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1337_master
2007-04-01, 02:39 AM
A was thinking, what was the GREATEST death in All the land Of D&D? so you have to answer my question

*note:I'm sorry if this has been posted before, I'm Lazy.

NEO|Phyte
2007-04-01, 02:54 AM
Exploding in a riot of energy after gaining too many temporary hitpoints while on the Positive Energy Plane. Also known as "Death by Awesome".

1337_master
2007-04-01, 03:55 AM
Did that actually Happen to you? Damn, talk about a Real badass of a GM.

starwoof
2007-04-01, 03:57 AM
No, thats actually what happens there.

Best death Ive ever experienced:

Death by wishing for more wishes. The campaign ended and we could never use the setting again because it was destroyed. :smallsmile::smalltongue:

Dhavaer
2007-04-01, 03:57 AM
Leaping up onto the evil altar in the evil temple surrounded by zombies in the underground ruined city and shouting out "BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL!"

1337_master
2007-04-01, 04:02 AM
The best Death Ever I'VE actually seen (Or heard of) Was in a Star wars campaign, were the went to the emperor, and My brother called for Han, and the millenium falcon, and it killed the emperor, caused the Universe to Break down, (We live in the same UNIVERSE as star wars, but not the same Galaxy) so by doing this action in game, hew caused the Apocolypse, but Man-Kind rebuilt, and then I told people the story...Then I spent a few days in a funny rubber room.:smallbiggrin:

starwoof
2007-04-01, 04:04 AM
Oh wait, I got one funnier.

THe party was running from a tribe of hill giants. We spot a 500 ft cliff and start to run up it (spider climb), when 400 feet up my wizard stops as I think 'hey, this is the range of a fireball!'.

Well, its also the range of rocks thrown by giants.

Not pretty.

ExHunterEmerald
2007-04-01, 04:34 AM
Oh boy, what a doozy we had on Friday.
Three of five members in the evil game, a half-giant fighter, a dwarven dragon shaman, and myself an elf wizard, all get into a fight with the captain of the guard in this city.
What we don't know is that he's an eighteenth level fighter. We're level five.
So we fight for awhile, and twice the half-giant gets downed and twice I get him back up with potions.
Meanwhile the other two members of the party who reason that evil=complete psycho and sadist, decide that we'll draw negative attention to our thieves' guild if we kill the captain (Actually, the giant had challenged him earlier and he accepted, but that's neither here nor there), and decide to kill us. They recently acquired two very powerful rings (there was a LOT of overpowered-at-fifth-level stuff) and hit us with a chain lightning that deals 20d6 to the primary target and 10d6 to the rest.
They use this JUST after the giant crits with his scythe. At this point, we later learned the Captain had five HP left.
The initial target of the chain lightning is me, but I have mirror image up, so I take 10d6 and get dropped to NEG NINE. All three of us are downed.
The captain and the twenty guards watching patch us up, so me and the shaman are up to one HP. The shaman activates his aura of vigor, so we're gaining HP back. They leave the giant unconscious, since they can't find manacles his size. The captain drinks a potion and recovers some.
While he's out, the dragon shaman breathes flame in the captain's face, while handcuffed and at one HP. The guard doesn't drop, and says "If he does that again, kill him."
One round later, he does it again. The guard's almost out, and an NPC guard knocks the shaman out, but doesn't kill him.
The captain kills the guard that failed to kill him and then cuts off the shaman's head.
However, now the giant is awake and pretending to be out. (The PKers complained that they should notice his wounds closing even though the shaman is BREATHING FIRE.)
He suddenly ups and attacks with his scythe, and KILLS THE CAPTAIN.
My character and his cry out triumphantly. Meanwhile, the PKers want us dead still (again, because of how they play evil) and use a spark shower from their other ring.
First, though, we alert them that there are guards right near us, and the radius of the ring will kill them too. So they decide to aim the ring's effect off us and hope that kills us. However, there's a good chance it won't, so they directly center them on us, deciding they didn't care about collateral damage to the guards. Despite earlier attacking us in the first place because we were fighting guards in the first place. This is because they wanted us dead. Anyhow, we die.
However, my next character, an orc bard (yes, I know) sees the slaughter and is so inspired by their gutsiness and final battle, that he seeks out the surviving members of the guild (just those two--the PCs were basically the only guild left to "protect") and asks about them.

And they promptly attack him despite him not even drawing his sword and surrendering. Then they strip him naked, chain him up, and try to nail his bits to the wall with a piton. No, I'm not exaggerating. They also kidnapped a family of seven and made various members rape each other and then tortured them.

Still, it was an AWESOME death. Three ECL fives brought down an EIGHTEENTH LEVEL FIGHTER. And the three of them will survive as recurring characters in my own games. The giant's term for them (after learning our guildmaster was Samuel L. Jackson) was the League of Extraordinarily Badass Mother@$%!ers.

Edit: I just crunched the numbers in the encounter calculator. Unbeatable.

...:D

LCR
2007-04-01, 04:40 AM
Leaping up onto the evil altar in the evil temple surrounded by zombies in the underground ruined city and shouting out "BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL!"

Reminds me of Hot Fuzz ...

argentsaber
2007-04-01, 06:00 AM
The best death i ever knew of in game was entirely off screen. One character in a Star Wars game was captured and brought before Darth Vader. As he was forced to kneel before the Sith Lord, he began to wonder what would happen if he pushed Vader's buttons (the blinking ones on his chest plate). While he found out off camera, we are assured it took hours to learn the fullest extent of what happened.

Leon
2007-04-01, 10:33 AM
The Deaths of a Sorcerer and Monk come to mind (Both were Level 4)

Monk and Sorcerer had split off from the main group to go look for their mounts (why do my players not tie animals to something....) and followed a teail that they hoped would lead them to the horses. It didnt, it was a random track off into the wilds.

while making various checks to look for any sign of the animals they detected a creature making some noise in a nearby patch of bushes, creaping closer they espided a very large boar (Dire) snuffling about for food - the monk (for who knows what reason) unslung his crossbow and took a shot at it. All hell broke loose for that poor pair, as the now enraged Pig turned to see what had pained it so. the monk fled and tried to reload his crossbow while the sorcerer stood his ground and readied a Shocking grasp (why? cos he could..)

The Boar charged - was hit by the readied spell and hurt some more but hit the sorcerer for a large chunk of his life, monk saw this and started to move off back the way they had come - stopping to fire once again, the Sorcerer meanwhile ran like hell past the monk with the Boar in pursuit.

the Boar gutted the Monk (he had a encouter with some mold earlier and lost a lot of CON) with one hit and then charged the Sorcerer (who had 5 health) Critting for a massive amount.

I ruled that all that remained of the sorcerer was a red trail of gore and gear in a churned mess about 15ft long.

The rest of the Party had heard something horrible sounding (the Boars reaction to being shot at) and thoughtthat better go investigate as it came from where the other 2 had gone, they happened upon the red scene and identified the gear as the Sorcerer's and nearby the ragdoll remains of the monk.

Lead by the Paladin in a thirst for vengence onwhat ever had done this to the two they searched the surrounding area and came upon the still ticked off Boar - who charged again, badly goring the paladin while the rogue crept at it from behind and did nasty things with a rapier. the cleric rushed to the aid of the paladin and managed to finally kill the beast with a solid blow to its skull.

Pig down, Rogue and Cleric decided to butcher it and eat it (they did cook it 1st) but didnt have the forsight to think about that first - Enter the 2 who picked up the Shakes from the cloase contact with dead boar

Lesson learned: Dont Attack something just because you can

Shatenjager
2007-04-01, 10:39 AM
Wizard gets bullrushed off a bridge in D+D by a dragon. Falls at terminal velocity and hits the rapids below (narrowly missing the rocks). Is a 1 hit point (seriously it took me to 1 hit point). Tries to read a scroll of fly (fails concentration check). Gets pulled underwater. Realizes he can't make the swim check needed to get him above water. Realizes that black bears have racial swim modifiers. Reaches into bag of tricks and amazingly pulls a black bear on the first try. Tries to grab hold of said bear. Fails to do so for 18 consectutive rounds. Drowns.

bosssmiley
2007-04-01, 10:46 AM
Death by hordes of flaming Rokugani goblins (in L5R). We wondered why they were smearing themselves with tar, then it all went pear-shaped! TPK and much DM hilarity ensued.

I still grind my teeth over it 6 years after the event.

Mr Pants
2007-04-01, 11:13 AM
Death by falling onto a fire genie. I'll explain. We were in the astral plane where you can alter gravity and such. My warforged bbn chooses the direction of the genie that was burning up our astral ship as his gravity. He falls 220 feet into the genie to do 22d6 to both him and the genie. This was at 5th level mind you. But then i got a rez and was then forever called the living cannon ball.

DaFlipp
2007-04-01, 11:52 AM
I mentioned my best D&D death on the Stupid PCs thread, where our whole party got torn to pieces by Thralls of Orcus.

Best PC death outside of D&D that I saw was in an Earthdawn chronicle, where a Nethermancer made the in-character, but questionable, decision to call open-endedly on Raggok's (the Passion/god of pain and torment and war) in the midst of battle. Something Bad replied. Turned out it was a Horror (if you're unfamiliar with ED, they're the Big Bad Evil Things of the setting, creatures from another plane of existence that caused a semi-Apocalypse and are still lingering around as sentient life repopulates the globe).

The Nethermancer, a very dark sort, wound up willingly serving this Horror for many sessions, helping the evil creature set up some other PCs for their downfall. When the other PCs tracked the Horror back to his lair, the Nethermancer decided to betray him at the last moment, attacking the Horror along with the other PCs, who let him live out of gratitude but still (reasonably) did not trust him.

A few hours after the combat was over, and the other PCs were long gone, the Nethermancer heard a familiar voice in his head.

"I'm not too happy with you for helping them destroy my physical body, you know. But that's okay. I think I've found a decent replacement... yours."

The Nethermancer's original mind/soul now only exists as a tiny fragment of consciousness that can feel only torment, misery, and pain.

Lolzords
2007-04-01, 12:51 PM
Being sat on by a flaming mummy doused in whiskey. (This actually happened to our party cleric, poor guy.)

factotum
2007-04-01, 01:17 PM
While he found out off camera, we are assured it took hours to learn the fullest extent of what happened.

We always used to have a shorthand for stuff like that happening back when I played at university...it was "He died horribly."

So, the fighter's just fallen down a trapdoor which recedes into a distant point that is flickering red, with faint screams rising from it? DM smiles and says, "He died horribly."...

Kiok
2007-04-01, 02:57 PM
My favorite would be when fighting some sort of lizard with thumbs. Let's just say the horse was named pin cusion after death. (uneventful, I know)

the_tick_rules
2007-04-01, 03:01 PM
my favorite death. when my monk demolished a warmage. it's probably still in this forum somewhere. it created quite a stir amongst the pro-mage community.

ZebulonCrispi
2007-04-01, 03:57 PM
"I throw a thermal detonator at the Sith Lord."
"The Sith uses the force to stop the detonator inches from your fingertips."
"Um."
"It goes off."

Meynolds
2007-04-01, 04:09 PM
My recent party had an interesting story similar to that, but they survived. Even funnier was their later death.

The party: A Human (Or Chiss? I don't remember.) Soldier, A Wookie Gray Jedi, and a near-human Gray Jedi. It was rather fun to GM.

The story began with them touching down on Coruscant. I'm serious. They get captured by Stormies, because the Jedi were wearing their robes. Yup. They are taken straight to Lord Vader, and or course, try to escape. They were surrounded by guards, and they threw a thermal detonator at a pair of Stormies behind them. It hits, explodes, and they sprint for the gap. They jump off the edge of the platform, having taken a few hits, and land in a speeder. One of them drops unconscious from the fall, and they threaten the driver to take them to the spaceport. They fly along for a while, and are chased by a TIE Fighter. The speeder gets shot after a few rounds, close range, but they jump onto the TIE before it explodes. They capture the TIE, jump in, and start flying. They escape to space, and on to another planet.

They reach the planet, land, and join the rebel alliance, and they are shipped off to Endor. They fly off in 1 X-wing and 1 Y-wing, and fly into a Star Destroyer. They meet Boba Fett (Regardless of whether or not he was really there) and fight him. They are beaten and taken captive.

They escape from the brig into the hands of waiting guards, and they are promptly shot dead. Five times over.

Mewtarthio
2007-04-01, 10:26 PM
They capture the TIE, jump in, and start flying. They escape to space, and on to another planet.

How did they do that? Last I checked, TIE fighters didn't have hyperdrive capability or a cockpit big enough for passengers or Rebel-style life support (you're stuck with the complex, annoying-to-wear helmet). Or any sort of combat capability... or much in the way of maneouverability... or shields... and Coruscant probably has enough ground-to-air weapons, spare fighters, and orbital Star Destroyers to kill you even if you've got all that...

ocato
2007-04-01, 10:48 PM
Two characters on a side quest find two parellel paths in a forest. For fun there was a dire badger on one path and a dire... I want to say Wolverine on the other. I forget the exact animals but the idea was they were similar in power and both would require good teamwork for the two people to beat. There were two exact paths to sort of mess with them.

"Let's race! I'll take one path, you take the other!"

There were no survivors.

Foeofthelance
2007-04-01, 10:50 PM
So we've infiltrated a wizard's tower, have been wandering about just collecting treaure, when my dwarf and his cohorts find a spell book. They then proceed to summon a demon, just as the rest of the party arrives on the scene. Unfortunately, they also forgot to activate the summoning circle that had been laid out on the floor before hand. Ooops.

So the party begins to fight the Queen of a demon clan, and the fight attracts two more Shadow Demons, which join the fray!

Highlights include:

-One of the dwarven wizards is sucked away into a Shadow pocket dimension, only to appear at the end of the fight. He barely survives the experience, but fortunately makes his Fort save.

- The Queen demon flees after my Dwarven rogue batters her with a Holy Avenger he corrupted using a powerful necromantic artifact of pure evil. He set it in the hilt. :)

- The other rogue in the party ends up trapped in a cage match with two of the demons, when the surviving dwarven wizard casts a Lightening Wall around them. He, along side several other cohorts belonging to the party, proceed to being lobbing Fireball into the middle of the fight, but only after the party Geomancer drops a pair of Flaming Spheres into the middle of the 'arena'. The rogue is fortunately making saves and has Improved Evasion, but is still taking turn by turn damage from the Lightening Wall. The Shadow demons are, of course, immune to both electricity and fire damage.

Finally, the rogue manages to get knocked out, the wall collapses and demons are free. They begin to take a mualing, and just before the last one dies, he turns to the my dwarf rogue, who had only lost seven of his sixty some odd hit points.

He promptly proceeds to activate his Phantasmal Killer spell like ability. I, naturally, roll a 1 on the will save, and a 2 on the fort save afterwards.

I was one dead dwarf.

It did however, turn out to be a good thing, as I then came back as Glinhammed, the first Prophet of Rockallah, who was then to wage holy war against Demons everywhere.

jlousivy
2007-04-01, 10:54 PM
In an old game i was playing a rogue. He never failed a single reflex save.
This bad evil guy is there that kidnaped someone close to my character. We are all invisible. So we do a strategy we did alot. I go up and sneak attack, and the two sorcerer's throw out their 10d6 fireballs. (note my dm rules all d20 rolls of 1's as fumbles/critical failures, so imp evasion doesn't work) I hit sneak attack and the fireballs come in. *rolls reflex save* 1. And i was a low con rogue without any +con items or anything.

Kel_Arath
2007-04-01, 11:00 PM
"of course we should break the cursed wand of fireball.. how else would we get rid of the curse!?"

hanseislanson
2007-04-01, 11:03 PM
How about when our party archcleric read the "rites of passage" off of the fountain. Mind you this player is catholic in real life too.

purepolarpanzer
2007-04-02, 12:41 AM
I have posted this before but it never gets old.
Normal party mix of barbarian (me), wizard Arcane archer, cleric, and rogue.
Defending a giant wall from massive siege engines moving our way. The Arcane archer took enough ranks in alchemy that it could make black powder bombs that attack to its arrows. It fired one of these imbued with a maximized fireball and rolled a 1. Broke its bow and had to roll again. Critical hit the cleric in the face, reducing it's HP significantly. Then the fireball went off, killing the cleric and leaving the rest of us low. Then the blackpowder went off. Killed the rogue and the archer, blew up the wall we were supposed to defend, and sent me flying out towards the battlefield with very little HP left. Where I was literally stepped on by a siege engine. And that's how one arrow killed our party, several random NPC soldiers, and later the entire city as the massive siege engines broke through the equally massive hole we made for them and proceeded to do their impression of Ares in the beginning God of War (stomp stomp smash fire scream argh) and that person was never allowed to be an arcane archer ever again.

Kreistor
2007-04-02, 12:59 AM
It wasn't me, but a friend relates this death.

After a long campaign, the group decided to start fresh. So, my friend created a poison using knife thrower. In the first fight, moments after scratching the last numbers onto his page, he threw his first knife and missed. His second knife, though, was flubbed a Natural 1, and the knife landed at the feet of the target. The target picked it up, threw it back at him and hit. So, check to seee if he made the poison correctly. Yep, it's potentially lethal. Fail the save. Character dead.

So appears the dead character's twin brother, identical in every way, but he wouldn't touch poison to save his life.

Flubadubdub
2007-04-02, 01:12 AM
I play first edition, so most of you will argue "that doesn't make sense, that monster doesn't do that". Well now you know the reason

Friend of mine decided to take off on his own. I knew it was foolish, traveling with a party is much safer, but sure he wants to kill himself, fine. So he has a cloak of the bat, allows him to fly around as a bat. He flies into a room and there in a chest sitting there. He flies in front of the chest, only to get his feet stuck to the floor. Turns out the chest is a mimic. He's a cleric, but unlike newer editions, they are horribly underpowered.

So he attempts to casts dispel magic, which is obviously completely pointless. So he enters melee with the mimic. Thing is, if a mimic makes a roll that would hit armor class 4+ higher than the character has, the mimic engulfs the characters weapon hand. Mimic rolls a natural 20. No weapon, can't cast spells, can't move, no one to bail him out. You can guess what happened to my friend.

Tallis
2007-04-02, 01:37 AM
1st Ed: The drow army is approaching the grey elf capital. I'm invisible in a tree behind enemy lines with the Amulet of Ra, ready to unleash the power of the sun on them. Dwarf warrior is leading the defense at the wall. Rogue is protecting the kin and finds a bomb in the throneroom. Passes it to the pyromaniac mage who proceeds to fly above the army and throw it at them. He doesn't want to hit our troops on the wall so he throws it towards the back. Right on top of me. Turns out it was a nuke. (Don't ask me how they got a nuke.) Mushroom cloud is quickly followed by a nova blast as the amulet is destroyed. I'm vaporized along with the mage, the drow, the dwarf, a large section of the wall and many grey elves.
At least we won...:smalleek:

Pagz
2007-04-02, 04:06 AM
Our party's level 3, and the mage finds a potion off a body of an evil cleric. None of us, however, can identify it, and we're at the bottom of a mine, so the mage says:

"I can't wait, I drink the potion!"

Turns out the DM liked the idea of a Fireball potion.

Mage explodes in a fiery fury.

Everyone drops below 0 hp, luckly the cleric stabilized and managed to get everyone above 0. The guy who played the mage never used another unidentified item again (That is when he wrote up a new character...).

Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick
2007-04-02, 08:15 AM
One of the last campaigns I was in had a higher-than-usual percentage of deaths. We had a monk and a warlock along, luckily, so somebody always lived- but since I was playing different flavors of rogue, that somebody was, frequently, not me. Glass cannon and all that.

High-charisma Party-face Rogue(Whilst being devoured by a horde of devilish bacchantes): I regret noooothiiiiiing!

High Int/Wis Trapspotter Rogue (Whilst being killed by the blues in league with the smuggler/inkeep): Honestly, though, you should really have a talk with your daugh-AUGH!

High Dex/Cha Dashing Swordsman Rogue (Whilst being murderized by the frenzied berserker succubus): I regret veeeery feeewwww thiiiiings!

On a more serious note, while I was playtesting a few elements of my homebrew the other day, one of my players had a spectacular death.

While fighting a villainous Tiefling archer/rogue type, the mastermind behind an evil plot to drive people out of the city (into the arms of evil, presumably) and kidnap some chidrens, the player- also an archer rogue, and almost painfully lawful good- makes some incredibly lucky roles to avoid getting pasted while he charges forth to defeat the foe, getting closer all the while...then makes a miracle and bull rushes the guy off the edge of the suspended (but not floating, quite) city into the giant well at the center of the world.
The Tiefling is seriously pissed about being thrown off the edge of everything, and they start a ranged duel in mid-air. Eventually, the player wins- if only just, and knocks him out...then they get attacked by a bloodhawk swarm, most of whom hang out underneath the city and feed on its garbage. He dies, but he dies really well.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-02, 09:11 AM
Archer fumble in the well-stocked magic shop, anyone?

1337_master
2007-04-02, 12:02 PM
*blink* *Blink* what? you killed yourself...on a Fumble.

Xian
2007-04-02, 12:46 PM
Playing a Wheel of Time mod with some friends.

End of the adventure, everyone's on a raft, sailing away from danger. One of the Aes Sedai (think sorceress, but part of a cabal that essentially runs the world) turns out to be a Darkfriend (you can figure that out) and channels (casts) some Walls of Air to try and shove everyone off the raft into the water. There was another Aes Sedai on board plus two Asha'man (sorcerers); we just push back. To top it off, we add 5 more Walls, box her in, tie off the weaves (make the spell permanent) and just shove her off into the ocean. Death buy burial at sea.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-02, 12:47 PM
Well, I really thought fire arrows were a good idea at the time. And my chances of accidentally shooting a bunch of magical and unstable components around me was, what, one in twenty? The odds sounded plausible enough.

Diggorian
2007-04-02, 02:32 PM
Spelljammer 2nd Ed:

Our ship is attack by Neogi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neogi) slavers. After futily fighting the catapaulted Umber hulks they launch over, whom are now burrowing through our hull, we ram and board them.

The fight goes not well. We fight them to middecks and are catching our breath for the next wave. Then the chaotic evil fighter thief gets an idea. We'll go the forecastle of the ship while he leads the slavers inbetween decks as a diversion.

Ofcourse, we question the motives of him. He reminds us of his long standing heart worm infection (loosing 1 Con a week) and his Resplendent cloak (that's staving off the worms but shines like a spotlight, not thiefy). We shrug and agree.

The party is fighting Umber Hulk defendes on the main deck while he's being surronded by their masters. Fighter/thief whips out a Staff of Magi we looted from a BBEG that went "missing" 5 real months ago and breaks it over his knee.

*BOOM!*

Those that made the save to hang on to the railing rode the front chunk of the ship until we landed on the half mile wide planetoid of pirahna-bunnies.

Meynolds
2007-04-02, 05:57 PM
How did they do that? Last I checked, TIE fighters didn't have hyperdrive capability or a cockpit big enough for passengers or Rebel-style life support (you're stuck with the complex, annoying-to-wear helmet). Or any sort of combat capability... or much in the way of maneouverability... or shields... and Coruscant probably has enough ground-to-air weapons, spare fighters, and orbital Star Destroyers to kill you even if you've got all that...

I think they had one pilot, and the others just held on at low speeds. They stole another ship after ditching it.

Sturmjaeger
2007-04-02, 06:04 PM
In the new D&D podcast, they talk about some really funny PC deaths.

Shotaro
2007-04-02, 06:21 PM
3 character deaths from my current campaign all of them rather spectacular.

The Ranger

The party find a cave where a demon is coming from and harassing the town, inside is a wall of force that ejects all S/P weapons with some force. The cave is in the side of the mountain and the CN cleric is convinced we missed the entrance We are level 6.
CN cleric - "DO NOT SEPERATE THE PARTY!! - people get killed that way! to the ranger Any idea whats round the back of this mountain?"

Ranger - "No Idea to rogue Cover me, we'll be back in a few hours"

*pause*

Just as they exit our sight

Cleric - ".... <expletive deleted> they're not coming back are they?"

We then sat and watched the carnage unfold

DM - "to ranger roll d20"

Ranger - "14"

DM - "Ok, roll spot"


Rogue - "28"

Ranger - "9"

DM - "OK rogue you see 10 to 12 griffons flying toward you with the sun behind them, Ranger you see the sun, your eyes hurt"

Rogue - "Ill jam my spear into the ground next to that rock over there and hide, 25 on the check"

DM - "Ranger you see something moving towards you and your wolf its quick and you're not sure whether it means to hurt you"

Ranger - "I'll shoot it, 14 total"

DM - "Roll initiative"

Ranger - "20"

DM - "Ok you get your shot off and clip the wing of it, you can see it did no damage but it is angry now - ok their turn 3 swoop down on your wolf whats its AC and HP? ok 3 hits for a total of 20 damage so its dead"

Ranger - "Drop my bow and Draw my sword taking a swipe at the closest - possible crit - confirmed min damage 14"

Three more rounds went by of the ranger managing to survive while the rogue hid for his life then the three that killed the wolf couldn't eat anymore. At that point the ranger's player (Who'd killed 2 of the griffons) resigned to the fact he was screwed. That night at the camp the rogue returned looking rather pale and we ventured out the next day and found the bones of the ranger and the spear still rooted in the ground next to the rock

The Paladin

In a huge fight outnumbered 2:1 by shadow plane assassins. The fighter has a hugely magical axe the properties of which are completely unknown he takes a swing at one of the assassins

ToHit: 1
Confirm Fumble: 1
Fumble Chart (d100 btw): 1
Auto crit on a party member - hes on 1 and 12 the rest of the party inbetween, 3 - the paladin
Ok so Great axe damage: 1 and 1
now roll 2d8 1 and 1 - thats the thunder power of the axe
NOW roll 2d10 1 and 10 - thats the lightning

the paladin falls down on -1

the assassins threw shurikens in the first round which did -1STR to us, for a few rounds at least the paladin gets revived hes on 14hp then the proper effect of the poison kicks in. 2d6 con damage, the paladin takes 9 dropping his con from 14 to 5 and costing him 4hp/level we're still level 6, takes him to EXACTLY -10

our DM actively tries to kill the players and my wizard (whos taken out almost half of all the enemies thrown at us so far) is the current target I hope he dies honorably so I can post it hell even if he dies drunk in a cart waiting for the impending apocalypse he just caused ill probably post it here.

Fualkner Asiniti
2007-04-02, 07:16 PM
We had an arena battle, and I walk around a corner. All of a sudden... FIREBALL! As I explode, I yell: "Tell my daughter I love her!"

The sorceror say directly afterwards " Yeah, whatever."

MinMax
2007-04-02, 07:17 PM
The group has a Lawful Evil dwarven paladin (Of Tyranny), which is me, and a Neutral Good wizard, both of whom consistently argue over what the proper way to deal with any given situation is. This is just too much for my dwarf to take after 12-odd adventures with him, so he enacts a plan to kill this wizard, which is over-the-top, befitting a plan of Nale's alignment. To start it off, I bribe our Chaotic Neutral ranger into casting Protection against Fire on me.

Then, my plan gets rolling. I gather together many vials of alchemist's fire, stuffing it into my plate mail, carrying it in my hands, strapping it to my back, and so on. Wearing my armour-spiked plate mail, I approach the wizard from around a corner, while he's preparing spells. I douse myself in alcohol, and light myself on fire. At which point, I bull-rush tackle-hug the wizard, smiting good at the same time, dealing armour-spike damage, 1d6 + 4 or 5, plus 1d6 cold, my strength damage, which was +5, smite bonus damage, which I believe is fifteen or so at this point, 18xAlchemist's fire damage, and regular fire damage.

In a few rounds of grappling, and being hurt by the Vampiric Touches, and such, of the Wizard's, as well as the spells from the cleric hurting me. So, I end up with very few hit points, and due to a constant wave of heirophant-based faith healing at range, the wizard had about 10 or so, much like me. I perform a final round of grappling, shaking the life out of him with my final smite good.

The wizard is dead, and the cleric is going blue in the face with anger. Uh-oh, though, turns out the wizard had a ring of vengeance (Exalted Deeds, pg. 115). Huh. I was annihilated at point blank range by 15d6 damage. Too bad it wasn't fire.

There wasn't enough left of the two of us to fill a match box. Also, the two of us, the players, could not stop laughing for three weeks. Still makes me smile to think of it.

Fualkner Asiniti
2007-04-02, 07:20 PM
In the new D&D podcast, they talk about some really funny PC deaths.

Can you listen to it without an IPOD?

1337_master
2007-04-03, 12:07 PM
heh, Sucks to be A Fumbler.:smallcool:

storybookknight
2007-04-03, 12:59 PM
I recently set things up in my D&D game for my players to hit a dragon with their airship, thus doing 1,008 damage direct.

MaxKaladin
2007-04-03, 01:21 PM
Like a number of my stories, this one happened under 2e rules. Under 2e, the Sepia Snake Sigil spell worked somewhat differently. The key difference, for the purpose of this story, is that it protected the subject from harm. This led to some of the PCs actually carrying around scrolls with the spell cast on it as a last-ditch means of trying to escape certain death. The plan being to read the sigil, become encased in the sigil and protected from harm for a few days during which you could hope that the rest of the party would organize a rescue or whatever it is that nearly killed you would go away.

Anyway, there was a wild mage in one of my campaigns named "Monte". At one point, the party was involved in a war and he was part of a group scouting ahead of an army when it encountered the advance scouts of the opposing army. A battle ensued and it went badly. Eventually, he decides he's not going to win and not going to get away so he uses his snake sigil to "hole up" and wait for rescue.

Unfortunately, the rest of the party doesn't get there before the bad guys do. They decide they want to capture and interrogate him and get a bunch of mages and clerics there to dispel the sigil and do various spells to incapacitate him. When they dispel the sigil, Monte finds himself surrounded by evil priests and mages. Not wanting to fall into their hands, he decides to go out in a blaze of glory. He casts fireball. Remember he's a wild mage. He rolls on the chart and gets a caster level above his normal one -- and it's a surge. He rolls the surge and gets the top result that basically triples all aspects of the spell (range, area and damage). Thus, he ends up casting a fireball with a 60 foot radius that does something like 30d6 damage. KABOOOOOOMMMMM!

He pretty much wiped out everyone who had been gathered around to capture him thanks to the increased area and damage. Unfortunately, he also managed to catch himself in the fireball thanks to that same increased area and basically incinerated himself.

The rest of the party, I ruled, saw a small mushroom cloud on the horizon in the direction where Monte was last seen.

He managed to take out enough of the enemy's magical support that his side won and he's now revered as a hero in that nation and a statue in his honor stands on the site of his death.

Wystrell
2007-04-03, 02:09 PM
This isn't actually a death, but it's near-death enough to be funny.

The party is probably barely past level 2; it contains a near-evil rogue, a tree-hating, pyromaniac druid (?!), a low-Cha, low-Int fighter, a dragon shaman, a LG Necromancer, and a gnome bard (that's me).

Party, with the help of the lizardmen, is going to attack a pirate camp, which we've discovered is the reason why a local lighthouse has been out of order. At night, the pirates are asleep (duh). At least one is in a watchtower near the coast, a few may be around the camp fire as guards, but the rest are in tents. Asleep.

The split goes like this: the druid is going to hide in the forest and prepare something fire-related to catch the watchtower alight and possibly make a distraction, while the rogue and dragon shaman are going into one of the northern tents to kill a pirate or two. We think it'll only be a pirate or two, because these are small tents. Myself, the necromancer and the fighter are sitting in the southern edge of the forest, near the southernmost tent.

The fighter/bard pair are sitting in this forest when the DM discovers that we're about thirty feet away. He calls us to make hide checks; I succeed, necromancer succeeds, fighter fails. Turns out the southernmost tent contained the pirate captain, and upon seeing the glint of the fighter's armor let out a yell that woke up the rest of the pirates.

From the northern tent comes the lone pirate sorceress, who, running south, casts sleep on myself and the fighter; the necromancer manages to stay awake. That northern tent turned out to have three pirates, including the sorceress who was rapidly advancing towards our sleeping selves, and two other pirates around the fire head north; this makes four pirates against a 8-9STR rogue and an average-strength dragon shaman.

Pirate captain goes south, while the sorceress turns around to join her four other comrades. Captain goes straight for the fighter, our only real source of manpower in the entire party, and immediately goes to coup de gras him with a morningstar, and MISSES. He misses a sleeping human fighter in fullplate. With a morningstar. Necromancer shoots magic missile, and hits for low damage. Next turn, captain tries to coup de gras him again. And MISSES. Again! Necromancer kills him. Bard is still asleep, but gets jostled awake by one or the other.

Somehow, the northern chunk of the party survives. Druid shoots fireball, and hits the watchtower, which burns to a crisp. :smallbiggrin:

Ikkitosen
2007-04-03, 02:21 PM
I had a Star Wars character that was undercover, trying to escape the second Death Star at the Battle of Endor. Unfortunately he was crushed by a falling Super Star Destroyer.

In D&D...nothing nearly so funny.

king korath
2007-04-03, 03:17 PM
One game I played in our party was split along alignment. There was a LE artificer and a CN Barbarian (me), that would argue with the LG Druid. Eventually the druid left the party, but five minutes later would attack us again, outside af a bar. The druid knew that she would lose in a straight fight so using natural spell and wildshape she cast ice storm as a bird. We could not hit that charactor so we just offered a reward to anyone who could kill the bird. Everybody in the bar came out and attacked with bows. The druid took almost 100 points of damage in the first round. (Without the artificer's fireball). There was not a second round.

onasuma
2007-04-03, 03:21 PM
By creating a powerful divine item for my 53rd level cleric, I unbeknowingly caught the attention of my good. My good liked what he saw and brought me to his right hand forever. However in all other circumstances my character i had had for years ceiced to exist.

Mewtarthio
2007-04-03, 03:38 PM
You reached fifty-third level and your god was only just then beginning to notice? Who was your patron: Oblivius, God of Blindness, Deafness, and Attention Deficit Disorder?

ExHunterEmerald
2007-04-03, 05:17 PM
You reached fifty-third level and your god was only just then beginning to notice? Who was your patron: Oblivius, God of Blindness, Deafness, and Attention Deficit Disorder?

That was so quotable it hurts.

Seffbasilisk
2007-04-03, 05:54 PM
My last character in an IRL game was Jacob Mavaken, Human Death-Touched Rogue/Warmage. Basically a Mage/Cop of the setting, his Magi-guard higher-ups told him to follow the party, keep them from screwing everything, and find out what they were up to. Anyway, partially in the sewers (after a long time adventuring with them) we came accross a sphinx. Being the only one able to come up with riddles, I kept it amused, until it misheard me (the DM missed a word and blamed me) and chucked me into the sewage. Later on, we're still exploring, but now the sphinx is following us, saying stupid things left and right. I unlock a door, and we ready ourselves to go in after the hydra we think is on the other side. I fling it open, the barbarian goes in, and the cryohyrda lets loose his breath weapon. Drops the barbarian down to 3 hit points, so he checks himself, and runs. I provoke five attacks of opportunity to close and lock the door, and managed to avoid being hurt too badly (a good reflex save and evasion helped me through the breath weapons). We're all gathering ourself, and sort of picking ourselves up, and the Sphinx makes yet another disparaging remark, and the barbarian tries an intimidate check. With his charisma penalty and no ranks. The Sphinx does his roar, and the only ones running are me and the barbarian. Upon returning, we're both pissed, and Jacob's digging in his pack for something so the sphinx lets out another roar to paralyze us. It gets Jacob, the young silver dragn, our lizardman wizard, and our gnoll bard/druid (so ineffective it hurts). The only one not paralyzed? The elven barbarian, and the only one likely to attack the sphinx anyway. So after the barbarian charge-misses (PA's for full) the sphinx lets out the blasting sonic roar. Since we're paralyzed....

Jacob had on his person: 8 alchemists fires, 1 tanglefoot bag, 2 thunderstones, 3 flasks of acid, and the item he was pulling out to give the sphinx. A cursed sword that delt 1 con every round it was held/each time it was touched that Jacob had placed in a sack and sealed with a firetrap, then placed in another sack and sealed that with a firetrap. When the bags disintegrated under the blast, both traps went off.

IF THAT WASN'T BAD ENOUGH

Sharris, the young silver dragon? Around her neck? Necklace of fireballs.

Jacob was reduced to -87 HP in a single round. In a single attack. For trying to give the cursed sword to the sphinx and say "Here. You deal with it. You're supposed to be good. Deal with it, and leave us the hell alone."


He later had a chance to return to life, and refused, preferring to go to hell then deal with the party more.

Ishikar
2007-04-06, 08:08 PM
Heh, wildest story I have is from my 2nd edition game when we were infiltrating a slaver hideout. We set off a fireball trap alerting the slavers so we wound up with a lot of enemies in a 10x20 foot hall. Our mage in a moment of overexcited hurry cast lightning bolt. The ricochets caught a lot of the slavers but also half the party. My character, the mage herself, and one other survived, of course the mage was crit with a battleaxe and the DM rolled 100 on the crit table. BOOM decapatation. My character and the other managed to run away and through clever use of a few abilities survived.

Also on a side note, earlier that session the mage made the mistake of casting a fireball into a 10x10x10 room. I'm sure there's PLENTY of fun stories about that though.

Extra_Crispy
2007-04-08, 06:03 AM
Death by hordes of flaming Rokugani goblins (in L5R). We wondered why they were smearing themselves with tar, then it all went pear-shaped! TPK and much DM hilarity ensued.

I still grind my teeth over it 6 years after the event.

I love the L5R game and that was one of the funniest things about it, I ran the game when it first came out and a few people died to the flameing goblins.

Another one for the L5R was the PC's riding hard from a shadowlands hord to warn the Crane clan that the horde had somehow gotten by the Crab clan and was headed for their lands

DM (not me) -- Ok everyone roll your ride TN of 20 since you are riding full out through a forest
Player -- I dont have ride. Straight agility, 2d10= 2
DM -- ok you fail you fall off your horse and take 2 keep 1 damage (thats 2d10 keeping only the highest) = 2 tens (tens are rerolled and added to the total), rolled again a 9 and a 10, roll the 10 again, another 10
DM -- well you fall off your horse and break your neck

A very good friend of mine had an funny D&D death in a game I did not play in. The DM is running a NPC with the party which if I remember right was a princess, she is also pregnant. She has a ring of weapons (dont think that is the right name) that allows her to materialize a weapon in her hand at anytime. She gets charmed/mind controled by the villian. My friend who for the first (and last) time is playing a elf, (he hates elfs and always playes a dwarf) tries to grapple the woman to stop her from leaving or harming the rest of the party. Fumbles the attacks and falls on his face right in front of her. Weapon in hand (from the ring) and she stabbs him in the back of the neck. Dead PC. That is not the funniest part. So the NPC feels bad about killing him (after they got her uncharmed) and decides to use her resources to get a scroll with resurrection on it. The party cleric is not high enough level to cast the spell so there is a percent chance it fails. Also there is a 5% chance that the spell fails badly and destroys his spirit.

DM -- Ok well you are in elfy heaven skipping along when you hear a voice calling you back to the mortal world (GM roles the dice and sees that the spell fails then rolls and gets a 01%) the voice changes and you hear - I dont think OOPS is part of that spell - just before all sensation is gone and you go poof your soul is eradicated.

The guy has never played an elf since

SolkaTruesilver
2007-04-08, 06:18 AM
Not happened to me, but I think it definitly has it places on this discussion.

The Head of Vecna story

http://users.tkk.fi/~vesanto/link.fun/stupid.pcs.html

Go see

Ranis
2007-04-08, 07:21 AM
Teehee, Vecna is the most abused deity 'cause he's 'impaired.' Silly silly.

karmuno
2007-04-08, 06:57 PM
Two from a recent, not entirely serious, campaign. In both of these I was playing a sorceror (two different sorcerors actually, as will be evidenced by the first story). First off:

The party is standing across the moat from this tower. Inside there are people shooting stuff at us. We found out that the tower was protected by some sort of magical shield that reflected any magical attack back at the caster. We try several things, many of which have no effect. Finally, I come up with the brilliant idea to cast disintegrate. Funny thing about elasticity...

Second, inside the tower, my sorceror (technically my former sorceror's cousin, with the exact same stats), decides to go up the stairs while the remainder of the party fights people downstairs. There are more people upstairs, so I cast cloudkill. Cloudkill is heavier than air, the hatch to the lower level is open, just poor judgement on my part.

I was not operating to full mental capacity that day.

(the disintegrate thing almost happened again when we were in a room of indestructable mirrors. I say "I cast disintegrate on one of the mirrors." The DM simply looked at me and said, "no, you don't."

Murongo
2007-04-08, 10:10 PM
My level 10 sorc was pitted against a balor and 3 other major demons of CR 14+. By some act of god the balor failed two will saves and was magically convinced that he wanted to protect my character, he butchered the other 3 demons with a little help from me then stood next to my character.

Realizing the effect would soon wear off, my character readied enervation, cast it, the mind compulsion broke, I win initiative, enervate again. Now its the balor's turn.

The Balor just stars at me and grunts.
My character says: "Yeaaaah... about that"
The balor vorpals my head off.

Epiphanis
2007-04-08, 10:19 PM
I was in a group where a ranger was killed by making out with a succubus. The cleric said it was the first time he had seen a corpse get a Raise before it had even died.

Ba-dump-bump.

Try the veal.

TheOOB
2007-04-08, 10:31 PM
I was playing a fighter/barbarian/frenzied beserker. I was fighting the BBEG alone on a set of wooden rafters near the top of a 10 story building...in a frenzy. The battle was going poorly and I only had two rounds left of frenzy, so a attacked the rafter that the BBEG was standing on, breaking it and causing them to fall. They proceeded to fall 10 stories, taking 20 feet of falling damage each story, and dealing enough falling object damage to the ground to break through each story. The next round I jumped down 200ft feet onto him, getting a charge attack, and doing 200ft worth of falling object damage. He failed his massive damage save agienst the damage, and I died the next round at -150ish hp when my deathless frenzy ran out.

Siric
2007-04-08, 10:59 PM
This happened to a friend, but whatever.

He was playing a halfling rogue. He had a number of various items with him.

Anyways, the group was a pretty large group. About seven people I want to say. They were mid levels when they got swarmed by a tribe of bugbears or ice giants. Large Monsters. It looked bleak, and the party probably wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for the halfling's sacrifice.

He set down a portable hole, and clutching his bag of holding, hopped in.
Explosion.
Luckily, no party members were near, and about a third of the bugbears were taking out.

Or so I'm told. I like it :)

Job
2007-04-08, 11:56 PM
My half-orc champion of kord, and his two buddies are walking through a tunnel created by a fleeing purple worm not moments ago. They round the bend to find it intersects an established hallway and at the end are two demons waiting for them, one blueish and feathered the other red and packing a sword/whip combo.

The half orc gallantly charges in to meet the vrok while his companions stay back readying to banish the other, and offing support. In the fallowing round the orc decimates the vrok and turns to the other monstrosity:

Me: he will raise his shield and say “let your master know that we will…”

Dm: *smirk*

Me: oh no way….

VORPAL!

As amazed as I was, I could not stop laughing at the thought of him sanding there, arm raised in defiance, with is head spinning backwards off his neck.

Cant complain when you get quotes such as: “if I sit up…will it fall off?”

Tallis
2007-04-12, 02:16 PM
In one of the fiorst campaigns I played in we had a ranger. First day we played he spent a good deal of his time chasing a squirrel arround town with a spear. This became an ongoing activity for him throughout his career. Come 7th level or so we were travelling and he wandered off into the woods to forage for food. While in the forest he came across a village of squirrel people, of course he attacked. Being vastly outnumbered he was easily overwhelmed and captured. He awoke tied up and surrounded. For some reason he decided to try to escape and attack again. He was promptly stabbed to death, thus ending his life as a squirrel hunter. Probably the most ironic death I've ever seen in a game.

Disposablecat
2007-04-12, 06:55 PM
Ok, note DnD, but D20 non the less. Call of Cthulhu, oh yeah!

Anyways, here's what happened. Three party members. Me, and two friends. First we are trying to stop this undying madman from summoning Cthugha by finding an idol in a temple and destroying it thus breaking the barrier that hold Cthugha from entering this world. So we're pursuing this guy and he leaps across this chasm. We stop and take a look over the edge. Hmm, very long drop down and lots of hazards that could kill you on the way down too. We decide to make the leap. I jump, and make it. Another jumps, and barely makes it, I save his ass as he almost falls of the edge on the other side. The last person jumps, critical failure. Plummets to her death. We more her loss, but know we must move on to save the world. Later we end up below he pit where our friend fell to her death. We look up and the floor of the pit is a rusty unstable grate with spikes adorning it. My friend see the corpse of our other friend amongst the other corpses and loses his last bit of sanity. He flips out and runs to pull her, now obviously lifeless, body down and help her. He puts all his weight into it and ends up breaking the grating's support. Now my other friend's lifeless body is sitting under thousands of pounds of corpses and rusty metal. Party went from 3 to 1 really quickly there. I make it to the ritual room where our adversary is waiting. Seems while try to make good time the ritual room he was very careless just spring all the traps the temple had to offer. He is now legless, has one arm and missing large amounts of flesh. No biggie for him, he is an undead abomination. He can't reach the the pedestal to place the idol is on so I draw my gun. He draws his, I win initiative and take the first shot. CRITICAL FAILURE. Uh oh. GM kind of feels bad because he knows what must be done if I did this, so he let's me do a kind of confirm of the critical failure so I roll again. 1, CRITICAL FAILURE. I blow the idol off the pedestal and shatter it into a thousand pieces. After all this whole campaign I'm the one that ends up shattering the idol and summoning humanities destruction into this world. Campaign over, world ends. Yay!

Wow, that was long. Sorry about that.

Another good one was while playing Gamma World. Same group, but me as GM and the CoC GM playing as a PC. One player pulls some form of unidentified grenade out of her pack and wants to throw it at some mutant tribesmen to help end the battle quickly. She doesn't know how to use it so she asks our robot friend with high skill in identifying pre-war items to tell her how to use it. He looks at it and misidentifies it. So instead of hitting both buttons on the grenade and throwing it, she hits one of them, then hold the other for 5 seconds before attempting to throw it. BOOOOM, plasma grenade goes off in her hand with the robot standing right next to her. End of story for both of them.

Good times. :smallbiggrin:

Tharivol123
2007-04-12, 09:08 PM
Our party is playing on the defensive side of a siege. My ranger, our party's rogue, barbarian, and monk are all up on the wall while our cleric and casters were down below.
The attacking army gets their ladders up to the wall after a long time and we start having melee combat on the wall.
Our monk jumps up onto the raised portion of the wall and attempts a grapple with one of the enemies already on the wall. Succeeds the grapple, but fails the balance check for staying on the edge of the wall. DM decides to be nice and roll dice to see which way he falls. He pulls his opponent over the side of the wall away from the city with him as he falls down to the army below.
Two rounds later, the siege weapons hit the wall. Only PCs to make their reflex saves are me and the rogue. The casters are all wiped out by the mass of enemies that come through the hole.
The two of us take off from the frontlines and find a way to sneak out of the city and go hunting for new party members.

Matthew
2007-04-12, 09:42 PM
Dwarven Monk named Gus Gruffbeard, flying kicking a Pizza Golem (Calzone, actually). Super hot Mozzarella everywhere...

KoDT69
2007-04-13, 06:45 AM
Ummm, I had a 3rd level cleric once that was trying to be diplomatic with an adult brown dragon who just got a hatchling killed by humans. I had her convinced we didn't do it and to the edge of reason, then the silly ranger jumps out from behind a rock shooting an arrow at her. I got a point blank acid breath weapon to my face. I was reduced to a puddle...

Gungnir
2007-04-13, 09:36 AM
First time playing Exalted, we run my character through a arena type thing, to get used to the rules.

I rain down Firey Brimstone of Metaphorical Pain on the first two challenges. They were pretty standard, first a horde of mooks, then a few more monster-y things. The third was a bit more interesting. It consisted of 5 statues, all apparently having something to do with by a caster-dude in the middle of the arena. Of course, I attack the caster, only to find he is protected by a shield that auto repels anything living, and anything touching a living person (weapons, etc) I thought it repelled everything for most of the battle.

Then one of the statues animates. I slaughter it by way of 4 10's on a attack roll. Then two others animate at the same time, and I find that the animation is fairly sporadic, with the creatures randomly going to and from statue format each couple rounds. A few rounds later, those two statues go back to stone, and another on the far side of the arena comes to. It's apparently some sort of alchemist, and it pulls out some equivilent to alchemist's fire. Pulls back to throw, and drops it on his face, and manages to take max damage, which destroys all his other alchemical flasks stashed on his person. The DM decided that he burned in a wide variety of colors, like a multicolored sparkler, for about 15 rounds. After I dispatched the remaining three, I turned my attention to the caster, who was just sitting in his impervious bubble, chanting the same as before.

So my character, by way of a 3 die stunt and enough charms to go full iconic with his anima banner, launches himself a hundred feet in the air, attaches his sword to a 20 foot chain, and brings it down like the sword of the Unconquered Sun Himself, getting and extra 7 dice to damage.

Rolls 14d10. Recieves NO SUCCESSES and 3 ONES. This, for those not familiar with Exalted, is a Botch to End All Botches. Sword rebounds off the shield, impales my character in the heart, keeps going, and nails him to a pillar. Pillar cracks AND FALLS ON HIM. Unfortunately for the poor, squishy caster, the pillar doesn't count as being in contact with a living being, as my character has shuffled off the mortal coil.

Hectonkhyres
2007-09-18, 10:09 PM
The background behind our party's little moment of death and glory was pretty basic: We had a big dwarven city that was beset by the BBEG, a millon man army, and one hell of a CE god... plus more beasties than you could shake a stick at. It was pretty obvious that we were intended to get as many innocents away as we could and run like hell... probably coming back later with a heaping can of vengence. We had been going for a while and were expecting to go until the gods started to get scared of us. Sometimes playing that way is good.

Lets just say that our druid didn't play it that way. He managed to get back in after it was conquered. He made his way to this massive underground lake of oil, rested up, and proceeded to summon fire elementals like they were going out of fashion. They caused the entire place to turn into the god of all air-fuel bombs.

The druid survived fine by going earth elemental and burrowing straight down as fast as he possibly could. The rest of us weren't so lucky. They had a flaming montain land on them due to a bad dice roll when the city blew.

Serpentine
2007-09-19, 01:37 AM
My character died in a rather spectacular way last game. Kariana, LG female dwarven knight (10) sans mount (her horse drowned in a shipwreck) with 116hp. Up against a level 9 barbarian minotaur, raging, and under the effects of Heroism, Enlarge Person and Inspire Courage with a +1 Large Anarchic Flaming Greataxe. Critical hit, confirmed, crit table gave +1 to the crit multiplier making it x4, decent damage from axe, Anarchic and Flaming. 117 damage in one blow, half-way through the combat, so she'd already lost hp. So straight down to -30. Chopped in half, head to toe, in two bloody pieces on the floor... At least she died doing her duty: getting hit so others don't. Another character built her a pyre out of lounges, but was too grossed out to actually scoop her onto it. Also the druid decided to "search her" :smallconfused: She found a kidney stone.
A while ago now, a centaur... ranger, I think it was, was taken out by flying posies.

Quellian-dyrae
2007-09-19, 02:04 AM
Had a thri-kreen fail his saves against a beholder's death and disintegrate rays simultaneously once. And I've lost more characters to massive damage and the instant kill variant than I'd care to count. One of the worst examples was when my halfling ranger/psion/slayer with evil outsiders as a favored enemy got instant killed by a demonic goblin.

And then there was good ol' Bishop Masters, who got critted to death in the first fight of his quest, resurrected, and critted or instant killed (can't remember which) only a few fights thereafter.

One of my friend's chars started developing a reputation that everyone who makes a deal with him dies. Happened to an ally NPC then one of my PCs. Not that he was trying, mind, it just so happened that they...died.

I don't think I have any good glorious deaths though. They're pretty much all flukes of the d20. And the one time by druid/wizard/mystic theurge got full attacked by our party's dominated barbarian...

leperkhaun
2007-09-19, 06:55 AM
the party was hired to clear out some orcs. Everyone warned us before we went that these were not your run of the mill orcs (which is why they hired us).

Our tank decided to run in the middle of all the orcs during midday. his last words were "These arnt ordinary orcs"

Kurald Galain
2007-09-19, 07:49 AM
I've got a bunch in Paranoia, such as using a mutant ability to accidentally wipe oneself from existence.

In serious RPGs? Hm, one that came close was the group standing on a Rainbow Bridge to battle a dragon in the sky. Said bridge was created by a druidess, shapeshifted into a big eagle to also battle the dragon. They won the fight, but when the dragon fell, he took the druid with him, which caused the Rainbow Bridge to start to fade. The characters ran for it, except for one who didn't realize it in time, and was suspended in mid-air... and took a 1000-foot fall.

Thanks to excellent athletic ability, landing in a river, and some luck, he survived. The druidess did not. But that was pretty awesome.

OverdrivePrime
2007-09-19, 08:55 AM
We were playing an extended game of Werewolf where our real-life selves had become shapechangers. It was a pretty sweet campaign, and I - being me - had wound up being the party's tank despite being a Child of Gaia Galliard. Think Paladin more than Bard in this case. I had just made Rank 4 and was pretty potent in a fight. I did a lot of the charisma stuff too, while the rest of the group handled being schneaky and working the funky magics and all that jazz. Anyway, during one of our missions we had been trapped in the Battleground realm of the Umbra - a place of unending strife and battle. It had been made known to us that due to the geas placed on us, that a death in the Battleground was a true death.

Well, through a huge mission with us wailing on banes, there was always the sound of a distant rider growing closer to us, bourne on omnious hoofbeats.

We had finally found our way to the only exit of the realm when the rider closed with us - the aspect of Nimrod the Hunter! I shouted to my comrades to get to work on the gateway and flee while I held off Nimrod, then activated my most potent battle gifts and set to work buying them time. Thanks to my totem, Stag, and a pretty sick stamina and survival rating, I had Luna's Armor up through the roof, and Resist Pain was making sure that I remained effective as long as possible.

I held off Nimrod for six full rounds, and each time he battered me away, I'd leap back on him with a rage-driven howl as the dark horseman inexorably advanced toward my pack mates. They had finally gotten through, and as our healer turned to try to offer me a bit of healing I saw Nimrod rearing back to strike her down. With a burst of rage, I leapt in and pushed the Theurge through the gateway, taking the Hunter's power attack in her stead. That was it for me... out of rage, out of health, I struggled to rise once more as the portal faded away. The last thing my comrades saw of me was Nimrod's mighty horse crushing my skull beneath his hooves.

A death fit for any Ahroun, and one to make even the Get of Fenris show respect.


Ironically, I had been saving up experience points and roleplaying out a relationship with the spirits so that I could buy the Hero's Stand gift. Just 3 exp away... :smallsmile:

Mushroom King
2007-09-19, 09:03 AM
Let's see, what deaths have occurred in my group?

We once had a character in D20 Modern dropkick the BBEG into a vat of battery acid.

In D&D, while fleeing on bobsleds through a mountain pass with a shipment of supplies for a besieged dwarven city, pursued by lots and lots of goblins, one of the characters, while going through a tunnel, tied together a couple of bottles of goblin thudrud, lit on one fire, chucked it back to create an explosion of flame, and threw an expensive gnomish mining charge into the blaze, collapsing the tunnel on himself and the goblins, killing them all.

Two solars, one named Eclipse (fallen angel), the other named Flare (his sister) were battling. They were both epic-level. They both grabbed eachother and used the spell Vengeful Gaze of God. Each took 506d6 damage. Their falling corpses created two massive rifts in the middle of the battlefeild, causing massive casualties. In the ensuing chaos, one of the characters charged with his rallied troops and defeated the forces of darkness.

in D20 Modern, a rabbi whip out a sawed-off shotgun, saw "Mazeltof, motherf****r", and blast the thugs to death in one round.

AKA_Bait
2007-09-19, 09:09 AM
I think the coolest death any of my characters ever had was the first and only time that my Bard/Cleric Malebranch died.

The party was leading a bunch of slaves out of the Drow capital in preparation for an invasion by the dwarves. The drow were also massing. As we are leading the helpless folks along a far wall from the center of the city Lolth appears above the head matriarchs house and starts giving a speech to the troops.

Mal, realizing that if Lolth cared to notice us everyone, including the slaves, would die painfully decided to create a distraction. He bullied the party mage into teleporting him to the roof of the next tallest building and shooed the mage off. As the last of the slaves were making for the exit, he downed a potion of glibness, put on the robes of a cleric of Shar (He worships Sharess, Shar and Lolth were working togather at the time) and proceeds to cast a flamestrike on the statue of Lolth right next to her.

He then informs her that the deal is off, Shar is coming for her, the drow will all be crushed, and that she's nothing but a skid mark on the porcelin of the universe. Lolth fails her sense motive check (by one) and buys it. Of course, she grabs Mal anyway and takes him to her demiplane to be feasted upon by her little spidery pets until he dies but the alliance was broken and the drow invasion was postponed for so long in the confusion that the Dwarves were able to get massive reinforcments. Also, Lolth was so peeved that she didn't even bother to notice the rest of the party escaping.

Death via tricking a god is pretty cool in my book.

Swooper
2007-09-19, 09:51 AM
One of the best campaigns I've played in ended when one of the players - A dwarven Fighter/Dwarven Defender/Sacred Executioner (homemade PrC whose details were scetchy at best) - leaped into a volcano. He survived in there for two or three rounds, dieing only when the portal he contained in his body opened, letting the demonic invasion into our world, and getting a warm welcome so to speak.

That was badass.

Solo
2007-09-19, 09:59 AM
However, my next character, an orc bard (yes, I know) sees the slaughter and is so inspired by their gutsiness and final battle, that he seeks out the surviving members of the guild (just those two--the PCs were basically the only guild left to "protect") and asks about them.

And they promptly attack him despite him not even drawing his sword and surrendering. Then they strip him naked, chain him up, and try to nail his bits to the wall with a piton. No, I'm not exaggerating. They also kidnapped a family of seven and made various members rape each other and then tortured them.

Still, it was an AWESOME death. Three ECL fives brought down an EIGHTEENTH LEVEL FIGHTER. And the three of them will survive as recurring characters in my own games. The giant's term for them (after learning our guildmaster was Samuel L. Jackson) was the League of Extraordinarily Badass Mother@$%!ers.

Edit: I just crunched the numbers in the encounter calculator. Unbeatable.

...:D

Those two players had emotional problems, didn't they?

Dizlag
2007-09-19, 01:19 PM
In Hackmaster, we were fighting a fire giant. The guy playing the one armed dwarf says, and I kid you not ...


"Called shot to the junk!!!"

And he rolled a NAT 20!!! Many critical tables later, a dead fire giant laid at his feet.

:smallbiggrin:

Dizlag

[Insert Neat Username Here]
2007-09-19, 07:24 PM
Some classics:

Helm of Brilliance. Enough said. Those things are WMDs.

True Created Anti-matter. Death by the world explodes.

Mushroom King
2007-09-19, 07:47 PM
While playing a game in which I was an outcast dwarf allied with some corsairs, halflings, elves, and disgruntled farmers rebelling against a tyrannical and corrupt government, we found ourselves holed up in a castle in the middle of a river. We had also hired dwarven mercenaries to help out.
We had burned the bridge and cut the ferry, keeping only the secret tunnel open, out of which snuck the halflings and an elite squad of elves to harrass the enemy soldiers. The enemy floated two barges full of rocks downstream and crashed them where the bridge once was, then had townsfolk and soldiers pile more rocks on top, then cover it with planks to bring the battering ram through. Their attack failed so much we used the bodies of the falle imperial soldiers to form a protective soft barrier in front of the gates.
Eventually, though, they broke through again and tried using ladders to scale the caslte. Our battered defenders fought them hand-to-hand, but were severely outnumbered. Finally, threir commander came nto the castle to personally bring the leaders of the rebellion (us) to justice and ensure the absolute crushing of the defiant defenders.
While he crawled over the parapet off of the ladder, I hit him in the head with a warhammer. Natural 20. Followed by a Natural 20. Followed by a Natural Twenty.
The rebellion won that battle, because imperial troops lose heart when their commander's head goes flying two hundred feet and his body falls into the river.

Dr. Weasel
2007-09-19, 08:29 PM
Second level: Being eaten by a rat swarm. Party pools resources, gets me reincarnated (as a gnoll).

Fourth Level: Being eaten by the same (Undead) rat swarm. Party pools resources, gets me reincarnated (as a gnome).

Seventh Level: Being eaten by the same (Enlarged-somehow undead) rat swarm. Party pools resources gets me reincarnated (as a lizardman).

Eleventh Level: Being eaten by the same (Enlarged-somehow Greater-invisibility-ed undead) rat swarm (apparently with fire resistance this time). Party pools resources, gets me reincarnated (as an elf).

Deth Muncher
2007-09-19, 08:48 PM
ok. My Lv1 Human Barbarian Mr. Wuggles gets teleported inbetween a small throng of goblins and a flaming, Lv5 Sorceror Flying Flaming Skull. When asked what he did, I replied: ".....rage."

He goes crazy, killing 4 goblins in 2 turns. He gets KO'ed. Another party member heals him to 3 HP. He proceeds to kill 2 more goblins, effectively clearing the corridor of goblins. The skull Fireballed. Mr. Wuggles failed his save. He got to -15. However, his pile of ashes continued to swirl angrily, as the rage hadn't expired.

Ralfarius
2007-09-19, 09:35 PM
Well, not personally being the one that died, I was DM'ing an encounter with a young adult red dragon back in 3rd edition. One of the characters was hit by a tail slap, on which I rolled a 20. When confirming the critical... I rolled another 20. Now, I could have fudged the roll, but it was too impressive to just let go. Showing the players that, I rolled the confirmation of the insta-kill... And rolled another 20. For the hell of it, I rolled once more and got a 19. Thankfully, the player wasn't terribly attached, as this adventure was mostly a one-shot.

Nonetheless, he was literally splattered against a wall with one bad tail slap. Everyone had a pretty hearty laugh at that one.

The_Werebear
2007-09-20, 02:30 AM
Attempting to melee a Nightstalker as a level 8 sorcerer. Then, trying to pretend to be dead next to it. Yeah, lifesense is a pain.

My gnome is fleeing the rest of the party (who want to dunk him in a strange glowing pool they found. He runs around the corner and into a spear set at groin height to a human and forehead height to a gnome. DM ruled it a triple crit because I had been under Expeditious Retreat at the time. He also ruled it a suicide, so my character came back as an allip to slay the party. Then was propmtly Rebuked and Commanded by the Necro. The DM didn't like me. Nor did the rest of the party.

Eldritch_Ent
2007-09-20, 05:11 AM
DM- "You have just slain your archnemesis, the Felhunter." (Vampiric Ranger with Human as his favored foe.)

LN Caster- "I want to cast Iden-"

CG Ranger- "I take his wicked bow and grab the arrows out of his quiver."

DM- "Alright. You are now in possession of a +3 Obsidian Longbow and 47 Unholy Arrows. Take 47 Negative levels. You die and become undead."

CG Ranger- :smalleek:

LG Cleric of Pelor- "Okay, I'd like to use my Greater Turning attempt on the now undead on the Ranger..." *Rolling* "Okay, I turn him..."

earlblue
2007-09-20, 05:42 AM
Hmm...

The group was attacked by an ancient dragon coming in from the sky. The wizard cast a number of fly spells so that the melee fighters can attack the dragon in its domain.

The fight went on for a while, and the dragon was losing. One of the fighters thought it would be great to attack from beneath the dragon, and he suceeded in delivering the death blow.

While still under the dragon.

OBeQuiet UWannabe.

After we scrapped the remains of the fighter out, we went hunting for the dragon's cave. We found the cave, and we hit the jackpot!

Gold, magical items... it was quite a haul, and we were all surprise... The DM is tight with his gold and magical items.

Then we found an item that one of the guys always wanted. He start jumping up and down, trying to claim the item.

And suffered a heart attack.

The game pretty much died then, and that group disband after a while.

We can only hope that guy is now in D&D heaven, gaming away.

Garfgarog
2007-09-20, 01:55 PM
First D&D game I ever played ended up starting with so many players, two DMs were needed to manage the entire party. The pretense was a fairly simple contract for an adventuring party to check out some huge foreboding building, and it was a fairly mixed party. A Kender, a Dwarf played by one of my good friends, myself as a Half-Elf Ranger who can only be described as Dante, one other experienced player that decided from the beginning he was going to screw us all over, the lamest copy of Aragorn in the world, and a few other characters I don't remember because they were in the other group that split from us.

We seemed to have a pretty good way to inspect the area and go about our business, until the Kender saw a huge rope hanging in front of the main doors and took a flying leap onto it and rang the huge bell it was attached to. Hearing sounds from inside, the party splits here and the second group goes off with what they're doing while we basically rush the now opening front doors. The fighters took up the entire entranceway fighting with some Wights with Aragorn trying to be the valiant hero and attacking a new target every round. I didn't just want to sit like a tool on the outside, so using my Quarterstaff, I pole vaulted the battle in the doorway and took out a heavily injured Wight on the other side with the only weapon that made sense at the time; a crowbar I was carrying. My rolls at this point were the clearest sign, I realize now, that I can never ever succeed in straightforward combat for the rest of my D&D career.

Once inside, Aragorn goes off on his own because he's Aragorn and he can take whatever godforsaken monsters come after him. So when he found his first door and was knocked to -1 instantly from the fire trap that went off in his face, no one really cared to go pick up his smoldering body, and a few moments later, the goblins in the room smelled the delicious roast man at their door and opened it, dragged the body in and finished cooking him on a spit. The rest of the campaign didn't last long, because a short while later the other group stopped because they were all either dead or on their way to it, all except one guy, and I was the one that found out why when he came out from around a corner when I was searching for help from the other party after accidentally hitting the Dwarf with a Drow poisoned bolt. The bastard blindsided me with the flat side of his battleaxe and laid me out onconscious in a single attack, then proceeded to sell me to the goblins nearby, who had finished Aragorn and were getting hungry again. Aside from this guy though, the only other survivors was the Kender and the Dwarf, because apparently the Kender had something to turn herself and other she was in contact with invisible, so she hid in the corner of a room, invisible and the entire thing was pretty much over.

John_D
2007-09-24, 04:30 AM
I had my first TPK at the weekend. Not really a "best" death, but certainly memorable.

We were playing from a pre-set Adventure Book as a wind-up to the campaign proper, so the mood was fairly casual. We were going to rescue some merchants from a band of orcs, and had heard them talking about the "trash eater". Hmm.

The trash eater, we found out, was a gelatinous cube. The paladin found this out by walking into it. Battle ensued! The wizard and I (cloistered cleric, since you asked), squeaked "we are weaklings!" and retreated down the tunnel to pelt the cube with ranged attacks. The paladin also made a measured retreat to block the cube where the tunnel narrowed. The barbarian was about to retreat but got engulfed and paralysed for 16 rounds. (3d6 rounds?! Might as well say "until you are dead".) The paladin leapt in to rescue the barbarian, and was likewise paralysed. The wizard and I continued to pelt the cube and eventually it died, but not before dissolving our comrades and most of their stuff.

Saying a quick prayer over them, we retreated to town to rest. We then took a look around town to see if anyone was willing to help us assault the orcs again. The other players looked up from hastily scribbling new character sheets and said "not quite yet", so the wizard and I decided to go on our own, figuring the dungeon was almost over and we were all stocked up on spells again.

We enter the room after the cube room and begin to look around. Suddenly we hear a yell of "Surprise!" as part of the wall collapses and three orcs charge us. I didn't even get to act, and was knocked down to -2 in a single blow. The wizard's player then raised his hands and began to plead frantically "no no no I don't want to die I'll do anything I'LL BE YOUR SLAVE!" as the DM rolled handfuls of dice. His pleading was so earnest that we had to stop the session and delay character adjustments for a good ten minutes so that everyone could stop laughing.

Earlier in that same session we rescued a unicorn, and the following exchange brought the session to a similar halt:

Paladin: I slit the bonds around the unicorn's legs and say "Go, unicorn friend!"
DM: The unicorn springs up and gallops from the room.
Wizard: Wait, that thing's hair is worth loads! I chase after it shouting "Stop!"
DM: Once it is out in the open, the unicorn accelerates away with unholy speed...
Wizard: Unholy?
DM: Yeees... because it was actually a Nightmare! "Fools! That horn was really an ice-cream cone! I don't heal, only burn! Bwahahahaha!" The Nightmare leaps onto a motorcycle, pops a wheelie and takes off into the forest.