The D&D Darwin Awards.

[BlueBlackRed]

Ok, there were some interesting response to the "What's the cleverest thing you've done..." thread. But now I want to hear the opposite.

I want to hear some gaming Darwin Award winning characters:
The rules are simple: A PC must have died in a spectacular way. (Yes I know the Darwin Awards only require removal from the gene-pool, but I don't want to hear about your stories that don't end with -10hp or less).

And when I say "died in a spectacular way" I mean has to be an unintentional death from a single stupid action or series of stupid actions that would be spoken about for years to come in your gaming group.

Right now, a guy I knew had a record of 7 deaths in a single evening from a guy I played with. (He just renamed the same character over and over again.)

Another situation: This happened with me as the DM. The party has no rope, 1/2 the party fallen 15' into a room that is now filling with water. The group finds a nice stash of treasure, but they realize that in order to swim once the water starts getting deep, they'll have to dump some of their heavier gear. So one poor soul decides to toss his short sword up to the the rest of the group. I ask how he throws it. "Straight up", he replies. Now no one at the top tried to catch a sharp sword for fear of losing a hand. So the sword comes straight back down.
I had the player roll a to hit on himself. A natural 20. The crit confirmation roll was 19. He was a level 1 ranger with some combat damage & falling damage already. He rolled near max crit damage.
We still don't let him live that down.

 

[Ghostwind]

I was running a group through the first of the Rappan Athuk adventures. The characters were first level, not the recommended fourth (yes, I am a sadistic DM). Despite all of the warning signs that were left, the party insisted on making their way back into a foul smelling chamber that served an outhouse function (or so it appeared). On the one wall was a stone platform of sorts with three onyx toliet seats on them. Well, everyone in the group except for the dwarf went "nothing to see here and I am not going to stick my hand in those holes to look for treasure." The dwarf, being greedy, decided to waltz right up and attempt to rip one of the toliet seats off the platform so he could sell it. You guessed it. The seat was really a Killer Mimic who promptly ate the dwarf while the rest of the party stared in shock.

 

[Abstraction]

Does anybody still have the story about the Head of Vecna?

 

[RithTheAwakener]

Head of Vecna is a great story

Last night my party was fighting to obtain the Crown of Thorns (the one that has Merkule's (sp) spirit inside of it) and the book of merkule in order to ressurect him. So the BBEG wearing the crown cast a wall of force, so i picked up a fellow fighter and flew over the wall of force landing right next to him, and in the very next instant the BBEG broke the Staff of Power over his knee and BOOM we all died, except the cleric. It was especially bad because of the timing, we JUST flew over and splat we die. Oh, and I would have lived if i made my reflex save, and what did i get, a 1. To oblivion we went

 

[Templetroll]

way back when my dwarf had a Mirror Shield; the face of the shield was reflective. We were fighting a basilisk and I decided the dwarf would peek around the edge to make sure I had the aim right. The DM asked me several times if I REALLY wanted to do that and I was emphatic. Then, he asked me to make a save, which I promptly failed. Luckily, so did the basilisk. The party carted my statue back to town to get me restored to what passed as normal.

In a game I ran, a cleric was imprisioned for treason, even though he had not committed the act. Another PC, a 1e bard, knew that the cleric would never have done it; he decided to rescue him. he also knew that the cleric, being uber-LG, would never go along with the escape.

The bard rode his figurine of Wondrous Power Nightmare up into the tower cell while the cleric was asleep. The cleric was manacled hand and foot and asleep on a cot. The bard drew his sword and went to slit the throat of the cleric. I told the player to roll to hit. He looked at me in dismay, "You know we both hate having to roll to hit a sleeping person!" I agreed, and said, "make the roll." He did, looked up triumphantly and said, "There! A 20! Satisfied?" I nodded and replied, "His head rolls off the cot." The player's eyes went wide, he actually stared at his "sword hand" and burst out laughing - he had forgotten that the only sword he had to use to slit the cleric's throat was a Vorpal blade!

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

The Head of Vecna. A classic!

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Ummm. does the mage miscalculating a fireball spelll count? Cause that happened and we have not stopped talking about it.

 

[TracerBullet42]

The Head of Vecna. A classic!

Wow...never heard that one before...that's brilliant!

 

[demiurge1138]

Oh, I have a good number of these...

One that I've probably related several times already on these boards involves the death of Thalias Darkshine, an elven rogue-turned cat-person. I'll let his player speak for him.

"I said I want to pounce on top of the ghost. [pause] Is that a problem?"

Sadly for Thalias, the ghost was a spellcaster in the middle of a ritual in the bottom of a pit, and when a cat-elf plunged through him and hit the dirt hard, the interrupted ritual was quickly replaced by a (3e) creeping doom. End of Thalias.

Another, far more recent, double-death involved a stupid paladin and a bored and inexperienced (player-wise) fighter. I had already given the party a not-so-subtle warning to avoid small, old boats in the estuary when the paladin, last time around, led to the disarming (literally) of the party cleric by crocodiles. So he decides to go back, this time at night. Good idea. The player, who's a bit (by which I mean quite) whiny and obnoxious, told me he was going to commit suicide by boat, so the sharks got him. But I didn't count on the fighter going with, even after I out-of-game tried to disuade her. Knocked into the water, she thought it was a better idea to fight the frenzied sharks and tread water than to flee. And she was 1st level. Two dead PCs in one boat.

Demiurge out.

 

[Blacklamb]

2e Game, a Pixie Ninja(don't ask) in the party had gotten trapped in a iron bound money box.

After being left behind, since the party was in a hurry and had no time to figure out where the Pixie went to(he was disappearing all the time anyway, doing secret ninja stuff i guess), The Pixe decided that he was on his own and had to get himself out.

The Pixie tried all the way he could think of to get out...to no avail.

Then he stumbles apon the bright idea of coating his Fists with Oil of Impact...and just punching his way out.

Ill let you all figure out the rest.


Blacklamb