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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    GreatWyrmGold's Avatar

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    May 2009
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    In a castle under the sea
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    Default Best Character Deaths

    I just had a character die in a way I want to share, so I'm starting a thread where people can share great character deaths.


    So for a bit of context: Our party consists of a rogue who keeps insisting he's the captain, a changeling pretending to be four different people (me), and a bugbear chef named Chef Lovesauce. (It's a very silly campaign, with plenty of homebrew.)
    We have a ship, which we used to transport a party of adventurers to a tropical island. The inhabitants of that island didn't appreciate our presence, so they tried to drive us off a couple of times. The second time, they sent three boats; after a lot of combat, we'd driven one boat off and killed almost everyone in the other two.

    However, we'd taken a beating; the chef and I, who swam/jumped into the boats to fight in melee, were reduced to two hit points each; while the captain navigator had mostly hidden behind cover on the ship, he'd taken some serious damage, too. And there was one enemy left—a ranger.

    The ranger promptly brought down both of the melee guys with one attack each, unsurprisingly. The not-captain rushed off the ship and tried to stabilize my character, and after a couple of rounds managed to do so. He then finished off the ranger, being reduced to two hit points in the process. He swam over to the other boat, and saw...a brain crawling out of the chef's head. Apparently he's been an intellect devourer this whole time!

    The rogue naturally fled as quickly as he could, but the devourer promptly caught up. They swam by the other boat, the one my (stabilized but unconscious) character was in. Sensing easier prey, the the beast crawled over and...well, devoured my intellect.
    And the "captain" was none the wiser. He was just glad he'd escaped that thing.

    Obviously, most of the time this kind of thing would suck. At the end of a grueling combat that we got through by the skin of our teeth, we get another dangerous enemy that kills another character? But nobody's taking this campaign seriously, and it's pretty funny that nobody's going to realize anything's up.


    So, does anyone else have a story to share?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
    Ah, thank you very much GreatWyrmGold, you obviously live up to that name with your intelligence and wisdom with that post.
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    Winner of Villainous Competitions 8 and 40; silver for 32
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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Composer99's Avatar

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    Sep 2013

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    I haven't had too many characters die, but my favourite, from years and years ago now, was a dwarf fighter I made using the AD&D 2e Skills and Powers supplement for a mid-level one-shot who was very nearly immune to poison.

    15 minutes in, and guess what kills him? You guessed it: poison.
    ~ Composer99

    D&D 5e Campaign:
    Adventures in Eaphandra

    D&D 5e Homebrew:
    This can be found in my extended homebrew signature!

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2019

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Dryad come out if the forest. Player jokingly expressed his PC exhibited romantic interest in Dryad. Dryad charmed PC and had PC approach. The party watched as we didn’t want to hostilely engage (low level and wanted allies for the campaign). So I cast a sleep spell on our friend and nearly maxed out the roll. He fell unconscious. The Dryad went and picked him up. We all watched and didn’t really think to intervene. Then she ran off in the forest with him.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    WolfInSheepsClothing

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    Mar 2015
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    Earth

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Once in a LARP I was shot in the head by the Avatar of Law for being too lawful.
    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    Why be Evil when you can be Lawful?

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    oxybe's Avatar

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    Jan 2009

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Call of Cthulhu game a couple years back. bit of a ramble.
    Spoiler
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    we had been playing for some time now and while we had some bumps, scrapes and slight psychological trauma to show for it, we were in pretty good condition, having only lost one character due to a player moving out of province, considering the system we played.

    Our group of 1930's investigators consists of a french-canadian mechanic, an irish vagrant-come-janitor (me), a new england beat cop & an insurance auditor.

    we had been investigating the disappearance of a couple of professors at the big and famous university I janitored at, who went missing on an archeological dig. My character knew them, the cop was the one put on to investigate the case, the auditor was there to check the site and report damages claims, while the mechanic was friends with me (usually driving me around town) and a reporter doing a piece on the case (who's player had moved out of town mid campaign, and thus will not be mentionned anymore).

    so we started the session picking up from the last week, in media res: a group of toughs led by the local self-proclaimed sheriff are blocking our passage from a dirt road (we had gone to ask questions about the missing profs to the local bootleggers who owned the land they were excavating).

    the sheriff seemed ok at the start, but his cagey and lackadaisical attitude towards some of the goings on got our attention, and when he locked away two frendlies who had been near some otherworldly happenings (a farmwife and her son, who's husband/father got disemboweled by what i can only describe as "the boar from princess mononoke") we had our suspicions he might just be trying to cover things up, but at this point we realize that he is not our friend as he's pointing a loaded shotgun our way with an armed posse who we suspect may not like our snooping either.

    with the party split into two vehicles, myself with the mechanic and the auditor with the beat cop, we each make a decision independently: beat cop tries to burst through the makeshift blockade while we gun it in reverse and try to make it to the heavily armed bootleggers.

    i say try to make it. while the beat cop does plow through the blockade, we... well we largely manage to back away off the dirt road, jump the ditch, tear down the fence and barrel backside of the truck into the corn fields at full speed. Clutching my rosary, i say Hail Mary and hold on for dear life as the mechanic drives blindly in reverse.

    As the mechanic continues to (mostly) blindly drive backwards, something catches my eye: a misshapen, grotesque form that manages to keep up with our (slowed down) speed, flitting in and among the corn stalks.

    I make the sanity check, but still lose a point. tightening my grip on the rosary I speed up repeating my Hail Mary's like a good irish catholic. Mechanic takes offense at this, thinking it a commentary on his driving.

    Hitting a hole in the ground, our tuck immediately stops and the wretch catches up to us, jumps on the hood of the truck and unleashes an inhuman howl as hoards or mice, rats and insects descend on us, coming out of the fields, biting and tearing at whatever exposed flesh they can.

    now, we're not D&D PCs: we're CoC investigators. those pests make painful work of the mechanic who dies to the hundreds of bites the foul rodents inflict as they swarm the truck's cabin through the open windows, before he can even fire off a shot from his "driving gun", a pistol he kept in his glovebox from his time overseas as a WW1 mechanic. My own character, by luck of the RNG granting me a comparatively nicer hit point pool, survives the first attack, but knows he's not going to survive the next. he can't get out of the truck, fight off the swarm and escape both it and it's master on foot.

    He realizes he's going to die.

    But Liam MacAlear survived the last 52 years on prayer, whiskey and being as tough as leather. there is no doubt in his terrified mind he's going out, but it's on his terms and he's sending this thing back to Old Scratch, express delivery.

    I've been hauled around town enough to know the contents of the mechanic's truck as though it belonged to me. Liam and the mechanic were good friends. Grabbing the mechanic's pistol I reach into the back of the truck, that space between the seats and the back of the cab and shove it's muzzle into a small wooden crate that's been sitting in the back of the truck since session 1, when the mechanic bought the dynamite to clear debris but ended up just not using it.

    "Hail mary, full 'o grace...".

    And that's how I lost my first Call of Chulhu character, and the first two character deaths of the campaign.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ettin in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jun 2011

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Big, 20 player, 4 table, 5 GM megagame at a gaming convention on the west coast. I'm one of the GMs, running a star destroyer's command staff through the current crisis. (captian and XO are missing, and I deliberately muddled the player's ranks and responsibilities- the fighter commander technically has the highest rank, Tactical officer midling, and the political officer technically has the lowest, aside from the CIC watch NCO and the Bosun.)

    In the course of the plot, traitors within imperial ranks attempt to hijack the ship while most of the loyalists have been given shore leave at the station where the plot happens.

    Political offcer gets thermal detonators from the armory, and is sneaking to engineering. actions of another player lead to the engineering staff taking updefensive positions... away from where the political offcer is hiding. So he arms the thermal detonators and walks up to the main reactor. Passed a discipline check to maintain his nerve...

    As table GM, I flag down the head GM. After the situation is explained, she flags down the other Table GMs for a quick conference- how does this affect the rest of the convention game?- we still have 2 hours or so left on the 8 hour clock.

    I get back to the table, and the first thing the political officer's player askes is, "so, how do I fail?"
    "You dont." ship is crippled but not destroyed, hyjackers are unable to complete the primary mission but are in too deep to make an orderly withdrawal, and the main plot has 3 other tables of PCs (Civilian investigators, IMPSEC, and a stormtrooper riot squad) crawling around the star destroyer for their own reasons tangentially relayed to they hijacking. The player who sacrificed his character to make this happen seemed entertained and engaged, even though he gave up his agency for this, so I count this as a win.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Titan in the Playground
     
    KorvinStarmast's Avatar

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    May 2015
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    Texas
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    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Original TSR module, Fire Giants (G3). We had completed Frost Giants and this was rumored to be tougher.

    The monk, the necklace of fireballs, and lots of them going off. Yeah, he was inside the blast radius.
    Talk about going down in flames. A spectacular death (and a colossal screw up on the part of the monk)
    Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Works
    a. Malifice (paraphrased):
    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
    Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Pixie in the Playground
    Join Date
    Nov 2019

    Default Re: Best Character Deaths

    Pathfinder 1e, the Emerald Spire. We had way more interest in the town than in the the dungeon, getting totally involved in the politics of the situation. I was, in retrospect, That Guy - Chaotic Evil Halfling Bard. Tried to screw over literally everyone he came in contact with. Two of the players - an Orc Fighter and some manner of Undead Sorcerer - declared their intention to kill me as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

    Unrelated, we hatched a plan to break some resistance fighters from prison by replacing a guard, then allowing us to walk a false prisoner in Empire Strikes Back style. The Halfling was captured while causing a ruckus and taken in for questioning.

    While the questioning goes down, a human Druid attempts to seduce the guard we met when we first entered the headquarters. They begin walking throughout the town, tailed by our Half-Elf Zen Archer Monk (orc and sorcerer got distracted with a drinking game). The seduction is going poorly, as the guard is drunk beyond reason and the Druid has decided to attempt to radicalize the guard instead.

    Back in questioning, the halfling has a compulsion thrown at him. He makes the save. The caster does not realize that, but asks that the halfling turn informant for them. He says he agrees, fully intending to totally rain havoc. He does, however, say that there's a mole in the organization, intending to improvise something out of the paranoia.

    The halfling is ejected onto the front steps at the same time the guard is ejecting on the front steps. He looks up and sees the halfling, then begins to recognize the halfling. The situation is about to devolve when the halfing says "Oh, right. Him. He's the mole." The interrogator, believing I am compelled into helping him, immediately takes the guard into captivity, closing the door. The Zen Archer fires an arrow from hiding, nailing the halfling to the door.

    At this point, the players are divided. The ones who wanted to kill the halfling are suddenly fascinated with the developments and want to spare the halfling. The Zen Archer returns to the tavern, leaving me pinned alone with the Druid. The Druid takes several IRL minutes to decide on a course of action. The halfling fails to get the Druid with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, the Druid succeeds at getting the halfling with a Flaming Sphere. They flee in tears.

    Fallout: Druid is now a broken soul. Halfling is replaced with his identical twin brother - a LG Gunslinger Paladin, who forms the basis for a full halfling clan I still add to. Security increases while the local authorities try to figure out who assaulted the literal front doors of their stronghold. We take a break because we're only halfway through the session and have all had the absolute time of our lives.

    (I have since DM'd for That Guy. It's a miracle that, by the end, everyone was as entertained with my antics as they were. All I can say is: First DM? You were a god among men for handling me)

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