Quick deaths in D&D

[gribble]

Howdy, Gribble!

Hey man.

Fastest campaign end: 4e; TPK in 2nd session thanks to two Deathjump Spiders.

Can beat that one - it was a one-off, not a campaign, but had a TPK in the second encounter. Being a one-off, we decided to ignore the TPK and continue on to the third (and final) combat encounter... another TPK... 4e can definitely be deadly. Unlike 3e, you don;t seem to have the "miracle" turns which can swing a bad combat back in your favor. Inexorable is the best term to describe it I think - once you get past a certain point in a combat you have 2 options flee (if possible) or play out a TPK.

Most pointless death

I heard about that one. I think Sigmund gives it a run for it's money though. Was a soulknife, the concept was a no-holds barred, staunch military type. Always managed to punch above his weight, mainly due to lucky dice rolls. I remember he took out a 3rd or 4th level soulknife NPC at 1st level, and his career was filled with moments like that where he won/survived against the odds. We'd just finished a slugfest with a dragon, we're he'd gone toe-to-toe with the dragon and in typical style he'd manged to drive it off but was left on single digit HP. We went into it's lair and there were corpses lying around, walked up to one and turned it over. BAM! Firetrap, killed instantly. Very anticlimactic way for such a hero to go out...

 

[Turtlejay]

My quickest death was my lovely Dwarven Hammer of Moradin in a 3e Against the Giants Campaign. In the fist session we ran I got creamed. Sad thing was, He was build to be a ranged fighter, and could throw hammers something like 50 ft.

Too sad.

Jay

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I was playing SWSE with a fairly good DM. I was a Madalorian who was basically a cross between Jango-Fett and Han Solo in the way I played him. Eventually in the session My group had encountered a small group of Sepritist tanks (I can't remember which tanks they were atm). Anyway, we had some heavy weapons at our disposal and we destroyed 2 out of 3 tanks before we were out of ammo. So, I got this idea to hop on a landspeeder and head straight for the remaining tank at ramming speed. My plan was to jump out at the last momen and be the cool hero type walking away from the explosion.
I used a force point to buffer my jump check, and lo and behold I get a 1 on my d20 and a 1 on my force dice. My jump check totaled 4 (jack of all trades) so I leap up with amazing dexterity, only to have my foot get caught in the steering wheel. I fall face first into the hood of the speeder and get a great view of the hull of the tank before I and my speeder explode against it.

To top it all off, after the floating red haze that was left of my character settled to the ground, the party took 6 more rounds to finaly drop the thing!

 

[Delta]

I keep thinking that this thread is asking "How do I convert the 'Quickdeath' monster from the Star Frontiers game to D&D?". But it's not.

 

[Jack99]

We had a quick-death recently in 4e. Not because it happened shortly after character creation but because it happened so quickly in the fight.

Setup: My players were doing my own modified version of KotS, and had run into the hobgoblin, which had, in my version, an elite version of the Hobgoblin Commander. They had almost wiped, but the wizard and rogue had gotten away, just barely, although only the Commander was still alive. A week later, they have assembled a new team, and return.

The Commander is hiding. So when the rogue (37 hps) peaks walks around the corner and doesn't see him, the Commander charges in, hitting him for 13 (1d8+5) damage. Initiative follows, the rogue has a wooping 24, but it is all for naught, as the Commander has 25 and thus goes first. Double attack (gave him that since he was elite) both hits, for 22 damage (2*1d8+5). Then the player says wow, I am bloodied and almost dead, at which point I do the only thing logical. I have the Commander use his action points. 19 and 20 on the rolls, 25 damage and the poor rogue is at -23, and permanent dead. And he didn't even get to his turn yet, despite having a 24 initiative.

And people say 4e isn't lethal...

 

[Hussar]

My World's Largest Dungeon campaign saw a player, over the course of about six, maybe seven sessions lose the following:

• Goblin thief - spread across several dimensions after jumping into a one way portal to the Abyss
• halfing scout knocked down by hobgoblins, then coup de graced
• orc fighter toasted by lightning bolt trap while swimming
• orc druid toasted by fireball trap

His next character was a halfling monk/paladin/Pious Templar. Couldn't hit anything, did next to no damage, but, couldn't be killed. Unbelievable AC, uncanny dodge, mettle and save throw bonuses out the wazoo. Became the trap springer.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Three Beholders, who got a surprise round. It wasn't pretty.

I would say: "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder".

 

[Lanefan]

I've had so many of my characters die quickly they've become a blur in the memory...but they've all at least managed to join the party, unlike a few:

1. Player is trying to introduce a Thief but party tell said Thief to get lost; so said Thief tries to stow away on party's boat only to get killed by party's guard dogs. Party find corpse on returning to boat later...

2. DM (me) is trying to introduce an NPC Ranger as party sorely needs a guide and someone with wilderness skills. Party is sleeping during day as it is safer that way where they are; they have 3 invisible people on watch. Ranger cautiously sneaks into camp and is not noticed by any of the watchers (and doesn't notice them), so goes into someone's tent, wakes them up, and suggests it would be safer to have someone on watch in such a dangerous area. Person in tent panics, watchers come running in, one of them backstrikes Ranger and crits it, killing her outright.

And in my current campaign they're dropping like flies...I've never seen anything like it. No TPKs, just lots of one or two at a time bad luck and bad decision deaths (never mind the deaths due to infighting)...and lots of returns to town to recruit the next few victims.

Fastest two death-raise cycles I've seen for the same character took just under an hour. Character died from melee and was raised in the field (high-level party), then healed by a party magic item, so back to almost full and ready to go. A bit later, same character fails a save and dies again...and is raised in the field moments after.

Lanefan

 

[MarkB]

We have a 'Greg' in our group, who's called Rob. He has a reputation for two things: Extraordinarily bad dice luck (he once borrowed a 20-sided d10 from another player, thinking it was a d20, and his rolls were consistent enough with his normal luck that nobody noticed until an hour later, when he finally rolled a zero), and a capacity for getting his character killed off in astonishingly arbitrary ways.

His shortest-lived character was in a modern-era Call of Cthulhu game. The party had already gone through some nasty experiences by that time, including the death of his previous character, and one of them was suffering from paranoia. So when his new character, a passing acquaintance of theirs, appears on the scene, he walks up to the car they're sitting in from behind, and opens the passenger door without knocking or otherwise alerting them - right next to the paranoid character. Who promptly shoots him dead.

 

[smdmcl]

My quickest death is still amusingly remembered at our game table.

I was playing a half-orc ranger that was dual-wielding broadswords in a 2nd edition game where we were using critical/fumble rules. We came across a group with an ogre and roll initiative. I roll the highest and act first, charging the toughest looking member of the group, the ogre. First attack roll, natural 1, fumble check, consult table, hit self. Second attack roll, because I am dual-wielding, natural 1, fumble check, consult table, hit self with critical, critical check, triple damage. It was the first action of the groups first encounter of the campaign and I managed to eviscerate myself without ever doing a point of damage to my enemies.

Needless to say, the group sat around the table in silent shock and, in my case, disappointment until we broke out in laughter when it was obvious what had happened. The DM ruled that the ogres, awed by the display of ferocity on the party's part, turned tail and ran away. He had to think of something since the encounter was going to be a tough one and a TPK was likely with the group already down a member.

Shane