Character Deaths

[mseds99]

i got one

This is good...

I once had an incredibly stupid but loyal half-orc barbarian. He fell in love with one of the other pc's who happened to be a reincarnated female dwarf, who happened to originally be a male elf. He/she went by the name of Irallel, the half-orc went by Trylor. While traveling through a dungeon together, the dwarf female/male elf charcater's weasel familiar gets grabbed by a spider that snuck up to the party unnoticed. The spider starts dragging the weasel up the side of the cave and into its lair at the top of the 200' high ceiling. Trylor the brave is aghast at seeing the pain on the face of his love (she thinks the half-orc is repulsive. Actually, she had quite a few sexual identity issues of her own, though it was very understandable considering her situation). After climbing at a brisk and dangerous pace, he catches up to the spider at about 150' up the wall. The spider sees a web and jumps off the wall onto the web. Trylor in a rash judement fueld by his unwavering love, decides that the web could support his weight and follows. Let's just say, it didn't. He comes falling to the ground, with weasel and spider in hand, screaming all the way "Irallel, I LOVE YOU!!!!" Of course, the spider and the weasel walked away from the whole affair quite unharmed. It was such a beatiful romance story. <sigh>

 

[Thanatos]

So you're saying the other players didn't slaughter the player after this incident?

no...there was no bloodshed over the incident...I think it was kinda close though...he did have quite a few dice and a book thrown at him though.

Honestly...we all sat there for about a minute in stunned silence as we realized that the DM was right about what he did.

All in all it was pretty sad...the kings daughter died...we died...DM stepped down after that he felt so bad.

Fair was fair though...and over a decade later, it makes for one of those good stories.

 

[Bihor]

the flying gnome

The PCs had to protect some gnomish war-machines. A bunch of gremlins try to destroy them. The godless gnome cleric jumped on a catapult to kill a gremlin who was in the scoop. The stupid half-orc barbarian shout ''watch out'' and sent the gremlin half a mile in the gnomish town. But the cleric Rolled a bad reflex recived the scoop in the face and flew 30' high. The hit did not killed him but the fall finished him.

 

[Steve Jung]

The party's ranger falls through a trap door 30 feet to the floor below. He had a lot of hit points, so falling damage wasn't a problem.

Me: He'll be OK if he doesn't hit his head. (die roll) OK, he hits his head and gets knocked out. Oh by the way, you see 2 minotaurs down there, too.
Player 1 (elven cleric): Player 2 (human fighter) has ring of feather falling. I jump on his back, and we'll float down to save the ranger.
Player 2: OK

They defeat the minotaurs and rescue their friend.
Sometime later…
Player 1: Wait a minute, wasn't that ring destroyed by a fireball a while ago?

So from then on, I kept a list of all the magic items the party had.

Steve

 

[reiella]

Me, "Say hi to Io for me."
Green Dragon breathes.

 

[fnork de sporg]

Ok so the party is infiltrating their former town recently conquered by evil in an attempt to rescue the townspeople currently being used as unholy sacrifices. A quartet of infernal gnolls decked out with a number of items from the Book of Vile Darkness and lure the party in to an ambush using a crowd of mindless zombies as bait, then attacking the party from sides. I had fully expected the chaotic-neutral Githyanki Psychic Warrior to use his Clairvoyance powers to foil this trap and had mostly added it as color to emphasize how cunning the enemy was, but he never really could get a good handle on how and when to use his powers.

The party's main muscle get tied up fighting the high-number but relatively low powered zombie horde who basically swarm them, while the more support-oriented characters end up fighting off the much nastier badguys. So the githyanki and one of the cleric/magess end up fighting one of the gnolls behind a building, about ten feet away from the rest of the group but around a corner. The two cleric/mage players got it in to their head that they really liked this one dual cleric and mage prestige class and so decided to multiclass their characters. Only problem is that untill that reach the prestige class they kind of suck, and the game eventually went of hiatus before they ever could. This particular player is regualrly taunted (though in a good hearted way) for his consistently cowardly tactics and decisions. The characters had previously found a supply of unlabled potions iwth permanent effect and the githyanki character ha, through no real fault of his own as the contents of the bottle were randomly rolled, consumed a Shrinking potion making him currently 3 feet 3 inches. The cleric is still mounted while the githyanki is not, and doesn't own his own horse-like-desert-creature anyways.

So the nasty evil nasty Infernal Gnoll comes up, with its various magic items made from children's skulls and severed hands and its nasty nasty war-scythe and enters melee combat with the githyanki. But the cleric mage refuses to dismount. He refuses to even get within melee range. Instead he postions his mount behind the shrunken githyanki and begins to pick away at the gnoll iwth his crossbow. Using a weakened three foot character as a shield! The githyanki player urges the cleric/mage to join him in the front ranks, but the cleric/mage player reclines because, if I remember correctly, "that gnoll dude is in' nasty". The other player's uge the githyanki character to attempt to flee, possibly using his dimensional slide. The githyanki character refuses, stating he thinks he can last at least one more round. He can't. The gnoll brings him to something like negative seven with the first blow and then, with not other targets in range, uses the second blow to cleave the poor er's torso in twain.

It was the first death of the campaign. Actualyl I think it was the first character death that particular grouping of people had ever had. Everyone's jaw kind of dropped.

Really that character seemed almost doomed to die.

If/when that campaign goes on hiatus I always wanted to have that character somehow come back through a miraculous intevention of his God. But the players has stated he thinks he would want to play an all new character, maybe ranger, so I guess I'll haveto bring him back as some sort of exposition souting undead/spirit npc.

 

[CombatWombat51]

In the early days of 3E, I (the DM) decided to try a stacking critical variant. Each successful crit would double the damage, or something like that. At the same time, I also decided to experiment with rolling everything out in the open. Bad combination

One player was having his first 3E game with us, and in the first fight, a wimpy demon (I forget what) rolled a nat 20. Ok, I roll to confirm. The thing needed like an 18 to hit his buffed, armored cleric. 20. Ok, I guess I get to see the stacking crits in action. A third[ 20. Well, his character was certainly dead, but I went ahead and rolled again. And, you guessed it, a fourth nat 20. The fifth roll for confirmation finally missed. Regardless, the character was paste. At least he got to roll up a new character, now that he knew that Charisma isn't a dump stat for undead-turning clerics.

Maybe some kindly mathematically inclined folk can tell me the odds of four 20's in a row...

Needless to say, I immediately scrapped the whole stacking crits idea, and went back to hiding my precious dice.

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

Maybe some kindly mathematically inclined folk can tell me the odds of four 20's in a row...

One in 160,000. But the vast majority of role players don't give their dice enough of a shake to thoroughly randomize the outcome, especially those who quickly pick them up and throw them back down. Still extremely long odds though.

 

[Telperion]

It’s been a while since I saw this one happen, but it was simply so memorable that I still recall it in detail =).

Surprise Round:

Me: Two fire giants assault you from the near-by woods.
Party Fighter & Barbarian: Charge!
Party Sorcerer: I climb a tree for a better view.
Party Ranger: I hide and sneak behind the fire giants.

Round 1:

Party Fighter & Barbarian: swing, slash, stab, hack…
Party Sorcerer: Now how did that Disintegrate spell go again?
Party Ranger: * whispers to himself * I’m in good position and taking aim (praying to Tanil for more guidance)
Fire giant 1 & 2: swing, bash, hack, slash…

Round 2:

Party Fighter & Barbarian: continue fighting
Party Sorcerer: casts Disintegrate, and rolls a natural 1 on the Ranged Touch Attack.
Me: the branch you are standing on snaps under your considerable girth and your aim is bad.
Party Sorcerer: how bad?
Me: See that barbarian over there, straight in your line-of-fire, in front of that fire giant?
Party Sorcerer: no!
Me: yes.
Party Barbarian: so I guess its time for a Fortitude-save.
Me: yeah.
Party Barbarian: rolls a natural 1 and dies instantly.
Party Ranger: NOOOO!!! What are you doing you fat little…* lots of swearing *
Fire giant 1: Notices the screaming ranger right behind him and proceeds to beat the ranger into a bloody pulp.
Fire giant 2: Sees only one, wounded, fighter in front of him and proceeds to beat him up.

Round 3:
Party Fighter: I’m getting out of here! * turns his back on the two fire giants and gets killed by AoO’s *
Party Sorcerer: O’ what have I done? * casts Teleport and takes his leave *

-Party Wipe-

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Our 2nd ed game was played pretty fast & loose, we had so many odd character deaths I can barely remember them. This happened to a friend of mine, the reformed thief/assassin turned cleric...

We're in the absolute middle of nowhere, looking for some lost ruins. Just as we find it, a massive red dragon appears out of the sky and breathes in our general direction. I think this was supposed to encourage us to go into the ruins, but our DM wasn't that great at pulling his punches. The thief/cleric fails his save, takes close to max damage, and is turned to a cinder before our eyes (along with a couple of henchmen, but that's what we have them for).

Anyhow, we get into the safety of the building post-haste. Inside, we find the remains of a battle between humans and orcs- lots of corpses. We poke around, rest some, prepare spells. Now, we didn't have another cleric at the time, but the other main PC, an elven wizard thief, had a raise dead scroll that he could use. Trouble was, no body.

So my human illusionist prepped a limited wish and cast it to try and get the cleric's body back. Well, since it was only a limited wish the DM decide to give us half the body- it was the upper part, I think. For whatever reason, either house rule or spell rules, we needed the full body. Being the chaotic type that I was, I performed some creative polymorphing and melding of the other remains around, and fashioned a full body that looked like our departed friend (more or less). Then, we raised him and continued on our way.

This worked fine until we went through an anti-magic zone. The polymorph other was dispelled, and the results were pretty messy. This time, we just kept a part of the body and eventually found a real cleric...

Another odd one, this time pretty much just involving my human illusionist. The party, and I in particular, were overly-fond of decks of many things (and I'm honestly shocked that I'm the first person to have a deck anectode in this thread!) Anyhow, I drew the imprisonment card and got sent to a prison in the Abyss, trapped by a marilith we'd somehow ticked off (killed her sister or something, I really don't recall).

So, if that wasn't odd enough, I was basically a vampire at the time (long story). So, turning to mist got me out of the jail cell fairly easily, and I floated around the complex for a while scouting things out. One place I found was this series of halls filled with nothing but traps (I think this was from one of the Bloodstone modules). I get through it ok, but come out into a middle of a demonic meeting on the other side- and there's plenty of people who can spot me. So a chase ensues, and in my infinite (ok, the PC only had a 10) wisdom I decide "they'll never follow me through that trapped hallway!" and go back into it.

Well, I was right about them not following me. I did, however, forget that one of the first traps was magical in nature, not mechanical. I'd made my saves the first time and had no idea what they did, but now I found out the hard way. The first spell was polymorph, turning me into a small toad (the DM ruled there was enough in the mist to constitute a target for the spell). As you can probably guess, a toad's saving throws (which polymorph did change in 2nd ed) aren't too hot, so I also failed the second effect, which was petrification.

The end result was that the marilith had a stone frog nicknack- me- on her throne for quite some time. I finally persuaded the DM to let me use some special abilities I had, nothing major, just annoyances like minor illusions and the like. But she eventually got tired of it and disintegrated me, allowing me to finally be reincarnated back on the prime.