funniest/most memorable deaths in DND

[steam_mage]

hi all just wanted to share a couple of deaths that happened to players during my campaigns and wanted to hear some of your stories.

i had one player who played a stone giant bard/hulking hurler who wheeled around a grand piano which he could then throw at people, because he always destroyed his pianos and got sick of buying new ones i let him research drendle's summon greater instrument which let him summon a new piano. any way at one point the party came to a mountain with a high path and a low path, the party knew both paths ended at the same place and that they were being tracked so they decided to split the party into two to hopefully confuse their trackers, the giant took the high road along with their cleric and their only tank melee character and the druid, rouge and sorcerer took the low road.
the trackers decided to take the low road and eventually caught up with the three squishes and started smaking them around like a beach ball. the bard thanks to a nat 20 on his listen check heard the ruckus coming from 200ft below and decided to throw his magical pianos at the trackers until he ran out of spells. he then without warning decided to throw their only tank character at the trackers, rolled at nat 1, missed the cliff entirely, had the job of scraping the poor character of the ground brining him to the closest church of pelor and explaining why the warrior died holding his middle finger to the sky with a very angry expression on his face.

in the night fang spire campiagn (for those of you who havent played it it's a lvl 10 featured around a 300ft tower you have to get to the top of to gain entry and then work your way down) we had quite a few deaths so i let all three of the characters who died (rather embarisingly in the first encounter with the moon calf) make new characters while those with surving characaters could stay inside while the they caught up. the three characters who had died b4 were all non casters so they had to climb (they decided to do so all tied together to minimise chance of falling) meanwhile one of the character inside the tower found a chest and as he was roleplaying a greedy SOB decided not to tell the rouge to check it for traps. when he opened it he of course trigered a trap that dropped him down a pit sliced him into tiny peices and shot the peices out of the tower. the peices happened to shoot out directly in the face of the first character climbing the tower ( i swear i didnt make that happen he really was at the EXACT place the dead player got shot out of the tower) this shock caused him to lose his grip and fall of the tower ( he rolled a 3 on concentration -_- ) as all the climbers were tied together and the player at the top was the strongest and heaviest when he fell he pulled the other two characters of the tower to their deaths (102 falling damage on a lvl 10 rouge, ranger, and monk)

[Grifthin]

Mine was last session. All Level 1 doing the Sunless Citadel. My Chaotic Neutral VERY naive fighter who worships Kord in a way that's not entirely healthy kicks the door in, bellowing for the "evildoers to show themselves and do honorable combat". Wanting nothing to do with that the little Goblins/Kobolds Charges en masse. I took down about 4-6 of them (not to shabby for dual crossbows level 1) and then got turned into a very interesting pinata. The rogue is trapped with me in here and the rest of the party is busy piling rocks on their side of the door, unmindful of the fact that the door opens towards the enemy.

Needless to say they are in for a nasty surprise. The DM called time ending the session and I'm rather intrigued to see how he will keep the party from getting wiped. As my penance My new character is a mute Dragon Shaman who's staying quiet and the hell out of everyone's way. Mostly by party consensus. It was fun to just go balls to the wall instead of pulling peoples crap out of the fire for once.

[illyrus]

*Edit - Another Sunless Citadel story in fact

Our first 3.0 game soon after 3.0 came out. I hadn't played in the game's first session where several of the characters had been captured and then dominated to attack the party. I was playing a fighter with some good rolls for stats that used throwing axes to melee with or throw. My character was brought in from the town nearby by the surviving party members who said they had lost some friends in the dungeon and were going back for revenge. The other players who had lost their characters brought new characters as well. At no part did anyone tell me OOC or IC what their friends looked like and the whole party was made up of humans.

Fast forward a few sessions and we're at the final fight. A dwarf wielding a battleaxe leaps out at my character trying to take off his head. My character steps back and flings 3 axes into the dwarf's head, scoring a critical hit on 2 of the attacks and instantly slaying the dwarf. The DM begins to describe the dwarf and one of the other players starts yelling that I killed his character.

me: You guys never told my character or even me what your old characters looked like.
him: Yes we did!
DM: No, you didn't, but really he should know as he was in the first game session.
me: I didn't play the first game session remember?
DM: Oh yeah, huh.
another player: We get xp for that right?

[Elvenoutrider]

My friend's druid got mauled by a bear...

[TheCountAlucard]

hi all just wanted to share a couple of deaths that happened to players during my campaigns and wanted to hear some of your stories.

Uh-oh. I hope you did a decent enough job of burying the bodies. No witnesses, right?

[Ernir]

My Exalted-good Unarmed Swordsage ripped a fellow party member's heart out a few sessions ago.

[Dire Moose]

One of my players is known for doing extreme and often somewhat risky things out of game, and in-game he has had more character deaths than anyone else for similar reasons.

The first, that of his half-elf druid Naxel, actually occurred in his first game session, but this was mostly a bad dice roll-induced combat death against a zombie moose.

He subsequently created a second half-elf druid, Xanthou, as a replacement. Xanthou never died, though he did do some rather stupid things like:
-Searching a doorway for traps with a 12 Int and no ranks in Search. This resulted in him attempting to walk through the supposedly-untrapped door and being met with a portcullis to the head.
-Walking into a room and immediately grabbing the shiny blue orb hanging from one of the mounted bear heads on the wall. Luckily, the Attack of the Zombie Bears didn't result in any casualties.
-He also lost two animal companions. The first, an eagle, was eaten by a green dragon he had sent it to attack; the second, a bison, was chopped to death by frost giants and frozen by their pet winter wolves. Luckily, he didn't have enough time to give his snow leopard the gruesome death it surely would have received had he continued to play this character.

After a hiatus over last summer, this guy made a new character: Philbert Bomat, human fighter. After being moderately successful for a while, Philbert eventually died when attempting to walk down a corridor filled with knee-deep water by himself. He fell into a ten-foot dropoff while wearing full plate and proceeded to fatally drown himself.

Finally, his latest character, Philbert Bomat, Jr., the illegitimate half-elven son of his previous character, also died while trying to jump from a ledge to a suspended platform over a pool of boiling mud. Again, note that full plate is not particularly helpful in a situation like this.

It would seem that he's planning another druid at this point. I'll fill you in on this character's inevitable death when it happens.

[Kaun]

I remember in one of our Deadlands games one of the party members, a rather full of himself dandy hex slinger got swarmed by gremlins while doing a little back ally RnD in Salt lake city.

Rather then try and pry the gremlins off him the rest of the outfit just turned on him drew there six shooters and proceded to fan the hammer untill there were no gremlins left moving.

Unfortunatly for the Hex slinger he wasnt moving either.

[Rensvind]

We have one player in one of my groups that usually dies roughly once per session, often from silly things:

One of his Paladins met his doom when he charged 2 Trolls and 1 Winter Wolf, on lvl 5, with only 2 hp left. Before the charge we asked him how much hp he had, he answered "enough"

Another time he played a Halfling Rogue, who after killing more elven pirates than all of the others combined, met his demise when the three surviving pirates fired a small lobby of arrows in our direction from the escaping ship. Three critical hits later, and the Halfling was no more. And since our Cleric of Pelor didn't like what the Rogue did earlier (some metagaming and stolen equipment) he ran to the corpse, ripped of the Halfling's clothes and everything of value, and threw him overboard... He then said it was a classical sea burial when the DM told him that was an evil act :)

And once he didn't actually die, but he attacked the demon that was hosting the gladitorial games we had entered, so he had to spend the rest of the session in Imprisonment :)

[Ravens_cry]

My Exalted-good Unarmed Swordsage ripped a fellow party member's heart out a few sessions ago.

*record scratch*
OK. . .first question, WHY?!
Ad infinitum
.

[Brendan]

I tried to reason with an evil undead boss. I then was hit with several javelins.

[Chaelos]

I think my favorite was when our Chaotic Stupid Bard unleashed Tharizdun as a favor to someone he owed money to. As expected by everyone else (who were actually trying to stop this exact thing from happening), Tharizdun promptly ate the Bard, us, and all the rest of creation.

[Arcane_Secrets]

My first D&D character, and a somewhat cruel DM. He was a dwarf who accidentally got his arm eaten off by green slime when it dropped on him from above, but that wasn't what actually killed him. In fact, he lived through that part of the campaign and made it to the final boss along with the rest of the party (which also died in that boss fight, so he still had plenty of company).

What killed him was when the rest of the party decided to attack a pirate boat with the boss on it, he decided to stay back on the boat. During the fight, one of the henchmen falls over the side, lands in the boat, and capsizes it. My character, still wearing his armor, tries to climb one handed up the rope to the rest of the party...and fails, falling into the sea where he drowned.

[Asheram]

We have one player in one of my groups that usually dies roughly once per session, often from silly things:

One of his Paladins met his doom when he charged 2 Trolls and 1 Winter Wolf, on lvl 5, with only 2 hp left. Before the charge we asked him how much hp he had, he answered "enough"

Another time he played a Halfling Rogue, who after killing more elven pirates than all of the others combined, met his demise when the three surviving pirates fired a small lobby of arrows in our direction from the escaping ship. Three critical hits later, and the Halfling was no more. And since our Cleric of Pelor didn't like what the Rogue did earlier (some metagaming and stolen equipment) he ran to the corpse, ripped of the Halfling's clothes and everything of value, and threw him overboard... He then said it was a classical sea burial when the DM told him that was an evil act :)

And once he didn't actually die, but he attacked the demon that was hosting the gladitorial games we had entered, so he had to spend the rest of the session in Imprisonment :)

You missed the one when he was playing a dwarven warrior and went hunting for orcs... alone... in the orc-infested forest... wearing nothing but his underware. (Or did he manage to survive that one? t'was good fun atleast)

[klemdakherzbag]

2nd Ed AD&D my Minotaur fighter and a human cleric were trapped/locked in a room after splitting the party to search an abandonexd mansion. Door was magically locked and I had failed my open doors roll. Only other useful object in the room was a desk with many drawers, all trapped. So I proceeded to smash said desk against said door and proceed to set off every trap in the desk.(20 traps @ 1d10 each) Luckily the DM rolled lowish ~ 80 damage which I was able to survive with 10 or so HP but outright killed the cleric. It was OK with everyone else since the character was dead weight anyways - the player made the initial comment

[SaintRidley]

My Exalted-good Unarmed Swordsage ripped a fellow party member's heart out a few sessions ago.

He's not exalted any more.

[MlleRouge]

I had a nice TKP in a little three-session adventure that I wrote up a while back.


One of the characters decided to switch sides and PvP the other two near the end of the dungeon. The player in question was a gnome barbarian, who had spent most the adventure doing random and crazy things while singing his 'theme song'. A joke character for sure.

After randomly knocking the already-wounded rogue out with a well placed kick to the ribs, the gnome took off down the hallway to join the BBEG. The rogue was revived and the other two characters followed, eager to take him out. Now, no one in the party was optimized (at all...), something Id taken into account when writing up the encounters.

The BBEG, a two headed demon, wasn't terribly keen on actually letting the gnome join in, but it was happy to use the party's desire to kill the gnome as a distraction while it chomped away at them itself. I lowered the BBEG's power considerably to try and give the 'loyal' PCs a good fighting chance, since the player of the gnome was having a hell of a time and there was no changing his mind on the whole ordeal. I wasn't particularly pleased. I tried to go easy on them, even had the demon retreat to the water a time or two after being AoO'd to brood and try to find a different angle of attack (it was rather cowardly, hence hiding in the bottom of a dungeon!).

The problem was, the rogue was so unoptimized it was useless. The other player, a decent paladin, and the gnome slugged it out after the rogue was beaten to death with his own crowbar by the barbarian. The paladin healed a couple times, the demon attacked a couple times but ultimately withdrew, since I really didn't want to force the paladin to fight both the BBEG (albeit severely nerfed) and the barbarian at the same time. The paladin switched targets to the demon at one point and almost took it out alone before the gnome's continued attacks annoyed him so much (RP wise) that he switched targets again. Disaster then struck as I realized that after a bathroom break, some of my notes had been cleaned up and had disappeared. Then this conversation took place.

Me: Im afraid Ive...misplaced my sheet. Damn it. *Paladin*, how many hit points do you have left
Paladin: 10
Me: Okay..and *Barbarian*?
Barbarian: 10, which will run out when my rage ends
Me: How long on your rage?
Barbarian: One round


Next round, the barbarian knocked out the paladin and then passed out himself. The rogue, having been bludgeoned to death with his own crowbar, is also dead. The almost-dead demon, which attacked only a couple times over the course of the entire thing, proceeded to have dinner.

Oddly enough, everyone was laughing. I felt horrible at first, but it was hard to resist laughing when I realized how amused they all were.

[Xallace]

• Druid blew up self in a munitions factory.
• Druid blew up because party sorcerer panicked while trying to kill an evil rose swarm.
• Druid was mauled by own animal companion turned sour.
• Wizard cast Lightning Bolt in a room filled made of precious metals.
• Warmage was coerced by ferrets to jump into a pool of acid.
• Sorcerer blew up via spell-storing octopus attached to face.
• Wizard eaten by gibbering mouther; was carrying party's supply of healing potions.
• Mayor was non-lethally punched to death; town had back-up mayor.
• Choker accidentally cut in half on backswing of buster-sword sized weapon; Paladin didn't know he was there.
• Dedicated Hero was eaten by 50-foot zombie leech, no save.
• Barbarian was tripped to death; forgot about five-foot-steps.
• Copper Piece dropped on gladiator from low-earth orbit on plane with no terminal velocity.

Any of those need further elaboration?

[Szilard]

One person's character is an evil rogue. The Rogue tries to push his brother's character into a chasm but fails and ends up falling in himself. It turns out there's a giant spiderweb stretching across the chasm. I burn the web to get rid of the spiders and the character falls twenty feet. Then the biggest spider who survived the burning and the fall tries to eat the rogue. After killing the spider and saving the rogue and getting across the chasm, a troll skeleton falls on the rogue and he dies. We made up an excuse to bring him back, and later an animated statue falls on him.

[sofawall]

We have a player, and he is one of those guys who doesn't always think things through. I tend to die almost as much as him, but that is mainly due to the dice hating me, although recklessness plays a fair part for me as well.

1) Jumped off a walkway on Sharn to chase some crossbowmen, but forgot to bring his own crossbow. DM showed leniency by making the crossbowmen unable to attack due to laughter.

2) Picked pocket of party barbarian, rolled a 3 on Sleight of Hand. I (the barbarian) rolled a 19. I proceeded to remove his hit points.

3) Wanted to get some xp to catch up with the rest of the party. I asked if he was sure he didn't want help, he said yes. Large sized Hell Hound proceeded to Grapple him to death.

4) Running through a forest (again, alone), a Dire Boar popped up. He decided to fight it instead of running onwards. Cue grapple.

5) Fought party. Ended up with Nauseated followed by 2 rogues using sneak attack. Didn't live.

6) Walked off alone in Xen'drik. Captured by giants.

And that's not even counting the times he didn't come close to dying.

[CTLC]

In a campaign last year, one of the players spontaneously combusted.
Apparently the Dm rolled a d[1.0 X 10^craptonne] for each of use every hour or so. I never figured out if he was joking or not. Anywho, this player 'failed' said roll and just poofed in a small quick burning flame.
Go figure.

Edit: a revelation! it might have something to do with the fact that earlier that day the player in question had stolen the DM's milk chocolate.

[Arcane_Secrets]

Any of those need further elaboration?

Yes. The spell-storing octopus, and the ferret incident.

[Jon_Dahl]

Well this was ALMOST death, but I hope it still counts:
Player had just created a new character to join our group. We were supposed to meet in tavern, but the first thing this PC does is to sneak in to our rooms while other PC's are eating! Pretty nice huh? No dialogue, no nothing. Just straight to our room (picked the lock etc.)

My PC had a bag on his bed. I gave him a very subtle hint that it is a trap (this was all offgame). So he falls for my double-trap: His PC foddles the bag without opening it and gets bitten by a ridicolously poisonous snake I had in the bag. He did barely manage to save vs. poison but had he died... It would have been something. Never have I wished a PC to fail his save as I did there.

[steam_mage]

ok so this was an npc death but im still counting it.

in one of my high level campaigns the players ( a lvl 13 cleric lich lvl 13 paladin half celestial, a lvl 13 mummy monk, a lvl 17 elf wizard and the party's pet 9th astral construct) were fighting a very annoying mindflayer with ridicolusly high spell resistance and a small army of advanced war trolls. after quite a bit of blasting FINALY getting rid of the trolls the wizard tried to blast the mind flayer and failed the spell resistance. the mind flayer realisied he was about to have his head punched inside-out by the monk so he levitated 30ft up and cast prismatic sphere. the wizard didnt have enough dispel magic spells left but with a wicked grin cast protection from fire on the monk and commanded the 49 str astral construct to throw the monk through the prismatic sphere at the mind flayer. he hit despite a -16 to attack roll for using an oversized wepon -4 attack roll no proficency and a 50% miss chance because of the sphere and the monk (who was either immune to or saved agaisnt all the effects) collided with the mind flayer made a succsessful grapple check which resulted in the combined weight of the two excedding the limit for levitate and thus pulling the mind flayer through HIS OWN prismatic sphere...he failed every save. i told them the mind flayer died in a massive explossion showering them in peices of mind flayer...some of which were on fire, some of which were steaming acid, some of which were frozen, some of which were made of stone and some of which were etheral.
the monk was covered in greenish purplish goo and when the local townsfolk saw her she simply said "sorry i fell in a mind flayer"

[Grifthin]

@ Steam_mage

THAT IS AWESOME!

[IthilanorStPete]

Let's see...there's my Wizard who nearly died in his first encounter. So I'm playing my first d&d, got a pseudo-Batman wizard rolled up...first encounter, we get ambushed by some hobgoblins on a trail. No biggie.
Me: Ooh, time to use Fly and laugh at the helpless monsters! *casts Fly, goes 30 ft. straight up*
Hobgoblins: "..." *have bows*
*shoot wizard*
Me: *becomes pincushion and falls into the negatives*

The Druid's wolf AC had to jump 30 ft. straight up to deliver a cure minor wounds to save me.
In the first round of my first encounter. Ever.

Not quite a death, but my own sheer idiocy makes it worth telling...and thats just the beginnings of my misadventures with flight in that campaign.

[SpikeFightwicky]

Back in AD&D, we had a lame house rule (everyone else in the group thought it was an awesome idea) that if you roll a natural 20, you get a reroll. If you get a natural 20 again, you automatically kill whatever you were attacking. It also worked the other way around, if you roll a natural 1, you roll again and automatically kill yourself somehow if you roll a natural 1 again (I know, I know... stupid rule, but the group loved it).

Anyways, I was running one of the Ravenloft adventures (the one where the Headless Horseman kills the party, then Azalin restores them and sends them back in time to steal Barovian artifacts so he can complete his Hexad), and they were going through his castle just trying to find a way out. The party was around level 10-11 at this point. They found their way onto a rampart, and encountered a half-dozen skeleton guards (just plain ol' skeletons in chain mail). Relieved to finally be fighting something simple, after getting the best Initiative roll, the Fighter charged at the nearest one and rolls to hit... natural 1. A hush falls over the group as the player rolls again... natural 1. I describe that as the fighter charges the skeleton, he gets to close the edge of the rampart, and loose bricks give way, collapsing a small portion where the player was, and he fell off and dissapeared from view, must to the dismay of the rest of the party. I think we abolished the 'roll two natural 1s or 20s' rule after that session.

[Lin Bayaseda]

... pulling the mind flayer through HIS OWN prismatic sphere...he failed every save

As much as this story is made of total win, I must say that ...

You can pass into and out of the prismatic sphere and remain near it without harm.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/prismaticSphere.htm

[Iceforge]

Back in AD&D, we had a lame house rule (everyone else in the group thought it was an awesome idea) that if you roll a natural 20, you get a reroll. If you get a natural 20 again, you automatically kill whatever you were attacking. It also worked the other way around, if you roll a natural 1, you roll again and automatically kill yourself somehow if you roll a natural 1 again (I know, I know... stupid rule, but the group loved it).

Anyways, I was running one of the Ravenloft adventures (the one where the Headless Horseman kills the party, then Azalin restores them and sends them back in time to steal Barovian artifacts so he can complete his Hexad), and they were going through his castle just trying to find a way out. The party was around level 10-11 at this point. They found their way onto a rampart, and encountered a half-dozen skeleton guards (just plain ol' skeletons in chain mail). Relieved to finally be fighting something simple, after getting the best Initiative roll, the Fighter charged at the nearest one and rolls to hit... natural 1. A hush falls over the group as the player rolls again... natural 1. I describe that as the fighter charges the skeleton, he gets to close the edge of the rampart, and loose bricks give way, collapsing a small portion where the player was, and he fell off and dissapeared from view, must to the dismay of the rest of the party. I think we abolished the 'roll two natural 1s or 20s' rule after that session.

Oh my, must be a very peaceful place.

No fear of some random drunk slapping you because you looked at him funny.

In a world where the average number of punches you can deal out before killing yourself is 400, nobody would be getting into any fights, unless they absolutely have to.

[Telonius]

Most memorable: We were fighting one of the recurring villains in Age of Worms. The villain hit our party Warforged Barbarian with an Implosion spell. Warforged rolls a 1. The DM described it thusly: "Imagine a can of Coke crumpling in on itself."