D&D 4E How have PCs died in your 4e games?

[Zustiur]

Lvl1 warlord, munched on by guard drakes in the kobold hall.
Lvl1 Cleric... munched on by guard drakes in KOTS
Lvl5 (?) Paladin, slain by orcs after running off on his own instead of waiting for a short rest like the rest of the party wanted to do.
Level 6 Warlock, slain by demons in Thunderspire Labyrinth

Every single one has been raised (although I admit that the warlord was only raised by DM fiat). I was shocked and rather disappointed when my cleric was raised at level 1.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, recently I DIDN'T get a PC death, despite really, really trying to.

For plot reasons, I really wanted to kill off the eladrin warlord in my party - although he has no wish to rule (or to be responsible... for anything, really), he shows up in a city where he has a stronger claim to the throne than the guy sitting on it. So, said ruler puts his assassin's onto him.

It was an n+3 encounter, with pretty much EVERY attack that possibly could be directed at the warlord was. Couldn't kill him... couldn't even keep him down long enough to coup-de-gras him. Did manage to knock him below 0 HPs three times, but between his own healing, that of the cleric and the palladin's - I just couldn't keep him down long enough for the assassin's to "do the deed". The party didn't even blow through all its heals. That said, the battle certainly had them all on their toes and working equally hard to keep the warlord upright... so, I think it was fun for all involved, even if it didn't advance the plot in the way I had hoped (I wanted to introduce them to the NPC that would raise the warlord from the dead... guess I get to save the party meeting her for if I manage to kill off someone later).

So, yeah... having 2.5 leaders in a 4 man party (the challadin is the .5) makes it really hard to meaningfully challenge the party. I'm going to try doing it through attrition - 5 n+2 encounters with an n+3 at the end... hopefully by the final encounter they'll be sweating bullets. That said, I don't plan on doing that too often - given that we play at most for 4 hrs 2x a month, I like short adventures of 5 encounters max, as it keeps things from dragging out too long.

That said, the near-death experience of the warlord seems to have put the fear of god into him... the very next encounter (an n+2) he blew both his dailies, which I imagine he'll end up regretting...

Anyway, sorry if this is all terribly off topic, but I thought that an account of when a death didn't happen might be helpful to the OP.

 

[surfarcher]

Hey Dr Ruminahui,

To me having the party know they are can die and that you aren't scared to kill them if you think it's appropriate is more important than achieving a kill!

Hopefully some of the other PCs were scared too. So good work!

 

[Abraxas]

Only 1 dead PC since we started playing 4E (we started the week it was released) - and we just hit level 20. The character died when he betrayed the party and the other PCs took him down.

 

[DragonXNIK]

First death in 4E I experienced was our Minotaur TWF Ranger. He refused to invest in heavy armor proficiency by the time he reached level 7, and his AC was something like 16 because of it. He was never missed by any monster attack, and his battle strategy always consisted of 'Get surrounded as much as possible' so he could use dire wolverine strike. However, I managed to keep him alive for most of our career as the party leader (Eladrin Taclord/MC Wizard). He went down in the very beginning of a DM forewarned 'extremely extended encounter', where no short rests were allowed between small encounters as we worked our way up a spiral where undead would be spawned every couple rounds.

The first fight in this encounter was a number of weak skeletons along with a Dragon Skeleton (not a dracolich mind you). Mr. Ranger went down on the Dragon's turn, and the Dragon used fearful presence with an action point, stunning the other two party members. Since he went down earlier in the fight because of his asinine tactics against the weak skeletons, he had failed one death save, and he promptly flubbed the next two, his turn being right after the dragon's. Nothing me or the pally could do to help him.

He actually ended up getting resurrected at the very end of this giant encounter by the Raven Queen, to end the life of the devil at the top of the stairs. He promptly wasted this second chance, by not resisting temptation in a roleplayed illusion triggered by the Devil's (temporary) defeat. That illusion actually killed our party rogue and two NPCs as well, burning them to cinders where they stood as they gave into temptation. Later, we could only raise the rogue, as the raven queen did not forgive Mr. Ranger, and the two NPCs were ready to pass on. These last deaths were not really 4E's fault by any stretch, all DM fiat, but it was very fair if their illusions were anything like mine.

 

[Henry]

Only one that I've seen:

I recreated the Ghoul encounter from Against the Slavelords A1; the level 4 rogue entered a room, was surrounded by a pack of ghouls, they immobilized him, and thanks to the "added-damage-when-immobilized" ability had him dead and dismembered in the first round of combat! The rest of the party blew up a bunch of encounters and dailies to wipe out the ghouls as fast as possible, having learned their lesson.

 

[Thanlis]

I've had a couple of LFR kills. I picked off a bard and a rogue, both around level 6, in an Impiltur module -- lots of demons, and the party failed to focus fire. It was somewhat surprising in that it was towards the end of a long fight; normally I expect deaths to come early when the monsters are burning their encounter powers and so on. But nope, I wore these guys down. Lack of focus fire, mostly.

I also killed a level 5 assassin once when he made the critical mistake of winning initiative and charging a pack of gnolls. Yeah, don't do that.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I recall having three character deaths in 4e, though I'm certain there have been others as well. That, of course, doesn't count those times when I've noticed the DM pulling his punches, trying pointedly not to kill us.

In the most recent instance, my monk and the rest of the party attacked a pair of guard towers. While we were able to use stealth to avoid early detection (incredibly sneaky party), we found ourselves quite pressed in battle against cannibalistic kenku archers and swordsmen (reskinned guard drakes?). My monk was knocked unconscious by a hail of arrows and a swordsman took him out before he could be healed (DM forgot to CDG, but it didn't matter). While the DM doesn't usually use CDG tactics, the fact that this tribe of Kenku go out of their way to do so has had us terrified of them since we learned of it.

The other two times were while trying out a gestalt system (PCs the equivalent of elite creatures, with double hp and such), so it was rather surprising that they died.

The first time was against a giant crab or crayfish, I don't recall which. It did a double attack, hit twice, and destroyed that character.

The other time I was at low hp, and all of our healing short of potions had been expended. I was hit and pushed into a pit, which knocked my character unconscious. The rest of the party tried to reach me, but I failed three death saves, one right after the other (two nat 1's in a row no less!). They reached my corpse just after I failed my last save.

 

[Smoke Jaguar]

And it is done... My first PC was killed last night.

He was a pretty good sport and we all laughed. It was right at the end of the night. The party set off the water filling room trap that comes out of the giant face on the wall. There were a couple rat swarms in the room. 1 PC was working on the face, 1 PC at one of the doors, and 3 PC's were trying to kill the rat swarms. The room fill up entirely so everybody was underwater. One PC's had failed his swim check so he had been underwater for one more round than everybody else. The door had been cracked open and water was pouring out. He had one last swim check to make to swim up for air because not all the water had gone out. On his roll he threw a natural 1. We all agreed that would be the death of him.

This is where my question. The book says that they have 3 chances on saving throws. In PH1, it states: lower than 10, you slip one step closer; 10-19, no change; 20 or higher, spend a healing surge (basically live and be knocked out). It doesn't say what state you are supposed to add with the roll.

On his third attempt at a saving throw, he rolled a natural 1 again. I looked at him straight faced and simply said, "You just died..." I think that we were all in a little shock because we didn't think it would happen.

(Fun tid bit, for those that have read my troubles about big brother and little brother. This was big brother that died. As a matter of fact, younger brother teleported into the middle of a bunch of hobgoblins and they reduced him to zero but he made his saving throws. Almost two deaths in one night. And NO I wasn't picking on them.)

 

[jimmifett]

My First 4e death was the first Gameday wizard pre-gen. Fey stepped onto a raised area, wanting to push an evil wizard off so the others could get him. Couldn't remember the Bull rush rules at the time and instead did a magic missle. I should have spoken up and asked how to do it. Instead, the evil wizard bull rushes ME, and shoves me off, fall damage, and then surrounded and pounced by skeletons, leading to a near TPK, my wife's rogue managed to run away.

As a DM, I essentially TPK'd a party in LFR. Was running the mod with the Ugly Calisham girl and all the were creatures. In the busted up courtyard, first combat, the party didn't focus fire very well, and I took advantage of staying up high and using range attacks while the guys on the ground were hitting hard and focusing. As the party started dropping, the cleric was crawling around (knocked prone and very hurt) and doing heal checks to get ppl back up, just so i could knock them back down. After some attrition, it was just 2 party members left, one a single hit from falling again, and the crawling cleric whoe was at 1/4 hp, versus my ranged guy making a fighting retreat. The ranged guy still had the upper hand, seperating the cleric and the other guy with distance. Not wanting to kill the party in the very first combat, I had the city watch show up due to the commotion and finish the fight. Most of the party were on thier last death save attempt and probably would have failed the next round. DM mercy is the only thing to save them. Of course, one player RPing a jerky character derailed the rest of the mod and they failed anyway.

Another game, while not a kill, I did an impressive amount of damage to a monk and the rest of the party. I was currently experiencing a severe allergic reaction to something and through out the game i was starting to puff up all over, but that never stops a dedicated DM. Instead, during the first combat, I managed to channel the necrotic energy of my body fighting itself and feed it into 9 criticals during the first encounter, in 30 minutes, 7 of them against the same player (monk). Just about every single roll I made hit the players, the entire evening, and either crit, or rolled max damage the hard way (or a few points shy of max). There was a ton of healing on the table and healing surges were gobbled up like candy. My wife started stealing my death dealing d20s so the party could survive, but even my crappy-rolling d20 was rolling high. After the game ending at midnight, I went to the hospital by 1am before the allergic reaction finished spreading across my chest, killing the DM. I forget if the next game was the day after or the day after that, but i couldn't roll a hit on anything to save my life, as the necrotic energy had been depleted by modern medicine

The monk's player still vows revenge when she DMs