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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vegepygmy" data-source="post: 5376116" data-attributes="member: 40109">Oh, yeah. Countless times! My most recent "weak" D&D death was an elven ranger, the leader of the party and beloved by them for his daring bravery. As we were riding from one place to another, what we expected to be some uneventful overland travel went horribly, horribly wrong. An ankheg that we should have easily been able to handle attacked us, and my ranger rode up to assist our cleric, who was right next to it. The next thing I know, the cleric has withdrawn, leaving me alone next to it, and the ankheg has me grappled. A few bad grapple checks and missed opportunities by my fellow players later, the heroic ranger is somewhere underground, being digested by the ankheg. The DM just looked stunned. He really hadn't expected anything like that to happen, and neither had we. But the group has talked about that encounter many times since, and we all love that we play a game where that sort of thing can happen. It keeps the excitement alive. A long time ago, playing a non-D&D system, I had a character I'd played for a long, long time, and really grown to cherish. He wound up pinned to the ground by a couple of hobgoblins while another hobgoblin stood there, poking him with a spear. I was in no great danger yet, but needed my fellow party members to free me. Our trusty dwarf decided the best way to do this would be to ride through the space my character was pinned in, trampling us all. By the rules of that particular game, this would likely damage (but not kill) my character as well as the hobgoblins, end the pin, and give me a good chance of surviving. What actually happened was the dwarf critted me, then rolled so well (badly?) for damage that he killed me instantly. Again, there was nothing especially important about the encounter, I wasn't in dire straits yet, and the outcome was so unlikely that we were all stunned by it. It was a really lame way for that cherished PC to die...but I wouldn't change it for the world. I can't recall any specific times when I've seen someone die in a way like you described (swimming across a river on the way to the real encounter), but that's because, as others have pointed out, such scenarios virtually never happen in actual games. If it's that unchallenging of a skill check, you don't actually make one. You either bypass it by magical means, take 10, or don't even call for a roll.</blockquote>

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