Most common cause of PC deaths

[Starglim]

Coup de grace and various death touch effects.

 

[Azul]

Loss of hit points is the most common cause of death overall in our games. Usually this occurs because of unanticipated factors, such as a monster being tougher than expected, criticals or a PC getting cut off and surrounded by baddies.

Critical hits and the deadly pairing of hp damage with Con damage (i.e. max hp collapse due to Con loss and suddenly those relatively minor wounds become fatal) have claimed more PCs than anything else.

Most of our games have been low to mid level. At higher levels, I expect save or die effects to play a greater role in player mortality.

 

[Ketjak]

Me.

 

[Lord Morte]

Other: Failing the Fortitude save when being de-petrified with stone to flesh. Massive amounts of hp damage comes second.

 

[Wombat]

Generally they die the standard D&D way -- slow, slow whittling. Negative HP is the way most of them lose it.

Once in a while it is something else, but such occassions tend to be rare.

 

[Storyteller01]

Other players.

 

[devilbat]

Loss of hit points is what kills the majority of characters in my game. But stupidity leads to loss of hit points.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Coup ds gras - needs its own catagory -
usually following a paralization effect/spell

 

[kenobi65]

Of all the PC deaths I've seen (or inflicted) over the years, 2 were due to mind flayer brain-extraction, 1 was due to death touch (Death Domain granted power), and every other one (and there's at least 20 in that list) was due to hitting the old -10.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Other players.

Even in a high level campaign, my experiences show that HP loss is still the most common means of death. My players seem to invest in items of death ward as soon as death effects become common enough, which also hinders energy drains. And heros' feast means that poisons (main source of ability damage) arn't a problem either. And I rarely coup de grace, although recently when a PC was dominated, he tried to coup de grace the ranger.