, and Jer'ruk came back... as a half orc.

Cue frantic screaming as Jer'ruk experiences feeling and emotion for the first time in his existence. After staring in horror at his own body, he grabbed the wand of repair items and started wasting charges, zapping himself with it over and over, trying to make the feelings stop. Because he was no longer warforged, his item familiar lost sentience and just turned into a mundane spear, so he tried to fix that, too, screaming in panic the whole time.

Eventually he hyperventilated for a while and started to calm down. He spent the rest of the day wandering around numbly, though he did stop to use up the rest of his "Repair" wand fixing houses damaged in the attack (as he was experiencing empathy and conscience for the first time.)

The party went off to hunt down the drow later that day. The next night, they were awoken by Jer'ruk screaming in rage and pain in the middle of the night; during his watch, he'd tried to carve holes in his arms to replace his wand sheath. They found him ranting and raving about how his body was a petulant child that rejected even the slightest form of modification, and screaming at his (bleeding) arm to shut up.

Kaveman26
2013-02-25, 08:59 AM
In order to put context to the following I will first say this. Our DM has a few long standing house rules

1st: No Fly Rule. No flight, no overland flight, no flying carpets etc.

2nd: Dead is dead. No raise dead, no reincarnate, no res...death is permanent. If there is an extreme circumstance exceptions will be made.

Our characters had recently completed a story arc where we dispatched a necromancer using amulets to control various races on the plane. With him dead and the amulets destroyed we moved on to our next set of business. A hybrid half-giant/half dragon was trying to bring about the end of the world. We were going to stop him. As we approached and began skirmishing and chatting I began to hear voices beckoning me to submit to his will. Turns out he had the ability to dominate and control humans...and he was taking me over. In the course of a panicked retreat I begged my own teammates to restrain me and lock me below deck of our ship. They complied and we managed to get seperation.

The key problem being that he could still take me over again at any point in the future. As the only human in the party that left me at a severe penalty. Here is a snippet from the campaign journal I wrote recapping this...


Me: this is bad…if I get anywhere near him I am going to jump ship literally and figuratively.

Kemen: Can we get a Sending back to the Material Plane without difficulty?
DM: Sure…

At the table Kemen is giving me this sheepish “Im sorry in advance look”….
He comes up to me and pats my character on the shoulder.

Kemen: You have been a stalwart companion and loyal friend. Never once have I feared death. I hope you feel the same way.
He takes the rest of the group off in a huddle and they confer…Paddock is incensed…Chulainn is indifferent and Coe-Nan is amused…at least that’s how I view their reactions. Paddock begins to compose a sending and there are tears streaming down his eyes as he does it.

Paddock: I really hope this works…
Me: Really hope what works…
Coe-Nan: Full attacking Marilius….
Kemen: Lightning Bolt to the rogue…
Chulainn: Flurry of Blows from flanked position…
I get bombarded with electricity then feel the sting of a spear darting for my vitals…then I see blistering hot axes fall upon me with a strength that makes me appreciate every single creature’s last moments.

My own party kills me dead in a single round…


DM: Marilius roll a d100…
Me: Why they freaking killed me?
Dm: d100 please…
Me: Ok…I rolled a 1

Groggily I awaken and feel like death warmed over. Standing above me is Wahloon…the orangutan druid from so long ago…and one of the very few druids of note to survive the Darkness event.

Kemen: sorry mate…weren’t sure how you would react to our plan.
Me: Plan for what?
Kemen: Well…we reached out to Wahloon in the hopes he could reincarnate you.
Me: no raise rule…

Dm: I told them I wouldn’t say yes or no as to whether I would allow an one time only exception until AFTER they killed you.

Me: Judging by the outcome you allowed it.

DM: As an eraser to compensate for a mistake…no I wouldn’t have allowed it. As an intentional workaround to a plot driven problem…I liked the idea. Plus they commited to it…which I respect.

Me: so you killed me not knowing If you could get me back?
Kemen: sorry?

Coe-Nan: for what its worth…you were reincarnated as a race with some decent benefits. *snicker*

Paddock: The denizens of the world will certainly be quelled…though I think your days as a lothario are behind you. *snicker*

Me: Why are you all snickering…

Coe-Nan hands me a mirror….

They reincarnated me as a frigging bugbear…

DM: The bad news is that you lost a level…the good news is that I am giving you a one level reward for figuring out Poligius’s true nature so quickly. So it all evens out.

Me: I am a bugbear…
Coe-Nan: Boosts to Str Dex and Con…
Me: That don’t compensate for me being a bugbear.

Magikeeper
2013-02-25, 04:27 PM
The PCs are at the edge of a cliff and need to reach the bottom to check something out. The wizard decides to just walk off the cliff to save time, risking death by falling damage. Around nearly 20 1s later the wizard dusts himself off. The fighter, not about to be shown up by the squishy wizard, walks off the cliff as well. Around nearly 20 6s later (same dice) the fighter lies dead at the bottom.

Templarkommando
2013-02-25, 05:56 PM
(2nd ed)The party rogue had to miss a few sessions so the only characters left in party were an elven ranger, a chaotic neutral human cleric, the Paladin and me (chaotic good human fighter).

We are exploring a temple of an ancient elven racial deity (ancient elves are a race that has a little bit in common with modern elves and a bit in common with demons - like horns growing out of their heads) We get into the first or second room. There are big stone walls and a single wooden door on one wall - locked with a padlock.

This of course doesn't seem to be any trouble. My fighter removes his hammer from his pack and strikes the padlock as hard as he can - breaking it and sending it clattering to the floor.

A mysterious dark aura travels out of the lock at my fighter who proceeds to fail a save vs. death and slumps to the ground in a lifeless heap.

After being raised by some benevolent Elven clerics (grateful for our intent to aid them in unearthing their history in a dangerous temple) my fighter has of course developed a severe phobia involving pad locks. This has led to several hilarious episodes where the party rogue has taken advantage of this fear. These episodes include the following:

Flying into a psychotic rage after having a neck-sized padlock buckled around neck.

and

Inability to sleep for an entire night after the rogue stays awake and randomly clicks a padlock open and shut.

Scorpier
2013-02-26, 09:21 AM
Got 3 with one shot. Four low health characters (3 PCs and a cohort) were kind enough to all stand within 20 feet of each other in the midst of a fight (from which they were already hurting).

They were fighting a bunch of Drow and the party's bard kicked up some Darkness to cover the party's movement to better position against the enemy reinforcements coming in. They were already tired/beaten/bloody from just escaping prison and fighting their way out. One of the PCs is a dragon shaman and after the darkness went up he kicked off his blindsense aura thing, and the 4 said characters moved into the darkness and were ready for anything...
...except the Drow's 2 clerics they had on the field. One Daylight and Flame Strike (followed by botched saves) later and we had ourselves some deaths!

Werekat
2013-02-27, 05:10 AM
My most recent character death was because my friend's character, a 14-year old girl, was madly in love with my character and destroyed the world to earn his approval. :D

Notreallyhere77
2013-02-27, 11:36 PM
I once played a flame oracle who almost drowned in lava, but was saved by a sentient stuffed bear (still trying to figure that one out). Later that session, another party member touched a magic door and was blasted with negative energy, which he miraculously was unharmed by. Then he touches my character for reasons I cannot remember, and she (my character) dies instantly. No save, no resistance, not even an explanation for what magical effect was going on.

Luckily, there was a convenient room and situation on the other side of the door to introduce my backup character, a Dhamphir rogue.

She died the way she lived - by DM fiat.


...I have a lot of complaints about that guy's DM'ing style, but they belong in another thread.

The Bandicoot
2013-02-28, 12:26 AM
Flarg the Gnomeish Bard. After getting stuck with two javelins and dropping into the negatives, he was healed back to consciousness for just enough time to go "Wow I'm ali-" before getting stuck with two more. He had a split second to say "You have GOT to be kidding me" before he slumped over and bled to death.

geeky_monkey
2013-02-28, 05:52 AM
I've already posted this in another thread, but it is my favourite character death so I'm reposting it:

I was in a party of lowish level (3, maybe 4) adventurers playing 4E.

We’d cleared out a 10 storey tower to look for a macguffin that could derail the plans of the BBEG.

We reached the top bloody and bruised to encounter the BBEG already there, holding the macguffin.

He started gloating, doing the standard bad guy speech about us being to slow.

At this point my dragonborn barbarian charged him, grappled him and carried on over the edge of the tower. I spent the entire fall headbutting and biting him, and for good measure used an acid breath attack on him just before we hit the ground. He mainly screamed.

Neither of us survived, but my party saved the day, killed the BBEG, recovered the (now useless) macguffin, and I got a burial fit for a hero. And the DM got into a right old huff as ‘6 months of planning’ had been ruined - the BBEG was supposed to use a scroll to teleport away once he'd finished talking and leave use to fight some grunts, but never got a chance.

dramatic flare
2013-02-28, 06:50 AM
I haven't had anything happen to me in DnD or associated offshoots, but I have had some great moments in Paranoia.

...Those of you who have played or heard stories of Paranoia know what is coming.

The players have been given the important mission of delivering a box some twenty kilometers in five minutes. On foot. With only one clip of ammo apiece. Failure to keep the box is treason, failure to make it in time is worthy of official reprimand, then fines, then execution for treason.
Oh, and there are about twenty other teams who have been given a box at the same time.
Some time into the mission (they had been fined twice, I believe) the players come to a locked down security gate with most of the remaining teams also trying to get past and connive their way past the securobots. It's not working so well. Several treasonous corpses lay about dirtying the good clean floor and such.
The players decide screw it, it's too hard to hack the robots and there's no time to waste on this line. They're just going to run through it. In front of the securbots who are each conveniently armed with missiles and lasers. So the entire party bursts through the gate at a dead sprint, the one carrying the box in the lead.
Three of the five bots give chase and quickly gain on the team, firing missiles while the team fires their pistols back. Two of the five team members are murdered damn near instantly. One lucky shot hits a servomotor on the bot and sends it into a slow, uncontrollable spin. first two doors are locked, party keeps running. Several infrareds are rolled over by the bots, and now the rest of the hall is being cleared and the sounds of doors being locked are echoing down.
A warning klaxon blares out. "ALERT. ALERT. COMMUNIST MUTANT TRAITORS HAVE BREACHED SECURITY CORDON 1653-KCD. VULTURE TEAM DELTA TO POSTS. ALERT. ALERT" and so on.
Another player goes down two three laser blasts. Two left. They've almost reached the end of the hall! Oh no, both of them have been shot in a leg by a laser! They're reduced to a crawl just meters before their door.
They both decide to fire on the damaged securobot and manage to actually damage it's sensory array. The robot now begins firing blindly, while spinning, rather than just having to wait a full rotation to fire. It demolishes one of the other robots in a fury of blind fire before the other Securobot has to take defensive measures. While the two bots start fighting each other, the two remaining players manage to sneak through the final door.
Into the blue Vulture firing range.
Now those vultures, they're good sports. Why bother just shooting someone at point blank range, eh? Just throw those guys out good and hard and let them getting a good crawling start? Op, can't let them have laser shots back though. No pistols for you. But there's another door on the end of the firing range so if you can make it, why, I guess you earned it. Never been on the other side myself though...
Now this actually amazed me because I decided to be nice and impartial to the dice. I rolled terribly. Just missing, all the time. I singed their bloody clothing a few times, but man. Nothing lethal at all. At least until they were lockpicking the door, then a blue Vulture headshotted the one without the box.
You remember this was all about a box, right?
Well, the last remaining, one legged (and that leg singed), box carrying team member lockpicks the door, opens it and flops out onto the sidewalk of a six lane autocar road. His entire replacement team is on the other side, briefed and rearmed.

So one goes. "I got this. I'll just shoot a car in the tire and create a traffic pile up so we can get the box across."
So he shoots the box courier in the head.
I do love critical failures.

ILetGoOfTheRope
2013-02-28, 10:49 AM
I was playing a orc in a 3.5 campaign and we had to climb down a cliff to get to a dungeon opening there was nowhere to tie a rope to at the top of the cliff so the party was holding the rope I was attached to. I rolled at natural one on my climb check ( we don't allow taking 10 and houserule fails on Nat 1s) the whole party let go of the rope except the wizzard (who was trying to play WOW at the same time. The dm asked him 3 times if he let go of the rope and he didn't respond so the dm had him make a strength check which he failed and was pulled over the edge. He then decided to let go of the rope and we both attempted to grab onto the cliff. I did, he didn't. After that he stopped playing WOW during sessions.

Grindle
2013-03-02, 04:48 PM
My party was playing in a Gamma World campaign, and we were in a clearly evil forest. We ran into some giant robots that said they wanted to "optimize" us. So one of the players let a robot pick him up and put him in a chest compartment. While he was in there, he kept losing health, but he told no one to interfere, and when he reached zero health he started regaining health, which he took as meaning the whole had been a good idea after all. Around this point, I came over from what I had been doing, and attacked the robot he was inside of, and he got angry at me, because the attack also injured him. The robot healed him up to full health and spat him out, but unsurprisingly, it also converted him to an evil mind-controlled minion, who then started attacking us. Anyway, he died when we killed the remaining robots.

Harlan Vold
2013-03-03, 02:28 PM
The first is not so much interesting, as stupid. (Although come to think of it, the other is also down to stupidity.)

My dad was GMing for myself and my two elder brothers the old Traveller adventure 'The Chamax Horde'. Wherein a horde of Chamax (a cross between the Alien and Starship Troopers aliens) are sweeping across a peninsula with only the PCs to stop them from reaching the civilians attempting to evacuate from a nearby city.

We decided to hold them at a bridge, forcing them into a bottleneck and thereby negating their advantage. Armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, we gave a good account for ourselves, until a couple of bad rolls let one of them through. It leaped at my characters face, and rather than dodge out of the way, I instead chose to shoot it mid-jump, neglecting to remember that their blood was highly acidic. Cue flying ball of acid and teeth to the face, accompanied by screams and raiders of the lost ark impersonation.

Second.

We were playing an extremely atmospheric and lethal Cthulhu Rising campaign (the futuristic counterpart to Delta Green) set across Earth, the moon and climaxing in an expedition into a buried martian temple. After accidentally waking a couple of unspeakable horrors from their tombs in the depths of the temple, we fled through the myriad catacombs, pursued by the aforementioned horrors and a black ops team sent to stop us.

Twenty minutes of incredibly tense decision making ensued as we fled through countless tunnels and junctions (the GM would later tell us that any of the other paths that we had been presented with would have led to horrible agonizing deaths and we only survived through sheer luck in choosing the right fork in each of the ten or so junctions every single time). Finally we reached a vertical shaft which led to the surface, just as the horrors and Black ops team were about to catch up to us.

Clambering up to safety, and In definite need of a fresh pair of underwear, we heard from below the sounds of the soldiers and horrors clashing. It was at this point i thought it may be a good idea to look down the shaft to see what was happening. I caught a bullet through the eye, and my lifeless body slipped back down the shaft to be eaten by the horrors once they finished with the soldiers.

Fun stuff.

Ormur
2013-03-03, 06:19 PM
My party decided to take out a baron that was in league with the bad guys. He was holed up in his little keep along with his evil wizard pal. So naturally my players decide to attack it head on. The sorceress was a little more circumspect and held back for a few rounds to cast fly, invisibility and other buffs (on herself mostly though) while the warblade and the unarmed swordsage try and fail to scale the walls. That leaves them pretty exposed.

The archer guards weren't a big problem for their AC but the wizards could safely throw spells at them too. When they are halfway up the walls the swordsage gets dominated to kill the warblade. An already hilarious failure to climb the castle walls turns even more slapstick as the swordsage starts hitting the warblade as they're both trying to hang on to the walls, the swordsage failing to shake of the spell and his poor healer cohort trying to keep them from killing each other. Eventually they both fall down, the swordsage lands on top and performs the fountain of blood manoeuvre, killing the warblade by ripping out his heart. Next round he comes around holding his friend's warm heart realising what he had done.

Then the sorceress finally showed up, fireballed the castle to hell and wrapped up the encounter. The warblade got resurrected later but this is still the most memorable death of the campaign.

Erik Vale
2013-03-03, 07:15 PM
Second.
-snip-

That's not so much Interesting or stupid, so much as the DM wanting to kill you all and settling for just one death when the group survived. I mean, why would the soldiers be firing up?

Harlan Vold
2013-03-03, 07:28 PM
Apologies, my explanation wasn't clear:

They had been specifically sent to stop us from exploring the temple and were pursuing us through the tunnels. This was just before the horrors showed up, and so they were about to follow us up the shaft, and would have had a man covering it in case we tried firing down on them as they climbed.

As for the DM trying to kill us, he wasn't. He had laid out the series of tunnels and junctions ahead of time, and exerted no influence upon our choices of direction. It was a Cthulhu Rising game, so to be honest I was surprised we made it that far without all being eaten.

Sloshman997
2013-03-03, 08:28 PM
All of the deaths I'm about to list happen in one campaign setting, it is designed to be an evil campaign so there is a good amount of treachery and round-about pvp involved.

Death 1
So the party is freshly started there is a Cleric, Wizard, Fighter and Rogue of alignments CE, NE, CE and LG. So we start about our way and encounter our first "quest" to retrieve some weird item. After searching the dungeon where it was supposed to be and not being able to find it we just grab a sword and plan on returning the sword as the item and if he denies it we planned on killed the questgiver (We were level 3 and this was supposed to be the ruler of a small town so we probably would have died). Well the Lawful good rogue decides this is a terrible idea and pours a line of oil around the party lights it on fire and runs back to the town. When he tells his side of the story he is sent out with a soldier to search for us, they end up lost in the woods and are slain in a house inhabited by three skeletons.
New Party Setup: Cleric, Fighter, Wizard, Bard

Death 2
Death number two occurs in a goblin cave underneath a city, we are venturing through and doing just fine when we hear a roar in the distance. The wizard decided to move up ahead of the rest of us, he was charged, gored and critted by a minotaur.
New Party: Cleric, Wizard(again), Fighter, Bard

Death 3/4
The third and fourth deaths occurred due to PvP. The group was in a mage tower and had arrested a wizard for the guard of the town. The bard didn't think that a trial was needed for this criminal because we had clear evidence she had murdered someone. So the bard goes invisible and start pelting the caster with arrows. A shout later the bard is almost dead and I(the fighter) decide to step up. I convince the guards to give me the keys to the wizards cell so I can guard her. Walk in there and one shot her. The guards sound the alarms and myself and the bard take off, expecting the cleric to follow us. No such luck cleric claims innocence and says he is willing to kill us to prove it. With the help of the new wizard and a wizard government leader they scry us, teleport there and attack us in our sleep. Our deaths culminate with the bard attempting to jump and use a form of transposition spell to switch places with me to save me.
New Party: Cleric, Wizard, Rogue(Me), Psion, Barbarian

Death 5
The newly formered party starts questing together and such doing normal evil things. The Psion is still trying to force a partially good/nuetral character into a clearly and blantantly evil campaign. My character does lots of spontaneous murder and has accumulated a few random houses in cities we have passed. Seeing a new target in a wizard who tried to overcharge us I wait til night and head to his house. Due to a lucky roll I picked up on the fact that the Psion overheard myself and the barbarian discussing it. The Psion then proceeds to run to the wizards house and guard it, barely managing to beat me and the barbarian. While there I send the barbarian to distract him while I sneak in a side window. While I'm working on the window the barb and Psion have some moral revelation the barbarian changes his mind about killing the wizard and tells the Psion what I'm doing. They round the corner just as I'm climbing in the window and rush to it and stop me from closing it. As we stand there having a heated debate about my free will allowing me to murder who I please the Psion Energy Missile's me in the face. I move silently/hide to sneak upstairs where to my disappointment there is a candle burning and the wizard still awake. The barbarian and the Psion climb in the window after me and start calling for me to come out(dem hide checks). Wizard comes to the stairs and casts suggestion on me to make me attack them, failing the save I move towards them and eat a second energy missile to the face and god well past -10.
New Party: Cleric, Wizard, Barbarian, Psion, Warblade(Me)

Death 6
After the attempt on the wizards life the guards of the town are after the party and they are trying to deal with the "unreasonable" murder of the rogue. My character is a rebellion leader in this town searching for some help with attacking an army. And since I wasn't in the campaign yet I am a bit fuzzy on the info but the Psion went to the guards to tell his side of the story and prove he was only helping he told the guards where to find the group. Having not been involved the wizard(whose location was the one given to the guards) tried to claim innocence even though the other two were hiding in his room. Having overheard the other two talk the Psion told the guards he was lying (he was overheard by the party members), the wizard opened the door and fireballed the guards/Psion and most of the inn they were in. The Psion survived and ran down the collapsing staircase only to be followed by the barbarian who tried to grapple him to finish him and rolled a nat 1. With more guards showing up the barbarian climbs up the staircase rubble to reunite with the wizard/cleric and Dimension door out.
Finally the warblade enters play, having heard rumors of the party and the Psion's betrayal I decide they are the right bunch to help me and just the way to convince them to do it. I send my rogue peons to find the Psion. I sent out two and they found him but one was killed, so I decide to look for him myself. After a bit of searching I find him on the streets mostly naked, (gear trapped in the guardhouse), I ask him if he attacked two men earlier, he confirms I charge crit and had chosen to deal nonlethal damage. I take him to where I've heard the party is and toss them his body as a bargaining chip. The cleric proceeds to heal him and then coup de grace him as he comes conscious.
New Party: Cleric, Wizard, Barbarian, Warblade
(The Psion, Rogue, Bard decided it was time to leave the evil campaign and transfered to the good equivalent our DM was also running.)

Death 7
The party has slaughtered an army and been traveling together for a week or two more and have returned to the warblades city where he is the 2nd in command of a rebellion. After some traveling through sewers and roleplaying for my cause the Cleric, Wizard, Barbarian teleport out and to the entrance while the warblade is running there from a different location. upon arriving the three encounter two wizards and two guards who begin questioning them about what they are doing near the sewers. After being told it was a forbidden area and being caught in two different lies the cleric stupidly admits they were down there. (I the warblade sees and hears all this from a small distance) As soon as I hear him say this I declare I'm charging the lead wizard, a guard had readied action to intercept me. I crit and kill him and sudden leap to put myself within threatening range of the leader. This is when the wizard decides to dimension door himself and the cleric out, the barbarian refused to abandon me and would rather fight. The leader rolled a nat 1 to disentegrate me(thank god) and the other caster is a warmage/wizard hybrid and can't do that much also due to some poor rolls and good saves by both me and the barbarian. After a couple of rounds of combat the leader is dead the warmage is severely hurt and the guard will die easily. When all of a sudden a fireball hits us from the air(this was a tactic we used to fight the army). The fireball doesn't get past the WM SR but myself and the barbarian roll a nat 1 and a 2 and fail the save. Thanks to terrible rolls we finish the encounter with roughly around 30 health each. We grab the leaders body and begin sprinting back to my HQ. After some RP I send out rogues to find the other two, who had come and looted the other wizard and two guards. After we are reunited at my HQ we begin to discuss loot. The cleric suggests a even split like normal. Both myself and the barbarian refuse, saying they were cowards and abandoned us in combat and barely did anything in combat anyway. For the sake of fairness we offer a 40/40/10/10 split at first and eventually change it to 35/35/20/10(10 for the cleric). The cleric then has the balls to suggest a split of whatever each side looted. Again denied, he says fine then he is leaving with what he has picked up. This is when I declare initiative and tell all of my minions (around 30 or so) to simply try and hold him. At this point he grabs the wizard and casts Planar Shift, a druid with some minor RP importance had readied to dispel magic as soon as the arguing had started and stops that. The player of the cleric at this point just goes "well ****". At this point I turn to the wizard and tell him to stand down if he wants to live(he was mostly out of spells). He does so and after some grappling and attempt bull rushes on his part he is downed and killed.
This was our last session so the Cleric hasn't decided on his new class yet and I'll be sure to post if anyone else dies next session.
We later found out that the wizard was 14th level and the WM was 13th. So we got very lucky there. But ah it's great to regale the bloody history of this campaign.

Chilingsworth
2013-03-04, 12:35 AM
Fresh from tonight's session!

Dinner is Served! Tonight's Entree: Wizard in the Raw.
Ok, so my party is fighting a pair of demons. The party consists of a rogue, a swordsage, a cleric, and a wizard/beguiler (my character) all 6th level.

The demons completely own us. Since they want us to free their master, though, they offer us a chance to surrender. I'm unconcious and being held by one of the demons by this point. The concious members of the party refuse to surrender. (I should note that freeing their master was our purpose in visiting the dungeon anyway, we're an evil party.) So, the demons carry out their threat to finish me off, chowing down. They then drop the swordsage. This convinces the rest of the party to surrender. They then demand a hostage, taking the rogue. They let the remaining party members return to town to get reinforcements (to aid in completing the task they set for us, also they wanted us to bring some villagers over as takeout.) The rogue's player and I rolled new characters, a crusader and a bard/paladin, respectively. (both of Asmodeus.) We were also joined by our fith player's character (a dread necromancer)

Also, they beat the rogue into uncociousness, and force feed him some of their leftovers (i.e. bits of my wizard.) He's also apparently being used as an incubator for a disease we were sent to collect a sample of.

tommhans
2013-03-06, 09:55 AM
First time i played dungeons and dragons they played it with this critical list(fun as it is can be really cruel :P) but yeah not even 5 minutes into teh game, the first encounter, the first initiative is the DM's creature, which managed ofc to get a critical, and ofc, 99, which means instadeath..

needles to say, good start to my DnD gaming :p

Another game i had, which i mentioned in another thread on this forum, a friend of mine had an epic death!

we met this "fake" giant(just an ordinary man that opposed to be the winter king) and he managed to crit my friend so that he flew across the room and became unconcious. He managed to successfully throw a saving throw and stabilize his death, but we were not done. I fumbled my magic missile, making a splinter go into my fallen party member and making him unstable again, and in the next attack we manage to kill the "fake" giant and my other friend who was a wizard was to heal this fallen friend.

Unfortunately he managed to slip on the floor, hitting the fallen friend with his knee and killing of his character(yes he fumbled on the healing) After this we decided to quickly burn the body so that he wouldnt turn into undead :p but yeah i laughed hard when we managed to basicly kill him off with welltimed fumbles :p