Hiding yourself from your party

[A.A.King]

What would you say is the biggest character aspect you lied about to your party?

When I say lying to the party I also mean OOC. Like: Actively pretending your Barbarian was a Wizard (I'm sure we all know that one)

Personally I like the idea of playing an Elf Rogue who pretends to the world that he is in fact a human by wearing a fake beard and hiding the ears. Or to play a Tibbit with a hireling who then pretends to be the strong animal companion of the hireling. Ofcourse the last one works best if the party OOC doesn't know Tibbits exist (keeps them guessing longer) and both only really work if the DM is in on it.

So, what mechanic of your character did you keep secret and how did it go (or how is it going)?

[Sir Chuckles]

In character? Not too difficult, depending on the character.

OOC? That's subjective. It depends on both you and your group's system knowledge. In my my group, I have the greatest knowledge of all the fiddly bits, monsters, classes, and all the jazz. When I'm not the DM, I have to hold my tongue, because I've only been wrong on knowing the enemy's race, class, and specific equipment once. That's when I mistook a Bear for a Druid, when it was a Bear Warrior. In return, I can make a Goblin Healer appear to be a Kobold Planar Druid, and my players would never figure it out. Yes, I have done that. It was fun.

I love the "I am not left-handed" trope.
The favorite one I've done is my Neanderthal Barbarian 2/Wizard 5/Rage Mage 7. Until they noticed that I was a walking, and very angry, thunderstorm, they assumed I was a oddly observant Neanderthal Barbarian who spent his WBL on a lot of potions.

[jedipotter]

What would you say is the biggest character aspect you lied about to your party?

and both only really work if the DM is in on it.

So, what mechanic of your character did you keep secret and how did it go (or how is it going)?


As DM, I hate it when a player lies and keeps secrets OOC from the DM. This is one of the ''you will be asked to leave the game(and my house) immediately'' type things. And chances are you won't be coming back. It is just so annoying when the ''3rd level barbarian suddenly casts a 10D6 fire ball''. Sure the player laughs with glee ''Ha, ha, you did not know my character was a 10th level wizard'', but it often ruins the game for everyone else. Or when the player hides their character's hit points and always ''have a couple left''. And so on. Keeping a secret from the DM is cheating in my game.


But I'm all for a player hiding things from other players, and not just the character hiding things from other characters. As DM, I wont tell the players anything more about the other player's characters then the character knows. If the player wishes to have their character tell anything, or if the player wants to tell things OOC, that is fine with me.

My long running favorite was Suki, she was a female raskata(cat-humanoid), with a STR of 18 and a big, bulky fighter type. And she was a fighter, like fighter 2. In reality she was a necromancer, like wizard(necromancer) 5. She almost never cast a spell in public, and just about always fought as a fighter. She used her spells in secret, using things like still spell and silent spell and making potions and oils. She would often drink a potion of false life or ghoul touch for a fight. Dozens of other players never had any idea she was a spellcaster at all. In all the years we gamed, only a handful of people ever knew.

[Alex12]

One of the many things I've been sorely tempted to do was make a Warmage that pretended he was a Fighter with some ranks in UMD.

[Pex]

While not as bad as stealing from party members, hiding stuff from party members has the potential to lead to trouble. It is subjective and certainly not automatic. It relates to the Lone Wolf thread. Why are you with the party if you need to keep secrets from them? There's no need to keep game mechanics secret. It's important for everyone to know what everybody can do for tactics planning. Even at character creation players want to know what class everyone wants to play so that there's variety and to cover the basics of tank, skills, control, and support.

Story roleplaying, that has more leeway. Even in real life your friends don't necessarily know everything about you. Some things are just private. You can have that with the DM which may or may not eventually become a plot hook. Secretly being a spy for the BBEG, that's a whole other mess the DM is at fault with as well I won't get into. Having a private story helps to relate to your character, a motivation in how to play him.

Personally I never had such a secret until my current character of a Life Oracle. The players know my human oracle was orphaned and raised by orcs. What they don't know is why my character eventually left the orcs. There was this one orc who loathed my human character being in the tribe. My character had an affair with his mate who gave birth to a half-orc son. The orc Chief liked me well enough, but he could not deny that orc's right of vengeance. My adoptive father and brother helped me to escape the camp and lose myself into human society. There's no particular reason why I've kept this a secret from the party. It's just a personal, private thing.

[Deathra13]

Main thing I end up hiding is alignment. I love playing LE with a strict code. Somehow always end up with someone playing a paladin. Its actually worked out pretty well most times. Never tried the whole pretend to be a different class thing, honestly wonder what the appeal is? Also have to agree with the earlier point about hiding things from a dm, its kind of hard to fairly arbitrate combat without appropriate info.

[Eldest]

This is one idea I've done a few times over. Instances include a woman crossdressing, a succubus who was a paladin simply not mentioning she was a succubus (she stayed in human form), and a tibbit thrallherd being the familiar of the wizard thrall.

[A.A.King]

To those saying that it's bad to keep secrets from the DM, I agree. What I ment with "only works if the DM is in on it" that these things only work if the DM helps you keep the secret. That way you can create codewords for casting spells when you are pretending to not be a spellcaster

[Necroticplague]

One time, I was playing in the party as the primary caster. Because I had turn undead, they all assumed I was a cleric, especially since I healed them in the downtime. Then, one of them noticed that I never prepared my spells, and called me out on it. My only response is "when did I say i was a cleric?". The 'higher power' was the beings required for the rainbow servant prestige class. Reality was, I was a dread necromancer focused on making his spell list as expansive as possible. Knowstones,rainbow servant, prestige ranger, sandshaper, oneiromancery, mother cyst, cerebrosis, ect.

[ArendK]

The one time I really "hid" something from my team was a gestalt changeling fighter/rogue in Eberron;

The character was a bastard son to House Deneith, and was raised outside Cyre with a retired member of the family who taught him how to fight. Almost entirely the character (his changeling name was Sin, but just went by Cayne ir'Deneith) was in his human form.

The GM was in on it, and just to keep nosy players out and away from my character sheet, he said human on the sheet. When players would analyze my sheet, I had an extra feat (Dodge or something very situational and not immediately or useful) written down that the GM knew I didn't actually have and I never tried to 'use.' Skill points, this being 3.5, no one tried doing the math on that one, so I didn't have to worry about that.

The party got a nice shock when we had to dodge the city watch, and using a Hat of Disguise and the characters natural abilities as a changeling talked my way through the guards to convince them to release as though there was nothing wrong. It was only after the fact and we finished playing through that I revealed that I'd been a changeling the entire time.

[Azoth]

One I did was that my party knew I was the skillmonkey of the group. I handled scouting, traps, locked doors, ect. They thought I was straight rogue, because most of the time I only did mundane stuff infront of them.

I was a Rogue1/wiz5/UnseenSeer10/Sacred Exorcist1/cant remember3 (not in that order).

I used expanded Slight of Hand to hide my invisible spells verbal/somatic components. I had a sack of scrolls, potions, partially charged wands, ect to use mostly as props. Whenever I cast infront of the party the spell was always written on a folded note passed to the DM and he would play off like I was asking a question.

All in all it was fun, and harmless. The party didn't need me to bring down all kinds of rediculous arcane fire power to win the day.

It all hit the fan at one point though. DM misjudged an encounter, and my character had to choose between the lie of being a normal guy and certain death, or reveal his arcane might and save everyone's bacon.

Wizard and Cleric were down in the negatives, melee guy was getting beat to hell by summoned elemental swarms, Ranger couldn't get a clear shot due to hurricane force winds. It was just horrid. Then came the "Oh sh!t" button when i realized the next round was goung to be a TPK.

We managed to live and everyone after the fact just gave me hell for it IC. They got over it prett quickly too. It was mostly things like "You mean to tell me that you could have teleported us to town instead of making us trek for a week through the Desert of yadayada, and then crossing the sea of eternal torture, and scaling mount effthis?!?!"

[Nightraiderx]

I haven't had anything like that, but I do have the opposite: when players hide their plan from the DM until it is too late for them to prepare.
This happened a few weeks ago, PF game playing an old senile dwarf of Todor (so dumb he doesn't even have ranks in religion, just builds trinkets of Todor).
But I digress, the DM went to the bathroom and the players turned to me and said "don't tell the DM but we plan to take over the abandeoned castle to make it our headquarters" at that point I only smiled in agreement, have yet to unleash the plan (haven't met in a while). But we did manage to sneak into the base and due to extreme luck managed to find cannons in one of the upper towers that had no stairs (they were destroyed prior) and all night fire cannon balls on around 100+ Centaur and centaur camps. This was a party of a non-optimized cleric, a ranger, a monk, and a wizard all level 3.

[WeaselGuy]

The only crazy thing similar to this is actually going on in my campaign right now, on 2 fronts no less...

On the one hand, you have my Half Drow Rogue/Beguiler/Unseen Servant/Mindbender/Arcane Trickster (alot, I know) who uses a Hat of Disguise to appear to be a Half Elf, and plays it all off as an extremely smart (almost like she can read your mind!) Rogue, who joined the party to be the resident burgler/trap-finder.

Joining the party at the same time as me (we both died and had to reroll) is a Kobold Sorcerer/Fighter/Abjurant Champion/Eldritch Knight, who carries around a giant book written in Draconic, wears spiked mithril full plate, and swears to the heavens that he's a wizard. He goes so far as to spend about an hour every morning reading his book "preparing his spells".

Our party also consists of a Krynn Minotaur fighter, who exemplifies the concept of "pointy thing goes there/big stupid fighter", a Gnome Swordsage who has the worst schedule in the history of the Army and might make it to 1 session a month, and a Human Monk that actually doesn't suck due to improved trip + knock-down. The Minotaur is trying to save money (and by save, I mean tithe the party's loot) in order to buy a building and set up a Scooby Doo Detective Agency style business. Unfortunately for him, we ransacked the funds while he was out cold in order to get our Human some darkvision shenanigans so he wouldn't completely suck in the Dwarven complex we were diving in to.

[Telonius]

There was a running joke with one of my characters - he was a Shifter who never actually shifted. Since he was a completely shady Rogue, some of the team members started doubting whether he was actually a shifter, or whether that was just an elaborate cover identity.

[Thiyr]

I think my favorite one got undercut in severity due to a bit of player ignorance, but the base idea is a classic. A MtG-based setting. Human wild shape ranger/MoMF. Cheeful, got on well with the party. Also, an extremely identity confused Phyrexian sleeper agent (mechanically a warforged) who's name changed by a letter each session (game via chatroom. Eventually to keep consistent, we called her Isopropanol OOC.). If the players had known any of MtG's history, that would've left them ready to murderize me asap. As it was, only person who found out was more compassionate than anything. Game got put on indefinite hiatus early, but still good times.

[Thorvaldr]

As a player it can be fun to have "something up your sleeve" with the party. But as a DM, I have a simple rule. As the DM I am time and space. To say that I am the one true God of the gods is an understatement, for they know not of my existence. I am the setting, the scenery, and every creature, rock and plant in the world save 5.

So if a player tried to pull a trick on me by telling me that he was a fighter, and then suddenly he's a wizard? No he isn't. He's a fighter with delusions of being a wizard. If a character suddenly has a necklace of fireballs I didn't know about? No they don't, they have a simple necklace.

In general, my players can do whatever they want with their character, and can definitely keep secrets from the group! 3/5 players are doing that right now. But there is no such thing as secrets from the DM. If the DM doesn't know about it, that's because it doesn't exist.

[A.A.King]

I think my favorite one got undercut in severity due to a bit of player ignorance, but the base idea is a classic. A MtG-based setting. Human wild shape ranger/MoMF. Cheeful, got on well with the party. Also, an extremely identity confused Phyrexian sleeper agent (mechanically a warforged) who's name changed by a letter each session (game via chatroom. Eventually to keep consistent, we called her Isopropanol OOC.). If the players had known any of MtG's history, that would've left them ready to murderize me asap. As it was, only person who found out was more compassionate than anything. Game got put on indefinite hiatus early, but still good times.

As someone who knows nothing about MtG (except that it's a card game) I have absolutely no idea why the other people were supposed to kill you....


As a player it can be fun to have "something up your sleeve" with the party. But as a DM, I have a simple rule. As the DM I am time and space. To say that I am the one true God of the gods is an understatement, for they know not of my existence. I am the setting, the scenery, and every creature, rock and plant in the world save 5.

So if a player tried to pull a trick on me by telling me that he was a fighter, and then suddenly he's a wizard? No he isn't. He's a fighter with delusions of being a wizard. If a character suddenly has a necklace of fireballs I didn't know about? No they don't, they have a simple necklace.

In general, my players can do whatever they want with their character, and can definitely keep secrets from the group! 3/5 players are doing that right now. But there is no such thing as secrets from the DM. If the DM doesn't know about it, that's because it doesn't exist.

I agree, I think it's vital that the DM knows the truth about everything otherwise you could just be making things up on the spot. What I meant with DM cooperation was something like this:


The one time I really "hid" something from my team was a gestalt changeling fighter/rogue in Eberron;

The character was a bastard son to House Deneith, and was raised outside Cyre with a retired member of the family who taught him how to fight. Almost entirely the character (his changeling name was Sin, but just went by Cayne ir'Deneith) was in his human form.

The GM was in on it, and just to keep nosy players out and away from my character sheet, he said human on the sheet. When players would analyze my sheet, I had an extra feat (Dodge or something very situational and not immediately or useful) written down that the GM knew I didn't actually have and I never tried to 'use.' Skill points, this being 3.5, no one tried doing the math on that one, so I didn't have to worry about that.

The party got a nice shock when we had to dodge the city watch, and using a Hat of Disguise and the characters natural abilities as a changeling talked my way through the guards to convince them to release as though there was nothing wrong. It was only after the fact and we finished playing through that I revealed that I'd been a changeling the entire time.

This is some great DM help for hiding your true identity. When I thought about DM help I was thinking about code names for spells when playing a wizard who says he is a fighter but to actually put fake info on the sheet just so that the other players can't find out by "accidentally" looking on your sheet is quite nice.

[Pesimismrocks]

We had a blackguard masquerade as a paladin. At least I had an excuse in that my alchemist had a wisdom of 5. Long story short we blew up a city and he became lord emperor of the world

[A.A.King]

We had a blackguard masquerade as a paladin. At least I had an excuse in that my alchemist had a wisdom of 5. Long story short we blew up a city and he became lord emperor of the world

When you say "I had an excuse" does that mean that OOC everyone knew that he was a blackguard but that you only didn't know IC?

[Deathra13]

As someone who knows nothing about MtG (except that it's a card game) I have absolutely no idea why the other people were supposed to kill ...

Phyrexians are basically the grey goo scenario from sci fi mixed with mad scientists. They invade a plane, turn every creature into an undead mechanical monstrosity and use those to continue invading until everything is phyrexian and then when theres nothing useful left in the world they move on.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The premise of one game I played in a few years back could be summed up as "The Avengers, but Evil, and in Eberron." On the surface, the party was your standard band of six eclectic do-gooders that went around Khorvaire righting wrongs and slaying monsters...but in actuality each member of the party was a representative of a different evil faction, all of us working together to undermine Khorvaire for our individual factions using our status as HeroesTM to gain access to things and people that would be otherwise inaccessible to our masters.

We had a DMM:Persist cleric of the Dark Six, a Tiger Claw warblade in House Tarkanan, a skillmonkey bard in the Cabinet of Faces, a debuffer sorcerer serving the Lords of Dust, a conjurer wizard in the Aurum, and myself, a face/assassin for the Order of the Emerald Claw. We all knew that only one of our factions could win in the end, so half the time we spent working together for the Greater Evil and half the time we spent snooping on our teammates, planting spies in each others' retinues, figuring out each others' weaknesses, and so forth. It was lots of fun preparing plans and counter-plans and counter-counter-plans for the inevitable confrontation, and everyone qualified for this thread to some extent.

When the time was right, everyone made their move, using special tactics they'd saved for the occasion. The berserker-like warblade turned out to have taken Moment of Perfect Mind, Mind Over Body, and Wall of Blades, and easily took down the sorcerer when his debuffs failed to have any effect. The clericzilla turned out to have taken a few levels in Master of Shrouds, and was able to out-minion the wizard for the win. The skillmonkey, in turn, had optimized Dragonfire Inspiration to the point where he was able to take down the warblade in two rounds. Finally, the cleric and bard decided to temporarily team up to take me down, since they'd seen I was incredibly lethal against one target and not so good against two...

...at which point they discovered I was not a rogue/assassin working for the Emerald Claw, but a telepath/thrallherd/factotum working for the Dreaming Dark. :smallamused: I'd used my factotum abilities and a few telepath powers to fake being a stealth-optimized skillmonkey, while devoting the bulk of my powers to coopting their followers, rewriting contacts' memories to cover my trail and plant false leads, and so forth. What they thought would be an easy cleanup turned out to be the two of them and their cohorts against all 400-some followers the three of us had, mind seeded into copies of me, with myself and my thralls nowhere to be found. Fortification armor and anti-stealth measures won't protect you against several hundred d10s of mind thrust damage to the face.

As a result of my scheming, Sarlona conquered Khorvaire, Dal Quor came close to Eberron again, Quori manifested throughout Xen'drik and Argonessen to take care of those pesky threats, and everyone lived unhappily ever after. :smallbiggrin:

[A.A.King]

The premise of one game I played in a few years back could be summed up as "The Avengers, but Evil, and in Eberron." On the surface, the party was your standard band of six eclectic do-gooders that went around Khorvaire righting wrongs and slaying monsters...but in actuality each member of the party was a representative of a different evil faction, all of us working together to undermine Khorvaire for our individual factions using our status as HeroesTM to gain access to things and people that would be otherwise inaccessible to our masters.

We had a DMM:Persist cleric of the Dark Six, a Tiger Claw warblade in House Tarkanan, a skillmonkey bard in the Cabinet of Faces, a debuffer sorcerer serving the Lords of Dust, a conjurer wizard in the Aurum, and myself, a face/assassin for the Order of the Emerald Claw. We all knew that only one of our factions could win in the end, so half the time we spent working together for the Greater Evil and half the time we spent snooping on our teammates, planting spies in each others' retinues, figuring out each others' weaknesses, and so forth. It was lots of fun preparing plans and counter-plans and counter-counter-plans for the inevitable confrontation, and everyone qualified for this thread to some extent.

When the time was right, everyone made their move, using special tactics they'd saved for the occasion. The berserker-like warblade turned out to have taken Moment of Perfect Mind, Mind Over Body, and Wall of Blades, and easily took down the sorcerer when his debuffs failed to have any effect. The clericzilla turned out to have taken a few levels in Master of Shrouds, and was able to out-minion the wizard for the win. The skillmonkey, in turn, had optimized Dragonfire Inspiration to the point where he was able to take down the warblade in two rounds. Finally, the cleric and bard decided to temporarily team up to take me down, since they'd seen I was incredibly lethal against one target and not so good against two...

...at which point they discovered I was not a rogue/assassin working for the Emerald Claw, but a telepath/thrallherd/factotum working for the Dreaming Dark. :smallamused: I'd used my factotum abilities and a few telepath powers to fake being a stealth-optimized skillmonkey, while devoting the bulk of my powers to coopting their followers, rewriting contacts' memories to cover my trail and plant false leads, and so forth. What they thought would be an easy cleanup turned out to be the two of them and their cohorts against all 400-some followers the three of us had, mind seeded into copies of me, with myself and my thralls nowhere to be found. Fortification armor and anti-stealth measures won't protect you against several hundred d10s of mind thrust damage to the face.

As a result of my scheming, Sarlona conquered Khorvaire, Dal Quor came close to Eberron again, Quori manifested throughout Xen'drik and Argonessen to take care of those pesky threats, and everyone lived unhappily ever after. :smallbiggrin:

This is great and sounds like an extremely fun though campaign to play (though one that can be very difficult for the DM). I bet half way through everyone was paranoid because everyone was furiously writing secret notes to the DM in which they explained all there current actions that nobody should know xD

[LentilNinja]

I used to play a Rogue in a group (players, not characters) where playing anything that tried to do an evil action would get you bad luck, automatically judged, etc.

So, when I ended up holding onto loot that was meant to be shared but they forgot who had picked it up, I just kept my mouth shut. I waited for the day I went to a store and sold all the good ****, getting all the gold. The DM thankfully ruled that, since enough time passed, just because they remembered now as players didn't mean they remembered as players.

It was good.

[The Grue]

Played the party Rogue in a Pathfinder campaign set in Katheer, Neutral Evil after assuring the DM that I didn't mean Stupid Evil(I mean of course he'd join the Save the World brigade, end of the world is pretty bad for business). It was a fairly leisurely paced game so during downtime while the wizard was crafting away at our homebase/bakery and the druid was, erm...let's not get into what he did during his downtime*, I took Leadership with the DM's permission and started building a Thieves' Guild since Katheer lacked one. It was agreed that I would use the bakery headquarters as a guild hall, and could appropriate a portion of party funds and resources towards the founding and operating of this guild provided that a small share of its profits be diverted back to the party coffers; in essence, the other characters were investors in my business. This arrangement was quite agreeable to all involved.

Shortly after we hit level 7 the Main Quest we'd latched on to led us in the direction of Absolom. I was knocked out by drow poison just before we left and shook it off as we arrived, so my character was not a party to the discussion to go to Absolom - this becomes important in a moment.

Anyway we enter the city proper and track down our contact, who gives us some intel about some jerkwad trying to open a gate to the lower planes somewhere in the city. The party decides we'd better go stop him. But not so fast - I, the Neutral Evil rogue ask "What's in it for me?" The DM gave me his "Heh, I didn't think of that" look and the NPC says "...that's why you're here isn't it?" Well, no, I'm here because these knuckleheads dragged me along, but I'm sure they can handle it so I've got some business in the city to take care of, meet you folks back at the docks in a few hours.

With the gate closed and a MacGuffin acquired, we returned by ship to Katheer. I sent word that I would be delayed, and arrived about a day after the rest of the group. When we reconvene, I let them in on what I was doing: I have secured the patronage of the legendary master thief known the Shade of Absolom, tales of whose exploits are only now beginning to cross the Inner Sea but are becoming popular in certain seedier drinking halls. He's looking to expand his operation into Qadira, and he's willing to lend his name to my venture. In return for his protection and...influence with certain members of Katheer's ruling class, he requires an equal share of the guild's profits. I told him I'd consult with my partners before accepting, and having done so, the discussion is brief.

"So should we accept?"
"Yeah, sure."

Organized burglary commences, and owing to the Shade's intervention the captain of the city guard not only gets off out backs but starts feeding us tips. Profit is had, a portion comes straight off the top and goes to our silent partner, then the rest of the party gets their cut.

Now, here's the fun part. Of course the very first magic item I bought was a Hat of Disguise. I got extensive use out of it frequenting various taverns and gathering places and spinning tall tales. The most popular stories were of the exploits of a master thief from a distant land, a man known only as the Shade of Absolom - and both the man and the stories were pure fiction. :smallcool:


...I think it best for security that [the thieves' guild] and the party be compartmentalized as much as possible (at least as long as [the dwarven druid] insists on riding to and from the bakery on his ****ing tiger in broad daylight). Speaking of riding his tiger in broad daylight, [my character] will also have his spies keep an ear to the ground for talk about tiger-riding dwarves.
- Actual excerpt from a between-session email to the DM

[Alikat]

I wish I could keep secrets. Last campaign I played a kobold whose gender, alignment, and motivations were all ambiguous. And every single plot point was spoiled when the DM let things slip over and over again, not a part of the story, but because of absentmindedness.

[Thiyr]

Phyrexians are basically the grey goo scenario from sci fi mixed with mad scientists. They invade a plane, turn every creature into an undead mechanical monstrosity and use those to continue invading until everything is phyrexian and then when theres nothing useful left in the world they move on.

Thanks for explaining that for me :D That's pretty much it. They were kinda the big bad of the Magic multiverse for a large chunk of its history, and made a semi-recent comeback. Almost took over -everything-. Known for outright replacing peoples spines as a method of assimilation. Big on use of plague, infiltrators, sleeper agents, etc. Also carries a solid chunk of conventional firepower, as well as flowstone (Which is remarkably similar to shapesand, except they had a lot more of it), demons, and purely mechanical constructs/siege engines. Led by someone who is about as close as most of the setting gets to an outright god. Fantasy Borg willing to fight a bit dirtier.

[Telok]

We just had an Uttercold Assault wizard die in our game because he kept secrets from party members.

This guy... Isn't all that good at tactics or planning. He's tried to play necromancer type characters before and it doesn't work, he gets his minions destroyed, makes a target of himself, and parades huge zombies in front of anti-undead temples.

In the most recent case he sent his main zombie minion deeper into the dungeon where some third level casters fried it with Flaming Spheres and Kelgore's Firebolts while he hid in a corner invisibily buffing himself. After our sorcerer included Mr. Invisible in the area of a Fireball he broke his invisibility with an Uttercold Fireball and then the two clerics he'd just roasted (one drow, one hobgoblin both half his level) beat him down in melee that same round. While the rest of the party knocked off the last few enemies the sorcerer's cleric cohort went over and healed him.

Now people who haunt the forums, optimize, or have played for a decade or so may know that an Uttercold Assault wizard build includes the Tome Tainted Soul feat. But our sorcerer is not one of those people and the wizard never mentioned it. In fact the wizard kept saying that he was not a necromancer and his minions were not zombies (he did use a couple Liber Mortis tricks to make that claim almost halfway plausable). So in character nobody knew that standard Cure spells would hurt him and the player of the sorcerer didn't know that out of character.

So he kept a secret and got healed to death.