Cool/Funny deaths

[Caliber]

So Yabuk our Half-Orc Barbarian had been possessed by an evil ghost who sought to release an ancient evil. Most of the party was already down from the ghost's allies ... in fact of 7 characters, only the Half-Orc Barbarian, the Human Favored Soul, and the Riathenor (don't ask) were still up, and all of them critically injured.

They Favored Soul doesn't want to kill the Barbarian, simply knock him (the Barbarian) unconscious so he'll stop beating him (the Favored Soul) to death. The Raithenor can't help because his legs are both broken and him movement is down to 5' steps only.

Let me turn from this story for a second and tell you about the Favored Soul's player. Have you ever met a player that seems to NEVER roll that 20 when he needs it? And always rolls a 1 when he doesn't? This is him in our group.

So back to the fight ... a ghost possessed Barbarian is happily chopping our party's Favored Soul to pieces. Without any way to take the Barbarian down, the Favored Soul decides to cast Inflict Light Wounds on him, hoping he'll knock him unconscious. With baited breath around the table, we watch him roll, wondering whether he'll succeed in subduing the possessed Barbarian. The dice tumbles across the table and lands on ...

... a 20. He crits the Barbarian with an Inflict Light Wounds and kills him outright. Much ribbing was done to both players (and still is! )

 

[MarauderX]

Just had a nifty one...
The party just acquired a 'Book of Evil', and the Paladin of Heironeous volunteers to carry it to keep everyone else safe. They get into a fight with some duergar, and when the paladin is surrounded by a mass of the little buggers, the book speaks to him and says to read a certain page. So... he does. Of course he looses his paladin status, but the druid volunteers to 'atone' him after the fight, as he 'didn't think reading mere words would be so bad, right?' Paladin goes on to summon a demon, cast mass inflict wounds and other vileness during round after round of reading.

So the barbarian/bard/seeker of the song breaths a swath of fire at the paladin, knocking him down to -26 HP. Instead of collapsing into a ashen heap, his flesh is blown away and all that's left is the blackened bones behind the full plate armor... and he kept reading.

The party is now fleeing the scene as the charred ex-paladin, ex-human, ex-living ex-PC fights a city of duergar.

 

[SteelDraco]

This was years ago, just after the 2e Tome of Magic was released. My gaming group was starting a new game, and I decided I wanted to play an elven wild mage. Everything looks fine - roll up a good character, get the background all set up with the DM, everything. My 1st level wild mage with a few days of background material sets off into the world.

We start with a fairly standard game - I believe orcs were harassing the outlying farms. My elf approaches, and confidently fires a magic missile at the lead orc, the first spell he's cast as a PC.

And the spell fizzles into a wild surge.

I roll on the surge table, and the DM tells me I've been polymorphed into chipmunk, and tells me to roll a save to see if I keep my mind.

I roll a 2, and proceed to hop off into the forest, never to be found again.

First and last time I'm playing a wild mage.

 

[toberane]

I've posted this before (a long time ago) but it's still my favorite.

We find a flask containing a blue potion, and my character cavalierly quaffs it. It turns out, it wasn't a potion, but the essence of an ancient evil wizard. I died.

From then on out, the catch phrase for months was "Don't drink the blue guy."

My favorite DM quote in relation to a death came from a friend's game. The thief was trying to steal a critical item from a large demon. She almost got away with it, too, but he noticed her at the last minute. The demon turns and fires off a gawdawfully powerful Cone of Cold.

The DM picked up 2 handfuls of dice, starts to roll them, and says to the thief "Tell me when you're dead."

 

[Hammerhead]

Deep in the lair of an evil wizard, a large seal of green glass rested upon the floor. This seal had the rather unique property of ripping apart the soul of anyone who touched it (20d6 damage). The evil wizard was flying over the seal, while grappling the party's half-dragon with a spine tendril. The foolish half-dragon attempted to break free of the tendril's grappling, succeeded...and then fell 10 ft. onto the seal, killing him.

The party had a heck of a time getting his body back.

Heh. During the same fight, an NPC follower was badly injured and made one last attack against a bad guy before tumbling away...activating Vivid Discharge, which killed her.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I roll on the surge table, and the DM tells me I've been polymorphed into chipmunk, and tells me to roll a save to see if I keep my mind.

I roll a 2, and proceed to hop off into the forest, never to be found again.

First and last time I'm playing a wild mage.

But you didn't actually die, did you...

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

But you didn't actually die, did you...

Well, presumably, he was eaten by a wolf.

But that's a tale for another day!

 

[Herobizkit]

This thread reminds me of the unluckiest character I have ever DM'd, one Sylvas Sylvanus.

Sylvas was a 2e Elven Mage/Bard with the Loremaster kit (I think, or the one that lets you cast spells through your instrument; it was an Elven-only mulitclass option)

The character was designed to be a historian who loved to study books and ancient cultures. Keeping the flavour of the character in mind, I gave the player a list of spells that best helped his profession -- divination, alteration, and abjuration spells. "I mean," said I to the PC, "why would your character ever learn attack spells?"

Little did I know that the other players had made meat-grinders for PC's: a Paladin and a Ftr/Mag/Thf geared towards a dual-wield build.

I ran them through an old module where the PCs descend into a network of caverns and discover a lost civilization of humans in a vaguely Aztec-like temple complex; the humans have lived for so long without light that they have naturally developed darkvision and are all pasty white. "Great Mystra!" exclains Sylvas. "What a trove of knowlege to discover!"

And thus begins a chain of numerous deaths which include:
* Death by crushing - the PCs advance on a hill and set off a boulder trap. Boulders do 10d6 crushing damage to anyone failing a DEX check. The F/M/T makes an easy check off his 18 dex. The clumsy paladin makes his check off a 12 DEX. Sylvas, with a 19 DEX, manages to roll a natural 20. *splat*
* Death by dismemberment - Sylvas manages to find some ancinet scrolls protected by rot grubs. They invade his body, and I decide to allow the PC's to chop off his arm to prevent the grubs from entering his heart and killing him. They do so, but Sylvas botches his System Shock roll to survive the operation.
* Death by falling - the PC's encounter a roc. The roc grabs Sylvas, takes to the air, and sends him plunging to his death, as his warrior PC's fail to strike it time and again to prevent this from happenng.
* Death by mercy - Sylvas dies and is reincarnated as an orc. The F/M/T, a fellow elf, feels that Sylvas could not stand the shame of being reincarnated as a racial enemy and bumps him off.

It is important to note that in that campaign, raise dead and resurrection spells did not exist but reincarnate did.

Also a funny bit of trivia: Sylvas, even with his +1 racial modifier, did not once roll higher than 7 for any attack he made with a longsword. We all knew it was an act of desperation when he ran out of spells and drew that longsword...

 

[Hussar]

One of my fav's occured recently.

While looting the home of a fairly powerful mage who was thankfully not at home, the party decided to grab what they had and leg it. Unfortunately, they weren't quick enough and got caught by the demonic Skiver (Scarred Lands critter - think demonic scorpion) guarding the wizzie's back yard.

They dance with the skiver a for a few rounds then decide that discretion is the better part of valour. However, not quick enough, the party rogue foolishly stays one round too long in the hopes of "finishing off this bag of xp". Skiver attacks. Double crit stinger attack, critical claw attack, hitting claw attack totally about 60ish points of damage... to the wounded rogue with 9 hit points. I described the scene as similar to the death of Bishop in Aliens. Little bits o' thief all over the landscape.

To this day, "Pulling a Trey" is synonomous in my group with spectacular character death.

 

[Michael Morris]

Ah, famous last words fits in nicely with this...