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Lycan 01
2008-09-14, 07:21 PM
PCs die. Sometimes the die normal deaths. Other times, lame deaths. Sometimes, their demise is cool. Occassionally, it might be awesome to behold.

And then, you have the rare "epic" death scene.




One such epic death scene occured Saturday during a CoC game I was hosting. A massive battle against a large crab-like monster monster was occuring in an underground cavern. Player A had been grabbed by one of the monster's tentacles, and was being held 20 feet in the air. He had 4 HP left - considering that the next round he would either lose 2d6 health from the crushing or falling, he was effectively doomed.

Now, due to it being an underground cavern, their was massive stalagtites on the roof of the area. They'd already shot one down on top of the monster, and they figured that since the were (supposedly) losing, another one was worth a shot. So player B (who had a vendetta with player A... ergo I doubt he had much reason to hesitate) opened fire on a stalagtite. I gave it a 50/50 chance of landing on the monster... One roll later, and the monster seemed to have sprouted a target on its back.

I then realized that a stalagtite of such size would probably injure player A, and even if it didn't kill him, the fall would. So I escorted him to another room, and asked him if he'd be upset if his character died. He knew we were moving from the 1920's to the modern era next session anyway, so he decided he would accept death with open arms.

We returned to the room, and I did what the rulebook says Keeper's should do: I gave him an epic death scene.

The monster lifted him up - either out of absent thought, or to protect itself - and held him over its body. His character, seeing Player B shoot into the air, looked up, and saw a massive stalagtite falling towards him. Naturally, he screamed. The pointy rock of doom then landed on his face. In his own words... he deepthroated a stalagtite. The large rock proceeded to rip through his head, and tear through his body on its way down. His character was effectively turned inside out and crushed into pulp by the stalagtite as it slide through him and the creature's grasp.

The stalagtite then impaled through the creature and pinned it to the ground. It died shortly thereafter, naturally. But there was still the issue of the 3 grenades Player A had clipped to his belt. I decided that the force of the impact set them off, and a massive firey explosion ripped through the air, obliterating any trace of Player A that would have been left.

Player A decided that he was content with his death, and together with Player B, they both ripped up his character sheet as a sign that they'd given up their vendetta.


So yeah... I decided that having a stalagtite go down your throat, rip through your body, turn it inside out as it passes through you, and then having 3 grenades go off to destroy what's left of you counts as an Epic PC Death.

Any objections?

drengnikrafe
2008-09-14, 07:39 PM
Hmm....

I'd have to say that's a pretty epic death. I can't really say I've ever seen or heard of a more epic one, off the top of my head.

Lycan 01
2008-09-14, 07:43 PM
Well, I read somewhere about one player who's paladin not only killed and rode a falling dragon to his death, but was later revived only to die by riding a pegasus into the mouth of a dragon being ridden by the BBEG in order to kill it from the inside... or something like that.

That > my story

blackout
2008-09-14, 07:54 PM
Well, this was two weeks ago during a playtesting session for my Dustworld system. I'd say it's pretty epic.

The players had been working to track down the hideout of some slavers that had been raiding a town in the middle of nowhere. The hideout in question was an old, abandoned military depot. Needless to say, they found it.

Player A is the groups pistol-slinger/medic/survivalist, Player B is geared towards shotguns and hacking, Player C towards rifles, stealth, and secondary first aid, Player D towards melee combat, and Player E towards driving(he picked up a Rig with no weapons and some passenger seats, and sat out the actual fighting. )

Players A through D sneak around and find a hidden entrance into the slaver fort. Upon sneaking in, they get ambushed by a few slavers, and kill them almost instantly. The sound of gunfire alerts the rest, and the players are fighting their way through the fort pretty soon. Finally, their stuck facing off against the slaver warlord, a massive, well-spoken mutant.

The warlord immediately charges at Player D, and starts going toe-to-toe with him in melee combat. Nobody else wanted to risk getting a shot off, on the off-chance they might hit Player D, so they sat and watched. The mutant, wielding a sword, successfully hacks off Player D's head. Player D had an ace in the hole, though; A primed hand grenade he found before entering the fort. He primed the grenade just as the mutant kills him, and the mutant turns to face the rest of the party. That grenade goes off just as the mutant takes a step towards everyone else.

Player D was pleased with his 'victory' over the slaver warlord.

Brauron
2008-09-14, 07:57 PM
In my long-running Cthulhu campaign, the PCs were scaling the inside of an extinct volcano. One of the PCs, who has a prosthetic hand due to a bad experience with a Byakhee, fails a Climb check. Roll a luck check, I say, to catch yourself before you fall. He gets a 97 on the Luck check. Almost the worst possible result. He spends a benny (house rule for my CofC game, shamelessly stolen from Savage Worlds) to reroll his Luck check. And rolls a 100. Worst possible roll. He sighs, and says, "Well...I guess it's my time...goodbye everyone. How much falling damage do I take?"

He took eighty points of falling damage. He had 12 HP to begin with.

Lycan 01
2008-09-14, 08:03 PM
^ There's a word for when the human body recieves more damage than it can withstand, and actually explodes into pieces/chunks/goo/bits/jelly/gore/salsa. I believe "gibbing" is what its called. I might be wrong...


But yeah... 68 points of extra damage... Sweet. :smallbiggrin:

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-14, 08:11 PM
^ There's a word for when the human body recieves more damage than it can withstand, and actually explodes into pieces/chunks/goo/bits/jelly/gore/salsa. I believe "gibbing" is what its called. I might be wrong...


But yeah... 68 points of extra damage... Sweet. :smallbiggrin:

We at the One True Wiki (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage) like to refer to it as producing Ludicrous Gibs (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LudicrousGibs) :smallbiggrin:

Dorizzit
2008-09-14, 08:19 PM
I had a pretty epic death once.


I was playing a Paladin/Kensai (Oathed to destroy Palaxis) named Ark. One of the house rules was that any artifact could be Retributive Striked. It was the final battle between the epic level group and Palaxis, who is the ruler of the setting, and also a Great Wyrm Shadow Dragon. The battle was taking place on a large plateau hundreds of feet tall. The party had reduced Palaxis to the point that he tried to flee. Ark, unwilling to let Palaxis go, takes a running leap off the edge of the plateau (in platemail, mind), and rolls a natural twenty, barely managing to get a hold on Palaxis' leg. The DM makes everyone else leave the room, because the other characters can't make out what's happening. He then has me make a strength check to hold on. Three very high climb checks later, he is clinging to Palaxis' back. Palaxis tries to shake him off, which results in two more strength checks (both passed, barely). Ark stood up, took his sword (which was an artifact, the physical embodiment of divine fire), and plunged it into Palaxis back. Crit. Max Damage.
Me: Palaxis is dead, right?
DM: Wrong. He breathes, barely, and you are now unbalanced and easily shaken off. Any last words?
Me: Yeah. Retributive Strike.
The DM says nothing, and calls everyone else into the room. He then narrated the following (paraphrased):
Ark grabs Palaxis by the leg, clinging for dear life to his hated enemy. Soon they travel far from you, and it is difficult to make out what is going on. Then, suddenly, a titanic explosion blasts through the sky, the shockwaves knocking you to the ground even from that great distance. The flaming corpse of Palaxis hurtles to the ground, crashing into it with a resounding slam.
Our Wizard: I teleport us to the crash sight.
DM: It's not pretty. Palaxis corpse is a wreck, and flaming pieces of him continue to rain over the area. But worse is Ark; his armor is gone, disintegrated, and his flesh is charred and broken. But suddenly, above you the sky cracks open. A beam of purest light descends, enveloping Ark. His body is healed, his flesh returning to normal, even his many scars gone. Then from that crack a host appears: dozens of angels descend to surround Ark's corpse. They turn and bow to you, before tenderly taking him in their arms and ascending back into the divine realm from whence they came.

If anyone can top that, I'll be impressed.

black dragoon
2008-09-14, 08:26 PM
I'm impressed. The closest we had was a loved NPC who maginuked himself.

Swordguy
2008-09-14, 08:29 PM
One of the trio of submissions from my "Stupidest players EVAR!" Shadowrun campaign to the now-defunct CLUE Files (an archive of Shadowrun player stupidity).


...

Personally, my imagination is still reeling from that. It's like something out of a
bad comedy/action movie, don't you think?

Regarding our next little tidbit (which was submitted by one of CLUE's network of alert readers), this is NOT a clue story. And it's not even a stealth story. But it sends enough chills up the spine to warrant mention, especially so close to Halloween.

Please note that this account was submitted by eye-witnesses, and I did confirm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"My group of six runners was in the process of breaking camp to continue on our journey through some flatland. From over the horizon came the silhouette of two GMC Banshees. Not prepared for a firefight, the team scrambled to break out the ordinance, the rigger sprints for the Bison, etc.

The troll mage, who has had an unfortunate experience with Banshees in the past, panics and tosses a fireball at the closest one, throwing in all the dice he can get his hands on. The result? He rolls 28 dice for the fireball.

The group was hushed as he shook the huge handful of dice and cast them onto the table.

They came up all ones.

So, as the Banshees bear down onto the camp, the troll mage erupted into a mushroom cloud of organic debris.

We stopped playing for the night. It was a baaadddd omen…"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow. I hope never in my life to see that. Can you calculate the odds of that happening?

Players get complacent about the rule of one, after all, if you're rolling more than two or three dice, the odds of getting all ones are pretty negligible, right? Guess not. Let this serve as a warning to us all…

See you next month!
Karen

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-1/938594/epic_flail.gif
/hotlinked for her pleasure

black dragoon
2008-09-14, 08:33 PM
Was he playing with loaded Dice!? I've never heard of a such a thing!

Swordguy
2008-09-14, 08:34 PM
Was he playing with loaded Dice!? I've never heard of a such a thing!

Not. At. All.

That's what made it so damn scary.

nobodylovesyou4
2008-09-14, 08:34 PM
Hmm... here's mine, wasn't my character though.
Game is Cyberpunk 2021, with a twist: our characters have mild psychic powers. Two of us, the hacker and the stealthy-guy, are in a corporate office building attempting to infiltrate (and failing). The other, the heavy weapons guy with a cyber-arm, is across the street positioned in case anything goes wrong. Of course, being the Jackass he is, he opens fire on the building before we tell him to. A helicopter comes from no where and starts shooting him, but he manages to make it to the fire escape unscathed.
Then he reaches the bottom. He ducks around the corner into an alleyway, and comes face-to-rifle barrel with a mercenary. One shot takes his head mostly off. However, with what little brain function he had left, he punches COMPLETELY through the guy's stomach, spreading intestines and stuff all over the ground. They both die shortly after.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-14, 08:42 PM
Dorizzit, that's pretty good. This one wasn't Epic (and I was cheesed off at the GM for it) but man, it was cinematic.

Background
I was playing Shadowrun as a Spike Spiegel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Spiegel) knock-off, complete with Ex-Mafia (Yakuza, not Triad) and a bag of guns. I was playing driver (in a beat-up Ford Americar) for this particular run, in which we infiltrated a gated community when the dreck hit the fans.

I take off, crashing through the gates and high tailing it back to Seattle. Now, for some reason, the private security force radios Lone Star back in Seattle and sets up a roadblock for us... so I crash it, ditch my car and we dive into the sewers. Lone Star follows us down into the sewers, which we shake off after I chuck a HE Offensive Grenade behind me before rolling down a drain. Chunky salsa time :smallamused:

We finally make it back to the streets where an armored Yakuza limousine is waiting for us (:smallconfused:) with an African-American (:smallconfused:) spokesman who wants to hire us for a job. Being ex-Yakuza myself (and supposedly lying low in Seattle!) I refuse and we get out.

We crash for the night in a safehouse, and the next day we make our ways back to our homes to see what's going on. As I approach my home I pull out my bug scanner and find out that I'm under high surveillance... so I keep walking down the street.

The Death
It is now roughly 2 pm on a weekday. I am walking down a main street in Seattle after having refused the Blackuza's offer. Suddenly, a van pulls up and a squad of yakuza thugs pop out with guns. Thinking quickly (and still well armed) I chuck another HE Offensive grenade at the van and duck behind a car while it goes off. After hearing a very satisfying boom, I locate a storefront and declare that I am going to make a run for it - hoping to bust out a back door and escape.

The GM says that as soon as I get up from behind cover, I am killed by a hail of automatic fire. Now, this may not sound too epic, but considering my source material (Spike Spiegel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Spiegel)) there was a certain... cinematic quality to the death.

It was appropriate, I suppose. Spike ducks behind a car, throwing a grenade into an open van of thugs, scattering them across the street. Like a man with nothing to lose, he makes a leap for an open storefront when a hail of bullets cuts him down, dropping his riddled corpse inches from safety, a rueful grin upon his face.

Why I was cheesed
I asked the GM how the heck Lone Star and the Yakuza were able to track me so well. He says they ran a check on my license plate which said where I lived. I took a deep breath and explained to the GM that, as an ex-yakuza hiding out in Seattle, I would not have a SIN for them to trace. In the event that I had registered my car for some reason, I would certainly have not used my actual residence, or my real name, since I was hiding from a powerful multinational criminal organization.

He at least looked embarrassed, and explained that I was supposed to have accepted the job from the Blackuza, and that the van full of thugs were just going to capture me to force me to do the job... before I threw a grenade at them. I'm not entirely certain why they did this on a busy street in the middle of the day, but I was dead, so I guess it didn't matter. :smalltongue:

Vexxation
2008-09-14, 09:09 PM
^ There's a word for when the human body recieves more damage than it can withstand, and actually explodes into pieces/chunks/goo/bits/jelly/gore/salsa. I believe "gibbing" is what its called. I might be wrong...


But yeah... 68 points of extra damage... Sweet. :smallbiggrin:

In honor of this story, a hastily and shoddily made GIF!
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g15/mmmoreos/epicfall.gif

Ta-da!

Graymayre
2008-09-14, 09:09 PM
I'm not sure if it can be considered epic, but I'll post:

My illusionist, a master thrower, and a barbarian were fighting a vampire and his consortium of minions. We were wiping the floor, I had mirror imaged myself, thus making me a hard target because of all the illusion copies.

Unfortunately, the vampire had the gall to use the dominate person ability on our barbarian (which, big surprise, worked).

Normally I wouldn't be worried about that. Unfortunately, this barbarian happened to be made by a player who just loves to make "combat savants" (I.E. a character who can give the gods a good a** whoopin but is, in all other aspects, an untrained child).

On his turn he attacked me and hit an image, but when the image dissapeared he got to take a 5ft step and cleave. He then proceeded to do this with all of my copies and then attacked me (in one turn I might remind you all) killing me in one super ultra cheese shot.

It may not be epic, but I'll say right now that I'm never making another spellcaster again who can't break enchantments.

Brauron
2008-09-14, 09:14 PM
In honor of this story, a hastily and shoddily made GIF!
http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g15/mmmoreos/epicfall.gif

Ta-da!

That's beautiful.

Also, reminds me that I forgot to mention...with that 100 on the die, we decided that the only possible explanation was that his prosthetic hand detached itself from his arm.

drengnikrafe
2008-09-14, 09:28 PM
That's beautiful.

Also, reminds me that I forgot to mention...with that 100 on the die, we decided that the only possible explanation was that his prosthetic hand detached itself from his arm.

Sounds fun... though I think you should have had it... maybe... detatch itself, only to fly over and pry his other hand off of the cliff, like it was demon-posessed?

Nah, now I'm just going too far. Ignore me. :smallbiggrin:

Mx.Silver
2008-09-14, 09:28 PM
Wow. I hope never in my life to see that. Can you calculate the odds of that happening?
Odds of getting 28 1s in a single roll? >6x10^21
That is: over six hundred quintillion to one against.

I can't really think of any meaningful comparison to that. The number of seconds that pass by in a thousand years is still a few figures short of that range.

BizzaroStormy
2008-09-14, 09:34 PM
Hmm... here's mine, wasn't my character though.
Game is Cyberpunk 2021, with a twist: our characters have mild psychic powers. Two of us, the hacker and the stealthy-guy, are in a corporate office building attempting to infiltrate (and failing). The other, the heavy weapons guy with a cyber-arm, is across the street positioned in case anything goes wrong. Of course, being the Jackass he is, he opens fire on the building before we tell him to. A helicopter comes from no where and starts shooting him, but he manages to make it to the fire escape unscathed.
Then he reaches the bottom. He ducks around the corner into an alleyway, and comes face-to-rifle barrel with a mercenary. One shot takes his head mostly off. However, with what little brain function he had left, he punches COMPLETELY through the guy's stomach, spreading intestines and stuff all over the ground. They both die shortly after.

Just to clarify, Protoss did tell me to start raising hell. If anyone cares, i definately gibbed that guy by dealing 86 points of damage. (Maximum HP possible was 40)

Brauron
2008-09-14, 09:58 PM
While it is distinctly not epic, in fact I killed the character in the least epic way I could imagine, the story nevertheless needs to be told.

I had a player who treated CofC as shoot and loot. His first character was a plastic surgeon (a new career path in the 1920s) who did reconstruction work for the Mafia on the side. Despite 20 or 30 declarations that he was a non-combat character, he was the most heavily armed one in the party -- a pistol (actually used once, brandished stupidly, almost shooting off his own foot twice), a rifle (never used) a fencing sabre (which he assumed had the same stats as a cavalry sabre, swung maybe three times), and surgical scalpels (seriously, he had them listed as weapons on his sheet).

His investigative activities had caught the eye of his Mafia buddies, leading to him being grabbed by a couple of goons, dragged before the don, told to knock it off, and then beaten up for good measure. Next adventure, they encounter a large, amorphous thing (not a shoggoth or formless spawn, though similar) that is manifesting enormous eyes and mouths, absorbing them and re-manifesting them elsewhere on its elephantine bulk.

He declares that he's drawing his pistol, and sticks his hand into its mouth, so he can fire down its throat "and bypass its damage reduction." He then proceeded to get angry with me when the mouth slammed shut, severing his arm at the elbow.

Since a one-armed surgeon is useless to the mob, he was smothered under a pillow by Vinnie "Pig Face" Vincenzio while recuperating in a hospital bed.

It took several more dead characters for him to learn how CofC works, but that's a story for another thread.

Prometheus
2008-09-14, 10:04 PM
I had an epic non-death. A paladin was forced to plunge a sword into her chest to prove that she was undead (she wasn't). She rolls for a coup-de-gra and survives, and with enough lay on hands to seal the wound behind the blade.

Other than that most of the epic deaths were NPCs.

Sequinox
2008-09-14, 10:11 PM
The most non epic death ever.

The climax of the campaign. One of the big bad villains comes out and casts either weird or phantasmal killer (whichever one attacks the whole party). Everyone passed their saves except for the ranger and the samurai (it was like a 7 person party). The ranger's worst nightmare was everything that he had built up in life crashing down (considering that he was born a bastard child, a half elf, and he never found out who his father was, a disgrace to the Elven Court. It turned out much later on that his father was a human lord, but still. He had become one of the most powerful people in the elven nation. His power reached everyawhere via his spy network.) Anyway, he died from grief.

The Samurai/Ronin was quite the ladies man. He died from the fear of angry ex girlfriends with weapons.

arguskos
2008-09-14, 10:11 PM
I had a player in one of my games who had a seriously awesome death (and later retcon, since he really REALLY loved the character, and wanted to keep playing). It's not really EPIC, but we liked it.

So, they are level 1, and on this demi-plane with lots of lava. The party gets attacked by a vasuthant (this undead ball of shadow and cold that eats Small sized things). The party is mostly safe from it's attacks, except when the halfling shoots it. The undead thingy notices a small critter, and uses Fly-by Attack and Imp. Grapple to totally grapple the crap out out of him, and fly off towards the lava. To cut a story short, the party ends up killing the vasuthant OVER the lava, with the halfling inside. She falls out, and I give her a Ref Save+Balance check to land on a rock and live. She makes both, and is now on a tiny rock, 20 feet from the party, separated by lava.

They lash a few ten-foot poles together, and toss them out there for her to walk across. She gets halfway, and slips. A few (more like 6 each) Balance checks and Ref saves later, and the halfling, after a serious bout of fighting gravity, tumbles into the lava.

I later retconned that she got one final chance to make it, which she did with a natural 20 (an epic back flip ten feet onto the main island, at her reduced Str score of 1), but it's a story that the party holds onto, because it looked great.

-argus

Ravyn
2008-09-14, 11:14 PM
So this was when one of my friends was running a game that was supposed to be the backstory for his primary campaign. It was an odd one, with the group at wildly mixed levels, including--this is important--one highly nerfed archmage by name of Argus, who had been cursed so that he took temporary Con damage every time he cast a spell.

So we're off looking for a kidnapped prince in the snowy mountains to the North, when we run into Dragon-King. Think one very large, very angry red dragon, more than any of us should be able to handle, and you've got about the right idea. (Bear in mind, other than Argus, the average level was about nine or ten at this point, and this dragon, as was proved later, was capable of one-shotting most of the party at Average Level 12-13.) We thought we could negotiate, until someone, we figured from the country that was perpetually fighting with ours, sniped him, and he blamed us. This was about to end badly, until Argus stepped in.

He looks up at the dragon. Steels himself, and declares, "I. Wish. You. Gone." Lands the spell. Fails his Fort Save.

Best way to die ever.

(Amusingly enough, the second party death was also against the dragon: My character, though that was a bit more scripted and definitely offstage, and after she'd cheated death something like four times. She left him a couple very nice scars, though.)

Lycan 01
2008-09-14, 11:19 PM
Sooo... the dude wished the dragon from existance... but he blinked out of reality as well?

Sweet.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-14, 11:26 PM
He looks up at the dragon. Steels himself, and declares, "I. Wish. You. Gone." Lands the spell. Fails his Fort Save.

Okay, that is cool. And by cool, I mean totally sweet. I'd sig it, but I have no room :smallfrown:

arguskos
2008-09-14, 11:30 PM
So this was when one of my friends was running a game that was supposed to be the backstory for his primary campaign. It was an odd one, with the group at wildly mixed levels, including--this is important--one highly nerfed archmage by name of Argus, who had been cursed so that he took temporary Con damage every time he cast a spell.

So we're off looking for a kidnapped prince in the snowy mountains to the North, when we run into Dragon-King. Think one very large, very angry red dragon, more than any of us should be able to handle, and you've got about the right idea. (Bear in mind, other than Argus, the average level was about nine or ten at this point, and this dragon, as was proved later, was capable of one-shotting most of the party at Average Level 12-13.) We thought we could negotiate, until someone, we figured from the country that was perpetually fighting with ours, sniped him, and he blamed us. This was about to end badly, until Argus stepped in.

He looks up at the dragon. Steels himself, and declares, "I. Wish. You. Gone." Lands the spell. Fails his Fort Save.

Best way to die ever.

(Amusingly enough, the second party death was also against the dragon: My character, though that was a bit more scripted and definitely offstage, and after she'd cheated death something like four times. She left him a couple very nice scars, though.)
That. Is. AMAZINGLY AWESOME. May I please have the honor of sigging your post sir?

-argus

Eldan
2008-09-15, 01:48 AM
I have one!
Ok, first: this was in a homebrew sci-fi system. It was based of D20 but since we were to lazy to learn D20 modern and it seemed boring without having classes, we made our own. In that system, it was possible to injure yourself with grenades if they didn't fly far enough. Area damage.

The characters broke into a secret research facility, which belonged to the government. At least they thought it did, in fact it belonged to a private corporation.
Anyway, they suddenly found themselves chased by about a dozen security guards. They had two options left they could think of: jump out of high-up window or try to open a secured door not knowing where it would lead. They took the door.
Opening it would take a few rounds, so the party's heavy weapon guy stayed behind, standing in a small door around a corner from the room with the door. He waited until the guards came around the next corner and threw a grenade. Good idea, probably, except he rolled a 1. Followed by a 4.
Player: "Oh, ****. Well, I can probably still survive that, if I roll low enough for damage..."

Of course he didn't. However, to make his death sufficiently epic, the DM decided that the ten other grenades he had at his belt went off as well. He collapsed a hallway.

Baxbart
2008-09-15, 08:38 AM
Maybe not epic, but certainly one of those mindbogglingly unlikely deaths:

A friend and I were playing in a Final Fantasy homebrew system a few years back. We are surrounded, heavily outnumbered and about to get wiped out by a small army of strange plant-like creatures. My friend's turn comes up, and he yells at me to cover him whilst he whips up a big fire spell, centered on us. We figure that we have probably a 50-50 shot of surviving with some bad-ass scars or the like.

That is until he rolls the damage dice. We should have survived, except he rolled 21 sixes, and a five (on 22 dice).

It was quite a way to go, that was for sure.

Triaxx
2008-09-15, 10:50 AM
One of the rare instances I play something other than a Sorceror. We've just accidentally unleashed the ultimate evil, thinking it was a benevolent diety. (Map was upside down.)

So this colossal creature, which on paper is a hybrid of a Tarrasque and Red Dragon without the former's regeneration, begins winging it's way back towards the imperial capital. It wasn't really going to be a lot of destruction since we were already trying to save it. On the way back, the party rogue spots a secret passage, that we'd been supposed to find from the outside on the way in. It leads us out onto a plateau. The creature wheels around for speed, under the edge of the plateau. My barbarians decides we'll never catch up and makes a running leap over the edge of the cliff, intending to land on the creature. He misses. The DM tells me to roll a reflex save. Natural 20 and the spiked chain catches the tail. A roll later, the head turns and breathes fire. I have 53HP, it does 7d10 damage. I survive with 1 HP. And then proceed to fail my strength check, falling nearly a mile to the ground. Using accumulated damage rules. Somewhere over 500HP worth of damage. The DM ruled that even my equipment was annihilated or fused.

Saph
2008-09-15, 11:20 AM
Star Wars d6. The party Kid (yes, it's an archetype; yes, it's as annoying as it sounds) decides he wants to fly in a swoop race, despite having only an average piloting skill. The GM gives him fair warning. He ignores it. For those not up on the Star Wars setting, swoop bikes are basically jet engines with seats that fly faster than the speed of sound. They make the pod racers from Episode 1 look slow.

The race starts out in the open desert on Tatooine. The kid makes his first few rolls, but then the race track goes through a canyon. The DM tells the kid his target number. Kid rolls, fails. He doesn't miss by much, so the DM rules that he just clips the canyon wall. The player's happy, until the rest of us point out what "clipping" a wall at 800 mph actually means.

The rest of the party see the fireball, and manage to find enough bits of the kid to confirm he's dead before skipping town.

- Saph

Oracle_Hunter
2008-09-15, 11:35 AM
Star Wars d6. The party Kid (yes, it's an archetype; yes, it's as annoying as it sounds) decides he wants to fly in a swoop race, despite having only an average piloting skill. The GM gives him fair warning. He ignores it. For those not up on the Star Wars setting, swoop bikes are basically jet engines with seats that fly faster than the speed of sound. They make the pod racers from Episode 1 look slow.

The race starts out in the open desert on Tatooine. The kid makes his first few rolls, but then the race track goes through a canyon. The DM tells the kid his target number. Kid rolls, fails. He doesn't miss by much, so the DM rules that he just clips the canyon wall. The player's happy, until the rest of us point out what "clipping" a wall at 800 mph actually means.

The rest of the party see the fireball, and manage to find enough bits of the kid to confirm he's dead before skipping town.

- Saph

Is there any Star Wars D6 story that involves a Kid that ends well? :smalltongue:

Man, what a system! :smallbiggrin:

chiasaur11
2008-09-15, 12:24 PM
Is there any Star Wars D6 story that involves a Kid that ends well? :smalltongue:

Man, what a system! :smallbiggrin:

I'd say that story ended fairly well.
Heh.

Kobold-Bard
2008-09-15, 12:25 PM
Not an epic death per se, but it was certainly an epic series of events that lead up to it.

Nonspecific D&D 3.5 World. Party consists of a druid, a cleric, a sorcerer and a wizard all of whom are level 25. (Due to it being the last session the DM decided to have us fall into a pool of Godblood that bumped us up from level 9 so that we would be strong enough for what he had planned. It also allowed us to pick our spells spontaneously, after all what did he care it was the last session)

We return to the Material Plane to find Lucindra (homemade Goddess of who had devolved into a psychotic monster due to being shunned by the other Deities, with 40 hit dice and a three figure Con score) 40ft tall and ripping a city to shreds. Obviously we engage her but on her first turn she finger of deaths the cleric, dropping him before he has a chance to bellow his carefully thought out warcry.

What ensues is an (I don't think there is another word for it) epic battle that involving many, many deaths, revivals, barely made saving throws, summoned Demons, massive abuse of Wish and Miracle spells (being used to restore players spell lists once they run out) and a church being thrown at the party.

Due to the sheer amount of hit points our enemy has and such vast quantities of healing spells this takes around 4 hours real world time to reach its ultimately anticlimactic conclusion. Just as she is beginning to fail she lashes out (pants darkeningly high grapple check) and grabs everyone (horrendous Reflex saves) but the wizard and without batting an eyelid the DM tells us that she eats them whole, as if that had been the plan all along. She then proceeds to move something around in her mouth and takes one last look at the wizard, who literally can't think of anything to do, and spits the rangers head straight at him with such speed that it caved his chest in on contact.

And that is the story of the Battle of Lucindra, still told to this day any time one us plays a bard.

Lycan 01
2008-09-15, 03:37 PM
Wow. Just... wow.


I need to make more epic campaigns...

Doomsy
2008-09-16, 06:10 PM
I still think the pilot of our small cruiser (or was it corvette?) in a game of D20 Future wins for epic death. He just carried us along for the ride. We were three sessions in and the BBEG and his fleet had just laid siege to one of the first worlds we had stopped at. Naturally, we had no hope of actually beating him but we had screwed around long enough and gotten lucky enough that the GM tried to shoo us along to the next 'stop' by having his dreadnought come at us. We had actually looked through the designs for most of these starships and gotten a good look at how damage worked in these homebrews. This is an important factor later.

The pilot was a former soldier from a nation that no longer really exists. He was pretty much all about duty and doing the right thing, had been career military, etc. This is also important later.

Eventually the enemy numbers are getting heavy. We have the flagship of the BBEG coming in, but there is a gap we could take it by basically shooting past the enemy with our broadside to their noses - the ships in this game worked like old school navies. Their main guns were generally mounted on their sides. Broadsides were brutal, crossing the T was a valid tactic, etc.

We had just been boarded by a ship from a local cruiser full of marines. The rest of the party sans the gunner and pilot were in our cargo hold fighting hand to hand with them in close quarters and it was getting bloody fast. Some kind of EMP blast took out the comm system in the area and fried most of our personal electronics, so the pilot and gunner had no way to know how the fight was going besides that we were plain just not answering.

So after a few rounds of silence, he asks the gunner to seal the door to the rest of the ship. While he is busy, the pilot swings the ship around to face the enemy flagship head on. And then throws everything into acceleration while asking the GM what the roll is to target the bridge.

Everybody from the GM to the rest of the players went catatonic for a few seconds. I think the GM just went with it mostly out of shock.

We effectively killed ourselves and the BBEG in about three turns. He is working on a new campaign in the same world and I understand the previous party are now planetary heroes. Post-mortem of course. I just hope mine has a nice statue or a school named after 'em.

only1doug
2008-09-17, 06:13 AM
We were playing WEG star wars and had a severly modified YT1300, it was upgunned in every aspect (to the point of having a vehicle scale blaster cannon in the cargohold for planetary security) and we loved that ship.

we were fleeing under fire from a star destroyer when one of the crew decided to go for his epic death scene, he called on the darkside for enough ability to throw the captain and the wookie into an escape pod and then turned the ship around and rammed the star destroyer (resulting in his own death and major damage to the Star destroyer) we were extremely annoyed with him.

Blackfang108
2008-09-17, 01:32 PM
We were playing WEG star wars and had a severly modified YT1300, it was upgunned in every aspect (to the point of having a vehicle scale blaster cannon in the cargohold for planetary security) and we loved that ship.

we were fleeing under fire from a star destroyer when one of the crew decided to go for his epic death scene, he called on the darkside for enough ability to throw the captain and the wookie into an escape pod and then turned the ship around and rammed the star destroyer (resulting in his own death and major damage to the Star destroyer) we were extremely annoyed with him.

I would assume the Star Destroyer's crew weren't too happy with him, either.

Sadly, despite the number of deaths in my campaigns (One is a True Killer DM.), few to none are epic.

Lycan 01
2008-09-17, 01:59 PM
Not only am I working on a Silent Hill campaign for my group, which we will be starting this Saturday, but I'm also about half-way done with my homebrew Star Wars system which is essentially Call of Cthulhu with different skills and a Force System instead of a Sanity System. (And it works, too!)

So yeah... I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories from Silent Hill within the next few weeks, and I'm pretty certain that once I get the Star Wars game up and running, there will be more than one epic death...

Ravyn
2008-09-17, 09:38 PM
That. Is. AMAZINGLY AWESOME. May I please have the honor of sigging your post sir?

-argus

The honorific you want is Ma'am. (You have no idea how often I have to tell people that; I got a whole blog post out of it once.) But go right ahead; it's always fun to see a good yarn land on a receptive ear.

Singhilarity
2008-09-17, 10:17 PM
The honorific you want is Ma'am. (You have no idea how often I have to tell people that; I got a whole blog post out of it once.) But go right ahead; it's always fun to see a good yarn land on a receptive ear.

Which goes to say a lot about perceptiveness.
There's a ♀ next to Gender...

Heliomance
2008-09-18, 03:36 AM
There are no girls on the Internet.

We've not had any epic deaths yet, but I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time. We have a Paladin in the party, and in the setting we play in, Paladins have to be even more exemplary of good than normal. Add to that that our loyalty to the party leader, a dwarven fighter, is such that if he told us we were going to invade hell itself our response would likely be "give us ten minutes to get our stuff together" and that he has a habit of truly epic victories (one-shotting every major encounter for the last three levels) you have the recipe for some epic deaths when it finally goes horribly wrong.

Crazy Scot
2008-09-18, 06:22 AM
Well, I know this thread is about Epic PC Deaths, but I just had to throw this in for consideration, though it is an Epic PC Anti-Death story.

I was not playing this game, but was watching from the sidelines, but the basic premise was the group was trying to fight through a dungeon of undead. They have gotten all the way to the end and are pretty much out of everything (spells, healing, hp, you name it). They get to the BBEG (lich or vampire, don't remember since it was a while ago), and he goes on this long monologue about how the group had done well to get this far. Then the BBEG gives them a chance to walk away. The group looks at each other, and before anyone has a chance to say anything the guy playing the wizard says "Hey, we will never get here again," so he turns to the DM and says "I cast Magic Missile at him." The group is speachless as the DM says, "Okay, but it is a wild magic zone." Everyone was getting really mad at the guy as the DM started rolling a few dice and looking up the result. Finally the DM read out the result, "Effect lasts for 10 minutes." Enough said.

arguskos
2008-09-18, 06:24 AM
The honorific you want is Ma'am. (You have no idea how often I have to tell people that; I got a whole blog post out of it once.) But go right ahead; it's always fun to see a good yarn land on a receptive ear.
*facepalm* My sincere apologies Ma'am, for some reason, I percieved the symbol to be otherwise. :smallredface:

However, I thank you greatly. Now, to the sig!!

-argus

potatocubed
2008-09-18, 07:47 AM
Gnomes 1, Trolls 0
The most epic death in any of my games happened in the very first D&D 3.0 game I ran (a conversion of The Night Below for those that know it). The party were fighting many, many trolls and were in way over their heads (levels 5-7). They had managed to construct a primitive nail bomb with a combination of a barrel of oil, some magic and my shaky grasp of physics, but it was now sitting on the opposite side of the cavern to them. Between the party and the bomb, a wall of trolls.

Boddynock, the gnome barbarian, has just come off worst from a clash with a troll. He has one hit point. In a fit of manic bravery he grabs a flaming torch from the severed arm of another party member (provoking an attack of opportunity - missed) and sprints through the front line of trolls (two more attacks of opportunity - miss, miss). Then he realises that because of his short legs, he's going to have to run through another troll.

"Got any ranks in Tumble?"
"No... hmm. I know! I'll bull rush it!"

Another attack of opportunity misses, and Boddynock crashes into the troll with all the force a 30 lb, three foot gnome can muster. The dice fall. Natural 20 vs. natural 1. Heaving the shocked troll to one side, Boddynock jumps into the barrel of oil with the last of his movement.

A lot of fire and nails later, the cavern is free of trolls and in serious need of redecoration. All that was left of Boddynock was a lump of molten gold in the shape of his jockstrap (where he kept all his money). The party erected a solid gold statue of Boddynock in his honour in the local town, then went on to bring about the end of the world more or less by accident.

Blackfang108
2008-09-18, 08:52 AM
... then went on to bring about the end of the world more or less by accident

you have to share this story.

Ninjalitude
2008-09-18, 09:05 AM
I may have said this on a forum before but here goes.
Our party was ascending a mountain in the middle of an island when suddenly we see a massive red dragon fly up from the crater then down at us. We take up battle positions
1st round: hit by breath weapon, only one seriously injured is the bard, I, as a monk take no damage
2nd round: bard begins casting fly from a wand, starting with the warblade, dragon swoops down and picks up the archer in his teeth (the archer was crit'ed), now my character is very good friends with the archer, and i notice that the dragon is only 100 feet away from me
me: i could get over to it this turn
bard: what good would that do?
me: hmm maybe i could rescue the archer?
bard: how?
me: I jump up to the dragon and attempt to grapple it
(after a moment of shocked silence the dm says ill need to make a dc 30 jump check)
I successfully grab on to the dragon but i cant get a pin
in the following rounds I was able to deal a significant amount of damage but when the dragon became invisible, i was the only thing that kept our party able to find it.
when the flying enlarged warblade finally killed the thing the DM realized that i was still on the dragons back i had to make a reflex save to jump on the warblade, then he had to make a strength check, I rolled a 20 he rolled a 2, well I'm now plummeting through the air, the casters are looking through their prepared spells to look for some way to help me, and I'm just praying that ill make my tumble check, well i don't, and i have a rather painful encounter with mr. jagged rock. our cleric could resurrect me but i didn't last long in the encounters to come because of my reduced level and monk-ness so i re-rolled a swordsage and all was right with the world.

Lochar
2008-09-18, 01:28 PM
The group teleported away from a few advanced to 9 HD Yeth Hounds, leaving their thief behind, because he was outside of grabbing range.

Said thief attempted to hide in the shadows (1 level dip in Shadow Dancer), but since Yeth Hounds have dark vision, didn't really help. No shadows to their eyes, you see?

Due to having taken some non-lethal damage earlier, the first attack on him knocks him unconscious.

The next attack is a coup de grace. Spoilered for those of you with weak stomachs.

On the other hand, Dothen is unconscious and there is a hound, very hurt by the thief, right next to him.

The hound takes a step forward, placing an overly large paw on the Tiefling's chest. The hound's weight is actually enough to crush Dothen's sternum, and the tiefling wakes one last time, even during this night, with an unholy scream that echoes throughout the town.

With a howl, the muzzle of the hound comes down, biting through Dothen's throat, nearly severing the head. Not finished yet, the hound gives a single jerk, and with a horrendous snap, Dothen's head is completely removed from his body.

Blood quickly begins to spurt from the ragged stump, and the hound discards the head of Dothen to begin lapping at the blood, like it was water.

Drascin
2008-09-18, 02:00 PM
Eberron. Lightning rail station. A whole bunch of innocent passengers on a now stopped train.

And a freaking dragon wreaking havoc on the roof (it would take quite some explaining how that guy ended up there)

The players fight it, but it doesn't seem they are powerful enough to prevent it from making canned meal out of the people in the train. Then the swordage goes silent for a second during his turn.

"I guess we should have taken those diamonds" he says to the others, before telling me he's whipping out that anti-fortification explosive he'd taken from the Canniths, activating its fuse... and jumping right into the dragon's mouth without a second thought, diving down the gizzard.

Personally, if vaporizing yourself together with half a Wyrm dragon doesn't qualify as epic, I don't know what does :smallamused:.

Lycan 01
2008-09-18, 02:11 PM
^ Das. Ist. Episch.

Calinero
2008-09-20, 01:29 PM
While there are no dragons in this tale, I do have a pretty decent character death story from a game of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a pretty decent zombie game.

The Cast:
Me--A British bartender
Player A--A waitress at my bar. Also has her 8 year old son with her, who is typically controlled by the DM.
Player B--an old man who worked occasionally as a janitor at the local school and did odd jobs around my bar.

Weirdness had started to happen, beginning with a zombie who attacked us in my bar. After defeating it, the group travelled to my apartment to hide for the night. It was on the fourth floor, or so.

We had taken a few wounds from fighting the zombie, but nothing too serious...we sat in my apartment, recuperating, with Player A and her son in my bedroom, about to go to sleep. Suddenly, we hear scratching sounds come from the wall outside. Both I and Player B go over to the window, and look. We are forced to make rolls against fear, which we marginally fail. Outside is a ghoulish creature described as "having a face like those freaky fish things, where the teeth interlock and it has a massive overbite and underbite at the same time." Just interlock your fingers, and imagine something with teeth that look like that. It was emaciated, had enormous claws--oh, and it had climbed up the wall for four stories to reach my apartment. It headbutts the window and leaps into the apartment. By this time, Player B had run out of my apartment and was heading for his car--he had taken the Cowardly drawback, so it made sense. I, however, had taken the Honorable drawback. The creature was between me and Player A and her eight year old son, and there was no way I could leave them to die. So, as it turned to chase them, I attacked it.

In All Flesh, there are three types of characters. Norms, Survivors, and...some other type I don't remember. We were Norms. Not meant for heavy combat, not able to single handedly crush zombies with their fists, nothing like that. The best thing to do is run away. I did not have that option. I managed to hit it in the face with a cricket bat (Shaun of the Dead homage) for 16 damage. Unfortunately, this did not do much to slow it down, and proceeded to eviscerate me with its claws, knocking me into the negatives in one hit. I did manage to buy enough time for Player A to open a window to a fire escape. She jumps out, turns around, and lifts her son through. However, just before she gets him through, the thing bites his arm.

Let me tell you about Player A. She was a very good roleplayer, got very involved with her character. Did not like anything bad to happen her characters, either. All in all, a bad combination with All Flesh. She tried to pull her son away, tried to punch the creature, tried to slam the window on its head, but nothing worked. It continued to eat away at her son's health, and finally she had only one recourse--she ran away.

The DM started grinning an evil grin. "All right," he said. "You run down the fire escape. As you run down, behind you you hear something. Ripping sounds." There was a collective groan around the table, and Player A looked extremely sad. This was a particularly sadistic game.

Throughout all of this, Player B had been running down the stairs to reach the parking lot. He encountered some normal zombies, nothing like the one in my apartment, and mostly ran by them. However, they managed to hit him a few times, and by the time he reached his car he was at 0 health. He stayed conscious due to a lucky roll.

Player A was running down the fire escape with the creature in pursuit. It caught up with her at ground level and swiped at her with its claws, injuring her. At this time, Player A saw Player B in his van and began running for it, the thing still chasing her. She made it to the door of the van....then was hit by the creature and knocked unconscious.

There was no way for Player B to get her in the car without exposing himself to attack by the creature. He swerved away in his car, and decided to make an attempt to hit the thing with his van, hopefully killing it or stunning it long enough to get Player A in the car. Unfortunately, this required a driving roll. Player B did not do so well on that roll, and actually ran over Player A. The creature dodged the van with little difficulty at all.

Very narrowly avoiding a TPK, our sole remaining party member drove away with 0 hp, to some later adventure with new characters in it. I slowly bled to death up in my apartment.

Lycan 01
2008-09-21, 03:06 PM
Wow... That had to suck. XD


Although, that game sound pretty fun. Where'd you get it?

Calinero
2008-09-21, 05:35 PM
It was surprisingly fun for a near-TPK. Both of the others were good roleplayers, and the atmosphere was sufficiently creepy.

As for where I got the game, it's a friend's, not mine. Here's the site for it, though:

http://www.allflesh.com/flesh.html

It's fun!

Prustan
2008-09-22, 04:07 AM
Currently doing a PbP for All Flesh Must Be Eaten at RolePlay Online (http://rpol.net). Quite fun, and the zombies have just started appearing...

Robert_Frazer
2008-09-22, 07:47 PM
My submission is from a Dark Heresy campaign. It needs a little contextual detail to appropriately set the scene. Click the spoiler to read it:

I recently concluded a lengthy Dark Heresy campaign that I have chaired as GM over the course of several months, entitled "The Burning Shore".

A somewhat obscure piece of background fluff for Warhammer 40,000 is that the Immortal God-Emperor as he is ensconced in the Golden Throne sheds a barely-perceptible tear for every loyal subject who dies faithfully in his service. This precious fluid, stuff of the divine sovereign himself, is collected in talismans which may contain the mourning grace for millions and are naturally holy relics of incomparable purity and majesty.

The villain of the campaign was a Night Lord, leader of a Chaos pirate band known as the "Sinners Before Heaven" (petulant defiance against the rightful order), no more than a bit player in the galactic scale of evil but one with grand ambitions. He had devastated a Ministorum basilica and stolen one of these precious talismans (killing the Adepta Sororitas sister of the Acolytes' Inquisitor in the process). It was the Night Lord's ambition to use the sacred fluid stored in the Talisman to water the first shoots of a garden of ruination tilled in the shell-churned fields of strife and anguish, using the harrowing desecration of millions of drops of Emperor-touched souls to bloom a daemon world for himself to rule over.

After a long interstellar quest pursuing the Sinners Before Heaven across multiple worlds, trying to clear up the mess left in their wake as they drew together their plan, the Acolytes grew and matured (and were replaced a couple of times as individuals sprouted inconvenient tentacles or went, to use a scientific term, "bats**t f**king loco") from initial recruits to literally topping out their experience points. We had reached the climatic act, a War Zone environment where the Sinners had appeased enough warp entities and called in enough favours to launch a global war, whose suffering would slowly fertilise the ashen soil of their dark desires.

The Imperium actually had the upper hand, until the Chaos forces successfully seized the planet's chief orbital defence battery - a sprawling ICBM complex set in a mountain range - in a bold coup de main. Impervious to orbital bombardment due to miles of igneous rock and a Void-Shield canopy, and with conventional forces requiring weeks to fight up through the harsh terrain, in a desperate gambit a full batallion of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers, with the Acolytes amongst them, were airdropped straight on top of the complex. Recapture the silos, smash up the command centre, unscrew the fuel lines, it didn't matter - the only objective was to stop those missiles launching.

The operation went, to state the matter elaborately and eloquently, tits up. Some bad rolls and some bad calls left had half of the Valkyrie transports being blown to smithereens before they landed, while those aboard the other half were pinned down in silos and corridors by murderously effective entrenched cultists.

Victory was literally impossible, but the Inquisitor (played by myself as GM)demanded to press on at all costs, at which point our party's Guardsman (with a player not keen to die right at the end) yelled down the vox:

"It's not over! The missiles can be shot down in-flight! The fleet can hit the shields harder! We can't clog the silo hoods with our bodies! I am a sworn subject and I will gladly throw down my life at the Emperor's feet - but I will not be a sacrifice on the pagan altar of your damned vanity, sir!"

The order to withdraw was eventually given, only for one of our party (technically Scum, but a very well-spoken sort because he absolutely despised what he once was and was eternally grateful to the Inquisitor for lifting him out of the lower orders of society) to be gunned down as he made his way out of the silo he had been fighting in. This man had battled daemons and horrors, he had unearthed conspiracies and stared down dangers that would flay souls - to get done in by a miserable cannon-fodder cultist shooting him in the back with a common autogun, with no Fate Points left to burn, was not the way he had expected to make his final bow, to say the least! Rather than just having his body cast to the brutality of the Critical Damage tables, I permitted him to narrate a death scene to redeem it with a measure of dignity.

Our female Psyker rushed over to the prone and inert body, turning him over and promptly staining her trousers black from his perforated liver. These two characters had been gradually building up a tentative, hesitant romance (with some excellent roleplay from the players, if I may so), and it was only as she cradled him as his life leached away in a reeking, leaking gut that they could finally voice their love. A few rounds of regret-tinged dialogue later and the Psyker was becoming a blubbering wreck, at which point the Scum took a laboured, strenuous breath and rasped: "Do not waste your tears. I was not born to watch this world grow dim. Life is measured, not in years, but in the deeds of men." The Psyker smiled uncertainly, at which point the Scum gasped a laugh and croaked "Heh. Lord Solar Macharius said that, you know."

With a strangled cry of half-outrage, the Psyker brought the Scum's head up and two shared a first and only, electric kiss. After a few precious seconds, the Scum's head thudded down heavily. His last cooling exhalation played over the Psyker's face:

"...worth everything..."

The Psyker was inconsolable and had to be knocked out and dragged to safety. There was no time to retrieve the body of the Scum, which was left where he had fell and was later vapourised in the jet wash of the launching missiles.

After then, the fate of the world was left to God, in my dice. Over a third of the missiles were successfully destroyed in-flight by Imperial forces, but those left wreaked terrible devastation. Loyalist fatalities were estimated at some six hundred million, and soon Chaos was advancing uncontested on all fronts.

nobodylovesyou4
2008-09-22, 08:19 PM
^ wow. this is epic on a different level. this is, like, movie quality. fine job, my friend.

Lycan 01
2008-09-22, 08:37 PM
^ So, so sad... But worth all the time it took to read it.

Wraith
2008-09-22, 09:15 PM
I feel out of place in this Thread. I have a few stories, but virtually all of them are my coplayers', because I always seem to escape death due to some epiphany right at the last second. Great for tales of survival, terrible for epic deaths...

The only one involving me was a Savage Worlds game in the Rippers setting. Basically it's Victorian London, and everything in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is real - Dr.Jekyll, Invisible Men, the Nautilus and of course our ultimate nemesis, Dracula.

The campaign ultimately reached it's conclusion in Dracula's Castle. The group consisted of a Pirate (complete with flintlock and pet parrot), an old and crippled but very powerful Mage, a Ninja that we had picked up during an excursion to the Far East (or, "your character died, so make something appropriate for the next adventure") and me, the Prodigal Surgeon with no close-combat ability and at best some average skill with handguns.

Through luck and bloody-mindedness we made it to Dracula's crypt, forced open the coffin and immolated The Dark Prince with magical fire in a few turns of extremely lucky dice rolling before he had a chance to fight back.
And then his Thralls turned up.

A dozen of Dracula's most powerful children arrived fresh for a fight - we had sneaked in the back way, and left all of the guards unscathed in doing so - and we were trapped inside Dracula's Mausoleum, desperately trying to fight off these monsters who we had funneled two-at-a-time in the doorway, trying to make our way out to the safety of the sunlit courtyard mere yards away.
The Mage went down quickly - very much a glass cannon, he was quickly torn up in the first couple of rounds, though he provided enough of a distraction for the Pirate to 'tumble' through the pack unhurt and launch a rear-attack on the group of enemies, trying to distract them enough to get the rest of us out.
The Ninja went next - being the only one of us armed with a wooden weapon (and therefore being the only one able to overcome our enemies' damage resistances with anything even remotely approaching reliably) he was a priority target for the monsters - leaving me, alone, trapped in a Crypt with no way out as half a dozen of the most powerful monsters in existence approached to avenge their Master and lay claim to his Throne by taking ownership of his coffin.

So what is a man to do? A mere surgeon with a few supernatural edges, but nothing remotely capable of saving me.

I smashed my lantern on the floor, stepped back a couple of feet and, with my shoulders to the wall, made them come through the flames for me as I rattled off shot after shot after shot at them, praying to get lucky and Crit outrageously with a mundane lead bullet.
Some 40 shots later (firing from a normal 6-chamber revolver and then reloading repeatedly) it only took one blow to cave in my chest and pin me to the wall with vicious talons, and Doctor Nikolai Tzogavich was no more.

The Pirate watched this happen, and then fled the country, never to be seen again and making no attempt to avenge his fallen comrades.

B*st*rd. :smalltongue:

I'll remember more, hopefully - we were particularly practiced at making WFRP characters as I recall, there's bound to be some good stories in there somewhere.

Cow of Revenge
2008-09-23, 12:58 AM
The most epic death of mine was at the end of my first DnD campaign right before the group broke up...

In any case, i was playing a half orc barbarian who was incredibly stupid. He was of low enough intelligence that he couldn't communicate properly and name was some sort of low gurgle. Anyways, although he was stupid he had an incredibly constitution and very high hit points, and always tanked for the party but never once died. Eventually the DM's best friend (being the immature middle school sort, who was incidentally the most annoying rogue ever, being evil and overpowered who always got the exact right and best magic items and TWF with dual katanas with no penalty) got jealous or something and decided to hate my character. For some reason i decided i had wanted a glaive to add to my character (dunno why) and would always try to buy it at the store and it would never seem to be there. During the last session however the rogue took over DM and at one point low and behold there was a glaive as treasure! I picked it up and he told me how incredibly powerful it was, had about every extra damage ability availible, ect ect... when he finished telling me of all its properties it promptly blew up, allowing him to roll oh so many dice and see the demise of my character. Well after getting done rolling all his dice and extracting his vendetta on my character we found that i still had about 20 HP left, which needless to say irritated him to no end. At that point he fiated and said that 100 archers popped out with flaming arrows and pin-cushioned my barbarian. We decided not to roll for damages, and about that point i decided it was time for me to politely excuse myself. I heard that in a later campaign after the rogue had taken over full time as DM they (well the group broke in two, but the half i wasnt in) resurrected my character so they could kill him again... Since then however i have never wanted another glaive...

Calinero
2008-09-23, 05:34 AM
Dang....that rogue/DM guy does not sound much fun to play with. Did none of the other players call him out on the ridiculousness of the exploding glaive? Or the 100 archers?

AslanCross
2008-09-23, 08:47 AM
"It's not over! The missiles can be shot down in-flight! The fleet can hit the shields harder! We can't clog the silo hoods with our bodies! I am a sworn subject and I will gladly throw down my life at the Emperor's feet - but I will not be a sacrifice on the pagan altar of your damned vanity, sir!"



....

....this entire post was just incredible, but wow. This particular piece of dialogue? The death?

I really wish my players would RP like that. You and your group deserve an Internet each.

Wreckingrocc
2008-09-23, 08:52 AM
Ooh! I got a good one! It's an NPC death, but it's still VERY epic.

Ravenloft Spoiler (If you're going to be doing it, don't read this.)When my group was doing Ravenloft, my brother's friend was playing as a half-orc fighter-ranger-barbarian and had a huge freaking load of strength. He dual-weilded bastard swords, and when we were in the church, the crazy man attacked us. He blasted the hole in the floor (the death spell which I passed my saving throw by by 1) and shouted "You will not take my son from me!" He then jumped in, provoking an AoO from my brother's friend, who proceeded to roll a critical hit, cutting him in half. The upper half his body fell in the pit. The lower half fell on the ground. It was epic.

Shishnarfne
2008-09-23, 10:23 AM
Ah, Ravenloft, and the many deaths I as DM have caused therein...

One NPC death:
The party figured out that Strahd was going to go after Ireena given the chance, so they thought they'd protect her.
While exiting the castle for the first time, Strahd attacks.
First round: Free action "Hold still" to the dominated Ireena, followed by a nice happy Web for the whole party.
Second round: Since a PC decided to make Ireena invisible (so Strahd couldn't see her), See Invisibility.
Third round: Dimension Door next to the Damsel in Distress as the party tries to cut through the Web to get to Strahd.
Fourth round: Grab Ireena and Teleport out.
In the presence of a party of about 8 PC's. They next saw her as a vampire.

Another death by the same NPC, different party:

The group was attempting to complete a ritual (for the cleric) when Strahd shows up to seize his "love".
First round: Order Ireena to hold still and wait for him, cast Solid Fog.
Second round: Dimension Door next to her and prepare to drain her dry.
Following rounds: Drain her of blood relying on Solid Fog to delay and diminish the party's attempt to fight him off. Only the rogue gets close enough to make melee attacks, which Strahd simply ignored.
Proceed to carry off Ireena's body.

I've run Expedition to Castle Ravenloft 3 times, and there's still more that I haven't run for players yet...

Lycan 01
2008-09-23, 10:43 AM
Cow, please tell me you didn't let that character stay dead. I would have completely disregarded that DM's... DMing... and just left with my character sheet in tow.

Crafty Banana
2008-09-23, 12:37 PM
A few rounds of regret-tinged dialogue later and the Psyker was becoming a blubbering wreck, at which point the Scum took a laboured, strenuous breath and rasped: "Do not waste your tears. I was not born to watch this world grow dim. Life is measured, not in years, but in the deeds of men." The Psyker smiled uncertainly, at which point the Scum gasped a laugh and croaked "Heh. Lord Solar Macharius said that, you know."

With a strangled cry of half-outrage, the Psyker brought the Scum's head up and two shared a first and only, electric kiss. After a few precious seconds, the Scum's head thudded down heavily. His last cooling exhalation played over the Psyker's face:

"...worth everything..."



That entire episode was of such unparalleled awesomeness that I felt compelled to register on the forum just to say how amazing it was. Major kudos on a fantastic group of players, and on running the sort of campaign that generated that kind of drama.

Epic-tastic.

kbk
2008-09-23, 01:57 PM
2 of my characters had particularly entertaining and epic deaths.

There was the half-elf bladesinger who felt betrayed by all the gods, because he was the last of the party to be an original character (all his friends were dead), and as it so happened, part of the plot involved overthrowing the monolithic evil empire that had caused his father to be beheaded in front of him. To say the least, he was depressed, so he was prone to taking risks. This resulted in him leading the way in dungeons. So he managed to be the only party member teleported into a diminsionally anchored giant bug hive chamber area. As a 3.0 bladesinger, he had a lot of options available to him, and for some 20 rounds he fought off dozens of giant bug things who had to roll natural 20s to hit him. That was an epic combat, that unfortunately bored all the other players to near death, because they had decided to try to figure out why I had vanished, instead of charging in after me.


Then, there was the dungeon crawl classics campaign where I played a kobold factotum. We explored a strange crashed space ship, which somehow had made ape creatures intelligent. Being a factotum, he managed to identify the strange stick-like things that they threw at us, which exploded causing massive pain. So, he collected several belts of these interesting weapons. When we opened the last of the chambers in the ship, we were confronted with the BBEG, who was standing in front of glass chamber filled with a green gas and a floating sword. The BBEG started his melodramatic flavor text speech, but my factotum rolled the highest initiative, so rather than listen to a dull speech, he ran up to a 10 yards distance, pulled every grenade pin and threw his belt.

Well, he hit, and did a whopping 145 points of damage to the BBEG (killing him). Unfortunately, this also fractured the glass chamber that was filled with cloudkill. Yes, we were still 6th level, and I failed the save.