Most interesting monster death

[Planesdragon]

best death EVAR!

Way way back in my 2e game, I had the privieldge of seeing the most memorable monster "death" of all time.

The PCs were on a mission from Huma (a Solar who was cribbing for Paladine, who had gone missing) to resuce an NPC from tartarus. A rogue Pit Fiend who wanted no part of the blood war had allied with some demons in the dungeon, and was attempting to convert the NPC to evil so as to get released from the blood war by a demonic power. (Of course, the PCs didn't do enough investigation to find this out.)

To aid in their travel, the PCs were given Huma's wish--which had just a little bit more kick to it than a wizard's wish. They tracked down the dungeon in tarterus, were ambushed by the Pit Fiend.

Laughing, the Pit Fiend taunted them, and offered them quarter--it figured that they couldn't possibly find a way out, so the fifteen minutes of rest would only serve to enhance their fear. It (and I) left the room and came back later.

The players held up a carefully-written piece of paper, and read. "I wish that the Pit Fiend before me, now and forevermore, become a true and strong servant of goodness."

It's funny how quickly demons run when their strongest ally becomes a Planetar.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The group I was DM'ing were making their way across an elvish city built at the edge of a Niagara-style waterfalls. Lots of disconnected islands, with bridges spanning the gaps. Their enemies were waiting for them, since this was the one spot they KNEW the PC's had to pass through.

The main bad guys were an Ogre Mage and a Werebat, but they were using a Quickling (natural invisibility, Spring Attack, move of 240', AC 27 I think, and 3 hit points) to harass the party as they crossed the main bridge in the city.

The Quickling would zoom in, hit somebody with it's sleep-inducing rapier and zoom off. No one could see it, no one could hit it. It was just an annoyance till someone failed their save and fell asleep. Then the PC's got worried. They still had no idea what they were facing.

The party druid stood very still, and listened, very intently. She heard the Quickling zooming up, and aimed one well-placed kick. Natural twenty.

She punted the little bastard over the edge of the bridge and into the swirling waters 200' below...

 

[Chronosome]

Here's one that springs to mind from an old 2e campaign I ran:

Spelljammer. Goldpiece, a tinker gnome outpost, is being destroyed by a pair of witchlight marauders (giant, voracious, magical mutant monstrosities thought to be destroyed in an ancient war). Devouring gnomish buildings and people, etc... All nine hells are breaking loose. Our inventive hero, tinkerer Merv Ninglanger, finds the biggest cask of smokepowder he can as marauders tear the Piece to shreds. Oddly enough, it's in the kitchens. With the help of a few husky giff (hippo men who love to see things go "boom") he hauls the cask on to a catapult. They get a marauder's attention by hooting and hollering and calling its mama names... The thirty-foot beast puts down the boat it was eating, shrieks, and runs toward them... Twang! A fuselit barrel of powder soars toward its head... Gargantua stops...eyes the cask...and snatches it up like a puppy. Gulp...

"?"​

BOOM!

I've got more, but I'll stop there.

 

[iwatt]

Back in 2e we played fast and loose with the illusion spells. Are patry of 7 level characters was attacked by 5 chargin trolls. These weren't a challenege to our party consisting of 2 evokers with the spell point system (one of which I played cause the regular guy was out of town). Somewhat tired of blsating a fireball at anything that moved, I decided to use an illusion of a botomless pit opening under the trolls. Long story short, they missed there saving throw and started flopping on the floor and screaming as they fell down. I think we just walked away from them after that

 

[Richards]

I've got one that isn't particularly remarkable in how the creature in question was killed, but by what happened afterwards. In a 2E game, my players devoted quite a bit of money and magical study towards the creation of a flying ship. They played it smart and started small, realizing that they'd probably mess it up a bit at first, so they began by trying to imbue a rowboat with the ability of flight. Amazingly enough, they got it right the first time, so they now had a flying rowboat. (At which point they were kicking themselves for not trying it out on a galleon in the first place, but that's another story...I thought they had been smart to start small during their experimentation phase.) So anyway, now they had a flying rowboat and decided they may as well use it. Since their next adventure was in a mountainous region, they decided to save some time by leaving their horses behind at their keep and flying to the mountains in their rowboat.

In doing so, they aroused the curiosity of a mountain wyvern. An aerial battle ensued, with the fighter trying not to fall overboard while standing up in the rowboat and swinging his sword at the underbelly of the wyvern trying to grab him for a light snack, and the spellcasters flinging spells as best they could in the jostling aerial rowboat.

Finally, the fighter made the killing blow. Unfortunately, the wyvern was directly overhead at the time, and its falling corpse not only pinned the party onto the floor of the rowboat, but overloaded the rowboat's weight capacity, plunging the whole thing to the landscape below.

The players had had PCs killed by undead monsters before, but never by a dead one...

Johnathan

 

[demiurge1138]

One I just remembered. The party is exploring an abandoned salt mine, and the salt mephits there warn them of "Scallie", a nasty dragon-y thing that was placed in the mine by a wizard who used it as a hideout for a few years. The party tries to sneak past Scallie, but the rogue catches a glimpse of treasure, gets a little closer, and they're in combat. Scallie rips the party a few new ones, sending them often into the land of the disabled and dying. The characters wisely decide to beat a strategic retreat, and Scallie comes forward in pursuit... right onto the tracks of the mining carts.

The cleric decides, since the party's half dead and nobody else is on the track, to grab the brake lever and pull it. I have him roll a touch attack and roll Scallie a Reflex save for half damage.

The cleric rolls a 20.
Scallie rolls a 1.

Scallie gets caught under the cart and plummets screaming into the depths of the mine, her ride ending with a sickening thud.

Demiurge out.

 

[Myrddin ap Taliesen]

Using original 3rd edition rules (before the spell was fixed) our 18th level cleric cast Harm on Tiamat and, since there wasn't a saving throw, reduced her to 2 hp and thus an easy kill.

 

[Saeviomagy]

In 2nd ed, I played a wild mage. He was 1st level when this happened.

We're playing some pre-written adventure, and we meet some guard dogs, nasty ones, 5 of them.

I cast "Reckless Dweomer", which basically meant that I forced a wild surge roll voluntarily. I had 2 memorised.

The first reckless dweomer rolls on the table as a colour spray, which paralyses 1d6 creatures. 4 are paralysed.

Next round, I cast the same spell again.

The GM rolls on the wild surge, picks up the monster book, flips through randomly, and says "The dog turns into a bigger dog - more like a wolf actually".

"Was it wearing a collar?" I ask

"Yup"

"Well, then doesn't it get strangled?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you."

Wracking my brains for a dog-like creature that wouldn't die from being strangled, I hit upon the idea that the creature might be a werewolf.

"Oh no! It turned into a werewolf! Shame that collar wasn't silver, huh?" I say.

The GM looks surprised.

He checks the stats for the guard dogs.

"OK, the wolf-creature chokes for a bit then dies".

It turns out that the adventure specified that the dogs were wearing silver collars.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This was back in 2E. I was playing a fighter/wizard 12/14 shepherding a few lower level characters, henchmen, and leige warriors on a search and supress mission for a local lord. Travelling in the hills, we were attacked by a flight of 6-7 wyverns. They would line up and strafe the party, snatching up men, biting heads off, and dropping them for later retrival. Of course, they were a little too spread out for fireballs or lightning bolts to be effective, so, after the second pass, I struck upon a unique application for a spell. Sighting along the main axis of approach, I dropped a Wall of Force directly in the path of swoop. With the wall being invisible, and wyverns being stupid, most of the crashed into the wall at full dive speed. What a mess!

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Back in the early history of 3e, my party was searching an orc stronghold and, after making quite a fuss, needed to rest. They figured the orcs would be looking for them, so the fighter took up a position behind a door.

When the orc sentry came a-lookin' and opened the door to the room, the fighter pushed the door back, hitting the orc with the door. One natural 20 and a confirmed threat later, and it was death by door for the orc.