Best Character Deaths

[Andurian]

What was you best or most epic tale of your character dying?

I realize this is an awkward question since most of the time, we avoid our characters dying. Of course, you can even get resurrected! So I want to specify this question to be when your character can't or doesn't come back.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I told this story before but is worth telling again.

We were facing down the BBEG and his lieutenants, low on hp, low on spells, no escape and no way to retreat. The fate of the world hangs in the balance... so with my last action I break my staff of power the resulting damage kills me, the BBEG, his lieutenants, and the rest of the party. The damage obliterated the magical engine keeping his fortress in the air causing a small mountain to fall onto his endless army of the dead below.

[erok0809]

This wasn't my PC, but I was in the game. Two of the other guys, a Ranger and a Paladin (we're all level 5-6 at this point) couldn't make it to the game any more, and so we were free to kill off their characters. So half our group is in a town, fighting off the possessed townspeople, while the two of them were in a nearby forest, fighting off the scouts from an approaching goblin army. They manage to trap the scouts, but end up setting the forest on fire inadvertently. So the ranger just recently got a wolf pup for his animal companion, and so surrounded by flames, he sat and comforted his puppy as they burned. The Paladin decides to shoot his arrows through the flames towards the town, to warn someone about the fire. The arrows end up hitting one of the ghasts that was summoned in the town, blowing it up and saving the rest of our lives, since none of us were rolling well and we were getting owned. It was a good way for the two of them to go.

[Lightlawbliss]

walking down the street, my character makes a spot check and sees the BBEG that had recently gotten away from us standing in the shadows. I run at him, and multiple people in the crowd take attacks of oportunity. none hit me and 3 kill themselves. I then roll an attack on (what I latter found out to be an illusion) the BBEG... 1,20,20. The character in question was a crit monger. after some very high damage rolls, he oneshot himself.

[Twilightwyrm]

walking down the street, my character makes a spot check and sees the BBEG that had recently gotten away from us standing in the shadows. I run at him, and multiple people in the crowd take attacks of oportunity. none hit me and 3 kill themselves. I then roll an attack on (what I latter found out to be an illusion) the BBEG... 1,20,20. The character in question was a crit monger. after some very high damage rolls, he oneshot himself.

It is unfortunate that your DM does fumbles that way. Were you in my campaign, the 20 would have allowed you to roll to hit again, and the next twenty would have threatened. The logic is that, while you badly aimed your attack, dumb luck causes you to potentially hit regardless.

[Amphetryon]

I've told the story of this TPK before:

My old DM had, and used for 3.5, a 1e book of various wondrous magic items and quasi-artifacts. A random treasure generation from that book produced a cushioned chair that we identified as allowing the person who sat in it to transport at high speed to any other location on the same plane, via a jaunt into the Astral.

Not long after, we found ourselves wanting to get all the way across the continent in relatively short order. Our thoughts turned to the chair we'd dubbed "the traveling La-Z-boy." All but one of us piled into a Portable Hole, with the remaining person settling into the chair and saying the command word. . .

Which activated the curse. The chair immediately bound, gagged, and magically held the seated Character, then teleported him to a random spot in the world. That random spot happened to be in the middle of an ancient forest. The DM explained that we'd probably be okay, that the chair would let go after an hour, and the Player in the chair merely needed to roll to check for random encounters. He got a 1: a random encounter came up. Another roll, another consultation with the charts, and the encounter was. . . wolves, who proceeded to devour the PC in the chair, while the rest of us sat, comfortable but trapped, until our air ran out.

TPK by La-Z-boy and Portable Hole.

[JonU]

My favorite character death was that of my favored soul I played in the campaign I was in before this deployment. First off, she should have had a healthy fear of water. In the very first night she nearly died. We started off on a boat and got boarded by a group of pirates. She tried to follow one of the other characters but slipped and fell as she went to make the jump resulting in her being stuck in the water as the two boats drifted away. I then had to start making swim checks to see if I could stay afloat. I spent the rest of the time alternating between sinking and floating. She was literally flailing about (her swim skill was -1). Eventually she got rescued by the group. Later on we where in a dungeon that was half filled with water. At one point we got swept down a hall due to a very strong current. One of the other characters managed to get a grappling hook set on a corner that had a hallway leading to safety. As my character struggled to hold onto the rope (I eventually rolled a 1), she lost her grip. That's when I found out why the current was so strong. At the end of the hall was a 600' waterfall. Needless to say, she was never heard from again.

[Arskanator]

My story isn't in any way epic, but it's still one of the D&D moments that I'll probably remember until the day I die.

Last year, I decided to change profession and went back to school. I was itching to DM again, and managed to lure three classmates of mine to play D&D with me. They all played League of Legends so I figured they at least had the faintest of an idea what a RPG was. They rolled a Human Cleric, a Half-Orc Barbarian and an Elf Druid(who thought that a constitution score of 8 was a good idea).

I decided to run them trough Sunless Citadel, because it's designed as one of those baby's first D&D adventures, and because I was rusty myself. They had a little trouble with the RP aspect of the RPG, but they finally managed to make their way in to the dungeon. They were clearing it out well enough, having fun fighting the goblins and rats and whatnot. Things were good for the moment.

Then the first trouble came when they found a golden ring, worth 25gp. Both Cleric and Barbarian wanted it, so they fought for it. Barbarian won. Cleric was actually okay with this, and they dragged him to a safe room for some rest. What he WASN'T okay with was the two stealing food from him while he was out cold.

Few rooms forward, and more loot. They found a tiny jade dragon statue, worth 20gp. Both Druid and Cleric wanted it. They started to argue and Cleric pointed out that he should have it because the two had stolen from him before. Druid was all "wha'eva" and tried to trip Cleric. Attack of opportunity, and Cleric brained Druid with his mace, killing him. Druid's wolf didn't like this, so it attacked Cleric and tore his throat out, killing him. Barbarian thought that if he'd kill the wolf, he could just loot both of them. So, he attacked the wolf. And missed. The wolf attacked back. And didn't miss.

Wolf wins. Fatality.

[Harlot]

playing Rolemaster some 20 years ago, I had a barbarian as a character.

As I remember it, or as it was played anyway, once you decided to let the barbarian frenzy, he'd attack the nearest creature, regardless of it being the smart thing to do or whether it was friend or foe.
Well, basically I'd grossly miscalculated the distance to the nearest foe; it was NOT the fighter I was facing, but a draconian hovering over an abyss nearby.
So my barbarian decides to attack the draconian, does so succesfully, grappling it midair, and, rolling a 20, knocks it unconscious ... thus ending my very last game of Rolemaster.

[Psyren]

I told this story before but is worth telling again.

We were facing down the BBEG and his lieutenants, low on hp, low on spells, no escape and no way to retreat. The fate of the world hangs in the balance... so with my last action I break my staff of power the resulting damage kills me, the BBEG, his lieutenants, and the rest of the party. The damage obliterated the magical engine keeping his fortress in the air causing a small mountain to fall onto his endless army of the dead below.

And people wonder why I love 3e/PF :smallbiggrin:

[malcon]

second edition when psionics hand book came out. my group was mostly chaotic and needles to say dysfunctional. my character keep losing levels do to alignment shifts when out of no where a ball of lightning struck me mind you I had just seen 1st lvl for the 3rd time when we calculated damage I was turned to ash all my gear failed their saves and became ash the rest of the party rushed to retrieve my loot but all they got was a slab of gold lol good times

[Warlawk]

This was back in 2e.

The party was a human thief, elven fighter/mage (bladesinger), elven mage and my minotaur fighter/cleric. The elven mage was a serious pyromaniac and had a custom spell that basically allowed pooling of fire damage spells for a higher damage cap or something like that. I think we were around level 12 or 13 when this happened.

We were playing through a heavily modified module (darkness below or something?) and encountered a high end demon/devil (pitfiend? Balor? something on that level) that was polymorphed to look human. After some dialogue and back and forth, he insulted the pyromage and she said "Screw it, I blow him up!" which was a very bad choice... appropriate for her character, but not the direction the encounter should have gone. The DM flips the page to the monster stats and just bursts out laughing. He gestures me to look since I was sitting closest to him and sure enough, the monster has a ring of spell turning (in 2E that would reflect a random % of spell damage). He lets the pyromage roll, and she comes up with 98%. Well, my now hairless minotaur calmly negotiated with the demon to get what we needed and then collected the rest of the party with a small broom. I took my little bags of ash, my 3 hit points and dimension folded my smouldering ass back to the surface.

I believe it was this same game in which we had to get some information from an old green dragon. Turns out she was more apathetic than evil, and in trade for the information demanded a backrub/scale cleaning with steel wool. Lets see, the bladesinger had a high level spell that combined haste, enlarge and some other stuff into a single spell to save actions spent buffing at the start of a fight. Well, we had some scrolls of that laying around and in a huge battle the thief decides to use one to buff my character... sure enough he blew his dice check and per the rules for the ability there was a 'mishap' which was suggested by the book to be opposite effect. So I was slowed, weakened and shrunk etc. To this day 12 or so years later our group still references the Mini-Taur on occasion!

[malcon]

now that's just funny

[SowZ]

Star Wars game. We are starting characters and we just pissed off the Dark Sun, (a mob group.) One of us decides to go to an illegal weapons dealer warehouse to buy some explosives. As an act of arrogance, he goes to a Dark Sun ran warehouse. I wisely decided to wait outside.

Half way through the bartering deal, my friend blows his cover. The dealer pulls a blaster. My friend pulls his faster and blows away the merchant. He jumps into the backroom and pulls out a det pack as a bunch of thugs rush him with rifles drawn.

My friend: "Drop the guns or I drop this!" (He is holding the det pack over an entire cask of thermal detonators. There's at least twelve of them, not to mention normal grenades and a few blaster recharging stations.) The mooks don't buy the bluff and shoot. My friend drops his det pack and the mooks run for it.

My friend: "I dive behind the nearest counter!"

GM: "Alright. Well, it goes off and starts a chain reaction, *describes explosion in great detail*"

Friend: "Hmm. Okay. Well, I get up and look around for surviving loot..."

GM: "No. No you don't."

[Jon_Dahl]

I had one player that blew us off just hours before the game. I had built the session around her character, so now I had to improvise something.

Before I was able to pull something out of the hat, the players decided to go mountain climbing. Fair enough.

The party was about at the 8th level then. The wizard, who had very low STR, led the climbing party without any equipment or spells. He fell from the mountain. The 7th-level below him grabbed him, but he had too much weight on him and they fell together. They both suffered a lot of damage, the cleric healed the wizard a bit and they climbed again. The wizard slipped, fell again and died.

All players were sane adults, university students and they were NOT under the influence. And it wasn't Friday.

[Dlkpi]

This wasn't my character who died, but I played a rather instrumental role in it. We had in our party an alchemist, who my character secretly bore a strong hatred for (both characters hailed from a place with a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist style use of alchemy for warfare, and my character had been on the receiving end of that as a child). So, while outwardly befriending him and offering helpful "emotional support", I used a combination of invisibility, ventriloquism, and an absurdly high stealth score to impersonate a wrathful god of judgement, whispering in his ear vague references to "sins" and "atrocities" that he'd committed, telling him what a horrible person he was, etc. Little did I know he had done some pretty horrific human experimentation in the past - so as I spent several months waging a two-front psychological war on him, he started to mentally deteriorate, to the point that when we finally reached the alchemy lab which had picked up where he left off, he promptly set off all of his daily bombs while they were still strapped to his belt, dealing roughly 700 damage to himself and reducing him and much of the room to dust.

My own most memorable death is hardly as heroic, and more of a textbook example of the fickleness of dice. It involved my cleric getting accidentally one-shotted by the party barbarian. It was the first (and last) encounter for my character, who got only a single round of combat in the entire game (which consisted of rolling a 1 and doing near fatal damage to one of the party bards while falling flat on his face) before getting crit-fumbled to death by the barbarian in a single attack - chopped completely in half.

[SolioFebalas]

We were trapped in cave by goblin-ninjas. Comrades were dying one by one from the traps and sudden attacks. And when I almost escape, I accidentally trigger the floor plate and were killed by severed bull's head suspended on chains from the ceiling.

[Auramis]

The first character I ever made died with the entire party in combat at one point. We had the option to avoid an encounter or go into it and, being the good people we were, opted to go in. Problem is, we didn't make any real plan, we just dove in (first time players here). We end up all dying one by one. My brother died due to being caught cheating (be forgiving, we were 12 or 13, can't remember exactly). I ended up dying because I was a sorcerer and I got surrounded by melee opponents. We all end up falling one by one to our opponents.

The MOMENT we wake up, I get killed again by a wizard who was in service to one of the people we died with because I 'allowed him to die before myself after swearing to protect him.' Being 12 years old, I got upset and stomped off and that's where that game ended. xD

[Alleran]

It's not one of mine, but there is the story of Sameo (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Sameo), about how the worst luck became the best luck.

(Note that the link goes to 1d4chan, though I've skimmed through the story and that particular page doesn't seem to have anything that would break GITP rules.)

[Xodion]

I told this story before but is worth telling again.

We were facing down the BBEG and his lieutenants, low on hp, low on spells, no escape and no way to retreat. The fate of the world hangs in the balance... so with my last action I break my staff of power the resulting damage kills me, the BBEG, his lieutenants, and the rest of the party. The damage obliterated the magical engine keeping his fortress in the air causing a small mountain to fall onto his endless army of the dead below.

I took out Kyuss in our Age of Worms campaign the same way with a Staff of the Magi, because my character felt like it. It was so wonderfully in character, as my character was pretty much unkillable so would do everything on a whim. Earlier in the campaign he decided he couldn't be bothered to wait for the wizard to cast some kind of flying spell on us and instead jumped down the hole to where the cleric was being attacked, which was 100ft down the 700ft drop. He made the ridiculous jump check and landed on a harpy, killing it outright from the falling damage they both took, then leapt onto a ledge.

In the final fight with Kyuss, the wizard was bleeding out, the cleric had retreated to heal himself from near-death, the Frenzied Berserker was almost out of frenzy rounds (on minus-several-hundred hitpoints) and I couldn't hit him because I was the rogue, built to tank AC instead of To Hit. (This meant I could bait the FB if he failed his save, without being killed, because he couldn't hit me.) My character looked at the party lying battered around him (he was fine by the way), shrugged and broke the Staff of the Magi across his knee, managing to kill Kyuss without killing the rest of the party, and being obliterated from the multiverse completely. I want to have him land in some other campaign some day, he would make an amazing villain :smallbiggrin:

This wasn't even the best death in the campaign though, for one of my characters, although it was a lot more epic. The character I played before this was a squishy elf rogue/wizard who was killed by a naga at around level 8 or so? We managed to finish off the drow without dying but my elf was killed by the naga because I don't think any of us saw it until too late. The others finished it off, took my body back to town and resurrected me, and we ended the session there.

The first thing that happened in the next session was we went back down to the cavern, and I saw the body of the naga lying there and ran ahead to kick it, in some petty kind of revenge. The DM was horrified, because he had pre-planned that the naga had been raised as a zombie, and it bit me clean in half before anyone else could move. They didn't go back to town that time :smalltongue:

[MoistCrayon]

So this just happened in our last session... I was playing A halfling Rogue, And my character's best friend was a Gnome Bard, played by a good friend IRL... Anywho, we were on a ship in a small fleet running from the King's guards, because our thieves guild was made a scapegoat by the king's Advisor.. So we had spent a few nights on the ship, and I found a strange coin with a phoenix on one side, and crossed swords on the other side..
So, I decide to flip the coin to figure out what it does. The coin hits tails five times in a row and I (painfully) transform into a Half phoenix halfing (quarterling, i suppose.. XD)
So, I start to fly around the ship, and my friend is drunk and see's me, and thinks it's an enemy,(This was supposed to be a quick joke..) and sends up a warning flare, (Prestidigitation colored to match the fleet's warning flares). The ship I'm flying to see's the warning, and proceeds to shoot me out of the air with a crit on an arcana tech Rifle. Needless to say I plummeted to the sea with only 2 hit points, and a broken wing, so no flying...
So the gnome and our elf mage hop in a lifeboat to come get me, only to see a fin raise up, and proceed to watch me get swallowed whole by a shark... (We watched the D.M roll every time... his dice had it out for me. lol)
I' still alive in the shark when the mage decides to use his only throwing dagger to stop the shark, rolls a crit, and the dagger hit's the shark, and then through another roll, Triple crits on me inside the shark, and I die..
The funniest thing about this was that happened during shark week. XD

[Piggy Knowles]

One of my characters once tried to bull rush a gelatinous cube. It did not go well.

[Handsome Goblin]

I was 10-12 ish, we were playing some Gurps. I think it was decently high points, because I remember I made a character like the Avatar (airbender cartoon) and we just got done fighting the final boss who exploded when he died, almost killed us. During our way out, we were attack by dire frost wolves with cones of cold. I had to make a decision between attacking and healing myself. I healed myself and the frost wolves killed me. I cried. Best part, the GM was my dad :smalltongue:.

[Chained Birds]

My tale is that of two brother Druids starting their first journey.

Tasked to meet a creepy guy, the first brother went out with his party while the second brother remained to continue his Druidic meditation. The first brother's party was a simple one, but their intentions were pure and their goals fairly accomplishable (as most fledgeling adventurer goals tend to be), though they did have their troubles venturing towards the creepy guy's keep.
Upon arriving, they were greeted and asked to stay the night by the creepy guy as guests. After accepting, curiosity got the better of the party and they soon found themselves entering an odd portal behind a secret door (elvish senses and all). The portal lead to a dark land where there seemed no escape.
After a few minutes, a man with a deck of cards appeared and asked us to draw from it to reap our rewards for arriving. Many gained wondrous items, and soon it was the brother's turn. Drawing a card with a skull on it, he was teleported to a small arena. There were no exits, and all that was within the arena was a specter with a gloomy scythe and the brother. The brother did not survive.

Several days later, what remained of the party returned empty handed and without a particular brother. The second brother was upset but knew that this was the potential outcome for an adventurer. When the party was forced to return to the creepy guy to fulfill what they were supposed to do, the brother followed.
Upon reaching the keep and actually doing what they originally came there for, the party eventually went through the portal again because of... Reasons. The same odd man with the deck was there, proposing the same deal as before.
Everyone gained all manner of interesting benefits from what they drew and soon it was the brother's turn.
Drawing his card, he was soon teleported to an arena. He looked at his card; it was a Skull.

-----

Non-story version: One of my first games ever and my Druid (Lvl 3) drew from the Deck of Many Things and got the card that forces you to fight an Uber Wraith. He died, so I made a new character, who was pretty much the same character but with a different animal companion. Our leader forced us to return back to where the party almost got TPKed the first time, and deja vu happened where I was forced to draw a card and it happened to be the same card...
The game shortly ended afterwards.

[PraxisVetli]

Okay, so here's wgat happened.
Day one of campaign.
Level 5.
We're supposed to be shipping this cart of gems and such to some high end merchant. Suddenly, DRAGON. Apparently, some of these gems are dragon eggs. And Mama Mercurial wants her kids back. So she's attacking and tearing us apart, it's no good, Sonic says. Then, backup arrives. A Sapphire comes out of the sky and tackles the Merc, I guess there's some sort of war going on.
Etc Etc, dragon death match. Merc lands, all slashed and bloody and dying. Me, being a Sorc, decide that Mercurial Dragon blood sounds like a beautiful component for homemade spells. So I walk over and try to gather some blood, roll a 1 on the Survival check. This is bad (we unknowingly assumed that the blood was mercury-poisonous). So I'm face first getting flooded through my mouth and eyes with mercury...
It gets better.
To insert storyline plot, I start having visions, convulsing and frothing.
So the Druid tries to heal me, not realizing something's going on. Bard makes the Knowledge Check, figures out what's going on, tries to stop her.
So she drops the spell mid-cast, simply releases the energy.
We did a lotta Wild-Surge in tha campaign....
BOOM. simply BOOM.
So, I've two hp, most the group is dead... But hey, she finished off the dragon.


Now I know the thread was for non-respawn deaths, but was just too funny.

[PangolinPie]

Got one better...a "double death"...(this happened YEARS ago so forgive me for lack of details)

Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian. Basically we were doing your standard "Tower of Doom" scenario; working our way upward, floor after floor to reach the big boss man at the top. This big demon lord was reenacting the scenario from the movie Legend, trying to sacrifice a Unicorn to open a gateway to hell basically. We got up there, held our own for a time, managed to use some artifact we had to open a portal and summon forth a Celestial who began to battle the demon just as evil dopplegangers of each of us appeared and we had to fight them...and they had an annoying tendency of copying our actions...

Professor Farnsworth: "Now, now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything!"

Well I made a called shot for my evil clones head...so did he...we both hit...hard...he went down...so did I....and I would have survive if it weren't for the magical shockwaves that would burst forth from the celestial and demon battle...hurling me from the roof >_> So yeah after a 500 foot drop I was done. However after the battle concluded the cleric put on his best pious groveling routine begging the angel to resurrect me...so she did.

But then no longer than a half hour later we were in the far north fighting a couple of frost giants...me trying to take one down Shadow of the Colossus style (had just finished a gaming marathon of this title a few days prior and it was on my brain) by scaling his body. I learned very quickly that his manual dexterity was far better than the Colossi as he casually plucked me off his back and used the broad side of his axe to bat me into the stratosphere homerun style....disappearing somewhere over the horizon like ****ing Team Rocket XD.

Thats what happens when you cheat death...ain't ya never seen Final Destination? LOL