Have you ever killed a player by mistake?

[Count Arioch the 28t]

I have accidentally killed a player twice. Well, I guess it was less accidental, more unexpected.

The monk took an unlucky critical hit one time and got brought to -10 exaclty. But then again, he shouldn't have tried to stand and full attack an ogre with an oversized mercurial greatsword.

A different time, I threw in a gelatinous cube against two 8th level characters, as a joke. It brought one down to -1, and the other down to about half HP before they managed to kill it.

 

[Jonny Nexus]

I have accidentally killed a player twice. Well, I guess it was less accidental, more unexpected.

Hmm... Would that be the insansity defence you're going for there?

The monk took an unlucky critical hit one time and got brought to -10 exaclty. But then again, he shouldn't have tried to stand and full attack an ogre with an oversized mercurial greatsword.

A different time, I threw in a gelatinous cube against two 8th level characters, as a joke. It brought one down to -1, and the other down to about half HP before they managed to kill it.

Yeap, clearly barking. The poor man's clearly finding it hard to distinguish between reality and the game. I can just imagine the police breaking down the door to his apartment, and finding him standing amid the blood-stained remains of two dead roleplayers saying, "It's not my fault, he was a monk, he attacked me... I rolled a critical."

 

[MarauderX]

By accidental I assume you mean traps/critters/etc to be dangerous, but not going out of my way to kill the PC. If that's the case, I gotta say: all the time. This is usually how PCs die IMCs, not from things that are deliberately trying to get them. Often, the victim ends up being a PC that split away from the group and is suddenly aware of the stupidity of marching headlong into the next fray just to get the max use of a buff spell. The traps & critters are there no matter who goes first and sometimes they happen to be the only ones charging into the next encounter while the rest of the PCs are being healed or assessing the area they are in. So many fellow players and DMs refer to this as a Stupidity Death; I am very much inclined to agree. SDs are in their own catagory - "the DM didn't kill your PC, you did" - and should not be counted against even a RBDM.

That being said, PCs still die IMC. Dice are dice, and even I can't save PCs sometimes, not even with a Luck Point system incorporated.

 

[Count Arioch the 28t]

Hmm... Would that be the insansity defence you're going for there?



Yeap, clearly barking. The poor man's clearly finding it hard to distinguish between reality and the game. I can just imagine the police breaking down the door to his apartment, and finding him standing amid the blood-stained remains of two dead roleplayers saying, "It's not my fault, he was a monk, he attacked me... I rolled a critical."

Oh no! A gnome!

(Whips out his greataxe and starts running for Johnny)

 

[TroyXavier]

I did back in second edition. It didn't seem like it was going to happen, but he actually managed to fall off a mountain the group was climbing. Kersplat.

 

[Rhialto]

Well, it was a dark evening, and Gordon still hadn't rolled up his character. I was getting very annoyed, and when he broke out the Magic cards for the fifteenth time my temper just broke, and I took up my trusty axe...

And that is all that my lawyer has advised me to say...

 

[Zelgadas]

Hmmm . . . I can't remember ever having killed a PC, but I can share a story about my PC being killed. He lasted a remarkably short period of time in the campaign (maybe an hour), and died, basically, because he was a hot-head. He and his compatriots were on their way back to town after raiding the hideout of some nefarious group or another, when they got waylaid by bandits. Now, my character had a penchant for using a particular kind of polearm, one that was fairly uncommon (I forget the name of said weapon). The bandit leader decided that she wanted it. Grudgingly, I handed it over, but after having done so, I decided that my character would be pretty miffed about this. In a moment of sheer hot-headed stupidity, I charged the bandit leader, weaponless, intent on getting my weapon back. I was level 1. The bandit was not. I had no weapon. The bandit had a polearm, and was able to brace it for a charge. Thus, I was impailed by my own weapon. Sucks to be me.

 

[green slime]

Hmmm . . . I can't remember ever having killed a PC, but I can share a story about my PC being killed. He lasted a remarkably short period of time in the campaign (maybe an hour), and died, basically, because he was a hot-head. He and his compatriots were on their way back to town after raiding the hideout of some nefarious group or another, when they got waylaid by bandits. Now, my character had a penchant for using a particular kind of polearm, one that was fairly uncommon (I forget the name of said weapon). The bandit leader decided that she wanted it. Grudgingly, I handed it over, but after having done so, I decided that my character would be pretty miffed about this. In a moment of sheer hot-headed stupidity, I charged the bandit leader, weaponless, intent on getting my weapon back. I was level 1. The bandit was not. I had no weapon. The bandit had a polearm, and was able to brace it for a charge. Thus, I was impailed by my own weapon. Sucks to be me.

Another complete lunatic. He can't remember having killed a Police Constable, but he killed his Police Constable? Bandits? Polearms? The PC wasn't killed, he impaled himself? *911* another asylum seeker awaits your services

uhhhh, yeah sure, sucks to be you

 

[Aristotle]

Anyone who has run games long enough has done this once or twice. Some don't even realize they've done it...

I killed off an entire party in a WoD game one night. A couple of weeks later the player of one of the characters came to me and reminded me of an ability of his character (I can't remember if it was a merit or a gift or what) that would have technically allowed him to survive the wounds. Since we had already began a game using new characters we just continued to use the new ones, but later I ran a game that took place in the same "universe" as my other campaigns but many years after the original. I allowed that player to play a revamped version of the character who had died.

More recently I ran "Forge of Fury" for my group, and one of the players fell from a rope bridge early in the game. I gave another character a chance to "catch" the falling character, but the rolls to do so failed. The character fell and died. A half hour later one of the other players was writing down some loot on his character sheet when he looked up at me and said "I have a scroll of feather fall". He could have saved the other character, but he never looked at his equipment. So I guess that one isn't my fault... but I felt bad that such a cool character had died in such an insignificant accident.

 

[Liolel]

Now in the game I've been running theres been no deaths, and that includes both players, and player characters.

But in a game I play in I was pretty sure that the one player character death in the game wasn't intended. The party was attacked at night by some brown bears, and the 4th level monk in the party charged at one of the bears and engaged it in single combat because the party was busy with the other bear. Also the ranger in the party was increadably foolish and sent his wolf animal compainion chasing after a brown bear. You can guess how that one went.