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View Full Version : Biting the Big One: Funny PC Deaths



Fighter1000
2013-03-24, 03:44 AM
In this thread, please post stories, long or short, about how your player character or some other person's player character died in a campaign.
This will work for any system. I'll open the thread with a funny PC death story of my own:

My friend was running a Pathfinder campaign and before the end of the first session, he was growing discontent with the campaign so he decided to unleash an avalanche upon the party. Unfortunately for him, they all managed to survive that somehow. So, the DM decided to make a bunch of snow sharks pop out of the rocks and eat the party. No rolls were made. Just everyone died. Apparently these were epic sharks to rival the gods themselves. lol

ArcturusV
2013-03-24, 04:54 AM
Well, a near TPK at a group's first session.

So, this guy is starting off an adventure with level 1 characters. We all roll up things for 3rd Edition DnD. Right off the bat we find our adventure involves the town well and this dungeon that is in the town's water source. The paladin, who actually has swim ranks, goes down there. He swims, finds the dungeon entrance, and runs a rope from the bottom of the well to the Dungeon Entrance.

Party cleric dives in. He's wearing his armor. He botches, natural ones, on 4 consecutive swim checks. He has no ranks in it. He drowns. Same with the party rogue. No swim ranks, cannot roll higher than a 4. Drowns. Wizard? Drowns. Only other one to get through was the druid and his dog animal companion. We didn't even crack the dungeon door, didn't even see a hint of a monster, and almost TPKed.

Which is an important lesson no one there forgot. ALWAYS get swim ranks. Always. Even if the guy tells you the campaign will take place entirely in a desert.

Malak'ai
2013-03-24, 05:10 AM
I was playing a Human Cleric of Pelor when D&D 3.0 first came out.
Typical 1st level Cleric with a half way decent stat line (nothing under 10), wearing splint mail and carrying a heavy steel shield and a heavy mace.

Anyway, we were traveling along and we get to this old hermit's tree house. Now this hermit wasn't the usual grumpy, hate everyone type hermit. He just liked living out in the middle of the woods in his tree hut.
Anyway, we had been sent to find him and give him something from his nephew so he invited up.
This is where things went sour. The Barbarian climbs up the ladder, totally botches the climb check and reflex save and falls, but survives because I burnt a spell.
The Rogue only just makes it up.
I start going up, rolled really well, except I forgot about ACP and encumberance (I was carrying a heavy load). This sent my total score into the negatives. I fell 20' and the DM rolled max on the falling damage...
Lesson of the story... Take your armour and backpack off before trying to climb a ladder up to a tree house that's 30' up a tree.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-24, 05:20 AM
Lesson of the story... Never, ever, ever roll when you can take 10. Because any time you think that something should be impossible to screw up, your d20 is waiting to prove you wrong.

Fixed.:smallwink:

GreenZ
2013-03-24, 05:38 AM
I have a fairly bad habit of dying due to stupid things in Pathfinder, not always my fault. :smalltongue:


For example, the party sets fire to a building and attempts to smoke out the BBEG; after a few moments we find out that he has an underground escape route and chase after him. Unfortunately the villain locks the trap door to reach the escape route behind him and leaves the party trapped under a building that is slowly burning down with no way to escape except through the lock. Several failed checks later and the party was thoroughly cooked.



Another time, I built a Half-Orc character with the Tenacious Survivor feat line; I stay upright until at -con and can be healed even a few turns after death. The party is forced to infiltrate a manor by becoming servants, slowly earning the house's trust until we can stop what they are doing.

Each time a character fails they are beaten, slowly the beatings get worse each time the character fails until eventually they simply begin to knock you out from non-lethal damage, preventing you from doing anything else that day. My character manages to spectacularly fail 7 times in a row (on a DC 15 check of varying types) and is given over 150 non-lethal damage before it eventually outright kills him (since it can't knock him out). :smallsigh:

TuggyNE
2013-03-24, 05:48 AM
The Barbarian climbs up the ladder, totally botches the climb check and reflex save and falls


I start going up, rolled really well, except I forgot about ACP and encumberance (I was carrying a heavy load). This sent my total score into the negatives. I fell 20' and the DM rolled max on the falling damage...

I'm honestly a little puzzled how anyone, however much encumbered, could fail a DC 5 Climb check by 5 after previously making it. :smallconfused:

But eh.

KillianHawkeye
2013-03-24, 06:47 AM
I'm honestly a little puzzled how anyone, however much encumbered, could fail a DC 5 Climb check by 5 after previously making it. :smallconfused:

But eh.

It's possible. You have to have a negative skill modifier. That's the only way you can roll poorly and get less than zero. However, it's pretty hard to get less than a -5 to your skill check, so even taking 10 you should be able to make a DC 5 even with no ranks and a Strength of 1.

If that's not an advertisement for taking 10, I don't know what is.

Hyena
2013-03-24, 06:56 AM
So, the players encounter the Big Bad of a current plot arc, the terrorist leader. BBEG offers them a CRAPLOAD of money for giving him a single thing he wants - a girl (who PCs recently saved), who knows some dirty secrets of the current goverment. PCs divide into a two groups - majority of the party tries to bargain with the terrorist, trying to ask even more money, while the jedi simply attacks him after a minute of talking.
The boss is tough - he drops the jedi with a few blows of his hammer, but eventually he is overpowered and forced to flee. The jedi rolls a constitution check and wakes up. The party's soldier, annoyed by the fact that jedi has just destroyed their chance to be rich, punches the jedi in the face.
And bypasses his reflex. And damage treeshold. And current hp. Then the jedi announces he has spent all his force points in the fight, so he can't drop unconscious instead of dying.
Cue to a long, awkward silence.

Malak'ai
2013-03-24, 08:07 AM
I'm honestly a little puzzled how anyone, however much encumbered, could fail a DC 5 Climb check by 5 after previously making it. :smallconfused:

But eh.

I didn't make it. Neither did the Barbarian.

My Cleric had a Str of 13 and no ranks in Climb. I rolled a 12 for a total of 13. I forgot to factor in the -15 from my armour, shield and other gear (-7 from armour, -2 from shield and -6 from load) which left me a grand total of -2.

I can't remember exactly what the Barb's Str was, I just know it was less than +4, because he only got a total of 4 on the climb check.

DontEatRawHagis
2013-03-24, 08:07 AM
This was the only Player death I've ever witnessed in a serious game(paranoia exception). Long story. Clip notes: I killed a PC's ingame girlfriend and then a Nazi blows up my van with a million pounds of C4.

This occurred during a villains game. I was playing as Krojack the Russian/Communist supervillain. And my friend was playing a Martial artist ex-Hero known as Shinobi. And Major Panic(I don't remember his real name. A Nazi that some how always had everything planned one step ahead of time.

We were given seperate missions, I was assigned to assassinate the Super Heroine's secret identity whose name escapes me. My friend had set up a date with her, deciding not to tell me and the others.

So while he goes on the "date" I do some investigating at her apartment and realize who she is and that when she is not wearing her super suit she is a normal person and she is the daughter of a superhero.

She returns from her date she immediately sees me. I manage to convince her that I am an FBI agent investigating a situation that could need super help.(My character was embedded in the FBI as a sleeper agent that never was tapped)

During the discussion she turns around and I am about to snap her neck. Outside the window is my friend Shinobi threatening to kill me if I kill her. So I back down and plan for the next session with the GM.

Next Session. Where the death occurs.

Shinobi and the Heroine go out on another date. I setup a three fold plan, I can only remember 2 of the three plan.


I set fire to Shinobi's Dojo and plant evidence that makes it look like her Father did it.
I crash my van(driven by George and Paul of the Beatles) into the Heroine while she is going to work in civillain mode and stab her between the ribs.


Shinobi sees me stab the Heroine because he is watching from a 30 story building. To which he jumps off the building and punches me in the face with the full force of gravity behind him. He survives the fall and is about to roll fro damage.

Remember that Nazi who I mentioned before, the one that is always one step ahead of everyone? He uses his ability to have planted a couple hundred pounds of C4 into my van. And blows it up. With me right next to it, unconscious from the punch.

I die. Shinobi uses some bull**** to survive the explosion.

In our last session Shinobi meets up with the Father and asks him why he was so against his daughter dating him and burned down his dojo. In fact the Father liked him. He looked at my new character Krojack 2 and was about to kill him. While my character doesn't remember any of it because he is a different guy.

Good game thinking back.

Tallai
2013-03-24, 08:43 AM
Dark Heresy - Playing:
During a face to face meeting with a greater demon of Slaanesh that had possessed another player:
Psyker: "I surrender my soul!"
GM: "Well okay then!"
Bale, my noble scum, decided that he would rather not have to explain this situation to his handler and promptly obliterated the psyker with a combat shotgun.

Dark Heresy Ascension - GMing:
- The assassin decided to tell me she could kill anything in the sourcebooks. I nodded sagely and quietly noted her hubris. That session they decided, in lieu of following up on a number of leads they had been handed, to look for illegal fight rings. The psyker (the only sane member of the group) was kind enough to justify it as posing as a group of mercenary soldiers to build rep. They failed to account for their lack of nightvision.
The assassin lacked remorse after noting the psyker mutilated on the operating table beside him.
- The assassin bragged about her seventeen attacks and dodge attempts. She decided to take the opportunity to charge the massed rank-and-file militia.
Moments later she was promptly incinerated by massed las fire.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-24, 02:58 PM
My Cleric had a Str of 13 and no ranks in Climb. I rolled a 12 for a total of 13. I forgot to factor in the -15 from my armour, shield and other gear (-7 from armour, -2 from shield and -6 from load) which left me a grand total of -2.


If your character is wearing armor, use the worse figure (from armor or from load) for each category. Do not stack the penalties.

If you'd actually put your shield away to climb the ladder instead of still wielding it, you'd have had a 4 after taking 10. Which is when the rogue climbs back down and pushes your fat armored behind up the ladder (Aid Another for +2).

Scow2
2013-03-24, 07:24 PM
I didn't make it. Neither did the Barbarian.

My Cleric had a Str of 13 and no ranks in Climb. I rolled a 12 for a total of 13. I forgot to factor in the -15 from my armour, shield and other gear (-7 from armour, -2 from shield and -6 from load) which left me a grand total of -2.

I can't remember exactly what the Barb's Str was, I just know it was less than +4, because he only got a total of 4 on the climb check.

Armor and Encumbrance penalties overlap, not stack. You take the worse of the two (But what armor has a -7 ACP?!)

Sith_Happens
2013-03-24, 07:30 PM
Armor and Encumbrance penalties overlap, not stack. You take the worse of the two (But what armor has a -7 ACP?!)

Splint mail and half-plate.

Octopus Jack
2013-03-24, 07:32 PM
One from the unfortunate death of a barbarian PC whilst I was DMing.

Long story short the party was exploring a fairly house ruled illusion themed dungeon with puzzles designed to confuse the players as well as their characters, they had already come across a lot of invisible floors, illusionary walls and monsters etc. They had just came to a room seemingly filled with zombies, only the ones at the front were real, once they had cut down the real zombies they got to the illusions with the party barbarian being the first one to work out they weren't real by the fairly obvious lack of bone crunching when he hit one. He then took it upon himself to grab the cleric's shield and bull rush through them to the end of the room believing he would collide with any real ones.

He was correct in his thinking however he didn't expect (despite a spot check, will save and low DC reflex save to grab onto the side) halfway across the room to suddenly plummet through the floor and be promptly gibbed by the drop.

TuggyNE
2013-03-24, 08:00 PM
I didn't make it. Neither did the Barbarian.

My Cleric had a Str of 13 and no ranks in Climb. I rolled a 12 for a total of 13. I forgot to factor in the -15 from my armour, shield and other gear (-7 from armour, -2 from shield and -6 from load) which left me a grand total of -2.

I can't remember exactly what the Barb's Str was, I just know it was less than +4, because he only got a total of 4 on the climb check.

So… how did you get 20 feet up in the first place if you didn't pass any checks to start with? :smallconfused: (Also, as noted, encumbrance doesn't stack with ACPs.)

This sounds more and more like "DM didn't know the rules well enough, and fiated a couple of deaths for no very good reason". :smallsigh: (A ladder shouldn't have a DC more than 5, and getting a 4 on the check means you simply make no progress. Since both you and the barbarian would have gotten a 4, you wouldn't have left the ground.)

Callin
2013-03-24, 08:32 PM
So 6 hours of round by round combat of ONE encounter that consisted of 1 druid wild shaped into an eagle and pounding us with call lightning and a group of mounted barbarians. The party was spread out over a half mile or so and doin in combat movement sucked and we couldnt all ever meet up. Me my Bro and a friend were just joining in (me and friend with new characters due to death and my bro as a totally new to the group player). So as i said 6 HOURS of going round by round and the horde and druid killing off the rest of the party 2 by 2 they make it to us.

My friend says to heck with it, strips naked, and charges the horde and gets promply squicked. Im mowed down after words. My bro runs into the woods and hides and is found by the druid and killed not too long after.

My bro does not come back to game with us for 3 years.

Morghen
2013-03-24, 11:52 PM
Not my character:

Tournament TPK - not my group
The party has been tasked (by Local Ruler X) with rooting out a haven of powerful and evil wizards. The wizards are mid-to-high-level (10 to 13 or 14, but I don't remember specifically). This specific party marched overland straight at the fortified haven, knocked on the door, and announced that the evildoers needed to Knock It Off and Go Away.

They did not make it through the front door.

TPK of my group a couple of years before I joined it
1. DM: "The bats have been nesting in this cave for years and years and years. There's guano everywhere."
2. DM: "The bats swoop down to attack."
3. PC: "Fireball!"
4. DM: "Um. You know guano's very flammable, right?"
5. PC: "FIREBALL!"
6. TPK

Malak'ai
2013-03-25, 12:26 AM
If you'd actually put your shield away to climb the ladder instead of still wielding it, you'd have had a 4 after taking 10. Which is when the rogue climbs back down and pushes your fat armored behind up the ladder (Aid Another for +2).


Armor and Encumbrance penalties overlap, not stack. You take the worse of the two (But what armor has a -7 ACP?!)


So… how did you get 20 feet up in the first place if you didn't pass any checks to start with? :smallconfused: (Also, as noted, encumbrance doesn't stack with ACPs.)

This sounds more and more like "DM didn't know the rules well enough, and fiated a couple of deaths for no very good reason". :smallsigh: (A ladder shouldn't have a DC more than 5, and getting a 4 on the check means you simply make no progress. Since both you and the barbarian would have gotten a 4, you wouldn't have left the ground.)

I know that now. But back then the group had only got the books a few days before we started playing, and we're trying to get our heads around the rules.
When the DM said he understood that part as only relating to movement speed, not the ACP, we all thought (after reading for ourselves) that it sounded reasonable as it only mentioned movement speed.

As for how I made it up that far, the DM only asked for 1 climb check, everything else was as tuggyne said, DM fiat.

Lord Torath
2013-03-25, 04:09 PM
So he made you roll for climbing a ladder?!? Something designed to be easy to climb? :smallsigh: Out of curiosity, did he make you roll to open the tavern door as well? :smallwink:

Angel Bob
2013-03-25, 08:16 PM
As seen in "PC Stupidity Stories, Part III":

We found ourselves spontaneously facing a young red dragon for no real reason (our DM wanted us to level up soon and isn't huge on plot). The encounter actually should have been fairly easy for our group, but we were all terribly new to D&D -- plus we faced a huge setback momentarily.

See, as the dragon announced itself, our good old kleptomaniac Psion greeted it heartily and attempted to befriend it. Since she was a shardmind, the DM ruled that the dragon decided to add this hunk of crystals to its hoard, so it grabbed her and tossed her in its cave. She leapt up as it flew away and was about to follow when she noticed the cave full of gold.

The party Rogue (IRL friends with the Psion and just as greedy) immediately resolved to get in that cave as quickly as possible. To her credit, her plan was clever enough: the DM had given her a Poke Ball, so she asked my Warlord to absorb her in the Poke Ball and then lob it across the battlefield. By the grace of the DM, it landed in the cave, and the Psion released her friend. They spent the next half-dozen rounds stuffing thousands upon thousands of gold into their various bags of holding while the rest of the party died.

Eventually, even the bags of holding ran out of space (the DM was a Monty Haul kind of person). Not to be defeated by something as simple as weight, the Psion simply stuffed the remaining gold into her cloak and boots. After six rounds of slaughter by a dragon that had both our Paladin and my Warlord in single-digit HP, the Psion finally headed back towards the battlefield with a speed of about 1. Thankfully, the dragon was still within range of her attacks.

My Warlord, because he still hadn't gotten a magic weapon, requested that the Rogue toss him any magic weapon she'd found in the hoard. The DM decided to be silly and request a Dex attack vs my Reflex to see if I could catch it. Being a tactical Warlord with abysmal Dex, I failed entirely to catch it and was knocked out by a sword to the head, joining the Paladin on the ground.

Here's the entertaining bit: since our Paladin's player was out, I was playing both him and the Warlord. (This is possibly why both were in negative HP right now.) I had a history of abysmally low dice rolls; the Paladin's player had a history of never rolling lower than 16. On our death saving throws, the trend continued: I rolled a natural 20 on the Paladin, who leapt back into the fray and got dropped again, only to get another natural 20 and repeat that action. My Warlord, meanwhile, bled out over three rounds and ultimately died from a fumble. We all had a good laugh over that one.

In our current campaign, the party ranger has been courting death in the last few encounters. An elven archer, she has this unfortunate habit of getting caught up in melee. Thus far, she's been savaged by an angered rage drake that scored a critical hit; and, while climbing, she's been enveloped by a swarm of rot scarabs. On the latter occasion, she eventually opted to just drop out of the fight (literally) and took falling damage, bringing her to 1 hit point. As of right now (this encounter was interrupted by the end of our latest session), she's busy fleeing the dungeon.

kieza
2013-03-25, 09:14 PM
This one's mostly funny because of the player's attitude, but I hope it counts:

So, early on in my last campaign, I had a new player join and replace an old one who had to move. Since the party was in the middle of a dungeon when the change took place, the new player took over the old one's fighter.

Now this was a 4e campaign, and the player was really more a fan of 3.5. There's nothing wrong with that, and he seemed to be having fun, but he had this obnoxious habit of latching on to the differences between systems and essentially going "Heh...heh...it's funny and stupid because it's not 3.5...heh...heh. Right guys? Guys?" And then he'd try and demonstrate how inferior and childish 4e was because (among other things) fighters were actually useful.

Anyways, there eventually came a point where he latched on to the fact that Rain of Blows (The fighter power that lets you deal autodamage to adjacent targets) lasts "until the end of the encounter." So, right after the party had finished a fight, he decided that if he kept looking for things to kill, then logically the encounter hadn't ended yet. The rest of the party, being rather beat up, decided to sit down for a short rest. Nonetheless, he decided to press on, secure in the thought of his neverending autodamage daily power.

That is, until he actually found my next encounter--no fudging, it was exactly what it would have been if the party was all there. Rather than get into their midst with his autodamage ability, which might actually have been kind of effective, he decided he was just going to run screaming at the one that was off on its own. Now, these were enemies that the party had faced before and knew the abilities of, so it shouldn't have surprised him when they 1) immobilized him before he could close to melee, 2) used forced movement to bounce him around between them, and 3) killed him without his doing any damage at all. I always picture it as resembling a game of keepaway, with the fighter as the ball, and by the time he dropped, everyone at the table was kind of snickering at the look on his face.

He toned down the edition supremacy after that.

Reynard
2013-03-25, 10:18 PM
I'LL EAT YOUR HEART!

Last words of Flint, Barbarian and hater of wolves, upon seeing a dire wolf while he, the Paladin, and the currently spell-less wizard went for a walk in the woods. After a fight with an Owlbear, that he'd barely survived.

It killed him instantly as he charged, tearing off his leg and chewing it, keeping an eye on the Paladin and the Wizard while they slowly backed away.


I'm the Largest Source of Good in the Room!

The final words of our Githzerai monk's player, mere seconds before it was pounded into jelly by the undead giant. That level adjustment really bit him in the ass when it rolled a nat20 and one-shot him with minimum damage. To his credit it, he did it to save a fellow party member.



Both of these were the same player, poor fool.

Alleran
2013-03-25, 10:46 PM
From two weeks back, the party uncovered a succubi den that was masquerading as a brothel (and turning a fine profit, it seemed). Upon discovering this, the rogue immediately said that he would deal with it himself, asking only that the cleric cast a Death Ward first.

So he went in with a full bag of gold. And "progressed" through every single "worker" there. He seemed very smug about how they couldn't level drain him. It was hilarious when the succubi decided not to bother with the level drain and rather than let him go, just tore him limb from limb instead. There was only one of him, and about a dozen of them.

beau highbill
2013-03-25, 10:59 PM
not necessarily a death per se:
I was playing my necromancy, had a +13 to my will saves, and had been rolling well all session.
DM put us up against a party of wizards, they tried mindraping us all, I was rolling great, only one who hadn't been affected by their spells, when the DM has one of them cast baleful polymorph on me. To resist the change: Nat 1, to keep my intelligence: nat 1. The only one who was doing well, and I got turned into a squirrel.

kieza
2013-03-26, 12:21 AM
not necessarily a death per se:
I was playing my necromancy, had a +13 to my will saves, and had been rolling well all session.
DM put us up against a party of wizards, they tried mindraping us all, I was rolling great, only one who hadn't been affected by their spells, when the DM has one of them cast baleful polymorph on me. To resist the change: Nat 1, to keep my intelligence: nat 1. The only one who was doing well, and I got turned into a squirrel.

Man, that reminds me of two stories:

The first is the time that some friends and I decided to play an arena-ish game, where we all made characters and took turns being DM for bouts between them. I had a wizard with loads and loads of save-or-die and save-or-suck spells, but not a lot that targeted Reflex. I did okay in the first two bouts, until I ran up against another player's Druid, which naturally had awesome Fort and Will saves. He took me apart pretty quickly.

Anyways, after we'd decided the champion of our tournament, we took a break for a couple of weeks IRL, and then gave our characters a levelup and went at it again. This time, I ran up against the druid first thing. Knowing that I still didn't have much that could touch him, he made a big deal about pandering to the crowd and boasting of how he was going to beat me even faster this time.

I won initiative, and since I didn't have many other options, I tossed a Phantasmal Killer at him. As it turned out, after the levelup he had such a high Will save that he could almost save automatically.

Naturally, he rolled a natural 1. The guy DM'ing at the time described how he turned white, screamed like a little girl, and expired suddenly, and how the crowd went utterly silent as my character walked off and collapsed in relief.



The second story comes from a little while later, when I was running a 3.5 campaign. The party was up against an annoyingly hard to hit caster, and they'd just managed to briefly corner it. The party Artificer (now that I think of it, he was played by the guy with the druid in the previous story) decided to burn a scroll he'd been saving, in case the enemy caster managed to get away again. This scroll happened to be a Baleful Polymorph (I think, it's been a while and I don't have my 3.5 stuff to compare the spell's effect to.)

The party was very excited when the caster failed his save and the Artificer declared that he was turned into a "harmless fluffy bunny." However, I'd flubbed up a ruling earlier in the evening, and the Artificer insisted that I get out the book and go over the spell's effect with him. Sadly, this led to my discovering that the rabbit got a save to keep its intelligence...and the rabbit made its save. Somehow (and this is why I'm not sure that the spell was Baleful Polymorph) it also got a save to keep its spellcasting abilities...and it made that one too.

When the rabbitcaster's turn came up, it used its remaining Dimension Door and vanished again. As the party discovered shortly, it's very hard to find a single rabbit in a vast, dimly lit cavern, even when it occasionally throws lightning bolts at you. I don't think it managed to kill any of them, but when they managed to pin it down and kill it, there was a serious discussion about skinning it and turning it into a pair of trophy slippers.

Erik Vale
2013-03-26, 02:34 AM
Man, that reminds me of two stories:

The first is the time that some friends and I decided to play an arena-ish game, where we all made characters and took turns being DM for bouts between them. I had a wizard with loads and loads of save-or-die and save-or-suck spells, but not a lot that targeted Reflex. I did okay in the first two bouts, until I ran up against another player's Druid, which naturally had awesome Fort and Will saves. He took me apart pretty quickly.

Anyways, after we'd decided the champion of our tournament, we took a break for a couple of weeks IRL, and then gave our characters a levelup and went at it again. This time, I ran up against the druid first thing. Knowing that I still didn't have much that could touch him, he made a big deal about pandering to the crowd and boasting of how he was going to beat me even faster this time.

I won initiative, and since I didn't have many other options, I tossed a Phantasmal Killer at him. As it turned out, after the levelup he had such a high Will save that he could almost save automatically.

Naturally, he rolled a natural 1. The guy DM'ing at the time described how he turned white, screamed like a little girl, and expired suddenly, and how the crowd went utterly silent as my character walked off and collapsed in relief.



The second story comes from a little while later, when I was running a 3.5 campaign. The party was up against an annoyingly hard to hit caster, and they'd just managed to briefly corner it. The party Artificer (now that I think of it, he was played by the guy with the druid in the previous story) decided to burn a scroll he'd been saving, in case the enemy caster managed to get away again. This scroll happened to be a Baleful Polymorph (I think, it's been a while and I don't have my 3.5 stuff to compare the spell's effect to.)

The party was very excited when the caster failed his save and the Artificer declared that he was turned into a "harmless fluffy bunny." However, I'd flubbed up a ruling earlier in the evening, and the Artificer insisted that I get out the book and go over the spell's effect with him. Sadly, this led to my discovering that the rabbit got a save to keep its intelligence...and the rabbit made its save. Somehow (and this is why I'm not sure that the spell was Baleful Polymorph) it also got a save to keep its spellcasting abilities...and it made that one too.

When the rabbitcaster's turn came up, it used its remaining Dimension Door and vanished again. As the party discovered shortly, it's very hard to find a single rabbit in a vast, dimly lit cavern, even when it occasionally throws lightning bolts at you. I don't think it managed to kill any of them, but when they managed to pin it down and kill it, there was a serious discussion about skinning it and turning it into a pair of trophy slippers.

The second one has me imagining the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
"I'm very late" indeed. Though how did he manage somatic components without fingers? Or [Vocal one] without the ability to speak? [Other than DM fiat and Rule o' Cool/Rule Forgotton/I'm mistaken.]

I don't actually have a [funny, I have had one PC death] PC death though. The closest thing was me being thrown around by a Ogre Mage, as one of the three front line fighters with everyone seemingly unable to hurt it. Except the psion that is. [Converted slightly from heroes, but it was still a ogre mage, the Psion was just a one trick pony, whos trick was a mental blackjack.]

Scow2
2013-03-26, 09:49 PM
The second one has me imagining the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
"I'm very late" indeed. Though how did he manage somatic components without fingers? Or [Vocal one] without the ability to speak? [Other than DM fiat and Rule o' Cool/Rule Forgotton/I'm mistaken.]That's what I'm wondering as well...

Shyftir
2013-03-26, 10:24 PM
Two Words: Natural Spell


and a few more to avoid that thing where you can't post cuz it's too short.

Teln
2013-03-26, 11:52 PM
Two Words: Natural Spell

Rather difficult to qualify for that if you're not a druid, and Dimension Door's not on the druid's spell list.

kieza
2013-03-27, 01:05 AM
Like I said, I don't remember exactly what spell was involved. I remember it was a pain to work out what happened, so there might have been multiple spells interacting or something, or perhaps there were SLAs involved.

Or I might just be misremembering how it happened.

But the party did wind up fighting a spellcasting rabbit as the end result.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-27, 02:23 AM
Technically not a death, but still a character-is-no-longer-playable:

Apparently, after I had to leave my group's last session early, the halfling rogue tried to "loot" one of the still-alive pickpockets we had just stopped. Who was under guard and surrounded by witnesses.:smallsigh:

Minimum sentence: three years.

Roclat
2013-03-27, 08:31 AM
I was running a 3.5 game and I wanted to have some side things to work on, so I had these demon doors that took different ways to open and were a portal to another place (Shamelessly stolen from Fable) Inside I put realistic fairy tales, since most started out less than harmless. My first one was snow white and the seven dwarves, so they walk into the dwarves, start a fight, Grumpy charges my brother's now ex-GF and I crit with a x4 Pick and kill her outright with damage. I still feel bad, all of us have stupid deaths, few of us are killed by Disney characters.

A few stories from my long played Fighter/Rog/Assassin/Artemisripoff

A quick easy one, rog looks at door, barbarian gets bored and opens door, trap kills everyone except rog...

way later in his career but pre-epic, like 16-17ish He was pinned in a corner fighting a pair of large fire elementals the host's wife's Druid/Sorcerer decides to fireball them... Typically a rog is fine, but I still took half damage because it was a precarious situation(I was fine with it, made sense) if RL politics wouldn't have interfered she would have been dead, but I settled for breaking her nose.(the character:smalltongue:)

One of our first Epic fights was some Naga who with a scream vs will could instant kill characters, as a fighter/rog mine was pathetic, but he cast it and erred and made us all roll fort, we all made it, I based it and killed it in 1 round.

I remember the car ride home the GM took a peek at the naga again, said some expletives and grumbled... It SHOULD have been a Will save... One my Character couldn't have made.

Late into epic, people were having a hard time with the scale, and everyone wanted to play the new Ebberon, so he had a final fight, it was on a Spelljammer, vs a vampire who didn't kill, he ate your soul. we were losing, I jumped ship, Via magics cast on him permantly and items worn, my character, altho loooooooooooost in space, was altogether fine, with immovable rods he'd be back to Toril in.... well someday.

My brothers character, decided to follow me... He was not so expertly equipped and has been the butt of "If the rog jumps off a bridge would you?" jokes for quite a few years now.

Aolbain
2013-03-27, 08:56 AM
My elven rouge was set to murder some officer that had apparently gone traitor (we never got any evidence to back it up). After some botched attempts to enter the tavern where the target had his HQ I decided to burn the place down. So I got up on the roof and tried to set the house on fire. The fire got along quite nicely but when I got down on the ground again I saw like 20 guards running up to me. In a desperate attempt to save myself I threw my weapons away, got on the ground and screamed, fake-crying, "Help, help! He's getting away!" I also took the opportunity to pee myself to enforce the point that I was just the poor elf that had been brutalised by the evil arsonist. It worked and they just left my with a single guard. I tried to sneak away by attacking the lone guard (I had enough sneak attack dices to kill him twice) but I rolled a one. Thrice. As a result, the guard beat me unconscious, took me to my commanding officer (another PC) and she was forced to whip me to death. And then burn my body.
Such was the end of my first DnD character, he died just a couple of weeks ago.

Deophaun
2013-03-27, 09:15 AM
Rather difficult to qualify for that if you're not a druid, and Dimension Door's not on the druid's spell list.
Also, Natural Spell specifically calls out being in a wild shape. Baleful polymorph isn't a wild shape. (Similarly, Natural Spell won't allow you to cast spells while shapechanged)

Callin
2013-03-27, 09:17 AM
So the party OOC are all just chatting in up after a battle. They start talking about Skyrim and they go on and on and on and on and on and about 15 mins later my Bro says to the DM I kick open the next door.

The party stops what they were talking about and start goin NOOOO. BAM a trap goes off. Prismatic Spray... im laughing and my bro is laughing. most of the group gets damaged then comes the roll for me... Sent to another plane. IM rolling on the floor now because I just find it funny. So i talk with the DM to figure out what plane i have to come back from. So after much debate on figuring out where i went we do the rolls on some random tables. Elemental Plane of Earth... I ask for a random roll for a hospitable cave/mine/geni master to grab me so i dont die. Nope. Solid earth. I become a Fossil.

They all feel bad. My Bro feels bad. Im laughing my tail off. Because ya know its just my luck. I also had most of the groups loot...

Techsmart
2013-03-27, 09:34 AM
We had one campaign where the PC wanted to play a wizard, with multiple personality disorder. Pretty much, he had 5 characters, and various triggers would cause him to change to different personalities, with different spells prepared. Primarily, he would essentially switch between roles as if he was going from beguiler, warmage, etc. I talked with him, and we came to an agreement on what those triggers were, and that he could not intentionally trigger them himself.

Cue the campaign - The players were exploring a mansion with animated objects everywhere. Story behind it was that a wizard was trying to give himself immortality without many of the usual side-effects - mindlessness, blood-sucking tendencies, etc. - and had ended up succeeding, but the side-effects were too much for the villagers. After getting divided in the kitchen by a band of butcher knives, the main group went and started trying to find a way to the main entrance again.
The wizard, now alone, went exploring outside of the house. He came out back and found... a gazebo. The personality he had active at the time made his character very short tempered and overly aggressive. As such, he started by attacking the gazebo. Needless to say, the gazebo was animated as well. It slammed the wizard and knocked him unconscious. Good news for the wizard was that the gazebo would not attack someone who was unconscious. Bad news was that getting knocked in the back of the head (I roll a d20 anytime something like that would happen and a certain number is a trigger), he turns into a tougher character, trading strength for con. He gets up, and is immediately squished by the gazebo before that personality has a chance to even think. Everyone had a good laugh that session, even the player that died.

TL;DR - Wizard dies to gazebo after getting chased out by kitchen utensils.

We had another character who was playing a druid in a massive dungeon. The druid began taking point, since the remainder of the party was already a little banged up. They entered a large cavern with a huge natural column in the center. In the middle of the column, the party noticed a roughly formed head shape sticking part of the way out. What did the druid do? "I walk right up to the face and look right at it." Needless to say, this was a bad idea. The face was an earth elemental's head, he had been napping until he heard the party enter. One punch later, and the druid was done for.

Same campaign, different player. The team had found a magic bag I created called the bag of chaos. On a roll, it did one of 4 things when you put something in it. 1)it destroyed whatever you put in it. devouring magic items gave it a charge for each caster level. 2) absolutely nothing, the item would sit at the bottom of the bag. 3) It would shoot the item out at a high velocity, dealing 1d6 damage of a type appropriate for the item being shot. 4) the bag explodes in a field of energy. All items not nailed down in a 20 ft radius are pushed to the edge of the field, taking 1d6 force damage for each 10 ft moved, and an additional 1d6 per charge from (1). Needless to say, the party loved it. The bard, however, thought it would be a great piece to make a show out of. Simply put, he went into the market district, got on a box and said "Hey everyone, look what I can do!" He dropped 2 rocks in the bag. First rock got shot straight up in the air, piercing a metal structure that was about the only thing keeping the town safe from the winter apocalypse just outside the city limits. Second rock activated the force blast. He got charged with 2 instances of murder, 8 attempts of assault, 3 destruction of private property, attempted terrorism, and a bunch of other crimes. At least, he would have, if the force didn't blow him into a weapon shop and got stabbed to death by multiple spears.

beau highbill
2013-03-28, 04:29 AM
Like I said, I don't remember exactly what spell was involved. I remember it was a pain to work out what happened, so there might have been multiple spells interacting or something, or perhaps there were SLAs involved.

Or I might just be misremembering how it happened.

But the party did wind up fighting a spellcasting rabbit as the end result.

Silent+still spell will take care of that

geeky_monkey
2013-03-28, 10:59 AM
A friend of mine died after trying to jump the equivalent of the Grand Canyon in a D&D game after getting km and cm confused.

Maugan Ra
2013-03-28, 11:41 AM
I'm still rather fond of the way my first Pathfinder character, Thane Castorson, died. He was an Asmodeus-worshipping Sorcerer, and throughout most of the campaign he'd been slowing corrupting and betraying the entire party and indeed their kingdom for his own personal gain.

And in the end, he bit the dirt not at the hands of an enemy or the talons of a wild beast, or even at the angry spells of a betrayed party-mate... but at the claws of a Devil, after he forgot to read the small text on an infernal contract. It was a death that was both entirely appropriate for the character and entirely deserved (because he was, to be frank, a complete bastard).

Fighter1000
2013-03-28, 12:25 PM
I just remembered a campaign-shaking event that wasn't quite a death, but it was just as bad.
I was running a pathfinder campaign and the party was a group of characters trying to liberate a city from undead, evil wizards, and devils. They came into a building controlled by evil forces. They slaughtered said evil forces, and our elf witch found a sideroom with some loose floorboards. Elf witch removed said floorboards and found a small treasure chest underneath them. The chest was unlocked and not trapped. Inside it was 2 magic items: A horn of fog blowing, and an apple of eternal sleep. The elf witch thought it was a normal apple and took a bite out of it. Roll will save. Failure. The party had to drag her back to their hideout, and they plotted to get the appropriate magics to wake her up, but it never really happened as this campaign did not continue beyond 2 sessions.
In hindsight, I regret putting the apple of eternal sleep there. It was probably one of the reasons why the campaign got scrubbed.
And if anyone is wondering why an elf would fall prone to such sleeping magic, it was because she was a variant elf (she took fire resistance instead of sleep immunity).

GigaGuess
2013-03-28, 12:43 PM
Not sure if it was "funny" or not, but it IS one of the truest examples of the random number gods screwing you over, and quite likely a good example of a PC deciding that kill 'em all is more of a viable approach than it ought to be.

I was playing an online Call of C'thulhu game where all was going well until my very first encounter. I neglected to invest in my unarmed combat but felt my mod was reasonable enough to carry through a battle. So I swing. Miss. The undead horror I was facing took a chunk out of he. I swung again. Miss. Again, I get nailed. Swing once more. I miss, she hits, and I'm on the ropes. Running seemed like a good idea at this point, so I do, bolt, roll another check, forget which, honestly, and the end result was I ended up tripping, falling down the stairs, and braking my neck...my adventure ended before it even began.

Dewani90
2013-04-09, 03:22 PM
some campaigns ago we were in a city full of thieves, the vast majority of them were children working for the local bad guy, and one of them decided to steal from the second paladin (new guy)... the guy was lawful good, you would believe he was tyrant evil for the way he acted, he grabbed the poor girl by the arm and decided that her punishment should be death, then she would work as an example for other thieves that would try to steal from us, and when he was about to do the killing strike his sword clashed with the barbarian axe, my twin-blades and the cleric hammer, we put the girl on the barbarian's care for later interrogation and then things went this way

Paladin2: god says that the wicked must be punished
Cleric: but she is just a child
Paladin2: evil has many forms...and the punishment for stealing is death
Warrior: I don't think anyone appointed you as judge dredd here
Paladin2: my god has power everywhere, therefore i can judge, and the lil girl is guilty, now hand her over so i can pass judgement
My Paladin: that's it, I'm kicking his fallen ass even before he falls
Rogue: now now, don't get conceited with this guy, I can get us rid of him... forever... do you still have those potions of glibness?
My Paladin: sure
Rogue: hand me one, I'm going to destroy him...

the lil halfling stood proud before the new guy and drank the potion in front of him, then proceeded to squash him with a long talk, where he failed all the saving trows... she convinced him that his god had left him because he didn't liked his hairdo (express auto-fall), that he didn't need armor or items ( that she grabbed ), that he was a farmer living in an old abandoned shack we passed in the way to the city and for good measure, that his alignment was true neutral, that was the last we seen of that pally guy (the gm allowed all of this and the player made a new character with a bit less stick up his ass, the dm made me draw the portrait of the lil girl so the party felt compelled to listen to her, the lil npc was an informant and quest giver so she didn't resisted to be interrogated and told us everything about the "thieves guild", that wasn't exactly a guild, more like slave labor)

once our party was remade we went on with the adventure and the new guy apologized, his friends normally go murder-hobo style everywhere... so he tough that he could murder an npc for a "good" reason this time, he didn't think it was a bad idea until he got stopped by almost half of the party

and that was the "death" of a PC I had to share here

Scow2
2013-04-09, 03:40 PM
the lil halfling stood proud before the new guy and drank the potion in front of him, then proceeded to squash him with a long talk, where he failed all the saving trows... she convinced him that his god had left him because he didn't liked his hairdo (express auto-fall), that he didn't need armor or items ( that she grabbed ), that he was a farmer living in an old abandoned shack we passed in the way to the city and for good measure, that his alignment was true neutral, that was the last we seen of that pally guy (the gm allowed all of this and the player made a new character with a bit less stick up his ass, the dm made me draw the portrait of the lil girl so the party felt compelled to listen to her, the lil npc was an informant and quest giver so she didn't resisted to be interrogated and told us everything about the "thieves guild", that wasn't exactly a guild, more like slave labor)
Glibness and Bluff checks don't work that way, despite Order of The Stick's approach. It is not Suggestion, Modify Memory, Charm Person, or any similar mind-affecting enchantment.

BWR
2013-04-09, 04:31 PM
First game I ever played, Zanzer Tem's dungeon, a starting adventure from the introductory 0D&D set. After breaking out of jail, our first encounter was skeletons. Having 2 hp (and you died at 0, none of this death's door nonsense the newer editions have) and knowing the skeleton could deal 1d4 damage, I didn't like my chances. I withdrew to the rear of the party. The DM, who was only barely more experienced than the rest of us newbs, thought this was not fitting behavior for a hero in a heroic game, decided that the skeletons bypassed the other PCs by jumping over them (room was not really high enough to allow this) and the first one killed me with its first blow. Character creation aside, we had been playing for 10 minutes or so.

Another memorable one was the time we met a mech in Dragonlance. Not surprisingly, a rather deranged Tinker Gnome had managed to make a mech of some sort that looked like a giant dragon that had enormous steam-powered spring legs it used to leap 30-40 meters in the air. It was pounding the party and despite having to charge up the steam to power the jump for a few rounds, we couldn't deal enough damage to take it down before it killed us. At least that was my resoning when I tied a rope around my knight's waist and secured him to the feet of the thing before it jumped. The next jump snapped his back, killing him instantly and left a flopping meaty ragdoll flying around the rest of the encounter.

Dewani90
2013-04-09, 04:39 PM
Glibness and Bluff checks don't work that way, despite Order of The Stick's approach. It is not Suggestion, Modify Memory, Charm Person, or any similar mind-affecting enchantment.

I know it doesn't, but our GM liked our way to get rid of the hostile member and allowed it, his campaigns are full of stuff that works different than it's intended purpose, you can also multiclass a lot and even play as races normally reserved for enemies/mobs, i doubt everyone plays by the book nowadays (unless you are really conceited with the rules), funny & useful skills, sudden plot twists & a neat story that hooks everyone the moment they start playing are our GM default skills, and we all like his style... less rules, more fun


-snip-

your GM screwed the rules because he had the book & dice, i think those ways to die were not funny, more like an awkyard moment of GM-vilness

still i liked the jumping dragon ff4 style, even if it became awkyard due to the grim keychain it got :smalltongue:

VeliciaL
2013-04-09, 05:52 PM
Do near deaths count? :smalltongue:

I was out for this one sadly, but heard it second hand: In an online fourth edition game I was in a while back, we had a Goliath Warden who decided he wanted to try "diplomacy" with the orc chieftain, his idea of "diplomacy" being "You take five swings at me, and if I'm still standing at the end then we'll be friends." Five swings later, the party was dragging his battered body out the front gates. :smallsigh:

This is a guy who would later challenge a dragon to a 1-on-1 duel. I think the DM was going easy on us, because that didn't kill him either.

It later came out that this player enjoyed a bit of, shall we say, strong drink during games. I don't think anyone was surprised in the slightest. :smalltongue:

Kane0
2013-04-09, 06:44 PM
Starting out a campaign, level 1 at this point.

Having left the nearest village on our way to another we stopped to camp the night, taking turns on watch. During the rogue's watch the DM rolls a positive on his random encounter table and the Rogue rolls really well on his listen check. In the distance over a nearby hill he can hear what sounds like an Ox, which are rare in this part of the world. He goes over to investigate and misses the check to notice the smell of sulphur as he near the ox. Then he decides to ride it back to the camp, at which point the Ox explodes from under him, leaving him at exactly 0 HP. He fails his fort save to stay conscious and we wake up from the noise. We run up the hill and see the charred figure of the rogue next to smouldering bits of flesh and horn. Best part was that the party healer failed his heal check and said "there's nothing we can do for him" so technically we were the ones responsible for his death.

KillianHawkeye
2013-04-09, 06:58 PM
at which point the Ox explodes from under him, leaving him at exactly 0 HP. He fails his fort save to stay conscious

And yet another character is killed by bad house rules.

Kane0
2013-04-10, 07:01 AM
And yet another character is killed by bad house rules.

It was a modified save vs massive damage since he was at full hp prior to the explosion, and a fail meant unconscious rather than straight dead.

runeghost
2013-04-10, 10:39 AM
About a decade ago, a few of us decide to run a short 1st Edition AD&D campaign. (Although we didn't expect it to be this short!) We roll up characters (so easy! so simple! so fast!) and head out into the desert to hunt down some bandits. We track them to their cave with little trouble and head in. Before long, we run into them - both sides are surprised, so combat starts with both groups some distance apart. The half-elf magic-user casts Web (we'd started off at 3rd level), intending to catch the bandits in it. The GM asks where and she points it out on the map. The GM goes, "ok" and flips through the (1st Ed.) PHB to find out the area of effect: 80 cubic feet. (Technically, 8 cubic inches, gotta love that old 1st edition scale system. :smalltongue:) And it turns out that through a combination of sub-optimal targeting, failure to take the party's position on the map into account, and a larger than expected area of effect, everyone is caught in the Web spell.

We all fail our saves (so do the bandits, at least). No problemo, we'll just break out. GM checks the book - no one has a sufficiently high strength (oops). Then he says, "Wow, I don't remember that rule."

For every full turn entrapped by a web, a creature has a 5% cumulative chance of suffocating to death.All of us died of suffocation before the spell duration expired. :smallbiggrin: Shortest AD&D campaign ever.

Souju
2013-04-10, 12:09 PM
The setting is a homebrewed Pathfinder campaign.
After introducing two "guest star party members" (two people who would be joining only for that session, well, one of them anyway. Ironically the one that didn't die was the one we knew would only be there once) on top of a mountain/hill that takes a full day's travel to climb (8 hours, up stairs. It's a shinto shrine.) where the rest of the party has been resting and running this one repeatable dungeon I put in repeatedly. The whole hill/mountain has "trials" as its theme.
On their way down to actually continue the story and find a magic shop to dump off a bunch of junk items they had won from the dungeon, they run into one of the stair trials.
It's a fairly simple affair: A ghost has lost her locket, the man that has her locket further down the stairs is magically compelled to not give it up (via Geas, so they couldn't just dispel it) unless asked politely. One thing to remember is that these are supposed to be tests of CHARACTER (the ones on the stairway. Ex: another trial is about waiting patiently for a turtle to walk to a correct pillar. Simple, but the gnome kept jumping on the turtle...)
The rogue/fighter, who had been doing all these trials mostly correctly, wants to drag the man up the stairs to the ghost. This is, of course, perfectly acceptable a response for the trial.
As we were getting ready to drag him up the stairs, one of the new arrivals (a gunslinger with full plate and a shotgun. In a party where EVERYONE else, even the cohort above gnome had developed an irrational distaste for because I based her on one of my characters from another campaign [I was feeling a little lazy], was capable of stealth) just shoots the guy with the locket. Having only 1 hit dice, the NPC dies. Being a test of character, the shotgunner gets Cursed.
Next, they finally arrive in a town with a magic shop and decide to set about getting their blinded and cursed party members cured (a fight against 6 black blood clerics didn't do so well for them) and find a Mystic Theurge willing to do it for a price. Since he's running a monopoly, he either charges double the normal price (and his CL is quite high) or requires an errand before he'll give a discount. The rogue/fighter grudgingly does the errand and gets his cohort cured, and the arcane trickster (who isn't the gnome, btw) gets the shotgunner guy (who had ALSO been blinded and nearly killed in the previous fight) to come with him to get cured.
They get cured and...the shotgunner shoots the MT. However, the MT isn't a pushover like the guy on the mountain, and kills him with finger of death.
Much "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" ensued, and the arcane trickster (since he tried to ray the guy) is now on the Mystic Theurge's hitlist.

BWR
2013-04-10, 01:09 PM
A TPK from the days of 3.5. The gang, going through the BBEG's tower, discover a glabrezu trapped in a circle on the way to the top. Realizing that it was a bit beyond our capability (we were level 7 or 8 at the time, IIRC, and there were 6 of us). We went to the top and wtfpwned the BBEG, far easier a fight than it should have been.
This of course has the effect of making everyone else overconfident (I was level-headed and said from in-game and OOC knowledge that we'd be very very dead if we tried).
The collective response from the other players was "GET 'IM".

Oddly enough, the tanar'ri had 2 hp left when he killed the last of us, so it was surprisingly close call.

Necroticplague
2013-04-10, 02:00 PM
That's what I'm wondering as well...


Two Words: Natural Spell/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Teln;14974664]Rather difficult to qualify for that if you're not a druid, and Dimension Door's not on the druid's spell list.

Well, bunnies can still make noises and they do have paws, so I guess it could get by with some substitution. Not perfect, but close enough.

laeZ1
2013-04-10, 02:17 PM
My only character death to date:

I was playing a dwarven priest. He was sort of a goofball, and I played him off as old and senile (age penalties and everything). While on a docked ship, the port town is attacked by a creature (I don't remember what it was... it was on the land, not aquatic). Mechanically, by the rules of CR, our party should have been able to defeat it, should we have worked together.

The dwarven fighter runs off the ship, onto the docks, and begins fighting it.

The Elven wizard starts casting buffs on fleeing civilians, then gets some goo stuff shot into his face.

The human rogue (whom we had hired on as a guide of the area) stayed out of combat, because she "wasn't getting paid for this".

I grab one of the ship's cannons, load a cannonball, and watch in horror as the creature beats up on the dwarven fighter (my character's adopted son). I am the shot at the creature (still in melee combat with the fighter), and fire. I roll a 1. Seeing this happen, I ask the DM if I could roll a tumble check/reflex save/dexterity check/anything to try to get into the way of the cannonball I just shot.

DM says sure (we work with the rule of cool). He has me make a jump check. I make a jump check. The result is me failing to get in the way of the cannonball, the fighter getting blown to bits, I land in the water, and heavy armor plus natural 1 swim check has me sink, but before I can drown, the local sea serpent swallows me whole. Whilest inside the sea serpent, I break my wand of fireball (Houseruled to cause a fiery explosion). I burn to cinders, the fire-immune sea serpent burps, the fighter dies, the wizard gets eaten as the rogue takes the ship for herself, sailing into the unknown.

Unfortunately, none of the other players had it in them to keep playing: the DM had made the plot too closely related with the three characters that died.

RurouniKakita
2013-04-10, 03:01 PM
Since I've seen a few near deaths here I guess I shall share the tale of how the party I've been DMing for should have died this last session.

As a sort of filler quest they had taken the task of finding out what has been taking Cyran refugees that where living in the High Walls district of Sharn. Making their way to the cogs since that is where their information took them they entered they entered what ended up being the lair of a pair of Necromancers. Raiding their rooms they find some research notes and a Flesh Golem manual as well as a Mirror that ended up being a Mirror of Life Trapping and the always curious artificer decided to try and check out this magic mirror and failed the will save for it. Since she was just a DMC it was no dig deal but the party seems to have grown attached to her (mainly because she's their factory) relentlessly question the shifter who had appeared in her place (since the mirror was full). Getting no useful info from him since he was about 1500 years out of place the party moved on taking the mirror with them in the hopes of having the owner free their friend.

Finally finding the Necromancers just finishing a ritual that opened a hole to Dolurrh. In the ensuing battle I had Erandis show up through the hole demanding to know who was encroaching on her domain. Needless to say the party wasn't in her good graces from the beginning having foiled one of her long plans previously by retrieving an artifact from. Trapping most of the party in a force cage She pretty much railroads the party to retrieve the artifact they had previously stolen from her. After leaving them to think it over for 24 hours (the force cage wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and was blocking the door) the party refocused on getting the artificer out of the mirror. Tying the Necromancers to the force cage corner they healed him up enough to talk. It should be noted at this point the paladin in the party was friends with some of the people that they used in their experiments including the flesh golems so he was OK with letting them die and seemed to think it was going to be their fate eventually. During the course of the interrogation it seemed they weren't getting any useful information beyond the usual "you wouldn't like it if you killed me." Chalking it up to boastful arrogance the party probably should have listened to him but decided to use his corpse to try and intimidate his partner so the Bard ran him through with her +1 long sword dropping him back to -9. One failed attempt to stabilize later the Death Throes spell he had cast on himself went off (he was level 9). The resulting Explosion caught everyone in it severely hurting and dropping the bard to 0, the druid to -8, shattering the mirror, and killing the other necromancer who also had cast Death Throes on himself. Through TAMDA (The All-Mighty Divine Aspect. another name for the DM) intervention it was ruled that the sudden appearance of 15 bodies of which 5 landed on the other necromancer blunted the explosion enough so they didn't take the full additional 54 damage, also the Druids animal companion was given one action before the second explosion saving the druid. Needless to say I think I might have put a fear of killing casters in my party.

Icewraith
2013-04-10, 04:05 PM
The party is progressing in some sort of cavern and is buried in a cave-in.

Party druid with natural spell & MOMF gestalt:

"I change into a beetle and crawl on top of the rocks"

A couple rounds later it is pretty clear the party isn't emerging from the rubble, so he casts transmute rock to mud.

Me: "Ok, but since you're still in the area and super tiny you're buried under a wave of mud as the collapse liquifies. Everyone needs to start making checks to hold their breath or start drowning...

(to the druid)"... wait, you're currently a tiny (description not size category) insect completely submerged in five feet of mud. (I start killing catgirls in the process of winging this turn of events) Bugs breathe through spiricles and most species aren't noted for their ability to stay alive while completely submerged, so you start drowning."

Druid: (Instead of shifting back to something big enough to get out of the muck, something with a swim speed, something with a burrow speed, or even something that breathes water, or just something that's not an insect)

"I cast transmute mud to rock."

Me: "..."
Everyone else: /facepalm

Me: "Alright, everyone is now encased in solid rock. You (the druid) still are suffocating, since now instead of being submerged in mud you are completely encased in solid rock unable to move, and you have no air or air supply. Also the mud that was oozing its way into your body and suffocating you has now solidified."

Druid: (finally catching up to speed) "AAh! I change into... something huge!"

Me: "You do realize you are encased in solid rock, and size change effects generally fail if the area is too small to contain the new form? You are also unable to move any of your limbs to cast spells, and you don't have any air to speak of and your mouthparts are probably also encased in rock."

A couple minutes later, in order to avoid completely derailing the campaign and characters we'd grown attached to (I think a few of the others were able to make it out once the situation went from inconveniant to potentially fatal, and one of the spellcasters had still silent "relevant escape spell I don't remember" on hand (either dimension door, teleport or potentially disintegrate?), we decided to let him walk back his action. It was either that, force the player to roll up a new character at this time consuming and complicated stage of the game, or hope the characters were able to find the corpse of an insect completely trapped in solid rock without destroying the body and without knowing they were looking for one as True Rez was not an option yet.

But yeah, we discovered one of the easier ways for a high-level natural spell druid to commit suicide. Change into your weakest, low str form incapable of holding its breath, transmute rock to mud, fall in, panic, transmute mud to rock.

Arutema
2013-04-10, 04:20 PM
So my archery ranger decides that she needs to pass through a few Babaus' threatened squares in order to get a clear shot.

Being somewhat cold and heartless, I send my animal companion through first to suck up the AoOs, then run through myself.

Unknown to my character, Babaus have combat reflexes, all 3 of them hit with their AoOs, and one of them is a longspear crit, dropping me to -30.

Most insanely reckless thing one of my characters have ever done, and I paid the price for it.

Erik Vale
2013-04-10, 04:44 PM
But yeah, we discovered one of the easier ways for a high-level natural spell druid to commit suicide. Change into your weakest, low str form incapable of holding its breath, transmute rock to mud, fall in, panic, transmute mud to rock.


Theres a quote somewhere about a wizard being able to suck harder than a fighter could ever hope to.
Now we have proved the same applies to druids... Does allow them to make their own burial mounds though.

Scow2
2013-04-10, 08:05 PM
About a decade ago, a few of us decide to run a short 1st Edition AD&D campaign. (Although we didn't expect it to be this short!) We roll up characters (so easy! so simple! so fast!) and head out into the desert to hunt down some bandits. We track them to their cave with little trouble and head in. Before long, we run into them - both sides are surprised, so combat starts with both groups some distance apart. The half-elf magic-user casts Web (we'd started off at 3rd level), intending to catch the bandits in it. The GM asks where and she points it out on the map. The GM goes, "ok" and flips through the (1st Ed.) PHB to find out the area of effect: 80 cubic feet. (Technically, 8 cubic inches, gotta love that old 1st edition scale system. :smalltongue:) And it turns out that through a combination of sub-optimal targeting, failure to take the party's position on the map into account, and a larger than expected area of effect, everyone is caught in the Web spell.You died because nobody at your table knows geometry. 8 Cubic Inches is only a 2" x 2" area (Also 2" high), or 8 1x1x1 adjacent cubes if you can shape the area of the spell. If it were 80 cubic feet... not even 5' on a side.

Mnemophage
2013-04-10, 08:11 PM
I guess this was kind of a death?

The one and only time I played Planescape, I got really hung up on the whole "you can be ANYTHING!" idea and decided I wanted to be a spider. Specifically, a Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spider from the Avernum series of games, which I was obsessed with at the time (and to a degree still am - they're amazing and have huge demos, go check them out). Furthermore, I decided I wanted to be a sorcerer spider, as we were playing a 3e Planescape conversion and I actually had a backstory for this nonsense that meshed with the Avernum series. As everyone else was a githzerai, tiefling or something else, y'now, humanoid, there was a bit of back-and-forth with the DM but eventually I did get my magic spider and she was actually pretty well balanced. This was not the reason the whole game went to hell.

After a few sessions screwing around in Sigil, getting sent to Bytopia for some reason and generally wetting our feet in faction politics, it was time for a theme episode. Specifically, it was Halloween, and the DM had downloaded this one-shot thing involving a Sensate costume ball. Our characters were required to obtain costumes to enter. Some of the cleverest among you are realizing where this is going by now. My spider, specifically, wound up acquiring half a mannequin, painting it black, sticking it on her head and yelling BLAAAA, I AM LOLTH, FEAR ME in her adorable squeaky voice.

Of course, of COURSE, there was some magical screwery that caused us to begin slowly turning into our costumes. The rogue was becoming a paladin, the zerth was becoming a mummy, and, well, I was becoming an evil spider goddess. The adventure itself wasn't meant to be very difficult to complete - the magical costume-change thing was a result of some sort of mist that was spewing out of a large and very visible smokestack - but the whole "evil spider goddess" thing threw a massive wrench in the works. Worse, Lolth, actual Lolth, was pretty on board with this because it meant that she had an inside clone in Sigil, and it wasn't long before she began trying to actively take over my mind.

The Lady of Pain did not like this, and after an evening of having a very confusing halfway amount of control over my character, she very mercifully sputched me.

There were maybe two or three sessions after that; I created a half-hearted aasimar but I wasn't really into it anymore.

runeghost
2013-04-10, 08:54 PM
You died because nobody at your table knows geometry. 8 Cubic Inches is only a 2" x 2" area (Also 2" high), or 8 1x1x1 adjacent cubes if you can shape the area of the spell. If it were 80 cubic feet... not even 5' on a side.

In 1st Ed AD&D, inches were used for spell ranges and area of effect. AoE was always converted at the 1" = 10 feet ratio. Ranges used the same ratio inside, but for range 1" = 10 yards when not in the dungeon. The spell description clearly shows a sample AoE of 20 feet x 40 feet x 10 feet; it's clearly intended to hit eight of the good old 10x10 squares. Blame Gary for the confusing math. :smallbiggrin: Either way, it was a fun TPK.

Dire Panda
2013-04-10, 09:24 PM
This was probably the funniest one I've DM'ed, and very much in-character for the poor fool.

"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.

Laniius
2013-04-11, 02:37 AM
Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood. I had read "favourite" not "funny". Leaving it up anyway.

Well, this one was kind of cheating because I wanted to replace the character. On the other hand, I had no idea what the DM had planned, I just let him know that I was no longer having fun with the guy.

Some backstory: Pathfinder system, and the setting was a constructed world made up by the DM.

My character was a Tiefling summoner. Now, in this world Tieflings are essentially a created race, and each one is created by the Dark One for a purpose. I got away with playing one as from the outset we all had almost complete amnesia, basically we only knew our abilities (i.e. stats, skills, feats, and class abilities) only knowing our names as we had them embroidered onto our clothes. Essentially we had been tortured so much to break us down to our purest essence, with no idea as to our identities. My character's name name was Cornelius McGill (picked through a random name generator, conventiently enough if you translate both those into English from their individual languages the name could mean "Horned Son of a Stranger")

Through a combination of the world being harder on Tieflings than I expected going in (even though the DM DID warn me), and not finding my niche in my party with the Summoner, I grew a little frustrated.

Not far from the town we had settled in and made our base of operations, was a line of statutes stretching as far as the eye can see in either direction. This was called the "Fairy Wall" and no mortal could pass it on pain of dire circumstances. It looked like there was nothing in between the statues, , but if one was to cross death was implied, as was worse than death. There was something very magical about it, but none of the original townsfolk had survived. Both our group and the NPCs were refugees from the Empire's work camps/execution yards who had been brought here from elsewhere. So we had no idea why the Fairy Wall was there or what the penalty was for crossing. We didn't want to experiment.

Cornelius had gotten into an argument about essentially Nature vs Nurture. We had destroyed a very powerful, very evil intelligent item in a very cruel way - we melted it on a magical anvil. It screamed the entire time. Cornelius argued that it could have been rehabilitated, or contained. Cornelius' companions argued that it had been created specifically for evil. Cornelius said "Wasn't I, and all my kind, created for evil?" And he stormed off. He wanted to get away from these people, at least for a time. There was nowhere nearby that he could be isolated in, and he didn't want to take his horse and wagon as at that point in time his was the only horse and wagon in the town - he was angry, but didn't want to strand anyone. But he wanted to be alone.

Then he thought: The fairy wall. No mortal can cross it, but as a creation of the Dark One, perhaps he was not mortal. And so he went.

Upon crossing the fairy wall, he noticed something strange. His eidolon [a summoner class feature, essentially a perma-summon] was manifesting, even though he hadn't called it. And it was glowing. And then it was expanding. And then it was exploding. Not your standard D&D explosion either. Think mushroom cloud. Think Hiroshima. Think Nagasaki. Thankfully, whatever magic created the fairy wall contained it on one side so the town wasn't harmed. Still, this explosion was huge.

And the fairy wall? After absorbing so much power, it was broken. Not a wide gap, perhaps a few hundred metres, because no matter how powerful the explosion the magic of the fairy wall was very strong and very old. But still broken. For the first time ever.

In the split second before Cornelius became ash, he saw a Dark shadow, and heard a voice "Even you, my wayward child, were created for a purpose".

Fade to white.

Malrone
2013-04-11, 09:27 AM
First one that comes to mind is for a CN Rogue that was in the party. Typical chaotic, he acted on whims and generally was short-sighted.

We were going through a randomly generated dungeon, in a place where such things were expressly canonical- they varied between Gygaxian and Monty Haul with extreme regularity. So it was, that we clear a room of Vampire Spawn, and notice that the ceiling is lower than in any other room. Mr. Rogue searches for traps and trap doors, and finds none. That was the extent of his caution.

Couple minutes later, he and another party member break through the false ceiling with sledges. Turns out the "Hidden Treasure" of that room was one hundred thousand copper pieces... not even enough gp value to buy a Raise for the poor saps.

Sith_Happens
2013-04-11, 12:58 PM
sorceresses

This word right here was all it took for me to know exactly what was going to happen.:smallwink:

Buddha's_Cookie
2013-04-13, 03:32 PM
I have two deaths one is just stupid... nevermind they are both stupid, for different reasons.
This first one I killed myself.
The party was trying to get through a puzzle barrier placed over a door in a library/dungeon where we meet a kind old man NPC (one of the power gamers evil vampire assassiny "screw with the world types" in disguise) next to the door is a pool of "water" about 6 feet by 2 feet and a few inches deep. This water created anything you asked for but disappeared when you left the room. So me (human ranger) and the sorcerer were the only ones trying to work through it, others were either unconsious or did not care (players GF and her useless cleric) so after a long time I jokingly wish for a cup of tea (half in character)
DM:"A cup of tea appears in the pool"
Me:"ok, I drink the tea." Taking it as staying in character.
Major poison, fail the save, take atleast 6 con damage and am knocked out. the remaining party drags me back to the main room. The power gamer then declares (ooc) what the old man is and that he hates humans (me being the only human in the party) procedes to kill me stealthly with extra poison (again I fail the save) and die. I was not upset that I died, but was (and still am) sour at the power gamer. But the DM let me fool around as a ghost

Second one is heroic TPK as a player
In a war campaign, the party is sent to take back a keep that belonged to the knights order that my friend (minotaur) and I (dwarf) were appart of. We find the secret tunnel 1+ miles away from the keep. Appon entering the keep the alarm was sounded quickly. Well the minotaur challenges the leader to a duel. This manages to buy time for the monk x/rouge x, to sneak around and close the gates and destroy the mechinism to operate it, he does this because he sees that this is now the main camp of the enemy army. So we call a retreat but the minotaur refuses and decides to hold agro so we escape. He dies when the 20+ casters finally enter and target him with mass magic missle (like 200ish). As the remaining party runs down the tunnel, the DM tells me that due to prevous knowledge and dwarven stone cunning the passage is filled with exploives (he made no mention of this earlier) designed to collapse the passage. Me being the slowest of the party I turn and face those soldiers now persuing us, I decide to light a torch and shout "stop or I will blow the passage!" they kept running, so I lit the explosives. OOC I then realized the passage was a lot longer than I thought and the fastest character was not even half way. We spent the next 40+ minutes working out if we actually died (most of us survived the initial explosion).
After the session I realised I could have stood in the middle of the tunnel (10feet wide) and held it with my tower shield. I appoligised and the DM did a plot divice rez. That game only lasted a few sessions longer.

Lvl45DM!
2013-04-14, 06:53 AM
Not my PC but we were playing a low level campaign set in an abandoned city. Wandering the ruins we came upon an ancient abandoned toilet. The dwarf, seeking roleplaying XP no doubt, decided to urinate. The DM roll a few dice behind his screen, started cackling madly and a ghoul popped out of the toilet. We were surprised, naturally, and the ghoul got a free round of attacks that dropped the dwarf to -9 on account of 3 natural 20's. Since everyone had left the room to give him some privacy he bled to death next round.