Best Character Death?

[CWD]

Minor spoilers.

Best death? Years ago we were playing a silly OD&D module, Quest for the Heartstone.

The big bad villain, a thief, is cornered on the edge of a cliff with the artifact the PCs need to retrieve (the heartstone natch). Luckily the thief has a flying carpet, so he hops on and starts to escape. The group's solmanic knight (we were playing it as a Dragonlance game) does a running jump off the cliff and knocks the escaping thief off the carpet. They both fall hundreds of feet to their deaths. The rest of the party climbs down the cliff, retrieves the artifact from the wreckage, and buries the knight at the base (I ruled the body was too badly damaged to raise). Most heroic thing I've ever seen a PC do. Might I add they didn't even loot the corpse?

Dumbest deaths?
Just a few months ago I was running RttToEE. The party was fighting a dragon. The party was hurt, but the dragon took more of a beating, so it turned and ran down the hall to escape. The party chased it down the hall. I stared at the map and realized they were all in a line behind it, chasing it down the NARROW passage. The dragon looks over its shoulder, smiles, turns and breathes. TPK.

 

[nopantsyet]

Last Sunday, my OA character finally met his honorable end.

Mugenhaji no Kosei (his death name taken after his disgrace) was a ronin (sam2) who had been living as a vagrant (rgr3) since his dishonor. At the time of the unfortunate event, he lacked the inner strength (low wis) to commit seppuku. However, he had a determination and even took an oath to find that inner strength and fulfill his honor.

After every victorious battle, he tried to summon the strength (Will save vs. DC 20) but was not successful. However, when he found himself 80' above the ground, clenched in a demon's jaws, badly wounded, he knew it was his last chance, drew his wakizashi, and commited his final honorable act.

The intestines hit the ground only shortly before he did.

 

[Ysgarran]

The most memorable death involved a Ranger of mine and the pursuit of a fairly high level drow priestess. After battling all of her minions and getting the drow priestess herself on the ropes she decides to flee. She manages to get a blade barrier up between the party and herself. We don't have anyway of bringing it down. I know just one more good hit will take her out.

I tell my compatriots
Ranger: "I'm going through".
Party Cleric: "You Won't Make It".
Ranger: "I'll make it and take her out. I don't want to give her another chance"
Party Cleric: "You Won't Make It".
Ranger: "I'll make it"
and with that I lept through the blade barrier.

I didn't make it....

 

[The Onion Knight]

This was back in a 2E campaign when you had simultaneous attacks. We were relatively high level characters fighting a Great Red Dragon (very old or ancient). We had a female fighter with a vorpal sword who had a simultaneous attack with the Red Dragon. The DM run dragon killed her, but as a simultaneous attack she got to roll her last attack and it came up 20, slaying the Dragon.
Great Death Scene

 

[arwink]

My Cleric body-slammed a dragon at high speed while on the elemental plane of air. Did some truly rediculous amount of damage, pulversied himself on the dragons scales, then the rest of the party watched as the dragon scrapped of the goo and healed himself.

Everyone looked around the table for a few moments, looked at the DM's evil grin, then ran like hell.

 

[Cedric]

Well...it was Rolemaster, I was a warrior about 14th level. We were fighting the Big, Bad Guy(tm). Several of the party members had already died.

I was at about half hits..which for me was a ton of hps left. I swung and open ended twice, rolling a crit.

I rolled 99 on my crit, landing it on his head. I managed too cleave right through the ungodly powerful magic circlet he was wearing.

Well...think retributive strike. I took him, me and the top of the volcano with us when it erupted from the backlash. It was a nice moment!

Cedric

 

[wallshot]

The Valant End to Kerrik the Drunk

so we are fighting a dragon. its red. we were asleep when it attacked. we (the players) were saying prayers for our characters. The party wizard still had some spells memorized that he hadn't used. My ranger was able to get to his bow. The cleric or tempus had armor he could summon to him. The sorcerer had unused spells. That left Kerrik, an outtawork soldier who was prone to drink heavily.

After many rounds, Im outta arrows, cleric is low on HP, sorc is outta spells. Kerrik was relatively untouched as the dragon had spent little time on the ground, preferring to unleash magic on us from the air, along with the BW every 4 rounds or so. Kerrik looks at the wizard and asks what spells he has left. Wizard replies he only has a few cantrips and a teleport that he can use to get us all outtathere. Kerrik judges the distance to the airborn dragon and says, "Teleport me up there." Our jaws hit the floor.

The wizard teleports himself and Kerrik up to the dragon and Kerrik is on the dragons back hacking away. Dragon starts to plummet to the ground, we think it is going to crash. As it is descending, it rolls over to crush Kerrik.

Kerrik rears back to take what he knows is the last swing of his life. Suddenly his sword becomes sheathed in a halo of freezing cold energy as Kerrik crits the Red. Dragon dies and the weight of it crushes poor Kerrik into the ground, leaving a giant crater in the earth.

DM ruled that we could resurrect him as his sole had found true happiness in the last moments of life. The elves in the area constructed a crystal tower to the memory of The Valiant End to Kerrik the Drunk. I never wanted to play a bard so bad in my life after witnessing that.

 

[Shiv]

I don't know if this is glorious or un-glorious, but it was entertaining (read: annoying).

The DM had set up a rival adventuring party, one that we were always trying to best. They gave us no respect. Anyway, eventually they got really naughty and happened upon an item that would summon a demon. They start doing this, and turn REALLY naughty.

One of them decides he wants nothing to do with this and betrays his party, tells us what's going on, and accompanies us to their HQ to help us dispatch the naughty demon-summoners.

There were six PCs, all in the 5th (or barely 6th) level range. I'm playing a Swashbuckly Fighter-Rogue, heavy on the "charge into battle gallantly" thing and very heavy on initiative bonus. We get to the door. Listen. Detect. Blah-blah-blah. Wizard drops a Silent Portal. Pick the lock. Open the door. Look in.

Four naughty demon summoners and a demon. Roll initiative. I roll huge and go first. Charge through the door. "Hah-hah, evil-doers!" Demon goes next. Big, fat, thick wall of ice at the door in a room with no windows. Group had no Dim Door or any such quick and easy way to bypass a door or wall.

I turn to face four 5th-level baddies and a minor demon.

Despite my utilizing Fight Defensively and other "save your butt" maneuvers, two rounds later...dead.

But I did fight gallantly.

 

[Methinkus]

One of the first characters I ever played was a paladin in 2nd edition. The party’s ship was attacked while they were on their way to assist some friends in a war over seas. Those major enemies of the sea elves, whose name escapes me, attacked them. Everything was going very badly when a beholder rose out of the water and attacked. My paladin saw that the situation was only getting worse and that if no one did anything, it was all over.

The beholder was hovering a few feet away from the ship and slightly above it, feeling nice and safe, when a fully armored human male dropped his shield and broke into a dead run and leapt into the air towards him. My paladin sank his sword deep into the lightly wounded creature’s central eye (yeah that’s a critical) and grabbed onto another eyestalk.

The monstrous thing was brought down to 0 hp exactly, and with his last action, disintegrated my character L.

On the up side, with the beholder out of the picture the party and ships crew managed to fight off the rest of the attackers without any other losses.

 

[jontherev]

This was pretty funny for all involved but me.

As our party was leaving town one day, we were waylaid by some assassins and various other creatures. We were around 7th level. As we were we getting attacked by several assassins, rogues, and a few giant spiders, a wizard was dropping fireballs on us from a few hundred feet away. So, my multiclassed rogue and the monk decided we would run away and deal with the wizard before every one got burned, literally.

Well, I reached the wizard just before the monk did, and was greeted by an invisible fighter guarding the wizard. SMACK! No big deal, for I still had about 70 hitpoints or so (high con, good rolls). So I smack the wizard pretty good, but not good enough. The monk comes in and finishes off the wizard, but this took a few rounds. While this was happening, the fighter was hitting me, and hitting me HARD. The rolls were just too good. Right after the monk knocks the wizard down (a good thing, because the party was on the brink of dying because of all of the fireballs), the fighter knocks the monk down. I take 2 rounds getting a potion out (and administering it) to save the monk while getting smacked (more good rolls) by the fighter's full attacks. When the monk becomes concious, what does he do? He stands up and moves away from the fighter, leaving me all alone. Needless to say, I was pissed off because that left me as the only target for this fighter's full attack. I was killed because I saved a coward monk AND THE ENTIRE PARTY.

Several sessions later, I was quite happy after we killed a vampire with Whirlwind Attack and a Ring of Blinking (a NASTY combo!). This made up for the death that happened before.
Looking back, it was fairly comical.