Cool/Funny deaths

Sorry if there's a thread like this, but since I can't search...

Some of my favorite threads to read here are the cool/funny stories of what happens to others' characters. So I want to hear some good death stories. (This was partly inspired by the Useless Rogues thread.)

Here's mine:

He was, I believe, a 5th or 6th level rogue. After botching a disable trap a little earlier, he and the group open a door to find a small room (20'x20' or so) with levers and gears and such. Obviously it triggers something, so I offers to go in and fiddle with it. My group was more than willing. After I entered, they 'jokingly' shut the door so they wouldn't get hit by any trap that might be there. Ha ha. I mean, just because it had happened a little earlier...

Anyway, my Rogue goes in and fiddles. And sets off a trap. Zap! Right in the middle of the room appears a large Fire Elemental. Between my Rogue and the door. The closed door.

The gang outside heard the screams and laughed. They're still laughing about it years later. Sons of bit...

EDIT: Crap, I meant to put this in general. I'll try to get it moved...

I remember once I was running a game and decided to run a simple encounter with a two young thugs who were going to try to steal from the PCs in a city street. Well they stole a money pouch but got noticed, and a chase ensued. When the PCs caught up, they went in fighting with the 14 or so year old pick pockets to teach them a lesson, one of whom was dual weilding daggers. Double crit and one PC went down in one round. He hasn't lived his death from a kid down yet.

That same player has never had a PC survive an encounter with an owlbear. Never. In four situations, he has always died when confronted with an owl-bear, be he playing a barbarian, druid, or rogue, all very different classes. You'd think he'd learn eventually.

Oh, and here's another way one of that player's PCs have died that was funny! We had just converted a 2E game to 3E and the PCs were stuck in a room with the door being pounded in by orcs. He, playing a wizard, strides up to the middle of the room and readies an action to cast burning hands on them when they get through the baracade because "They're just orcs. They'll all die." Of course, they were actually 3th level barbarian orcs and proceded to slaughter him the next round.

I can always count on him for a good death!

I remembered this one because the fantasy weapons thread's discussion of mercury. I was DM...this was a LONG time ago, so don't criticize the mechanics.

I had some friends and we used to have a fairly large, good group of gaming friends, but they moved away to farmland BFE. Several months after they moved, I packed up a couple friends from the group and went to visit them/play all night. Once we got there we met a lot of younger people that they had met, since moving, who wanted to play too. I said sure, no problem.

So one newbie player says, with all conviction, that he wants to kill stuff. I told him that would be fine, he can play a barbarian or fighter or something. He rolls up a barbarian and we commence with the dungeon crawling.

The whole time he's reckless (like a good barbarian, but he wasn't roleplaying much IMO) and was always trying to grab the loot and force the party into disadvantagous postions.

They make it to the end, beat the BBEG (i forget the details), and find four large chests made of different materials, each in a corner of a large square drawn on the floor of a small circular treasure room.

SO the rogue went up to the first chest, made of gold (of course), and looked for traps/tried to open the chest. He failed miserably and got flamed by the trap which melted the chest and golden contents...shiny puddle. It was designed to do that.

The rogue was then so low on HP that he was super skittish. He checked for traps and attempted to open the second chest, made of dark wood. He failed both and was pricked by a needle trap and passed out. The party leader stepped up and bashed the chest, yielding a nice cache of druid items. WOo hoO!

The barbarian at this point is freakin' out. He hasn't smashed anything in a while, the girly paladin just smashed something, and HE WANTS LOOT BAD! He took out his great axe, went over to the chest made of stone, and bashed it. He rolled exploding crits and reported that he did some ridiculous amount of damage to the chest. I told him that that wasn't very good (smile=>frown), so roll a d100 to see how bad it is. 00.

SO I explained that the stone chest was full of mercury. He utterly destroyed the chest splashing mercury all over himself (and made the rest of the party roll saves). Had the barbar roll a poison save, 1. He started to rant, that's not fair, you're out to get me, the other chests have treasure, blah blah blah. I leaned over to the party leader and showed him my notes.

Chest #2 - Stone - Full of mercury, designed so bashing will result in contact and possible poisoning/death. Nothing else of value. Anyone breathing near the chest must save vs poison. Poison causes madness and if largely exposed (from doing more than 10HP damage to the chest) death.

We all had a good laugh except the barbarian player who left. That wasn't very cool, but we found it very funny.

Two deaths, one D20, one Ars Magica, were funny because of the last lines...

In the AM example, meet Dalton Erdell, rogue companion, a man who almost single-handedly started a revolution in a small barony (the local inhabitants were convinced that the archangel Michael was calling for them to rise against a wicked baron). In trying to escape from the baron's castle, Dalton makes a jump, rolls a double botch (truly tragic mistake time), and lands next to three guards while simultaneously wrenching his ankle, thus putting him directly in harm's way with little means of escape.

Guard: (in surprise) Who are you?!?
Dalton: (drawing his shortsword) I'm your worst nightmare, pal!

He was dead in one combat round...

And for the D20 example, meet example, meet Nigel von Golotha, 3rd level wizard. The party (a Divine Champion, a Fighter, a Cleric, a Ranger, and Nigel) are fighting off a large group of zombies, too many for them to handle. They are doing a pretty good fighting retreat when suddenly Nigel gets it into his head that he can get on a horse (no Ride skill) and get through the zombies by going the other way...

...as Nigel rolls a 1 on his Ride skill (Dex was 9), he is dragged off of his horse by about a dozen zombies at once, all of whom start munching on him.

Doing his best Dieter of Sprockets impression, Nigel's last words were: "Oh. Zat hurts."

But for a truly cool death, we have to reach into a D20 variant game I ran a while back. I forget the character's name at the moment, but he was a 3rd level non-magical Ranger (variant class). The group was going through a house that was crowded with strange spirits and one horrible ghost. The character was determined to get the rest of the party out alive, again doing the fighting retreat. He is standing at the top of the stairs facing off with the ghost and I ask him to make a Fortitude saving throw. Bad day, he rolls a 1 and the ghost does a lot of damage to an already hurting individual.

I turned to the group and said, "The ghost moves forward, her eyes blazing, her dress in tatters, blown by the unseen wind. She reached out her pale hand, puts it into his chest, and pulls out the ghost of his heart. He crumples over dead, with frost on his lips."

One of the other players was this character's brother. He breaks down, trying to rescue his brother, or at least his body, with the others trying to restrain him and drag him outside. The roleplaying got very intense and we had to call a short break just to get our heads back together.

Good session, though

We found a skinless body lying next to a table. On the table is a leathery scroll. Out of unsatiable curiosity I read the scroll. The scroll is in an unknown language and it falls apart when I try to read it. No ill effects. Later my skin begins to itch. Later still tattos begin to appear on my body. Finally my skin peels off, finishes rewritting itself and rolls into a leathery looking scroll.

I love CoC !

I've posted this one in at least one similar thread previously, but here goes...

We were about 5th level, and ambushed by assassins on our way home from a party. About half of our party members took to the rooftops to dispatch the casters & ranged attackers hiding up there. My rogue stayed on the ground, and was gutted by one of the assassins. After I lay in the alleyway for a few rounds bleeding out in an area of concealment (either an obscuring mist or a smokestick or somesuch), our halfling cleric broke off from her rooftop combat to come to my aid. She cast a cure spell and jumped off of the roof holding the charge, attempting to land in a square next to me. Thanks to the concealment, she picked the square I was lying in. The DM decided that we would split the falling damage between us. IIRC, between jumping and tumbling and anything else we could come up with, the damage we would have to split was reduced down to a single d6. I was at -7 hit points.

She rolled a 6.

My character was raised later on, but always watched the skies above, wary of falling halflings.

A few months ago we had a temporary gap in our regular gaming schedule and decided to run a short-term dungeon crawl to fill the time. We all rolled up 12th level PCs. The first session, the whole party had just descended into a pit that held the entrance to the dungeon. There turned out to be four doorways in the bottom of the pit. One was a portcullis with a couple of rag-covered sigils on it. An invisible sentry behind the portcullis kept taunting the party as they tried to determine which doorway would lead to the dragon's lair they sought.

The party's rogue decided to try to take a peek under one of the rags to see what the sigil was. As he did so, the warmage decided to walk past the area and got hit by the sigil's effect. Fortunately she made her save, thanks to a magic item. So we had no idea what the sigil did.

We got irritated with the inivisible sentry harrassing us, so the warmage decided to cast an ice spell at him to try to freeze him, so we could then see him to attack him. She hit him, but the spell didn't quite have the desired effect. The sentry managed to reach out and grab one of the rags, whipping it off the sigil. The warmage, the monk, the NPC favored soul, and my cleric were all in range of the effect.

We all failed our saves. The warmage's item was a once-per-day use. Suddenly 4 out of 6 party members were lying dead on the floor. Only the rogue and the scout were still alive.

We had been playing for all of thirty minutes.

Playing a module I don't know the name of, one of the characters was a True Necromancer with a feat that made him healed by negative energy/damaged by positive energy. We run into a crazy bard being attacked by a dragon, and the necro goes down in the first round, to -7ish. The NPC bard who we had never met runs up and casts cure serious on him.

The best part was when the DM didn't understand the looks of horror on our faces. He had totally forgotten that it would kill the necro dead. ;-)

This was a SR3 game run by my friend several years ago. We're about 20-30 minutes into actually playing and the party's chased this mook (he had info we wanted to question him about) and my friend's character moves to engage him hand to hand. The mook has an Ares Predator (heavy pistol, but generally not something too lethal) and fires it at my friend, with all the incumbent penalties, hits. My friend is rolling resistance and then we all hear and incredulous, "I'm dead!??!"

It was hilarious.

I tell this one pretty much every time we get a thread like this...

The party is in Rokugan, and they've tracked the spirit of Iuchiban the Blood Sorcerer to the Festering Pit, where Iuchiban intends to raise Fu Leng, the First Oni, to destroy the world. Natch.

In the party is one Thalias Darkshine, an elven rogue-who-thinks-he's-a-fighter who's also turning into a cat. As the party climbs the ridge and sees Iuchiban conducting the ritual, Thalias says "you guys wait here. I'm going to pounce on the ghost."

I, being the DM, stare long and hard at him. "You pounce on the ghost?"

"Yeah, I pounce on the ghost. Is there a problem with that?"

Thalias did pounce on the ghost. And straight through the ghost. The spell was disrupted, and Iuchiban finished off the prone and injured Thalias with a creeping doom spell.

Those were the days...
Demiurge out.