Most Unexpected/Funny Ways the PCs Killed A Creature

[AFGNCAAP]

My 2nd ed. AD&D PC (a half-elf fighter/cleric/mage) casting a dry cantrip to kill off a slithering tracker.

Way after this feat, we realized it wasn't feasible rules-wise, but it was funny.

Same goes for the time when another player's PC (also 2nd ed. AD&D) punched a dragon. He roled a natural 20, & then using a crit table from an old issue of Dragon rolled a knockout result.

 

[Sigdel]

In one of my earlier groups I had a bit of bastard for a DM. He honestly thought it was his job to kill at least one PC every other session. I tend to be quite creative and therefore make a good caster. The game was level seven when I joined and the party had no caster. Normally, due to my efficiency, I rarely play a caster unless the rest of the party has equally effective characters, but the party basically forced me into it. After a couple sessions where the DM was getting quite annoyed as my character bolstered the party via buffing the party and through creative use of various arcane/divine spells. Due to this, the DM had not killed a single PC in nearly six sessions. Finally, he decided to kill off my character and refuse to allow me to play a caster with my next character. He pulled some reason off the top of his head to explain why my character had angered an epic level barbarian and why the barbarian planned on killing my character and only my character, effectively to gain revenge. The party's rogue who had recently aquired a bag of holding tossed it 25 feet in front of my character and the party's ranger readied a shot with his bow, aimed for the bag of holding. As the barbarian charged over the bag of holding the ranger rolled a nat. 20 on his to hit roll and ended up bursting the bag of holding, destroying the epic barbarian. The DM then kicked me out of the party for "cheating and not following the rules of the game" and never let me come into his house again.

Sorry for the hijack of the post but I have to know what happened after this. If I was one of the other player in that group I would of left the game. There is no way I would game with that king of power-freak. Have you stayed in contact or heard from any of the other players? I must know.

 

[Anticitizen One]

Way back in the misty years of 2nd edition, our party was attacked by a giant slug in the middle of a village. I forget what the name of the monster was, but it essentially was a 20' tall slug that was surrounded by a bunch of flying swords and axes and stuff (metal master maybe?). This thing was beating us up pretty badly, whatever it was. So my character ran into the village store where we were buying supplies earlier and grabbed a big 'ol barrel of salt. A quick jump spell and I dumped the barrel onto this thing. It shriveled up right quick and we were able to make short work of it. It was a lot of fun, but just plain silly

 

[Ambros]

One of the more fun was when we hada fight with a monster (who's name I don't know) but it was a huge slug-like abomation that had some scales that smached together around whatever hit it, swords would get flattened and bend out of shape etc... well the thing was it was a monk/brawler and myself a necromancer (low on spells).

After a long fight in a now sawer/former ritual room, where the monk and I was down to our last hps, and running out of stuff to chack at it, and no where to run, Being a necromance with the "There is no death, there is only being metaphysically challenged" So I graped my wand of light I had picked up in town earlyer, ran to the oppside of side of the slug (to get the slug-monster-thingy between the monk and myself) and snap'ed the wand (DM's houserules says that ANY magical item that is broken unleashes its remaining chargers in a 8d dmg pure magic blast per charge) and well 50 d8's later and I was more then dead from the blast, BUT so was the slug-monster-thingy.

Our DM laught so hard, saying that from now on I'd only get sunrods

 

[Set]

Back in the days of the Bloodstone modules, there was a room with a Tarrasque in it. (No, really.) My Wizard had a Wand of Force. I put up a Wall of Force, leaving a tiny bit of clearance on one side (though which the massive beastie could not fit, but we could toss spells). The Illusionist threw Chromatic Orbs at it until it failed a save and died. I re-absorbed the Wall of Force into the Wand (didn't even waste a charge!) and we proceeded past the temporarily dead Tarrasque. Later in the adventure, a wrong choice sends you to the beginning, and we ended up in that room again. The DM just said, 'fine, you kill it again, next room.'

We also had the bug-on-windshield effect on a dragon with a Wall of Force in another game. Kinda anticlimactic. That was a GURPS game, and the spell was Force Dome, but the effect was identical to what it would have been in AD&D.

The best dragon-kill was in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, I think. A dragon was attacking us in a temple complex, zipping in and out of tunnels to flyby attack us in a central chamber. He was breathing for insane amounts of damage, given his size, and one of the characters noted that he was far too small, able to fit easily in these tunnels, when he should have been much bigger. Spotting a bracer looking bit of jewelry on his forelimb, the Cleric of Wee Jas, who had held an action for his next flyby, threw a targetted Dispel Magic on it, and, as luck would have it, turned off his magic item of Reduce Person while he was still in the tunnel. Instant death by squishage. On the downside, we needed to go that way, and it took the Druid Summoning a Thoqqua to make us a tunnel around the dead, squished dragon blocking our path...

 

[Darklone]

PCs had a broken wand of fireballs... it worked nicely with the one flaw that the pellet didn't fly where you aimed but exploded instantly. The DM had a long list of our magic items in his notepad... any item had a special number with special notes...

He still lost control about what item happened to be where. So ... we were kinda robbed in a battle (where my evasion dude with high Refl save had used the wand in a way the DM didn't like ) by one of his recurring villains. That small bad evil boy (SBEB) took more than a dozen items from unconscious chars by grabbing their bags.

Weeks later, the same SBEG showed up in the final epic battle against another BBEG while we were forced to flee. DM says with a cackle: "And he pulls out his wand, points at you and ... which number had that fireballwand you had btw?". We tell him, he pales.

BOOM. Necklace of Fireballs of the BBEG makes BOOM too. All NPCs dead.

 

[hafrogman]

There is a narrow bridge crossing a gaping chasm. Across the bridge we see a number of monsters. . . xorn, I believe. Although we don't know it, the center of the bridge has a weight trigger trap door on it. If anyone too heavy attempts to cross over, it would open and they would fall.

Well, being a cautious bunch, we all whip out ranged weapons and begin attacking the xorn, rather than fighting them on a narrow bridge. One guy has no ranged weapon. He does, however, have a Rod of Wonder.

*roll* 36 = summon an animal.
*roll* 48 = an elephant.

Okay, it technically didn't help us against the xorn, but it found the trap for us. And, um. . . killed a creature? Well, I'm pretty sure the elephant didn't make it.

 

[SiderisAnon]

How To Kill A Pack of Undead

I have had two different players independently use gravity to kill a group of undead.

The first was in a home game a number of years ago back in the days of 2nd Ed. A rogue-type encountered a group of skeletons. He knew they were to much for him, so he went running. He was on the second level of a tower. Rather than run down and outside to the party, he ran up the stairs ... all the way to the roof, all the while with the skeletons at his heels. He reached the roof, ran to the edge, and jumped. He figured the falling damage would be less painful than the skeletons. I made a quick Int check for the skeletons, they failed, and so they chased him off the roof. The rogue just managed to roll out of the way before a dozen skeletons rained down around him. Only one skeleton survived the fall, and the party made short work of it.

The second was at the 2005 Game Day. I wasn't running the pregen module because we had more DMs than players and I had players in my group who'd read the module. So I created an on-the-fly adventure using the same miniatures and elements. There was a half-ogre barbarian working for the drow. He had an amulet that let him give commands to some of the zombies the drow had. Unfortunately, the commands were in a language the character didn't speak. (Basically, an order of 'take commands from anyone wearing this amulet'.) One of the characters witnessed the half-ogre giving orders to first group of undead encountered. Later, the part ran into a much bigger group of zombies guarding the lair entrance. The player put on the amulet, walked up to the undead, and repeated the commands as best he could, hoping it would make the undead wander off. Instead, they moved up to him. He retreated, they followed. So, he started leading them away. But he didn't know what to do with the undead. As this was hilly country, he walked them to the edge of a cliff and he began climbing down the cliff. (He was also playing a rogue.) The zombies tried to follow. They began failing climb checks and plummeting to their destruction. (And any that weren't destroyed were certainly well out of guarding the entrance to the cave.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The most unexpected death was probably when, in a dangerous and hard fight, one ofu our spellcasters casted dispel on another mage - and dispelled his Bear's Endurance.
Suddenly, the hitpoints went away.

A similar situation happened when our Bard noticed a strange spell effect on the halfing servants of a spellcaster. He dispelled it, and suddenly the Halfling became dust. Turned out that it was not an actual halfling, but created by a magic spell (it was even a core spell, but I don't remember which one...) The Bard was really surprised and emberassed, never having planned to "kill" the halfling...

 

[maransreth]

While not exactly a monster death, I have always equated resolution of the encounter with monster death.

The party was in a forest and came across a couple of gnolls. They killed one, knocked the other out and were dragging the unconscious one back to camp for interrogation. Along the way they blundered into the path of a rather large and nasty ogre (I had earlier in the adventurer mentioned that the party saw this ogre take on a couple of wyverns and win).

I expected the party to run and have the ogre chase the party. What I did NOT expect was for the party to throw the unconscious gnoll at the ogre for food and then hightail it.

The party ended up fighting the ogre a number of months later, and it was funny to see the players' faces when the ogre spoke to them and thanked them for the meal, but now it was hungry and tthought they would make a nice meal.