Today My Character messed up (Your best death)

[Moltenbrisingr]

The Idea here is to share the story of the worst, and potentially last, mistake one of your characters has ever made. Ill start with my story below

The Party is running through castle greyhawk and TLDR, we learn of a party thrown by monsters to attract a new dark lord. I am playing a tabaxi monk who is happily chomping on some cookies we had been given by the monsters with rat heads in them the rest of the party refuses to eat. Meanwhile, we come up with the awesome idea of pretending to be a dark lord so we can have some fun. We make a big robe out of bed sheets and painters supplies, and we stack on top of one another kids in a trench coat style and the sorcerer uses alter self to make himself look more dark lordly.

at this point we enter the party and have a jolly time for about an hour getting wined and dined and generally enjoying ourselves. After an hour.. the doors open again and a man walks in, flanked by three pit fiends and looking annoyed. At this point, we realize an actual dark lord has shown up... but unfortunately, the sorcerer is on top and shouts "how dare you set foot in my domain pretender?" This was a mistake...

The dark lord throws a fireball and sets all of us and most of the monsters on fire. At this point, we are all ready to bail, except the barbarian and sorcerer both fail the check to get out of our makeshift robe and only I, the monk, make the save. At this point I know I need to buy some time, so the only thing I can think to do is attempt a stunning strike. DM says "he has to roll a one to fail, there is no other way". The one is rolled... Dm asks how I want to do the stunning strike. I figure I can't do real damage to the guy, so I say the following "I want to throw a cookie in his mouth and uppercut him so he has to swallow it" This. Was a bigger mistake.

The escape went poorly and in the end we found ourselves face to face with the devil.. Who turned out to be aesmodeus. He was supremely amused and said he had a special plan for me so I did the only thing I could and like the honorable kensi I was I noped off my mortal coil. best death ever TBH. Two party members died and the last one retired because aesmodeus owned his soul now. Best death ever. I'm not even mad

[zinycor]

Seems like a horrible experience, but hey, if you and the other players enjoyed it, that's all good.

[Moltenbrisingr]

Seems like a horrible experience, but hey, if you and the other players enjoyed it, that's all good.

Nobody in the party realized it was him so we were our normal jerky adventuring selves. It's also the group of friends where we have all been playing together so long it was worth the death to have the story.

[Damon_Tor]

Not a mistake exactly, but a good death.

It's a high seas pirateesque campain. My character is a tempest cleric who had the magic item which is an anchor shaped patch that prevents a ship from moving.

We were smugglers at the time, and our ship had been overtaken by a much faster pirate ship. The enemy ship catches up to us and pulls alongside us and they start dropping gangplanks to board us. It's pretty clear we're outmatched, so my PC swings over to their ship and slaps the anchor patch to their deck.

We had both been moving at high speeds, so when their ship abruptly stop our ship rockets ahead. But of course my character was left behind on their ship, intent to fight to his last breath.

My plan was to let our ship get clean away, but my teammates figured out that a frozen ship is a vulnerable ship. Both ships had arcane cannon things, but concentrated on the sides. The other ship being frozen, our ship was able to turn their cannons on the fore of their ship and blast them into oblivion.

My character died, but his Gambit had us eliminate a powerful rival far earlier in the campaign than the dm had planned for.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Tomb of Annihilation- my genius Eldritch Knight/War Wizard found that planar travel machine thing and, thanks to one of the spirits that was with him, insisted that he knew what he was doing and tried to work it. First he gained another generous increase to his already high Intelligence, putting him at a 22 I think. Then, he got teleported to Victorian England.

Everyone acted like that sucked, but I got to thinking- he's the only wizard on our earth, and he's got intelligence beyond mortal comprehension. He establishes a secret school to teach magic, manipulates global politics, economies, and agriculture with his spellcraft in order to bring about his ideal utopia, and ultimately becomes the shadow leader of our world. He eventually advances his studies far enough to invent spells like clone, brings magic apprenticeship and teaching to the world at large, and oversees our transition into a gas lamp magitech world.

The rest of the party was acting like this was a sucky thing, enough that the DM stepped in and abridged this outcome so that I could continue playing. Which is too bad, because I really liked that 'death'. To me, this was what really happened.

[KorvinStarmast]

Tomb of Annihilation- my genius Eldritch Knight/War Wizard found that planar travel machine thing and, thanks to one of the spirits that was with him, insisted that he knew what he was doing and tried to work it. First he gained another generous increase to his already high Intelligence, putting him at a 22 I think. Then, he got teleported to Victorian England.

Everyone acted like that sucked, but I got to thinking- he's the only wizard on our earth, and he's got intelligence beyond mortal comprehension. He establishes a secret school to teach magic, manipulates global politics, economies, and agriculture with his spellcraft in order to bring about his ideal utopia, and ultimately becomes the shadow leader of our world. He eventually advances his studies far enough to invent spells like clone, brings magic apprenticeship and teaching to the world at large, and oversees our transition into a gas lamp magitech world. This is why we come to the playground. Love this take.

[Moltenbrisingr]

Not a mistake exactly, but a good death.

It's a high seas pirateesque campain. My character is a tempest cleric who had the magic item which is an anchor shaped patch that prevents a ship from moving.

We were smugglers at the time, and our ship had been overtaken by a much faster pirate ship. The enemy ship catches up to us and pulls alongside us and they start dropping gangplanks to board us. It's pretty clear we're outmatched, so my PC swings over to their ship and slaps the anchor patch to their deck.

We had both been moving at high speeds, so when their ship abruptly stop our ship rockets ahead. But of course my character was left behind on their ship, intent to fight to his last breath.

My plan was to let our ship get clean away, but my teammates figured out that a frozen ship is a vulnerable ship. Both ships had arcane cannon things, but concentrated on the sides. The other ship being frozen, our ship was able to turn their cannons on the fore of their ship and blast them into oblivion.

My character died, but his Gambit had us eliminate a powerful rival far earlier in the campaign than the dm had planned for.

I'm always a fan of either a heroic sacrifice or one that massively screws over the enemy, this is both

[TheCleverGuy]

We were playing Curse of Strahd. (Possible Spoilers Ahead) We were level 3, just paying a visit to the local temple in the Town of Barovia. We heard a noise from the basement, which the kindly old priest told us was his son who was "ill." The whole party was suspicious and started to interrogate the priest, but my Halfling Gloom Stalker decided to sneak away and check out the basement on his own. Opened the trap door and looked down into the darkness to see a humanoid shape. I had a chance to back away, but didn't take it. The vampire spawn jumped up the stairs and immediately bit my neck--with a natural 20. I was dropped from full HO to zero in one hit, and my max HP was reduced to 5. I should have died, but the DM was very forgiving and allowed the rest of the party to come to the rescue and trap the vampire spawn back in the basement.

[blackjack50]

My flight had a stop over on the brain slug planet. He liked it so much he decided to stay of his own free will.




Freakin intellect devourer.

[Misterwhisper]

Long angry story:

I was playing a very charismatic rogue who was essentially the fixer for his entire family of criminal casters because he was not blessed with magic like they were.

His family were all warlocks who sold the souls of their family and descendants for the ability to be powerful magic item crafters and businessmen.

The eldest son of each generation had to pay fealty to their great old one by doing a great work in his name.

In the generation before mine there were no male children which greatly angered their patron so my character could never be blessed with magic as punishment. This also made him extremely devoted to his patron to the point of coolaid drinking fanaticism.

Over 2 years of in game role playing I had built small churches to my god all over where we traveled. Essentially if I helped others I would tell them of my god and encourage their devotion.

Had quite the hefty hidden religious order going on.

While in the dwarven capital, there was a clan war going on. I pledged the support to the losing clan including the support of my church and family if they also swear fealty to my god.

They could even continue to serve Moradin just so long as they also praised my patron.

However due to an unwanted plot line, one of our PCs who was Neutral Evil by the way. Was forced into being the new king of the dwarves by Moradin himself, after the PC punched the king in the face and literally slapped Moradin himself when he appeared in the throne room.

His first act as new king was to have every follower of my religion including the now biggest clan of dwarves in the city murdered because they made a deal with outside forces to gain power this also included every follower in every city we ever visited because the new king knew where we were every time.

I pointed out that there is no way he could know that because I always recruited people while the rest of the group were not there and were busy, but evidently that Didn’t matter.

So after murdering my entire religion and all the work I had done over 2 years, in the span of one night, my Lawful Evil assassin rogue was plotting the death of this new king and now former PC.

The DM just told me:

“He was put under a geasa by Moradin to become Lawful Good and your religion is evil. If you try to kill him I will just kill your character without rolling dice.”

I told him that I would not bother sneaking to do it, I will go to the city center and call him out for a duel to the death and point out that he was a blindingly evil barbarian ranger with favored enemy dwarves that spent the last 2 years killing all of them he could and only became good 2 days ago.

As a level 12 rogue the likelihood of me beating a bear totem barbarian 8/deepstalker 4 is almost impossible but I will roll it out.

The dm said fine and the new king showed up but was now level 20 straight barbarian with + 3 armor, shield, a dwarven thrower and an ioun stone of mastery.

We then rolled out the fight while the dm looked me straight in the eye, rolled in the open, never looked at what he rolled and just said he crit me on each swing and killed me in 2 rounds.

The dm just said: “I don’t put up with PVP in my games, any one who tries to hurt another PC will just be killed by a falling rock.”

Friends with the whole group for 20 years, never went back, never talked to any of them ever again.

[Moltenbrisingr]

The dm just said: “I don’t put up with PVP in my games, any one who tries to hurt another PC will just be killed by a falling rock.”

Friends with the whole group for 20 years, never went back, never talked to any of them ever again.

Sorry to hear that, I have learned to walk away from games that have been heading this direction as well. thanks for sharing your story!

[ff7hero]

Oh boy, I love telling this story.

The tale of Rictor, the Bardadin of Redemption, is a long one, but I'll try to keep to the details relevant to it's end.

Our party had been charged with the retrieval of a set of MacGuffins. While attending to other business in the Shadowfell, we got word that The Raven Queen knew of the location of one of the previously mentioned MacGuffins. Before we were granted audience, The Raven Queen subjected us to a number of trials and visions, one of each is relevant here.

First, the party was separated and each was locked in a Groundhog Day style loop of the worst day from their past (DM/God level Illusion). For months, Rictor woke knowing his father would die that night. Each day he worked to prevent it, but there was nothing he could do. Each night his father died in his arms. Rictor was only freed from this cycle when he performed a Ceremony to The Raven Queen, summoning her and demanding his freedom.

She explained that she would free him once he accepted the death of his father and forgave himself. Rictor rebutted that he could not forgive himself for not protecting his father, having sworn an Oath of Redemption by resolving to do some great good to outweigh his failure. He made The Raven Queen a counteroffer though, he would pledge his sword to her and work to do good in her name (he'd developed a fondness for the Shadar'kai and thought their God-Queen might be worth serving). Even now though, he personally was not fond of her. When he poured wax from a black candle over his Holy Avenger, swearing to bring her redemption. he was released from the spell.

Next was the vision. In short, we saw the birth of the Shadowfell. We were in a "healthy" Shadowfell. It was still a barren place, but it wasn't Shadowy or full of Undead. A battle raged in a lowland between two huge Shadar'kai armies. On a mountain overlooking this lowland we saw a "young" Raven Queen, not yet a god, performing a ritual aided by 13 mustachio-twirling mages. As the battle raged below, mystical energy flowed from the fighting and was forming a huge magic storm and fueling the Raven Queen's ritual.

The sudden but inevitable betrayal came as the ritual reached it's climax. One of the 13 mages assisting drew a dagger and struck at The Raven Queen. She cursed all thirteen and they fled, but the ritual had gone way sideways. Undead were popping up all over and both the land and The Queen were looking quite...Shadowy. At this point, The Raven Queen explained that she was trying to achieve Godhood for herself and prosperity for the Shadowfell, but Rictor felt that her actions were inexcusable in a leader. He also wondered if releasing the energy that the now Godly Raven Queen contains might help the Shadowfell, redeeming both himself and The Raven Queen.

Fast-forward through some more preliminary "are you up to the task" trials and we have an audience with The Queen. We ask about the MacGuffin and she offers to trade us the information we need for the destruction of the dagger used in that assassination attempt of the past. She fears it will be used against her, and Rictor sees a path to redemption for both himself and The Raven Queen. Rictor's party defeats the dagger's previous owner and Rictor claims the dagger. He hides it on himself and he and his party return to The Raven Queen. Rictor, with nominal agreement from the rest of the party, tried to convince The Raven Queen that the dagger had been destroyed, but Rictor never was a very good liar.

The party left with their information at this point, rightly noticing the potential for conflict. Nonetheless, I've never seen a DM's face quite as surprised as when I declared "I stab The Raven Queen with my dagger!" I don't know if it would have mattered, but the dice were not with me that night. I don't recall specifics except that I hit her once out of four attacks and wasn't surprised about the misses. In the end, a Power Word Kill ended Rictor, but his memory lives on to this day.

[Laserlight]

In 4e, I'd been running a Lazylord who was the Gruff Sergeant Mentor of the group, and was ready to retire him.
We needed to get into the baddies' throne room and chop/burn a hole in it to allow the Sun to shine on the McGuffin. After a preliminary fight or two, we get down to brass tacks. A demon appears, and I say "I'll hold him off, the rest of you knock a hole in the wall." The demon is L24, I'm l6, this will be glorious but brief.

The demon comes after me. Except, while my character is supposed to die in this scene, I don't want to make it too easy, so I moved away last turn. The monster doesn't have the movement to reach me.
He comes after me again. He attacks, but rolls a 3 and misses by one.
I can't outrun him any more, but I draw him away from where the rest of the team is working. The demon clobbers me...but rolls low on damage, and I have 4hp remaining. I'm still up!
At this point the team breaks through the wall, which is going to let the light of the dawn Sun shine on the Artifact, use up the special effect budget, and dispel the demon. Except I'm still not dead. The DM shakes his head, checks distances, sees I'm still closer to the demon than anyone else is, and rules that the demon explodes. That finally kills me.

The party buried me in the castle courtyard and then burned down the castle and town. Can't ask for a better send off than that.

[Vessyra]

In 5th edition, I'd taken a break from DM to run a character, a dark-elf cleric with a fully fleshed-out backstory and personality. However, the problem was that of the two other players, one of them liked to play fun, low-int characters, and the normally serious & sane other player had decided to try a senile paladin. This meant that I spent much of the early sessions of the campaign trying to avert a TPK, saying, "No, let's not keep going when we're at five hp", "No, let's not keep going, I had to use my last spell after you rushed off while at five hp", and, "No, let's not pick fight with the massive evil dragon".

However, we then had a break for a few weeks during scheduling, and I started wondering whether I was taking charge too much in the party, and whether I should just let everyone do their own thing. And so we returned to the game, with me starting the session by deciding to be less controlling.

We had managed to convince the evil dragon to attack a highly fortified stronghold full of bandits. I had been thinking that we should just stay behind the dragon and let it do the fighting, but the senile paladin wanted to go and search around. While I initially resisted, he said he would just explore, not fight, and so I acquiesced, and the paladin took a friendly warrior NPC, exploring through the cleared-out rooms the dragon had left in his wake. However, immediately after he was out of sight of me and the other PC (a rogue), the paladin went and started exploring other parts of the headquarters. The bandit's headquarters. Full of bandits.

So after a few rounds we hear sounds of fighting, as the paladin and warrior bump into some bandits. The rogue and I rush to aid, and the dragon also goes to help, arriving first and using his breath weapon to clear the area of enemies but also knocking out our allies. He then wanders off, not really caring whether they live or die. The rogue then arrives on the scene, and rather than use one of his several healing potions he simply stabilises the NPC then wanders off one his own. And a round or so later, I get there, and prepare to use my next action to heal the paladin. However, before I can, I get jumped by two bugbears and a goblin, and am swiftly knocked down to low health.

I then have a decision to make. I could heal the paladin, who is up next; however, that would leave me one hit away from death. Or I could heal myself and hope that neither to bugbears nor the goblins try to kill the paladin while he's unconscious. I choose to heal the paladin, who then kills a bugbear in one strike. However, I am knocked out immediately after. The rogue rushes back, then he and the paladin engage in a quick fight, killing the remaining goblinoids after two rounds; however, that's all it takes for me to roll a 3 and a 1 on death saves, bleeding to death moments after rushing to heal a reckless ally.

[Xihirli]

My death is two deaths and I’m alive at the end, but out of the game for the rest of the campaign.
“I” here meaning my goblin Ranger with poor decision making skills.
The first time she died she was possessed by a pit fiend but able to control her own body for brief spells. In one of those spells, she had the wizard slit her throat and everyone hide while the pit fiend ran off. She was revivified about ten minutes later (gentle repose) and was greeted in her afterlife by the loving whip of Maglubiyet.
Some time passed, Jade switched religions, died again in a boring way, and then we were in a vampire’s den. She saw a corpse in a pool and gave the wizard the other end of a rope before swimming down and poking it. She body swapped with the vampire thrall inside but it didn’t fight them at first. She explained the situation in her vampire body and suggested they kill both bodies and reanimate the goblin one.
W: “We’re not going to keep killing you every time something weird happens!”
J: “But it solves every problem we have!”
It did not solve the problem and I got to role play the vampire thrall pretending to be Jade until they came to its master in what our DM described as the scariest moment in the campaign as I stole the wizard’s Staff of Power and snapped it over my knee. Downed everyone but the Death Warded Cleric and the Half-Orc who both used their “not today, Death” abilities and were left at 1. Closest the party ever came to a TPK.
Jade’s body was plane shifted to Mount Celestia where for whatever reason the thrall left her body and she was trapped in Tyr’s afterlife. She hated it. So she wasn’t dead, just trapped in heaven until the campaign ended.

[Moltenbrisingr]

Valiant deaths all.

[NRSASD]

DM's Honorary Mention: I asked the player for her last words, and said last words saved her life.

The Warlock, grappled by Strahd and having her life drained out of her, locks eyes with one of Strahd's vampire lieutenants right before she dies:

"When I rise, I'm going to outrank you"

[Talsin]

A little backstory; I have a rogue who I play in every universe who, since his first death, will consistently die in some seemingly mundane manner after doing something heroic.

After driving back a horde of Kuo-Toa from the town and rescuing the victims that had been selected to be slaves, our hero, Jack found himself trapped in a net that had been thrown by one retreating fishman. He failed his checks to untangle himself and fumbled his last knife away as tide was coming in. He drowned shortly after.

[DrowPiratRobrts]

Not my death, but we were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver, and this was literally our second or third session. We got to Klarrg's Hideout while we were still Level 1 and he ended up being tipped off before we came into the room where he had been. We start pilfering through crates and such because it looked like nobody was there. Our Halfling Rogue decides to go off by himself and check behind some stalagmites across the cavern...

Suddenly we hear a scream and as we turn we see everything in slow motion. Or maybe it was all just a blur. Either way we saw a muscled, furry reach out from behind a stalgmite and with a one-handed swing that would put a prime Tiger Woods to shame, cleave our friends head clear off his body. The worst part was that this was completely preventable. Bugbears get a huge damage spike on surprised enemies, and we ended up chasing Klarrg away after he instakilled our small friend. If we just walked over there together and searched carefully maybe he'd still be with us...

[Moltenbrisingr]

Not my death, but we were playing Lost Mines of Phandelver, and this was literally our second or third session. We got to Klarrg's Hideout while we were still Level 1 and he ended up being tipped off before we came into the room where he had been. We start pilfering through crates and such because it looked like nobody was there. Our Halfling Rogue decides to go off by himself and check behind some stalagmites across the cavern...

Suddenly we hear a scream and as we turn we see everything in slow motion. Or maybe it was all just a blur. Either way we saw a muscled, furry reach out from behind a stalgmite and with a one-handed swing that would put a prime Tiger Woods to shame, cleave our friends head clear off his body. The worst part was that this was completely preventable. Bugbears get a huge damage spike on surprised enemies, and we ended up chasing Klarrg away after he instakilled our small friend. If we just walked over there together and searched carefully maybe he'd still be with us...

Maybe it was an honest mistake. halflings can look a little like golf balls on tees if they are bald.