Have you ever killed a PC on purpose?

[Piratecat]

Two incidents come to mind. The first one I was only somewhat complicit in.

I was running a 2e game back in about 1990. One of the players was a person who tended to prey on other PCs, steal from the party, hold grudges, fudge rules in his favor, and the like. This guy was bringing in a new PC, and it turned out to be a halfling thief optimized for pocket picking. The player made no real secret that his prime targets were going to be the other PCs. He was greedy and covetous beyond belief.

At the time, the group was in a drow dungeon, and one of the calmest and most reasoned players decided that enough was enough. "I take one of the drow daggers we've found," he whispered to me, "and cast explosive runes on the blade. Then I'll drop it by the wall."

Sure enough, over comes the other PC. "Do I see anything?" he asks. "Well, there's a drow dagger on the--" "I grab it!" he interrupts me. He turns to the other player. "Ha ha, you didn't see it, and now I claim it! Sucker." He turns back to me. "Are there any runes on the blade?"

I keep a straight face. "Yes." As expected, he says, "Then I read them!"

BOOM. -17 hit points.

Later, he looks at me shocked. "Geez, one comment about you pulling your punches, and you kill my character! Sheesh!" I never told him it was the other player; I just smiled at him.

 

[Piratecat]

The other incident happened when a PC turned evil. In the middle of an adventure he betrayed the party and pledged his loyalty to the God of Murder. The God's price for accepting him was the murder of the PC's only real friend. The PC couldn't do it and tried to go back on his word, and his punishment was a crippling and disfiguring disease that stole away his Dex and Cha - his two defining attributes. Doomed to suffer on indefinitely, the PC allowed a celestial NPC to kill him and grant him a semblance of peace.

Of course, once he sold out the group and turned evil the PC was going to be removed from the game one way or another. If he had killed his friend, everyone who had ever met him would have had a simultaneous vision of the character betraying his trust and performing murder. Trying to make a deal with evil Gods after your career has been spent killing their priests is usually a bad idea.

 

[thatdarncat]

well, while I have killed PCs, generally they are more of the "ok, the orc Crits and hits you for *roll roll roll* mm love great axes... that'll be 32 points of damage. What are you at now?" "-17." "oh."

I killed one PC offstage between the Sunless Citidel and the Forge of Fury. The PC, a monk, decided to leave the party, not knowing his GF was a sucubus. One sacrifice later, he came back as a spell stitched tyrant fog zombie with fear and summon undead spells.

As the party traveled back to the Forge from town (returning hostages, getting one of the party raised - the orc Crit above) with 10 of the town guard sent to recover loot, they noticed a familiar figure standing in a field off to one side. In retrospect, I was perhaps a little hard on the PCs. A low level ally of the sucubus cast Obscuring Mist and fled. While the party was busy dealing with the fog and skeletons who'd appeared (summoned) in the middle of the group, (more summoned) ghouls and ghasts started taking out the town guard with them.

I house rule Ghoul and Ghast spawning time to 1d4 rounds instead of 1d4 days, just for the zombie movie feel.

Between the Mist, the screams of terror and the Zombie's fear spells, half the party fled. The other half were slowly killed - often with their brains eaten alive. Was much fun, and the PCs enjoyed the encounter, but for a (mostly) 4th level party with 6 members, it was perhaps a bit much (CR5 IIRC)

 

[the Jester]

The other incident happened when a PC turned evil. In the middle of an adventure he betrayed the party and pledged his loyalty to the God of Murder. The God's price for accepting him was the murder of the PC's only real friend. The PC couldn't do it and tried to go back on his word, and his punishment was a crippling and disfiguring disease that stole away his Dex and Cha - his two defining attributes. Doomed to suffer on indefinitely, the PC allowed a celestial NPC to kill him and grant him a semblance of peace.

Of course, once he sold out the group and turned evil the PC was going to be removed from the game one way or another. If he had killed his friend, everyone who had ever met him would have had a simultaneous vision of the character betraying his trust and performing murder. Trying to make a deal with evil Gods after your career has been spent killing their priests is usually a bad idea.

Alix?

 

[pogre]

Once, 1982.

I was running a game for a bunch of guys older than me. We're having a grand time and this guy's roommate comes home and says he playing. Now, I do not really like this guy, but he is older, and he intimidates me a little. So, I say, you know maybe next time - we're already into the adventure. Everyone concurs - nobody else really likes him either.

He says naw, I'll make a character and jump in. I say no again. He starts rolling dice making a character. Two dungeon rooms later he states he is opening the door with his character who just magically appears.

I roll some dice and announce his character just took a dagger to the head and is dead.

He gets up and starts swearing, but everyone else is laughing their rear ends off. They are all saying to him, "hey, dagger to the head your dead."

Now, whenever I hang out with one of these old buddies and we see somebody who we don't like, or who is rude we say "dagger to the head."

 

[Piratecat]

Alix?

Alix.

 

[Henry]

Yes, I have. The player wanted to try a different character, because he wasn't enjoying the old one - so when the character went down in the middle of a fight, the opponent Coup de Grace'd them.

The fun part was the fact that the player and I were in on the change, but the other players were not. They had some very shocked looks on their faces when I pulled that - it was simultaneously "man that was harsh", combined with sudden awareness of their characters' mortality.

 

[James McMurray]

Its pretty rare for me to kill a character without it being on purpose. If the party's opponents ar the type that kill, and can manage to kill someone, its in their best interests to do so.

Just last night every single duergar blackgaurd that could concentrted on killing the party's cleric, because if they didn't, they would never be able to permanently hurt another character in the party. They dealt enough damage to the samurai to kill him twice but the cleric kept mass healing. That puts a pretty big target on your head (and the cleric's player even said so).

However, I have never killed (or even incapacitated or discomforted) a PC because I didn't like the player or the character. But then again, I've got a great gaming group who all get along great an have for years, so the temptation isn't even there.

 

[WayneLigon]

Yes, once. We were playing Vampire and they are a group of small-timers visiting the insane Malkavian stronghold of Las Vegas. After meeting this one vampire woman, a player announces 'I'm going to hunt her down and [vampire term for drinking the blood of another vampire, thus gaining greater power]'.

The others quietly vanish into the background.

'OK, how are you doing this?'

'I follow her, track her back to her lair, and drain her.'

I look at the NPC stats. I ask for the guy's character sheet, to make sure he doesn't have some funky power I've forgotten about. He doesn't. I look at the NPC stats again.

I rip the PC's character sheet in half and put it in the notebook, then look to the others. 'Bob doesn't show up at dawn. No, he's not back the next night, either.'

 

[Wycen]

I've killed characters on purpose, at least once, but maybe before then. I've also played characters intent on getting killed, for various reason, usually before I leave a game because I can't stand it. I've never "arranged" a death with a player, they usually just change characters if they aren't happy with their current PC.

The one time I know I did it on purpose I was able to cover it up and blame the party. Basically, the party encountered a nabassu demon who challenged them to a staring contest. Nabassu's have a death gaze, so it was a good bet whoever did it was going to die. The ranger picks up a corpse from a dead orc that tried to ambush them and says, "He's our champion".

I asked him to roll a d20 and when it came up low I said, "here add this to your character, everybody roll initiative." Basically he died, but I played it off like he was possessed, when in reality I had him spontaneously reanimate as a ranger-ghoul and the party had to "kill" him.