The story of the kill you still feel bad about

[nickl_2000]

I'm curious about stories of the most unique horrific kills in battle. One that you felt guilty about afterwards because, despite them being evil and bad guys, that was still a bad way to go.

Personally, my bard had a bad guy swimming away from a battle to take information to the BBEG and bring more help. I cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him causing him to go prone, be incapacitated, sink, and laugh uncontrollably while underwater. I still feel bad about that one, as that would be a horrible, horrible way to go.

[Sigreid]

At least he died laughing.

[MadBear]

I'm curious about stories of the most unique horrific kills in battle. One that you felt guilty about afterwards because, despite them being evil and bad guys, that was still a bad way to go.

Personally, my bard had a bad guy swimming away from a battle to take information to the BBEG and bring more help. I cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him causing him to go prone, be incapacitated, sink, and laugh uncontrollably while underwater. I still feel bad about that one, as that would be a horrible, horrible way to go.

Not really a kill, but still fairly horrific.

Our group encountered a "baby tarrasque" that was the size of a large truck. After a lengthy battle, in the middle of a large town, we managed to knock it out. Our DM ruled that it couldn't be killed, but as long as once a minute it took 50+ damage, it would remain unable to move.

So we handed it's body over to the town guard that put it in a dungeon.... where a team of guards would have the full time around the clock job of repeatedly stabbing it..... forever....

yeah, while that solution worked, it was definitely cruel.

[2D6GREATAXE]

I recently levitated a Bugbear over a huge bonfire until he burnt to death.
I was playing a Lawful Evil Wizard, he didn't feel bad about it ......

[AureusFulgens]

Mine is more the not kill that I still feel slightly bad about? (But it was also awesome.)

My party is helping my paladin regain favor with his god, Marduk, and I've agreed to a duel with a paladin of Tiamat to win back a holy relic he stole. I point out that since I'm fallen, I'm at a disadvantage, and he allows me my companions if he can bring his friend Quarrel, who has the supernatural power to be in multiple places at once. The rules of the duel are, whoever bleeds first has the option of yielding (for themself and their team) or declaring that the duel will be to the death.

Well, during the night we all have acid-trip dreams, as is standard, and some of us deal with our insomnia by talking with Quarrel. It becomes apparent that he isn't too psyched about the fact that the duel will probably be to the death. He's a fairly innocent guy, personable, is proud of his village's backward technology (as in, he invented the Weather Rock, which determines whether it is raining because it gets wet when it rains - he gets wide-eyed when we explain wheels), overall reminds us of a mature but naive young child.

So during the duel the next day, we square off with the enemy. The paladin of Tiamat uses a magic drum to summon up a sandstorm, and the battle is getting ready to get messy. But I've already decided I had no intention of killing anyone. I walk right up to Quarrel as he's gearing up for a fight, and I stab him with a dagger. Wound. Nine damage. One of him is unconscious, but the others Med-check him.

And then I look him in the eye and play with his brain. I remind him that if he chooses a fight to the death, then either his paladin friend or all of the members of my party are going to die, and I tell him repeatedly that it will be his fault, because at this moment he has the ability to stop it. I lay all my cards on the table, and tell him I chose him to make this decision becaese "I know you'll make the right choice." And I just keep rubbing the specter of people dying in his face until he caves and yields, which ends the duel in our favor with exactly one attack.

Thus, I won a fight with a legendary boss single-handedly by manipulating the enemy's compassion and naivete. It was my most glorious moment, and I still have a bit of guilt.

[Spookykid]

Throwing a bead of force around a dragon and then throwing it through a portal to another plane. Totally feel bad because I didn't get to skin the thing.

too many vampire game ones to list here for sure

[Trum4n1208]

I had a buddy who beat a Kobold to death with a mace, but kept rolling super low damage, so it took several rounds for the Kobold to die. The Kobold spent the latter half of those rounds begging for its life as opposed to fighting. It was...slightly a bit much.

[Sigreid]

I had a buddy who beat a Kobold to death with a mace, but kept rolling super low damage, so it took several rounds for the Kobold to die. The Kobold spent the latter half of those rounds begging for its life as opposed to fighting. It was...slightly a bit much.

Yeah? I'm with your buddy. No prisoners or rematches. Start a fight with one of my guys and he will kill you if he can.

[Trum4n1208]

Yeah? I'm with your buddy. No prisoners or rematches. Start a fight with one of my guys and he will kill you if he can.

I should clarify that the player started the fight. So the Kobold acted in self-defense, and then was slowly bludgeoned to death while weeping and begging for mercy.

[Sigreid]

I should clarify that the player started the fight. So the Kobold acted in self-defense, and then was slowly bludgeoned to death while weeping and begging for mercy.

That's a bit different though traditional D&D has always been largely about breaking into the underground homes of non humans and killing them for their stuff. Really,the popular view is basically Hom Invasion Robbery the Game.

[DMThac0]

I've been behind the screen for so much of my D&D play I find it hard to come up with a kill that I personally dealt that makes me feel bad. Most of my characters that I can remember were support, battlefield manipulators, or simply did not like the idea of killing. However, I am reminded of my most guilt filled accident, a death by proxy...I killed Meepo.

He'd been leading us around and seemed to know his way, so I asked him to check a door a bit further down from where the party was. We were in the middle of wrapping up a task, I figured what harm was there in having him peek into a doorway... Only to watch as 3 arrows impaled him the moment he opened the door. Apparently the enemy had flanked us and set up an ambush..Meepo gave us a warning through his death.

For those unfamiliar, Meepo is an NPC from the Sunless Citadel module and you should play it if/when you get the chance.

[effenhoog]

We encountered some Kobold "inventors" in tomb of annihilation who used some unorthodox equipment like a scorpion on a stick and a cage with a skunk in it. The one with the cage let the skunk out and tossed it over near our party's monk, who grabbed it and turned its tail end back at the kobold who threw it. After being sprayed in the face, he fell prone, coughing and puking, followed by my barbarian brutally smashing him face first in a pool of his own blood and vomit as he died.

I'm pretty sure that part of the adventure is supposed to be kind of silly with the weird and mostly useless kobold inventions but it really made me think about what kind of effort and enthusiasm they must have put into creating such things to protect their home, only to result in complete failure and miserable deaths.

Didn't stop me from smashing their skulls in though :^)

[Asmotherion]

I don't regret anything. :3 Living a life of no regreats is both an RP and Real Life Goal.

If I don't want to do something In Game, I just don't do it, and advocate against it. If the Opponent leaves us no choice but to kill him, it's on him. If I feel empathy towards someone I killed, I say some words showing that, and that's enough to process the feeling (something along the lines of "everthough I understand you partially, you crossed this line and I could not forgive that). I have stepped out of combat on killes I did not agree with, such as a repending mass murdering Sorcerer (actually used the Fireball spell multiple times on a feat of rage, and claimed that he could not control his powers when angry).

[erok0809]

The best one I can think of was when I had a Folk Hero Wild Magic Sorcerer, one who was incredibly well loved by the people and was working to take down tyrants. We were at a town fair, and I was entertaining the children with prestidigitation and such, when a fight broke out, and I tried to help stop it, to protect the kids. I cast a spell, triggered a wild magic surge, and rolled an 83, and rolled a 10 on my die. Immediately killed every child within 30 feet of me, draining their life forces and unnecessarily healing myself with them. Loads of guilt for Adrik, and even though it wasn't directly his fault, it was terrible luck that made his magic surge in that way, he never truly forgave himself.

[Laserlight]

We were fighting giants who were throwing rocks at us from some distance. I was riding a horse, and took up an attractive NPC monk behind me. As we got close, I slipped off the horse and sent it (and her) on to be decoys (a detail i hadn't mentioned to her), while I cast Darkness on myself. The giant predictably decided to fling a boulder at the target he could see, and the young lady got squashed to strawberry jam. It never bothered that character, but he was NE and coldblooded.

When I was DM, the characters went into a pyramid and found a skinwalker, obviously powerful and evil. The PCs ran and on the way out they locked a door behind them. Two guards were thereby locked in with the monster, able to hear it coming but not able to escape.

[KorvinStarmast]

The time I killed our whole party in the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan by casting the spell fireball. (AD&D 1e, module C1)

Little did I know what a bad idea that was, to cast that spell, until we were all dead.

[BBQ Pork]

My old DM was going through a really nasty divorce, and every female NPC in his campaign was either completely worthless or demonically evil.
Every. Single. One.

We were trying to rummage through a (closed) bar for some reason, when a small girl came up to us and asked what we were doing. The Archer (Fighter who never carried a sword) panicked and beat her to death with an axe handle, afraid that it not being either silver nor magical it wouldn't do any damage.

It was a normal 8yo human child. He toned things down after that.

[Kane0]

My warlock was participating in a mage's tournament and made it into the final event, nonlethal spell duels between the best mages of the event. He got matched up against a wizard the party had worked with before, and had become good friends with.

The duel started without any issue but the villain of the campaign had tampered with things behind the scenes, turning the duel lethal and locking us in the struggle or else destroy a sizable portion of the arena and much of the audience. It was a race for the party to end the effects of the tampering before I, our ally and/or half the onlookers died.

We did not succeed. The BBEG forced us to kill our ally in order to save one of our own and a bunch of innocents, which was of course planned as we were working together to uncover and thwart him.

Tell you what though, we were very motivated to find and kill the villain after that, political immunity be damned.

[EvilAnagram]

I was playing an evil character in a fairly mixed party, and one of our PCs turned narc when I tried to fluff out our performance on a mission to fleece money out of our employer.

Three levels later, I convinced the party that a curse had wiped out his sense of self, so two other PCs killed him. I didn't roll at all. I'm just a persuasive person.

The player was okay with it, but OOC I feel bad.

[Eric Diaz]

I did a GoT campaign once. At the climax, the PCs raided the house of a noble rival, a very evil guy, and killed him. But then his wife saw the deal... the PCs thought about it for a second, but the villain had slain one of the PCs ENTIRE familty, so they offed her.

Then they heard a baby's cry...

Needless to say, I was not expecting the PCs would do what they did, and the campaign ended the same night.

The culprit was sent to the Night's Watch (there were no witness, but the PC's backstabbing ally knew what had happened and took the opportunity to accuse them, with false witness, of the crime they had, indeed, committed) and I didn't feel like continuing the campaign (it was nearly finished anyway) because I thought the PCs had crossed the line between "GoT anti-heroes" to "these guys are actually the villains of the story".

Anyway... that is waht I get for telling my players we are playing GoT!

[Grear Bylls]

My grung shot acererak with two crits, dealing over 100 damage as before combat with HIM technically started (was fighting death god). I readied, and went first, and critted twice. I felt bad.



Until I realized it was ACERERAK AND I WAS USING A NONMAGIC SHORT BOW.


He eventually fled, and we discovered his library, and a librarian. We determined, "ITS ACERERAK KILL IT BLAAARGH!!!" We killed him, and as the DM put away the monster manual, he said, "Sorry guys, just had to find the stats for 'Human Commoner'". We all chuckled at that. I felt mildly badish, but the grung didn't care.

[ProsecutorGodot]

I played a one shot just this last sunday where my character was based off the character I always make in the Elder Scrolls games that I've played.

In just this one shot campaign he killed a beautiful elf boy before he could even take a turn in combat, freed a genie from it's bear shell and attempted to then kill the genie as well, shouted multiple people into a pool of lava and when the DM decided that it was time for only one survivor to escape the maze, he shred the rest of the party into ribbons.

Deidrak is not a good argonian. I as the player felt pretty bad about how thoroughly I trounced my party members though.

[Wampyr]

My Dragonborn Barb who got disarmed during the fight so he held down his opponent’s head and drowned him... in a pool of acid.

It was really the way the DM described it. Saying the guy was stamping his feet and clawing his hands bloody on the rim of the pool until finally he went limp.

[Potato_Priest]

Well, I've got one that I would feel bad about, if it hadn't been so awesome. We were hijacking a ship, and after we'd killed all the guards on the boat we realized that none of us really knew how to sail.

Thus, I ordered one of the terrified crew to step up and do the job. He turned us around, and with a lucky untrained navigation check I discerned that he was taking us to a city where pirates like us would be quickly executed. Me being a barbarian, I picked him up and held him out over the prow of the ship, before asking the rest of the crew what was traditionally done with traitors on this vessel. One of he crew sheepishly suggested "we let them go?" hoping to save his buddy.

So I let him go. I let him go off the front of the ship, keelhauling him without a rope and leaving him in the open water behind the ship to tire and drown. The rest of the crew were more responsive to orders after that.

[Matrix_Walker]

The one I best remember is actually from a cyberpunk game. My character was hired as an assasin, so he built a holdout laser into a eye scanner and sent the target a "sensitive package" that required a retina scan to unlock. The target took himself out.

[Prudii]

My party was still pretty new and getting to know each other, and how we each would play. our exploring took us to a nearby cave where we believed a group of villagers had been kidnapped to. Our Goliath barbarian proceeds to pound his war drums, and is immediately hit by a large spear. The cave mouth is home to two ogres. Our bard decided to use Crown of Madness and have one ogre attack the other, who was then killed via castration by our rogue. The Crowned ogre was then killed by the rest of us. We investigated the cave a bit more and came to the conclusion that those ogres were mates.

We made an ogre beat its mate bloody, castrated it, then beat it to death. Ignoring the initial spear, i felt kinda bad the rest of that session

[Falcon X]

Not strictly a kill, per se.

So, we needed to get into a whorehouse and explode it and we figured we would bring a peace offering.
So, we found a 12 year old orphan girl and put a ring on her finger that made her perpetually stoned (I had several dozen of those rings in my bag of holding).
We intended to use her to get in, then take her back out when we exploded the place.
Instead, the whorehouse people opened the door, grabbed the girl, and slammed it in our face.

Now the girl is a sex slave and we didn’t even accomplish he goal...

[Astofel]

I was the DM, not the player for this, but it's a good story so I'll share it.

The party was fighting in a prison, which had several cages scattered around, each holding about 4 prisoners. The wild magic sorcerer triggered a surge, and as luck would have it she rolled a self-fireball, which just so happened to encompass most of the party, most of the enemies, and about 12 prisoners. So the sorcerer heavily damaged the party and also accidentally killed several of the innocents they were intending to rescue. The kicker? The enemies they were fighting were all devils, and immune to fire.

[Ellisthion]

I killed a man and hugged his grieving widow at the memorial service.

We were in an enemy elven city. I'm half-elf... they hunted down and killed all the half-elves. But I'm trying to find my elven family and my place in the world. We fought (and killed) some elves who were possessed by a mysterious super-evil.

The city held a memorial for the fallen: terrorists had murdered innocent citizens. I attended, in disguise.

I met the widow. I told her I was sorry for her loss. She hugged me and thanked me.

The man I killed was unwillingly possessed. And I murdered him.

:smallfrown:

What's worse is the game has become crazy-complex and I'm now personally responsible for the deaths of a LOT of innocent or semi-innocent people. And the killing of possessed people is becoming a discussed moral issue because of the plot circumstances surrounding the possession. My character is really struggling with this.

[Vessyra]

We had defeated Acerack and were in a room with two dozen prisoners that we were freeing. My wizard performed identify on the staff we looted from Acerack; it turned out that it housed the soul of an archmage. To free it, the staff must be destroyed; the catch is, destroying the staff causes a massive explosion.

"Not to worry" my wizard thought to himself. "I'll just use Bigby's Hand to smash it from a safe distance".

However, I forgot to say my full plan out loud. I simply said, "We must destroy this evil device in order to free the poor soul trapped within!". The vengeance paladin then immediately smashed the staff. Right in the middle of the prisoners.

All of the prisoners died, and most of the party was knocked out.

I then had my character the in next campaign swore an oath of no killing.

[nickl_2000]

I don't feel bad about it due to circumstances (ogre massacring people and holding a Ranger's fort), but last night we found a group of 10 ogre in a small, dry, and very flammable building with only one exit (that they could use, there were a few small windows that we could see them). I set fire to the place while an ally held the door shut until there wasn't any more fighting or sounds from the Ogres.

Then a few minutes later we came upon a rickety old build made of stone. I used my call lightning on the corner stone and after the third strike the whole building came down on top of the ogres inside (luckily there were no innocents since we didn't actually look inside first). 3 ogres survived the building collapse, but grouped themselves perfectly for another call lightning on top of them, basically ending the encounter instantly.

Add onto that that I landed a confusion spell that turned a deadly encounter into a trivial one (the meat shield ogre spent one round picking his nose before dying without getting an attack, and the Sorcerer Ogre lost 2 rounds and was only able to cast one spell, which was promptly counterspelled, before she went down). It was a good night for my Druid.

[Amdy_vill]

this is a little different but my party to kill a vary powerful tarrasque dropped one of the krynn gods of magic on it killing the god. we even had a very heartfelt conversation with the god before we killed her. this was only yesterday but we are all still feeling bad about it. i think this is because our dm is a great story teller and had been building to this choice for over a year now.

[Thaumic]

In a campaign that I DM, the party had been informed that some of the BBEG's minions were trying to loot a nearby dungeon. After some exploration and combat, they found the place, and discovered two NPCs they'd encountered before. Chained to the walls in a small room were a Lawful Evil human rogue named Laurelli and a True Neutral halfling wizard named Xavier. I had intended this to be a minor moral dilemma, as Laurelli was decidedly evil but Xavier wasn't, and he saw Laurelli as the mother he'd never had. What I neglected to realize was that the party hadn't really spoken with Xavier before, and had no way to know he didn't share his companion's morals. They proceeded to brutally kill both of them, even while Xavier was screaming for his life.

Several sessions later, they were travelling through the Outlands, and by some crazy chance :smallwink: they encountered Xavier's afterlife form. He went into a horrible fit over what the party had done to him, all while it slowly dawned on them that poor little Xavier was in the Outlands because he wasn't evil. They definitely felt bad about that.

They did end up making amends, though, by helping him establish a home and killing a hag that had caused him trouble. So all was forgiven (sort of).

[Armored Walrus]

I've been behind the screen for so much of my D&D play I find it hard to come up with a kill that I personally dealt that makes me feel bad. Most of my characters that I can remember were support, battlefield manipulators, or simply did not like the idea of killing. However, I am reminded of my most guilt filled accident, a death by proxy...I killed Meepo.

He'd been leading us around and seemed to know his way, so I asked him to check a door a bit further down from where the party was. We were in the middle of wrapping up a task, I figured what harm was there in having him peek into a doorway... Only to watch as 3 arrows impaled him the moment he opened the door. Apparently the enemy had flanked us and set up an ambush..Meepo gave us a warning through his death.

For those unfamiliar, Meepo is an NPC from the Sunless Citadel module and you should play it if/when you get the chance.

I have a similar incident, Meepo was leading the party around, but I (as DM) got a bit confused about the map, and led them wrong, had to double back, etc. This caused the party to question Meepo's integrity, and I was so flustered by losing my way, I didn't think about it when they sent him to open a trapped door until I started rolling trap damage. Sliced Meepo in two as a scythe blade descended from the ceiling, but if I had been in my right mind, it stands to reason he would've known about the trap and warned the party away from the door. Meepo's blood must be on so many hands...

[Efrate]

My party didn't kill meepo, but the wrymling nearly did twice, they liked the miserable little wretch and used a ton of healing resources on him.

On my players felt bad about was a random morg in curse of nightfang spire. Travelling around ran into 4 morgs. 3 go down easy. The fourth paralyzed the uber charger, paralyzed then coupe de gras the malconvokers bound ice devil, took out a bunch of huge summoned vermin, 4 spiders I believe, paralyzed the conjurer who controlled all of them before finally falling to our swashbucker rogue. So many 1s and 20s were rolled. Everyone felt bad, that morg was a trooper.

[Davrix]

Very first few games of 4th ed we played many years ago now. One friend wanted to play the lawful evil kobold in the group with the lawful good paladin. The player wasn't being very truthful to the party at times and when he got caught in a lie he tried to escape by casting sleep on the party... Right as the DM was ambushing us with kobolds throwing alchemy fire. Sadly from my player perspective. The party kobold put me to sleep and I woke up with alchemist flask flung in my face (made from kobold dung it seems according to the DM at the time)

Long story short, kobold was caught in a lie, I failed my save. Was put to sleep, woke up with fire in my face, smelling of crap and that little kobold standing over me with his wand out. I'm like **** I don't want to kill him in the back of my head. IC i roared at the kobold accusing him of treachery and if he wished to prove himself innocent to either fight with us or stay put until i could sort it out.

He chose setting our cart on fire and tried to run away. He was caught and (by this point 3 am) I had a farse of a duel and he was one dead kobold wizard. To this day I kind of regret it. The duel was a joke and I never got the real story before passing judgment IC and its haunted the character to this day at the table. OOC my friends never let me forget the PK and I sort of just wish I'd not done it and saved myself the jibs these years.

[Johnw]

My favourite kill, playing in a linked series of one offs with a party of Well, if not bay guys, certainly of the criminal persuasion. I was playing A wood elf shadow stalker assassin (pre xanthars guide) as a stone cold bounty hunter type. Somewhat bizarrely he was the least bloodthirsty of the party, as random killings were rather unprofessional, and arrows cost money after all.

Anyway. In the adventure we were on, we are trying to save a baby from a hag. Down in the crypt we venture and in a large room we try to fight off the zombie hordes and the hag carries herself out of the crypt in cloud form with the baby. As I had hunters mark on so the dm let me track her back outside (only place she could have gone anyway really).

So I run back outside a meet the hag, who casts charm, which even with advantage I fail. Then I’m told to kill the party. I stealth back into the dungeon, to look for the party, who Had nearly been wiped by the zombies. The party wizard has dropped back, having been nearly zombie supper and is on his own. Drop hunters mark on the wizard, take aim at the unsuspecting sap and shoot him for a surprise round of criticals and he drops. Don’t split the party!

Creep down into the crypt, lots of darkness to hide in and spot the cleric getting the party back on its feet. As an equal opportunity killer, I shoot the cleric in the back. Much to my surprise he drops. Now my memory gets a bit fuzzy, but I seem to remember Being and putting down another party member, effectively totalling the whole party. At which point the charm wears off, and I start casting heals so get everyone up again.

A a professional, I was pissed. Killing the party without having the bounties? Just not on.

It wasn’t a surprise when we did a level tewenty adventure, which started at the moment of the characters death, the party decided that most of them had been killed by a mysterious bounty hunter.....

[Johnw]

Then there’s the kill in fourth ed with a completely different group.

During This time I’d been playing Warcraft online, and was making cheap jokes about gnomes being evil. “All Gnomes are evil, they nuked their own city they are that evil”, “all gnomes are so evil that their evil under dark opposites are STILL evil, that how evil gnomes are”; that sort of thing. All silly stuff, as a pet peeve of the character.

So early in one of the published adventures, we run into a gnome in the middle of an excavation. I’m, like, nope, it’s a gnome, he’s evil, not going down there no way! The rest of the party, not heeding my warnings, go down to meet the lonely gnome at the bottom of this big pit. What a surprise when The gnome triggered an ambush and nearly kills the rest of the party. Naturally I wasn’t at all smug when I say “ remember this next time we meet gnomes. All gnomes are evil”.

Fast forwards to a later adventure when we encounter two gnome slaves in a kitchen of an ogre fort. We spot the gnomes, in manacles and all. I say, “ uh oh, gnomes”, to which the party wizard says “Gnomes? I cast fireball!” Thus killing two entirely innocent gnomes.....

Well they would be innocent, but all gnomes are evil after all.....