Wolfsnap |
I told them that things would get tougher once they reached a certain level. I told them that they were heading into dangerous territory. I told them that the gloves were off and that one of them would likely die if they weren't careful. And tonight I killed the first PC of my current campaign.
Heck of a fight. Tons of Orc Mooks and a few Orc Barbarians, a Troll, an Ogre Chieftain, and an Orc Chief. I knew someone was going to bite it by round 2. The party wasn't coordinating well enough. The Barbarian got caught out by 2 Orc Berzerkers, the Ogre Chief, and a couple of mooks. She held off that entire crew for five rounds while the others dithered and wasted their energy on CR 1/3 orc warriors. Orcs are tough bastiches, with that whole ferocity thing.
She bought the rest of them enough time to get their act together, and blunted the whole assault. Once she went down, the wizard lost his cool and let off an empowered lightning bolt at the lot of them that nearly did max damage. Reduced the chief and most of his remaining goons to a smoking hole in the ground.
So I'm raising a glass to all the PCs I've killed. Here'sa special toast to Ishma, the axe-crazy barbarian.
What PCs have you killed recently?
HappyDaze |
We had a cavalier that decided to fight to the bitter end to put down a lake troll (an advanced scrag). After several rounds of combat the party had worked the creature down considerably (to fairly low hit points, and out of the water so no regeneration) with ranged attacks and magic. The cavalier charges in to finish it off. He misses, then the scrag full attacks and hits with bite and both claws (meaning it rends too) leaving the cavalier a smear on the battlefield. The cleric's reply of, "I can't heal that." got nervous chuckles from the others as they decided to withdraw and let the scrag do the same.
Sieglord |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sounds to me like Ishma should be congratulated on fulfilling every proper barbarian dream: fighting the good fight and dying with an enemy's heart in her teeth! (Ishma's player should also be commended for properly playing that character to the hilt!)
That being said, as a DM, I've never killed a character. Good DM's don't kill characters...they give characters ample opportunities to kill themselves (or let their teammates die, which sounds like the situation you've described). Based upon the original post, you warned them. You gave them time to prepare. One can only hope that your players have learned the value of coordinated action in future endeavours. Don't put the "kid gloves" on, however. Keep the pressure up, and let your players know that they can EARN their way through, but that you won't GIVE them the way through. THAT'S a top-notch DM, right there!
...and keep up the good work, by the way. Sounds like you'd be an awesome DM to play with!
Muser |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've yet to kill anyone, but my recent convention PFS game was truly memorable:
I won't go spoiling the session, but this scenario was situated near the Mwangi expanse and had the characters dealing with a caravan of goods that should have left a town already. Mysterious, I say, most mysterious. Everyone was undercover in a hostile environment. And naturally only one character had good disguise rolls. This meant that we were soon ambushed by our malefactors.
So, basically, we are struck in an alley(how iconic!) and my character botches his perception check. Being a first level half-elven inquisitor, harumpfh, of course. Next up three guys with crossbows all target poor Kirol and hit that tiny flatfooted AC of his Weapon Finesse build self. Inquisitor down, everyone else flanked by an enemy monk. It all went okay in the end, what with the elven barbarian finishing everyone and the wizard getting off a sleep spell pretty successfully. These guys were PFS newbies to boot.
Then we got to the problem. My character was the only one with some healing and was down to -1. Everyone else except the gnome sorcerer were unexperienced players. The player of the gnome looks at me surreptitiously, tries to argue about getting their companion back on the road, back to action, but gets shouted down by the newbies, suddenly eager for blood after the "successful" ambush encounter.
Then they decide to leave Kirol and his -1 hitpoints buttocks on the stairs of the building with the final encounter. This is the thanks for healing up everyone in a two day session of intense treatment and healing spells after a previous encounter with an eidolon which went pretty disastrously. I started to have a feeling of the end, closing in. The party went to do whatever they had planned to do in the city council hall behind the stairs.
Fifteen minutes passed by. The sparrow-looking bird pecking on Kirol's holy symbol, a face clefted in half by black and white colours, got spooked by a troop of crossbow-carrying thugs in heavy armor rushing in to the council hall. Some more minutes passed. Sombody mistook Kirol for a drunk passed out after a looong night and kicked his very sober and very serious, except for the drool, body, chuckling to himself. Then the troop came out of the building, carrying a party of Pathfinders, covered in huge bites.
Some time passed and Kirol woke up in the market yard, smelling of piss and some other unmentionable thing. After questioning the clerks at the hall about the disappearance of his companions, he decided to shave his hair, cover it with henna tattoos and sell whatever loot he had to gain a passage back to Absalom. Getting caught and tortured by the Aspis Consortium was not THAT high on his to-do list, Nethys willing.
That was that then, there are good things to be had even when unconscious or dead. Like missing an utter failure. Or being manhandled and poked by evil corporations. Everyone else on the table agreed. :D
golem101 |
The halfling rogue.
Failed Acrobatics check to roll past the BBEG (dragon-thing), AoO, crit, confirmed. HPs dropped to like -3 times CON score.
Hadn't the players requested the rolls for the final battle to be made in the open, I could have cheated and saved him, likely dropping the poor fellow to negative score and keeping him out of the fight but otherwise "safe".
Funny thing, the open rolls were never asked for again.
idwraith |
I have an all veteran group that I've run through a couple of games, and I am BRUTAL. I've come close to killing the entire party when they made stupid decisions. Being veterans they don't appreciate the concept of "Run-Away" even when it's made clear that they're fighting a rival group of equal power who has studied them to prepare.
The point came across pretty clear when the Elf Druid jumped down to engage her opponents in combat and the other sides Dwarven Ranger stood up, yelled "ELF!" and let loose a barrage of arrows. Enchanted bow, full attack, multi-shot, maxed Favored enemy.... the Druid basically did a wonderful impression of Boromir. The party got their s$&& together quick at that moment. Managed to drive the rival group off but not without being reduced to almost half hit points for all of them.
Crazy bastards STILL decided to continue to hunt down the vampire-assassin they had been trailing when the ambush went off.
Spacelard |
Just had a TPK...
I thought they'd be okay and play it a bit smart, large creatures in a huge room with 10' wide choke point. 11th lvl PCs all tooled up and ready to go. How wrong I was...
They ignored the choke point and went running into the room, rogue got surrounded and splattered in two rounds...Paladin/DD/Bard doesn't switch on his smite against the evil undead, doesn't cast mirror image gets splattered a round or two later quickly followed by the switch hitter.
What was the wizard doing? Casting ray of enfeeblement in a threatened square then casting acid splash...
FFS!!!! nearly 120 years worth of gaming experience between them too.
Ashiel |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I never try to kill anyone, but my games tend to be pretty hardcore sometimes. As a result, I have a lot of notches on the proverbial gun. Within recent years, it seems that there is at least one PC death in any campaign I've ran for an extended period of time. Let me recall a few.
Red Hand of Doom: About two or so years ago, I was running the adventure path Red Hand of Doom (by WotC). In this one campaign that stretches from about level 5 to 15, I had one of the PCs die twice. Once against an Ettin and once by a Gray Render (he was actively looking for the Render for some reason). His deaths were somewhat amusing to the group when they had to cast raise dead or similar.
Recent Games: In a recent game for my persistent world, one of the players was playing a venerable synthesist who had Str, Dex, and Con 1 when not bound to his eidolon. During one of their adventures, they angered a necromancer who was up to some bad stuff, and he sent a pack of plague zombies after them. After being attacked by a horde of plague-zombie bats (estimated CR 1/8th), several of the party members were plague-ridden. The old PC died during the night 24 hours later and rose as an amazingly frail crusty zombie (Str 3, Dex 1 :P) before he was put down by the group. The group is now looking to have the old guy reincarnated, but they are currently trapped in a town full of zombies (the plague lord ordered the undead bats to follow them and infect anyone around them). Thus they are somewhat cursed until they can deal with the whole flock of bats or overcome the BBEG.
In another recent game, I had an Imp Sorcerer whom the party found trapped in an ancient tomb. For releasing him, the Imp offers to provide the "lowly mortals" (egotistical little guy) some sort of boon for his release after all these years. The party's barbarian screams and charges into combat without so much as batting an eyelash to let the party know. Remaining alive via it's damage reduction, the little imp hops back and drops a potent fireball into the APL 3 group. He rolls particularly well, one of the party members rolls particularly unwell, and next thing you know a party member is BBQ.
In yet another fairly recent game, there was a 1st level adventure where a mage got tag-teamed by a group of 1st level kobolds who all hit him with flasks of alchemical goodies with Point Blank Shot. The wizard took 4d6+6 damage immediately and dropped. Later in a continuation of that same game, the kobolds ended up using a pit trap combined with a barrel of oil they had added in their WBL, some alchemist fires, and some acids to make life for a group of PCs hell. Surprisingly no one died during this encounter, but they basically got to be whipping boys for the kobolds.
In another game, I was running the Forsaken Churchyard adventure for a group that included a pair of 1st level spellcasters. During one scene involving a group of slow moving but very beefy zombies, both of the 1st level mages decided to run right up into melee with the zombies and begin casting burning hands and shocking grasp. It didn't end well for either of these mages.
In a game I was running as a favor for an online persistent world, I was asked to run a group whom I hadn't GMed with before through a tower of undead and have them ultimately battle a lich-wizard at the end of the tower. The GM assured me that the party was exceedingly powerful for their level (13th), and gave me a list of things he felt I should do to the lich to make it "last more than 2 rounds"; which included making the lich a 17th level wizard, giving it an artifact only the lich could use that gave it a 30 spell resistance and a +8 bonus to intelligence, exceptionally high ability scores, and PC WBL. Feeling this was a bit heavy handed, I generated the lich as a 15th level wizard using the standard NPC rules, NPC wealth, and none of the artifacts or anything like that.
As we were beginning the game, I asked for a quick headcount and introduced myself and got acquainted with everyone. The group was about 8 players strong, and apparently exceedingly used to steamrolling every encounter they came across. Half of them also complained about how amazingly overpowered one of the party members was (a beguiler who had heavily optimized her save DCs and dipped into Shadowcraft Mage). During the first encounter, the group is harried by a pack of CR 3 shadows, whom at their level weren't even worth XP except in excessively large groups (and even then it was a tiny amount of XP). The beguiler, who apparently had never thought to invest in any sort of AC improving item ever had both a 10 AC and a 9 strength at level 13. She dies in the first round.
Later, the party goes through the dungeon and encounters the lich, having been speaking to them through magic as they were storming through the tower, has already prepared a bit for their arrival. The epic encounter consisted of the lich and a pair of CR 8 advanced allips as her minions. Within the first three rounds of combat, half the party was either dealing with some sort of disabling spell like black tentacles or unconscious. The party's Planar Shepherd (yeah one of those) fled the combat by planeshifting early, realizing they had apparently attacked some sort of demigod. During the fight, the heavily warded Paladin (whom I believe was one of the more skilled players) continually used Use Magic Device and scrolls of Break Enchantment to begin freeing different PCs from bad conditions.
During the battle which their previous GM was afraid wouldn't last more than 2 rounds (it actually lasted closer to 30), several party members were thrown out of the tower, one of the party's sorceresses was turned to stone (twice), about half the party was Exhausted (barring the ones who thought to use defensive spells like deathward), and every few rounds another party member would break off and flee the battle which seemed to progressively be worsening for them as the lich used more of her powers to spank them around.
By about round 22 or so, even the Paladin grabbed the twice-petrified sorceress (after de-petrifying her again) and suggested they flee because he was running out of consumable items to keep countering her doom, and even if they beat her it would be an overall loss for them. The party's healer/cleric however refused to leave because (in the player's words "this is the greatest fight ever" and "if I'm going to die, it's going to be in this one!"). The battle raged on until both were suffering combat fatigue (IE they were low on spells and dirty tricks). Ultimately they ended up talking out their differences over a game of chess, the lich gifted the cleric with an intelligent magic item for being willing to talk and work out a solution to their differences civilly, and the cleric walked out of the tower successful.
That's by far not a comprehensive list, but that covers most of the deaths that spring to mind or were fairly memorable.
Ingenwulf |
Kingmaker: Current game.
One flamboyant first level Elf Wizard, fell to one arrow (and a crit) too many, after he drew undue attention from the bandit archers.
Two weeks later another character falls to wild boars after an ill judged decision to risk an attack of oportunity (even though he had just one hit point remaining).
My players know the dangers of my game-world and are still willing to take risks in order to become true heroes. My players accept, quite graciously, that fate plays a hand in all things. They mourn their losses and move on. Creating a tapestry of tall tales, brave sacrifices, lessons learned and a feeling of personal grief for the brave adventurers left standing.
Players, I salute you.
Stabbington P. Carvesworthy |
The most recent death, oddly enough, wasn't even my fault. Our intrepid party had made their way through the fort. Slicing, dicing, blasting, smiting, and otherwise chopping their way to the sanctum of the BBEG (an Ogre Barbarian), the players were high on the feel of impending victory. After kicking in the door and charging in with guns blazing (figuratively speaking) a savage melee ensued. Smiting arrows flew, judgement was pronounced, and the raging barbarian and stalwart fighter hacked and chopped their way to the enemy on the other side of the room.
Battle was joined for a time, with each side giving as good as it got. Steel rang against steel as the Ogre hacked at the armored warrior, and screams of pain echoed from the rafters as the party's barbarian laid into the ogre with frightening swings. As the Ogre reluctantly gave ground, it appeared that the party had once again overcome the odds set against them and would emerge triumphant.
Unfortunately for the party's barbarian, the gods had other plans in store for him. With the Ogre barbarian almost defeated, the fighter rolls a critical miss. Since we use the Crit Hit/Crit Miss decks, he draws his 2 cards. His options are
- Nearest ally is struck with a critical threat, roll to confirm
- Confused for 1d4 rounds
Obviously, not wanting to stab an ally, he chooses the confusion effect (which I roll a 1 for the duration). The rest of the round goes predictably, but the Ogre is still up, hanging on by a thread (5 HP). It comes back to the fighters turn, who then has to make his confusion roll. The result: Attack nearest creature, which ends up being the party's barbarian.
Ordinarily not a big deal, as the barbarian still had a reasonable amount of HP left, but unfortunately, the fighter rolls a natural 19 (with a greatsword). Worse still, the confirmation roll was a natural 17. Since the weapon is only a x2, he draws 1 card. Decapitation. The barbarian is forced to make a fort save in the mid 30s or lose his head. Needless to say he did not make the save, resulting in a headless dwarf twitching on the ground.
The party did still defeat the Ogre, and the fighter is seeking therapy, but it still makes me laugh every time I think about it. So, a toast to the characters that die to entertain us, and a salute to the players that make them dance.
DrGames |
What PCs have you killed recently?
Only two, and in both cases, the players wanted to swap out their PCs with new PCs.
So, none really.
Player death seems like it most to be more prevalent in earlier generations of RPGs.
It is really hard to get a PC to the point that you kill them off in 4th Ed.
In service,
Rich
zhalindor.com
Velcro Zipper |
I insist I don't kill PCs. NPC's, the perils of an adventuring lifestyle and bad rolls kill PCs. I'm just a humble narrator. That said, anyone who's followed my campaign journal knows how dangerous the World's Largest Dungeon can be. My group and I have been at it for a little over two years and I think they've gone through somewhere around 40 characters. We just lost one who, I think, may have the record for most sessions survived.
The cleric, Shi, was created as a PC in June of 2010 and managed to survive encounters with giants, black puddings, shadows and even a black dragon. He'd been at death's door dozens of times but always pulled through. That all came to an end last session when he faced off against the most malign device the party has ever encountered: a door.
The party is exploring a section of the dungeon connected by warp gates. They look like ordinary doors but anyone who steps through one gets teleported to some random location and there are often side effects. I allow the players to roll for both location and effect so I ask Shi's player to roll his D20 for effect. He rolls a natural 1. That's awful. Maybe the worst thing you can get because it means instant death if you fail a DC20 Fort save. He's a level 8 cleric with some resistance items and a decent CON so I'm thinking he should be okay. Nope. Natural 1. Shi falls stone dead. In game, he'd survived the perils of adventuring through the dungeon about 70 days.
Two other characters were lost in the same session due to those nefarious portals. One was petrified and another was energy drained to level -4. Fortunately, the party knows a level 7 druid so I think we'll be seeing Shi again. The party may not recognize him, but he'll be back.
Josh M. |
I played a game earlier this year, wherein the DM was overheard saying earlier in the day "I'm gonna kill someone with this monster tonight *evilgrin*". He had gotten some ealier Monster Manuals he was missing for christmas and found all sorts of monsters he was eager to run.
Later that evening, we go up against a creature that is drawn to and feeds off of Arcane magic (and Arcane Ooze I believe). The rest of the party was powerless against it, and me being the only arcanist, threw myself at it so the party could escape. The DM must have had someone else in mind, because he seemed disappointed that my character was the one thoroughly decimated, while the party escaped unharmed.
Lesson for the day: As a DM, don't make a joke about killing off a PC unless you intend to see it through. Best off not intentionally killing off any PC's anyway, because usually your target lives, while another player's character gets caught in the crossfire.