The most recent deaths (this past Fri, 9/10 & 9/16) were both the most convenient & humorous in quite awhile.
Warning, long post.
The PCs had accepted the advertised challenge of trying to survive 3 fun (IE; death trap) filled levels of Grimtooth's Museum of Death - a mysterious ruined castle that had sprung up in the foothills of the western mountains.
Imagine your typical ruin, situated in an idyllic valley. Neither of wich were there when the PCs left on their last adventure.... Arriving, they find a long amusement park style line of excited prospective delvers, adventurers, looters, fellow murder-hobos, & others who dream of getting rich quick, all waiting to get in.....
The reward: Vast wealth. The risk: Violent, messy, death.
Upon entering they take the elevator down, down, down. To lv.100. The doors open to reveal a vast cavern, larger than their dark vision can see across. It's also full of knee high fog.
This room immediately set the tone for the rest of the evening by demonstrating why we used to carry 10' poles in previous editions....
The parties rogue, played by a very modernish player, simply walks into the room without taking any precautions. 15' out he walks straight off a small ledge into an open pit of acid (concealed by the fog). He takes a LOT of damage & is reduced to 0HP. The rest of the party hurry to his aid, some of them also falling into the acid bath. Round two: The rogue suffers 2 failed death saves. The other PCs who fell in take more damage, but get out. Round three: The rogue, still in the pit at the start of the turn suffers his 3rd failed death saves & dissolves.
1 PC down/5.5 to go....
The next to fall was the EK, an earth genesai with an incredible AC.
The party came into a cavern divided by a great chasm filled with boiling water. Across on the other side were a handful of orc archers. Right in the middle, tied off to a post on the heroes side was a rope anchored to the ceiling. Looked long enough to swing across with.
So as the party trades fire with the orcs, the EK decides to Tarzan across into melee.
He discovers that the rope is REALLY attached to a sliding mechanism that releases once he's 1/2way across. It slides towards the orcs, causing the rope to effectively lengthen, splatting him into the chasm wall (takes some damage, Con save to see if the wind is knocked out of him. He fails the Con save).
And then the nearest orc rushes out of cover, severs the rope & drops him 30' into the boiling water. He takes some more damage as he learns how a lobster feels in its last moments.... He also sinks like the metal clad stone that he is.
In the coming several rounds he takes boiling damage, is making drowning checks, fails to swim/climb out of the chasm & dies.
2 PCs down/4.5 to go.
(the .5 represents 3 followers the wood elf warlock has for being a variant noble. They're often controlled by a player who gets to the game 1/2way through each session due to work)
So they get to the final room of this lv and find themselves in the great throne chamber of Grimtooth the Troll himself.
They're congratulated on having accepted the challenge and told that they may each have as many GP as they can carry + 1 magic item of their choice (some exclusions, provisions, restrictions, etc may apply) & are granted access to the treasury. When they're done looting the staff will escort them back to the elevator & they may select their 2nd lv (floors 2 -99).
{nobody chose anything that would bring the dead back}
So they survive Lv.57 fairly intact.
They only lost the wood elfs pseudo-dragon familiar (to a crushing barrel in a Donkey Kong style trap) & 2/3 of her followers. One was eaten by an animated fountain, the other got flung into a wall by a catapult/rotating floor trap. Oh, and she lost the tips of her ears to a bunch of animated jumper-cables that descended from the ceiling. The trap targets elves & their pointy ears. One set of attacks to clamp on (if they hit, then the better the to-hit roll, the more ear is caught). In the next turn if not dislodged/dealt with/escaped the trap makes a strength check to rip the ears off the victim....
Once at the next elevator they select lv.90 as their final challenge & the session ends.
The next session, 9/17, the elf warlock player can't make it but the player who plays her minion(s) can. So the very 1st trap they encounter is a version of the Black Mercy plant from DC comics (it attaches itself to you, drops you unconscious, & you experience idyllic dreams as it feeds upon you. Superman faces it now & then) that takes the Elf out of play - because while I'll cheerfully murder any character, I dislike killing them when their player can't be there. (and I know she didn't quit the game)
So her minion had to decide: Carry all the loot, or carry the boss? He chose the boss.
3 PCs down/3.5 to go....
And now it goes (further) south.
The remaining PCs overcome a few traps/encounters. And they trigger a trap that summons a random monster (roll on chart). They get 2 owlbears. Someone asks what's an owlbear look like? (the group is a mix of RL XP playing these games). Somebody googles it & finds a pic of a really goofy LARP costume of an owlbear. I say sure, it looks like your fighting people dressed up in really bad owlbear costumes. But they fight just like the real thing.
Fight ensues. Party wins but gets tore up. Asks if they can take a short/long rest. Sure.
HPs are regained, etc. Party determines that the things they killed really were unfortunate NPC adventurers dressed up in magical (?) owlbear costumes.
And the party sets the same trap off as they leave. (the one player moves his mini right through the marked trap space)
They get to fight....2 more "owlbears".
So further into the lv they find a display gallery of legendary items. A staff of the Magi, Deck of Many Things, Necklace of Fireballs, a Flame Tounge, A Holy Avenger, an Ioun Stone (absorbs spells), Helm of Telepathy, and several empty cases.
The human warlock, the human cleric, & the 1/2orc minion all do a happy dance. The not-quite-a-Drow 1/2elf sorcerer - who's survived everything I've thown at him for more than a year of play - says "You have fun with that stuff, I'll wait over here" (points to a hallway on the other side of the room).
The minion lays the sleeping wood elf down & they all enter the room to loot. They set off (and survive!) the poison gas trap & begin playing with the Deck (summoning Death x2 & winning).
Meanwhile the not-a-Drow has taken a look at whats in the next room.
He finds a room full of bad LARP costumes - kobolds, owlbears, orcs, an ochre jelly, a caveman (think from Scooby Doo), skeletons (black PJs with glow-in-the-dark bones) & zombies (Minecraft) and a Glabrazu.
He decides to put on the Glabrezu costume & scare the pee out of his friends.
Well, it's magical.
And he fails his save & now thinks he's actually a Glabrezu and has all of its stats.
The human warlock makes his perception check, spots someone in a rubber Glabrezu costume approaching, is indeed scared peeless & opens fore with EB.
He fails to drop the target.
He's then ripped apart by 4 successful attacks, two of wich are crits. Do not pass go, do not bother with death saves, go directly to Valhalla.
Initiative.
Glabrezu wins. The player declares "I've always wanted to do this!" And states that he's breaking the Staff of the Magi (over the clerics head). He hits.
The staff is broken.
The cleric is killed outright. The 1/2orc minion is reduced to making death saves.
The sleeping wood elf? Is outside the blast & is still asleep.
The 1/2elf sorcerer wearing a rubber demon costume? Is blown into another plane of existence.
And thus officially ended my 1st 5e campaign.
But that's OK. Because we'd planned to reboot it completely from lv1 come Oct.
All that really happened was it ended a week earlier than I'd expected (we don't play the last fri of the month anyways)
