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

[Stalker0]

Over 50 characters dead since the start of 4e.

I'm hardly a "killer DM".

Sorry my friend. You may believe you are a fluffy DM with a merciful soul, but look at the stats and look into your heart.

You are really a dark evil DM who delights in the destruction of his players. Its unsettling at first I know, but everything is alright. Just step...over here, into the darkness. Join us...everything will be just fine...just fine.

 

[Ktulu]

1st 4e mini-campaign:
The first death came on the first session from a group of wolves that ganged up on the level 1 ranger due to a higher initiative. A crit, followed by a couple other attacks left the ranger unconscious on the ground. The party killed the wolves, but the ranger died. I don't recall his name.

Second session the cleric was blasted in round one from a crit with a fire beetle. He burned to a crisp, along with the warlock. Only the rogue and fighter survived, so we mulligan'd.

Third session, the party was TPK'd by a group of goblins in an ice-cave because the rogue kept trying to hide, the wizard was blind so he hid until he saved, and no one understood fighter marks.

We scrapped that game after that, and did some more reading.


Fall of the Rankan Empire campaign
Session 14 or 15; Raylos, a paladin, sacrificed himself to break a powerful ritual and kill the caster--the evil warlord Rathamon. He was the first death in this ongoing campaign, and still one of the most memorable.

Session 29 - TPK - The party was outmatched due to a misunderstanding of their enemy forces and chose to continue fighting, despite the looming threat of death.

Interim games
In between the TPK and the return to my ongoing campaign, we played a number of different mini-campaigns. The deaths are as follows:

Marius - (Dragon Crusades Campaign) damphyr fighter, died in a fight with some dragonborn. He was bleeding out and our "healer" the artificer had nothing to help him with and was focusing entirely on fighting the enemy, rather than helping the party.

Elyas - In a game based on the Sundered Skies; an elven swordmage was killed defending and isle from a hunger demon. They only won because he stood strong to the last hit point.

Jenny and Zanne - warlock and warlord; were killed by the paladin Rohm after their mission was completed. They had ties to the infernal enemies of the church and Rohm had to slay them (his best friend in Zanne, and adopted daughter in Jenny).


Return to Rankan game: Rise of Zehir
Session 46: Anthony Garibaldi - Son of the previous character, Titus Garibaldi (killed in the above TPK), called to finish what his father started. Unfortunately, to gain the information they required to defeat Zehir, Anthony had to offer up his body as payment to a lich.



Near as I can tell, that's every death during our run of 4e.

 

[Crazy_Dragon]

So we are in the Keep in KotS and we rescue Splug, so we come to a split and the Barbarian says split up gang! I roll a 20 on a diplo check to convince him . So we go and later everyone is fighting, with me at the end of the hall way, out of nowhere comes an orc, and I get a solid crack on the head by the first shot, luckily I'm a bloodbond seeker so I shift as minor and then use a move action to get away and shot him with grappling shot(?) so he's slowed. So anyways I kill him and get to the party, unfortunately the barbarian is out of javelins so he uses my PC as a heavy thrown weapon (very not cool!) by rolling 20 on the grapple and throwning... So my character hits the Big Bad and deals max damage (d8 I think). So my character is one point away from death and I make 2 fails, and guess who shows up? well he uses my PC as a club and deals max damage, now my DM is like "WTFH?" and my character dies...

 

[Jack99]

I have killed a lot of characters. How?

By not pulling my punches - ever, not even when it starts looking bleak for my players.

 

[Gort]

I have killed a lot of characters. How?

By not pulling my punches - ever, not even when it starts looking bleak for my players.

But is that necessarily a good thing? I personally would prefer it if my players didn't have characters they've spent months developing killed outright and taken away from them.

You probably use raise dead in your game, though, I guess. I find that that ritual adds more problems thematically than it solves mechanically.

 

[ourchair]

I hear a lot about how 4e characters are so hard to kill. Aside from the mishaps like the TPK of Irontooth et al, the attitude seems to be you can't kill 'em.

This month I saw two PCs die. One of which I, the DM, just killed. The first PC I ever killed, too.

The first fatality was an 8th level barbarian who took several CDGes by gricks. That barbarian was hard to kill, but he finally ate it.

The second, however... a 2nd level Warlord was butchered. An Elite attacked him, brought him down to 2 HP, then popped an AP and used another attack. And did 24 points of damage. He did not pass go, did not make death saves, just went straight to death.

How about you?

P.S. Amusingly the SAME PLAYER played both characters in different campaigns. He's very amused that he's lost two characters in the last month.

I think that's a case of a DM not being vicious enough. Not that I encourage it, mind you.

But while PCs are very very resilient (3 successes before 3 failures before being healed to die) I think that a death is possible simply when the DM really wants it to happen.

Just pummel one character, and then coop de graysee her over and over. In a sense, it's less that PCs are hard to kill and more that DMs are less likely to 'accidentally' kill them.

 

[keterys]

I'm still at 0 deaths witnessed or administered, out of several hundred battles. I've missed TPKing three groups due to a death save bringing someone back at a key moment, though, and missed a CdG death by about 2 points...

And I don't think my players would think of me as a DM that pulls punches on encounter design (nor would they call me a killer DM - I don't go out of my way to hit people that are down for example). I also occasionally seed in stuff, like a potion of vitality in Heroic, so they have a couple of 'outs' for when things get grim.

 

[keterys]

Dwarf runepriest ate a forbidden fruit in the Undertemple of the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (...you'll know what I mean if you've read the module). Rather than requiring a 1e System Shock Survival roll, I treated it as rolling on the remove affliction table vs a 15th level effect, using the PC's Endurance skill. Dwarf had +14 Endurance (so rolled on the table at net -1 modifier). Rolled a natural 1. Instant Death.

And if it had been the elf sorcerer rolling, might have been a 50/50 chance of death. Harsh

Eladrin fighter got caught in the death blast of two oblivion wraiths [Open Grave]... with no surges left. Negative Bloodied.

They actually do very little damage, so I'm guessing you use the (relatively common) house rule that losing a surge when you have 0 deals a healing surge worth of damage... that's... maybe excessively rude when something deals 2 surges worth of damage

1st level human ranger on max hp steps into a cellar. Three poisonscale slitherer lizardfolk [MM2] lurk in the shadows. They win initiative and throw three javelins, two at the ranger and one at the PC behind him. Both javelins hit the ranger, and both poison attacks also hit. No crits, but 6d6+12 damage... Negative Bloodied.

Ouch. That's some bad luck - 3d6+6 on the first hit not possible to drop him. You see the same swinginess with some creatures like deathjump spiders.

PC is slowly reduced in hp by [creatures] and eventually collapses unconscious... Approximately a third of all our PC deaths occur this way... with another third being a TPK variation on the above (i.e. one PC dies in this fashion, and then the rest quickly follow).

We almost never play it that way - my players are pretty attentive about getting people back up. Even if it means someone delaying until after ongoing has triggered on a down person with no surges, so they can feed him a potion to get him to 1 hp and drag him out of an aura (actually happened).

 

[Storminator]

Near TPK - all but the wizard down, and the wizard can't stabilize everyone (5 down PCs and 1 down NPC) before the warlock dies of failed Death Saves.

Both the rogue and the swordmage are at 2 failed Death Saves and my cleric is the only one nearby. I save the rogue and the swordmage fails his save.

Entire party trapped behind the locked door when the Cloudkill trap goes off. 3 PCs force the door open while the weaker ones (no help with the door) run. Both the wizard and the rogue go negative while still in the effect. My cleric heals the rogue, who drags the wizard - 1 square from safety. Negative bloodied.

Warlord gets pushed by the stone constructs into the pit of acid. Constructs then pound on him while acid eats away his flesh. Negative bloodied.

Sorcerer with few hp, no surges, and the worst defenses in the party flies over the front line of the enemies into the back line. Blows some people up, then gets swarmed. Negative bloodied.

PS

 

[Jack99]

But is that necessarily a good thing? I personally would prefer it if my players didn't have characters they've spent months developing killed outright and taken away from them.

You probably use raise dead in your game, though, I guess. I find that that ritual adds more problems thematically than it solves mechanically.

I never meant to imply that it was a good thing. If I had my way, my players would almost, if never die. But they like it rough, which is what they get. Also, I roll all rolls in the open, because that it was both I and my players prefer.

As for Raise Dead, I have run a 4e campaign with RAW, I have run one where there is no Raise Dead, and one where each character was limited to 1 Raise during the campaign. Now we are back to (more or less) RAW.