A poor death for a warrior

[Rackhir]

One of my favorite character deaths was in a 30's CoC campaign. We had discovered the evil bad guy's plot and I was on my way back to the authorities in my pickup with the information. However the BBEG knew we knew and caught up with me on 30's New England back road and started trying to run me off the road.

Problem 1 - My Character had no drive skill. Not a good thing when you are driving at night on a dirt back road and someone is trying to run you off the road.

Problem two needs a little background. In the previous adventure, we had gone out to these standing stones with some dynamite to knock them down and prevent the Horrible Ritual from being performed. A Shoggoth (40'+ amorphous blob of eldritch horror) showed up and we looked at our .38 specials, looked back up at the shoggoth, looked down again at our puny pistols and tossed them aside to get the dynamite. 3 Sticks of dynamite later we had a dead shoggoth. After that my character swore off puny guns, packed the trunk of the pick up with 100 sticks of dynamite and 15 gallons of gas. Also there was an ape chained to the bed of the pickup (long story).

So to recap, Driving down dirt New England back road in the middle of the night, BBEG trying to run me off the road, no driving skill, only armed with explosives.

While desperately trying to stay on the road, I started trying to light a stick of dynamite to toss out the window to blow up the following car. I did manage to get it lit, but fumbled my roll to toss it and the DM ruled that it landed on the running boards of the pickup.

Problem 2 - I have a lit stick of dynamite sitting on the running board of my pickup as I am driving down a bad dirt road in the middle of the night with no driving skill while the BBEG is trying to run me off the road.

I did manage eventually to open the door and kick the dynamite off the sideboard. Unfortunately, it had been burning there long enough that it went off underneath the bed of my pickup. Where the remaining 96 sticks of dynamite and 15 gallons of gas were sitting, causing a massive explosion killing me, the BBEG (who had to take 3x the damage of a normal person to be killed, fortunately that wasn't an issue), however the ape chained to the trunk of the pickup was blown free and survived. But I did kill the bad guy!

 

[Piratecat]

But I did kill the bad guy!

With style. And really, in the end that's the only thing that counts.

 

[shilsen]

With style. And really, in the end that's the only thing that counts.

And the monkey got away. How cool is that!

 

[Vargo]

So, I was running this little deathtrap named Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Since my story is rather spoilerific, I'll have to wrap it...

Spoiler

The party is in the abandoned moathouse, lowering into the hidden shrine. The grick pops out, grabs one of the party members, and in the attempt to save him, another member (the dwarven barbarian) falls off, and ends up in the pool at the bottom of the shrine - the one that transforms people into ghouls. I used the ghoul template and turned his character into a "self-aware" ghoul - think I got that one from PKitty - and he called up to his old compatriots, asking them to come down.

They got to the bottom, where he critted yet another character (1/2 orc cleric/bbn) with a greataxe, putting him at about -12, before they got him.

3 characters down out of six. Owie.

 

[A'koss]

One PC death I always get a good laugh out of is a Dragonlance campaign (1st ed.) that got off to a rather poor start...

We were running the game with homebrew rules that allowed 1st level characters to roll for their social status (a la 1st ed. Greyhawk). The Paladin character, who had just finished rolling some of the most impressive ability scores I'd seen in years, rolled something a 99 for his social class and ended up being minor lord sitting on a rather impressive mound of gold. After outfitting the group in the very best - Full Plate Armor, destriers, composite longbows, weapons and equipment (I think the paladin even had a magical flamebrand longsword as an heirloom) we set off to Xaks Tsaroth (sp?) to go whup some dragon heinie.

To get there the band had to travel through some creepy little spot of marshland where they ran into their very first encounter - a random encounter with a giant snake. Said giant snake promptly won initiative, meandered over to the paladin, bit him through his Full Plate/Shield combo on a natural 20, who then promptly failed his poison save on a 1 and died on the spot.

Now, said paladin's player was just starting to foam into a good lather when the thief character (played a new player who had yet to discover what a bow was for) jumped up and said - "I stab it with my short sword!". Now... the paladin's player wasn't the kind to take insult upon injury lightly, especially coming from a somewhat over-enthusiastic newbie rolling a lethal critical hit on his first try. He liked gloating even less.

I guess it wasn't surprising that the campaign went... somewhat downhill after that, but it was certainly educational. We learned that dice makes a somewhat hollow sound when deflected off someone's head at high velocities. We learned that those 1st ed harcovers make for surprisingly good projectiles when thrown properly. We also learned that even newbies can come up with some suprisingly creative uses for shortswords and dead paladins. And finally, we learned that knocking over an entire vial on Nilodor can quickly put a end to any disagreement...

Cheers!

 

[Lord Morte]

Not non-combat, but a barbarian left the gaming session I made him when he got coup de graced by a goblin (or an orc if the DM's remembering right ) after being held. That's still annoying.

Of course, I once boiled his multiclass fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric along with most of the party with a Dragon Turtle's breath weapon. It was a case of declare attack, check effects, swear and starting looking for a lot more dice than the CR suggested.

Then there was the classic line "So what happens when you fail the save on this Death Gaze thingee (for a Bodak). Oh, you die." (wasn't me DMing that time)

Didn't cause any fatalities, but we once broached an unmarked barrel filled with alchemist's fire. Ouch.

The best: Party attempts to cross massive ravine using a series of magical stepping stone whose use they believe they'd decipher from ancient murals. Believed, until all of them gave way beneath their feets sending them plunging to their doom. Admittedly they were in a complex filled with dwarven death traps...

 

[Impeesa]

Preamble: Our DM uses some simple fumble rules. Nothing harsh, just a natural 1 on an attack roll calls for a DC 15 reflex save to avoid dropping your weapon or something similarly lame. So we're going along and get in a fight. The archer rolls a 1 on an attack. Then a 1 on the reflex save. In the unlikely event something like that happens, a second save is made (kind of like the three 20 instant kill rule). Another natural 1. The DM described the arrow hitting the stone wall, shattering, and a piece of the arrowhead flying back and piercing his brain through his eye. Dead.

I've also heard second-hand of a Cyberpunk character who was walking around with way too much C4 under his trenchcoat. Naturally, most of the party was close at hand when he met the inevitable taser-wielding punk.

--Impeesa--

 

[BaldHero]

a particulary annoying fighter had reached 7th level in my KoK game, and had bought a horse from a man in the last city he had come through.
The horse was truly unique, being both almost humanly intelligent and very evil. It was a horse in all other respects.
After the fighter abused it repeatedly, after discovering its intelligence and nature, the horse had had enough.
One night while the party slept on the plains, without benefit of a watch or guards, the fighters horse calmy walked over to the fighter, Move Silent nat 20, in front of everyone at the table, no one noticed or cared that the horse just kept creepig closer to them...and used its hoof attack to coup de grace the man in his sleep. The 7th level fighter failed his save, and the evil smart horse killed him.
Another time, i had created a really kewl gemstone construct called Shard 622 for my friends Silver Age Sentinels game. He crashed throuh a wall, with enough strength to lift an aircraft carrier...and was fire blasted to death by a sixteen year old girl that weighed about a hundred pounds.
Same game, new hero called Pinball, goes to look for his nemisis, finds him in pub, using the public restroom and then gets into a brawl, and dies from a critical hit, falling dead in a flithy bathroom stall.
L.

 

[Ghostwind]

How about jumping into a sphere of annihilation, thinking it was a gate -- and having the rest of the party line up to follow you "through"?

I do believe you have coined a new definition for 'stupid'.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Diving out THE WRONG window of a tower to escape guards that more than likely could have been handled in combat. Enter the room the DM said...To the right, the window overlooks the garden, you see tops of trees and the wall not far away, to your left the window looks out to the sea...Spent time seaching the room, alarm ended up going off guards came running...what do you do? It was even layed out on the MAT!