Forked Thread: Most Memorable PC Kill

[Reynard]

Forked from: Most Ignoble PC Death

3.5E. I was the DM. One of the PCs was beaten to death by goblin children wielding small wooden baseball bats. The kind of bat you get on bat day at the ball park. I had one at the table from a Pirates game as a prop.

Same player, same session, new, different PC. An adult goblin bull rushed the PC into a bottomless pit. The goblin had a rope tied around his waist held by his goblin friends. They pulled the bull rush goblin out of the pit as the PC reached terminal velocity.

Same player, same session, new (3rd), different PC. Player wises up and gets another player to string a rope between the two of them as they work their way around the pit to get at the goblins. Rope is tied to both PCs' waists. Goblin archers turn the 2nd PC into a pin cushion. 2nd PC dies and falls into the pit...taking the original player's PC with him.

The player had another (4th) PC rolled up 'just in case.' I don't remember if that one died or not.

Thanks,
Rich

This post got me thinking about those PC deaths that, as DM, warm your heart. Now, I know we're not supposed to enjoy killing PCs (it's just part of the job) and that we're supposed to "play fair" and make sure everyone's having a good time. But sometimes, there's a PC (or a player) so vexing, so irritating and/or so stupid they are just begging for it.

My favorites have to be Kender. Any time anyone has ever played a Kender, they have gone Tassllehoff to the hilt -- without any of the genuine innocence and heartfelt warmth of that character. Every death of every Kender has filled my heart with a little glee, from the one that got sacrificed to the Dark Queen by another PC's Black Robe wizard, to the one (played, ironically enough, by the player of the aformentioned black robed wizard, many years later) who fell from very near the top of the great chain in Xak Tsaroth.

Mmm... dead kender...

 

[Caliber]

I have a friend who had just died, losing a rather high level (and very powerful) Cleric way back when during a run through Lord of the Iron Fortress (this was pre-3.5 days). His new character was going to be another Cleric, perhaps a testament to this particular friend's power gaming tendencies. In particular he was a Master of the Shroud, and planned on summoning all types of nasty shadows/wraiths every fight and Str/level draining every monster to death. Much gloating was tossed about re: the strength of his new character.

So anyway, first session, first fight with the new character. A group of iron predators are attacking the group, but being high level pretty much everyone just flies away and lets the Barbarian beat them down. Unknown to the party, an invisible imp has been studying the group ... for 3 rounds. Suddenly he strikes, landing a death attack against the surprised Cleric. The Fort save vs death comes up and ... 3! The brand new (supposedly uber) character falls dead, to the first attack received, in the first combat, in the first session. We still talk about that guy. He claims I have it out for him; really I was trying to AVOID killing anyone ... after all that bragging I figured the new guy could take it!

 

[Vayden]

Heh. My favorite kill has to be the Githzerai monk - he boosted his AC up as high as he could get it, and I couldn't land a hit for 3 sessions. Then I flanked him with a pair of Assassin demons, landed both sneak attacks, and killed him in one turn. The second attack that ever hit him killed him (all that AC but no HP).

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I was running thia big campaign near the end of 3.x, One of my players had made a character that I didn't aprove of (The concept was a time-traveling Paladin who worships a force greater than all gods in the game whose sence of justice was "everything I do must be for the greater good, therefore I can do no wrong"). I had alrady talked to the player away from the group and within the group about making a character more fitting to the game, but he insisted on playing this one.

The premice of the game is that the BBEG had fractured reality, and at this point the PCs were trying to "mend the seams" as it were. The campaign had taken them all across the world, in the ocian and sky and through time. Now it was the elemental planes' turn.

Through their travels the PCs had come to rely on one of the BBEG's mini BBEG henchmen who decided to offer her services to the group. She was relaying all the groups tactics and travels back to the BBEG as she went, but the PCs remained oblivious. She had been doing this for several in-game months.

The PCs finaly made their way to the elemental plane of fire. They were up against fire elementals, salimanders, Djinn etc. etc.
The time-paladin (who had been acting rather neutral evil for several sessions, but inanely justifying everything he did) had this bright idea to summon a Djinn (through a magic item found in earlier adventuring).

Now, the Djinn that the PCs were fighting had been going last. Not because they had lost initiative, but because they were holding their actions waiting for someone to say the words "I wish..." every round, and when it didn't happen they simply took their turn last.

So this time-paladin summons this Djinn on his turn. The 3 Djinn the group was fighting at the time stopped, looked at each other with a grin, played a game of 1s & 2s (where you show 1 or 2 fingers, and the one who has a different number wins) and the winning Djinn vanished and appeared out of the item.

The PC went ahead and said "I wish to return to a state of existance before this battle began." or somthing along those lines (I can't realy remember the exact wording). So, all 3 Djinn are like "Granted". The first Djinn Sent the time-paladin back to the beginning of the fight with no wounds. The second Djinn Sent the time-paladin back in time through the last campaign chunk (removing the gained xp from that chunk), the third sent the PC back to before the PC began his planar travels (removing more xp for the un-done quests) Then all 3 Djinn charged the PC 5000 xp for their services (as per the wish spell) setting the PC back to level 0, and killing him.

It was very satisfactory. The player threw a hissyfit, ate (litteraly ate) his character sheet and never played with us again. No one in the group missed him.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Heh. My favorite kill has to be the Githzerai monk - he boosted his AC up as high as he could get it, and I couldn't land a hit for 3 sessions. Then I flanked him with a pair of Assassin demons, landed both sneak attacks, and killed him in one turn. The second attack that ever hit him killed him (all that AC but no HP).

I ran a "paper tiger" like that...he took 4 points of damage in 3 months of play...from using an unarmed strike against something that exuded acid.

The campaign ended due to RW pressures, so the DM never got the "satisfaction" of really tagging him.
***

In my case, I was running an "epic" adventure in 1Ed/2Ed in which a campaign PC (one of mine) had been kidnapped, and the kidnappers were using his spouse (again, one of my PCs) to lure the party into a trap.

She got the party into a narrow ravine, and cast Scatterspray to send a shower of Reduced boulders and Itemized logs, oil and fires over the party. The mage at the center of the party had a Contingency spell that caused his Globe of Invulnerability (which she knew about) to flare up in response to the influx of hostile sub-3rd level spells...immediately causing the boulders to expand to full size, dealing great amounts of damage, while the simultaneously negated Item spells caused a rain of fire and oily flammables to turn the pile into a Weber grill. While they were digging themselves out, she added more oil to the fire...

There were at least 2 casualties who spent most of the 1st day of that adventure being dragged around by fellow party members, and nobody got out of the fire-pile with more than 50% of their HP.