What killed a party member in your last campaign and why?

[Rhyltran]

So this is how this works. In this thread you post the last time a party member died. You explain what killed that party member and why. So I'll start..

In my current campaign (the one I'm running) my fiancee was slain by a Dragon Turtle that was working with the BBEG. In an attempt to negotiate with it since the fight was going poorly one of the party members decided to start insulting it while trying to talk it out of it's attack.After some poor diplomacy rolls and offending the Dragon Turtle the fight resumed which resulted in one dead dragon turtle as well as the death of one of the party members. While Dragon Turtles are usually neutral this is a more grey campaign and this particular Dragon Turtle happened to be lawful evil.

So what caused the last player death in your party?

[Quertus]

Suicide. As a requirement to join the Order.

[Inevitability]

A high-leveled enemy binder used that Phantasmal Killer vestige successively in an attempt to get the party to leave an area. The player failed both saves.

I've since learned not to use save-or-dies as deterrents.

[mrlazy]

The last campaign I was in was a fairly high power one, one player got bored due to another player hogging the playtime and attacked the hirelings that were his racial enemy. In defence of those working for the party, my support fighter shot at the player (missing several times) before I got annoyed and hit the character with a great axe (much to the suprise of another player). The result was a cleric sliced in two and a very confused (and slightly worried) powergamer.

[tokyooo23]

A krenshar coup de graced them while they were asleep from sleep-smoke. Dragged their body through a dungeon and fed off of it for a few days.

[finaldooms]

The storm giant barbarian who suffers from chronic good guy syndrome lol...he died 3x in 2 sessions because he tried saving the ( terrible) cleric who tripped and took a negative blast to the face...then said cleric died by charging a dragon skeleton right after ...then the other barb tried hiding behind him and he took a ton of hits trying to guard said coward and died..then he got eaten by a slime.

[Jack_McSnatch]

A tactical minded drow mercenary killed the party healer/support. He would have just left her at negatives, but she had diehard, so killing her was his only option

[Doctor Despair]

Rhino charged from max distance during a surprise round and hit the monk for near max damage. Dead on impact.

[DarkSoul]

The BSF decided to charge something other than the devils they were warned about being able to cast scorching ray, so he took 8 of them to the face, at least one of which was a critical hit.

[J-H]

My players (4 7th level characters) were in a town taken over by undead. There were several undead with class levels, several skeletons, and a whole bunch of regular zombies. The unarmed swordsage charged ahead and spent a couple of rounds half-surrounded by enemies by herself trying to play tank. Once her HP got low, she ran off and spent about 10 rounds fighting 2HD zombies one at a time in an alleyway. At 10hp, she then decided it was a good idea to charge a guy riding a rhino skeleton. The rhino knocked her to negatives in a single attack (the rider missed) and then a few of the zombies finished her off.

Very, very poor positioning and tactical decisions.

[Rhyltran]

Keep them coming! Love these! :)

[Keral]

The ranger died.

I grilled him with my breath weapon. He was hit by a prismatic ray trap and got the insanity ray. Since we got no access to the spells to cure him, we decided it would be easier to kill him and reincarnate him. Especially since we have a terrible house rule that reincarnation doesn't give the level loss, we were about to engage the BBEG and couldn't afford having someone who could turn on us.

[noce]

First kills were against a Y-shaped dragon, that killed both the cleric and the warblade.
We resurrected the warblade, while the cleric player continued as a warlock.
Several months later, warlock head exploded and we still don't know why, he now plays as a psion.
The evil sorcerer in our party killed the fighter, just to try his new demon powers, but it was a dream.
Months later, the warblade and the sorcerer were in a town about to explode with dynamite. There was a portal with the warblade name, the warblade jumped in but, before going through it, the portal closed: meanwhile the (evil) sorcerer understood what was going on and with Celerity jumped in the portal before the warblade, so the sorcerer was safe and the warblade exploded with the town. We resurrected him.
Not many days later, the fighter saw the (evil) rogue eating steamed gnome brain, and he killed him. Unfortunately, time is unstable in this campaign, there was a rollback and no one remembers neither the gnome brain nor the kill.
Lately the sorcerer insulted a drow we were forced to work with, and in response he killed the sorcerer. We resurrected him.
Lastly, a female NPC has an affair with the warblade, and he found her in the bed of the psion, that is known to be lesbian. So the warblade killed both. It was just a warblade nightmare, though.

[Vizzerdrix]

Me.

The party rogue insisted on checking every single door we passed for traps. This would have been fine if we wernt walking through a busy city at mid day. After letting him go through two blocks of this, I decided to use him to check for traps in my own way. By tossing him into a busy intersection, directly in front of a cartload of stone pulled by clidesdales. The good news was he didnt find any traps.

[GilesTheCleric]

The party was investigating a cave complex where a primary antagonist had been hoarding barrels of black powder.

They passed a series of doors, one of which had a whole bunch of statues right next to it, all positioned looking at the door. The rogue decided to take a look at the door, too. He remains there to this day.

[Crake]

The last party death in the game I'm running was one of the party's warblades. He was sacrificed by another party member for thought crimes.

[Tiri]

Our party leader touched a teleportation trap and disappeared.

Later, we found her held hostage, unconscious, by two bugbears who warned us not to attack or they would cut off her head.

Guess what we did?

[GreatDane]

I feel like party members killing each other isn't as common as this thread reflects...

Last player death (current campaign) happened during a random encounter with a shambling mound. The party was level 1, and the mound (rather than going for the party) had killed a horse and was dragging it off. The party knew how tough it was (both by being experience players and having made the relevant Knowledge check), but the horse's owner got offended and convinced everyone to try taking it down anyway. The party was pretty smart about it, using ranged attack and entangling it, but it finally caught up and devoured a front-liner.

[atemu1234]

Let's see, the most recent one I dealt with was as DM, with a player being bisected by a mid-level Drey barbarian wielding a falchion. Did over fifty damage in one swing, due to a certain improved critical feat.

Most recent in a campaign I've ever played in, was my kender rogue being strangled in his sleep by his party members. In their defense, he most certainly deserved it.

[Hiro Quester]

The party blaster sorcerer, killed by his own impetuousness.

Rather than talk to the pair of Balors guarding the castle gate, as was the plan, he decided to attack them. Mostly because he had learned a new 9th level spell and was itching to try it out.

Their SR shrugged off the iceberg spell's damage, they walked out of the pile of snow and imploded him.

[flappeercraft]

The last death in the campaign I'm running was just one of my players playing borderline retarded due to a immortality complex he had of his characters. So the other players were not online to play so he asks to do go with his 2 characters into the dungeon that was meant for the party but as he insisted I allowed him after several warnings. His characters were a Fire Gnome Sorcererer/Ur-priest/MysticTheurge with Troll Blooded+Acid immunity+RageClaws Shape soulmeld and a Mineral Warrior Water Orc Fighter/FrenzyBarbarian/Warblade which were both ECL 9. So after breezing through a room of 20 wights, another room of 7 cloakers and 2 random encounters inside of a Stone Golem and then like 10 Centipede swarms for the second one (He actually got that unlucky that 2 random encounters happened to wander around and walk into the room he was on, due to some secret rolls I did that were not really much on his favor). He then goes to the 3rd room which had IIRC 7 basilisks which all gang up and back up still within gaze range and after about 4 basilisks are dead his Fire gnome just gets petrified and he has his Mineral warrior finish the last 3 off. The barbarian seeing his friend turned to stone decides to leave and take him to another caster to fix him, he pays for a Stone to flesh and the Fire Gnome just fails the fort save to survive. So much for being nearly immortal, his character died from what he did not anticipate, also from going alone to a dungeon that contains a minor artifact with 2/5 of what the dungeon was intended to be for.

[Elkad]

I feel like party members killing each other isn't as common as this thread reflects...

In my current game? Hasn't happened yet, or even been hinted at, in the first dozen sessions.

But other than this one? There is always PvP. Whether it's just killing the possessed guy because nobody has protection from evil, or using Suggestion to make the Fighter make a foolish charge, or making the old adage about "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you" become truth by deliberately slowing them down, or flat out murdering another character for the purpose of stealing their stuff, it always happens.

[OldTrees1]

The dice.

The last PC death I saw was when a 9th level PC traveling alone was ambushed(bad die) by Gelantinous Cube. They were paralyzed, engulfed, and corroded away before the bad dice would grant them any chance.


I am still trying to figure out how to have DM'd that better. It left a sour, acidic taste in my mouth.

[Allanimal]

Not the last, but I think most interesting.

Chaos beast (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chaosBeast.htm).

Victim rolled a 1 on the Fort save. Otherwise she would have easily made it.
If I remember right, the only PC able to cast a spell to save the victim was the victim herself.
She never made the CHA roll to return to normal shape, so no spell casting...
They had to kill her after they realized there was nothing they could do to save her.
This is the only time i can recall in my group there has been PvP not due to enemy mind control magic...

[Technetium43]

We managed to have someone consistently roll less than a 9 for multiple weeks worth of days, and die from ghoul rot in a pathfinder campaign. It was baffling.

[Inevitability]

The dice.

The last PC death I saw was when a 9th level PC traveling alone was ambushed(bad die) by Gelantinous Cube. They were paralyzed, engulfed, and corroded away before the bad dice would grant them any chance.


I am still trying to figure out how to have DM'd that better. It left a sour, acidic taste in my mouth.

Gelatinous Cubes are one of those monsters that are really good against singular characters. Normally it wouldn't be able to paralyze or engulf everyone, leaving at least some party members able to hit its cripplingly low AC and save their friends, but in a 1v1 battle...

[noce]

I feel like party members killing each other isn't as common as this thread reflects...

Well, it depends on the party composition.
My party:

LN warblade: good tendencies but aggressive temperament (I'd say he's CN rather than LN)
NE rogue: the most selfish guy you can imagine, killed even children without the party knowing (there's good roleplay here)
NE sorcerer: chaotic tendencies, hungry for power, made a pact with a feared demon without the party knowing
N cleric, died early, replaced by CE warlock, died early, replaced by N psion: she only speaks to say catchy ironic phrases
LN kensai: a dwarf in a human party, in a human dominated world, with the oath to free non-human races from slavery


I must admit, we spent many playing sessions roleplaying party discussions and conflicts, often ending in subdual fights.
Nonetheless this campaign has been great, since such a heterogeneous party seems alive, and we're having a blast.

[King of Nowhere]

poison, and bad luck with dice.

see, there was this big barbarian with 17 CON. he got poisoned by a slime of some kind, and lost a smidgen of it. nothing dramatic. then the party faced a trap that summoned a random monster. the monster was rolled as a bebilith, a demon spider with a poisonous attack. it lasted but one round, but it was able to hit and poison the barbarian. he rolls a save, while raging, he should make it but he rolls a 4. his CON drops to 7 (after rage expires), so we realize he is in danger. the healer cast a smaller restoration, bringing it to 9. he also get a few fort bonuses. this time he rolls a 2. damnit. well, 2d6, chances are he's going to survive. they roll 12 CON damage.
ultimately it was good, because the player was feeling invincible and becooming too reckless. I tried to kill him a couple times before, but the dice always turned his way (including a fighter type who could two-shot him making three attacks and rolling two 1; they were supposed to keep their distance from this one, but it worked out for them regardless...). And then he was killed in the most random and stupid way.

EDIT: I could also mention the time when I made an encounter with a dozen weaker monster (i don't really remember what they were) to let the aforementioned barbarian use his great cleave and the druid use hailstorm to full effect. i didn't read carefully the description, and when the encounter broke in I realized that they were resistant to slashing damage, so the barbarian could not one-shot them and cleave the encounter in a couple round. the ruid decided to cast hailstorm in melee, hurting the enemies enough that the barbarian could one-shot them. dices were against the group, who took massive damage and many went near death (they already had a few encounters behind them). It was then that I realized those monsters were also immune to cold. Since none of my players knew it, and it looked like a tpk was coming, I decided to "forget" about it. Then the barbarian ploughed through the encounter in a couple rounds, as I planned.

[Zancloufer]

In the last game I was running there where only two (a low number for once for how long and lethal the game was).

More interesting one was a fight in a Church with some slightly modified Succubus. After getting past their disguises and engaging in open combat one of the party member got dropped. Character in question was an experimental combat android (modernish setting) and tried using their arm mounted ranged weapon in melee. Que AoO which sent them flying a good 20+ feet into the rafters, crashing into the squishy mage type PC hiding up there and then they BOTH crashed into the ground with the android landing ON TOP of the squishy mage charter.

Android was the only one that died from that. Not by much, but by enough. Was odd in that it was one slightly bad choice + 2-3 bad rolls and it ended up killing the second toughest party member while what was the least durable surviving the impact. Somehow.

[Manyasone]

Character of a friend failed his initial save against a dance macabre his aura. Then the thing was hitting us for con damage on touch attacks and we were unable to land a solid hit. We left the dancing character there... Later on in the same dungeon my own character got sandwiched between barbed devils... It wasn't pleasant

[Buufreak]

In short, bad storytelling (on my part, admittedly) and the party as a whole.

A friend and my wife bicker often, OOC. This tends to bleed over into games, and while incapacitated he PK'd her. Lecturing ensued.

Shortly after, new characters for a handful of players due to "poor life decisions," (Paul's words, not mine), they ended up on a new plane that had its own pantheon. Someone became chosen by a god in a war of cosmic power, and he chose to ignore it. Eventually, the sun crashed into the plane. I'm not exactly sure the amount of fire and gravity damage that would do, but we figured it was enough.

[balegar]

Our party was framed for murder.

I was the party rogue and earlier in the campaign we found a wand of reincarnation and another one of restoration. We didn't have a divine caster so my rogue kept the wands. So one by one we had the barbarian coup de gras each party member and the rogue used the wands. Everyone except the rogue since he was the one with umd, so he mostly hides nowadays.

[Malimar]

A rakshasa, a couple of efreet, and a monkey. The party didn't know how to deal with wall of fire and so a couple of them died.

(The monkey was in case the witch used her sleep hex on the rakshasa -- it was riding the rakshasa's shoulder and had a prepared action to wake him up.)

[GiantFlyingHog]

Level 0 bandits. TPK.

[Tiri]

Level 0 bandits. TPK.

There's no such thing as a level 0 character.

[chainer1216]

Balor went BOOM!

The poor necromancer was blown through a mansion.

[Inevitability]

There's no such thing as a level 0 character.

Sure there is! As a result of having no HD they have — HP, which is what makes them so dangerous to low-level parties.

[Tiri]

Sure there is! As a result of having no HD they have — HP, which is what makes them so dangerous to low-level parties.

I hope you are being sarcastic. I'm pretty sure you are, but you never know.

[Dante Daylight]

Our halfling druid got beheaded by our fighter.

As the party was infront of a cave labyrinth and doesn't knowed the right way, the druid just yelled into the dark. As we heared wolf steps from inside he ran towards the sounds and a giant dire wolf leaped onto him and pinned him down. After animal charm from the druid doesn't worked against the wolf, he revealed his true form as a baghest and stunned the swift hunter. After the barghest managed to devour parts of him, the druid got free and run away, but the barghest managed to dominate our fighter and forced him to attack the druid our only real caster.

Long story short, fighter won against the animal companion gorilla who tried to stop him, rolled critical with his Greatsword, confirmed and the druid was gone. I as a paladin had lower initiative and casted protection from evil to supress the domination (dm was fine with this). The fighter then killed the Barghest with the rest of us before the protection went off.

We then found the right way through the caves and the gorilla helped to transport the parts of his master to the next towncleric where he got revived.

[Xaroth]

Last campaign...? Uh...hm.

I think I got obliterated by a disruptor beam.

Current campaign though, I'm DMing, and the last person that was murdered was the Warforged Artificer. The party came across some Dire Apes, and the smart member of the party managed to calm them down, and make it so that at the very least, they would be keeping their distance and the party could go past/around (Dire Apes are territorial, right?). This was just after murdering some Apes that they'd found previously, too.

So what does the Gnome Barbarian do?

Charges one of them.

What occurred afterwards was a bloody mess nearly ending up in a TPK, and even I was amazed at just how goddamn powerful the Rend ability is. It was kinda early-campaign so I decided I'd go easy on them, so as to not deter them from wanting to play, but the Warforged's death was honestly unexpected even on my end. Who the hell expects a dire ape to crit twice and then roll max damage on the rend?

Needless to say the party had a newfound respect for our silverbacked friends after that.

The Gnome Barbarian's Black Bear pet also died in the battle.

This was 3 dire apes against a group of 8 EL 4 characters.

[GilesTheCleric]

What occurred afterwards was a bloody mess nearly ending up in a TPK, and even I was amazed at just how goddamn powerful the Rend ability is. It was kinda early-campaign so I decided I'd go easy on them, so as to not deter them from wanting to play, but the Warforged's death was honestly unexpected even on my end. Who the hell expects a dire ape to crit twice and then roll max damage on the rend?

Crits will always happen when you least expect them. I TPKO'd my two member party (both level 2) with a pair of lucky CR 1/3 skeletons. Roll the bones!

[Xaroth]

Crits will always happen when you least expect them. I TPKO'd my two member party (both level 2) with a pair of lucky CR 1/3 skeletons. Roll the bones!

Doot doot!

I just found it absolutely ridiculous and couldn't stop laughing at the time while the Artificer was just like "...WHY?!" and what with a certain gorilla meme circulating the internet recently, many jokes were had about the critting ape.

[Inevitability]

I hope you are being sarcastic. I'm pretty sure you are, but you never know.

Don't worry, I am. :smallwink:

[ComaVision]

Last Monday I killed two PCs and two of their NPC companions.

I was running Tammeraut's Fate. The gist is the party goes to a small island with a keep and zombies attack at night. There are various trade supplies and some NPCs hiding inside the keep to fortify and defend the building.

My group got to the front door and fought a Peryton and two Assassin Vines. The Psion spent most of her PP during the fight, and the Warlock had expended his Healing Belt and damage boost charges, so they decided to camp in the courtyard. I tried to foreshadow a bit by having them see a dozen bloated, rotting figures on the beach as the sun was setting but they stuck to their plan of resting in the courtyard. Jump a few hours and they're set upon from all directions by a dozen, hivemind undead.

It probably doesn't help that I was rolling hot. Both PCs and one of the NPCs died by critical hits. The other NPC died after multiple rounds of failing stabilization checks, and the Psion failing multiple Heal checks. Oh, and the diplomancer of the group lied to the undead that he was sent to help them and helped kill one of the PCs.

The Psion is planning to go get some muscle from a nearby fishing village and try to get revenge tonight. Hopefully they don't do one fight and chill in an unprotected area again.

[Uncle Pine]

The stupidest character in the party suddenly went to town alone to buy a type II necklace of fireballs of his own volition and hiding it from everyone else in the party. There he meets an old friend of his who decides to accompany the character and even help him (by lending him the money necessary to buy a type III necklace) because he likes him that much.
Fast forward half an hour later, when the party realizes after 2,5 years that the charming warlock they befriended near the start of the campaign is actually working for the BBEG and he loves to use Brimstone Blast to blow his problems away. :smallwink:

EDIT: There were no survivors.

[Malimar]

A rakshasa, a couple of efreet, and a monkey. The party didn't know how to deal with wall of fire and so a couple of them died.

(The monkey was in case the witch used her sleep hex on the rakshasa -- it was riding the rakshasa's shoulder and had a prepared action to wake him up.)

Oh, I just remembered I lied: a level 1 character died to a bunch of flotsam oozes more recently than the rakshasa/efreet/monkey incident.

[Calthropstu]

A coup de grace from an undead at one hp. It had successfully paralyzed a party member, the group had it surrounded, but had left a spot where it could 5 foot step and be unthreatened and adjacent to the paralyzed characters. Its orders were to kill one of the party members at any cost.

So the undead 5 foot stepped, and coup de graced. The reason for the order is there is a plot device that can resurrect a party member, but allows them to be tracked from a particular location by a particular group.

[MesiDoomstalker]

The only time there was a death in the party for our games (we tend to switch games too frequently for death's to occur, unfortunately) was in our D20 Future game. Long story short, the party are fleeing from some Grasshopper alien commando dudes with a natural invisibility ability. They had captured the commando leader (and left the other 2 to flee), and took the leader to the orbital base above the planet they were on. They had to wait for an escape ship to arrive, to they scattered throughout the (mostly abandoned) base in search of supplies and a functioning long range communication's array to get their escape ship to come sooner.

The Commando Leader, who they left on their small ship (incapable of interstellar travel), in the hangar, regained consciousness and broke free of his binds. This happened just as the pilot came back down to check out the ships in the hangar for anything useful. Proceed with absolutely epic sequence where the pilot (not a combat focused character) fought an enemy the entire party struggled to handle together. It ended with the Commando outsmarting the pilot, locking himself in the ship and them ramming the pilot against the hangar wall, with the ship. The damage the Commando took from the crash made it easy for the tech specialist (who saw the commotion on a security feed and ran to help) to finish him off.

Everyone agreed it was a good first death.

[ZamielVanWeber]

My DM rolled near max damage on Forbiddance after I failed my Will save vs it, then I failed my Fort save vs massive damage, then houseruled massive damage sets my HP -10. Boom. I was super salty too, since I failed the Fort and Will saves by 1 both AND he dealt the damage through a 19 HP false life.

[Thealtruistorc]

Bard ran out of healing spells and happened to be the only caster in the group. We were fighting the quasit witch in Rise of the Runelords. Party Ranger got decapitated by a minion.

In retrospect, running this adventure with newbies may have been a bad idea.

[Deadline]

Let's see, from the last campaign alone we have the following (in order):


Old General of an Evil Kingdom - Struggling against the remnants of his god-queen and oh yeah he's been dead the whole time (FFX Auron style). Finally laid to rest at the conclusion of the campaign.
Grumpy caravan master and former executioner for one of the only "safe" (kinda but not really) kingdoms left in the magical post-apocalypse - killed himself after being possessed by an outer evil so that said evil no longer had an anchor in this world and was banished. Returned as a ghost powered by the souls of the dead because his task wasn't finished yet. (He actually returned to life at the end of the campaign).
Dragonborn alchemist - turned to stone and had his name erased from existence after using his ability to punch things out of existence one too many times (worth it to erase an eldritch evil and save his wife and children from oblivion!)
Young street-thief - destroyed his own soul after absorbing evil taint from the soul of his "adoptive step-sister" who had been cared for and loved by the BBEG (who was the street-thief's father), thereby destroying said taint forever and allowing his step sister and father to pass peacefully into the afterlife.


It was a heck of a ride.

[vasilidor]

One character made a deal with one evil deity for power, betrayed said deity for a deal with a different one for more power, got caught but was killed in combat before either one could kill him themselves. so they just took his soul and our reincarnate artifact did not work because of that.

another character died by bad luck in combat, but was quickly reincarnated.

dying permanently in that game takes some doing, can't remember them all but some are on there 5th reincarnation.

[Azoth]

In the last game I DMed it was death by Manticors. Group saw a dual tiered room down a hallway and heard heavy shuffling. They buffed the Island Troll Warlord to the nine's and hurled a Sunrod into the room so he could see the enemy ahead of him. He charged in and almost one shot the Manticor at the base of a stairway. The other 4 from its pride opened fire on him from the second story. The rest of the party looked on in horror as their only frontliner became a pincushioned corpse in a matter of seconds.

Last time I played (same guy as the Island Troll) was playing a Half Dragon Half Giant Dervish Defender Warlord. We got contracted to clear out a band of barbarian raiders, and well he Leeroy Jenkins'd himself. While the party spread out and used various means of reconnaissance to ascertain the threat level of this massive tribe, he just took a nap and double checked his gear. After nightfall, when we decided it was time to go, he agreed to wait for the signal to start, and that he would deal with the bulk of the mooks as he was a walking blender. We begin by everyone using Wall of Stone to create a ring around the encampment, followed by a Control Winds to set the air to spiral inside the bow from the outer edge to the center, a few scrolls of Cloud kill are the finishing touches. Our goal was to let the spells do most of the work separating the threats from the red herrings. Thankfully, we get this much done while the dragon is using potions/scrolls to buff himself.

Shortly after some of the barbarians start making their saves and an alarm is raised. Cue the entire encampment going berserk. They know an attack is happening, but can't tell where from. Our Hidden Blade Rogue disguised as one of the barbarians goes to work avoiding the Cloud Kills and causing pure havoc in their encampment. He is setting tents on fire, driving horses into the Cloud Kills, and being a menace. I am hanging back waiting for the enemy Shaman to appear, as it is my job to tie up the tribe's only real caster. The other two members of the party are just picking off targets of opportunity.

The plan is working, until the Chief exits his tent. Our half Dragon immediately abandons the Rogue and charges the Chief. After failing to hit him, the Half Dragon issues a challenge to 1V1 combat for the fate of all the lives present. The entire melee comes to a screeching halt. The party is floored and none of us can articulate how bad an idea this is, or that we don't accept the terms before the Chief accepts. One condition, no outside aid or magic.

Cue our Half Dragon tossing aside all of his gear, dismissing his buffs, and stepping into a bare knuckle brawl with a Dragon Totem Invulnerable Rager Barbarian. He got beaten go death in less than 3 rounds. We only survived because I quickly challenged the tribe Shaman for his position and Flesh to Stoned him in round 1. I bartered our lives for that of his Shaman.

[Shinn]

The party itself killed our Duergar Rogue : first our Barbarian crushed him to death between his hammer and a wall, then the Sorcerer drowned him, then the Warlock cooked him by boiling the water and then turning the body to ashes.
Then the Life Cleric resurrected him with a Breath of Life spell, and the War Cleric attached him behind our carriage for twenty miles, for finally crucifying him.

Hey, he killed hostages we were supposed to save, betrayed us, sold our epic artifact to the BBEG for 5 GP, tried to rob us, then to poison us, then to stab us !

[Waazraath]

I think it was aprox lvl 10. We got ambushed by a bunch of drow archers, accompanied by one mountain troll. After taking some damage from the archers, the barbarian player decided the bbn wasn't going to use the weakling hit & run skirmish tactics the other two party members were using, and went toe to toe with the troll. One full attack later, we were minus 1 barbarian and had a huge stain in the middle of the street :smallsmile:

MM3 trolls are nasty.

[Matrota]

My halfling bard bet her soul in a game of Olidimarra's dice and lost. Our orc fighter won the soul and the soul of a dwarf npc as well.

[Calthropstu]

The party itself killed our Duergar Rogue : first our Barbarian crushed him to death between his hammer and a wall, then the Sorcerer drowned him, then the Warlock cooked him by boiling the water and then turning the body to ashes.
Then the Life Cleric resurrected him with a Breath of Life spell, and the War Cleric attached him behind our carriage for twenty miles, for finally crucifying him.

Hey, he killed hostages we were supposed to save, betrayed us, sold our epic artifact to the BBEG for 5 GP, tried to rob us, then to poison us, then to stab us !

See, that's justifiable homicide.

[denthor]

I would like other players in DM's thoughts on this death.

Evil campaign I'm an AsMO worshiper the others are all evil we were told there was a group of CE demon worshipers.

Turns out they worship one of the Seven hells most of the party is knock down except for me half work wizard and the party Thief who is four levels above me.

Upon realizing that these are not but we were told they were but are actually align with us. I attempt to broker peace with the final remaining cleric on the field from the opposite party saying I will not attack you if we can speak .

The thief takes three rounds to walk over to me and backstab me. This allows the LE cleric to leave the field.

I am bleeding out the thief then bandages the other players leaving me before the other group returns say just because they worship a plane of he'll does not mean we let them live. backstab me again flees the field.

What do you think of the role playing?

[stack]

Mythic warlord vs mythic chimera. Not the stock mythic chimera, a custom job to be an actual challenge.

Die-hard kills. If he had dropped, he would have lived. If he has made either of 2 reflex saves he also would have lived. Ah well.

[Blu]

In a "low magic" campaign(DM refused to give us items or money) after a hard combat we managed to get a crazy tide of luck and finish off two of the three enemys. While we started to run after the last one the lvl 10 party meets the CL 20 delayed blast fireball... The sole survivor was the fighter that managed to save the reflex(almost died anyway).

[Thaneus]

An ambushing pyrohydra obliberated our wizard who failed his reflex (HP ~80) for 114 dmg 30minutes after i explained him, he should learn celerity and memorize it (my bard has it but ruins delvers fortune was enough)

[Ualaa]

The last campaign was a long one... 98 sessions of play, over a two year span.

76 player deaths... the vast majority were preventable, if the group had chosen to value the life of every character.

Some were plain bad luck.
Some were a result of a refusal to retreat.

A lot of the deaths were interesting.

... shot the Worg, to get it's attention... succeeded.
... fell while climbing down a knotted rope.
... acted as bait, it worked.
... fell to his death, while tied to a 100 ft. safety line.
... moved into a flank between two Rogues, to get a flank bonus.
... prevented a fleeing mob from fleeing, slain by said mob.
... died of thirst.
... mummy rot targeted my dump stat.
... two hallucinating characters killed each other.
... dissolved by an allies 'Corrosive Aura'.
... shadows ate my dump stat.
... dissolved by a Black Pudding, while in a cage.
... voluntarily summoned 30+ shadows, rather than repeatedly killing manageable numbers.
... maximized & split ray was spell reflected.
... not hard to detect a very noisy scout.
... all his party members teleported away, leaving him alone to deal with 12 ghouls.
... abandoned the choke/bottleneck, was swarmed over.
... TPK, due to refusal to flee an unwinnable fight... rogue interrupted his wizard's evac.
... scouted ahead of the scout, into an ambush.
... french kissed the succubus.
... slain by those the party chose to ambush.
... the nearly dead survivors, of a near TPK, get slain by the villain pretending to be a hireling.

Many of those were multiple PCs at once.

[Professor Chimp]

So far there's only been one fatality in my current campaign.

At that point I was down to two players, an Elan Psion lv5 and a Drow Ranger lv4, who were exploring a frozen dungeon. They ran into an Ice Energon inside a fairly small enclosed space, the second they'd encountered so far. The Ranger was already dangerously low on health and took a little more damage during the fight, putting him at 2hp. The Psion finished off the Energon with an Energy Ray.

Naturally, the Energon exploded, which they should've known would happen from the previous one they killed. I rolled max damage, the Ranger failed his ref save. One dead ranger. One really embarrased Psion, since one of his character schticks was supposed to be a master combat tactician.

[Pulplair]

Party of 5 APL 8 fought a witchfire as bbeg. Was going fine for the party until the paladin was affected by the witch flame and the got hit by confirmed crit doubling the damage.
It was 24d6 damage no save on an already hurt 8th level pally. Instant ash.

[Seerow]

Captivating Song.


We were on a ship, and got waylayed by Sirens (refluffed advanced Harpies with swim instead of flight speed). Most of the party was asleep, but the ship's night crew and the one PC who was on deck keeping watch pretty much all failed the DC18 Will Save (one NPC succeeded, and kept the boat from crashing killing us all until we were out of range of the song when he came to wake the rest of us up). The PC who was on watch got a second save when he jumped out into the ocean to continue towards the Sirens, and failed that one too (Note: the character was a mid-level druid, and had like a +13 will save, just horrendous luck). Captivating Song specifies he offers no resistance even if attacked as long as the Siren who snared him keeps singing, and with the rest of the party oblivious there was no way out.

[The Extinguisher]

So we were doing the Tomb of Horrors (for the second time).

We get to the churchy room, and while we searched the room, the more... pompous member of our party decided to sit on the throne at the back, because it's a throne. Now while this is happening, the dragonborn gnome is all "lets purify this alter" (a really stupid running joke in our game), and well bad things happen. The alter explodes, incinerating the wizard on the throne, injuring the gnome and knocking my neutral good character through a door that turns them neutral evil. Our duelist rushes in to see if I'm okay, and oops their evil now too. We convince the gnome to join us in the closet, and it turns out the duelist wants revenge for killing our wizard. He stabs the gnome and kills her. Now me and the gnome are good friends, so I'm upset. So I use phantasmal killer and he fails both saves.

With everyone else in the party, I leave the room (switching my alignment back) and have to drag three bodies out of the tomb and back to town.

[GiantFlyingHog]

There's no such thing as a level 0 character.

We were playing a weird system.

[Dagroth]

We were playing a weird system.

You mean 2nd edition AD&D, where 0-level NPCs were a thing?

Last character death(s)... we're in a dungeon, drawn together by an epic'ly powerful Wizard. The Rogue/Sorcerer/Daggerspell Mage is doing his thing, the Duskblade is doing his thing, the Pixie Monk is... a Pixie Monk, and I'm a Half-Genie Crusader/Cleric/RKV.

The Rogue fails his search check on a door, so the Pixie goes to open it. Disintegrate trap, and the Pixie rolls a 2. My character takes out a bag and scoops up the resulting Pixie Dust.

[CartmanTuttle]

Had 2, no wait, 3 deaths in the campaign I have been running for...coming upon a year now.
1st: Warforged Paladin turned CE Warforged Warpriest of a Great Old One, made for a cool boss fight.
2nd: Human Alchemist. Party got into a fight with an Ogre that had Barbarian levels (Can't remember what it was called, Ogre Brute maybe?), and there were so many targets that even with his precise bomb, someone else was going to get hit. He chose himself. He nat 20d, toasted the Ogre, damn near gibbed himself. The party convinced a cleric of a god of battle to resurrect him by beating him in a fistfight.
3rd: Elf Warblade. Boss fight with a Cavalier/Antipaladin, got knocked down to damn near nothing. 3 healers were within spitting distance, decides he wants to taunt the boss. Boss complies and murders him. No one liked the Warblade, so they decide not to resurrect him, and let the Alchemist turn him into a Zombie, who then became his manservant.

[dervin]

in the last campaign i was in the lvl2 monk got shot in the head natural 20 and max damage by a lvl1 commoner and died before we could heal him.

[D&DPrinceTandem]

Lvl 1 commoners...... It was me that died and it was worse than normal because i was lvl 10. then again the commoner had crit and was using a Longbow (elf). I was at 1hp." I used to be an adventure like you but then i took an arrow to the knee!" When i built my new character i killed that elf.

[Nosta]

Sorcerer got pinned by a Boneyard and failed his saves

[thorr-kan]

I'm DMing an on-again/off-again 2ED Al-Qadim campaign. (Think Sinbad and Arabian Nights.) We've finished off the Geomancers Campaign. They'd confronted the BBEG, dismissing or trapping her allies, deploying the artifact to strip her defenses, and the thief got in close for an epic backstab. BBEG rabbited, dimension dooring away. The priest took off in pursuit, but she dropped a horrid wilting on him; insta-kill. One of the holy warriors, in hot pursuit, laid out one last blow with the artifact. BBEEG goes down. She kneels next to her fallen friend, calling upon Fate to spare her friend.

01%.

Her friend draws a shuddering breath.

The crowd goes wild.

[GiantFlyingHog]

You mean 2nd edition AD&D, where 0-level NPCs were a thing?

A system by the name of Age Past, actually.

[theasl]

So I...um. In a homebrew-ish setting, the BBEG crashed the beginner dungeon (we were almost all new players), summoned a young black dragon (what?!), and its breath weapon naturally took out my level 1 cleric in one hit. At least there was an NPC cleric who rezzed her after the fight...

[Inevitability]

So I...um. In a homebrew-ish setting, the BBEG crashed the beginner dungeon (we were almost all new players), summoned a young black dragon (what?!), and its breath weapon naturally took out my level 1 cleric in one hit. At least there was an NPC cleric who rezzed her after the fight...

CR-inappropriate encounters aside, there's various spells that can bring dragons to your side. Anything up to juveniles is doable with Lesser Dragon Ally, for example, and regular Dragon Ally can also call young adults.

[theasl]

CR-inappropriate encounters aside, there's various spells that can bring dragons to your side. Anything up to juveniles is doable with Lesser Dragon Ally, for example, and regular Dragon Ally can also call young adults.

Well I did mention that we were level one, right?
And the dragon was magically compelled to help the guy or something, I dunno DM fiat.

(also, Pathfinder)

[MintyThe1st]

most recently, our Halfling Cleric was killed by Orcs.

Soon in the future, my Aasimar Favored Soul/Risen martyr (its a long story, ~2 years long) will expire due to the DM giving me "GODLIKE POWER" in exchange for increasing my Risen Martyr level by 1 each time i use it.

[Braininthejar2]

Me

Barfing acid at his neck until his head fell off

because he tried to be smart behind our back, and got himself bound to a demon.

[Stealth Marmot]

The last campaign was a long one... 98 sessions of play, over a two year span.

76 player deaths...


Okay...call me a bleeding heart newb but there was clearly some problems here.

I played in a first edition game with a DM I considered harsh and pretty unfair, and I only had an average character death of 1 per 3 sessions after I did the math. Here you have... 0.7755 character deaths per session. That's 3 character deaths a month. Or at least I ASSUME character deaths since you said PLAYER deaths...which makes me wonder if the nice policemen should be taking a look in your crawl space.

Were players controlling multiple characters?

[tedcahill2]

This wasn't the last character death, but it was one of the most memorable.

I don't remember the details of the group, but I know I was a psychic warrior and we were around level 6. One of the members of the group had got his hands on a rod of wonder. The next time we got into a fight he exclusively used his new toy.

It wasn't a particularly hard fight even, but:

Round 1: Rod of wonder! Stinking cloud. Our whole party (failed their saves, and most of the baddies didn't).
Round 2: Rod of wonder! Grass grows in 160-sq.-ft. area before the rod. Comical, but useless. Meanwhile we're all getting peppered with arrows from atop a wall and are too sick to do much about it.
Round 3: Rod of wonder! Leaves grow from target if within 60 ft. of rod. Likewise comical but useless. At this point we're starting to turn the combat in our favor, and we're all yelling at our buddy to stop using the rod and actually help us.
Round 4: Rod of wonder! Fireball. Having no evasion in the group, and fighting an ambush of rogues that all have evasion. This really messed us up, and we were thinking one more round of this and we're done for. Through a few lucky rolls we actually killed all the enemies in this round.

Our attention now turning to our rod wielding companion we let into him about how he nearly got us killed and needs to stop using the rod etc etc. Due to some pre-existing depression issues on this character he took our words really harshly. He turned the rod on himself, "I put the rod in my mouth." is what he said. Flesh to stone, failed the save.

[Vaz]

Playing a Backported 3.5e Campaign involving some Final Fantasy D20 material; the Ronso Warblade with a Dire Lion Mount was stalking the Blue Mage who killed his tribe, but a series of terrible rolls saw him fail the stealth roll, causing the Bkue Mage's Summoner ally to call Valefor in; as they start flying towards, and scouting out what the disturbance is, the Ronso breaks cover and starts bolting to the rest of the party; a Natural 20 on the Initiative Check on the part of the Blue Mage, and a 19 from Valefor who proceeded to Doublecast Graviga (Fort Save or instantly halve your HP); the first save was an attempt at a Diamond Mind Save, but it completely failed, needing a 4+ he rolled a 3, and then dropped to 25% HP from full. He passed the first massive damage save (DC15 Fort Save or Die instantly, could only fail on a Nat 1), but proceeded to roll a Nat 1 on hos mext save.

The irony was that they had just dinged to 13 last session, and the Ronso had just gone from 187HP to 200HP. If he had rolled one HP less at any point in his career, he wouldn't have had to make that second save.

The Valefor got roasted by the parties Bahamut and wheeled off in the next round, and the Ronso got the last Phoenix Down of the party.

[flappeercraft]

This was actually last night, so on a dungeon crawl at 9th level 3.5 where all characters are allowed to optimize as much as they want. So there was the Necropolitan Pugilist/Tashalatora Pyschic warrior fighting a Gelugon in the last combat room where the Gelugon pulls out a Reach Bestow greater curse scroll created with the enhance item feat, which forced the Necropolitan to make a save or lose the pugilist class feature that made him turn all damage to nonlethal (it was a dungeon dedicated to fight characters that are protected with these kinds of protections, designed it before the player made that character tbh) which was followed by the Ice devil attacking him and leaving him at 1 HP, then he withdrew and as he was in trouble which no one expected to happen, the Knight who was not immune to damage charges at the Gelugon and starts manfighting the thing even though the knight was already damaged. He then proceeds to take down 1/4 of the HP the Gelugon had from his total leaving him in like 40 HP and then the Gelugon backs up and casts a Cone of cold which instantly kills the Knight, they proceeded to kill him with the rest of the party which was nearly dead but everyone else survived. Now they are in the last room where they are supposed to recover a Major artifact which is sorta weak until they recover 2 other artifacts where all 3 will become more powerful. In that same session, the Wizard almost got killed by some Greater shadows so he plane shifted out and on the previous session the cleric died from rushing to the middle of like 6 Greater shadows instead of letting the wizard do his thing.

[Scorponok]

A boar killed a player in my campaign. No, not a dire boar, just an ordinary boar. Rolled three 20's in a row. I let the player go to -5HP instead of death.

[HurinTheCursed]

One of the party members killed a frost worm that had managed to get near the group, this caused massive damage to the group. The team cleric was unconscious and saved by a potion, then he raised instantly our wizard using revivify.
It could have been way worse.

One bard imploded after spending too much time in a part of the room that had a connection with a positive energy plane I think. She got healed, remained there a few rounds longer, missed a save and was overloaded by energy. No one could have recognized her remains afterwards, we had to clean many bit of her on the walls, floor and ceiling.

The lich BBEG and his army found us in a ruined fort. We were holding our own against the army until the lich began to cast high level spells. The pallie fell way too soon, due to bad dice but mainly because he had forgotten to heal his injuries before the fight and was already at half HP before the encounter :smallmad: The battle plan was disrupted, since we had to leave our tasks to get back his body (and his artefacts) from the horde. Meanwhile, out scout pixie was stunned and an animal companion was drained to dangerously low stat levels.
A restauration and a resurgence later we were running away toward the allied army that had arrived too late, my barbarian was covering our back against the few enemies faster than us while the lich's attention was diverted away from us.
Our only defeat to this day.

Recently, we infiltrated a city held by dark knights hundreds of km away from our kingdom. During our exit, a few rank and files found us and our cleric foolishly told them in which city we were adventuring next. We killed them using excessive force, just to be sure, and ran by wind walk. Then, they managed to persue us by wind walk and they found us during the night, the match was quite even but our spellcasters were feeling low on spells and chose to run away. We outran them when their spell stopped.
In the last session, we learned a commando of evil knights (a third of dark knights, a third of half knight half clerics, the last of half knight half wizards) was seeking revenche on us. In the next city, the pallie (him again) was told by a child to follow him to find where were our allies in town. At this moment, we were occupied and he chose (with all the campaign artifacts) to leave alone without trying to convince us to follow him. He met the druid who was also alone but didn't tell him anything. The rendez-vous was a trap and the pallie is surrounded by dark knights that wanted to attack the whole party.
He doesn't have the tactical ressources to fight or flee safely, he could wind walk to us, even with him mount ouside the town he can try to outrun them, or use his alarm horn and wait for us. I don't know if he will make it. Still, we have wind walk on but dormant, revivify and revenance if he falls. It would just be super painful to run after the bad guys to get our campaign stuff back.

[Pex]

Party member killed by an orc because I couldn't roll anything but a 3, and I do mean the number 3, for three rounds to kill the stupid orc that should have been killed three rounds ago.

[Stryyke]

It all started with a simple but unrecoverable mistake. We were in the underdark, fighting swarms of spiders. I saw that the party had things pretty much in hand, so I flew off to scout ahead. The DM said that I saw a "big worm" that was attacking something (I can't remember what it was attacking). We were ECL 5. So I went over and attacked the big worm, figuring we would be encountering it in a few moments anyway. The party finished up with the spiders as I swooped in and attacked the worm.

The first sign that something was up was when the DM went wide-eyed. It turned out that it wasn't a "big worm" so much as a gargantuan purple worm (16 hd). So I attacked it and it attacked me. It hit me with it's poison and did 6 STR damage. I knew in that moment that we were in over our heads. I did an instant teleport 20 ft back toward the group, and flew top speed back to the mouth of the tunnel, yelling for everyone to run.

We managed to get back to the tunnel before the Worm got to us, and it started attacking the entrance trying to get to us. All of us but one got away clean, but the mage was shooting magic missiles at the thing. He got chomped. We started running. The other two party members were faster than me on land, and quickly out-paced me. Soon they were 100 ft ahead of me. That's when the second part of the poison hit. I took 10 more STR damage, reducing me to exactly 0.

The other two party members were too far ahead to hear me fall prone. They continued running, and when they attempted to cross a chasm that we had crossed on the way in, the Pixie was knocked unconscious from a gas, and was eaten by some oozes. The last party member was the idiot barbarian, who proceeded to go to the local pub and drink himself silly.

I lay on the floor, unable to do anything until a drider appeared and ate me.

[Dagroth]

It all started with a simple but unrecoverable mistake. We were in the underdark, fighting swarms of spiders. I saw that the party had things pretty much in hand, so I flew off to scout ahead. The DM said that I saw a "big worm" that was attacking something (I can't remember what it was attacking). We were ECL 5. So I went over and attacked the big worm, figuring we would be encountering it in a few moments anyway. The party finished up with the spiders as I swooped in and attacked the worm.

The first sign that something was up was when the DM went wide-eyed. It turned out that it wasn't a "big worm" so much as a gargantuan purple worm (16 hd). So I attacked it and it attacked me. It hit me with it's poison and did 6 STR damage. I knew in that moment that we were in over our heads. I did an instant teleport 20 ft back toward the group, and flew top speed back to the mouth of the tunnel, yelling for everyone to run.

We managed to get back to the tunnel before the Worm got to us, and it started attacking the entrance trying to get to us. All of us but one got away clean, but the mage was shooting magic missiles at the thing. He got chomped. We started running. The other two party members were faster than me on land, and quickly out-paced me. Soon they were 100 ft ahead of me. That's when the second part of the poison hit. I took 10 more STR damage, reducing me to exactly 0.

The other two party members were too far ahead to hear me fall prone. They continued running, and when they attempted to cross a chasm that we had crossed on the way in, the Pixie was knocked unconscious from a gas, and was eaten by some oozes. The last party member was the idiot barbarian, who proceeded to go to the local pub and drink himself silly.

I lay on the floor, unable to do anything until a drider appeared and ate me.

ECL 5, in the Underdark?

Yeah, you guys weren't killed, you were committing suicide.

[PraxisVetli]

The players were in the desert.
Seeing an oasis nearby, the head that direction, and are pleased to find it isn't a mirage.

Now. I had heard the tales of MM2, but hadn't truly experienced how wrong it was. So as the group, composed of a Human Warmage, Werepanther Psychic Warrior, Thri-kreen Swordsage, Tibbet Harbinger (PoW backported), Human Medic (also PoW) and a Goblin Master of Flies, all roughly level 9, approach, they are ambushed.
Two Drowned, refluffed to sand/suffocation instead of drowning, burst out of the sand. They hit the Warmage and the Harbinger in the surprise round, and the Swordsage fail his Con check from drowning. First round the two undead roll high Init, finishing off the Warmage, and severely injuring the Harbinger.

By the fifth round, most of the party was being dragged away by rhinos from a bag of tricks.
The Drowned didn't pursue, which is the only reason anyone made it out of there.

[Deeds]

In thr last session I ran, 2 players perished. After a mummy knocked the elf ranger into the negatives & after a failed fort save, the dwarf knight ran back to the dungeon entrance with his friend on his shoulder.

The elf crumbled to dust and at the same moment the dwarf failed his spot save to the grey ooze which promptly swallowed the poor knight.

[HurinTheCursed]

The lich BBEG and his army found us in a ruined fort. We were holding our own against the army until the lich began to cast high level spells. The pallie fell way too soon, due to bad dice but mainly because he had forgotten to heal his injuries before the fight and was already at half HP before the encounter :smallmad: The battle plan was disrupted, since we had to leave our tasks to get back his body (and his artefacts) from the horde. Meanwhile, out scout pixie was stunned and an animal companion was drained to dangerously low stat levels.
A restauration and a resurgence later we were running away toward the allied army that had arrived too late, my barbarian was covering our back against the few enemies faster than us while the lich's attention was diverted away from us.
Our only defeat to this day.

Recently, we infiltrated a city held by dark knights hundreds of km away from our kingdom. During our exit, a few rank and files found us and our cleric foolishly told them in which city we were adventuring next. We killed them using excessive force, just to be sure, and ran by wind walk. Then, they managed to persue us by wind walk and they found us during the night, the match was quite even but our spellcasters were feeling low on spells and chose to run away. We outran them when their spell stopped.
In the last session, we learned a commando of evil knights (a third of dark knights, a third of half knight half clerics, the last of half knight half wizards) was seeking revenche on us. In the next city, the pallie (him again) was told by a child to follow him to find where were our allies in town. At this moment, we were occupied and he chose (with all the campaign artifacts) to leave alone without trying to convince us to follow him. He met the druid who was also alone but didn't tell him anything. The rendez-vous was a trap and the pallie is surrounded by dark knights that wanted to attack the whole party.
He doesn't have the tactical ressources to fight or flee safely, he could wind walk to us, even with him mount ouside the town he can try to outrun them, or use his alarm horn and wait for us. I don't know if he will make it. Still, we have wind walk on but dormant, revivify and revenance if he falls. It would just be super painful to run after the bad guys to get our campaign stuff back.
In case someone is interested the said paladin fought for 1.5 rounds before being lucky enough to end knocked out rather than killed. The group will have to run after 3 major campaign artifacts.

I had forgotten his first blunder.
The group had cleared a large section of a dark knight dungeon and was busy looting. The paladin decided to keep on alone and entered a room protected by a spell preventing several members to enter. Indiana Jones style, he looted one of the major artefacts which trigerred the arrival of 3 shadows. When he managed to reach us, he was left with something between 1 and 4 in strength. Once again, close to die but here he would have been revived as undead before we could raise him back.

[Togath]

Ability damage via poisoned darts from blowguns wielded by imps.
Then their leader exploded and nearly took out another PC.

[Firechanter]

In my last 3.5 game, it was my fault (as a player) that our party Cleric was slain.
Simply put, we were duking it out with a couple of dragons in their lair. We were well prepped and it basically was a "We are not locked in here with you -- you are locked in here with us" scenario.
The first dragon quickly fell, and the second one didn't enjoy being forced into melee with us. And here I screwed up: when he attacked my Warblade, I didn't take it like a man and tank the damage, but teleported out of reach with my Shadow Cloak. So the dragon picked the next best target in reach -- which happened to be our Cleric. A few solid hits later, our priest was dead. The dragon followed one round later but the damage was done.

Of course, it was double unfortunate since the Cleric was the only one of us who would have been able to Raise someone. We had to coerce a captured NPC Cleric into doing it for us.

--

Amusingly, afterwards we played a 5E game and again it was the same player whose character died, and was the only one to die. This time at least through no fault of mine. We were stuck on the Shadow Plane and, since we were almost totally dry, had to make a Long Rest there. During the "night", a bunch of Shadows came out of the walls and floors. They divided their attacks evenly among us, so as could be expected, the character with the lowest AC would be the first to fall. Which, in this case, was the Sorcerer that the aforementioned player was running. He got drained to 0 a few rounds before the rest of had overcome the last of the Shadows.
Luckily, my paladin had _one_ spell slot left at this point. And was able to cast Revivify. I never felt so validated for conserving my spell slots.
This player really had it coming, anyway -- in the past there had been several occasions where he got to live only due to really lucky rolls, like a nat 20 on a really-high-DC Save-or-Die etc.

So long story short, in two games the same player's character died. Once I was to blame for his death, and once I got to take credit for his return from the dead. So I guess my Karma is fine again. :smallbiggrin: