Killing a character "accidentally" (with approval of player)

[DingleDongus]

Yesterday my friend and fellow DM/player (this campaign has 3 DMs, who are also players, along with 2 that are just players) told me he didn't think his character was reaching his full potential in our campaign (due to reasons I won't go into), and he was seriously considering killing his character. I was fine with killing his character, considering he isn't enjoying D&D as much as he should be, so I told him I would.

The reason this situation is difficult though, is because while the person playing the character wants the death to happen, we also play with two extremely stubborn individuals who do not want him to die, and would also not accept a purposeful death and would try to resurrect him if he died. So now, to kill him the death needs to:
1. Look completely accidental
2. Only put his life at extreme risk, which is difficult because it has to look accidental and he's a spellcaster so he won't charge in to battle
3. Completely destroy his body (so resurrection is more expensive)
4. Not be hilarious. Bonus points if it's actually a cool death


So how should I incorporate all these things into one non-hilarious death? Any ideas are appreciated.

 

[parinho7]

try to resurrect him if he died

all resurrection spells state:

the subject’s soul must be free and willing to return

I'd recommend that you'll raise the difficulty of an already planed encounter so much that the spellcaster won't be the only one who might die.

 

[nomotog]

Might be a stupid question, but why do you have to kill them? His character can just retire.

 

[DingleDongus]

parinho, I'm aware that resurrection spells require the soul to be willing to return, but the people in my group would hassle the player to get resurrected even though his character wouldn't want it; they might even become suspicious when he doesn't oblige, which is something I definitely don't want. nomotog, it's not a stupid question but the reason this is a problem is because my friends don't want his character to leave; I don't think they really care about the whole death aspect.

 

[Dandu]

How about explaining the situation to the other players?

 

[parinho7]

I believe the best thing to do is to discuss it openly as a group and explain that the player just don't have fun playing this character anymore, he could then proceed to retirement and create a new one maybe one level behind than his original character.

Now if the other players don't want to be cooperative I suggest what I previously said. A difficult battle that would also punish the others too! Disintegrate is a spell that might apply to your situation and you can also trap his soul with magic jar.

About killing the player you should know how your party operates in battle and what to do kill the spellcaster. A couple of enemy spellcasters can easily deal with him while a group of decoys keep his teammates busy.

 

[nomotog]

Well if he retires, he is still around. Just not with the party. Why do they want to keep him so badly anyway?

 

[DingleDongus]

Well thanks for the ideas everyone, I think I'll try talking to my friend about convincing our group to allow his character to retire; if he says no I think I'll try that difficult encounter though. I was thinking of having a really beast main boss with insane (for our level) DR so that he can incapacitate our tank then weaken our spellcaster before hitting him with a spell of Disintegrate. The only problem is I'm going to look like a real Richard for disintegrating my best friend, I think I can pull it off though with some not-so-skillful acting.


EDIT: nomotog, for whatever reason my most of group is completely unwilling for any of us to leave, I think it's just because they're used to video game RPGs, where main characters don't die and people never leave the group.

 

[was]

acid works great..whether it's an underground lake, a giant vat in a wizards lab or a convenient black dragon

a good lava pool would work too

 

[Dandu]

EDIT: nomotog, for whatever reason my most of group is completely unwilling for any of us to leave, I think it's just because they're used to video game RPGs, where main characters don't die and people never leave the group.

Tell them to get with the program.