Most ignoble NPC death...

[Nightchilde-2]

We have a thread for the most ignoble PC death, but how about the most ignoble important-to-the-campaign NPC death?

At 3rd level, the PCs had (accidentally) released a lich from where she was imprisoned. This lich became a recurring villain through the whole campaign, as the PCs kept getting swept up in her exploits. By the time the campaign ended, at over a year real time and PCs at 16th level, the lich was epic-level and extremely powerful.

(I should note that, at this point, they had gone on a quest to find her phylactery, which she had hidden inside a vampire servant of hers that was trapped in the Plane of Shadow)

All I would've had to do was win initiative, and she could've most likely taken out at least half the party in the first round.

I lost iniative by 1 point. The character that won had an arrow of undead slaying and hits her AC..by 1 point. Being an epic-level bad mutha, the lich needed to roll anything other than a 1 to save against the arrow. Now, we play online so all rolls are "in the open."

Yep. Rolled a 1 to save against the arrow.

So, a whole year and 13 levels of buildup with a villain the group had grown very much to hate was ended in the first action of the first round of the final encounter of the campaign.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I had an aged dying man on a stair case - he when the players arrived he started whispering " beware the ghost below, he did this to me and... " At this point one of the players started to go off on the NPC

"You fought a ghost by yourself? what are you stupid? and what are you doing alone in a dungeon to begin with? etc, etc, etc." I think it ended with him actually kicking the (now dead) old man "idiot."

He was right I had left a few plot holes, but the old man's dying wisdom (clues) was drowned out by this angry rant. Plus I started giggling at the complete break down of the cliched scene.

---
I also lost a Lich on the plane of shadow to a bard with a lvl 2 scroll of command undead. (save=1)
but at least the guy had a shadow dragon on hand, and eventually he came out of the charm, so the battle was not a complete disappointment.

 

[phloog]

Try to keep this short (and I'll fail) - - The End of the Evil Lord Westyn

After having enough of his evil machinations, the party besieges the Lord's keep, using a summoned Stone Golem. The party's archer was on the roof of a building nearby, taking out guards as the rest tried to enter the castle.

Lord Westyn had however decided to beat feet, and was sneaking out a back exit. His group of guards fails to Move Silently or Hide (rolled like a 1 or a 2 for both) as they sneak off to the woods.

Despite the botched roll, it looks like they'll make it to the woods and safety, when the elf archer suddenly launches the Insane Hail Mary shot at extreme range, rolls a 20, confirms with a 20, and Westyn goes negative and drops. Down but not yet dead.

The group of guards grab his healing potion and are attempting to get it into him as the fast member of the group arrives and rolls another miraculous success - and kicks the bottle out of the way.

The guards keep trying to get potions down the Lord's gullet as arrows (more 19s and 20s) rain down, and as the Stone Golem and the stone giant PC rush to get in on the fun.

The Stone Golem makes it there first, but immediately collapses into rubble (it took a ton of damage in the siege).

The Lord manages to drink a potion, and is lying there prone with a few hit points when the stone giant arrives and manages to use an item that I gave them essentially as a joke.

Boots of Shocking Levitation- - basically boots of levitation that do an additional d6 on a kick attack.

The giant kicks....another critical, and the Lord is negative again but not dead. He has yet to actually get up and use any of his mighty magic or combat ability.

Still surrounded by guards, the giant manages to grab the fallen lord and levitates.

Now the stone giant player has a moment of turmoil. He's not a totally evil giant, and though Westyn must die, he doesn't want to just snap his neck. And he realizes that the guy is not having the best day...

So he comes up with the 'humane' idea of trying to give him WAY too much of this very expensive wine he'd retrieved from the castle...

He didn't really think through the mechanics of giving wine to the unconscious, so while levitating now about 100 feet in the air he starts drowning this near dead old man in alcohol.

Finally, despite initially wanting to be humane, the player just gets frustrated and drops him...he falls just over a hundred feet toward the grasslands....

...but manages to land on the rubble of the stone golem.

So if you ever run into a situation where a villain is shot in the head from a thousand yards, then kicked with an electric boot, levitated into the sky, drowned with wine, then thrown down into a broken stone golem...it's officially called "Westyning" someone.

 

[Janx]

I got 3 stories:

My old PC "Janx" a 2e elf Fighter/Thief/Mage was staying at some evil wizards castle (I forget how I got there). The Wizard was trying to entice me into an alliance of some sort. I suggested we do an elven blood bond with my ritual dagger. The wizard agrees, so I cut my hand with it, then hand him the dagger, and he cuts himself and at that point, I inform the DM that the wizard dies from my Dagger of Wizard Slaying. I had that thing for many real-time years, from when an NPC used it against me (and I subsequently quested to get my Wizard class back), and I was immune to it. The DM wasn't fuming, but it was one of those cases where what he thought would be a much more complex adventure was just beaten because he forgot about an item I had.

Years later, in our 1st 3e game (with the same GM), my half-orc barbarian "Rau" is coming in from the cold (an arctic campaign) into a small inn. Shortly thereafter, the scene develops where a 18th level gnome sorcerer is about to get spell-hostile on a PC (who I haven't actually met). I win initiative, move up, and critical hit the wizard with my two-handed sword. The DM describes him as getting knocked back against the wall 10 feet away, and bouncing back. I point out that he just left my "threatened" square, and I get an Attack of Opportunity.* With which I score a critical hit again, and the gnome dies. I did make friends with the 2 other PCs. Supposedly they contributed somehow to the campaign, but mostly they were there to heal me, or soak up attacks. That was a fun campaign.


*yes, we know that this was a blatant violation of the rules, but the GM didn't know it then...


In the same campaign with "Rau", the party stops at another village* where I head for the pub to get a drink. Before we know it, the village is surrounded by a horde of orcs. The horde is in the neighborhood to take over. My party member Remington gets the idea to go outside and talk me up as the biggest baddest mo-fo ever and challenges the orc leader to a duel for leadership of the tribe. He accepts, and spends like 20 minutes getting buffed from his head cleric. Remington gets me, I stride outside, step into the circle, smoothly unsheathing my level-appropriate magic two-handed sword, win initiative and chop off his head with a solid hit, followed by a double-crit. In this campaign, the GM ruled that if you could re-confirm a crit, it was a double-crit and killed the target. I then strode back into the pub, and Remington yells "All Hail Rau!", with a resounding chorus of my new tribe.

*maybe a month after the start of the campaign, we'd gone up about 10 levels, the arctic is a hostile, but XP-full place.

In short, I've had a number of 1 round victories that thwarted my GM and amazed him at how much he under-estimated me (or my lucky-ness).

I had enough of the double-crits that the GM modded his house-rule to simply increment the multiplier when a crit was reconfirmed. It's been awhile, but I also suspect you had to roll a nat-20 on the first crit, to justify a re-crit check. I had at least 3 instances where I rolled 20-20-20 in that campaign against seriously BBEGs. I like my dice and my dice like me. Except for that steel d20 I got from the Iron Heroes box of stuff (I couldn't hit anything with that thing, more 1's and 2's than I'd ever seen in my life).