D&D 5E How do you kill a 10th level character?

[Tormyr]

Shoot, I was not able to kill a PC tonight even when I wanted to. The mind flayer had the cleric dead to rights. The cleric was on fumes and stunned. All the mind flayer had to do was hit with the eat brain attack with advantage. The player was leaving our group because of real life. The mind flayer rolled a 3 and 4. Then the rest of the party came to the cleric's rescue and there were squid bits everywhere.

 

[Nebulous]

technically, reduction of maximum HP to 0... The life drain alone isn't enough, it has to run you out of max HP.

Is there an undead that kills you at zero Strength? I thought wraiths or wights did that.

 

[Nebulous]

Shoot, I was not able to kill a PC tonight even when I wanted to. The mind flayer had the cleric dead to rights. The cleric was on fumes and stunned. All the mind flayer had to do was hit with the eat brain attack with advantage. The player was leaving our group because of real life. The mind flayer rolled a 3 and 4. Then the rest of the party came to the cleric's rescue and there were squid bits everywhere.

Lol. I know the feeling. When you actually DO want to gloriously and spectacularly destroy a PC and it just doesn't work out.

 

[Paraxis]

Is there an undead that kills you at zero Strength? I thought wraiths or wights did that.

Shadows, they do 1d4 strength damage per hit and if you drop to zero strength you die and become a new shadow. Very scary monsters indeed.

 

[Li Shenron]

Normally I would just suppose that all that it takes is to use higher-CR encounters... what would be the problem with that?

 

[TrippyHippy]

How to kill a 10th level character…….hmmmm…..

Throw him in a pit with 3 other 11th Level Characters and tell them all only one can come out alive….

 

[Paraxis]

How to kill a 10th level character…….hmmmm…..

Throw him in a pit with 3 other 11th Level Characters and tell them all only one can come out alive….

It depends on who made those characters, I would put gold on a character I optimize at 10th level vs those 3 other characters if they are made by the roleplay first crowd that wants to make elf fighters with 14 strength scores using longswords, or the I will take linguistic, skilled, and keen mind because my paladin is worldly type characters.

I mean sometimes people talk about making almost three stooges level inept adventurers, just saying Drizzt vs Larry, Moe, and Curly in a pit Drizzt is the one who backflips out leaving a pile of corpses behind.

 

[Rune]

Also, Mouse, for the record, I'd love to have you in a game sometime- even if it was just a one-off or something.

But you have to start at level 1!

 

[Stalker0]

In terms of play style, i agree that there is no one style.

In terms of game design though there might be an assumed style.

So my question would be, when monsters are cr'ed, what style was assumed? Were different styles assumed for different monsters?

 

[TrippyHippy]

It depends on who made those characters, I would put gold on a character I optimize at 10th level vs those 3 other characters if they are made by the roleplay first crowd that wants to make elf fighters with 14 strength scores using longswords, or the I will take linguistic, skilled, and keen mind because my paladin is worldly type characters.

I mean sometimes people talk about making almost three stooges level inept adventurers, just saying Drizzt vs Larry, Moe, and Curly in a pit Drizzt is the one who backflips out leaving a pile of corpses behind.

Ah, well in that case, I would ask you to optimise three Level 11 Characters for me, then throw them all on a pit with another crazily built 10th Level goon I designed myself. I’d make you play the goon!