D&D 5E First 5E PC Deaths

[Tony Vargas]

So give me your tales of your first 5E PC deaths.

The first Next Playtest death at my table has kinda eclipsed the many subsequent ones: A player had lovingly created this noble, had names for her three followers and everything, spent hours on it, was very excited. She was a noble thief so she had good initiative. A little roleplaying, a plot hook, and it's all aboard the module. First combat is a sudden-but-inevitable-betrayal. Initiative is rolled, bad guy wins, noble thief comes in 2nd (yay! will get to SA some of the mooks). An attack, a maximum damage roll, and the thief is reduced into negatives, 1 hp away from death, in fact. On her turn, before anyone can help her, she fails her death save, and, under the then-current playtest rules, takes that 1 hp, and dies.
Hours to build, moments to die.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The first Next Playtest death at my table has kinda eclipsed the many subsequent ones: A player had lovingly created this noble, had names for her three followers and everything, spent hours on it, was very excited. She was a noble thief so she had good initiative. A little roleplaying, a plot hook, and it's all aboard the module. First combat is a sudden-but-inevitable-betrayal. Initiative is rolled, bad guy wins, noble thief comes in 2nd (yay! will get to SA some of the mooks). An attack, a maximum damage roll, and the thief is reduced into negatives, 1 hp away from death, in fact. On her turn, before anyone can help her, she fails her death save, and, under the then-current playtest rules, takes that 1 hp, and dies.
Hours to build, moments to die.

Ouch.

I kind of felt like that when my Rogue failed 3 death saves in 1 round due to a fire elemental moving through my square (1 auto failed save) and then rolling a nat 1 for a death save immediately after when it was my initiative.

Thankfully the DM allowed me to be saved if someone in the party could stabilize me before the end of the round (which the Cleric was able to do).

 

[Zardnaar]

How many sessions was that in?

Obviously the number of character deaths depends on how hard your DM is pushing and how many risks your PCs are taking. For example, if your DM is running you through Tomb of Horrors I could imagine a lot more deaths than if you were running some sort of AP or level-appropriate adventures.

Idk it was school holidays so the sessions could be long. Our record was 28 hours in a 2E game. The Pakadin rode his warhorse intothe underdark with a continual lt stone.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

In LMoP my group got TPK at the final boss. They tried very hard to get a surprise attack, but one person rolled bad stealth and when they noticed the additional monsters hidden in the room, the wizard felt like they can't win the battle and just went suicidal. The group was consistently dropping unconscious, then got healing by a healing potion and then drop unconscious again. Eventually they ran out of resources and died. Well actually the boss left them alive and tried to get all information he can get from them first, but then he killed them anyway.

 

[corwyn77]

I'm sure there were numerous deaths when I playtested Next but I can't recall them off the top of my head.

My most recent kills were a form of suicide. The serial killer rogue and the evil Paladin decided to take on a little old lady that they had already suspected was more than she let on, without the aid of the party, at 4th level. Turns out she was a Night Hag. It went poorly. After she beat down the paladin, the rogue had the option to flee 90 feet and I would have let him go. Instead he chose to hide, shoot, then flee a mere 30 feet. She strode to her door and magic missiled him as a parting shot, killing him. Well, she knocked him out and then turned both of them into dinner.

Most recently, in a game I'm playing in, we ran into a Banshee. Most of the party spent most of the fight feared. Once we took her down, our cleric, was unconscious and had failed one death save. The dm said for everyone (three I think) that was still unconscious to make one more death save and then everyone would be stabilized. The cleric, of course, rolled a 1.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

We had most of the party die. They ended up ..somewhere else, where they met the (living) warlock's patron (or something claiming to be/allied with), who sent them back to mortal realm with a message for the warlock, inscribed upon their souls. They are currently looking for a way to reunite their bodies and spirit before they decay into fetid pools of slime.

Patrons. Can they not simply send a letter?

 

[Bitbrain]

My half-elf sorcerer was killed at 1st level on his very first session.
Don't worry, he got better.

THE STORY
It was the warlock's fault. Dude cast darkness over the party instead of the horde of kobolds, so the bard couldn't find the door to close it.
Next thing we know, we're all in the Abyss, and Lolth offers to resurrect us in exchange for the quarter-Drow bard's soul.
So what does the Tiefling War Cleric do to ensure the safety of the bard's soul?
HE COUNTER-OFFERS TO KNOCK UP THE SPIDER QUEEN.
Lolth bursts out laughing, declares that the Tiefling has "Spunk", and resurrects us for a tenth of the Bard's soul.
We return to the scene of battle, and kill those stupid kobolds.

Since then, whenever we start a new campaign with new characters, our first opponents are always Kobolds, and all we take special pleasure in sending them to the afterlife.

 

[CydKnight]

We were continuing after Lost Mine of Phandelver with Glasstaff's Revenge from the DM's Guild. The party did several ill advised things that night but two in particular led to one's demise and nearly another's.

After entering the town already under siege and partially burning, they had just fought off a small part of Glasstaff's henchmen who had set up an ambush near the main entrance to the town. The party managed to fight off the ambush but took some damage. For some inexplicable reason, they decided to split up the party without taking a short rest or healing. The Paladin and Wizard entered the center of town to find themselves stairing down 9 henchmen and Glasstaff himself. The Paladin led the round by doing a Dash action and bolting the way he came. The Wizard, after seeing this and either not realizing the disparity in numbers or not caring, casts Chromatic Orb on Glasstaff perhaps assuming he could do enough damage to put him down. Though the spell was successful it did not put the Mage down. The PC did use his 30 feet of movement afterward to move back in the direction he came but Glasstaff hit him with a fireball powerful enough to set him below zero since he didn't heal before this encounter. The henchmen then pummeled him to unrecoverable death.

 

[jimmytheccomic]

I'm the DM- the first 5e death we had was at level 5. Due to some character decisions, the rogue had a solo encounter against a Revenant. He was paralyzed, dropped in two hits, then whaled on when he was down.

Second death was due to a how nasty multi-attack can be. First hit knocked the player to 0, second hit caused the two failed death saves. Player went next, and failed the third. It happened so fast!

Third death was during a fight with an adult White Dragon- most of the players didn't have ranged attacks, but the archer character was really laying it down. Dragon dropped him with her breath, and used the legendary to whale on him with her tail attacks til he was dead.

Fourth "Death" was a petrification by a Gorgon, with no resources to fix it.

 

[jasper]

Ragnar the Red 8th barbarian done in by his tooting his own horn.
Ok don't remember the module. But between lack of healers. Not using his short rest die. Saw a dragon and blew his horn of blasting. Well that sucked. He was left with 1 hit pt at the bottom of round. The other two pcs bravely ran away before the dragon could go.
If you deaths from my AL gaming, I generally do a write up in the AL forum.