The fastest I've seen was in Mummy's Mask. First book, very first tomb, very first trap, crit was rolled, and 1st level PC cleric takes 21HP damage... Dead.
Others?
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I made a human sorcerer in 3.5 to join a group already in progress. I wrote up a backstory where he murdered his father accidentally, then ran away to an elvin village. He was taken in and ended up killing there too and ran away. He was NE, but I intended on shifting his alignment through the course of the campaign.
When the game started, they were in a town in the underdark and a drow child stole an apple. My character ran after because he was intrigued by the natural invisibility. The party barbarian also ran after. He caught up to me and thought I was going to kill the child. He threatened me, I threatened him to stay away and I backed up. One thing led to another and he attacked and crit me. Instant kill. The player felt soooo bad. I said it was okay because it was all in character and it was a natural progression of events. He felt really bad when I showed him my written up backstory at the end of the night. LOL
Iron Gods, first chapter of the first book. We were in the first cavern and there was a cliff that we had to get past to continue. The barbarian took the halfling rogue and tossed him up. Big mistake. He was immediately surrounded by kobalds and killed.
I'm running a homebrew game on the boards. The PC's were tasked with finding out who was trespassing in a closed factory as their first task after meeting. They found a criminal group working the machines. They had guards. Initiative was rolled.
Guard #1 goes, crits a tiefling PC. "Threatening, but this is why I started at level 3"
Tiefling PC goes, casts daze on Guard #1. He has a bad will save. This is good. He passes.
Guard goes, confirms against same PC, PC is dead. Guard is now Crits "Alfred" McGee.
One of my first 3.5 Adventures; 1st enemy was an Orc forward recon with a greataxe. x3 critical on a d8 factotum flattened him.
Literally just let him get right back up after the encounter was done; he was really excited to play him. Suffice to say I now switch to broken greataxes instead of greataxes where thematically appropriate, verisimilitude be damned!
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Way back in 2e one of the party members died and then was reincarnated as a nearby enemy, a gold draconian known for spellcasting.
So he wakes up and goes "Hey guys it's me, your party member" while waving his arms around.
Dm "it sounds more like Hassghaabd Harraaagh toooth"
So the druid with the scimitar of speed goes "He's casting a spell! HACK!"
Shortest duration character possible :)
Homebrew campaign, we were first level. I was playing a brawler (snakebite striker archetype) and we surprise-attacked a group of slavers. Out of all of us, I rolled highest initiative and only one opponent rolled a high enough perception check. I sneak attacked him, rolling a nat 20 (didn't confirm though), max damage, max sneak attack damage. He goes down, so needless to say, I'm feeling pretty confident.
Until the next round when another guy with a club hits for decent damage.
And then a greatsword-wielder decapitates me.
First round, first battle.
First time we played MERP. First thing we did, hidden orc shoots at a dwarf pc. Through both lungs and dead. Made us all quite wary
Before the party actualy got together. A gnome wizard felt offended by how tall the barbarian is. He sent a magic missile at the barbarian, which barely grazed him. The barbarian retaliated, killing the gnome in one hit.
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And then a greatsword-wielder decapitates me.
I played in a 3.5e homebrew once where there was a similar rule, but it was auto-kill if the crit confirmation was a natural 20. 1st encounter of the campaign, each PC is dropped into a separate 20' square room containing a Howler (all PCs were made at level 3). I'm a sorcerer/monk. Howler wins initiative, kills me with a 20-20 crit. Even without the auto-kill rule the crit put me below zero hp, with no possibility of rescue.
That GM was much more fun on the other side of the GM screen.
As written, I do not believe the assassin encounter in Giantslayer book 1 is survivable (I don't remember if it is the first or second fight). I cheated and didn't let the assassins coup de grace anyone, but it went poorly. From what I have read, there were many TPKs as a result of this fight.
Reign of Winter, book 1. First fight was a TPK.
I had that too! Although it was the second fight. And it happened on the same fight when I gave them another shot at it with meta knowledge.
Mostly tells me that crits are too potent in PF. I moan about this constantly. Just by the fluke of the GMs dice you die. No blame or poor decision. It's frankly a bit rubbish.
Thankfully SF and 5th ed have tempered it a bit.
First encounter of a new Pathfinder campaign in my GM's homebrew world. My level 1 polearm fighter kicks down the door to the back room of a shop after hearing a strange language. He gets hit with 3 crossbow bolts, one a crit, from bandits that were waiting in ambush. Dropped him on the spot.
3.5 Campaign, we went through a temporal anomaly all ended up outside of town earlier in the day than when we had Just started the game. I tell everyone Not to interact with their past selves, could Blow up the Universe..... So I go tell my past self Not to upset the Barbarian in the bar later....
Needless to say the universe broke, and some Draconic God of Time destroyed my past self..... SOOOOOO basically I got killed Before the Campaign Technically began >.>
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Well, there was that one Paranoia game where a player went through a whole clone family during the initial briefing...but that's Paranoia for you.
And as a runner-up, while not the FASTEST death as such, the very first time I ran a published adventure for Legend of the Five Rings RPG (Honor's Veil), my group of friends had played all the way through the investigative scenario without starting a fight. As they finally caught up with the person responsible for the murder they were investigating, a fight was started. The NPC went first, and...killed two players out of four in his very first action.
And of course, there was always original Traveler, where your character could die during character creation...
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Well, there was that one Paranoia game where a player went through a whole clone family during the initial briefing...but that's Paranoia for you.
And as a runner-up, while not the FASTEST death as such, the very first time I ran a published adventure for Legend of the Five Rings RPG (Honor's Veil), my group of friends had played all the way through the investigative scenario without starting a fight. As they finally caught up with the person responsible for the murder they were investigating, a fight was started. The NPC went first, and...killed two players out of four in his very first action.
And of course, there was always original Traveler, where your character could die during character creation...
Oooh, L5R is a deadly system.
My first ever L5R game, I'm playing a Unicorn samurai-ko. We get our "mission briefing" and then we're heading into the Shadowlands. We pass the border where there's a Crab sentry. As we pass the sentry says "That's one less Crane, one less Lion, one less Unicorn..." I refuse to let the insult pass and challenge the insolent Crab to a duel. He accepts. Karmic strike - I'm killed outright whilst dealing the Crab a mortal wound.
In one old school D&D game we tried to take siege of a ship using disguise and magic, but things quickly went pear-shaped. One guy went through a few player characters in that session. One of them was introduced as a stowaway on our boat we used to reach the enemy ship. That PC was shot dead by enemy arrow fire the very first round he appeared in the game. However, their sacrifices were not in vain, as through a long series of shenanigans we made off with the ship in the end.
My cousin was running a modified XCrawl campaign. I was running a Gnome Hacker. First crawl in, we encounter a horde of goblins with chainsaws. First attack, crit, and maxed out damage.
I spent the rest of the session writing up 3 backup characters.
I always loved (in a bad way) the starting story from this old PFS thread:
Fastest death ever
That's pretty much the Giantslayer assassin scenario. If you sleep in separate rooms, 3 coups de grace.
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First, I'm sure at least a few people have died to the first fight in confirmation. A crit from that thing would kill like 2/3's of PC's at lv 1.
Second, where do you guys fall on killing pc's? I have weird inconsistent viewpoint where typically unless you are very new the dice are the dice and enemies fight to win. If the bad guy is standing next to an unconscious PC and someone is trying to heal him back up, that player is gunna die. I don't typically spread damage unless an enemy is beast level int or it is disadvantageous for me to do so.
Do you guys pull your punches or make intentionally un-optimal choices to keep from killing pc's?
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Yep. We're here to have fun, not play super realistic games. My intelligent NPCs will attack downed PCs, but only if there is a good reason. It's almost always better to turn to threatening opponents rather than waste time of incapacitated foes.
Say that downed player is adjacent to the healer who you know can heal him up. You are a NE gunslinger with say 3 attacks and an 18 Int, would you put at least a shot into the downed PC? Your Bg's story is your a hitman and you are on the run, the pc's are trying to catch you. If your caught your best option is death in a jail sail. Tactics:fight till death/incapacitated
Yep. We're here to have fun, not play super realistic games. My intelligent NPCs will attack downed PCs, but only if there is a good reason. It's almost always better to turn to threatening opponents rather than waste time of incapacitated foes.Say that downed player is adjacent to the healer who you know can heal him up. You are a NE gunslinger with say 3 attacks and an 18 Int, would you put at least a shot into the downed PC? Your Bg's story is your a hitman and you are on the run, the pc's are trying to catch you. If your caught your best option is death in a jail sail. Tactics:fight till death/incapacitated
Why not shoot the healer?
I was DMing a one-shot campaign that I hastily threw together on short notice with encounters from d20pfsrd, CRB, etc. and the first encounter was against half-orc Barbarians wielding greataxes who were making lots of noise (easy to avoid or ambush), but naturally, the face decided to greet them by offering a goat (silent image, which they disbelieved) in exchange for the human women they had captive, proceeds to roll a 1 on his diplomacy, and then the muscle rolls a 1 on his intimidate check.
Battle ensues, face gets critted on the first attack with a greataxe where I rolled two 12s and a 9 IIRC. Muscle misses with his attack, takes two hits and goes down, rest of party runs away.
Probably shouldn't have used greataxe wielding barbs at 1st level and I wish we didn't roll in the open so I could've fudged some rolls ... but c'est la vie.
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Why not shoot the healer?Yep. We're here to have fun, not play super realistic games. My intelligent NPCs will attack downed PCs, but only if there is a good reason. It's almost always better to turn to threatening opponents rather than waste time of incapacitated foes.Say that downed player is adjacent to the healer who you know can heal him up. You are a NE gunslinger with say 3 attacks and an 18 Int, would you put at least a shot into the downed PC? Your Bg's story is your a hitman and you are on the run, the pc's are trying to catch you. If your caught your best option is death in a jail sail. Tactics:fight till death/incapacitated
Ok say average I do 15ish per hit and I hit 80% of the time. I could do, not actually doing math, just rough estimate, about on average 38ish? That likely wouldn't drop the healer even if I only focused him. The healer heals both him and the unconscious pc for 18. Now both are up and my chances of getting out alive are much worse.
No monster at starter level should be wielding a great axe. Always seemed odd a 5-8 hp beastie would down many pc archetypes with one hit
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Ok say average I do 15ish per hit and I hit 80% of the time. I could do, not actually doing math, just rough estimate, about on average 38ish? That likely wouldn't drop the healer even if I only focused him. The healer heals both him and the unconscious pc for 18. Now both are up and my chances of getting out alive are much worse.Why not shoot the healer?Yep. We're here to have fun, not play super realistic games. My intelligent NPCs will attack downed PCs, but only if there is a good reason. It's almost always better to turn to threatening opponents rather than waste time of incapacitated foes.Say that downed player is adjacent to the healer who you know can heal him up. You are a NE gunslinger with say 3 attacks and an 18 Int, would you put at least a shot into the downed PC? Your Bg's story is your a hitman and you are on the run, the pc's are trying to catch you. If your caught your best option is death in a jail sail. Tactics:fight till death/incapacitated
And the healer has wasted his action, letting you full attack him again. He better hope he doesn't eat a x4 crit.
Now, I most certainly have targeted downed creatures before. I recently had a BBEG magus out of spells knock a PC unconscious with his attacks, and just to add insult flick an acid splash on the body with his spell combat casting. I have spent an iterative, unlikely to hit the conscious foe, on an unconscious PC to force the healer to spend their action preventing the death rather than doing something else to the enemy. But out and out full attacking/CdGing a downed foe is almost never necessary and just detracts from the fun. I don't enjoy killing PCs, and I don't enjoy full on grimdark enemies killing my PCs. I almost always apologize when the dice decree a death. I never seek it out.
Ok say average I do 15ish per hit and I hit 80% of the time. I could do, not actually doing math, just rough estimate, about on average 38ish? That likely wouldn't drop the healer even if I only focused him. The healer heals both him and the unconscious pc for 18. Now both are up and my chances of getting out alive are much worse.
Shoot the downed enemy: Almost no chance to also kill the healer, who then has nothing else to do on his round than do something to stop me.
Shoot the healer: Higher chance to kill him, who will probably use his action to heal. The healed player was unconscious and thus prone, so unless it's a spellcaster or ranged martial that can fire while prone, not much of a danger. Next round, both of them probably drop from a single shot each.Unless the healer has something to prevent the NPC from full attacking (and probably even then), the smartest choice the PCs can make is to heal/move away and stand up/move away, respectively. If the NPC kills a player, he gives the healer extra motivation to stop him.
Traveler
I had a character die during character creation from old age.
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I devised a WHFRP one-shot in college that was predicated on the fact that in the first edition of that game character creation could be *completely* automated fairly trivially (I mean, the rules had you roll for race and class against tables). So I wrote a program to just spit out randomized characters before a game and brought a printer to the game. The scenario was about a ship full of random people run aground on a volcanic island, and the conceit to that game's hilarious lethality was that every time a character would die you would hit the button and play whoever came out of the printer.
This was sufficiently entertaining that it was brought back a few other times by people who wanted to run their own scenarios with the same conceit, and "characters dying before their sheets finished printing" was not uncommon.
Carrion Crown. At least we made it to 3rd level before that stupid burning skelemonstrosity axed us a few critical questions, one-shotting everybody in the party.