D&D General Most predictable character death

[J-H]

The game I'm am a player in (IRL) had this happen last night. We're trying to catch a thief who ran from one city to another, and got the police to set up a roadblock just outside the town we think the thief was headed to. This setting is kind of steampunk-1920s, so there are cars and guns. Our plan was to watch for anyone who spotted the roadblock and made a U-turn, and we positioned ourselves accordingly.

We see a car with someone matching the description of the thief go by, hit the roadblock, people pop out, kill 2 cops, then turn around and head back towards our ambush position. We have a new player on her 3rd session of D&D ever. Abbreviated discussion:

DM: The car is heading towards you and about 30 or 40 miles an hour. You have two rounds before it reaches you. What do you do?
NP: "Can I jump on the car?"
DM: "Umm, you can, but you're jumping on a big heavy steel box that's coming at you at 40+ miles an hour at that point. If you try and fail, it will probably kill you."
NP: "Okay! I'll try it. I start running. That helps, right?"
Brief discussion of running helping with jump height/distances follow. I give her fighter Bardic Inspiration
DM: "Why shouldn't I give you disadvantage on jumping onto a moving car driving towards you?"
Me: "Um, it's D&D?"
2 rounds pass.
DM: "Ok, make an athletics or acrobatics check. I have the DC in my head for this, and it's not easy."
NP: "----. 14."
DM: You still have the Bardic Inspiration d6. You need to roll a 6.
NP: "3."

She hits the car, flips over the hood, and goes under the back wheel, taking 20d6 damage while having 18 hp, and dies.
The driver rolls a 4 on her dex save and crashes the car after unexpectedly having someone jump on and then go under her back wheel.

Ambush successful!

I think we all knew this was probably going to happen. But it was cool!

The car wasn't our quarry, but was smuggling a lot of guns and ammo to rebels against the Vaguely Evil Empire we're currently working for, so we were able to get her raised as a favor from the intel captain who took the smugglers and weapons into custody.

 

[aco175]

Sounds about right. Anyone throw out one of these quotes.

"Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are waiting for."
"So, you're saying there is a chance."

 

[Oofta]

Most predictable character death?
Me: Hi, I'm going to be playing Nueleth. He's an elf ...
DM: Really? Again?
Me: Yeah, the curse has to end some time, right?
DM: Okay, let's cut to the chase here so we can move on to your real characters. Roll a D20, just don't roll a one.
Me: [rolling a D20 which stops on a 20 for a moment only to flip to the one for unknown reasons] Okay, I'm going to be playing Kragoth the half-orc...

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Was there some sort of gravity well that sucked that PC backwards towards the car's rear tires moving in the opposite direction at 30-40 mph? Not a great DM call IMO. It was a cool move on the PC's part. Low chance of success for sure, but the result doesn't even make sense. Also, this is the player's 3rd session. Not seeing this as a fun introduction to the game for her. I hope you can bring her back for a 4th after this.

 

[payn]

Anytime the GM forces rolls for stat generation.

 

[J-H]

Was there some sort of gravity well that sucked that PC backwards towards the car's rear tires moving in the opposite direction at 30-40 mph? Not a great DM call IMO. It was a cool move on the PC's part. Low chance of success for sure, but the result doesn't even make sense. Also, this is the player's 3rd session. Not seeing this as a fun introduction to the game for her. I hope you can bring her back for a 4th after this.

She was explicitly warned 3 times that trying to jump onto a fast-moving car would kill her if she missed, and that it would be hard. She was dead when the car hit her anyway, and this way it also helped us "succeed" so it wasn't in vain.

Everyone was laughing, and she got handed the high-level NPC gunslinger (our sort-of silent boss with the party) to play for the rest of the session.

 

[Shiroiken]

"I tell the king to eat $%#&."

 

[overgeeked]

Me: "Um, it's D&D?"

Sounds like a huge assumed Rule of Cool there.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Not an actual death, but definitely close enough for an honorable mention for a Darwin award...

Back in 3.5, one of my games had a high-level rocket-monk in the party - totally spec-ed-out so that his speed and jumping ability were almost Pun-Pun-level ridiculous. (RAW, the guy could run up the side of a four-story building without having to make a roll.)

The BBEG was on the other side of a wide crevasse and the monk announced that, instead of waiting for the party to create a safe way across the crevasse (which several other members of the party were well-equipped to do) and lose a round or two of attacks on the guy, they were going to do a running jump across the crevasse...

Now, here are the two things that need to be known about the situation:

- The party is not only standing on a frozen landscape covered in ice that makes movement dangerous, but the area in front of the crevasse is covered in several rounds' worth of spell effects from the BBEG specifically to force them to choose between slowing to a crawl or risking falling into the crevasse...

-And the crevasse is really wide and nearly 1000 feet deep.

I pointed out to the player that even with their maxed-out magic-item-pumped Dex it was going to be dicey whether or not they'd make it across the ice in front of it.

But, idiots gotta idiot...

Monk takes off running in their best Flash impression and gets halfway across the ice when things go all Wiley-Coyote-shaped. Not only did they fall on their arse, but missed two different rolls to be able to save themselves before they went sailing out over the edge into thin air...


Now, that should have been the end of it, but I didn't feel like listening to the player whine about it for the rest of the session, so I just winged it and gave them multiple chances to save themselves as they fell...

I ruled that, narratively speaking, they were going so fast that they hit the opposite wall of the crevasse and ricocheted off, hitting the near wall and starting to fall straight down... They hit an outcropping, bounced off, fell some more, hit another outcropping, fell some more, etc.

Unbelievably, between good rolls and the monk's slow-fall ability, they actually survived the fall... With only one or two hit points left.

Of course, instead of being grateful that his character hadn't died through their own stupidity, I had to listen to the player whine about their character having to sit out the entire fight because they were stuck at the bottom of a 1000-ft. crevasse.

 

[jgsugden]

My most predictable death - didn't die. At least, not when he should have.

This was back in early 2nd edition. The PCs had rescued a town from bandits and were leaving the town using a hot air balloon. We were pretty high up in the sky when the DM let us see an unexpected invading army from our vantage point. He expected us to watch in horror as the village we had just saved was destroyed by the entirely unexpected invading monsters.

But my paladin was not willing to just let people die. Even against impossible odds, he would choose to fight to protect. So he dove out of the balloon - while still wounded from the prior fight. I don't remember the exact die rolls after 30 years, but I do remember that it was insanely low damage for the fall - and it left me with less than 5 hps. The rest of the party flung a few spells and arrows as they left, but realized the DMs not so subtle hints that nobody was going to escape alive were a direction to leave.

But the dice continued to favor my paladin. The enemies could not land a hit. And the paladin couldn't miss. For round after round it went on. Even when I was eventually hit, the damage was minimal and not enough to take me down. Galen Dracos' Last Stand lasted for far too long. It was impossible for him to win, but he put up the most improbable fight of my D&D career for a full 10 rounds. The DM allowed one villager to escape and tell the tale - which resulted in the DM incorporating the "Ballad of Galen Dracos' Last Stand" into the lore of his realm. Outside of my first action in my first round of 5E being a Wild Sorcerer Fireballing and TPKing the entire party with an 07 Wild Magic Roll, this was the most improbable thing I've seen in D&D in over 40 years.