Memorable character deaths

[Zergrusheddie]

Everyone has had one of those characters that just seemed to flop over at the first sign of danger. I remember my first, second, and third character death rather vividly, mostly because they were in the same campaign over the course of 4 sessions...

1. Monk. Was swimming around an island looking for the entrance to a 'dungeon.' I'm not exactly sure what kind of eels they were, but 2 of them managed to get 5 hits on me with each one averaging about 15 points of damage per hit. The level 3 Monk imploded with such force that the eels swam away. The real kicker is that the DM suggested someone to scout in the water and I was the only person with a positive swim score.

2. Wizard (brother of the Monk). The DM realized that he basically 'sucker punched' me, so my brother was found on the island. Well, Mr. Wizard was killed by a small army Sahuagin when the party investigated the underwater dungeon to save some captive sailors. It was a total party wipe 1 week after rolling up the Wizard.

3. Evil Paladin. The party is now annoyed at the DM. We ended up dying trying to do a quest to obtain a boat. Since we failed miserably doing it the Good way, we rolled Evil guys and stole the boat. 2 sessions into the new Evil Campaign, my Paladin is attacked by a zombie who was found on a boat floating in the middle of the ocean. 3 attacks on me: slam, slam, bite. 3 Fortitude saves, 2 of which I fail because the DC is 22. The disease apparently stacked, so I was going to take 2d6 damage until a Remove Disease spell was cast and the Cleric was not 5th level. My 4th level Paladin ended up coming back as another zombie. Together, me and my new friend wiped the entire party. We stopped playing after that.

So, what kind of deaths have you had? Were they because of bad DM's, bad luck, or just bad decision making? This should lead to some funny stories.
Best of luck.
-Eddie

[KillianHawkeye]

My first ever 3E character (human monk) died a couple of times.

First time, we were in this haunted dungeon or some such. I don't remember exactly. Anyway, we found this magic necklace but we weren't able to identify it on the spot, so I just decided to put it on and hope for the best. It strangled me. Ironically, we were unable to cast a remove curse on the spot, either.

Second time, I got critically hit by someone (I don't remember who, maybe a githyanki) who was wielding a githyanki vorpal silver sword. I was beheaded. After coming back to life (again), I claimed the guy's sword in lieu of other treasure, and later traded it to one of the princesses of Cormyr (in the FR) for a huge plot of land and the funds to build a new monastery and martial arts dojo.

That character eventually got kinda touchy about his neck region. Also had a pretty wicked sword collection for a guy who punched people with his fists. My battle cry was "I drop my swords and prepare for battle!"

[Knaight]

I can think of two when I was GMing, one of which surprised me to no end. The PCs were fighting a demon cultist warrior, who was throwing around hell fire, and cutting things up, and in general being powerful as hell. One of the PCs tackled him, and while they were struggling another threw a lightning bolt at the ceiling above them. The demon cultist managed to pin the PC under him, then the stones hit him. He tried to escape in ink form, and the PC who threw the lightning bolt threw another at him and the trapped PC when neither of them could dodge. Both of them were killed, and I didn't see it coming at all.

The player was given a temp character, an angel who was accompanying the PCs. Another person, "the servant" a spirit who had possessed a human that tried to attack it, created by a necromancer who she had to obey (until he was killed, at which point the plan became "kill the rest of them"), and in order to try and minimize killing the PCs, who she liked, challenged them to send in a champion to a one on one duel. The last time this had happened, she lit a bunch of alchemists fire on of the PCs was holding on fire, negating a dodge attempt, and nearly killing him with the explosion. Nonetheless, the player playing the angel decides that it is a good idea. When the servant was actually threatened, she decided to bring out the big guns, limited ammunition and all, left part of her sword in the angels body(a mercury coating she magically kept on the edge, with a lot of magic held within it), and blew it up. Around then, the necromancer was killed by an assassin the players hired, due to being distracted, and "the servant" took the opportunity to defect. Both of these things were extremely epic, and still remembered to this day. There were a few other PC deaths in other games, most of which were due to people being enamored of "taking them down with me" rather than allowing escape.

[Zergrusheddie]

He tried to escape in ink form, and the PC who threw the lightning bolt threw another at him and the trapped PC when neither of them could dodge. Both of them were killed, and I didn't see it coming at all.

Friendly Fire isn't.

[Assassin89]

My first 3.5 ed character death involved a negative energy battery. My third level human cleric died when investigating a room. A cube was found in the room, and then it sprouted tentacles. It then attacked me in a surprise round. After rolling initiative, my character was, then torn apart by the tentacles during actual combat. Afterward, my thoughts were being angry at the player of the warforged healer for telling me to investigate the room, and giving every other character in the group permission to loot my body. The warforged healer still has his wand of cure light wounds and silver holy symbol from that day. The good news about that death were that a goblin fighter who threw my character down a well also died in the same session, and my new character did not have any negative modifiers to dexterity.

[Shinizak]

A crazy hobbo cleric that died at the hands of two kuo-toa's magic gay hand holding power.

[The Mentalist]

Not mine but a guy I gamed with:

Decides to play a VoP druid (against everyone's advice) we all go over a cliff, monk does the whole slow fall thing, the wizard (me) does the whole I can fly bit. Druid completely forgets about his wild shape and splats into the rocks.

Same guy:

Is playing the Lawful Stupid paladin and decides to charge the marching column of undead soldiers (I designed them for the DM he didn't have a prayer) I grab him and teleport. He attacks me instead...

Baleful Transportation thingie one of the skeletons and him. He ends up with about thirty spears in him before his initiative comes.

[Swooper]

I've told this story here before, but whatever.

It wasn't my character, but it happened in a session I was in some years back. The most bad ass dwarf ever. He died several rounds after jumping into an active volcano, but not because of the molten lava he was swimming in, but because of the dimensional portal opening inside him and ripping him apart. "Why did he jump into the volcano?" you ask? "To make sure the daemonic* invasion through said portal received a warm welcome when they entered our world!"

*They were actually machines, not daemons from the Abyss, so they didn't have any resistance to fire damage.

[oxybe]

a few months after i moved in the city where i currently live, i found myself a game that was starting up (GM was looking for players).

i quickly joined up as a cleric of pelor.

our group was selected to go check out "the isle of dread", a small island off the coast that used to be inhabited but no one's been coming in for a while. fisherman whisper of undead.

so we enter the town and start looking around. we don't see anything so we "split up" (not a real split up, but we do put about a round's worth of running between the group). fog rolls in. me and the wizard are walking along and searching the ruined houses when a shambling form is seen.

ME: i exclaim to the zombie that i will return him to the realm of the dead. turn undead
GM: sorry, no effect, the ogre zombie charges your (level 3) cleric.
GM: *rolls* oooh... *we look at the dice* (he rolled openly) a 20
GM: *roll again* high number *rolls damage* 16 (on 2d8) +9... times 2 due to greatclub 50 points.
ME: negative...twenty-something. i believe i'm dead (sarcastic voice)?
GM: kindof. your head now resides in your chest as the ogre zombie's log smashes on your helm.
ME: hm... *look at wizard, the group's munchkin* you've got expeditious retreat, right?

same session later after i've rolled a new PC:
we were in a dungeon and we were at a "T" junction. to the left is a pit we ignore for now and decide to go right. the GM begins to narrate
GM: from the depths of the pit an amorphous blob creeps up the side and is coming towards you.
ME (glaive-boy, a rogue/fighter) : wait... large blob?! GUYS... trouble in the back!
WIZ: put that thing away glaive-boy, i'll split (it was a jelly) if you cut it.
GM
ME: well, he did say it in character...
GM: sigh. alright.
ME: s'not like i can do much, my only side-arm is a cudgel (mwk club we found).
party starts running for the "T" junction as the group's new cleric steps up to stop the beast.
ME: sigh. well i guess he'll need some help... charge+hit
DM: alright it advances (bull rush) on the two of you (rolls, hits both of us)... grapples both... 2d4+3+1d4... alright.
US: uh-oh...
DM: the ones left see the cleric and glaive-boy get swallowed
comes back to me and cleric, fail to grapple out
DM: and... 2d4+3+1d4...
ME: well, that's just in the negatives.
CLR: yeah, i'm dying too.
DM: wow double kill next turn unless the party does something.
WIZ: yeah, expeditious retreat.

[MeatShield#236]

My first character death was someone else's fault. We were exporing a ruined tower. So the rogue has an invisibility ring he always uses.He opens the door, thinking we was invisible; only, he forgot to put it on, and was promptly ripped to shreds by gorgons.
Now this brings in about ten gorgons. I (the fighter) decide to save the rest of the party and attack while they run away via passwall
Stupid rogue...

[Sallera]

Well, my players were exploring a side passage in a dragon's lair, and found a string of beads sitting on a small pedestal. The party being somewhat paranoid, the sorceress casts Haste, and the cleric runs up, grabs the necklace, and runs back again. A small glowing gold bead rises up from the pedestal.

Cleric: Well, I'm a greedy bastard, so... the rest of you run away and I'll go and grab it.

So, naturally, the cleric rolls a 4 as he picks up the Delayed Blast Fireball and it goes off. The cleric then fails his reflex save, fails the second save for the necklace of fireballs (type VII) he just picked up, and promptly explodes. He then proceeds to save against every single fireball from the necklace, but still ends up at -20 or so. And then gets reincarnated as a gnome.

[Shadowbane]

20th level Diviner, Enchantment as banned school nuked a room with Meteor Swarm, killing the rogue, the ranger, two cloud giant skeletons, and a skull lord. Oh, and the Auradin then had to give up 5k experience to Miracle all his friends back. Greeaaaat.

[Zergrusheddie]

He died several rounds after jumping into an active volcano, but not because of the molten lava he was swimming in, but because of the dimensional portal opening inside him and ripping him apart. "Why did he jump into the volcano?" you ask? "To make sure the daemonic* invasion through said portal received a warm welcome when they entered our world!"

That is awesome, like Batman with a machine gun that shoots nuclear weapons awesome. How the hell did he think of that?

[shadow_archmagi]

I was DMing, and I'd put the players up against a mad gnome and his flesh golem, they were around level 10. Anyway, they were getting low on HP (the golem had something like 6 left, but being a golem it wasn't showing pain so they didn't know that), so the cleric decided to use his Book Of Summon Fish. He rolled a 4, resulting in a whale falling from the sky and crushing him and the golem and caving in the ceiling; the gnome and the other PC narrowly escaped.

[Calinero]

Yeah, serious kudos to the badass dwarf there. I actually haven't had too many character deaths, but I had one in All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I played a bartender with the drawback Honorable, and we were in my apartment. The other party members were a thirty four year old woman with a six year old son, and an elderly janitor. A zombie climbed up the apartment building and broke in through the window. The janitor had Cowardice, so he ran away immediately. The zombie had the woman and her son pinned in my bedroom. I could have run out the door, but I chose not to. Instead, I attacked it with my cricket bat to try and buy them time to climb out the window, down the fire escape. It killed me with its claws...a noble sacrifice, and one that would have been better if it hadn't ripped the boy from his mother's arms and torn him in half before he could get out, then chased the mother into the parking lot and thrown her in front of the janitor's van.

[Icewalker]

Well, one of an NPC from a game I ran a while ago pbp, didn't get far. The PCs were battling some smugglers in an underground tunnel, first level party, one of the smugglers was a first level monk. He was pretty pathetic, especially considering monk's MAD and the fact that I used non-elite ability scores for him (10, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11). Basically, they spotted the party. Monk wins initiative. Sprints at a character, who has a readied action to basically psionically punch someone in the face if they run at him. Monk drops to exactly 0 hp. Round of combat. Grease is cast, at one point, covering the space the monk is in.

He tries to stand up. Rolls a 1 on the balance check. At this point, I just DM fiat that, halfway standing up, he slips, breaks his nose (to compliment the broken jaw) and loses consciousness. Fun times.

[hr]
A more epic character death: in a very high power campaign, our party had traveled back in time to the founding of the major city in the setting. A character (kind of my character, but I wasn't playing her at the time) leaps in front of a horrific doom blast from some villain at some major NPC hero. Disintegrates into nothing, but the hero catches the dissipating ash in a shield, which becomes sentient, and takes her spine which became the flagstaff for the city...it was epic, and ended up being basically one of the center plot points of the story, because the DM is fantastic at weaving events into his plots. It was also significantly less ridiculous in context.

[d13]

TWF Ranger/Paladin (Don't ask why, I still don't know... But it was great fluff-wise xD).
Last session of the campaign, we were recovering Sir Artifact McGuffin that had been stolen and taken to the Abyss...

Died holding ground at a portal to the Material Plane, which promptly blew up when the rest of the party crossed it.

Well... In fact, the character never died. After he solo'ed 2 or 3 demons (devils? I can't manage to remember which goes where xD), CR (My level +3 or 4), with the DM we decided to give him a Movie Hero ending, so we don't know what happened. (Much for the tears of the rest of the pjs xD)

The Bright Side: he had his heroic "death" and got his own statue in the capital city of the Kingdom xD.

[ondonaflash]

Okay, so the party crawls through this dungeon I gave them, a whole mess of necromancers and undead. The ranger fights a bearded devil, and because i was feeling generous, and the Ranger got shafted weapon wise, I let him keep its glaive.

So they make it to the level boss, a real sick SOB i had tricked out for the fight. the Ranger goes, rolls a twenty.

rolls to confirm, a twenty

rolls to kill, a twenty.

so rather than just hitting him, he rends him, shoulder to groin, cleaving through the Necromancer like he's nothing (destroying the major loot) and spraying the druid and rogue with a large quantity of gore. it was glorious.

[MCerberus]

I've actually had a joke encounter kill a player. The party finds a gazebo in the middle of the forest. On the benches were several humanoid corpses, stripped of flesh and all clothing/treasure. The cleric, despite being the only one to roll a decent spot check, sits down. Oops, now he can't get up, and his hands are stuck.


So the party leaves him there.
The party leaves him.
On the doom gazebo of death.

[holywhippet]

3. Evil Paladin. The party is now annoyed at the DM. We ended up dying trying to do a quest to obtain a boat. Since we failed miserably doing it the Good way, we rolled Evil guys and stole the boat. 2 sessions into the new Evil Campaign, my Paladin is attacked by a zombie who was found on a boat floating in the middle of the ocean. 3 attacks on me: slam, slam, bite. 3 Fortitude saves, 2 of which I fail because the DC is 22. The disease apparently stacked, so I was going to take 2d6 damage until a Remove Disease spell was cast and the Cleric was not 5th level. My 4th level Paladin ended up coming back as another zombie. Together, me and my new friend wiped the entire party. We stopped playing after that.

What edition of D&D were you playing? Evil paladins only became possible in 4th edition, but it sounds like you are playing 2nd or 3rd edition. However, a level 4 paladin in 3rd edition is immune to all diseases - including supernatural ones. Not sure about 2nd edition, but I think they are 100% disease immune in that edition also.

My most memorable character death was playing Dark Heresy. My adept was foolishly chasing down an assassin - but the assassin saw me and wiped the floor with me. The other player (it was a 2 player session) was heading to my location and I was making a series of rolls with a 10% chance of bleeding to death. The other player finally reached me, then we discovered he hadn't bothered spending points on the medicae skill despite him being told to previously. On my next roll I rolled exactly 10 and died.

[Godskook]

What edition of D&D were you playing? Evil paladins only became possible in 4th edition, but it sounds like you are playing 2nd or 3rd edition. However, a level 4 paladin in 3rd edition is immune to all diseases - including supernatural ones. Not sure about 2nd edition, but I think they are 100% disease immune in that edition also.

3.5 Unearthed Arcana rules have evil paladins, as well as several dragon mag variants.

[Revlid]

Metroid-based campaign. Almost a TPK after we boarded a Space Pirate ship.

Dead Bounty Hunter 1, a psychic alien in a containment suit, saved everyone's asses before dying - some catwalks had collapsed over a line of cloning vats while we were being chased by Flight Pirates, so he time-freezes the cloning liquid in the vats (GM rules it acts like custard) for us to run across. Just as we get to the other side, he releases his time-freeze, redirecting it to the Flight Pirates zooming down on us from the floor below. They stop and fall down into the cloning fluid, dragging him with them, with 'orrible results.

Dead Bounty Hunter 2, an amorphous shapeshifter, was impersonating a Mutant Pirate when he opened a door and came face-to-face with the other Bounty Hunter attacking the ship - a certain Chozo-infused human female. Needless to say, he died horribly and ingloriously. They don't call her The Hunter for nothing.

Dead Bounty Hunter 3, a human ex-marine, got sniped hacking a door open on another floor... and then kept on hacking, thanks to some kind of combat drugs. He got sniped again, rolls high, keeps on hacking while we try to lay down covering fire from half-a-floor away. He managed to get the thing open just as the Space Pirates got frustrated enough to break out a laser assault cannon, and he went splat.

Dead Bounty Hunter 4, a huge silicone-based rock alien, football-tackled a giant, Phazon-mad semi-bionic Omega Pirate into a crucial (and unprotected, those wacky Space Pirate safety regulators) reactor. She died instantly, and the whole ship went critical.

The last two survivors, a human spacefarer and a sapient robot, hightailed it out of there, the robot leaking coolant with 1 point left the whole way, frantically avoiding potshots from fleeing Pirates. They only managed to get out in the nick of time (seriously, in the finest Metroid tradition, the GM actually got out a timer. Running in real-time, the magnificent *******), sighing with relief as they watched the incredibly advanced alien ship of The Hunter warp away without bothering them.

[KillianHawkeye]

... awesome Metroid story... ...

Woah, you HAVE TO tell us what system you were using to play this!!

[kemmotar]

Well there's one I'll always remember..

First one, a friend of mine playing a monk. Our party was fighting a young black dragon in an abandoned temple of illmater that it's mother had taken control of. The mother was fighting the solar we had just freed so we had to deal with the dragon. The are we're fighting is an enclosed space filled with pillars and no ceiling. Monk cllimbs one of the pillars then drop-fly kicks the dragon in the head as he's falling. He then proceeds to try and strangle the dragon (Don't ask why...nobody knows to this day). The dragon gets pissed off so he flies up and out of the enclosed space with the monk on his back still trying to strangle him...

The dragon hits the monk with his wings, he falls unconscious and starts plummeting. In the meantime, our druid had summmoned a bat and was heading up when the monk rushed passed him falling down. Druid manages to dive and save him. We bring him down, heal him to barely alive and the dragon comes back down. So what does the monk do? He climbs the pillar and drop-fly kicks the dragon again. The only difference was that this time he climbed higher. The combination of critical hit, fly kick, falling damage killed the dragon. Unfortunately the monk also went unceremoniously splat on the floor next to the dragon.....

[Xallace]

Not my character, I was just DMing.

So here we have Marrick, he's a druid, and he's by some technical definition an eco-terrorist we guess. His terrorism of this steampunk fantasy land included kicking vending machines, batting mailboxes, and knocking over trash cans (then running off laughing).

Once he actually lit some wood on fire and tossed it into a gunpowder storage room. That was the closest thing to terrifying until...

Spoiler

Show

The player approaches me and tells me that he doesn't want to play his character anymore. He's been fun, but he just doesn't feel he'll get enough mileage out of Marrick. The Dragonfire Initiate caught his eye and he wants to test out his shiny new book. So I say, "OK, how do you want to phase him out of the party?"

He shrugs and says, "We'll figure something out. I'll keep him around until I make my new sheet."

So, we're in the hometown of one of the other characters (a gunmage, ala Iron Kingdoms, named Sigfried). This town is currently the weapons manufacturing capitol of the nation, as the entire populace was converted into a workforce during the war. The factories are still active, and the pollution is rampant.

There is a tiny sparkle in Marrick's player's eye.

Well, the party has come seeking information from some Sigfried's previous adventuring group. While they wander the town, Marrick sneaks off towards the building that produces a whopping 75% of the weapons.

After about half an hour (in game), Moby (the rogue) realizes that Marrick isn't with them anymore. There's a couple seconds contemplation before Sigfried realizes what's going on. In a panic, the group runs towards the various weapons silos and storage facilities in that quarter of the town, hoping to stop Marrick before something goes wrong (Sigfried and another character, Daniel the Warforged, had caught Marrick in the act of trying to light up the gunpowder storage).

Marrick gets into the building, knocking out any guards who come his way. He wildshapes, breaking down the doors to as many storage rooms as he can. Then he lights up Create Fire, and with what is described as the "sick grin of a self-proclaimed martyr," Marrick begins.

A little before this, Sig has realized where Marrick is and is taking the party there as fast as he can. They're all about half a mile from the facility when the sky turns white. The facility explodes into a massive fireball, and shockwaves erupt across the town. Gases spring upwards and flames spew in every direction.

And the largest manufacturer of weapons, both mundane and magical, is gone. Marrick has stopped the ongoing pollution (sorta), crippled the armed forces (in a way), and made himself a hero (not really) among his druid buddies.

The party gazes in horror at the fireworks, but manage to shake it off as they start trying to rescue the remaining town and townspeople.

"What the @#$%?" Sigfriend's player would later ask Marrick's player. Marrick's player would just shrug and say, "He sucked as an eco-terrorist, I thought I'd send him out with a bang, at least."

[Tar Palantir]

Best character death in our group came in the final session of a campaign I DMed. the group was in fierce combat with a god-killing abomination, an insect queen with powerful magic. So the party swordsage (who had just been made to replace a previously slain character) uses a maneuver that lets him climb into the Gargantuan monster's space. She doesn't like that. He gets hit with a stinger, fails the save against her poison, takes 5 points of Wisdom damage, and fails the Will save against a quickened final rebuke. Next character to go is the ranger, who confirms a crit for max damage of his composite shortbow and sends her into the lonely land of -10 hit points. Karma's a b***h.