PDA

View Full Version : Your First Kill (DM Edition)



SixWingedAsura
2014-01-24, 01:03 PM
What was your first PC kill?

Mine took place on a magical "Lightning Rail" train, where a wyvern made of bacon was attempting to destroy the train, one car at a time. (Pathfinder) A monk who was fighting off the wyvern got caught up in its jaws and the barbarian of the party killed it off with a whack to the head with an Earthbreaker. I made the monk make a Reflex save to catch the train car and avoid hitting the ground at X-hundred miles an hour...and he rolled a one. Other people rolled for him, and they all got ones. We declared that the dice gods wanted him deader than dead, and there was my first PC kill.

Oh, and I gave the barbarian XP for the monk's death...

Rhynn
2014-01-24, 01:34 PM
I don't even know how I could possibly theoretically remember.

The first RPG I GM'd was BECM with the red Basic Box, so that would probably be the system. MERP and AH's 3rd edition RuneQuest were close behind, so those, too.

GPuzzle
2014-01-24, 01:42 PM
It was during a boat crash, one of the PCs (a Gnome Warlock) was dealing with a bunch of Kuo-Toas and failed all of his Acrobatics (fell into the water), and then, when the Dragonborn Cleric tried to save him, giving him a plus two bonus to Athletics checks and trying to rescue him out of the water, the player rolled a one.

The Warlock and the Cleric were brought down into the waters, and while the Cleric managed to fulfill his Athletics check, the Warlock drowned after rolling another 1. Thankfully, the Cleric had a box with several nails, one from each party member (hey, it's a part of the body) so he could use Raise Dead.

CoffeeIncluded
2014-01-24, 01:56 PM
It was during a sea battle with pirates. Pirate archers (two rangers and a rogue) shot arrows at the ship the PC's were hired to guard and then meleers (two fighters and a barbarian) used them to get on the ship and attack the party. Meanwhile the archers kept firing arrows and the pirate cleric and sorcerer used spells to incapacitate the PC's. It quickly turned into a chaotic and extremely dangerous fight, and when Elsee, the goblin rogue PC, failed a will save against sleep, the raging pirate barbarian coup-de-graced her the following turn. Despite multiple warnings that he was going to kill her, they needed to wake her up, and so forth.

Because raising a character is canonically difficult in my setting, I had to create a sidequest where they went to a couple of bronze dragons to get her raised. Thankfully I had already written in that the pirates had previously attacked a young bronze dragon, so it wasn't too hard to say that her parents were grateful and wanted to thank the party.

CombatOwl
2014-01-24, 01:59 PM
Well, it involved a trex and a boat...

Meth In a Mine
2014-01-24, 02:09 PM
I had an adventure where the party was on a very high mountain trail and they fought a minotaur barbarian who loved him some bull rushing (appropriate, I think) He pushed the wizard to his doom (the DMG said 1d6 damage per 10 feet. They were 5000 feet up:smallbiggrin:) before the party killed it.

lytokk
2014-01-24, 02:16 PM
First kill was in the second session I ever ran, though technically I don't think the kill is mine. 3.5 for all that matters Party is fighting a bunch of wood elves that were being mind controlled by a drow, and the wood elf in the party doesn't want to kill any of the elves, which was good RP on his part. So, big fight goes down, party kills the drow and all but one of the wood elves, which is being held down, knife against the throat by the party's elf. Well, its a dimly lit room, and one of the other PC's is right next to the 2 elves. He asks for, and I give him a spot check to make sure which elf is his ally, which he rolls a 1 on. At the time we were playing 1's on skill checks are automatic failures (didn't know any better, hadn't been playing long, it was a rule from the DM who taught us who, ironically, was the wood elf). So, he see's the elf on the ground as his ally, and proceeds to roll attack on the PC, nat 20, PC is dead.

So yeah, I guess not my kill. Was the only time a PC died in one of my games though.

the guy was fine with dying, felt no attachment to his character. Yet, one of the other players demanded that the questgiver raise him, and rolled well on diplomacy. Only person capable of raising around was a druid, and got him a reincarnation. So he came back, as a goblin, gender swapped since everyone demanded I roll for gender. Was also a cleric of Correlon, so made for an interesting character I suppose.

Velaryon
2014-01-24, 02:28 PM
The first time I ever killed a PC was a scripted event prearranged with that character's player. I'm not sure it counts, but I'll mention it anyway:

The campaign: Ravenloft, 3.0 D&D. The character, Jidan, was a monk with I forget what prestige class anymore, but his fighting style was described as similar to capoeira. An odd fit for a game set in Valachan perhaps, but not a problem. I don't remember exactly what the backstory reason was (it might have involved his family being killed or something), Jidan hated the local ruler, Baron Urik von Kharkov (a nosferatu vampire that turned into a panther instead of wolf or bat). When the party confronted von Kharkov and some of his lieutenants, Jidan charged straight at the Baron to attack. His kicks were blocked, he was grabbed by the throat, and his neck was broken.

The rest of the party was forced to retreat, though they managed to retrieve Jidan's body. They were discussing where to bury it when Jidan rose up in front of them, murder in his eyes. He had come back as a Dread Revenant, animated by pure hatred and desire to slay the Baron. Sadly the campaign ended prematurely due to people moving away and so on, so he never got his proper revenge.


The first time a PC was killed in my game and it wasn't a prearranged event, it was actually another player who did it, and it really had nothing to do with me:

Campaign: Star Wars d20, around the time of Empire Strikes Back

Vira Loran was a Miraluka who had become the apprentice of the party Jedi Sin Shai, when Vira's player joined the campaign. Various events led to a permanent party schism, in which two of the players betrayed the rest and joined the Empire. Vira was one of them, and began falling to the Dark Side in the process. She and the other PC fell in with an Imperial Intelligence division based on the Turks from Final Fantasy VII, whose assignment was to deal with the other PCs while the Emperor and Vader concentrated on more important matters (Luke Skywalker, etc.).

Well, it happened that the two parties came into conflict. Vira's old master killed her by turning the laser cannons of his starship on her, vaporizing about 95% of her body. I had her remains retrieved and made into a General Grievous-like cyborg, but she was killed again in the climactic final battle of the campaign, again by her old master.


Finally, the first time a PC died in my campaign that wasn't scripted or because of PvP:

Campaign: 3.5 Forgotten Realms, set in Tethyr

Human warlock Leon'ard Letum (the PC in question), is a human warlock who just recently rescued his NPC girlfriend from a recurring villain. She had been kidnapped and used as bait to lure him into a trap in the ruins of Castle Tethyr. Unfortuntely, he hadn't been able to recover her gear, among which was a Journey Book. The Journey Book is a set of two linked books - what's written in one appears in its mate. Leon and his girlfriend had used it to keep in touch while adventuring with their separate parties. Now that the enemy has it, he can communicate with her too, and they agree to a showdown at the ruins of Castle Tethyr to settle things once and for all.

Leon knows he's probably walking into a trap, but he's already killed this enemy once before, and he knows she won't leave him alone until he takes her down for good. Unfortunately the party is in the middle of escorting an important supply train to the capital, so they can't all come help him. Leon enlists one fellow PC, centaur fighter Tyrrox Zym, and the party of lower-level NPC adventurers that includes his girlfriend, and together they head to the ruined castle.

The enemy waiting for them is a Swordsage focused on Shadow Hand maneuvers, and she's got a Shield Guardian, an Efreet, and half a dozen low-level archers backing her up. Irea, the Swordsage, has already faced Leon and been killed once, but her employer raised her and she's out for revenge, so she's taking no chances this time.

While the NPC allies take care of the archers, Tyrrox goes for the Shield Guardian while Leon goes straight for Irea. Tyrrox is a charger build who fights similar to a mounted knight, but acts as his own mount. Unfortunately in the tight quarters of a ruined throne room, he can't fight as effectively, and he's eventually taken down by the Shield Guardian and Efreet.

Moments later, Leon is taken down by Irea, who nails him with her throwing/returning dagger as he's trying to retreat.

Luckily, this triggered an event I'd been planning for awhile. Leon has a major archfiend a few generations back in his family tree, and unknown to him, said archfiend takes a strong interest in his mortal descendents. Instead of the normal afterlife, Leon found himself in a position to bargain with his ancestor to have both himself and Tyrrox restored to life at the very moment of their death. He struck the bargain, and both of them got back up. The fight had been close already, so once they were back up they were able to destroy the Shield Guardian and kill Irea. The Efreet decided it wasn't his fight anymore and took off, never to be seen again.

I know listing three is kind of cheating, but I felt like the first two only sort of counted.

DigoDragon
2014-01-24, 03:57 PM
My first PC kill came about during an AD&D 2e adventure decades ago. The party was fighting a pretty tough dragon that was tactically outsmarting them. The wizard took a number of hits so he cast Improved Invisibility and then took cover with the intention of healing.

The fighter got a couple good crits on the dragon, leaving it quite wounded. The wizard, not wanting the fighter to get the killing blow, changed his plans and fired a ray spell at it, but rolled terrible damage and failed to slay the dragon.

The dragon in response shot it's own breath weapon in the direction the magical ray came from. The saving throws didn't matter, the damage rolled so high that all his defenses weren't enough to prevent himself from being practically disintegrated.

Calen
2014-01-24, 04:06 PM
I have never killed a PC :smallconfused:
The only PC death I have dealt with that was not intended was a building collapsing…with an unconscious PC on top of it. Since another PC is the one who blew up the structure I would call it his kill.
In my current game the dwarf shaman has been knocked out every single session…I'll get him eventually :smallamused:

FreakyCheeseMan
2014-01-24, 04:23 PM
This wasn't strictly speaking a PC, but on like my second session, I had the party fighting a homebrewed monster named a Hungry Rose (Big stationary plant that drags prey towards it to eat.)

It had swallowed the druid's animal companion, and the druid's real-life girlfriend's character, and they were both suffering bludgeoning damage every round as the rest of the party tried to kill it. She was able to manuever around enough to give the wolf a potion, and a couple for herself, but it finally died a turn before they killed the monster.

The druid was really, really upset with me, and I had no idea why. After the game, I learned that his girlfriend had broken up with him (by combination of text and significant glances) during the course of the game, while I was killing his wolf.

rweird
2014-01-24, 04:33 PM
Mine was the first ever time I played D&D. It was a 2nd edition game, we'd just gotten the books and wanted to see what it was like. I opened the Monstrous Manual, and saw skeletons, they looked weak enough for a 1st level, so I rolled the number, and got a high one. The fight commenced, and the PC died. I later on started to get a better idea of how lethal 2nd edition is, death wasn't abnormal, and you have to pay more attention to what you're throwing at the PCs, as the XP reward values are inconsistent, and so many monsters need a specific type of ability to kill them.

geeky_monkey
2014-01-24, 05:30 PM
I don't remember my first PC kill but I do remember my first TPK.

It was in 3.5 and a party of 5 lv 3-4 PC were wiped out by a kobold. Not a kobold with class levels or fancy equipment, just a bog standard kobold.

It started off as a normal random encounter. The players ran into a group of kobold minding their own business and decided to slaughter them for their stuff, you know normal hero stuff.

Things were going going well for them - most of the kobolds went down fast, with the PC barely taking a scratch. Soon there was only one kobold left and he was surrounded.

And then the Dice Gods turned on them. Seriously they suddenly couldn't roll higher than a 4 and I rolled more 20 than I've ever rolled since. It was a massacre - this kobold had seen all his friends die around him and something just flipped in his brain and he became an unstoppable avatar of death.

We talked about making him the BBEG, but I was scared to unleash this unnamed, faceless grunt again for fear of the destruction he might unleash!

Totema
2014-01-24, 05:41 PM
Ooh! My first kill was also my first TPK. :smalltongue: It's not my fault the fighter wanted to hunt a red dragon! Granted, I should have given them the chance to run away, but the fruit was too tantalizing...

Averis Vol
2014-01-24, 05:50 PM
My only player kill was....well, it was rather Doh! worthy for the PC. I was running city of the spider queen over at RPGcrossing. Things were going well, they dealt with the first encounter fairly easily, radiant servant of lathander made it go poof, and went inside the actual crypt via hole the warblade cut through with his bastard swords. Now, if you know this module, you can probably guess what is going to kill my party rogue.
So they got past the room with the celestial lions, there were 4 good party members and they didnt want to **** with wholly good creatures, and proceeded to the next room with the ghost statue behind the finger of death door. Yea, the rogue rolled a 1 on his search check and subsequently opened the door, figuring he had the best odds should it blow up
...

So yea, 39 damage later, he has no idea what happened, but he figured he activated the trap and all was. So he touched it again.
...

So 43 more damage and he tries to disable it, one round before the cleric gets there. By the time she rounds the corner, he's a withered husk lying on the ground.

Meth In a Mine
2014-01-24, 05:55 PM
My only player kill was....well, it was rather Doh! worthy for the PC. I was running city of the spider queen over at RPGcrossing. Things were going well, they dealt with the first encounter fairly easily, radiant servant of lathander made it go poof, and went inside the actual crypt via hole the warblade cut through with his bastard swords. Now, if you know this module, you can probably guess what is going to kill my party rogue.
So they got past the room with the celestial lions, there were 4 good party members and they didnt want to **** with wholly good creatures, and proceeded to the next room with the ghost statue behind the finger of death door. Yea, the rogue rolled a 1 on his search check and subsequently opened the door, figuring he had the best odds should it blow up
...

So yea, 39 damage later, he has no idea what happened, but he figured he activated the trap and all was. So he touched it again.
...

So 43 more damage and he tries to disable it, one round before the cleric gets there. By the time she rounds the corner, he's a withered husk lying on the ground.

You just don't do that... :sigh:

kardar233
2014-01-24, 06:55 PM
The players were heading through a dark labyrinth when they heard skittering sounds around them, outside the circle of their lanterns. So, since a solid half the party had darkvision, they decided to extinguish their lanterns to see what they were being stalked by.

It was then, as the saying goes, pitch black.

Two dwarves died before they managed to drive the beast away with Burning Hands, and they never ventured into the dark without a light source again.

Erik Vale
2014-01-24, 11:54 PM
Playing in Heroes so not all terms translate.

A Evil Priestess [Actually a demon] hatched a plot to summon a demon city, for help she has turned many of the towns inhabitents to demons after replacing their churches main priest. The players know they can easily remove the amulets each demon wears which keeps them demons instead of every day people that fall unconscious.

They know that the Priestess is going to summon the demon city, and needs lots of demons to do it, they rush to the old corrupted church, open the doors ready to a fight, and find the 100 demons and the priestess doing the chant, all oblivious. Unknown to them they have 3 turns [roughly 12 rounds] to strip the demons to prevent the spell, which would be the smart thing.

Instead, the fighter [name forgotton], pushes his leaping, jumps over the 100 demons, to perform a move through on the priestess [I forgot the caps on pushing movement], who get's knocked out immediately, ending the spell and leaving 100 angry demons...

The other pc's retreat to the sounds of demons dogpiling the PC, knocking him out and then killing him, having to hide in the river and use a illusion of the wizard using a wand of fireball to accidentally kill themselves.

Rosstin
2014-01-25, 12:34 AM
My first kill was one that was pretty embarrassing and unfair, although it's from a campaign I'm very proud of.


This was in Rithgaia; the players were all monstrous races in a classic sort of "unite the races and heal the world" plot, where they had to go around to the various homelands of other races and reform an artifact that would allow them to heal damage from a druid's rifting of the world that happened a hundred years ago. (The druid had convinced the ruling council of powerful wizards and warriors that the only way to prevent conflict between races was to separate them, but later it turned out that keeping them separate only made it harder for them to understand eachother and find peace, and a huge war had broken out.)

The PCs were running from a battle in a human/Yuan-Ti magitech facility (heavily based off of SHINRA from FF7, I confess.) The guards had +1 Vorpal guns, and one of them rolled 3 20s in a row... decapitating a PC. It was pretty unfair, I never should have given the guards those weapons, or put the PCs in a situation where they were forced to run away from them.

The PCs had a single dose of an extremely rare revival potion, and were able to use it to bring the decapitated PC back to life (they had to pour the potion down her... head stump :smalleek: ).

Each revival potion was made from the life energy of ten other living, sentient beings. The best you could do for reviving someone in this world, is if you had a very skilled Avoral cleric you could bring 1 person back to life with the death of a single other person, but most other clerics, wizards, and alchemists weren't so efficient.

The PCs, bless their hearts, were mostly very good-aligned, so it's a good thing more PCs didn't die. They only found out the source of the revival potions after they had used that first one. I actually would have let them make as many as they liked if they had wanted to, although it would have been exactly that inefficient, 10 lives / 1 pot.

andresrhoodie
2014-01-25, 12:51 AM
first one i remember killing was way back in middle school. We used a hodgepodge of different rules back then. Mainly.....

This monster manual

http://diterlizzi.com/home/books-the-monster-manual-part-2/

And this PHB

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ADVANCED-DUNGEONS-DRAGONS-2ND-EDITION-TSR-PLAYERS-HANDBOOK-/161141656580

And one PC got bit by a giant spider and failed his save.

Poison was nasty back on those days, literal save or die nasty, so he died. Which I narrated in excruciating detail.

His next character was played with arachnophobia :smallbiggrin:

YossarianLives
2014-01-25, 11:21 PM
Ahh my first PC kill. Happy times.

The party was attempting to tame a wild bear. Well the beguiler had the smart idea to try to ride it. Anyway he accidently rode the bear into the nearby village. Where the bear went on a rampage destroying several buildings. Somehow the beguiler managed to hang on however. Anyway the villagers chased the bear away with pitchforks and the like.
The bear freaked out and started running around. Even though I kept hinting to get off the beguiler hung on. Eventually the bear ran off a 100 foot cliff.

Fayd
2014-01-25, 11:28 PM
My first PC kill was dropping a house on the party's Witch.

DigoDragon
2014-01-26, 09:52 AM
You just don't do that... :sigh:

Sadly, that kind of shenanigans was the norm for old D&D modules. I was in a 2nd edition adventure and that GM's first kill was the party druid for kicking in a hollow door filled with an explosive... something. And this door just had a secondary trap disabled by the rogue which was almost as deadly with poison.

And it was a door leading to a part of the dungeon we needed to be.

The insult to injury was that we had hoped the GM would kill off the party psion first because no one liked him. :smalltongue:

Elvenoutrider
2014-01-26, 11:29 AM
Maximized scorching ray spell on a sorcerer PC in the middle of a naval battle.

Angel Bob
2014-01-26, 06:25 PM
I ran a delve (4e) for my brother today, featuring his level 12 character and a companion fighter whom we named Brunswick. The duo faced a derghodemon as the boss, which eventually managed to grab Brunswick and begin to squeeze the life from him, inflicting 10 damage per round; this knocked him into the negatives, and he began to roll death saving throws. My brother's character was also low on HP, but all the same, managed to slay the derghodemon and free Brunswick from its clutches; however, he botched his Heal check with a natural 1, and Brunswick then bled out. Thankfully, they'd found enough treasure for a Raise Dead ritual.

'Course, I don't think killing a companion character really counts. I did come within 1 hit point of outright slaying a PC in my main campaign, but the other PCs pulled off some clever maneuvers to get him out of harm's way. I appreciated their tactical thinking, but I was still frustrated... He was at -31 HP, goddammit! I was so close! :smalltongue:

Akal Saris
2014-01-26, 06:33 PM
Well, it involved a trex and a boat...

My first PC kill was also with a T-Rex! A skeleton t-rex, to be specific.

Other early PC deaths that I can recall included dying of thirst in a desert, mobbed by shadows, and killed by a bodak's death glare.

SassyQuatch
2014-01-26, 10:57 PM
The 1st level mage ran out of spells so he decided to knife-fight with the two thieves solo. Inevitability happened.

SowZ
2014-01-26, 11:17 PM
In any game? It was a Super-Hero game. The character was being introduced. He was a starting character with minor super strength, minor super speed, and health regen. Before he'd played five minutes, he took on about eighty armed cops or so. He took out one street cop and three SWAT, though, so good on him.

My first D&D kill? The party was investigating a necromancers tower. The rogue found a secret compartment in the wall. She opened it. A small black hole appeared and started sucking everything into it, (including the party.) Everyone was fighting it, trying to claw their way along the wall to the exit. The troll? The only one with a Str score high enough to easily resist the pull? He screamed, "Shabladoo!" And jumped in.

Thus started a long and prolific career of not saving PCs from their own stupidity.

Callos_DeTerran
2014-01-26, 11:52 PM
I think my first unplanned player kill was in a d20 Modern game I was running where the players were taking on the traditional roles of teenagers from an 80's slasher movie. The preppy kid being prepared to be a doctor was bravely trying to blow off the slasher's head with a shotgun, but two failed grapple checks later and the slasher had wrenched away the shotgun and buried an angle grinder in the kid's head before turning it on.

He didn't survive that experience, but the player always got major props from me for trying despite almost certain death and knowing he probably wouldn't make it. Sad part? If he had, he would have killed the slasher, it was that damaged by the party's efforts throughout the rest of the session.

dylanh043
2014-01-27, 02:11 AM
During a D20 modern game in a post apocalyptic world.

He was determined to play a charismatic hero in a gritty dangerous world and he regretted it. The other players not so much as they looted his bullet riddled corpse for everything he was carrying.

Averis Vol
2014-01-27, 02:12 AM
Sadly, that kind of shenanigans was the norm for old D&D modules. I was in a 2nd edition adventure and that GM's first kill was the party druid for kicking in a hollow door filled with an explosive... something. And this door just had a secondary trap disabled by the rogue which was almost as deadly with poison.

And it was a door leading to a part of the dungeon we needed to be.

The insult to injury was that we had hoped the GM would kill off the party psion first because no one liked him. :smalltongue:

That same trap got my tabletop group the first time we ran it. Killed the parties druid (who had the highest strength score) when he tried to push it open because it didn't have handles. I haven't got much further then that room as a DM or player, but I hear the rest of the module is kind of like that as well.

Look forward to finishing it one day.

Artemicion
2014-01-27, 10:56 AM
I find no pleasure in killing PCs, but sometimes it seems they are actually trying very hard to die.

The PCs had just defeated a few salamanders in a cave deep within an underground complex. The PCs searched the bodies and the cave, but they did not find much except the huge lava river that was on one of the far sides of the cave. Somehow sure there was magical loot to find the party wizard cast Detect Magic and started scanning every inch of the cave. The only magic he found in the cave was what seemed to be a portal, right in the river of magma, fifteen feet from the shore.

When designing the dungeon, I had decided that there was a portal to the elemental plane of fire in the magma, through which the salamanders came.

The PCs were quite intrigued by this magical phenomenon and decided to investigate. They threw a monkey right in the portal (don't ask where they had found a monkey). It vanished with a scream and never reappeared.

Still quite intrigued, one of the PCs decided to go see what was there by himself. To my dismay, he cast Expeditious retreat on himself and confidently did a long jump towards the portal. He rolled extremely poorly on his jump check and landed directly in the lava. And burned / melted away.

I still wonder what they hoped to find beyond the portal.

Trinoya
2014-01-27, 03:01 PM
I had been running games for a few years without any PC death. Most of my games at the time were just one offs. I was actually pretty much done with D&D at the time.

After being convinced to run another game we sat down and went through the entire first session. At the end of the session one of the players didn't like his character and built a brand new one. He then wanted to bring it in killing his old one.

His old one 'defended' himself. Won initiative. Hit, Crit, Confirmed, max damage, 24 points from his bow...

The PCs brand new 4 hit point wizard lived exactly 3 seconds.

The first PC I killed... is also the shortest lived PC in any of my games.

DigoDragon
2014-01-28, 08:43 AM
I find no pleasure in killing PCs, but sometimes it seems they are actually trying very hard to die.

I've noticed that as well. In one of my older D&D campaigns, the PCs found out that one of the two BBEGs wandered into a white dragon's lair and hasn't come back out for some time. I heavily hinted that the BBEG was killed fighting the dragon.

But nope, half the party went in thinking the BBEG is fine and can be caught. And that half of the party got killed by the white dragon (At least they did confirm the BBEG was dead, but the spellcasters could have learned that with a simple divination spell).

Rain Dragon
2014-01-28, 08:49 AM
I find no pleasure in killing PCs, but sometimes it seems they are actually trying very hard to die.

In fact my first PC kills (yes, a pair of them) was going to be a level one party of two dying to goblin warriors. They were very unlucky with the dice rolls and the last goblin would have got them, but thanks to the GM screen I fudged it so they survived.

It was close though... It would have been the saddest biography of a DnD character ever.

Ydaer Ca Noit
2014-01-28, 02:33 PM
Lucky crit, the player had forgotten to heal from the last battle and the rest of the group left him to bleed to death.

Averis Vol
2014-01-28, 03:40 PM
Lucky crit, the player had forgotten to heal from the last battle and the rest of the group left him to bleed to death.

Man, that's cold as ice on the parties part. did they not know, or did they just not like him?

veti
2014-01-28, 08:18 PM
Still quite intrigued, one of the PCs decided to go see what was there by himself. To my dismay, he cast Expeditious retreat on himself and confidently did a long jump towards the portal. He rolled extremely poorly on his jump check and landed directly in the lava. And burned / melted away.

I still wonder what they hoped to find beyond the portal.

... And the rest of the party didn't follow him? You can't have been selling it properly.

Or did you strategically fail to keep the character's fate secret from the others?

PersonofJid
2014-01-28, 08:31 PM
Tomb of Horrors. 'Nuff said. It was also my first TPK.

USS Sorceror
2014-01-28, 11:07 PM
Some three or four years into my time GMing games, and I've only just now ever killed a PC. Evil wizard hit the party with an area effect spell that dealt 13d6 damage. Killed the sorcerer and KOed the barbarian. Fortunately the party had some NPC backup. In retrospect this was an entirely inappropriate encounter.

Slayer Lord
2014-01-29, 04:31 AM
Some three or four years into my time GMing games, and I've only just now ever killed a PC. Evil wizard hit the party with an area effect spell that dealt 13d6 damage. Killed the sorcerer and KOed the barbarian. Fortunately the party had some NPC backup. In retrospect this was an entirely inappropriate encounter.

You forgot the rest of the encounter. That was the best part. Thanks to the NPCs, we managed to talk wizard down from slaughtering the others, and even got a side quest out of the deal. Cleric doesn't know any resurrect spells, so the NPC druid dropped me a reincarnate spell. Still human, but now I'll have to be dealing with some gender identity issues. Confused the hell out of the dwarf.

Evo_Kaer
2014-01-29, 06:23 AM
... And the rest of the party didn't follow him? You can't have been selling it properly.

Or did you strategically fail to keep the character's fate secret from the others?

Pretty sure he meant, that guy didn't even make it through the portal.



Btw, does driving a character to suicide count as kill?

Ydaer Ca Noit
2014-01-29, 06:24 AM
Man, that's cold as ice on the parties part. did they not know, or did they just not like him?

They were buddies out of game and he was brother was in the party too, so they kinda trolled him or something :smallconfused: never figured it out myself

Delta
2014-01-29, 06:47 AM
The first PC I killed was in a Shadowrun game, a characters girlfriend had been kidnapped by bug spirits, I really dropped a ton of hints that the bugs that captured her were mantis spirits, and people taken by them sooner or later "changed" and were taken over by the spirits (their former employer had them look for her lost brother who they found and returned only for him to kill his sister later on to take over the family business, for example. Even a competing bug spirit explicitly told them never to trust people taken in by mantis, even though they look unchanged)

When they finally storm the big bug nest they find a bus full of new arrivals and free some of those already inside and find the girlfriend there, just as they try to set up the bomb to blow the whole place to hell, she approaches them, the other PCs are suspicious and tell her to stay back with the other prisoners that they were just beginning to lead back towards the bus, she feigns confusion until her PC boyfriend (the demolitions expert setting up the bomb) tells everyone to lower their weapons and embraces her only a couple yards away from the bomb. Which was the moment the mantis spirit that had taken over her body chose to set off the grenade hidden under her coat, blowing up her, the PC and destroying the bomb before it had been set.

The player was pissed but I felt well within my rights, every other player was at least suspicious of her and I had dropped more than enough hints that the spirits were capable of taking over people without changing their appearance sometimes.

CTrees
2014-01-29, 09:52 AM
Bestow Curse, delivered by a goat familiar, for -6 Constitution. Follow-up attacks from said goat quickly ran down the rest of said hit points. Killed a guy with a goat. It was fun.

Most of the subsequent deaths on this campaign have been more understandable (ex., remorhaz are nasty). Did manage to kill one of my PCs on his player's birthday, though!

Erik Vale
2014-01-29, 03:06 PM
Bestow Curse, delivered by a goat familiar, for -6 Constitution. Follow-up attacks from said goat quickly ran down the rest of said hit points. Killed a guy with a goat. It was fun.

Most of the subsequent deaths on this campaign have been more understandable (ex., remorhaz are nasty). Did manage to kill one of my PCs on his player's birthday, though!

1: Was the character called Ted?

2: Now that's how the DM delivers birthday presents, with a new character sheet!

Averis Vol
2014-01-30, 04:38 AM
They were buddies out of game and he was brother was in the party too, so they kinda trolled him or something :smallconfused: never figured it out myself

That's awesome, that makes me happy to hear.

Pigron
2014-06-12, 07:49 PM
My first kill was in a custom module I made for AD&D 1st edition.
The party is traversing a winding path to the top of a mystic plateau which only appears every 7 years or so. There is a break in the path where it reaches a small cave.
The cave has a small opening in the ceiling with a rope leading up to a similar cave, which has an exit leading to the continuation of the path.
When the party reaches the second cave they see a figure in sillouhette standing in the entrance. It has an owl perched on its shoulder and glowing red eyes. The owl attacks.

The figure is actually just a scarecrow made out of a stalagmite with an old robe and pointy hat thrown over it. It has a hole chiseled out of the "head" to allow light to pass through two inset rubies, which I thought would make an easy prize.

The party ignores three rounds of DM's hints that the figure does not seem to be taking damage and the owl manages to drop the party mage and seriously injure the fighter. Then, the 1st level illusionist NPC comes around the corner and unleashes his one color spray spell, dropping everyone but the evil cleric in the group. He decides to save himself by jumping 20 feet down to the lower path, rolling the full 18 damage on 3d6 and dying instantly.
The owl had 4 hit points, meaning one hit would likely have dropped it, taking out the illusionist with the 8 points of sympathetic damage.:smallredface:

Slipperychicken
2014-06-12, 08:18 PM
My first PC kill was dropping a house on the party's Witch.

Please tell me that a confused woman in a blue dress and ruby red slippers immediately stepped out of that house, followed by a tiny dog. And that this woman was the character's new PC.

jedipotter
2014-06-12, 11:18 PM
Ok, set the wayback machine to 1980-something. Playing D&D (aka the Known World aka soon to be known as Mystrera) in the Red Box. The included adventure of ''Bargle's ruins'' (anyone remember Bargle? Most evil and hated magic user? ''Hello is Bargle with you...oh, what, oh, nevermind'' lol). So the group heads off towards the ruins and get ambushed by the goblins. The goblins shot arrows at the characters, who die for cover. Except poor Ikey, who gets hit for like ten damage, and dies.

The_Werebear
2014-06-13, 01:31 AM
With disposable characters in a one shot, we were DMing for two parties in a race from opposite sides of a Kobold Warren to get to a treasure in the center. The treasure turned out to be a newly hatched red dragon. The first party's wizard was fried by the dragon after missing a True Strike'd Shocking grasp that would have knocked it out on a nat one. Then the second party got to the center, killed half the weakened first party, and enslaved the survivors as meat shields (causing them to die as well.) Then the mayor of the town had them poisoned so he didn't have to pay their reward. It was rather gruesome.

In a campaign, it was a crit with an axe during an unrelated side mission that the party had taken while on vacation from their regular career as high ranking members of a city guard. The PC struck a deal with the setting's resident god of death and came back as a vampire (which was nerfed to "undead traits + vampire vulnerabilities").

Braininthejar2
2014-06-13, 02:55 AM
My sister's wizard.

We were still kids and I wasn't a very good GM at the time. She found a powerful wizard's spellbook and acrtivated it's protection spells while tampering with it, popping a bubble of force around it and filling it with a cold area effect.

I though it would be obvious to her to break the trap by destroying the book - instead she tried to break the force bubble and ended up freezing to death.

JeenLeen
2014-06-13, 10:26 AM
I'm ignoring the ones where the characters could be revived or when I ran a Tomb of Horrors.
Middle Ages Vampire: The Masquerade

Player was a Lasombra Path of Night (which in Middle Ages was 'terrorize people into redemption', not the more-insane modern Lasombra version). He was patrolling looking for people to redeem. I rolled, and let him find a wererat in the slums. Figured it would let him know about them for future conflicts or alliances, as the party wished. To add some tension, I had the wererat kill someone who ticked him off.
Player decided to 'scare' the wererat by attacking him. After both sides took some damage, the wererat shifted to the Umbra. The PC knew enough to know better than to walk back to base, so he sought the aid of a mage we knew.

What he didn't know was that the mage was a friend of the wererats.
Negotiations opened, and about three times I basically said (through the wererat or the mage): "The wererat will forgive you for trying to kill it, if you agree to not try to kill it again." He refused, saying that he could not one who would kill innocents like that live. A fight broke out and he died rather quickly in a burst of flames.

Kalmageddon
2014-06-13, 12:01 PM
I'm going to count only permanent deaths, since otherwise it's not really "killing off" a character but more like "temporarily incapacitate".

I think the absolute first time was a gnome bard who got offed by a failed jump check and plunged to his death in a crevasse. Nothing too fancy I'm afraid. Beside the campaign lasted only 3 sessions before real life kicked in and we went our separate way, so really, no way to know if he would have been resurrected someday.

I would like to mention my Fallout d20 campaign as the one with the most and most memorable character deaths:

A super mutant character got ripped to pieces by a Mirelurk Hunter (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mirelurk?file=Mirelurk_hunter.png) after he thought he could handle it in melee.
A Brotherhood of Steel scribe got headshotted by a high level raider during a heated battle in the ruins of New York. This is particularly unfortunate because he was being really careful, sniping from atop a building. A lucky crit from a sniper raider ended his life, unfortunately.
A particularly heroic medic died after shooting a Tesla Cannon (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tesla_cannon) in melee against a Super Mutant Behemoth
(http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_87_super_mutant#Super_mutant_behemoth) that had picked him up and was about to eat him. He managed to bring down the mutant and save the lives of his friends, but unfortunately the splash damage was more than enough to kill him too.
A brawler character and a raider character got reduced to fine red mist by the minigun of a high level super mutant. Expecially comical since the raider's last words were "Hey, I'm here you piece of ****!", as he was trying to get his attention to save an exposed character. It worked. The brawler was unfortunately adjacent to the raider, so the AoE of the gatling gun autofire got him as well.
Another double kill happened when the group decided that the right course of action when faced by an enemy armed with plasma grenades was to get everyone close to each other. Was nearly a TPK, fortunately two characters had Evasion and another one had enough hit points and managed his reflex save. The other two, both flimsy, intellectual characters, weren't so lucky and got melted into green goo.

Yora
2014-06-13, 12:12 PM
I honestly can remember only a single death in 15 years of playing, and that one was in one of the few games in which I wasn't the GM. Guy got killed in the last round when we were fighting a beholder. (Also only the second time I've ever seen a beholder in practice.)

I quite changed my campaign style over the last few years and right now my game has a rather large group, making TPKs unlikely. I expect to see some death occuring soon.

MrNobody
2014-06-13, 12:27 PM
My very first kill as a DM was in a AD&D 2e game: the rogue, during the night, went solo deep in a cave full of ooze-like monsters looking for treasure. The only thing he found was his own death!

LogosDragon
2014-06-13, 01:31 PM
My very first PC kill? Hm... I haven't killed many, but my first PC kill was in my first campaign, 6th session I believe. Characters were level 4, with four Neutral or Evil characters and a Paladin. You can guess who dies.

The party just returned from a small plane call Axis, were they found a specialist who knew more about the mysterious metal that the wizard's newly-found and befriended construct was made of, and appeared to have some information about the wizard's role as the "Starchild" though he refused to share said information yet. They also secured a huge number of troops from Axis as a gift for something they did (if I remember correctly, the Rogue and the aforementioned metal specialist closed a small portal that was spewing out fire elementals) because there was an underground force of thousands of Orcs preparing to invade the surface under the flag of a Balor.

And yes, these characters were level 4, glad to verify. I was not the brightest cookie back then, honestly, and while I had a plan of some kind involving that I can't remember what it was.

Anyway, the portal out of Axis dropped them smack in the middle of a desert, and after digging up and exploring the nearby buried house and finding some magic plates that turned so much as a crumb of food into a whole feast, they took off towards the mountains, as they had seen the desert before and knew the mountains as a landmark to get to the elven kingdom.

Then it happened.

The Paladin...

Asked for help.

Yeah, seriously. That's it. He couldn't take off his half-plate by himself, so he was slowly getting closer and closer to fatigue while the other characters were totally fine. He asked someone to help him take his armor off so the wizard's construct friend could carry it... And they were like "Oh, yeah! You do get penalties for wearing heavy armor in these conditions! In that case... We all start running to get out of the desert faster!"

The Paladin, knowing he wouldn't be able to keep up running long, just kept walking. He kept his stamina up most of the way, but tried to sprint the last little bit because the sand started rumbling and he was afraid a previously foreshadowed blue dragon living in the desert was coming after him. He immediately dropped to Exhausted and was promptly killed in combat with a giant insect.

The party came back for his loot.

Knaight
2014-06-13, 02:21 PM
I honestly don't remember. However, as I have some idea of which players were probably involved, I'm putting good odds on it being due to friendly fire.

Aedilred
2014-06-14, 08:21 PM
It was a trap, somewhat surprisingly. A lightning bolt straight down the corridor, injured most of the party and killed the wizard. The wizard was reincarnated as a goblin (which in this homebrew setting was definitely not a good thing) until I eventually took pity and restored his original form by fiat. Later the party got into a fight with their "evil opposites" (in game terms, at least) and the wizard managed to die again, this time being reincarnated as a kobold. :smallsigh:

Slipperychicken
2014-06-14, 09:12 PM
The Paladin, knowing he wouldn't be able to keep up running long, just kept walking. He kept his stamina up most of the way, but tried to sprint the last little bit because the sand started rumbling and he was afraid a previously foreshadowed blue dragon living in the desert was coming after him. He immediately dropped to Exhausted and was promptly killed in combat with a giant insect.

The party came back for his loot.

Should have had the insect take the Paladin's stuff into its lair. And eat the evil characters next :smallbiggrin:

Angelalex242
2014-06-14, 09:17 PM
Gotta say, if a party did that to me during a game, Logos, I think I'd pick up my dice and my books, get up, enter my car, and go home. Jerks of that caliber need to be taught a bitter lesson about betraying party members.

Alaris
2014-06-15, 12:25 PM
Eh... mine was hardly spectacular... or really even cool at all.

My PCs were running through the first dungeon of the campaign, a not-in-use base of a Drow. The party stumbled into a prison-like area, where the prisoners were turned to stone. There was a powerful Demon there, several Fey, a few Were-Creatures... all-in-all, not a place people would want to go.

So... in their infinite wisdom, some of the party started releasing these creatures from their stone imprisonment... and in the ensuing chaos, the Demon gets released.

So one of the party... a Sun Elf I believe...decides that this is not the place for him... grabs his wife, and runs down the hall through the dungeon, away from the prison. I know that some of my group thereafter learned that separating the party is BAD. Unfortunately, not all of them learned this.

So... the Sun Elf runs down through the dungeon, and ultimately comes to a a strange room. The door locks behind them, with a door on the opposing wall. To the left and to the right of the opposing door are 3 levers each (for a total of 6). In the panic, the Sun Elf and his wife starting pulling ALL the levers, hoping they will open the door so they can continue to run away. (Masterful roleplaying really... I will give the Player that).

Well, in reality, this room was a sort of torture-kill room of sorts. Each lever on it's own would initiate an effect that would attack, or torment the character in various ways. And they just activated all of them. So in essence, I believe the following things happened:

A fascination-type effect that warped their perceptions of reality. They would view themselves as in an open, beautiful meadow.. and any threats were actually happy, fun things. That owlbear totally was going to give them hugs and candy!
The room begins to fill with water, which will drown the characters if they do not do something to stop it.
An undead owlbear will be released into the room, to maul the character at it's leisure.
Fire will surround the room, both walls, doors and the levers. (It is illusionary, but feels hot).
A seventh lever will appear (now behind the fire) on the wall behind them. This lever was invisible, and is the true lever that will open the exit. For this lever to become visible, all levers must be pulled. It could be found via search, and can be pulled regardless of it's visibility.
A few other things I do not recall, but were also torturous.


So... in essence, a Sun Elf Favored Soul and Moon Elf Rogue failed various saves, and could not find their ways out of the rooms before dying from a combination of Owlbear 'hugs', drowning and various other effects. Had the party come into this room together, and not panicked, I believe they would've solved this puzzle much more easily.

On the plus side, the player in question took it all in stride... he was roleplaying a coward, and had no issues with dying from that. He went on to make a Half-Giant Psionicist of sorts, and much more fun ensued.