D&D General What’s the most gruesome thing that can befall an adventurer?

[Blue]

Petrification - completely out of play until solved, but not actually dead to roll up a new character. Not solvable with revivify. Occasionally hard to move and solve / other players want to finish the current location before going somewhere to bring you back. It's like maximum penalty of being unable to play on the player.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Soul destruction and eternal damnation.

Ah, so the Wall of the Faithless. Pretty solid answer.

I'd have to say DMs that cheat, if we're allowed meta-effects. Everything else--theoretically, even soul destruction and mind control and all the rest--at least theoretically, in principle, permits the possibility of doing something about it. It is not possible, even in principle, to circumvent a DM that cheats.

If it has to be a diegetic "worst fate imaginable," then as noted, soul destruction, eternal damnation, and mind control/mind virus are the big ones. If you die, you at least go to your afterlife of preference (absent Wall of the Faithless BS). If you're mind-controlled, you no longer have agency but still are present for horrible things. If you're corrupted by a mind-virus thing, you lose who you are. Etc.

 

[Eltab]

2. Being sucked to the Abyss side of a planar portal when a party member (on the Material World side) panics and slams it shut.

1. Being the party member who slammed shut the Abyssal portal on your friends - but you did not panic, you lost track of who was where.

I spent the rest of the convention slot penancing myself for that moment of stupidity.

 

[pukunui]

Ah, so the Wall of the Faithless. Pretty solid answer.

Given that the only reference to the wall in the SCAG got excised in the last round of errata, I think it’s safe to say it is no longer a thing.

 

[rgoodbb]

Hanging from chains in a trap room as a Gelatinous Cube slowly rises up only for the trap to malfunction and stop when the cube is halfway up your dangling feet.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Given that the only reference to the wall in the SCAG got excised in the last round of errata, I think it’s safe to say it is no longer a thing.

That's fair, but "soul destruction and eternal damnation" were literally its functions. Even if it isn't a thing anymore, that's what the thing did when it was. That someone (AIUI, not Greenwood himself) chose to include it, given at least some people consider that literally the worst imaginable fate, is worth noting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I’ve lost PCs to a wide variety of ugly ends, but having a gnome fighter/thief plucked out of midair (while being flung “Fastball Special” style across a deep chasm underground) by a cave fisher was the worst in many ways. The party had no way to get to the creature, and she was paralyzed, so she couldn’t defend herself. Basically, it got to savor her like a mint julep on a hot summer day, and she was conscious through the whole event...

 

[generic]

Death by reverse snu-snu.

 

[Helldritch]

I would go for mummy rot. Slow unavoidable death for low level characters (even mid level ones, depending on the edition you play).