Character Death's?

Palantir

Member #86
Joined
Aug 7, 2002
Messages
4,877
Reaction score
1,706
Location
The Heartland
Country
llUnited States
What are some seemingly dumb or clever ways you've seen or done to player characters to kill them? Or even cool ways they have died?

The dumbest way for a character of mine (10th Rgr) was opening a door in a basic orc lair and being sucked into outer space :surprise: no saving roll etc. just "you're dead." :crosseye:

Now, you can imagine the "discussion" that went on after that little event. :mad: I mean, what was the logic behind that "trap?" What powerful entity said, heck I'll waste my energy & emmense power creating a doorway into outerspace in this rat-hole of a tunnel?

I believe that if a player is going to die (especially if they've spent a long time leveling up) it should at least make sense and possibily be exciting & "heroic." (Of course there are a million normal ways to die in a RPG world)

I would never have a player if they "fumbled" and the results = slip and die from hitting his head on rock. How exciting is that? Much better to overwhelm them with a mass wave of monsters or battling one elite creature.
 
Last edited:

Dr Zaius

Chief Defender of the Faith
Joined
May 1, 2001
Messages
8,902
Reaction score
408
Location
The Forbidden Zone
First name
Don
Country
llUnited States
I played in a campaign once where one of the characters came down with a fatal disease after adventuring in filthy troll lair. It wasn't any special ability or anything like that, the DM just thought the place was so nasty that spending time there could result in getting sick. The character ended up with something similar to Tuberculosis.

I thought that was interesting and gave the campaign a realistic flair. It also made us think twice about entering such places again looking for a handful of gold.
 

String

Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2004
Messages
47
Reaction score
0
Location
Tallinn
Country
llEstonia
I guess the rarest way for an adventurer to go (whilst actively playing) is to die of old age..
 

Vinnie

See Dummies in the index
Joined
Feb 9, 2005
Messages
17,426
Reaction score
3,365
Location
Aberdeen , Scotland
Country
llUnited Kingdom
The best way I can recall is a paranoia clone who died since his buddies forgot to remove the shrink-wrap he arrived in.
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
Oh this is a good one.

I was running a game, the guys were in this "cave" ok it wasn't a cavem but how else to describe an underground location that is not entirely man made. One person was above ground (knight, didn't want to leave his horse).

So the guys are in this place, it looks well furnished too. There is this odd looking "mechanism" running. Crystline bars, many of them, all glowing.

Well naturally, one of the group figures "I gotta smash dem bars".

So he starts in on whacking them. I tell them ok, seems odd, like you guys are all sorta flashing in and outta phase or something. "Hard to describe" I tell them you feel "here not here" in increasing speed.
I also mention, the lunatic smashing the bars seems to be why the "effect" is getting faster and faster.

Well I figured, either they would stop the dude, or at the very least, run the heck out of the place back to the surface.

So I waited, and waited. Then sighed, told them, sorry guys, this time, no return blink, you are all quite gone, not coming back either by the way.
Told the guy up top, "the oddest thing happens, the area you were standing next to, just disappears.

They smashed the controls of a plane hopping wizard's home. They just basically beamed out into nowhere.
 

mr_clark

Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2003
Messages
1,007
Reaction score
0
Location
Berlin, Germany
Country
llGermany
Well out Mage died when we blew up the wall of a city besieged by a goblin army to make it fall down on the goblins.
Unfortunately the wall fell the wrong way and he didn't pass his reflex throw...
 

Mordrig

Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2006
Messages
36
Reaction score
1
Location
Canada
Country
llCanada
We were in a package dungeon, one of the rooms was an altar. A character in the room spoke the gods name and there was listed a chance that if this gods name was spoken there was a 25% chance that the character would be transported to stand before the diety. Well he did and the roll was made. The rest of us see POOF and he's gone. The GM and the character went on without us and the character says to the chaotic evil goddess "Hey Babe."

The GM looked at him and said "OK, she's not impressed. ZAP!! You're dead."

LOL
 

Aries

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2002
Messages
4,187
Reaction score
5
Location
Earth
Country
llCanada
Never get mean and throw a mage's spellbooks into the fire "to piss him off" or some such thing.

Dude did that to me once, the DM thought it out, checked some notes.

BOOOM!!

Books were warded and protected and didn't react to fire very well.

Half the party was blasted out of the immediate area. The perp found he had a corpse hanging in a tree for his effort :)

Rest of us got various levels of blast damage.

No one threw mage's books in the fire again after that hehe.
 

Psycho

Elder Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2005
Messages
15,445
Reaction score
1,509
Location
rectum
Country
llUkraine
Guy didn't actually die but still funny. Me and two dudes were going thru what seemed to be a deserted town. Heard noises in one house and busted in to see what it was. People were all locked in according to the laws of the land apparently. One of the dudes ended up killing the man of the house and took him up to the room and started stuffing his body down the chimney! :confused:

A bit later we ran into the town guards who had seen what happened from the castle walls and came to get us. They asked why he was stuffing the citizen down the chimney. He said the guy was an undead creature and that was the special way to off them. :laugh: When we wouldn't put down our weapons they all started pointing bows/crossbows at us. Two of us ran but not the "chimney worker." He dared them to shoot and they turned him into a pin cushion. :D

While we watched they dragged him into the castle gates and slammed the doors. We hung around for a few hours and the gates creaked open and out walked this bare naked pink humanoid. It was him! They saved him/brought him back to life, took his possessions, and they had somehow (magic?) stretched his skin so that they tied some of it into a little bow on top of his head! :laugh: :laugh:

We were supposed to perform some action so that they would return him to normal but we never did get around to the next session.
 

Psycho

Elder Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2005
Messages
15,445
Reaction score
1,509
Location
rectum
Country
llUkraine
I remember another time where I was running three friends thru the White Plume Mountain module. They had all been thru it before or at least heard about Black Razor (the soul sucking sword). Keep in mind that we were pretty young and preferred hack and slash at the time to actual roleplaying.
Two of the dudes had two characters each and one dude had a fighter. Go thru the entire module working together of course. They walk into the last room and...

You see a halfling...
KILL HIM! :nofear:
For those that don't know, the halfling is a polymorphed Ogre Magi :eek:gre: and he is the one with Black Razor.

Anyway, the single dude is surprised so he doesn't get to do anything along with the halfling. The other four charge the halfling and hack him to bits. :bandit: They all holler "I pick up the sword." I roll to see who is closest and it slid across the room to the surprised guy. He bends over and picks it up.

KILL HIM! :bandit:

He proceeds to cut down three of them. Only the magic user is left. He casts spell after spell but the guy keeps saving. The MU starts teleporting in and out of his protective prism he's in so I make him roll to see if he pops in halfway in the floor or something but he never does. I finally talk the dude into leaving while the MU is teleported out.

The guy running the MU gets pissed and summons some demons and devils to attack the guy and like an idiot I let him do it. The dude kills them off without getting killed. The dude running the MU says he has a sword and a stone that when struck together will destroy the planet and he chooses to do that. :shock: We didn't play with him after that. :D
 

Psycho

Elder Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2005
Messages
15,445
Reaction score
1,509
Location
rectum
Country
llUkraine
During college I went to stay with a HS friend for the weekend and he and his sister were going somewhere to play D&D. They had been playing at this dude's house for a couple of months with a pretty large group. I only had one character but there were about 12 people and they all had two characters each. We sat at a large table with a grid on it. There was a large castle/building outline drawn onto the grid with a few doors marked on it. The group had been trying to get inside this place for the two months but had yet to even enter the place once. :confused: I soon learned why.

The DM sat at a little table about 10 ft away from all of us and rolled his dice behind a screen. No problem with that right? He also had a small metal tub next to him. That was for the dead characters. He would take your character sheet, set it on fire, and drop it into the tub laughing the entire time. :laugh:

The group had already had about 8 characters killed just trying to enter the building. They had to keep going to the nearby village to find new people for the group and heal from all of their wounds. After sitting thru a fight with a troll outside the building I realized something that none of these other twits seemed to understand. HE WAS TRYING TO KILL OFF EVERYBODY! :shock:

The troll rolled IIRC 10 attacks against us before we killed it off. 20s were automatic double damage BTW. He "rolled" seven 20s, one 19, one 17, and one 3. The 25 PCs rolled on average a 10! :shock: We had to go back to the town again and rest up the wounded people again.

When we got back to the building I stood over the table and looked at it for a minute and said "why don't we try that door?" The DM hollered out "you can't listen to him!" I recognized the outline as the building in the A1 module and suggested the easiest way in. He refused to let the party follow my "advice." :D

We still never got into the place in the four hours we were there. When we got back to my friend's house I asked him why he played with that dude running the show. He said they all enjoyed it. I asked him about the guy and his incredible dice rolling abilities. He said he had seen the guy roll like that. I suggested that maybe his dice were loaded then. He defended the guy and so that was another group I never played with again. :D
 
Top