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Henry the 57th
2014-04-26, 02:58 AM
What have been the dumbest, most cringe-worthy and/or laughable deaths of PCs that you've seen or experienced?

I'll start with one of mine:

My character was doing some alchemy, and it blew up in his face. He was blinded and his lab was filled with choking fumes. The tower was set on fire, so he blindly stumbled around, trying to get away. Somehow, through incredibly bad rolling, he wandered straight into a catapult. Again, through awful luck, he wound up launched straight out of it and into a mountain.

*splat*

The fire's only victim? A random cat.

Now for one I've witnessed very recently:

In a D&D game featuring myself and the playground's own Kazasu and Torgarn, as well as a few others, we were fighting a trio of harpies with a large (and very deep) pit between us. Long story short, Kazasu failed a will save against the song and walked straight into the pit. Torgarn managed to drop all three of the harpies in after him, and, knowing that the pit was very deep, tried to drop a Swan Boat Token on their heads. Unfortunately, it was too big for the pit and got stuck. Doubly unfortunately, the pit turned out to be one that circled back around indefinitely.

Kazasu came back around the bend, breaking free of the harpy song... just in time to run smack into the boat. 792 damage.

*splat*

So, what are your stories?

illyahr
2014-04-26, 09:30 AM
Group was fighting a black dragon. They were winning, but keeping health up was a problem. When the group finally killed the dragon, the cleric of strength cut its head off and held it above his own to show off the trophy. Black dragon blood, which was corrosive, poured out and melted the cleric away while we all laughed.

Kid Jake
2014-04-26, 11:12 AM
We'd just started a Star Wars game and I'd started things off by having a Mynock find its way onto the ship. I'd expected the players to blow through it pretty easily, but after a couple of bad rolls they'd decided it was obviously a boss monster intent on murdering them and the rest of the crew. One of the players shouts "I blow a hole in the side of the ship!"

I just stare at him and I'm like "Why?"

He's like "The decompression will suck that bastard out and he'll die in the vacuum of space!"

So I explain to him in more detail what a Mynock is, that it can absolutely breathe in space and that it's generally just considered a pest. Needless to say, he still follows through with his plan and blows up half the damn ship in his hairbrained scheme. Everyone's sucked out to their deaths (they couldn't make a reflex save to grab onto something) and the last thing he sees before passing over is the Mynock fly right back in.

Or, it could also be this (http://untcs.com/?p=239) which was taken almost word for word from my first ever attempt at DMing. It's the same guy that blew up the ship, and the same guy that plays Roger McCrow (who I'm sure is going to make this list eventually) in my M&M campaign journal.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-26, 11:42 AM
Me (playing a wizard): "I cast Detect Magic into the room"

DM: "You can tell there are several magic traps in the room"

My Wizard: "Don't go in there. It's trapped. We need to be careful"

[we try throwing rocks in for a while, to no avail]

Gunslinger: "I walk into the room"

Wizard: "That's a terrible idea, it's trapped"

Gunslinger: "F*** it. I'm going in anyway"

[Gunslinger is grappled and suffocated to death by an Ooze which was meant to be a puzzle encounter. Campaign ends because the plot apparently revolved around her]

Braininthejar2
2014-04-26, 04:50 PM
1 A player in level 1 adventure got sent to a hidden temple, and given a wand to tap the guardian golem with to be let in. He approached the temple and saw a giant statue with its hands around the entrance. He went in and got squashed. It turned out he didn't know what a golem was and didn't think to ask the quest giver.

2 First session of Fading Suns. One of the players got information that there would be an assassination attempt on one of the local diplomats. (the party was supposed to meet him and form the party working for him.) The player decided that the best way to warn the diplomat would be... to break into his mansion and talk to him face to face.

One failed stealth check later, he is in the courtyard, facing the diplomat's personal bodyguard who asks him what is he doing there in the middle of the night. The player pulls out a gun.

The bodyguard is 5 feet from him and since he was meant as a character for another player, a well optimised swordsman. Since he was obviously expecting trouble, he is not surprised - he wins initiative and one-shots the intruder.

3 Honorable mention to a player in my World of Darkness group who, while preparing a major operation for his storyline, was told that the enemy gang leader in a hengeyokai and despite being an experienced player and GM in other systems, didn't think to ask the GM to explain what it is. We survived through GM benevolence and some NPC involvement, but not before I had to throw my diplomacy-build vampire against an angry werewolf...

Mono Vertigo
2014-04-26, 05:20 PM
1 A player in level 1 adventure got sent to a hidden temple, and given a wand to tap the guardian golem with to be let in. He approached the temple and saw a giant statue with its hands around the entrance. He went in and got squashed. It turned out he didn't know what a golem was and didn't think to ask the quest giver.

[...]

3 Honorable mention to a player in my World of Darkness group who, while preparing a major operation for his storyline, was told that the enemy gang leader in a hengeyokai and despite being an experienced player and GM in other systems, didn't think to ask the GM to explain what it is. We survived through GM benevolence and some NPC involvement, but not before I had to throw my diplomacy-build vampire against an angry werewolf...

Hah, the Reverse Gazebo Syndrome. "I don't know what that is, but that doesn't sound so bad!"

Odessa333
2014-04-26, 06:36 PM
Stupidest? I once saw a level one mage steal a gem off a clearly trapped pedestal. It awoke a golem. He proceeds to fight said golem, one on one. His spells barely scratched the creature, and he quickly ran out of spells to cast. All he had to do was return the gem. Instead, he decided to pee on the golem. Just dropped his pants, peed on the golem. Golem responds by removing his limbs starting with his.... head. Yea.

Another groan worthy death was the warrior who saw a major army approaching and panicked. Our party rushed to the city's defenses without our warrior. He apparently decided we were all going to die, and decided he'd rather 'die happy.' He went into a bar and attempted to rape a bar maid. He ignored the citizens arming themselves for battle, and they stabbed him to death as he dropped his weapons and armor.

I've seen some stupid in my day.

In the 'at least it was funny' category, I love the tale of our warrior wielding his mighty electric sword and diving into the pool with a Kraken. We had a hearty meal of Kraken meat and toasted his death.

SimonMoon6
2014-04-26, 07:09 PM
A PC was sent to "retrieve" a magic item from a wizard's house. He was told that there were all sorts of magical traps and alarms, but he'd be fine as long as he didn't do X (I've forgotten what it was now).

So, being a PC, naturally, the first thing he did was X.

Then, a smoke elemental appeared and killed him.

Fayd
2014-04-26, 07:10 PM
There were a bunch of vine grappling and whipping plant things on pillars in the final fight of a campaign. Our mage knocked a pillar down by turning a bit of its middle into sand. In the midsts of the fight and it being 3 AM and my brain not working, I forgot that it was "down" but not out, and so it got a few attacks in on me. Then our vampire, who had been systematically breaking a demigoddess's bones while she was performing an epic level ritual (and making her concentration checks despite it all, just as a note) finally did enough damage to disrupt the ritual; it caused a gigantic explosion. Anyone not killed by the explosion was brought back to full HP. Unfortunately, I didn't survive.

The worst part of it all was that I was a living dead-man's switch. We'd struck a deal with one of the only Fey spirits that was NEUTRAL between the two courts, and my death signaled that she should tell both courts that this demigoddess is on the loose. (Something about her being the Third queen of the Fey and there are 2 courts, or something like that). So the entire continent got pummeled into the ground by the forces of two fey-driven hobgoblin armies. Because I forgot simple geography and where a monster had fallen over.

Necroticplague
2014-04-26, 09:31 PM
Once I had a shadowrun group who was going to do a run that was actually fairly basic: act as some relatively normal-looking bodyguards to a lobbyist/activist. The organization was an extreme transhuman organization, with one of its goals being the spread of techniques like cybermancy to extend life and improve capacity.One player asked what cybermancy was, so I told him. When they met the lobbyist, I made point to mention how off in his own world he seemed. This was supposed to be an indicator he himself was a cyberzombie. One of the players interpreted it to mean he was just some stoner (because of my use of "activist" earlier). When he refused to haggle up,one player shot him. I tried to save him by having the IMS give the zombie a flashback to when he was tight under the thumb, so he didn't feel the bullets. The player then interpreted his unflinchingness to mean "shoot him more". So I sighed and had him return the attack with his cyberspurs. Killed him before anyone else could react. And then managed to negotiate their pay down.

When I later asked him what made him think that was a good idea, his response was that apparently my exposition on cybermency to him only came across as "blah blah negative essence blah aztechnology blah blood magic blah blah dual-natured", so he didn't know about th "how to spot" that was part of the speal.

Daer
2014-04-26, 10:28 PM
Not my story but from game i watched from youtube/twitch.

warning might be spoiler if you haven't watched far ITmeJPs Rollplay!

Well anyway. Group was trying to get flying dragons attention to talk with it to get its help to slay evil dragon.
Well Well dragon flies over group when party priest opens portal and tell one of the party members jump in. Well the other end was aimed to be above dragon so party member would fall on dragon and get its attention.. Well couple bad rolls and aim is wrong and party member cannot get hold on dragon and starts falling from high air. Pretty dumb plan, specially as the guy gone trough portal is infamous for rolling ones. Well it gets worse when party thief tries catch him >.< Splash, 2 people dead instantly.

Mr.Sandman
2014-04-26, 10:55 PM
Right before the final fight of the campaign, there is an undead army marching on the city led by an (un)living airship which was to be the location of the final battle. Most of the party wants to bring the ship down before going aboard to finish off the leader, but the half minotaur/ half orc barbarian gets the huge animated statue to throw him onto the ship. The rest of the party spam spells onto the ship, including Call Lightning Storm and a few Fireballs, and he dies when it crashes to the ground far below.

BWR
2014-04-27, 03:10 AM
DM: You enter the room. The first thing that catches your attention is the gargoyle which moves menacingly...
Wizard (interrupts): I cast Fireball!
DM: uh, ok.
Wizard: *rolls very well*
DM: Without waiting to see if the room is large enough to safely cast your spell, you toast yourself. The rest are badly injured.
(mostly because the player had an annoying tendancy to sit and read other books until he heard that there was combat at which point he would cast Fireball without waiting to determine whether this was a good idea or even what we were fighting. He learned his lesson after this)

My crowning moment of stupid was the giant steam-powered jumping dragon mech piloted by a mad gnome (in Dragonlance). It would jump absurd distances, like a hundred meters or more, land on us and do ridiculous amounts of damage. The thick iron plating meant we did miniscule amounts of damage to it (high AC, tons of hit points, literally) and it would jump away ever other round or so before jumping back on us. So I decided that the best way to handle it was to have my knight tie himself to the legs of the contraption. This way I would go along with it and be able to attack, and it wouldn't land on me because I'd be on top of its foot rather than under. The DM ruled that the enormous force of the thing jumping those distances snapped my spine like a rotten twig, leaving me flopping around like a meat puppet until the others managed to stop it.

jedipotter
2014-04-27, 08:46 AM
Long, long ago in 2E. Blunderfoot, the fighter with a DEX of 3 and STR of 20. He had gotten almost enough XP to level...just short like 10 or so. So Blunderfoot headed out into the woods to find something to kill and get some XP. And in a tree, he found a stirge. Blunderfoot, missed and missed and missed......and the stirge did not. A couple rounds later, Blunderfoot was dead.

Brother Oni
2014-04-27, 03:51 PM
Modern day game and the PCs are trying to get away in a high speed car chase.

One of the chasing cars catches up to them and pulls up alongside. The trigger happy player (you know the type) winds down his backseat window and fires his recoiless rifle at it, without winding down the window behind him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=F8AQM7KyHDE#t=93).

One failed car handling test later and the few surviving party members are crawling from the wreckage.

Apparently he thought it was an anti-materiel rifle and not a bazooka type weapon.

Braininthejar2
2014-04-27, 05:03 PM
The party (fortunately we were playing with one player - one DM only, the rest were npc's) goes through a portal without checking how it works and ends up stranded in a swamp in Carceri. While trying to find where they are, they stumble upon a huge shack inhabited by a glabrezu. The deamon is busy making a garland out of a (still "living", sucks to be a petitioner) guy who tried to rob him, but is otherwise not hostile - he has a (dis)reputable business here and it would scare away customers if he randomly murdered people. He even gives them some introduction to the planes (waiting for them to say something he could twist into a wish to send them somewhere worse - demons being demons, if they're not buying from him, he may still have some fun)

The player, otherwise smart, but playing a chaotic neutral "teenage" elf with a penchant for making weird comments (and also slightly high from painkillers she had taken for a cold that came with a horrible migraine) starts asking the glabrezu stupid questions. After initially asking if she is a xaocite, he is visibly annoyed and the npcs' start moving away.

Then the player looks up at the glabrezu's rabid rottweiler face and asks him if he likes being scratched behind the ears.

The demon decides this is now a matter of his reputation and wipes the party.

(She wasn't even mad. for the next campaign she created a "weird but very serious" druid and it worked much better)

veti
2014-04-27, 10:26 PM
My first ever character in a new campaign (that subsequently ran for more than 25 years): a half-orc fighter/thief.

In our starting town - a small port town of some description - we got into trouble, were on the run from the law, and I hit upon the happy idea of escaping by boat, to row up the coast a little way, land and return on foot as a Completely Different Innocent Traveller. I found an unattended rowing boat, rowed out into the harbour... and found myself passing an imperial war galley, its crew apparently ashore.

Being chaotic, and paranoid, I decide to set fire to it in passing. Heave a flask of flaming oil onto the deck, and a fire starts with a satisfying whoosh.

Next thing I know, half a dozen crossbow bolts are heading my way from the guards left on the ship. I die.

...

In the "funniest" stakes: you have to picture rules (part AD&D, part shamelessly-unbalanced homebrew) that allow damage multipliers to stack. And a character who is part-barbarian (in this version, giving a multiplier on damage for the first round of a combat), part-thief (giving a multiplier on damage for any surprise attack), part-caster, and part-just-plain-badass.

The scene: a game of "football" against otherworldly (vaguely Cthulhoid) abominations. Something, I think it's Shub-Niggurath, is dribbling the ball down the wing. I cast a spell that enhances surprise, appear pretty much in its armpit, and deliver a full round's worth of attacks with all the multipliers. The total damage is something over 2500, yes that's two and a half thousand, HP.

Only then do I notice, Shubby is surrounded by a faint bluish glow. It's a Fire Shield spell. And in this edition, the description for Fire Shield says that anyone who hits you with a melee attack takes twice the damage they inflict.

I believe the record I set then still stands to this day. Shubby somehow had time to look at me for a moment and say "Are you... all right?", before I exploded into my component molecules. I'm not clear what happened to her - I think it involved a rapidly-regenerating pool of goo - but at least we got the ball.

DeadMech
2014-04-28, 01:24 AM
Not my story but from game i watched from youtube/twitch.

warning might be spoiler if you haven't watched far ITmeJPs Rollplay!

I remember that. Though it did end a bit differently due to.. circumstances.

As for myself. In one game I was playing the party tank. I had a particular ability called lifeline that I could attach to my party members to redirect damage they suffered onto my knight. I used this allot since the rest of my party was very very glass cannon. Or perhaps my party developed very glass cannony because I was offering them the crutch of not having to defend themselves.

Anyway we were traveling through a mine in order to get to the other side of a mountain range when we encountered a very powerful spider boss. The gm that game had thrown several encounters at us in this game that weren't properly balanced against the party's power level so I was looking for an alternative to hacking away at this thing while it either decimated my party or turned me into ablative armor to be stripped away painfully followed by another plot averted TPK.

My plan was simple. We are in a mine. Knock out the wooden support struts built into the wall instead. The resulting cave in would surely kill the vile creature. So I order the party wizard to burn the struts and he obliges.

Perhaps expectedly this is an unsafe solution. The GM is merciful enough to state the the rocks fall but rather than everyone dies, only cause relatively minor amounts of damage to each of us since we expected the cave in and moved back... Unfortunately I had used my lifeline ability upon every party member in the fight and it was still active so the damage redirected upon me who was already below half health from the first of the spider's attacks.

Mercifully again this was a home brew game with easy revival methods, or perhaps not mercifully since my character ablative armor'd himself for the party no less than four times in that GM's campaign in various fashions.

Sartharina
2014-04-28, 02:31 AM
The death we still don't let my youngest brother live down, playing as pre-made characters with our 3rd edition starter kit.

I, playing as Tordek, had managed to cripple the bugbear chief of the dungeon we were in. The dice and weird houserules resulted in him having his legs cut off and bleeding out in a corner, but still alive and combat-capable (Sort of). My brother was playing as Regdar, and, instead of moving up to kill him with his greatsword, or even just shooting him with his bow from where he was, decided to run past the bugbear and try to shoot him with the bow. One crit from an attack of opportunity later, and Regdar was joining the Bugbear in bisectedness. Except he didn't have the HP remaining to still be alive.

Socksy
2014-04-28, 06:05 AM
Cleric with mundane leather armour and longsword: I charge [into the antimagic field] and attack the Omnimental!

Jon_Dahl
2014-04-28, 07:47 AM
This story involves a player playing Chaotic Neutral alignment in the cheesiest and most commonly stereotyped way:
We had been playing a campaign for about 60 sessions and two years. Finally the end of the campaign was drawing close. One of the players had created a new character: A CN half-orc.

The party, along with the new recruit, approached a rift that they hadn't seen before. It was supposed to be the key to a great mystery. Without thinking or looking, the half-orc jumped straight to the rift and fell into the darkness. Chaos ensued and the four-man party was split into three and they couldn't see each other. The half-orc had fallen straight to a monstrous spider's web and was eaten alive. There was but a single survivor from the incident, who run away.

DigoDragon
2014-04-28, 08:13 AM
I've watched three PCs die by climbing down into a giant's toilet, despite the warnings on the wall that elluded to a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the commode.

Loxagn
2014-04-28, 10:32 AM
I've watched three PCs die by climbing down into a giant's toilet, despite the warnings on the wall that elluded to a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom of the commode.

Ouch. Well at least it never gets clogged?

I once saw someone take a crown --that they knew for a fact was a lich's phylactery and was radiating an overwhelmingly powerful aura of Evil-- and decide that he wanted to wear it. Put it on his head.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then the idiot got possessed.


Then there was the time our Warlock decided that Eldritch Blasting a Husk of Infinite Worlds was a sensible idea. The resultant explosion killed the BBEG. Along with the party. And some of Sharn.

Trinoya
2014-04-28, 10:43 AM
Player A: Decides he doesn't like playing his elven ranger anymore and rolls up a level 1 human wizard, which he sends after his old character as his introduction, despite the warning that, "your old character will defend himself."

His previous character won imitative, hit, crit, confirm, dead wizard.

His character didn't even live a full round. 3 seconds. Got to love it.

Player A (again, there will be a lot of player A): Party is under attack by a bone golem. Another golem is nearby, seemingly inert. The player ceases fighting the bone Golem and awakens what is in actuality a warforge.

He does this by attacking it with magic.

Deciding that magic is now bad because it upset the warforge and the warforge summoned a mean creature to kill him, he decides to take his wizard into melee combat. It ends with him thrown into a nearby river where he proceeded to fail every attempt to not drown horribly.


Player A (told you): Decides he'll bring in his next character by attacking the party. The party was not amused.

Player A (Dear god the stories!): Is bothering the local sheriff. Sheriff finds out that the player was involved in a local bar brawl. The PC is arrested and placed in prison for the night, trial in the morning (very efficient criminal justice system). PC is informed that he has been found guilty and will have to pay 100 gold or 30 days hard labor. Rest of the PCs get ready to pony up 100 gp.

Player A proceeds to denouncing the entire nation, the judge, the sheriff, and proceeds to insult them all. He is a level 2 character. Ballsy, but stupid. Sheriff challenges him to a duel for his honor. Rest of the players now spend 400 gp to rig the duel (auto hit spell, instant death poison on the PCs weapon). They spend several hundred more gold on this. All player A has to do is win initiative and swing.

Duel occurs the next morning, player A proceeds to enter the arena and declare, "see this, is what is wrong with our society!" Takes off his armor, throws his weapon down and is dumbfounded when the sheriff attacks him and kills him.

Player A: Attempts to negotiate with a dragon of pure shadow in spite of several warnings by another player (me) to get the hell out of there before I close the door. After two rounds of waiting door is promptly closed. Player A looses yet another character to one breath attack.

Player B: Uses turn undead on his own undead ally (another PC) with predictable results.

Player C: Swears to his god to protect every individual in the party. Gods take this kinda stuff to heart in that setting. If you break an oath to a god they are likely to just strike you down. Player D ends up causing a huge fire and getting knocked out in a burning building. Player C takes this chance to stab him in an effort to get his plot significant item, killing the PC. God smites player C, and Player Ds character dies as well.


Player E: Summons the BBEG because she was bored. Is turned to stone shortly there after and shattered (not technically a death, another PC brings that character back months later after putting her back together).

I'm sure I have more, hell I'm pretty sure I haven't even begun to run out of player A stories...

vasharanpaladin
2014-04-28, 01:10 PM
Sphere of annihilation on a pedestal. Party spends an hour flicking pebbles and crap at it to watch them spontaneously cease existing and (most of them) work out they don't want to touch it.

Cue the fighter: "I pick it up."

Slipperychicken
2014-04-28, 01:28 PM
Then there was the time our Warlock decided that Eldritch Blasting a Husk of Infinite Worlds was a sensible idea. The resultant explosion killed the BBEG. Along with the party. And some of Sharn.

Well, actually...


Unlike all other magic items, major artifacts are not easily destroyed. Each should have only a single, specific means of destruction.

ElenionAncalima
2014-04-29, 02:13 PM
Ok, so I am breaking the rules a little since this didn't end in death...but it was a close call and would have been the stupidest death I've ever seen.

Our party was in a city with an out of control undead problem. We had figured out that some of the evildoers were hiding in the general store. The party decided to have my ranger/rogue gestault sneak around to the back entrance to cut them off if they try to run. So I told them to wait one minute for me to sneak around and break in, then they should enter through the front. Apparantly no one remembered that part because after three rounds they started saying "I wonder whats taking so long. We should check if she's okay"...and since I was not there the DM said I could not remind them of the plan.

Unfortunatley, no one else had stealth, so the Bard/Oracle came up with the bright idea of disguising herself as a wandering zombie so as not to attract attention from the people inside. Her charisma was godly so she easily fooled them. However, before I could say anything the DM says "Roll a perception check". I got a decent roll, but her disguise check was insane, so the DM says "You see a zombie approaching you". Everyone at the table went silent, as her character was ridiculously squishy...and my character could easily kill her in a round (as she was already injured)...plus I had a Cheetah companion that sure wasn't going to be smart enough to see through her disguise. Luckily on initiative I roll a one, so she got to explain herself to my character before I cut her down.

After all was said and done, I joked that all of this could have been avoided if one of them had taken Message as a 0 level spell...to which 3/4 players respond that they did have Message.
My face ->:roy:

Jay R
2014-04-29, 03:02 PM
In my earliest D&D group, there was one player that the rest of us refused to play with, for reasons of survival.

So pretty soon he was playing as a one-man party.

Player: I follow the road out of town.
DM: After a few miles, you see a sign to the left that says, "Danger! Cockatrice Valley!"
Player: I go that way.
DM: Umm, you mean you stay on the road?
Player: No, I'll go investigate the valley.
DM: Um, OK. You see a path between two ridges. Another sign is here: "Danger. Cockatrice Valley. Turn Back"
Player: I go forward.
DM: As you enter the valley, you see hundreds of life-size stone statues, all looking up.
Player: I continue on.
DM: You hear a heavy flapping above you.
Player: I stop and look up.

The DM told me later, "I really wanted him to survive one adventure, but he just wouldn't let me do it."

Sith_Happens
2014-04-29, 04:46 PM
Well, actually...

Obviously the one specific means of destroying that Husk was to Eldrich Blast it. I guess not all artifacts are created equal.:smalltongue:

Dienekes
2014-04-29, 04:50 PM
Two from the same player different games.

In a low level, gritty warfare game. He wanted to get high, and had no ranks in jump or climb. So he decided he was going to rocket jump like a TF2 soldier. He then shot the ground beneath him with a rocket launcher.

In a level 3 D&D 3.5. The party was invading a castle. His character found a trap door. He wanted to see what where it went to so he stood over top of it. It was a trap door.

TriForce
2014-04-29, 07:14 PM
So, i was playing a "dumb muscle" type of character, and the party ended up in some sort of weird extension of the fey realm. magic was running wild in this place, and basically everything you wanted or expected to happen would happen (our DM had a tendancy to empower the party so much it would break the campaign) my character, having a int and wis of 8 both, decided to mess with it a bit, changing a huge tree-like thing next to him into water, unfortunatly, this meant getting a ton of water on his head, knocking him out.

it didnt actually hurt him, but it did cause him to miss the explaination a fey gave the party, about how dangerous this ability is for normal mortals like us, since anything you tried would be solved like a wish: in the easyest and most literal way possible, meaning a poorly phrased or tought out one would be disasterous.

so when my character woke up again, having missed all those warnings and lacking common sense, he wanted to make himself completly immune to all the fey magic, forever!...

yeah that didnt end well, he got turned into stone, and since he was immune now, the fey magic couldnt reverse it. one trip to a high lvl priest later with the stone version of me, and one roll of a 1 on my fortitude save during the un-pertification later, and my character dropped dead on the ground

Rainman3769
2014-04-29, 09:22 PM
My most recent 4th edition D&D campaign had 3 dwarves (Thordrim, Jorin, and Helja: pronounced "hell yeah") a Dragonborn named Smaugh, and a goblin named Snig (He made us unpopular in towns)

Anyway, we were mounting an expedition to the Underdark and after a combat with a bunch of Duergar (dark dwarves) there was one left alive. He fled and slid down a hole with a rope ladder, setting fire to the rope ladder behind him so we could not follow.

*Note: Helja was a VERY excitable dwarf, over the course of the campaign she became known as Helja Doorsbane, because every door she found, she would try to kick open)

Helja immediately runs over to the hole, which still has a rope ladder that is on fire, and JUMPS down after the Duergar, not knowing how deep the hole is. Thordrim, who happens to have a Ring of Featherfall with a 5ft radius, leaps down as well to save Helja, Jorin, seeing his kinsmen being so badass, dives in as well.

Smaugh and Snig also attempt to jump in, but Smaugh gets stuck in the hole. Snig, who always got bullied by Smaugh for doing harmless things like constantly blasting the party with Chain Lighting in battles, decides that Smaugh needs lubrication to get unstuck. The actual person playing Snig then stands up, starts to hop in a circle and sings out, "DO THE. POTTY DANCE!!" and says Snig pees in a ciricle while standing on Smaugh's shoulders, ya know, lubrication. DM says it works, and with no Ring of Featherfall, Smaugh and Snig fall over 200 feet, each one landing on a dwarf and killing said dwarf and themselves. Helja was the only survivor.

Necroticplague
2014-04-30, 08:17 AM
At one time, a wizard in a party I was in ended up turning to the other side. As a parting gift, he tried to dominate me into joining him, figuring a rainbow dreadsnake would be useful. After me failing the save, he decides to "shake on it." Against a paranoid who always held a charge of necrotic cyst active. He failed his save. Not appreciating the control IC or OOC, I used any ambiguity of wording to screw him over. One day, he asks me to make some undead. So I asked "any type in specific?" With the answer being "no, just make sure you can get it to me quick." One necrotic termination later, he had his undead.

The stupid part was th unnecessary handshake when he should know about the charge. And not being more specific when giving orders.

MrNobody
2014-04-30, 08:43 AM
Just occurred in a 3.5 campaign where i am the DM.
The group is exploring Xen'drik and reaches an ancient city of giants, topped by a little flying hill with a castle-like building.
They manage to ge to the building, start exploring, reach the core of the hill where, protected by various traps and gears lies the magical engine that keep the hill flying.
The group manege to solve all traps and riddles, unveiling the last protection: a prismatic sphere.
I end my description and, before i could even realize, before any Spellcraft or other check could be asked, the bard yelled: "I want to pass through!".
One succeded and two failed refl save later, the burned/melted body bard lied on the ground.

We all are still confused by the event!

Sith_Happens
2014-04-30, 11:15 AM
At one time, a wizard in a party I was in ended up turning to the other side. As a parting gift, he tried to dominate me into joining him, figuring a rainbow dreadsnake would be useful. After me failing the save, he decides to "shake on it." Against a paranoid who always held a charge of necrotic cyst active. He failed his save. Not appreciating the control IC or OOC, I used any ambiguity of wording to screw him over. One day, he asks me to make some undead. So I asked "any type in specific?" With the answer being "no, just make sure you can get it to me quick." One necrotic termination later, he had his undead.

That's epic.:smallcool:

The Oni
2014-04-30, 11:38 PM
So, the whole group was infiltrating a thieves' guild, and we were in the sewers. We had two rogues in the party, and one of the rogue's players didn't like the new guy the GM was introducing IRL. I mean he really hated this guy, even though he said it was OK to play with him. So when we went to unlock the chest to give the new all of his stuff back, the first rogue stole the key. After almost half an hour of real-world feuding, the second rogue stole the key back and unlocked the chest. The first rogue responds by running upstairs and banging as loudly as he can on the secret door of the thieves' guild, alerting about fifty vicious and highly trained thieves roughly at or above party level to our presence in their abodes.

This wasn't the first time Rogue 1 had done this sort of thing and I'd had enough, so I tore my character sheet in half and left. Even though we made up later, the DM ruled that no character sheet = no character, and in-game had a blue dragon roast my character, who was a hengeyokai goldfish, alive, underwater. He was basically a fish stick.

...Although it probably goes without saying, I don't game much with that group anymore.

Magikeeper
2014-05-01, 12:06 AM
So, the (mid-level) party needs to get to the bottom of a cliff. The party sorcerer, not wanting to waste any valuable time, simply walks off the cliff and falls several hundred feat to the bottom. 20d6 somehow manages to only deal 30ish damage, and he lives.

The party tank decides he's not going to let the sorcerer show him up. He walks off the cliff and dies.

--------------------------

**Players A and B enter throne room, motions towards king on his throne**

Player A: "Who put me in that prison I just broke out of?!"
Player B: "I'm, um... I'm just here to use the bathroom."

---------------------------

Player A's PC has not eaten for 4 WHOLE HOURS. He declares that Player C's PC is worthless, unconscious, and made of meat. My PC finds A's dinner plans to be completely insane and starts defending C's PC.

Player C wakes up (both IC and OOC).
C: What's happening?
DM: Player A and MK are fighting.
C: Oh! I throw a grenade at MK.

And thus did my PC die.

Later that session player C almost died when the DM claimed we could either save him or a crate filled with bacon. DM relented when he realized we were totally going to choose the bacon. Yes, even the awakened skeleton. :P

Lord Vukodlak
2014-05-01, 01:17 AM
A party member jumped into the ocean after the retreating Kraken.

BWR
2014-05-01, 01:53 AM
A party member jumped into the ocean after the retreating Kraken.

So simple and yet so beautiful.

We had one group that, at level 7, met an iron golem. I didn't intend for them to fight it, it was just there as a very obvious "No trespassing" sign. They tricked their way around it and got stuck. The only way out was to make a run for it. At least one would provoke an AoO, but chances are they would survive the hit, if barely, and they figured they could outrun it. So when it's the dwarf's turn to run, he runs right up to it and attacks.
Needless to say, an AoO and a full round of attacking from the golem reduced him to a greasy smear on the floor. The player, when everyone looked at him in disbelief and asked why he did that, answered that he had just forgotten the plan was to run.

scurv
2014-05-01, 07:53 AM
Party wipe on this one

So party shortbuss decides to provoke the local wildlife and leave a few tags, Local wildlife being a vally that was for all intents an orc and goblin kingdom....who frowned on humans(at best) and killed elf on sight

So this party decides to kick the proverbial hornets nest, Run DEEPER into the valley to use a cursed abandoned castle that is rumored to be trapped, cursed and a bad idea in general to go in to.to use as their escape rout. As it was said to have a secret passage out of the valley.

So some drama aside party makes it into the castle, that they then set anything wood on fire. As the castle is made of both stone and wood (think floors and a significant amount of its internal structure) And somehow this party finds the secret passage out.

Now keep in mind, I handheld their hands up to this point having every member roll a wisdom check with a plus 5 bonus. And letting them know at the start of this, it was most likely even if said party made it to the castle that with no one who had advanced trap skills...or any form of trade skills in the party that it would amount to suicide. that if the orc and goblin kingdoms did not over power them then most likely they would die in the castle from its traps.

Long story short 'I run fast down the hall so the traps don't get me' Is not a very effective tactic for dealing with things like. Pits, tripwires and false floors. and the like.

Henry the 57th
2014-05-04, 10:51 PM
A party member jumped into the ocean after the retreating Kraken.

Please tell me he was wearing heavy armor.

ddude987
2014-05-07, 04:55 PM
Okay here is one in my group.

Bit o' backstory: the DM in this campaign has a custom template, named Vyrek (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279902-Vyrek-Forms-Bound-in-Shadow-Shadow-Bound-in-Form) that is effectivley lycan's but the creatures are more of shadow and their alternative form can be modeled after anything, animals, magical beasts, dragons, et al.

The entire party got sucked into a painting (artifact) and was being forced to retrace events that happened hundreds of years ago. We were all turned into vyrek for the simulation. One character, a dwarf, named drogmar, had a whale form.

We were fighting the final boss who was a vyrek, and his form was a lava salamander. His form was representative of the heart of a volcano. We are beating him to a pulp and he turns into a massive lava lizard during the combat. After some fighting, he morphs into a regular sized salamander and tries to run away. Our dwarf buddy decides its a great idea to go full whale form and fall on the lizard made of lava. Suffice to say, the next thing he knew there was gouging hole inside of him as his insides were melted away.

ThreadNecro5
2014-05-07, 05:05 PM
well the story I have is simple but oh-so stupid. well I had a party in the middle of the tomb of horrors (I updated for pathfinder). well so far I have fully told everyone that it is the tomb of horrors, so far their had been deaths, lost limbs and a random gender reversal and so the party found a glowing gem in a pile of charred remains. the conversations went something like this:

me: you learn that you gain one wish.
player: I wish for infinite gold.

well needed to say an infinitely dense 5x5 block of gold falls from the sky, through the ceiling, and on top of the character.

well they know it was the tomb of horrors and they know what was probably going to happen.

and earlier two members of the party crawled into a trap room that they had previously disarmed and got stuck in. something to the effect of the following sentence was used by the ninja "a light at the end of the tunnel, that's not suspicious". I eventually stopped it after at least half an hour or so.

for all interested the total list of events was the following:
ninja: broke elbow, lost an eye, fell in lava, exploded, struck by lightning indoors, exploited glitch in dungeon and got WMD

tank: lost all clothing, got cursed, lost clothing, insisted to stay nude

ranger: got a magic bow, unlimited slaying arrows, died countess times, turned evil, turned female, got cursed, lost clothing, insisted to stay nude, impaled became half elf

summoner: cast open on all the doors, proved nigh invulnerable

drow cleric: fell in lava, lost leg, wished to be a supermodel, got disemboweled by treasure

druid pirate: I think suffer block incident, forget

leroy Jenkins (yes that was the name, he was an awakened raptor animal companion and killed evrything): jumped into a sphere of annihilation, did other thinks

also someone else jumped into a sphere of annihilation and their were a number of teleporting incidents.


and completely unrelated my were dire shark was once disemboweled by a donkey. yes...

Silus
2014-05-08, 06:57 AM
Well, guy in a Hunter game I was in got Ghouled and walked into a Hunter bar. Ashed in seconds by the patrons.

Amphetryon
2014-05-08, 09:28 AM
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.

imaloony
2014-05-08, 10:29 AM
The time the Kender died for the LAST time. Probably his only death that WASN'T his fault.

It's near the endgame, and we're fighting a Deep Dragon (Currently in human form). Several players ride right past him to attack him (Kender included), but my characters and one other rear up, not wanting to ride past. DM rolls and says that the Deep Dragon is going to attack the people in front of him, UNTIL the human fighter decides he's going to yell an insult in Blue Dragon.
DM: "Never mind, group in the back, roll saving throws."
The Kender fails and goes to something like -30. Since Deep Dragons breath flesh eating acid, there's nothing of him left. But then, his mount (A crystal griffon, which is a magical item). Also rolls. Critical Failure. Rebuke. Roll for all other magic items. Nearly every magic object on the Kender explodes except for, luckily, the most powerful item, which was near-artifact level and might have ripped a hole in space in time.
The Kender died in the shiniest explosion of all, and it was glorious.

Seto
2014-05-08, 04:08 PM
A very entertaining one.
We were 1st level characters. I was a NG Elven Wizard, there also was a LG Dwarven Warrior and a half-demented Vecna-worshipping CE Halfling Rogue. The Halfling performed some kind of horrible ritual during the night, covering himself up in entrails from the monster we'd just killed.
In the morning, we were like : "No, you're... you're just disgusting. And you stink. No way we're letting you back on that cart, you'll just have to run behind us. That'll teach you".
Later, we finally made it to the city doors. We told the Halfling he couldn't enter the city covered in dried blood and dust, and he had to do some basic cleaning. So he took his armor off and dived into the moat. Our DM didn't remember correctly the rules for swimming (and we were all newbies so we didn't know them), so he made him roll a Swim check even though he wasn't threatened. He rolled a 1 and started drowning. He failed a second and a third roll too. I dived in to save him, and also failed miserably. The frickin' Dwarf in heavy armor had to dive in and rescue us...

Basically : The Halfling died by drowning into a moat because he was too dirty. I fainted and almost died too trying to rescue him.

FabulousFizban
2014-05-08, 04:35 PM
We were facing an encounter in a lighthouse. The goal was not to defeat the ambiguous creature in the ocean below, but to survive for a number of rounds killing it's tentacles coming through the windows & defend the townsfolk huddled in the tower with us. The creature in the water who the tentacles belonged to wasn't even statted.

I did not know this. It was only my second time playing d&d and I figured the best way to end the fight was to take out the creature. So I used Soften Earth and stone on the ground the lighthouse was built on, but only on the ocean side. The soft clay was quickly washed out by the storm and the tower collapsed onto the creature... killing all the townsfolk and the entire party.

My friends were not pleased, but goddamn if I didn't kill that bastard!

Delwugor
2014-05-08, 04:41 PM
My character cast a spell to disrupt a some Witches Coven ritual, TPK was had that night. My character was paralyzed and bent over backwards so the head witch could look into his eyes and she sucked the soul out of him. Best character death I ever had, though it took a while for the group to forgive me.

togapika
2014-05-08, 04:59 PM
One of these two:

The 2e Spelljammer Halfling who when attacked by pirates attempted to man a siege catapult with no skill resulting in launching himself into space when he critically failed.

The 2e Halfling in a converted version of the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module who exploded when he attempted to use a suit of power armor sized for a medium creature.

The Oni
2014-05-09, 02:39 AM
The time the Kender died for the LAST time. Probably his only death that WASN'T his fault.

You misunderstand. Every time a Kender dies, it is automatically his fault (for being a Kender).

Abd al-Azrad
2014-05-09, 06:23 AM
My high school gaming group once ran an "Ocean's X+10" style game, where we had to break into a fortress and steal some incredibly valuable thingie, but we had as much time as we needed and the initiative was ours to take.

We infiltrated the place. A few of us got jobs there, learned the entire fortress' security layout. Developed our plan, even going so far as to create an illusory copy of the place in which to hold a trial run of our scheme. It was an awfully complicated plan, involving crazy contingencies like having a wizard outside who, having previously Arcane Marked the entire guard staff's weapons, could auto-disarm any sentries who spotted us with an Instant Summons spell from their scabbards. Silly over-planning like that.

During the trial run in the illusory copy, we had penetrated the main vault and had one task left, to pick the lock on a safe-deposit box in which the valuable thingie was held. The party wizard joked, "So who brought the lockpicks?" and we all chuckled at the thought of skipping such an obvious and vital part of the plan.

Come the night of the actual mission, we break into the fortress. Everything is moving perfectly, and when it doesn't, we have a contingency in place to compensate. We reach the final room, penetrate the main vault, and the DM asks us who will be picking the lock on the safe deposit box.

Y'all know what's coming. No one had actually written "lockpicks" in their inventories.

In the ensuing panic, we end up smashing the box open, drawing tons of attention. The party gets swarmed, with my monk being the only one to escape through a ceiling vent. Wounded and alone with a valuable thingie, the quest-giver decides it would be cheapest to kill my monk and take the treasure for herself, rather than pay me five shares of what would have been my party's cut of the take.

I had the good sense to respect her decision and die.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-09, 10:14 AM
Y'all know what's coming. No one had actually written "lockpicks" in their inventories.

If this was 3.5, you could have just improvised some lockpicks from nearby items and only taken a -2 on the check.

Abd al-Azrad
2014-05-09, 12:40 PM
If this was 3.5, you could have just improvised some lockpicks from nearby items and only taken a -2 on the check.

I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm really not adept at thinking on my feet.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-09, 01:35 PM
I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm really not adept at thinking on my feet.

II don't blame you. t's hard to remember that kind of stuff in the moment.

Garimeth
2014-05-09, 01:48 PM
Very first character. Level 1 cleric. AD&D. Woke up to starnge noises at night near our horses. Went to investigate. Character was carried off inot the night by grimlocks.

Second character, same game. Level 4 ranger. We ended up fighting Cain, portrayed as the original vampire. The DM gave him the unarmed strike damage of a Marut.

Fourth character, same DM. Sent our level 3 party on a mission to recover a magical sword. Guarded by the Tarrasque.

Yeah, my first DM sucked.

DSmaster21
2014-05-09, 02:08 PM
The death of an entire team of runners in a game of shadowrun. Doing an escort run in a van and motorcycle on an overpass, The cyclist (A massive street sam) wiped out on a glitch and the van driver failed the check and hit him and his bike. The street sam is now being squished by the van so he decides to push it off him. He had STR of like 13 or something like that (Troll has like 10+1 for upgraded ability and then increased muscles augmentation). So he rolls for and got all hits (I kid you not). DM asked him where he wanted to push it to and he decides to go to his left. Right onto the hood of the escorted vehicle. DM rolls a drive check for the EV and critical glitches so the EV and van go off the overpass. DM lets players roll agility plus str or gymnastics whatever would give them a chance. They all failed and die in the ensuing impact and explosion. Street Sam tries to lift his bike off himself and critically glitches. DM goes screw it everyone else is dead, the bike explodes. GAME OVER.
(They used so much karma for this it was hilarious how impossible the odds of this were)


Actually was part of:
A GM once strangled my character to death. We were playing PF and the GM said he could kill any caster. He grappled me with a 20th level fighter focused on Combat Maneuvers. He then ruled that there was no way for my 1st level sorcerer to get away (Combat Maneuvers are not really my cup of tea so I don't have the rules memorized but I am sure that the next part is not allowed) and that he could crush my trachea as a full round action and then drop me to die in the dirt. He then made me make DC 35 fort saves to resume breathing. I died. The other players thought this was funny. I dropped out of the group.


Barely surviving a lynching for using vision of madness (PF Madness domain class feature that can be used to get +1/2 Cleric Level (Min 1) to skills, ATK Rolls or Saving throws in exchange for an equal penalty to the un-chosen options) to try to get a slightly better roll for diplomacy. Quoth the DM "You are obviously using some sort of evil power" I was traveling with two paladins and both tried to vouch for me and produced papers from their order. DM: "He is obviously evil, They grab him and someone throws a rope around his neck." The rest of the party was then forced back so they started trying to shoot the rope as the villagers begin to lift me into the air by the neck. The ranged specialist fighter rolled a (Die Roll 18) 26 to hit but the DM said that was too low to hit the ropes AC. This continued until one of the paladins got a 20. Then I fell 10 feet so I took a d6 fall damage.
What caused all this? I was trying to stop the villagers from lynching a goblin that had come into the town injured and looking for help so I had done an unsuccessful Diplomacy once and decided to give myself a bit more help. What is even worse was he knew from my backstory that I would try this sort of thing because I had been raised by gnolls as the chosen of the god of monsters. I had been in that town for weeks proclaiming that we should make peace with monsters. That and the dominant religion was a CG Diety who had the madness domain and was a god of what is best for all even if it means breaking the rules so my ability to use Vision was possibly granted by good. (I was a CN cleric though I did worship an evil god, who was god of monsters in the setting but I was the guy who was supposed to resolve the feuding between the player races and the monsters so her children could live in peace and prevent attacks on either side. There was supposed to be an NPC later in the campaign for me to meet who was a CN cleric similar to me but worshipping the CG diety.)
I walked out of this campaign the next session when the villagers pressed charges on our whole party for rescuing me though I got additional charges for being a "Demon-spawn".

Defiled Cross
2014-05-21, 08:32 AM
Natural 1's all day, every day...

:smalltongue:

ghendrickson
2014-05-21, 08:45 AM
So one of my players, the weakest of them all (an assassin) decided to go alone through a room in an ancient temple. At the top of a wall he had to climb, there was a golem. He fails his perception check, climbs the wall... and is immediately murdered by the golem (golem crit). His head is smashed completely clear his body.

lytokk
2014-05-21, 09:39 AM
A few sessions into my first time playing, the party ended up spying on a meeting between a network of drow and some Zhent soldiers. My Elf Ranger/Wizard was up in a tree watching the conversation, when one of the other PCs in the group failed a move silently causing all of the soldiers and drow to start scanning, finding all of us. I start getting hit by spells and arrows, as the rest of the party is being pursued on the ground. 40 ft to the ground for me, the falling damage would more than likely kill me, and if it didn't, the rest of the drow would.

I'm only a few sessions into the game, and I really don't know what to do. I ask the DM if anything in my inventory might help, after passing him my sheet. He looks through the whole thing, gives me a resounding no. So, I climb down, and attempt to diplomancy myself out of the situation, as its the only thing I can do that might help. Suffice to say it didn't. A year or so back I was going through my old D&D stuff, found that sheet and started looking at it, when I noticed the scroll of pyrotechnics in my inventory. I know its my responsibility as a player to know what my stuff does, but cut a newbie some slack. Scroll of Pyrotechnics + Campfire + Drow = more than enough blindness to let me get out of there.

Same DM, different campaign. Attacks our 3 person party at level 2 while camping for the night with a dire wolf. Straight for my sleeping wood elf fighter, killing him in pretty short order. Not really a balanced encounter at all.

Judge_Worm
2014-05-23, 02:55 PM
Twofer- Me, the party wizard (and secretly a lich, I was still "fresh") and the party fighter. I had a +5 sword, the fighter had a ring of regeneration. She offers to trade, I decline, and being CE decide to instead make a bet out of it. I bet the fighter that everyone in the next town will be dead before she reaches it. I enter the next town ahead of the fighter, leaving my sword on the path. I use ALL my arcane energies to turn myself into a mininuke. The fighter, figuring that I, being dead, couldn't claim the reward. So she picks up the sword (my phylactery) and gets possessed. So I win right? Wrong, the ring is blessed, it has the opposite effect on undead. The party cleric puts the ring on the sword and buries both, preventing me from ever coming back.

As a DM: Had a PC paladin give a "reasons you suck speech" to ... Asmodeus. The paladin was level 4.

Stallion
2014-05-23, 05:00 PM
DnD 3.5 game. We are in a setting where the world is practically Ice Age. Surprise encounter with a Remorhaz, which gets a surprise round bursting through the snow. It crits and grapples the Duskblade, who has a comparatively low grapple. Next round, it's gonna swallow him. He has NO LIGHT WEAPONS, so he would have no way out and would therefore be fairly screwed. Being the party cleric, I react with a Reach Spell Freedom of Movement, which gives him everything he needs to escape from this predicament. However, this guy gets the SUPER BRIGHT IDEA that he could be like Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black with a semi-badass moment of killing this thing from the inside. We try to dissuade him, pointing out that he has no light weapon and has no way of damaging this thing enough before he dies, not to mention that he can literally just win a grapple check and walk out of the jaws of the giant toaster worm. Instead. He dives headfirst down the damn things throat. The next round he realized he had made a mistake when he went to -11. To this day we will tease him with the line he threw out before going headfirst to his death: I'm gonna get my gun back.

Worgwood
2014-05-23, 09:30 PM
I played a game in which my PC, a katana specialist barbarian, was challenged to a duel of honor by an archery specialist paladin. (He had a Constitution of 5, so we house-ruled he could smite at range.) This was instigated OOC because my character refused to give his a masterwork sword mine had earned separately of the party.

Paladin: I challenge you to a duel of honor!
Me: I decline.
Paladin: You can't decline. It's law.
Me: Okay, as the challengee I choose katanas as our weapons. (I know he has massive penalties to fighting in melee, besides his cripplingly low Constitution, not to mention I have EWP and he doesn't.)
Paladin: ...I rescind my challenge.

The paladin runs to maximum longbow range and shoots my character in the back. The DM rules this is just cause for him falling, and my character promptly kills his, to his shock. Unfortunately, the tantrum he threw killed the game, which was otherwise really awesome.

Oh, afterwards, the DM announced to the table that the sword that had started it hadn't actually been masterwork - we just assumed it was. It was actually made of silver and gold and worthless in a fight.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-23, 10:47 PM
I played a game in which my PC, a katana specialist barbarian, was challenged to a duel of honor by an archery specialist paladin. (He had a Constitution of 5, so we house-ruled he could smite at range.) This was instigated OOC because my character refused to give his a masterwork sword mine had earned separately of the party.

[...]

The paladin runs to maximum longbow range and shoots my character in the back. The DM rules this is just cause for him falling, and my character promptly kills his, to his shock. Unfortunately, the tantrum he threw killed the game, which was otherwise really awesome.


That's just depressing. Expecting Con 5 character to survive a combat-heavy D&D game is like expecting a house made of toothpicks to survive a tsunami.

With 3rd edition stats, that means a Con modifier of -3, and an average of 2.5 hit points per level (average of 1d10 is 5.5, minus 3 = average 2.5). In other words, a stiff breeze could have killed this paladin.

Deremir
2014-05-23, 11:36 PM
i was playing a dwarven spellcaster who was notably greedy in a horror campaign our dm had cooked up, so towards the end we kill this weird lich version of the mad hatter, now previous to this the lich had killed all of the npcs and turned them into undead, apon our defeat of the lich i was the only one in the vicinity who wasn't paralyzed, and all around me are dead corpses of previously undead nobles so im like "sweet! lootin time!". well once one of the other characters completes the story line shortly afterward all of the dead nobles come back to life. go to a cut seen and the other members of my party either become royalty or find their true love or both, I get hanged for theft.

Worgwood
2014-05-24, 01:32 AM
That's just depressing. Expecting Con 5 character to survive a combat-heavy D&D game is like expecting a house made of toothpicks to survive a tsunami.

With 3rd edition stats, that means a Con modifier of -3, and an average of 2.5 hit points per level (average of 1d10 is 5.5, minus 3 = average 2.5). In other words, a stiff breeze could have killed this paladin.
He insisted on rolling as his stats, and got a 7 for one of his scores. He put the 7 into his Constitution as an elf and asked me to help him with an archery build. If he got hit, he counted on Lay on Hands to make the difference. Most combats I was taking the hits, or our druid, but he picked a fight OOC over an item that turned out to be useless anyway.

Aquillion
2014-05-24, 03:59 AM
The paladin runs to maximum longbow range and shoots my character in the back. The DM rules this is just cause for him fallingI'm pretty sure it breaks like three parts of the Code of Conduct at once, amusingly -- by my count, it's evil (trying to murder someone for material goods), chaotic (betraying a companion for frivolous reasons and breaking the actual law in the process), and dishonorable (shooting someone in the back with no warning, and, again, betraying a companion), all at the same time. It's like the shoot-the-moon of Paladin epic fails.

Worgwood
2014-05-24, 04:43 AM
It's like the shoot-the-moon of Paladin epic fails.
This particular player was really good at that. Although to be fair, we use a custom Code.

Another story involving this player. His character doesn't die but he comes very close.

The player decides to play a ladies' man elven bard - although the way he played him was really sleazy and made everybody at the table uncomfortable. Each game he would try to pick up any non-monstrous female character he encountered and would also hit on the female characters in the party (but only the ones played by the girls).

One session he really puts it on heavy, and consumes an hour of time at the table having his character going from inns and pubs and eventually to a brothel trying to pick up. He gets turned away at every opportunity (again, really sleazy, both OOC and IC) but he's so aggressive about it that it's really hard for the DM to give us any play time.

Eventually, the DM throws him a bone - in the middle of the night a beautiful but obviously sinister woman agrees to take him home. She drags him down an alleyway and starts putting on the bad touch, which agrees with the player until she turns out to be a vampire and starts applying energy drain, at which point he freaks out.

The DM let him sweat until the end of the session, when he had an NPC paladin show up and save him.

Kender7777
2014-05-24, 11:19 AM
The stupidest gamer death I ever saw was when I DMed Ragnos, a setting I came up with 4 years ago. In the campaign, my players were at an epic boss battle. One of the players was a cleric, and the other was a spell sword. The spell sword died, and the cleric continued to smite down the wight lord which they were fighting when my player who WAS a spell sword came up with a "tough" dracutar fighter. He blue-clouded into the fight, and died of a fire-ball thrown by my boss. He never said his name, made an action, or was seen by my other players...

The Oni
2014-05-24, 11:48 AM
The stupidest gamer death I ever saw was when I DMed Ragnos, a setting I came up with 4 years ago. In the campaign, my players were at an epic boss battle. One of the players was a cleric, and the other was a spell sword. The spell sword died, and the cleric continued to smite down the wight lord which they were fighting when my player who WAS a spell sword came up with a "tough" dracutar fighter. He blue-clouded into the fight, and died of a fire-ball thrown by my boss. He never said his name, made an action, or was seen by my other players...

So what you're saying is he was dead on arrival.

Doorhandle
2014-05-24, 07:59 PM
> Most rage-inducing stupid death: Had a 1st level character among a small party of lv 3-4 ones. pokes a corpse, turned out it was hiding spiders.
Got eaten by the spider swarm because I was the only freaking one who thought to bring acid flasks or alchemist's freaking fire... :smallsigh:

> Most oddly appropriate death: my magus got charmed to the top of a pillar, coup-de-graced, and then thrown off by a harpy. thing is, it was just the last in a long series of failure by that character so having something so anticlimactic kill him was just a fitting end. Helps that I kinda messed up his build.

Aquillion
2014-05-25, 04:29 PM
The stupidest gamer death I ever saw was when I DMed Ragnos, a setting I came up with 4 years ago. In the campaign, my players were at an epic boss battle. One of the players was a cleric, and the other was a spell sword. The spell sword died, and the cleric continued to smite down the wight lord which they were fighting when my player who WAS a spell sword came up with a "tough" dracutar fighter. He blue-clouded into the fight, and died of a fire-ball thrown by my boss. He never said his name, made an action, or was seen by my other players...Did they find his corpse after the battle? What did they make of it?

Lakaz
2014-05-26, 06:23 AM
Okay, let's see...

My first Call Of Cthulhu game, we have a basic haunted-house scenario with a Formless Spawn Of Tsathoggua (A slime monster). We manage to trap it in a basement, and after a long and nasty fight (We were attacking it with vials of acid, which were the only way to hurt it. We hit each other as often as we hit it) it finally seems to lose cohesion and turns into a slime puddle. At which point, PC:1 decides to see if it's really dead by poking it. It comes back to life and starts crawling up his arm, and he screams for help. PC:2 decides the best way to help is to cut off his arm with a knife.
Suffice to say, for the rest of the campaign we referred to PC:1 as "Stumpy". (No, it wasn't a death, but it deserves an honorable mention)

PC:1 again, had the bright idea in a Warhammer 40k campaign to accuse the ship's navigator of heresy and kill him, before realising we were STILL IN THE WARP.

Different PC but the same party... "I jump into the rift in space-time!".
In a similar vein, "I charge at the Slenderman with a Katana"

Will post more as i remember them

DM Nate
2014-05-26, 06:24 AM
Did they find his corpse after the battle? What did they make of it?

A marionette.

The Random NPC
2014-05-26, 09:15 PM
I was playing a Ninja, and we were exploring some kind of dungeon. Because Alchemist fires were expensive, I decided to outfit my character with bottles of oil and tindertwigs, 50 to be exact. We come across a stone dragon's head that has some script in Draconic above it. I, knowing Draconic, say that I read it out loud in Common. My GM miss-hears me and, thinking I read it in Draconic, has the fountain activate, pouring out a glowing reddish orange liquid. Once I clarified that I was translating the script, my GM tells us it has something to do with fire (I forget the exact wording). Our party fighter had dumped Int and decided to put the torch into the liquid. As it turns out, the liquid was a draught of fires breath, and would work as a fire trap if lit. 4 reflex saves and 1d4+7 damage later, everyone is laughing at the fighter's stupidity until they realize that I have 50 bottles of oil, and that they only have 1 hp with 3 points of hardness. Even if the dice rolled all 1's they would all break, and catch on fire. 100d6 later all that's left is a pile of ash and a very guilt ridden fighter.

Erik Vale
2014-05-27, 03:35 AM
...
You mean the ninja chose to pull the suicide trick before learning evasion? :smalltongue:

More seriously though, I thought attended objects [like bottles on your person] only got damaged if you rolled a nat 1 on your save. :smallconfused:

Contribution:
New player joining older group [me] in Heroes... Effectively a 5th level or so joining some 8-12s, I was a rouge that could turn invisible which was cool, intended to play it smart.
Unfortunately I get stuck in close quaters with the others fighting the BBEG in a tight corridor, he lops off my arm,but I'm not dead yet.
Being new and figuring 'I can reroll', I charge the 'totally not samari in robes' who has some ludicrous speed, and effectively get killed on a AOO with a stab through the chest in my leaping attack...

Given that I prayed to the goddess of luck, I was aiming for his weapon, and the amount of overkill, the DM rules that the BBEG's stupid sharp katana [because katana] get's dropped with me still on it given my whole wait landing on the guy's arm, and he get's killed two phases [rounds] later, with me being dragged to the edge of the battle... And the party beatstick is absolutely hating that his magical sword got cut in half, because ultrasharp katana and heroes rules...

I'm lucky enough to get resurrected by the parties necromancer.

The Random NPC
2014-05-27, 03:42 AM
...
You mean the ninja chose to pull the suicide trick before learning evasion? :smalltongue:

More seriously though, I thought attended objects [like bottles on your person] only got damaged if you rolled a nat 1 on your save. :smallconfused:

We were young and not fully acquainted with the rules. By the time we had discovered that tidbit, about 5 sessions had passed. Of course it didn't help that I had described my character as wearing a rope bandolier of oils.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-27, 06:16 AM
Of course it didn't help that I had described my character as wearing a rope bandolier of oils.

The surest way to have your weaknesses exploited is to state them aloud and in a memorable fashion.

Sith_Happens
2014-05-28, 01:56 AM
PC:1 again, had the bright idea in a Warhammer 40k campaign to accuse the ship's navigator of heresy and kill him, before realising we were STILL IN THE WARP.

I think this guy wins the thread.

chainer1216
2014-05-28, 02:21 AM
One of my PCs decided the he need some pocket money, and that pickpocketing the extremely organized and notibly heavy handed town guards is a good idea. One bad sleight of hand roll and a short chase scene later we have 2 dead PCs because he dragged someone else into it.

Yael
2014-05-28, 02:42 AM
CoCthulhu D&D35 game.

DM: You find a pool of a ooze-like fluid, it's coming out from the ground and it looks green.

Druid: I take out a fruit and throw it at the pool.

DM: When it fells, it does not splash, also it grows a tentacle at one side and an eye at the other, it sinks slowly on the liquid.

Druid: I put my hand into the liquid.

DM: Uh... Okay? Roll Fort.

Druid: *rolls a 4, he's level 1st, and not that high of CON*

DM: Well, you fail and your hand starts to hurt bad. It becomes greenish, and oozeish.

Druid: Oh, okay, I jump into the pool.

Party: What? You crazy? WTH?

Druid: I just did, okay? What happens? I'm curious.

DM: Well... Roll Fort, you have -4.

Druid: *rolls natural 1*

DM: Well, even while not quite dead, you transform into an aberration, your body shapes and it hurts like hell, then you pass out. When you wake up, you're an Illithid, congrats, you'll have to take a hell of RHDs and a massive LA that won't let you advance in quite a while, also, being a Druid who hated aberrations (and had the work to kill them all), you get suicidal thoughs.

Druid: I follow those thoughs... *Player gets out of the room*

DM: Whose turn is next?

Aquillion
2014-05-28, 07:22 AM
I don't think it counts if the player is clearly not taking the game seriously; I don't see how that could be a case of anything else.

jqavins
2014-05-28, 07:40 AM
We were young and not fully acquainted with the rules. By the time we had discovered that tidbit, about 5 sessions had passed. Of course it didn't help that I had described my character as wearing a rope bandolier of oils.
OK, another bandolier story. This one happened to a friend of mine before we met, but he tells it so well I feel like I was there. His character also liked using lots of burning oil flasks. He made grenades - oil flasks with wicks and wax seals - and at the start of combat he would plant a torch then step in front of it; this let him take a bottle from his bandoliers (two of them, crossed like a bandito in a cheesey western) grip the wick in his teeth give a yank to break the seal, reach back to simultaneously light the wick and wind up, then pitch the grenade. His battle cry was "Roasty Toasty!"

So, you all see where this is going. One day he opens a door and comes face to snout with a small red dragon (this was 1st ed. AD&D, so there were small dragons) which breaths on him. The DM demanded his character sheet, and burned it.

This occured more than 30 years ago, but a cry of "Roasty Toasty!" in the right circumstance can still get a laugh from him (and me.)

Honorable mention for the frequently clueless member of my own (otherwise) elite group from similarly long ago. We were reasonably high level, and one day found ourselves suddenly surrounded by a very large number of weak monsters, goblins or something. So our guy announces "I fireball then."

The rest of us start to say something, but staying in character we would have no chance to, so we shut our mouths.

"Which ones?" asks the DM.

"All of them!" says our guy.

"You're surrounded; are you sure you want to fireball all of them?"

The rest of us bite our collective tongue. "Yes, all of them, Mr. Adams*"

No one died, but we lost about half of our assorted magic items, mostly lots of scrolls and potions but a few permanent ones too.

* Not the DM's real name.

Flashy
2014-05-28, 08:23 AM
The stupidest PC death story I have is an absolutely idiotic TPK for which I was entirely responsible.

We were all still first level and had just barely managed to escape a dungeon we had been forced to go through with limited equipment. It was actually a great adventure, a really good start to our little party's journey, but while we were trying to make it back to civilization we ran out of food. Obviously we started making survival checks since it was that or starve. The wizard's went fine, the cleric's went fine, the fighter's went fine, so we were feeling pretty confident. The only person who still had to make a survival check was me, the ranger. Easy money, right? I crit failed the check. Everyone laughed and joked and made fun of me, and the DM decided to roll on the random encounter table. It seemed like a fun, silly little foible. We wound up with wolves. Not even that many wolves, like three. And then we realized that we hadn't rested since we came out of the dungeon, we had almost no equipment, and there was no way to run. The casters had no spells, we had two shortswords and a dagger between the four of us and when I tried a wild empathy check I crit failed it again.

And that's how the ranger got his entire party eaten by wolves in the middle of nowhere.

HighWater
2014-05-28, 09:35 AM
And that's how the ranger got his entire party eaten by wolves in the middle of nowhere.

Well, technically the "critical fumbles on skills checks" (or on anything really), killed the party, with your very unlucky d20 as an accomplice. ;)

prufock
2014-05-28, 10:33 AM
Last Halloween I ran a "Tomb of Horrors" - not the actual module, but an original dungeon with some of the same elements, but more based on the Saw franchise. Still deadly, still ridiculous. Anyway, they come to a room with paintings of creatures holding different coloured orbs. There had been other adventurers through the dungeon, as evidenced by corpses at various points and left-behind equipment. Some of the adventurers had labeled the orbs. One was labeled "DEATH!!!!!"

One of my PCs decided to poke her head inside to see what was in there. I gave her a saving throw. Failed.

To be fair, sometimes in this dungeon the obvious answers were red herrings and vice versa, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. She just figured that it was to throw them off the right trail or to hide good loot or something.

Braininthejar2
2014-05-28, 02:14 PM
Not the stupidest there but one of the weirdest. My GM once had a player who had a long history of being killed by his groups. Whether scheming behind their backs, doing the one thing they were told not to do or causing near-tpk through random stupidity, he would always attract their collective wrath.

In one case, the party, running an adventure around epic-equivalent, found out that he was scheming behind their backs in order to steal some divine power for himself. Having discovered his betrayal, they informed the powerful NPC they were working for and discussed his punishment.

Turns out the NPC was powerful indeed and the players were creative. They decided that if the guy wanted so badly to be among gods, they could get him married to one at least.

So they left him in a grassy meadow, baleful-polymorphed into a mantis, along with a female mantis they had invested with enough power to give it divine rank 0.

Sith_Happens
2014-05-28, 07:57 PM
Turns out the NPC was powerful indeed and the players were creative. They decided that if the guy wanted so badly to be among gods, they could get him married to one at least.

So they left him in a grassy meadow, baleful-polymorphed into a mantis, along with a female mantis they had invested with enough power to give it divine rank 0.

Wow, that sounds like something that would happen to a fairy tale villain.

2D.
2014-05-29, 12:05 AM
I'm not sure how original this is, but I was in one campaign where our fighter jumped into a deep lake wearing heavy armor. Come to think of it, I forget why they did that. This was from years ago.

Worgwood
2014-05-29, 03:57 AM
In a text-based game I was in, we had five people pursuing three different story threads with the ultimate goal of them all tying in before the end of our first adventure. It was actually working really well, too, with everyone's stories revolving around finding and defeating a death cult. Since we were had separate chatrooms, we didn't get to see much of the other player's action, but we were allowed to talk about it OOC if we wanted.

The party rogue and my ranger, both CN, cornered a prominent member of the death cult in the shipyards. We'd been hired anonymously by the court of nobles to dismantle the cult and she was our best lead.

Another player's LG paladin, a church inquisitor who was chasing the same lead, stumbled across us in the act. Since the cultist was mostly helpless and we were obviously about to apply the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique he leaped to the assumption that we were cultists. Weapons were drawn and threats were made.

Neither of us wanted to fight him and we couldn't let the cultist go, so the rogue slit the cultist's throat and rolled her into the river. She was dressed in armor and sank like a stone. (Note: we had a houserule in play that said you can only perform a resurrection within a fifteen minute window after death. After that, the soul moves on permanently.)

The paladin decides that her safety comes before delivering justice, and is about to run to get help when my ranger points out that the paladin's armor will slow him down too much. He's not going to be able to have her fished out of the water and have the resurrection ceremony performed in time. This leads to a heated in-character argument about the restrictiveness of plate armor which only ends when the rogue pulls out his pocket watch and says:

"That's fifteen minutes. Let's go."

We immediately skedaddle and the paladin makes a split-second decision to jump in after the cultist, still dressed in full plate armor. He never resurfaced and we were soon introduced to a milder cleric who had inherited the paladin's notes and journals.

TL;DR: Paladin spent too long arguing to get help and drowned himself trying to save a major villain.

Lakaz
2014-06-06, 07:04 PM
This one was relayed to me through a friend, not one of mine unfortunately.
So they were running a Call Of Cthulhu campaign a few years back, and they were a few sessions in, investigating the evil cultist (As you do), and one of the usual party members, let's call him "Fred", couldn't show up to the session today. He said to have the IC reason for this be that his character had been put in the local mental hospital after trauma suffered the previous session.
Okay, the group figures, we'll continue on without him.
So they get on with the session, where they investigate the cult further and find out that it has a base on the mental hospital. Their response is obvious: Block all the exits, and then BURN IT TO THE GROUND! Won't have those cultists attacking US any time soon! So they go forward with the plan, and hear banging on the locked doors, and clawing at the windows as smoke streams out and the cultists try to escape, which ultimately stops as they choke/burn to death, and the session ends with that base of the cult wiped out.
Then somebody suddenly says "Hey guys? Wasn't Fred in there?"
Suffice to say, explaining things to him the next day was not a job any of them relished.

Fredaintdead
2014-06-06, 08:27 PM
Let me tell you the tale of Ed [or at least, his first character in the current game I'm playing in. He's chewed through three so far.]
The game: AD&D 2e
Ed was playing an Elven Ranger, which due to Warrior HD, made him one of the beefier members of the party, and he'd been doing okay in combat. Nothing special, but not dropping every fight and never really needing rescuing/focused healing.
The situation: We're 60ft up in the air on a floating platform, fighting 4 elementals [one of each type] that are keyed to four pillars. Killing an elemental releases the barrier around one of the pillars, which reveals an enemy Wizard. Killing all four of these wizards releases the barrier on the central pillar, where there is a final Wizard. Killing the 5th Wizard destroys the platform. So, the Warriors of the group [which included myself and Ed among others] get stuck in. I take on the Earth Elemental and start beating the daylights out of it with a claymore. Ed tangoes with the Fire Elemental, and gets burnt up pretty bad. He's getting healing though so he's fine... until he gets set on fire. This is where things get fun. The DM informs him that if he could get to the Water Elemental, he could put himself out and not die, but unfortunately for Ed, the fire elemental is in the way. Rather than move round the fire elemental, or leap over it [which he could've done quite easily due to being an Elf and the elemental being fairly short], he decided that, given that he was already on fire, he would dive right through the Fire Elemental.

Yes, you read that right. He ran through the Fire Elemental. Charred himself to a crisp. And if that didn't kill him, well, the 60ft fall that happened when we broke the platform would have. I like to describe his logic with the following: "I have already been shot, therefore I am now immune to bullets."

Notes:
Ed's second character [a Human Archer] lasted exactly one session. Mauled by Werewolves because he decided to continue firing when they got into swiping range of him rather than retreat.
Ed was absent from a few weeks of sessions [we have 2 a week due to having 10 players], and came back last session with his third character, a human Cleric/Fighter... he managed to permanently die in the one portion of the campaign where it was meant to guaranteed that you would come back.

Angelalex242
2014-06-07, 03:42 AM
For some people, you gotta go big, or go home. For some people, it's not enough to simply kill your character, or even the whole party. For some, you gotta leave the entire campaign world in a post apocalyptic mess.

A 'council of Wyrms' style 2E campaign, Half Gold Dragon Paladin with Gold Dragon Mount. (They were even related!). Anyways, they're underground, told to exterminate some ogres underground and rescue the king's advisor. Well, they find the ogres underground, in a magical lab. There's pockets of explosive gas the player didn't know about.

He and his gold dragon breathe a 'combination flame', a special super breath weapon that takes the damage of the half gold and the full gold and doubles it by combining their breath weapon. The GM rolls a saving throw for the structure of the dungeon. He rolls a 1.

The entire kingdom the Paladin worked for save the King's castle was annihilated in an explosive nuke that left the whole realm a big smoking crater with no living things in it whatever. The King's tax base was thoroughly destroyed. One of his own Paladins had just done more damage to the Kingdom then every evil character that had ever attacked it in its history. The evil characters of the next kingdom over were actually jealous of the destruction the Paladin called. They were saying 'damn, it should've been me that did that.' But most of them just laughed their asses off at 'evil must triumph because good is DUMB!' Or at least, in that case, evil must triumph because nobody told the player that breathing fire underground could cause an Apocalypse.

Eventually, the whole party save the Paladin was resurrected by the King. The Paladin, after an error like that, opted to stay dead. After all, it is still the rule back in 2E that a character need not accept resurrection when it was offered. The angered members of the kingdom had a wizard animate dead his corpse to take their frustrations out on, and his family had their possessions stripped and were exiled on pain of death from the kingdom. Or, what was left of the kingdom, anyway. The DM refused to use wishes to fix the problem, and ran the campaign as post apocalyptic after that, in a 2300 AD Chrono Trigger style. The player, looking sheepish, just kinda sat there going, "I didn't KNOW that was going to happen!" He didn't bother rolling up a new character that day, and kinda sat there in shock for the rest of the session. He couldn't believe that had happened.

The saddest part was, he didn't even violate his ethos, really. He was intending to breathe fire at clumped up ogres to reduce the damage done to the rest of his teammates. Accidents, even catastrophic accidents, aren't actually evil, or even chaotic. The other players yelled at the guy, but he just said, "Well, none of YOU told me not to do it! Had I been warned of the danger, I wouldn't have done that."

DM Nate
2014-06-07, 07:34 AM
That was one fail DM. A single dice roll, with no informed consent from any player, destroys the entire party AND the campaign world? Someone should have taken his pencil away right there.

Erik Vale
2014-06-07, 09:40 AM
It does... And it kinda makes you wonder if the DM wanted to change the campaign around like that.

jqavins
2014-06-09, 08:08 AM
I like to describe his logic with the following: "I have already been shot, therefore I am now immune to bullets."Sure, that makes sense. Bullets are like the chicken pox virus, aren't they?

Aquillion
2014-06-09, 05:10 PM
This one was relayed to me through a friend, not one of mine unfortunately.
So they were running a Call Of Cthulhu campaign a few years back, and they were a few sessions in, investigating the evil cultist (As you do), and one of the usual party members, let's call him "Fred", couldn't show up to the session today. He said to have the IC reason for this be that his character had been put in the local mental hospital after trauma suffered the previous session.
Okay, the group figures, we'll continue on without him.
So they get on with the session, where they investigate the cult further and find out that it has a base on the mental hospital. Their response is obvious: Block all the exits, and then BURN IT TO THE GROUND! Won't have those cultists attacking US any time soon! So they go forward with the plan, and hear banging on the locked doors, and clawing at the windows as smoke streams out and the cultists try to escape, which ultimately stops as they choke/burn to death, and the session ends with that base of the cult wiped out.
Then somebody suddenly says "Hey guys? Wasn't Fred in there?"
Suffice to say, explaining things to him the next day was not a job any of them relished.If I were running that game, I'd give him the option to do a short solo adventure explaining how his character escapes, or to simply have them off the grounds for whatever reason when it happened. Killing someone's character offscreen isn't really very fun, even in a lethal game like CoC!

Corwyn77
2014-06-09, 08:11 PM
I have two as GM:

The Greatest Archer who ever died.

An honest to God, Weaponmaster "Robin Hood was an amateur" archer, when confronting a mage was the only one who could see him. He took a shot, the arrow bounced back and winged the archer (Reverse Missile, minimum damage).

The archer asked himself, "Is he a better mage than I am an archer?" So, of course, he shot the mage again! It reflected back again, this time I gave him a dodge which he failed. Max damage, died on the spot.

Ep. 2. Same archer some time earlier, tracking an (undead) wyvern. The group sets up a camp as bait and waits. Sure enough, the Wyvern shows. The archer, the group's tactical leader (honest, in spite of these two inexplicable incidents) has given explicit instructions NOT to engage unless attacked. The plan is to follow it to it's lair and attack on the ground.

So everyone holds their breath, half expecting the impulsive rogue to attack, it's going, going...Then the archer shoots it. Everyone stares at him, confused, as the Wyvern turns, charges the archer and grapples him. Not able to use his bow or draw a weapon, head butts the beast. One crit failure later, an unconscious archer is carried away.

As it turns out, it was a pretty lucky thing since the Wyvern had no need to venom the victim so he was healthy-ish for a rescue attempt. :) Okay, he didn't die, but not for lack of trying.

Savage Worlds, 50 Fathoms game for those in the know.

PCs are privateers, engaging in a boarding party. Most of the party is involved in melee, supported by allied ship's crew. The pc in question, Ugly John, is figthing two pirate mooks when two crewmates shoot at the pirates. First one fires, critical miss, hits John, damages him. He soaks the damage (Vigor roll to mitigate damage) and he's fine. Second guy shoots, crit misses, hits John (what are the odds?), rolls an obscene amount of damage, John dies on the spot.

What makes it a really stupid death is that I had a house rule capping damage from bad guy mooks but I didn't really want to hamper their allies in that way.

YossarianLives
2014-06-09, 09:12 PM
Our 2nd level party had stopped in some generic tavern in a forest one night. In the corner was a big intimidating burly warrior guy in the corner along with a couple of equally burly cronies. Anyway our psion (who had 7 hit points) walked up to the big warrior guy and started insulting his manliness and challenged him to a fist fight.
(The rest of the party was face-palming the entire time)


Suffice to say the psion was sent flying throw the window by the warriors greatsword and was killed instantly.

Actually it wasn't so bad because we all disliked the player and his character.

DM Nate
2014-06-10, 11:06 AM
Those characters have remarkably different definitions of "fist fight."

Slipperychicken
2014-06-10, 06:18 PM
\
PCs are privateers, engaging in a boarding party. Most of the party is involved in melee, supported by allied ship's crew. The pc in question, Ugly John, is figthing two pirate mooks when two crewmates shoot at the pirates. First one fires, critical miss, hits John, damages him. He soaks the damage (Vigor roll to mitigate damage) and he's fine. Second guy shoots, crit misses, hits John (what are the odds?), rolls an obscene amount of damage, John dies on the spot.

What makes it a really stupid death is that I had a house rule capping damage from bad guy mooks but I didn't really want to hamper their allies in that way.

To be fair, what do you expect from shooting into such a melee?

FidgetySquirrel
2014-06-10, 06:26 PM
Once, a character of mine died. My brother, whose character had earned a favor from some kind of weird, magical critter, decided to trade his life for mine. So... he died, and I was resurrected... in HIS body! I retained my inferior mental stats, gained his inferior physical stats, and got stuck with his equipment, which was useless to my build. It was one of the dumbest things I ever witnessed.

Worst of all, it ended the campaign, because my brother's character was somehow necessary to defeat the BBEG!

GPuzzle
2014-06-10, 06:28 PM
The team was split into two groups, and one of the groups had the only people who could drive properly without crashing.

The other team hired a driver to fullfill the mission for them.

Driver is shot during street chase.

Jack, which is a total Knife Nut, decides to take over the wheel.

Jack hits a petrol truck, loses control, and the knockback throws him out of the car, landing on the ground, really hurt.

Robin and Thomas try to control the van, before being cornered, and turning around in the Highway.

Jack tries to convince the chasers that if they shoot him, they'll kill themselves (Jack had the ability to make himself insubstantial for a few moments)

Thomas finally messes up the driving, goes off the Highway and back to the road they were.

Thomas and Robin get away from the car.

Car goes towards Jack.

Jack fails to listen to the car coming.

Jack dies.

Deaxsa
2014-06-12, 01:46 PM
I know a guy who always thinks his character is immortal. He will throw himself at literally anything, and never realizes the consequences:

1. His first character was a big combat brute. While shopping in a town controlled by numrous gangs, the party gets into a fight right in front of some gang's HQ. As the party fights on, they realize more and more people are streaming out of the building as they realize what's happening. One of the Enemies, who was at like 3 hp, runs back inside the building to avoid getting killed. This character charges after the npc into the HQ, after basically everyone tells him he's gonna die. And yet he still does it. surprise, surprise, he dies.

2. For his second character, this guy basically copied his build from the first character with some minor modifications. While sailing about on the high seas, the party is attacked by a galley full of pirates. Now, it was made clear that the only thing the galley had was a boatload of pirates and a single ballista. Additionally, the galley's deck was much lower than the PC's, so the pirates would have to climb on, and all the PCs would have to do is poke them off and find some way to deal with the ballista. This character's favored course of action? Jump on the ship SWARMING with pirates

3. Next, he made a character similar to the first two. at this point, we were getting a bit tired of seeing the same character again and again, but we went along with it. So, this time, we were in town, trying to do a bit of spying and sneaking around, as well as trying to assassinate a judge. As we progress through our subterfuge, this guy, who has a penchant for rash action, takes an action that gets him arrested. Fast forward a bit, and we're in a courthouse, where a CLEARLY rigged trial is going down. While in the audience, we work out a plan to get out alive, which consists of our cleric casting fog cloud in the building to provide concealment, and our psion repeatedly blasting the wall with AOE sonic damage to create an escape route. It starts without a hitch. The cleric casts his spell, the psion starts blowing the building to bits, and everyone sees what's happening. What does the unarmed, unarmored man on trial do? Why, he jumps out of his seat, charges the wall (while chained), and starts punching it to help out. Now this normally wouldn't be terrible, but our the wall was not in the fog cloud. And he was in our psion's AOE. Needless to say, a combination of guards and fort saves for half damage brought him down in 2 or 3 rounds (yes, he stayed there after having taken damage).

4. The next character went against the flow of the previous three, this one was a Dark Hengeyokai Psion. Now, the idea was to become a little sparrow and basically be a pocketwizard with lots of stealth as well as flight and super-high dex. This time, we were on the high seas again, only the roles were reversed, and we were trying to hunt some people down, not avoid being hunted. Now, we were chasing them down, but it pretty much got to the point where our ship was just following them at their speed, and there was little we could do about it. So we formulated a plan. Our Sparrow-Psion would fly over, disable/slow the ship, and then return to us so that the entire party could attack them while they were trying to repair damage. We (the rest of the party) pointed out that a sparrow flying around in the middle of the day, in the middle of the ocean, meant that not only would he be easy to see, he would be a giant red flag that something funky was going on. So we instructed him to stick to the plan so that he would not get hurt. Lo and behold, he flies over there, and starts trying to take on the entire ship by himself. Fortunately, they had no one who could cast spells, so he was dodging crossbow bolts left and right, and actually managed to survive a good while, but then he took a crit. And then another. (Not that we were upset to hear this, he basically forced the rest of the party to sit and watch for a half hour.) He was in the negatives, hidden in a dark spot on the deck of the enemy ship when our party finally caught up. Sticking to the mission, we began our assault. the rangers were shooting, the pilot was piloting, the paladin was enjoying the wonders of a dragonnel mount, and... the psion was blasting. Now, normally, this would not be a problem, but when you don't know that there is a sparrow from the shadow plane, hiding in a shadow in your AOE (and can't afford to go looking for them, because giant fight and EXTREMELY morally ambiguous character who was actively stealing the psion's role despite being asked/warned against it)... well, that character died too.

5. The most recent character is a tentacle-monster of crazy, and is actually the sanest of all of them. We've only played one session together, but i have high hopes for this character.

Aaand those are my stories of silly/useless/avoidable deaths, all by the same guy. all in the same campaign. In the space of about... 8 weeks of play (longer than that, because we can't meet every week, but still).

TheFamilarRaven
2014-06-12, 02:21 PM
I have one from campaign I am current;y DMing.

So the party is in an old and abandoned cathedral/tomb to an evil deity. Fun times. I say cathedral/tomb because, although the primary function of the building was a cathedral, many of its former priests were preserved inside sarcophagi, which was great for me, cause it allowed for a reasonable opportunity and explanation for random loot.

Now I know what your thinking, the PC in question was too greedy and got killed but one of the priests who reanimated behind him. WRONG! He was actually OVERLY cautious dealing with them, (although I never really planned on that sort of cliche trap) and he decapitated each entombed priest. However, there WERE traps on the tombs. They were, without fail, all rigged with a Cloud Kill trap. All of them, no exceptions. So it came as a surprise when he dropped all caution with one tomb in particular.

At one point the PC in question went ahead of the group into another room. The sarcophagus was on the north side of a 10X30 room. 15ft in front of the sarcophagus is an illusionary floor that covers 10x10 ft, disguising a pit trap with spikes. Needless to say, he falls in and takes damage. The rest of the party arrive and hoist him out. He then jumps across, which was fairy difficult (seeing as though he's wearing full plate), and makes it, thanks to his many ranks in jump and a running start. He then opens the sarcophagus, which of course releases a cloud kill spell. He takes the CON damage, tries to jump back, but there's not enough room for a running start. He falls into the pit, takes more damage, the the Cloud Kill spell rolls in a finishes him off. Everyone just kinda stares at his corpse for awhile before looting it, and stuffing into his own bag of holding for later resurrection.

I believe he told me that his reasoning was, that since THIS sarcophagus was protected by a pit trap, there couldn't POSSIBLY be the same trap as all the other ones. Yeah....

Madara
2014-06-13, 03:39 PM
Barbarian runs into a room, trips a trap and gets knocked into a pit, falling to his death.

sometimes, you need to heal between rooms. Max fall damage is OP

Slipperychicken
2014-06-13, 05:49 PM
Barbarian runs into a room, trips a trap and gets knocked into a pit, falling to his death.

sometimes, you need to heal between rooms. Max fall damage is OP

Sometimes, you also need to let the Rogue go in first :smallbiggrin:

Machpants
2014-06-13, 06:22 PM
A loooooooong time ago, playing 1E at school with just 2 players at the time. One wanted to play an evil PC/campaign the other good (it was all sandbox). I said, fine I am not running a game with two opposite alignment PCs sort it out. They basically fought in the starting town 1v1, making new PCs after each defeat until one got bored enough to go a similar alignment to the other. Bloody teenagers!

Angelalex242
2014-06-15, 12:03 AM
I was playing a 1st level Half Celestial in a 5th level party.

The GM sent wights after the party. He specifically added the Wights had surprise and I couldn't fly or put my protection from evil up, and I was flat footed too. They didn't do enough damage to overcome my damage reduction...but they didn't need to. Energy drain penetrated DR.

And so the half celestial died in a random encounter to a surprise attack before I ever rolled a dice. Right down there with rocks fall, you die, really.

DM Nate
2014-06-15, 12:32 AM
I was playing a 1st level Half Celestial in a 5th level party.

The GM sent wights after the party. He specifically added the Wights had surprise and I couldn't fly or put my protection from evil up, and I was flat footed too. They didn't do enough damage to overcome my damage reduction...but they didn't need to. Energy drain penetrated DR.

And so the half celestial died in a random encounter to a surprise attack before I ever rolled a dice. Right down there with rocks fall, you die, really.

That is definitely under "Stupidest PC Death," but not from the PC being stupid. :smallmad:

Lakaz
2014-06-15, 05:33 AM
So one PC, let's call him PC1, had betrayed the main group, and the nation of the main group, and was giving information about their actions to the BBEG at the time, along with helping her out by sabotaging missions and attacking plot-critical NPC's in dark alleyways where the main group can't see. Another of the PC's caught on to this, let's call her PC2, and followed him during one of his attemtps to kidnap a plot-critical NPC and recorded it on a audio recording device (Cameras didn't exist in this setting, but that did).

Anyway, PC1 is skulking around eavesdropping in the back of a bar while the main group are talking, they don't know he's there, and PC2 approaches with the audiorecording device and shows it to the main group. None of them believe her outright, but think it may be best to keep an eye on PC1 just to be sure. What does PC1 do? Does he slip away quietly and report this to his masters? No. He throws a grenade at the group. In the middle of a crowded bar. In the capital city of the hyper-millitaristic race.
PC's survive with nasty injuries, guards are called, and PC1 makes a break for it, is surrounded, and summarily excecuted for his crimes against the state.

The sad bit was, that was by a significant margin his least stupid character, and that was basically the only REALLY stupid thing he'd done. Unlike the avatar of chaotic stupid that was his next character (Also excecuted, i might add, although that one wasn't his fault so far as i know)

Togath
2014-06-15, 09:16 AM
One in the campaign I'm running;
The party's warforged knight/crusader ended up attacking the villain the party was trying to negotiate with, a very powerful wizard, focused on golem crafting and necromancy.
Now neither me nor the rest of the party expected this for two reason; first, they'd come to him for information on another villain. Second; he actually was going to help them against a worse villain. Third(three reasons I suppose :3 ); he had one of his strongest golems beside him.

He did actually manage to fair pretty well, nearly felling the golem(2hp remaining) before he was overpowered... Though it didn't help that the rest of the party sealed him in the room with it as they fled.
They eventually found his plating being displayed like a set of armour in the entrance hall of the wizard's lab when they returned after managing a truce with him(only to break it when they decided to help his daughter who he'd sent them to find, and who was the above mentioned "worse villain", and who had at one point tried to kill them with a horde of zombies and a vampiric werewolf after derailing the train they were on[the zombies were the other passengers]. She did admittedly [was tricked to, to clarify]think she was doing those things "for the greater good".. but still..).

Erik Vale
2014-06-15, 11:16 AM
Well you de-railed the tracks first, after all.