Strangest (or the most funny) deaths

[Narfellus]

In one of the campaigns I play in, my wizard died in the last session. His death came during a very deadly battle that claimed the lives of 5 characters in our group of 8, but I think my wizard died in a particularly strange manner:

The party was on a mound that we had to camp on until Sun appears at which point something beneficial was supposed to happen that would put us out of danger. We had to hold the mound with an altar on top against attacking monsters until that time Sunshine broke throught the clouds, which we knew was expected some time that day, but did not know when. The mound was in a valley surrounded by cliffs on four sides with four wide passages between them. On the cliffs, there were enemy archers positioned in an inaccessible and well protected location. There were numerous archers in each fortification in the cliff but only one could shoot from each cliff at a time (a total of 4 archers could shoot at any one time, but if any of them was killed he would be replaced by his companion the next round). The damage from the archers, though by no means negligible to the weaker characters, was not the main problem - the arrows they were shooting required us to make a will save or be blinded and that was the killer. Lower on the ground we were under assault of 5 strange creatures that seemed to be some kind of cross between trolls and umber hulks. They regenerated and had the ability to cause confusion. Unfortunately, acid or fire or electricity did not seem to effect their ability to regenerate. Later on in the battle some kind of griffin-like creature that could call down fire joined in the assault against us. In any case, the battle went on for ages and eventually my wizard despite being protected by improved invisibility was blinded down to 6 hit points at which point he surreptitiously retired from the battle to the edge of the cliff. He had already discovered that the troll/umber hulk creatures have tremor sense and can track him invisible, but he successfully eluded them this time (I think through the use of flying). Unfortunately, this did not help against the archers, who it appears also could see through his invisibility protection, since one of them shot him causing him to fall and drop to -6 hit points. He bled out to death because none of the party members could find him, since he had improved invisibility cast on him!

Roman, it sounds like your DM was trying to destroy your party! Damn, you took it pretty well. I admit, i've had to stack the odds against my PC's just because they were so powerful and innovative, but it sounds like he had every avenue of escape covered.

 

[trilobite]

Back in the day, I would go down to my local gaming store and get into a D&D game. Well I joined in a game in which I really didn't know anyone. After going through a dungeon for a while it became aparent that the thief was stealing from the other members of the party. Though we didn't have any real hard evidence. The thief fell into a deep pit trap and he yells up for us to throw him a rope. We all just look at each other for a second and then start throwing flasks of oil down into the pit followed by a torch. Needless to say we didn't have any more problems with missing items that game.

 

[Ramien Meltides]

Some time ago I was playing in a brilliant 3.0 D&D game as my namesake, a rogue/fighter type and the only female character in a group otherwise composed of males.

At one point, our party was exploring this ruined elven city and came across a grove protected by a beautiful faerie woman. We began negotiating with her for passage through her grove. My character, being awesome at many skills, rolled a "monster lore" check to determine if in fact this creature was a nymph as I suspected. I rolled a 1, and decided that Ramien had no clue. At the end of the negotiations, the Nymph swept off her cloak to begin casting the spell which would open the way for us to travel - hitting the entire party with her "nymph disrobed, save or die" effect. Naturally, all the men in the party made their saves like champs and murmured something to the effect of "Nice ears" and "Never wanted to be a cloak so much in my life" only to hear a loud thump as the only girl in the party rolls another 1, fails the save, and falls stone dead.

I always get a grin thinking about that one. It was a particularly strange way to die.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I can certainly see why. -56?

Nazis. Everything goes better with Nazis. We were running a game where a dimension hopping baddy was aligning himself with the Third Reich in exchange for "modern weapons". The character who died (a sorcerer/dragon disciple) went butt-hauling into a hanger where two dozen German soldiers were preparing to deploy. He was already at low hitpoints from an earlier encounter. Using the d20 WWII rules from Polyhedron for machine gun fire, the entire squad opened up on him because he completely bombed his Spot check to even notice them (a 1 will get you every time). He never had a chance to react.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I ran a 1st ed game where a 6th/7th Mage/Thief was going to go out and "steal some stuff" while the rest of the party rested. He casts invisiblity (24hrs) and sneaks to a jewerly shop, he tries to go in a upper window - failing his 92% + climb walls - twice. So he tries the door F/R traps 55%+ fails, Picks the lock 67% fails, gets poisoned and dies. If he hadn't taken so much falling damage he would have surrived. Leaving him invisible in the jewlers doorway. The jewler trips over the body, loots him and burries him without ceremony. The rest of the party never found out what happened to him.

I had a gnome professor who was hiding behind a tree - great char no use whatsoever in combat. And a PC throws a spear and crits the villian de Jour
I stand up and applaud - the villian yanks out the spear and hurtles it at me critting me, and nailing me to the tree.

We were playing Psionics in 2nd ed - bad idea, and the party ranger decides to meditate in the forest and see if he has a wild talent (as he is jealous of the psionists powers). I am introducing a new PC to the group, who studies the ranger carefully as he meditates. The ranger botches the roll and ends up loosing most of his Int, Wis and Con. The new PC tries to help him, and the ranger whispers "kill me", and take my stuff back to my friends, I cant stand to live like this. The new player does. When he meets the other pc's they don't believe him. The new player moves away - and his charater is gleefully assiniated by the rest of the group (evil halfling campaign)

Then there was the 5 int barbarian who was eaten by Carnivorous antelopes..

Then there was the cocky darksun dwarf - with a con of 22 he has a posion save of 3. So when the party found yellow mold, he walked back and forth in it. on his 4th trip the he failed his save. The party alchemist brewed up a leathal toxin and had the dwarf drink it. It killed the mold, but left him weak and unable to move far. So the party thinking his regeneration will kick in leave him lying there helpless, in a large, unexplored cavern. 10 min later he is eaten by the pair of cloakers hiding on the ceiling.
Another Darksun dwarf died at the bottem of a mineshaft, with his lifegoal of killing a Baraxat unfurfilled. Several adventures later the party returns, with a new PC who started with Baraxat armor, and they have to get past the bottem of the shaft. The now undead dwarf finally completes his lifegoal and is allowed to pass on to his reward. I killed a lot of people in 2nd ed Darksun

 

[spider_minion]

I had a character die in a way that was not so much strange as it was spactacular . . .

He was a halfling knight with a wizard cohort, and they both rode around on a phantom steed. Earlier, while hunting vampires, we had come across several powerful magic items that were cursed. One, a cloak of resistance +5, killed one of the players when he put it on. The others were a amulet of natural armor +5 and a helm of brilliance. I took the helm, but didn't use it.

Later on we were in a huge battle, being attacked by (among other things) a huge dragon with an evil priest riding it. They were really hammering the party. The druid tried creating a tornado, but that didn't stop the dragon (it did annoy the flying mage, though ). My character realized there was only one way to save the party . . .

With the phantom steed, my character navigated the tornade winds and got up next to the dragon. The priest attacked him, lowering him to exactly 1 hp. Next round my character, concentrating on fireballing himself, donned the helm. As I suspected, it reversed his alignment (it still functioned normally). However, I was still able to get off the fireball, and willingly failed my save against it. The helm detonated, doing somewhere around 1,300 fire damage and blinding the party. When they could see again, my character and the dragon where gone.

The rest of the PCs were cracking up. They knew what I was about to do, since I was tallying the expected damage on the calculator. The DM was caught off-guard, though .

It turns out that my PC was indeed vaporized, but either the priest or the dragon was immune to fire. Whichever one survived was sent to another plane due to the massive explosion. It still saved the party.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Not to one up anyone, but we had a guy end up -56 in a game I ran. We were shocked and appalled.

Last game session the PC archer (ranger/sniper) did something I'd never seen before: kill 2 people with 1 arrow.

The archer was targeting an NPC Xill monk that was the target of a Shield Other cast by an invisible NPC cleric. Both monk & cleric were at half HPs (roughly 45 left each) and were about to flee. The archer fires a 5 arrow volley (17th level+rapidshot). The first four arrows deal about 50hp damage (25/25) but the 5th arrow is a crit that does 102(!!!) points of damage. The monk hits the ground at -27 and a second thump marks the death of the cleric. (I made the archer justify the damage; it was all valid in 3.0 and his dice rolled just shy of max damage)

The party looks on in shock "TWO thumps?!? You killed TWO bad guys!?!"

 

[BlueBlackRed]

We have a guy in my game who loves to play mages and steadfastly refuses to think before acting.

I was the DM of a 2e skills & powers game. He had a level 13 mage that got separated from the group. He claims that he had no spells that could damage the foe he was facing, an arcanaloth.

So instead of running or teleporting or whatever, he casts Evard's Black Tentacles. But he didn't think before to told me the center point of the spell. The front arcanaloth was the target, but the mage was within 10'.

Arcanaloth saves.
Mage fails the saving throw versus his own spell. Ends up being strangled by a tentacle.

 

[Someone]

Altamont Ravenard in the "Luck Hates Monks" thread said the shortest-lived character he had ever seen was a monk that was mauled to death on the surprise round of his first combat by dire lions. I thought that was a pretty strange and/or funny death. The poor monk didn't even get an action before he was killed in his very first combat!

Olaf the Stout

Well, it was playing MERP, but I did better than that. It was the first character I ever created, in the first adventure I ever played, in the first combat against the first orc, who in the very first swing swung killed my character. Isn´t that funny?

No.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Poor little monk indeed.

I had a high level cleric fall victim to an allied Frenzied Berserker's crit. Had 8 hp. He did 80+ points of damage.

The player who ran the monk in question had a really poor streak of luck with characters. His monk was destroyed. Then, a half-orc ranger he made died during the same adventure (I don't remember exaclty how). Then, next session, his new character, who didn't even have a name yet, falls victim to an assassin death strike.

AR