What´s your best story about times, where the heroes didn´t just plundered eachothers corpses (or a NPC´s at that)?
I had to special moments:
1: PF. The Human Cleric died in the middle of the desert early during the adventure by a really unlucky crit by a mummy. The party transported his corpse three days, plagued by ghouls invistigating the stench. Meanwhile the Cleric´s spirit fought against ethereal creatures trying to posses the corpse.
He was later ressurected by a Desert Druid Npc as a Harpy (real random chance, openly thrown)
2: Shadowrun. The Elvish Streetsam was killed a Humanis-Leader. The character had a preference for trenchcoats and hats. So when the team made a retribution strike against Humanis, the whole team adobted a simelar outfit.
Two party members drew the Void card from the Deck of Many Things. Left as bodies without a soul they were laid in state by the colony they had been protected. Several angels attended the funeral event, and the party was forced to leave it at that for a bit while they defended the colony against a looming invasion. E
Eventually an expedition was launched by the rest of the party along with some replacement characters and a gaggle of NPCs to find an artifact that could restore the missing souls. After fighting through a densely packed heavily trapped dungeon for a couple months of OOC time (and almost a week of IC time) they reached the Pools of Truth and Beauty and were able to restore the lost PCs (who returned to PC status).
At the same time, concurrently, a PBP went on detailing what went on for the two PCs that were trapped by the void. Locked in a sub-realm of Hell they were tortured and interrogated. One lost an eye and his left arm. The other's soul was 'slain' in an attempt to get to the secrets in her mind. Eventually it was revealed that their joint venture with the Void card had linked their souls, and that neither could be truly destroyed while the other lived. The slain character was restored to life, and both were sent into an alternate reality in which things had gone very badly for the party and their allies. In that reality the maimed character had his missing arm replaced with a temporal quicksilver one that granted him some new powers, and both characters traveled into the alternate reality's past to save the day for that reality from the same invasion that the rest of the party had fought off.
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I bit the farm rescuing one of the party that had been captured without us knowing it for weeks. They sent a faceless stalker to infiltrate our group in his place; which really freaked us out. Anyway, during the rescue I got run through by a Skeletal Champion that I'd just dropped to something like 3 HP. Dead, dead, dead.
The rest of the party, including my cohort Dahlia, managed to finish the bad guys off and rescue our comrade Caleb. As soon as Celeb found out I was dead he freaked out and insisted that we rush off to Magnimar immediately to beg the gods to restore me to life. I spend the next week in a bag of holding as Caleb mowed down anything in our path just to get to Magnimar. Since then, he's finally quit freaking out about me dating his sister (in game).
Nothing like a death in the family to bring everybody closer together.
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PF homebrewed game: I'm running a sandbox/megadungeon; super "open-world" concept. Often PCs run across monsters above their pay grade.
The party at the time:
LG male human paladin (Iomedae) 2
NG male dwarf cleric (Saranrae) 2
NG male half elf ranger (Dungeon Rover)2
CG male Halfling sorcerer (Faerie Dragon Bloodline) 2
The setup: PCs are scouting a way into a new section of the megadungeon: a bunch of cave entrances from a sparsely wooded hollow (my homage to the Caves of Chaos). In one the party spots movement and out comes a CR1 party of goblins in stealth, trying to sneak up on the PCs. Combat ensues. Another group of goblins is leaving the cave, just about to reinforce their buddies when they turn, look skyward and flee screaming. The party looks up to see a Young wyvern, out on the hunt and closing fast. The Halfling had failed a save from fear (from the goblins) so he's already running in the trees, so the party decides to scatter and hide rather than flee to the cave.
The paladin realizes that this strategy will definitely get someone killed and boldly steps into the wyvern's line.
What ensued was one of the most EPIC battle scenes I've had in a LONG time! The wyvern charges and, even though wyverns aren't technically dragons I give the paladin full smiting on the thing. He smites, deals some damage, and is impaled by a brutal stinger attack which knocks him into negatives and he fails his save against the creature's poison. He rolls though and manages to stablize.
Next round the other PCs turn and begin to re-group below as the wyvern grapples it's prey and begins to lift off. The dwarf pulls a PHENOMINAL Climb check out of nowhere and hurls himself into the trees getting close enough in one Move to channel. Even though this heals the wyvern a bit it also gets the paladin awake. The other PCs take some pock shots at the beast; one misses and the other deals 2 damage.
The paladin, now awake, has his smite still running and attacks, critting! He also uses a Free to lay hands on himself and heals a little more. The wyvern, still grappling, maintains its hold, flies the both of them higher in the air, and gets a crit of its own with it's stinger and the paladin, who lost a little Con before resisting the last batch of poison fails to save versus this new attack.
The dwarf keeps climbing and channeling. 2 more pock shots from below and the wyvern takes damage from both. It decides, now 60' in the air, that it's prey isn't worth it and drops the paladin who is beginning to stir once more from the channeled energy. Said paladin begins an uncontrolled fall, 60', through the canopy.
The dwarf heroically hurls himself out of the tree to soak some of the damage and break the fall. Both PCs hit the ground with the paladin burning his last lay hands and the dwarf burning his last channel for the day. Both are close to death, but by HP they're alive. The paladin keeps failing his save versus the poison though and has at this point taken so much Con damage that he's at Con of 2.
He's choking on the ground, flat on his back but alive and grinning. Then he rolls his final Fort save against the poison... and fails it. He takes 3 Con damage and dies. There's a moment of silent disbelief at the table. I look at my buddy, and he's grinning. I ask if he REALLY wants to die on a random encounter and he just laughs, nodding yes.
So I paint the scene: the paladin, broken but alive, grins up at the party. Suddenly his whole body convulses in pain and he's clutching at his chest. Blood, mixed with a blackish ichor, streams from his mouth as he coughs. "Take care... of the orphans I... was looking after..." he whispers, grabbing the dwarf's shoulder. "They will need guidance... and the care of a father... watch over them..." and with that another convulsion and the man's grip goes slack.
Now, throughout the campaign I'd added in a homebrewed faerie called a Gravesworn Piskie; basically a Sprite with it's powers slightly altered that acts as nature's guardian of the dead and abhorrent of undead. The very first adventure the paladin had used EXTREME Diplomacy and skipped one whole section of conflict by working with them instead of against them. He'd become a true friend to the creatures.
At the moment of his death suddenly they appeared, in droves, weeping. They formed a ring around his body and used their magic to create a cairn on the spot while the corpse descended into the earth. He'd also been a weaponsmith, the son of a legendary smith in the campaign, so the cairn was topped with an anvil. Finally Iomedae's own power descended from the heavens as a bolt of lightning from a clear sky overhead. The bolt struck the anvil and the thing was instantly Consecrated.
Ulfbert's Cairn still exists in my gameworld, a year in RL later. It is known to have restorative and healing powers and is slowly becoming a shrine for Iomedaen pilgrims who dare to come that close to the megadungeon. My buddy moved away in RL but his paladin, though only 2nd level, will always be a part of the game.