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Most pathetic death was a fighter who fumbled, drew the card that has you critically hit yourself, and realized he was a power attack fighter with a x4 critical weapon. It was not pretty. We figured he fell and impaled himself on it. xD
Most Heroic death was a 2nd edition specialty priest of Lythander in the Forgotten realms setting. For those of you not familiar, HATES undead, with an all-consuming passion. We ended up fighting against a giant horde of undead and we were all bad off. My cleric healed himself, cast daylight on his weapon, and waded in, singing battle hymns while the party escaped. The DM was so impressed, that when they came back, for some reasons, my body hadn't risen as an undead, and in fact was untouched, Evidently Lythander decided It was a good death.
In my current pathfinder game that I'm running. I had a pretty ignoble death. Dwarven monk. party gets ambushed by rogues. he's the only one that isnt surprised. he runs off to the side, attacking two assassins. Alone. They take their turns, one tumbles around him to flank. they both are dual wielding kukris, have improved crit, combat reflexes and outflank. a series of 15+s later and he went from full to dead in one series of attacks of opportunity. He had just made that character too, after his magus ate his own sword while spider climbing and died to the falling damage. heh
Ondes: Elf Wizard
Ricardo: Human Inquisitor
Jonjon: Human Witch
Scene
We had found a swamp within which was a shambling mound. We were all level 3 characters. We planned an ambush around a pond where we knew the shambling mound was. We couldn't see it but we knew it was beneath the surface and we dug a pit nearby into which we would attempt to trick it.
Everything is quiet. Ondes (played by me) is reluctantly supposed to act as bait while everyone else is hidden nearby.
Ondes: *blows horn*
*waits*
Ondes: *blows horn*
*waits*
Ondes: It's not coming out.
Ricardo: Step into the water and make some splashing noises
Ondes: Are you crazy?!
Ondes: If you want splashes you'll have to do them yourself.
Ondes: I'm not going out there.
Ricardo: Then what do we do?
Jonjon: Aww to heck with it.
Jonjon proceeds to step out of hiding, take a few steps into the water, make splashing noises, fail his perception check, fail initiative against the shambling mound, be attacked and CRITTED.
We proceeded to defeat it.
Jonjon was later reincarnated as a gnome.
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My very first character was one day forced to draw repeatedly from the Deck of Many Things. While the other PCs got all sorts of wonders (castles, riches and whatnot), mine had all his possessions stripped away and can't remember what other bad fates. Finally, he had to face Death and, guess what... he died.
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Back in 1e AD&D days I was DMing the Dragonlance modules. I think it was DL2, the player playing Raistlin levitated into the shadows at the top of a cavern to surprise the enemy they heard approaching. Unfortunately the shadows contained a Shadow Dragon with a similar idea. Nice when food delivers itself to you.
S.
Most memorable: after knocking my fighter prone the GM had the evil monk perform a “double crotch punch” coup de grace.
Most shocking: a charging tasoli one shot kill’s my fighter with a critical hit to the skull via a wooden mallet. The rest of the party was so impressed that after wipeing out his kin they hired him to replace my fighter.
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In a Dark Sun campaign back in the mid 90s we had a player who had all of his equipment lost due to a fire trap. Later he found a ring of wishes and blurted out "I wish I had all my s$&t back!". All the players, who had been trying to coach him on what to say stopped talking and looked at the DM, who had the biggest grin I have ever seen. The character started swelling and eventually exploded, showering the other characters in a lifetime of feces.
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The one my friends still pick on me went something like this:
DM: "You see a lone man wearing dark clothing come stumbling down the road. He looks very pale, he seems to be shivering despite the summer heat, he is twitching, and he is muttering to himself."
Me: (the squishy level 1 wizard): "I walk up to him, and say "hello, friend, are you well"?
DM: "He looks up at you, and says "Friend? Friend?? There are no friends. There are no such thing as friends!" He pulls out a black dagger, and stabs you."
...yeah. Nothing like ignoring all the obvious warnings the DM is giving you and ending up in meele combat with a crazy person as a level 1 second edition wizard with 3 hitpoints. To this day, whenever a character does something incredibly dumb and naive, they all still say "Hello, friend!" Lol.
Nice of your Friends to remind you... Lol
Nice of your Friends to remind you... Lol
That sort of thing seems pretty common; my group uses "I manacle the snake" in the same way.
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In a narrow vertical passage the wizard levitated our rogue up to a ledge with a chest. The chest had a trap, it went off and turned the rogue to stone. The statue, which was too heavy for the wizard to levitate, proceeded to fall on the wizard and kill him.
A combination of all three. I was being a bit hard when it came to expecting them to act like the good alignments they possessed and we just plain didn't like each other at all. This wasn't the first time something like this happened. It wasn't even the worst incident. It's just the most b&@*+$$# party death.The dumbest death I ever had was when I played a Tiefling Paladin of Shelyn in the Worldwound. Iomedan burners demanded the party turn her over to be executed for her evil blood, and the party did so in exchange for payment, and I was burned at the stake with no chance of escape or survival.So what did you do to piss your own party off that much? Or were they just evil and doing it for the lulz, or bringing in RL player disputes into the game?
The DM just let this happen?
And I thought my DM had issues...
In a Dark Sun campaign back in the mid 90s we had a player who had all of his equipment lost due to a fire trap. Later he found a ring of wishes and blurted out "I wish I had all my s$&t back!". All the players, who had been trying to coach him on what to say stopped talking and looked at the DM, who had the biggest grin I have ever seen. The character started swelling and eventually exploded, showering the other characters in a lifetime of feces.
Worst example of toilet humor ever. Seriously.
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The most epic death of a character I've had was entirely due to the GM not understanding how the spell "Darkness" and the feat "blindsight" worked.
Don't know about the 'Darkness' mistake (maybe the GM meant that the Shaman had cast 'Deeper Darkness', which-- if the light had been dim to begin with, would have been total). Also, I don't know of any "feat" called "blindsight"-- Now, "Blindfighting" doesn't work that well. However, if the Shaman had the special ability (not a feat) "Blindsight"-- then yes, it effectively does let the Shaman completely disregard blindness, out to the range of his 'blindsight' ability.
Not saying your GM didn't screw up-- but the combo of 'Deeper Darkness' from dim light to begin with, and the Shaman having the blindsight ability, would have hosed your entire party in exactly the way described.
I swear I have played this mod and yeah he's right the shaman does have blindsight from his cleric domain and it was 3.5. Can't remember the name but its about a sickness striking a town and then the corpses who die of a fever coming back as undead or something goblins at the start. The shaman is the one behind it like 4 or fifth lvl cleric of grumish. God I hated that.
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Well I got 3 good ones here. 2 of em were my own (and one TPK ;)
We just started a new campaign and I am playing a gunslinger for the first time. After reading and finally deciding to play a musket master with a sniper theme we begin. Now we did not get to have all our stuff at the start, but instead went through a few mini encounters as we fought our way out of a fortified mansion overrun by goblins. Every room, a player got to 'equip' himself with what was in the room and therefore had to defend the other players until they got equipped themselves. Since I was second to last, I spent most of the time cowering in the back and chucking the occasional rock... Finally i get to do something! so we enter a mini armoury with a rack of broken guns on the back, boxes of ammunition, barrels of gunpowder, and emergency suplies in the corner (my soon to be gear). First thing I do, grab a rifle, grab some ammo and take up a sniping position behind the countertop (think like in a bar) holding the gunpowder. First shot, misfire. When a broken gun misfires, it explodes. Next to barrels of gunpowder. Dont worry, none of the goblins were harmed in the ensuing explosion... FML
In this next one, we had a party of 3 consisting of a fighter (me), a rouge, and a overpowered paladin. To balance out the party, the gm threw in a GMPC divination wizard to help us along. The wizard was obviously higher level than us and always wore this strange grey mask, and it seemed that he was in for the long haul. As we campaigned, the wizard proved most valuable with his divinations every so often that warned us quite accurately of what was ahead. In battle, he would always take a more support role and was quite effective at it with occasional assistance in the form of arcane magic. The pally would bear the brunt of the fighting and the rouge would just try and figure out what the heck he could do (he was new, so mostly dead weight, but had fun) and I usually got outshined by this pally. By the time he warned us that we would see and confront the BBEG, we were trusting of this wizard completly. Just before we were to go face him (according to the wizard), he gave us a choice and a dilemma. There was this mystic pyre standing in the middle of the room, and if we let the pally stand in the middle he would become powerful enough to face the BBEG with a good chance of winning, or we could move on ahead and have next to no chance of surviving unless we ran. 2 options and we had to chose. The pally's ego stoked and mine irked, he walked boldly and confidently into the consuming fire, then promptly died...
The wizard then revealed himself to be the BBEG, and whats more turned out to not even be a wizard at all! He was a gesalt bard/Rakshasa sorcerer, and every time he cast his 'divinations' he really was casting glibness and because of his arcana, disguised it as a divination spell. He lied through his teeth about what was ahead, but because he put it there, knew anyways. His buffs were mostly bardic performances but we didn't even clue in and his trademark mask was a mask of stony demeanor (+10 to bluff). With the pally dead and scowling and me laughing my ass off, we booked it out of there as fast as we could (as we had no chance with just the rouge and me).
This last one, my favorite, I was playing a goblin alchemist that was chaotic neutral or pure chaotic as I put it. This campaign was intended to go into the higher levels and possibly even into epic if it got that far (and we didn't all die by then). Well my character was obsessed with fire. Completely obsessed... He was a switch hitter, he would throw bombs at people, set people on fire, set himself on fire, set everything around him on fire, eventually he turned into a permanent fire elemental (fire bombers gain elemental body as a 3rd level extract, I combined it with eternal potion) He loved fire, and most of all, he loved his rocket propelled inferno bombs... 40 foot diameter, huge constant damage, lasts 16+ rounds. Pure bliss... Well I played him like an idiot, charged him in when I shouldn't, took on stupid chalenges, attempted risky (read suicidal) ploys, played him like a goblin obsessed with fire, destruction and mayhem. The strangest thing is, he SURVIVED! I had not expected him to last, and found him to be more and more fun, while getting more and more chaotic as he 'matured.' By the time we hit lvl 19, we finally took on more than we could chew, and, in fashion the wizard teleported me right beside the BBEG, and a couple touch injection detonations, elemental aura, elemental touch, delayed consumption with a detonation and then used the rest of my attacks in the full attack to chuck as many inferno rocket bombs at point blank range as I could. Basically I nova'ed hard. Essentially there was a pillar of flame and destruction all around me, and I was loving it. Well the BBEG survived, retaliated (I was beside him, so he full attacked) and was one round instant ko'ed. At this point, all the implanted bombs that I had accumulated over my career in my body went up as well. Since I never expected to survive long, I had spent most of my wealth and long hours implanting bombs into myself for the eventual day that I died. By this point the list was almost a page long, and included many inferno bombs and dispel bombs. Enough dispel bombs to dispel the fire resistance on my teammates at any rate, and the force bombs inside of me were strong enough to damage the support beams holding up the roof of the temple we were in causing the roof to collapse. Nothing survived that day, not me, not the BBEG, and not a single teammate. It was an epic finish to a great campaign and my goblin got what he wanted. Complete and utter destruction.
Glorious
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Best death:
One of my friends playing a demon Binder. Her last words to the Crusader of Freedom were "But she's mine!!" One crit and 1 day later she was dragged to the abyss by her former slave who she was afraid to admit was a succubus around the Paladin like Crusader.
Funniest Death:
death by role-playing; the fighter at the front of the party is yelling back and forth with an old monk who is hard of hearing (not really) trying to get an answer to a question. Rest of the party was amused by this and decided not to interrupt this bit of role-play. Old man keep cupping his ear and shouting back "What!? What do you wish to know!?" Nobody caught on that he was really just trying to get the fighter to phrase his request as a wish... When he finally yelled at the top of his voice "I wish to know what this bloody poem on the walls means!" he suddenly disappeared, only to find himself standing on a large pile of loot. The rest of the party, ever suspicious decided the old man was evil (which as a demon he was) and dispatched him fairly quickly after that. The fighter then got to find out that certain large draconic creatures often collect treasure and do not like it when people attempt to take their hard earned piles of loot :D
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My favorite and most heroic death was a character I played in Red Hand of Doom back in 3.5
The GM was awesome, the players were awesome it made me look forward to each game.
Character
Vandraven Elf Rogue / 7 I think
My rogue had done a lot of dumb things throughout the campaign due to me being new to the game and the character I played was a fast talking thief. Needless to say I ended up at -9 three different times. One time it was due to putting on a clock with a flame pattern I won at a carnival of Nurgle, we had as a side quest/break.
My characters main clam to fame was killing a goblin shaman and a worg at level two through the use of terrain and tricks.
Our party hears of the Red hand army moving through the mountains near by. There’s only one bridge crossing. Without the bridge it adds another week or more to the armies travel time. My group decides that were going to destroy or hold the bridge to buy some time for people to evacuate.
When we get to the bridge our group takes out a scouting party of hobgoblins and ogres. It’s a tough fight but we pull it off. Vandraven climes up one of the bridge towers and looks around from the roof. Here comes the army of the Red Hand. Oh and a giant black dragon.
The dragon doesn’t see Vandraven so he does a strafing run on the rest of the party with his flame breath. Everyone but Vandraven and the Wizard panic and run back across the bridge.
Vandraven draws his sword and yells to the wizard to finish the bridge. The wizard starts to finish the setup to blow the bridge.
The dragon hovers over the wizard about to breathe fire again. Vandraven leaps off the of the tower and crits the dragon for max damage (DM said I took out his eye ;). Through very high reflex saves Vandraven grabs the dragon by a horn and stays on him.
The dragon is furious and the wizard blows the bridge. Vandraven goes two more rounds on the dragons head scoring one more crit hit with his longsword two handed before falling to his death in the chasm.
ROFL... You are not kidding, just plain Wrong!LOL. That is so wrong.The original Castle Ravenloft, way back when... I was GM.
The party had entered the castle via a back door, and then proceeded to work their way through the horrors and tribulations that were that particular module.
In the end, Straad was defeated, but only one character managed to survive: a cleric (my brother's) with no spells remaining and single digit hit points...
As the sun came up, he staggered out the front gate, and over the drawbridge... the horrors behind him...
Only to have the board he was on break and collapse beneath him and he plummeted a few hundred feet to his death.
To this day, he still remembers that death fondly =)
And yet, par for the course as far as Ravenloft is concerned.
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I was playing Second Darkness, on the second module.
We decided that the camp in the middle of the forest was a bad idea, so we moved it to a tower on a cliff out of the way. We poked around the tower, didn't find anything, so we set up camp.
Later that evening we were awoken to TWELVE wraiths (I think we were around like 5th level?) attacking us. Apparently, while we were asleep, a wraith that haunted the tower flew into the tents that the workers we saved were sleeping in and silent coup de' graced each of them, causing them all to rise into lesser wraiths.
Two party members didn't have magic weapons.
I still haven't forgiven the GM for that.
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Mourn the lost mage, Rtilliu
(Hurloff his first name)
Who wanted to be half-ogre
(Just 'big' was not the same)
The GM said, "Your eyes don't glow"
"Your teeth are normal, too"
But Hurloff had his self-image
'The demon-mage Rtilliu'
I recount so you'll be assured
None of these weighed a bit
And all was fair and above board
When Hurloff, while stirge-bit
Did cast his lonely magic spell
And Mage Armor did form
Around Hurloff, and the stirge too!
(Which kept both snuggly warm)
Mourn the lost mage, Rtilliu
(Hurloff his first name)
Who wanted to be half-ogre
(just 'big' was not the same)
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A story from back in the 1st edition days.
A party just coming out of a Monty Haul campaign convinced my friend to DM a game for them. They insisted that they were ready for anything; they were experienced gamers and could handle any adventure, no matter how deadly. So fine, they go on a quest to defeat an Evil lich that is growing in power.
They invade the lich's dungeon and start killing his minions while the lich scries on them and notes their tactics. Particularly the paladin and his powerful Holy Avenger which he pulls at the start of every combat.
Armed with this knowledge the lich teleports to a hallway that the party will shortly be heading down. He magically digs a deep pit in the stone floor, then flies down and casts Stone to Mud on the bottom. He then plants two dozen iron spikes, point up in the mud and casts Mud to Stone. He flies back up and casts Wall of Stone (a continuing magical effect at the time, not a permanent conjuration) to create a new floor. Not yet satisfied with this trap he creates another hole in the ceiling and uses telekinesis to lift a large boulder into the space. One more casting of Wall of Stone to make a new ceiling and the boulder is held in place.
The lich then retreats around the corner at the end of the hall. He uses a magic eye to keep a watch on his newly modified hallway.
Along comes the party. As soon as the paladin (leading the group, of course) steps onto the magical stone floor the lich casts an illusion of himself and has it step around the corner.
"Hahaha!" he laughs evilly. "Now you will all die!" The illusion raises his hand menacingly.
The paladin reacts instantly and pulls his holy avenger. The sword pulses with power and the automatic 30' radius Dispel Magic springs up to protect the entire party from any magic that the lich might throw their way... It also dispels the Walls of Stone both above and below the paladin.
Paladin falls into the deep pit onto two dozen iron spikes, followed by a large boulder falling on top of him. Squish.
The rest of the party is stunned, but unloads on the lich at the end of the hall, who is remarkably unharmed by everything they throw at him. Lich teleports away.
At this point the players decided that my friend should not be allowed to DM any more.
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This is one we still talk about to this day. We were playing through Tomb of Horrors. We had a monk in the party, and we had come across an open pit trap. It was fairly deep and had spikes in the bottom. However, there appeared to be some sort of treasure in the bottom of it. The monk decides he'll jump down into the pit and use his slow fall to save him from damage...
The dm gives him a look and says, "Okay, you slow fall onto the spikes."
Outcome: sure, the slow fall reduces a good chunk of the falling damage, but he still ends up being impaled on the spikes, which turn out to be poisoned, so he ends up taking a bit of falling damage, damage from the spikes and damage from the poison. The final result- one dead monk.
My character then promptly climbed down the pit with my slippers of spider climbing and liberated the treasure.
Fun times. We had a lot of deaths in those sessions.
2nd edition death by drowning in a desert:
To start, the DM was an old school killer DM. At one point we faced Demogorgon who rotted off all our arms and then left us to die at the hand of cannibal pygmies...
Anyway, I was playing a neutral good variant of the paladin (from Dragon Magazine... Don't remember the issue) and the party were traveling across a desert to bring a magical cure (which I carried in a vial) to a tribe of plague-stricken barbarians. We were attacked by a horde of trolls (who somehow surprised us even though we were in a fricken desert in the daytime) while we were resting by an old well. One hit from a club (that critted) and my character is knocked unconscious into the well. In a true old school style, I. Begged for a constitution check or a saving throw or anything to try to wake up and the DM laughed. Sad thing for the campaign was that the vial was broken into the well and diluted, so the party had to go to the tribe and bring the whole tribe to the well. Oh yeah, they left my body because they were afraid of screwing up the water.
Gotta go, but I will tell the mighty story (same campaign) where two party members were killed by donkeys. Or the time the party got into a bar fight where everyone in the bar was above 10th level (we were 6th level.)
Here's a tale of power gaming backfiring.
I had a player in my Savage Tide campaign playing a goliath barbarian. He had some cheesy racial feat that would let him assume large size when he went into his rage. They were on the Isle of Dread and he'd wandered off with a fellow PC to get some fire wood. The pair runs into a T-rex. He goes into a rage to fight it, and the T-rex gets him with a bite attack, scooping him up with his improved grab ability. Now had the PC not been large sized from his cheesy feat the T-rex would have swallowed him whole, and he probably would have been able to cut his way out and survived. Instead the T-rex can't swallow him because he's too big, and he can't escape his bite short of rolling a 19 or 20, as its grapple check is so high. Consequently, the T-rex keeps dishing out automatic bite damage for a few rounds and promptly kills him before the rest of the party arrives to put it down.
Funnily, the same player has another character nearly die the same way a few levels later. This time the character is gish (abjurant champion prestige class) with a disgustingly high AC. He gets cocky and chases after a fleeing dinosaur on his own. The dinosaur ends up grappling him, which gets around the high AC. He gets pinned in its mouth (much like with the T-rex). He has no fellow party members to help him and no real way out of the grapple. He again starts taking damage each round.
The player is going mental. He goes an rocks in the corner for a while, stressing about the what appears to be the inevitable demise of another one of his PCs. Meanwhile, the rest of the players share several laughs at his expense. Finally he remembers he has a spell that lets him swap places with his familiar- it requires no somatic component, so he pulls it off, and sacrifices his familiar to save himself.
Party defeated a monster that we were told to hunt down. after killing the monster and receiving rewards the party rested for the night.
My GM said roll a fort save against DC 67. (my 6th level ranger failed of course) GM said. "your dead. sorry dude your pet coup-de-graced you in your sleep."
** spoiler omitted **
I wouldn't play again with that dude, ever.
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I usually GM, and we're a bunch of newer players with one experienced player among us, so not a whole lot of PC death going on, but we have one player in particular who's very fickle, and likes to roll something up, play it for 1 or more sessions, then decide he doesn't like it. Invariably, he asks the experienced player to kill his character off, and me to come up with a reason to justify it. He's about to do this with a 4th level ranger he's been playing for nearly 2 months. It's ridiculous. We make many a joke about how he offers his characters as sacrifices to the other player, and how, if this were Highlander, the player he "feeds" would've won by now.
Party defeated a monster that we were told to hunt down. after killing the monster and receiving rewards the party rested for the night.
My GM said roll a fort save against DC 67. (my 6th level ranger failed of course) GM said. "your dead. sorry dude your pet coup-de-graced you in your sleep."
** spoiler omitted **
What FuelDrop said. Seconded.
One GM I wouldn't continue gaming with.
QFT.
My most dissapointing death was a 17th level half-elf warrior in AD&D 2e. I fell. Downstairs. Into a pit with 20 stakes. DM ruled that, besides the damage from fall, I'd take 1d20 stakes in my body. He rolled a 17. So I took 17d6 damage from stakes, plus 20d6 damage from fall.
Best Char I've played in D&D, ever.
Last millenium, playing 2Ed, my halfling thief pick-pockets one of the bad-guys in Curse of the Azure Bonds and scores a necklace. The party paladin, who was a bit of a show-pony, decided she should have it. I told her not to be stupid, the only reason this guy would have had something like that in his pocket would be if it was trapped somehow. She insisted it would be fine, I insisted that, knowing our DM, it was probably a necklace of strangulation, or some such. She told me not to be stupid, it was just a pretty (and expensive) necklace.
I told her she was wrong, and bet that I could prove it.
She said "Bet you can't."
I said "Bet I can."
And put it on.
I was right...
Reggie.
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I don't think I've ever had a "good death". And I, unfortunately, have only ever actually known dick DM who like killing you off on purpose.
1st Stupid Death: 3rd level Elf fighter that the DM made himself in 2E Ravenloft, because that was his rule. He was also a stereotypical drunk fighter. Again, his rules. And being an elf, he didn't hold his liquor very well and always had a hangover. Well, I wasn't there for this because I was at a friend's wedding during game night, and the inn was burning down when the rest of the party realized that the inn keeper was secretly the serial killer we'd been looking for. So the LE necromancer, who was also the best friend of the GM, decided to be a dick and run up the stairs to yell at my character that the inn was exploding in fire. Well, the DM decided that since my character was still half drunk, that he'd want to escape as quickly as possible. Guess what way that is. The window. From three floors up. Needless to say that he didn't survive the max damage rolled. Well, he did actually because the DM decided that, that was too mean. So instead, I was at -9 hp instead, and all of my items including armor, weapons, etc were all destroyed instead. I came home to find an e-mail regarding this. I told them that they were both dicks, and quit the game.
2nd Stupid Death: Different dick DM asked all of us to make characters with a full background as it was going to be story intensive. Sweet, I liked that idea as I was never allowed to be creative before. DM decided that I was too extensive, and instead had my entire background worth of NPCs (girlfriend, mentor, friends, parents, legacy, etc) all killed off. Painfully. My character was a LG paladin, so he didn't exactly take it all that well. He also decided to have my character robbed of all material possessions. So I decided enough was enough. I became a fallen paladin, on purpose, and took a level of blackguard. He had me executed by the followers of my previous god. Then he quit the game and moved away.
3rd Stupid Death: Joined a group who was desperately looking for someone who could play a cleric, as none of them were or could. I agreed, but if I knew then what I know now, I definitely wouldn't have. You should take it as an omen when you go there, and one of the players, who's a really good friend of the DM, is on their 2nd character after only five sessions, and that the DM very nearly TPK'd the entire party twice in the last three sessions. I took it as them just not having a cleric. I was wrong. We were in the fey lands when the half-orc monk kept getting charmed and made to dance for their amusement over and over again. The DM was using a stupid high pitched voice on purpose and laughing maniacally. I had enough, and cast spells on the fey. It turned out that while they hated all orcs, even half-breeds, they were all GOOD creatures. Not chaotic or evil, just really mischievous and playful, and my killing the 1 HD fey angered the elders. So, they put me to death. I couldn't fight them off because they summoned high level centaurs who grappled me and pummeled me with their hoofs, and then took me in irons to the council. Where I was executed. I complained about the DM openly, and I was booted from the group.
4th Stupid Death: High level bow ranger character was near death after a major battle that shouldn't have happened (misunderstanding thanks to a botched diplomacy check from the PC erinyes), and I was given the chance to surrender to what we believed was a CG paladin. I agreed, and was forced to stand up. As I stood up, the "paladin" took his attack of opportunity and killed me. Turns out he was actually an anti-paladin and there was no misunderstanding (think Mars Attacks with the white dove). He later walks up to the hurt red dragon PC, and goes to "heal" him. The dragon didn't have spellcraft and ended up getting disintegrated. He then laughed and teleported away.
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Player strolled through a trapped treasure room, got hit by con poisoned darts, failed save, kept walking right onto a groinal scythe trap.
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You have had some awful experiences kevin, my heart goes out to you bud.
Wow.
My tabletop experiences have been very different from yours.
Of course I usually DM/GM, so I don't get a lot of character deaths.
I've had a few opportunities where it would have been perfectly reasonable to kill off the party or significant parts of the party in my current campaign, but I usually find some reason the monsters didn't kill the party members.
For instance: A had a couple ghouls paralyze all but one member of the party. They didn't coup de grace the paralyzed PCs because they were chasing the one PC that wasn't paralyzed yet. When the paralysis started to wear off on the other party members, the remaining ghoul tried to drag the last paralyzed character into the night, but the party overwhelmed him.
Often when I reduce my players' hitpoints to negatives, my monsters will switch targets because the unconscious PC is no longer an immediate threat.
We've had nine sessions in our current campaign with no PC casualties yet. That's at least in part because I have the monsters focus on threatening targets rather than non-threatening ones.
In my former D&D 3.5e campaign, we had one casualty and a few near-misses.
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No, even better. They don't coup de grace the pcs, they start eating them alive! Play this up for all it is worth.
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I had a player in my Savage Tide campaign playing a goliath barbarian. He had some cheesy racial feat that would let him assume large size when he went into his rage. They were on the Isle of Dread and he'd wandered off with a fellow PC to get some fire wood. The pair runs into a T-rex.
I remember that T-rex. He ate our dwarf barbarian/ranger. The character was an absolute powerhouse but didn't have any weapon other than his greataxe. So the t-rex swallowed him whole and he couldn't get free before dying.
Another addition for myself for worst death:
My ranger kneels down to start unlocking the nursery when two players got bored. Both of these are playing paladins mind you. One starts banging his sword on his shield and walking down the corridor to attract the attention of the bad guys while the other opens the door to the harem as my ranger finishes unlocking the door.
As you might guess this didn't go down well. The paladin who walked down the corridor ended up attracting another encounter while the second paladin charged the bugbear ranger in the harem. The serpant sorceror and my ranger moved to back the second paladin up after we both took swift actions to face palm.
As soon as my half elf appeared the bugbear dropped his weapon drew his bow and took an attack of op from the paladin to shoot me. This was due to tactics since he hated elves and my character embraced his elf side and made no effort to hide it. Nat 20, Nat 20 to confirm with a elf bane arrow. Large damage rolls dropped my ranger to a few off his con from full.
The paladin completely ignores my ranger which I thought was odd since he had sworn the oath of charity and the bugbear can't attack him and me, out of character, telling him he needed to do something. Several rounds later the ignored ranger bled out on the floor of that room.
So my character died because two people were too impatient to let my character do his job of checking doors and unlocking them. The game lasted one more session before breaking up.
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I had a player in my Savage Tide campaign playing a goliath barbarian. He had some cheesy racial feat that would let him assume large size when he went into his rage. They were on the Isle of Dread and he'd wandered off with a fellow PC to get some fire wood. The pair runs into a T-rex.I remember that T-rex. He ate our dwarf barbarian/ranger. The character was an absolute powerhouse but didn't have any weapon other than his greataxe. So the t-rex swallowed him whole and he couldn't get free before dying.
Another addition for myself for worst death:
** spoiler omitted **...
I too have faced that T-Rex, and my bow ranger was the one who was eaten. Had a sickle on hand, but my strength was so low that I didn't do enough damage fast enough to get out before being crushed and digested. That sucked, greatly.
And sorry to hear that paladins were the cause of your demise, alair223. I hope they both had to atone for what they did.
No, even better. They don't coup de grace the pcs, they start eating them alive! Play this up for all it is worth.
Same effect if the eating them incurs bite damage. :-)
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I had a character die in an interesting way during a Mythus game. We were playing a godslayer scenario (GM's words) which meant there was an almost absolute certainty that not all PCs would survive. Misstep = death.
After a few encounters, we met the powerless Crocodile God chained to the walls of its cell. After it speaks its part, we debate what to do with it. I argue for freeing it. The High Mage in our group argues for killing it. Tempers flare. He stuns me with a spell. I swing my mace at him and miss. He blasts my head off.
They ended up freeing the Crocodile God anyway and first thing it did was eating my PC's corpse because it was so hungry.
They all died anyway.
But at least I got to become part of a God.
Now THAT is a boss way to go(Rain of Swords). Only thing that would make it better is to be able to see Jagreen's face while it happens.
Paladins seem to be extremely over-representated here.
To add to the paladin theme probably my favorite character death was a paladin.
I hate playing paladins and never do it by choice. In the only campaign i've ever played in where the characters we played were chosen for us, I was handed a paladin.
Found a deck of many things.... Ace of spades. See ya later, suckers!
Was playing a Evil cleric in a 2nd ed game and group found some loot every one was oh no we don't know what it is ... So I go pick up the mace bam it's cursed oh bugger. No one else wanted to try on the remaining cloak so me being greedy goes well you hardly even get a cursed item what's the chances of there being two cursed items .....Yeap cloak of poisonous game over ...Was actually one of the more memorable game endings. A crazy or spectacular death/TPK is better than the game fizzling out I reckon.