Ironic Deaths

[Inarus the Wanderer]

Example from last night. I was playing a Perfect Scholar Monk. The party was fighting a pair of giants. One giant was dead. The one still up (a giant with brawler levels) was facing my monk (11HP left), a bloodrager (about 15HP left), a rogue (who was hiding behind the body of the dead giant), a sorcerer (who was out of useful spells) and an oracle (who had run away). The giant was near death, but so were we.

I had missed 4 stunning fists in a row. I had 1 stunning fist left and 1 ki point. I had also completely forgotten that I had an ability called 'learn from failure.' It gives you +1 on your next to hit roll (able to use once per opponent each day) after you missed your last one.

So my monk yells "I learned from failure!" as he jumps at the giant. He uses his last ki point. He uses his last stunning fist. He...misses with every attack. To hit I rolled a 3, a 5 and another 3.

The giant then swung twice at my monk. Got 2 critical hits. The giant's fist literally went through my monk.

And that, my friends, is the story of a truly ironic death.

Anyone else have a similar story to share?

[The Shifty Mongoose]

I was playing as a syrinx arcanist, with a Calistrian barbarian/cleric, a dwarf gun tank gunslinger, a "Chaotic Neutral" human investigator, and an accordion-playing dhampir bard. They all thought of her as a pompous ingrate, while she thought of the others as a bunch of violent, god-fearing, impulsive alcoholics who were necessary to her survival.

We had to walk through an obviously dangerous garden, so my snooty owl lady told everyone to pay attention to their surroundings and avoid hassling every single dangerous thing between here and the stairs down. Not wanting any venomous thorns in her down, she took to the air.

Wouldn't you know it, a plant monster attacked everyone. Finally happy to make use of her new Flyby Attack, she got to zap it as part of her glide past it. Unfortunately, her movement took her over another part of the dangerous garden, and directly into the mouth of another giant plant monster, that tried to eat her.

She would've died if it wasn't for her move-action teleportation ability, but she came close. Everyone agreed that part of the fun of having her in the group was all the non-stop hilarious comeuppance she'd gotten.

[Berselius]

(Our party leader, who is playing a half-orc paladin with an "absolutely stunning" intelligence of "6" by the way, gets the glorious idea to take the caravan we're guiding through a shortcut. The shortcut is a forbidden forest called the Giantswood)

Party Leader: Don't worry, what could possibly go wrong?

(20 minutes later)

Party Leader (missing his legs and riding on the back of our wizard while beating him with a stick as we all run from literal death): GO FASTER! GO FASTER! YOU FOOL! YOU FOOL!

[Purple Overkill]

Some years back, a group of players contacted me, saying they were interested in trying PF and that Kingmaker sounds good.

So I do the regular session zero thing, explaining how this is a cooperative game, monitoring the shared character building, and so on, starts out really promising.

The first session starts.... and all five players have their character move in total opposite directions, from running back to Brevoy, to haggling with Oleg to wanting to scout the nearby woods all alone.

So starts the slow TPK:

- The Monk (I´m so fast and stealthy!) gets one-shot outside by the bandits.
- The Ranger (I´m a perfect woodsman and hunter) gets eaten by a Worg.
- The Rogue (Stealthy trap-handler!) enters the Mite lair alone and botches Perception for the traps.
- The Cavalier (Courtly manners are my thing!)... well, I lose interest in what that character does because his travel destination is more than 2 months away.
- The Barbarian gets into insulting and attacking Oleg & Co. and won´t cease that, ending up killed by the NPC in self-defense.

Turns out the whole group was made up out of VtM players and were used to their characters always acting solo and power-tripping around in their corner of the world. Their gm got fed up and left the group...

[Grumbaki]

Lol. Damn that's a great story

[Purple Overkill]

Grumbaki wrote:

Lol. Damn that's a great story

There´s even a "Part II - The Return" to it:

We´ve some serious after-action talk, go into the misconception what play-style is neither covered by PF and me as a gm and decide to have a second go at it one week later. Same group setup, but the Cavalier getting replaced with a Witch to have some kind of spell support.

(Please note that I rarely, if ever, fudge dice - this time, tho....)

- The bandit encounter comes up and I... roll and confirm a crit against the Monk....
- The Mite lair comes up, the Rogue scouts... and again fails against the traps. The Ranger goes in for the rescue.... and triggers the other trap...
- Same dungeon, the Witch gets nosy, casts light on a stone and drop it... on the Giant Centipede.
- First random encounter roll for a hex: 1 Worg. (They fired one arrow at it from 330ft. Missed, but the Worg trod off, unimpressed)

.... I .... cringed.

Edit: After that, it was all pretty smooth gaming, the Cavalier made a cameo appearance and the Worg turned into a running gag.

[Grumbaki]

Nobody said kingdom building was going to be easy...