Mechanics of Death aka How have you died?

[IanB]

Most recently, we had a druid get killed in one shot from ~5 hp to negative bloodied by one of those skeleton archer guys using their encounter shot.

Prior to that we lost a couple who were down and bleeding when we had to run away from a fight to prevent a TPK.

Prior to that we had a similar situation induced by mad wraiths. Those get my vote for one of the 'worst' low level monsters - a daze aura that you can only shut off with radiant damage sucks if you don't have any divine characters, and if they kill people they make more.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

Only one PC death in recent memory.

Our party was investigating some disappearances, and we finally found the culprits: a group of dopplegangers.

They were ready for us, and the following fight was very chaotic. It went bad for the party, so a PC known only as Stalking Wolf boldly grabbed something important to the dopplegangers. He tgeb fled into some dark corridors, and the baddies followed.

His sacrifice allowed the remaining party to rest.

We ruled he died by negative bloodied value.
Of course, we raised him when we could.

 

[keterys]

That, btw, is an example of the kind of death I like seeing. Voluntarily dying for a good cause

 

[Alaric_Argent]

My wizard Sebastian Argent (One of Alaric's younger brothers BTW), died twice in one day of game time (two sessions IRL). We found our cabin boy and another person held captive and guarded by 3 undead dire wolfhounds. The party showed no signs of leaving the room, so I cast Wall of Fire and Thunderwave to push the hounds into it for further damage. One hound didn't get pushed (failed attqack vs REF), and it rushed up and attacked me. I think it was the ongoing necrotic damage that finally did it, but Seb had left the room to put some distance between him and the hounds, so the healer and the paladin weren't close enough to help.

Later, after they revived Seb with bloodooze remains (I don't know if it was kosher, but it kept me from sitting around all night), he got separated from the other by the top villain and attacked by several undead puppetlike imps. The rest of the party had to spend valuable time getting into the room, and multiple attacks dropped him quickly. The tiefling paladin volunteered himself as the next victim, fended off the imps' fire attacks, fed Seb more bloodooze, and eventually the party killed him.

 

[Mort_Q]

Lost a first level tempest chain fighter to a half-elf dual wielding ranger. Just got unlucky. I had been hit, and I was close to bloodied. He attacked twice, one hit and one miss, dropped me to bloody, which triggered a free attack. Two attacks, both hit, DM rolled big damage, and I went past negative bloodied and dropped dead.

 

[Iron Sky]

We haven't had any deaths in the 1 16-level campaign I've been in, the short 3-level campaign I ran, the 2 adventures of Scales of War we've played, or the new 2-session-old game I'm running now. There are alot of times where it was close though:


In the short game I ran, there was one player 3hp from negative bloodied with 5 ongoing damage and two failed death saves. Someone ran up and dumped a healing potion down his throat right before his turn(when he would have died). Everyone ended the fight bloodied with ongoing damage and no heals left.


In the 16-level game, we've had surprisingly few near-death experiences, partially due to some exceptional rolled stats, having a kick-ass dedicated healing cleric, and having solid group tactics. The few close calls I can remember:

At level 3, the four of us "aggro'd" a whole dungeon at once, taking on 3 encounters at once:

8 level 3 skirmishers(Orcus cultists) + 2 level 3 artillery(filth-thrower zombies).

Everyone was down at some point rolling death-saves, and our DM later told us that that was the first time he'd fudged his rolls running 4e. We told him not to fudge again, so it was also the last time.


Around level 4 - 6(don't remember exactly), we were assaulting a wall built across a pass on our way to destroy a pair of massive towers dedicated to Orcus. There were 4 crossbowmen atop the wall and two of those Hulking Zombies or whatever they're called (the large ones) chained out front. While the ranger, rogue, and cleric were fighting the Hulks (one of which critted the rogue and took him from full health to unconscious in one hit), the warlock decides he's going to teleport on top of the wall to kill the crossbowmen.

Unfortunately for him, turns out the "crossbowmen" were actually "halberders" using their weak ranged attacks until we got up to the wall and they could bust out their good attacks. The warlock was at two failed death saves, lying out of sight behind a parapet before the rest of us dispatched the last of the hulks and approached the wall.

One of the halberdiers picked up the warlock and said he'd kill him if we got any closer(action readied to attack if anyone attacked him). Our cleric, now able to see him, promptly healed the warlock, who, on his turn, teleported back off of the wall to safety.


Much later in the game(level 11 or so), our (newly joined) fighter and paladin turned to stone by the four basilisks we were fighting.


The fight before that, we were ambushed by 9 Dragonspawn who all dropped their encounter ranged Burst firebreath attack on us... 9 encounter-level attacks on each of our 5 PCs...

Due to some poor rolling, most of us were "only" hit by 4-5 attacks, bloodying all of us except the cleric who was hit by 7, taking him near negative bloodied. What the DM had missed (and only noticed after the fight was over) was that the Dragonspawn should have done 1/2 damage on a miss, killing the cleric outright and dropping a few more of us. So, that should have been an instakill - and quite possibly a TPK without the cleric to nova-heal everyone up.


In my new campaign I'm running, they've only had 5 combats so far, 4 of which had at least 1 player unconscious making death saves at one point or another.

In one fight, they stumbled into a natural trap - hallucination gas leaking from the ground - that attacked them every round and made them think all the other players were demons until they saved. Fortunately, the swordmage made a couple saves and got out of the trap area, noticed it wasn't magical, and held his breath on a hunch. Two of the players were on their second death saves before they managed to get them all out. In a side note, in player-versus-player free-for-alls, it's tough to beat a leader. The bard and warlord were the last two standing and the warlord was the last one, landing the "dropping blows" on nearly every other player.


The last fight - trying to disrupt a town full of cultists from opening a rift to the abyss - everyone went unconscious at least once except the swordmage(who was busy counter-ritualling the high cultist to control the rift for most of the fight).

Not terribly surprising that they had a hard time since they, at level 3, were taking on:

40 level 1 minions
1 level 4 controller
1 level 4 soldier
1 level 4 solo artillery
Skill challenge: magical barriers and a rift to the abyss(with the potential of releasing additional minion demons and eventually a Gnarled Demon(level 5 brute) into the fight.

All the bard's heals, every healing potion, and every second wind was used. If it weren't for the bard planting a Battle Standard of Healing at the beginning of the fight, they'd never have made it.

 

[Iron Sky]

I just thought of a few more 4e deaths I've heard about from my buddy in California's FR game. He started with 6 players and now has 13, of whom 8 attend regularly.

He lost one character to drowning in a river. No enemies, just a river and a bunch of failed Athletics checks. If not for the water genesai, it could have been a TPK.


Later, the infernal warlock got killed by the goblin mafia. When he died, he was paid a visit by the Pit Fiend he had sold his soul to. The Pit Fiend said he'd return the warlock to life and release his soul from their pact if he killed the party's cleric. So, the warlock revives, gets the cleric alone and attacks him.

The cleric, being a cleric if Illmater, merely opens his arms and lets himself by martyred. Then the rest of the party shows up and puts the warlock down for good.


In a mini-dungeon I made for them, he had three player deaths on the final fight against 30 goblin minions, a drow sniper, a mind-flayer, and a hobgoblin captain riding a war rhino. They had about 7 players on-hand for the fight.

The warlord charged ahead, was shot by the drow sniper, then critted and impaled, unconscious, to a tree by the hobgoblin captain. Then the goblin's turn came up, making a wall of meat between the rest of the party and the warlord. While the warlord was pinned there, the mind-flayer made his way over to the warlord, looking for a free brain snack.

The cleric, taking a huge pile of OAs that bloodied him, charged through a gap in the goblin lines and attacked the mind flayer, who promptly tentacle-grabbed him and ate his brain. The warlord soon bled out, since the rest of the party was too busy fighting off waves of goblins, trying to keep away from the TWF ranger that kept getting dominated by the mind-flayer, and trying to take down the rhino captain.

Near the end of the fight, the bloodied PC hobgoblin fighter, the dominated TWF ranger, and the elven wizard with 3 hp were the only ones standing, versus the still-hidden, uninjured drow sniper and the bloodied and retreating mind-flayer. The TWF ranger finally made her save, spotted the sniper, stunted, ran up the tree and cut off the brach the sniper was standing on, dropping them both to the ground.

The PC fighter charged through the waterfall to the hidden tunnel the illithid had fled through, where he was promptly mind-blasted, dominated, and brain-snacked. The TWF bloodied the sniper, then was dominated again by the returning illithid.

The wizard managed to finish off the sniper as the TWF ranger charged across the clearing towards her. The illithid used the opportunity to flee. The ranger made her domination save, leaving her bloodied, staring at the wizard. The wizard still had 3 hp and stood pointing a wand at her, ready to blast her if she so much as twitched. Final tally: 3 dead PCs, 2 unconscious and stable PCs, 2 concious and bloodied PCs.

 

[Iron Sky]

Just remembered a couple more near-deaths.

In our 16-level campaign, there were two more near-death fights, each when only 3 of our regular 5 players were there.

One was level 8 or so (that I wasn't there for, but heard about), featuring the cleric, rogue, and warlock vs a red dragon. The cleric was tanking, using all his heals on himself while everyone else threw out as much damage as they could. The cleric ran out of healing surges( ! it was the only fight of the day) and was dropped, the rogue dropped in a round or two after that.

The warlock managed to hit-and-run for a couple rounds and dropped the dragon with the last attack before the dragon would have reached him, then ran up and stabilized the others who were still making death saves.


About level 9 or 10, again there were three of us, this time cleric, rogue, ranger vs a Eye of Flame beholder. It was a 20' high room and our primary ranged attacker (the warlock) wasn't there, so my TWF ranger was using his puny bow attacks. A pair of crits on the cleric (one on the beholder's turn, then again on the start of the cleric's turn - with 10 fire vulnerability) dropped the cleric.

My ranger dragged him behind a pillar and fed him a potion while the rogue distracted the beholder by charging out, leaping, and attacking it, then getting dropped (with 10 fire vulnerability and ongoing damage).

While the cleric ran over to heal the rogue, bloodied and still taking ongoing damage himself, my ranger charged in to draw the beholder's attention, critting and killing it, then being dropped by it's death-explosion.

The cleric got the rogue up, then failed his save and dropped to his ongoing damage. The rogue ran over and stabalized my ranger at a failed death save or two (and still ongoing damage), then we both ran over and poured a potion into the cleric.

Oh, another reason why the party didn't have many people dropped over it's 16-level run: everyone carried at least 5 healing potions at all times and everyone with enough dex has quick draw, for those single minor-action self-heals.


In Scales of War, the three of us (Avenger, Cleric, Sorcerer) picked up the game again just before the fight at the base of the Monestary in Bordrin's Watch. Forgetting that I only had 1 healing surge left on my Avenger, I charged in, caught 1 heal, then was dropped due to lack of surges. The cleric managed to get over and drop a CLW on me, then was dropped himself.

My avenger got up, critted the Orog with an encounter power, then was dropped again, leaving the Sorcerer against 4 orcs and the orog. The DM remembered that the NPC Paladin Khalid was still there and had him wake up while the Sorcerer was taking on the orcs. Both my avenger and the cleric made death saves at two strikes before Khalid stabilized us.

The sorcerer finished off all 5 enemies on his own and wasn't even bloodied when he killed the last one!

Note: We figured out that 3 level 3 PCs were worth roughly the same amount of "encounter monster xp" as 5 level 1 PCs, so just started higher level rather than adjust all the encounters.


Another random note, in all the above campaigns, I've only seen a nat 20 rolled on a death save once and the was by my ranger who had already used his second wind...

 

[Stalker0]

No deaths in my game. My group TPKed once in the other group I play in (that was to area attacks that kept hitting the downed people, and taking them to negative bloodied.

Curious to know how many deaths are in groups with leaders vs without. Right now at 13th level for my group, its amazing how much healing our leader puts out. Takes one of my players from near to death to max hp in no time.

 

[Iron Sky]

I can't imagine having no leaders. The difference between a healing-focused leader (heal-specialized cleric) and a non-healing leader ("healing-specialized" bard) alone is incredible.

I can't imagine have a group with no leader. If I was DMing that group, I'd either put on the kid-gloves or they'd TPK and make a group with a leader...


In my buddy's story above, they had 3 deaths in a party with 3 leaders (cleric, warlord, bard). Problem was, warlord was taken out of the fight in round 2(and bled out later), cleric was insta-killed by the mind-flayer a round or two later, leaving the bard to heal for the rest of the fight until he went down too.