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Mandar
2010-06-26, 01:33 PM
Do any of you remember your very first character deaths?

Okay, last night, after playing for 2 1/2 years my character Mandar died. He was caught off guard by an Angel of Decay and his flesh was tore from his bones while his party members watched helpless.

Manny-

Daelen
2010-06-26, 01:46 PM
My very first character's death was back in 2e AD&D. Elven Thief, still one of my favorite characters ever.

He got involved in a money-making scheme, started a fake church and took donations, then while the congregation was enthralled by the sermons, another thief would steal the rest of their money. Went well for a long time, until we decided to upgrade to a bigger venue and set up a street-side tent revival in Waterdeep. Found out the hard way that you need a license to preach in public.

Failed every roll I could try to get out of it and got thrown in prison. He then got caught trying to escape, and spent the rest of his life in jail.

Jorda75
2010-06-26, 01:50 PM
My first character death was my 2E fighter, he was killed by a giant hamster. No seriously. :smalltongue:

Magic Myrmidon
2010-06-26, 01:51 PM
I'm not entirely sure if it was my first, but my monk based on Captain Falcon died after this spirit challenged one of his friends to a duel and killed him. Enraged, my monk took another challenge to the death, but he lost too. It was pretty much a total party wipe, actually. :/

Amphetryon
2010-06-26, 01:56 PM
Toward the end of 2e, I had a Fighter/Thief mimicking the Skaald kit named Ragnar doing the advanced scouting for our party. He tripped the trap door in the floor and fell into the watery pit. While treading water, 10' down, he got attacked by a couple of Lacedons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghoul.htm#lacedon). Choices were trying to keep swimming and make it easier for the Lacedons to hit me, try to climb the sheer, wet, stone walls with a Thief not focused on Climb Walls and hope the Lacedons missed, or fight and start sinking further underwater. One failed save versus Paralysis later, and Ragnar was officially doomed.

*moment of silence for the fallen*

Knaight
2010-06-26, 01:59 PM
I don't think I've ever had a character die. Clearly this means I GM too often, NPCs die by the dozen, important ones still die frequently, but I've never lost a PC. Odd.

Pelfaid
2010-06-26, 02:02 PM
Elf ranger went a scoutin' and found a half-dragon ogre with a greataxe. I soon had a half-elf.

Zanticor
2010-06-26, 02:08 PM
Back in first edition my elf mage/fighter (all elves where) and a human fighter buddy walked into some goblin cave. We already hit third level and where quite full of ourselves. We hacked away at some normal goblins and then met the lieutenant guarding the door to the chief. Just one more we thought so we started trading blows. The dice just did not go our way and the little yellow creep kept saying "you shall not pass!", but we just could not accept it was time for the big guns. Even after the fighter lay dieing my elf kept swinging (and throwing 1's). I could have used a healing potion on the fighter or a sleep spell to take down the gnat but instead after about twenty rounds the little goblin stood triumphant over two dead adventurers. Harsh times.

Zanticor

Woodsman
2010-06-26, 02:12 PM
This one's a bit odd.

My character, Roth, and the party we were in were fighting a massive battle against an army of deadly dancers (Tome of Magic.)

Poor guy gets torn to shreds by about three of them, but something odd happens. Instead of dying, he transforms into a yuan-ti and proceeds to scare the crap out of the dancers in the area (aversion ability).

The party has to kill him, at which point he turns back into a human, fully healed, albeit passed out.

'Twas quite the shock for everyone. He was an amnesiac, so I l;eft the backstory up to the DM.

Sliver
2010-06-26, 02:13 PM
The very first character I played was the only character death I faced. It was an elven sorcerer, I didn't know any of the rules and I didn't have the PHB, made the character over some site that had all the PHB options of character creation...

Considering I didn't know about defensive casting, 5ft stops, or that magic missile isn't that good (my second spell was mage armor which I didn't want to waste a spell slot on), I think my character fared all too well... Even though my character had 3 fights total. The first two he was knocked out on, the third was his demise.

Although my second character didn't fare to well either. A dwarf fighter that was knocked out before the first fight, and on his second fight he spent most of it running away. Campaign was actually fun, even though I was useless. Didn't last much after that tho...

Tanuki Tales
2010-06-26, 02:14 PM
Wish I could. Going on 6 or so years of playing DnD and I don't think I've ever had a single character die on me.


On the same hand none of the campaigns I played in ever lasted more than a few sessions anyways.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-06-26, 02:22 PM
I've had, let's see...4 or so 1e characters, 6+ 2e characters, and about 21 3e characters, all of which were played through at least 12 levels and none of which have died on me. Like Knaight, I DM most of the time and have NPCs die by the score, but they they're supposed to.

Geech000
2010-06-26, 02:35 PM
First character death that I remember was a greatsword fighter in a custom system. We were in a dungeon where the path split 3 ways, each with their own perils. The party started debating which path to take and they were taking their time. My big dumb fighter got bored and figured he'd just go on without them. One of the paths was a section of 3 pits that had to be jumped, each one larger than the last. I figured that I was a big, strong fighter, I could make the jumps. Made the first two fine, botched the third one. Found out that the pit was very deep and ended in a lake of acid. It was okay, because I can back as a frog demon and ended up giving a superweapon to the demon god. Fun times! :smallbiggrin:

Aharon
2010-06-26, 02:37 PM
2nd ed.
I rolled an absolutely substandard Paladin, he barely fulfilled the requirements of the class, the rest of his attributes were all below 10.
That was my first character who died. I played him as a very valiant character. Unfortunately too valiant to notice the clues the DM left that opening a certain door was a really bad idea. It was. My first character death was a first level paladin being eaten by Ctulhu. In retrospect, I find this awesome. Back then, I didn't.

Claudius Maximus
2010-06-26, 02:41 PM
I'm another one who's never had a character die in an actual campaign. I'm either playing the sort where you really can't lose, or a more serious game that lasts only two sessions and ends before it can happen.

Scorpina
2010-06-26, 02:42 PM
My second ever character was a Cleric of Tymora, who tried her luck in jumping over a chasm in order to escape from the ghouls that were chasing her. She fell to her death. It was rather... unheroic.

Primehunter74
2010-06-26, 02:45 PM
A few months ago, my level 5 human cleric died, we were at the end of the adventure, about to kill the vampire we had tracked down.
I got pummled to a pulp by my ally's zombie bugbear after I had attacked him (stupid confusion spell). After I died, the zombie did not unstand that i was dead, and continues to mutilate my corpse. Another party member and I died, another 2 were turned into vampires, or artificer only lived because he was not there that day.

EvilElf
2010-06-26, 02:48 PM
My first character death happened when I first played in 3.5e. Playing a halfling rogue, that was tossed by a Half-Orc barbarian into a wall, then fell to his death in the guard dog pits. Never let a barbarian play toss the halfling. =/

Kaje
2010-06-26, 02:49 PM
Mine's a bit different.

Returners Final Fantasy. McGivern, an Elvaan fencer. He had amnesia (I know better now) and I told the gm he could fill in the holes. We decided he had been an important secret antagonist in the past of two of the other PCs. At the appropriate time I surrendered control to the gm and McGivern was all set to become an important recurring villain, but then Tilly the Moogle used two Scenario Points to one-shot him in the head with her rifle.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2010-06-26, 02:59 PM
I died in my first game, I was only 9 at the time but my dad was a huge nerd so he convinced me to play AD&D (I still thank him for that). My first character was an elf magic-user, I spent a lot of time making him and got kinda attached to him before the game even started. Me (and a few of my dad's adult friends) got TPKed by orcs with pointy sticks after getting beaten badly by a bone-golem and I was crushed. After I was done sulking (I was very emotional) I made my second character, a human thief. I still have both sheets somewhere. :smallwink:

DemonSlayer
2010-06-26, 03:05 PM
My party of lvl 3-4 characters is facing off against a kua-toa wizard, who is hiding behind a group of 30 or-so watered-down-yet-impressive blue slaad minions (luckily we had a lot of lvl 1 NPC's backing us up). My sorcerer tries to do the smart thing, uses Alter Self to gain wings, and flies over the slaad's heads.
Now, my most impressive damaging spell at the time was burning hands, so I needed to cover a lot of ground, fast. So I charge the wizard.
Turns out it was a level 12 cleric with a good spot check, and reflexes fast enough to cast Lightning Bolt at me.
So I missed the rest of the combat (in which, apparently, a lvl 10+ gnome druid riding a big green dragon did most of the fighting for us), but since it was my first character, I was given a free ressurection spell after the dust had settled.

DwarvenExodus
2010-06-26, 03:45 PM
Found out that the pit was very deep and ended in a lake of acid. It was okay, because I can back as a frog demon and ended up giving a superweapon to the demon god. Fun times! :smallbiggrin:

Sorry, this thread is for D&D, not nethack.

Mystic Muse
2010-06-26, 03:48 PM
I was a dragonborn Rogue. I was killed by either fire bugs or ettercaps. I forget which.

D Knight
2010-06-26, 04:09 PM
heck mine was a bad idea to start with but i was just wanting to have fun. So first level fight, his name was Crystal, going into a 3 or 4 round 3.0 mod. so i get to the last round and hiding in a bush to surprise a caravan. big guy climbs out of the first wagon and walks right up to my hiding place and one shots me. i was the first KIA of the round and the reaper would not see me first, that ....

World Eater
2010-06-26, 05:02 PM
"So, anyway, the Void Elemental crits you. And rolled max damage."

And it put me at exactly -10 HP.

Brendan
2010-06-26, 05:07 PM
On my first session ever, I tried to use diplomacy on a mindless undead. I spent my actions on that for a round or two and was hit with a crit on a javelin followed by a crossbow. it was essentially the BBEG of the one shot, and I died quickly and easily.

d13
2010-06-26, 05:10 PM
Third character ever...

Just trying a spellcaster... Works out that punching a Shocking Grasp in the Orc Chieftain's face is not a very good idea...

arguskos
2010-06-26, 05:12 PM
My first character (whos name I utterly forget) fell down a magical elevator shaft and died. :smallfrown:

He was an elven cleric, back in ye olde days of 2e. I liked him. He has been mostly forgotten now. *silence for a moment of remembrance*

Creed
2010-06-26, 05:16 PM
First character death?!

Homebrewed Oriental Adventures, Ad&d.
My shapechanging Bushi/Shukenja/Wu Jen (who rode an awakened dire-tiger and carried a sword that had stole the soul of whoever the blade touched, DC 35). The gods decided he was too powerful, and destroyed the world in an attempt to kill him.
He survived, via dimension door spell he had learned from a western mage, so then they all dropped a giant chunk of primordial creation on him. Then he died.

...What? I said it was homebrew! The characters were so powerful that I think the world was destroyed about 9 times just to make our empires collapse. I didn't have an empire, instead I was a mercenary who literally fought armies alone.

Vangor
2010-06-26, 06:18 PM
Never had a character die. I tend to DM, and whenever I do not we usually play pretty strongly via roleplaying and the Rule of Cool which allots me plenty of opportunity to avoid death, generally through enchantment.

Actually, I cannot say never died, but this was a story element for a Ghostwalk inspired campaign where we were facing an all too powerful shade'esque wizard who had captured us at the start (not Shadovar, but evil enough to be wreathed in shadow and such). I killed his apprentice, which I thought was our captor, initially, by disintegrating a metal door, taking the pile of powdered metal, inhaling so as to cause myself to sneeze, covered the apprentice with the powder, and casting fabricate to make a jagged, flanged, spiked random whatsit inside of him. My plan was the sneeze was technically not aggressive, so any protections the apprentice might have wouldn't try to stop the dust, and since I was using the dust he was covered in the whatsit should be produced at the center of the cloud, which would be him.

My victory was short lived as the actual captor appeared, far more imposing, after having used time stop to do a few things. His round again where he disintegrated an ally. Fearing for my life, I was about to wet my pants, but instead used his pile of ashes in my last round of life.

-----

Since that death doesn't really count, the first total party wipe I caused was by employing a Drow Cleric/Ghost-Faced Killer designed to maximize shivering touch. Immobilized two party members, a Cleric and a Warblade on back to back rounds. Coup-de-graced the Cleric with a scythe followed by a Frightful Attack on the Ranger turned into a Frightful Cleave against the Barbarian. Two functioning members of the party left with the Monk and Dread Necromancer. Killed the Dread with a full round attack and ghost stepped away as his minions tore apart the Monk and immobile Warblade.

Granted, the entire purpose of the character was to force the group to really start rethinking the lack of magic, utility, and protection they were using in my campaigns because I constantly had to rein in any potential fight or risk killing people left and right.

Traveler
2010-06-26, 06:28 PM
Sadly my first character death was not epic. He was a 1st level halfling sorcerer who went toe to toe with a possessed 3rd level ranger. I actually got close to killing him, but then a possessed paladin helped him finish me.

Tar Palantir
2010-06-26, 06:52 PM
I usually retire my characters before they die, but my one death was definitely my fault. My warlock had (in the same session) left another PC to drown in the mud rather than pull him out and risk getting sucked down himself and accidentally shot and killed the party druid who was grappling a black pudding. He ended up being hit with drow sleep poison and knocked out, so when the big bad came for us, the party fled and left me, given that there was no easy way to save me and they like me enough to risk their necks. So yeah.

Snake-Aes
2010-06-26, 06:58 PM
4 10d6 fireballs to the face, duskblade, level 6. Straight to -26. Then I got Revenance on me and kept going. Burned a few spells and took another 3 10d6 fireballs to the face, I think I didn't pass a single save :( Straight to -80, and by the end of the spell I managed to reach my cat familiar and utter my last words: "Rake...Baxter's eyes..." (Baxter's our cleric, who only cast his Revenance because the rest of the group threatened him into it)

gibbo88
2010-06-26, 07:38 PM
My first real character death only happened a few weeks ago. TPK, but it was a fight we couldn't win (and were meant to die from)...invading armies are hard to beat at level five when the people living in the fortress are all drunk.

Snake-Aes
2010-06-26, 07:40 PM
Mine also happened in a fortress :x we infiltrated to open the gates for the main host to enter. Stupid demons.

Remmirath
2010-06-26, 07:53 PM
My first character death was a cleric who was... killed in a dungeon... I'm realising I don't remember this as well as I thought. It was fourteen years ago, in my defense.
I remember the description involved the words 'torn apart', and I'm sort of thinking bone devil (there was certainly one around). That was AD&D, version one.

She got resurrected (well, raised; close enough) shortly thereafter, though, so I'm not really sure if that counts.

The first one who didn't get resurrected was a paladin who was killed by a roving tyrannosaurus.

gallagher
2010-06-26, 07:56 PM
I am actually proud of mine. I was a barbarian/scout charger, who I had raised from barbarian 1 all the way to barb 1/scout 8 with a whirling greataxe in 3.5

well, I was scouting ahead, and the rest of the party got ambushed from behind. On my way back, I see that my teammates are rounded up and held hostage. Well of course I rage and charge, and whirl away. I drop about 8 of the 14 rogue bandits, but of course my rage ends while I'm flanked. By this time, my team pretty much have loosed themselves from their ropes, just in time for two flanked sneak attacks to put me at about -20. The party lived to laud my death

Tedesche
2010-06-26, 08:04 PM
My psion tried to TK the BBEG—an evil elven magus-turned-demon/lich by Baal himself—and ended up being cleft in twain.

'Course, he came back as an angel and had a direct hand in destroying both the lich and Baal forever. Go righteous vengeance! ;-D

AdamSmasher
2010-06-27, 01:43 AM
One of my first characters, a monk/rogue, died by my sheer stupidity. The DM WARNED me that I would need to have my face covered and my voice disguised, or 'he' would kill me. In the next dungeon, I team up with an NPC ranger who is clearly stronger than me, both of us looking for the same thing. When we find it, what do I do? I nonchalantly grab the artifact, sucker-stunning-punch my former ally, throw down smoke pellets, and run like all hell out of the dungeon.

I make it back to town, turn the artifact in to my shady dealers no problem. The next day, while undercover on a diplomacy mission for said shady fellows, I meat Mr. Suckerpunched. He promptly blows my cover and hacks me in to tiny little peices with all of his friends.

I still cry at night.

Saveducks
2010-06-27, 01:50 AM
3rd level gnome Bard who failed an insanity check; I started singing very loudly in a bar, an orc picked me up slammed me against a wall crushed my lute and said stop singing, I summoned an instrument and plucked an F sharp then he threw me down a 400 foot pit.

Superglucose
2010-06-27, 01:55 AM
First death was when I suicided my elven evoker because I was bored of it.

I actually have yet to have a character die on me, at least not any characters that I was particularly invested in.


3rd level gnome Bard who failed an insanity check; I started singing very loudly in a bar, an orc picked me up slammed me against a wall crushed my lute and said stop singing, I summoned an instrument and plucked an F sharp then he threw me down a 400 foot pit.
... what? That sounds like some really bad GMing.

Jolee
2010-06-27, 02:00 AM
My first death happened a couple weeks ago during the 5th or so session of a desert campaign (D&D 3.5). I was playing a Female Grey Elf Druid 2/Wizard 2 who's main (read: only) trait was that she would run away from her problems rather than face them (character development was supposed to occur over time and what not).

I had to shown up late to a session and had told the group to start without me. I walked in right as a combat was about to begin, and not wanting to waste anybody's time with writing out my spells (I forgot to bring my usual spells prepared list) so I told the DM that I'd treat all my Wizard slots as having colour spray (up until now we had only faced hordes of weak opponents so I was very fond of this spell) and the Druid slots could stay empty and I'd just spontaneously use summon nature's ally.

With that settled, the party entered the next room to find a large humanoid with a falchion (and iterative attacks, so I knew right away that colour spray wouldn't be as affective). I opted to stand at the back managing the melee characters' tactics while using my 2 summon nature's ally spells on wolves, hoping for a lucky trip. No such luck. After the second wolf disappeared, the paladin got hit hard and was probably going to die during the next round.

I rushed into melee and fired off a colour spray (monster made his save) at point blank range to draw attention away from the paladin so he could lay on hands himself (this seems a little ironic in retrospect, but the player was new and I didn't want him to have to re-roll on his third combat ever). I got full attacked, and my hp dropped deep into the negatives, but at least the paladin got to self heal.

The cleric/druid healed me up to 1hp but I couldn't escape the creature's reach without drawing an AoO that would almost certainly kill me, so I turned up my combat expertise to 5 and attacked from prone (I needed a nat 20 even without the combat expertise). I missed, and then promptly got chopped to bits.


All in all, it was totally a worthwhile experience.

tl;dr: I played a caster but didn't bother with spells that day. Natural Reach makes running away annoying. I did get to save the paladin's life though.

ImmortalLiam
2010-06-27, 02:42 AM
Ok, this story is about my buddys first character, a male Tiefling bard named Sorrow. Our party of level 2's had already gone through an entire castle, facing down grue and an acid dragon. We get to the second-highest level of the tallest tower, and suddenly I see the Khorne Champion with whom I had a personal score to settle. Letting the others go ahead to face the BBEG alone, I settled down to a fight to the death.
As we battled below, all the others talked with the BBEG. He was a powerful necromancer, but he didn't seem at all afraid of dying, not even putting up a fight when our squishy drew a flint-lock pistol. Having heard enough of his babble, our squishy shot him between the eyes, killing him then and there. Sorrow, not quite trusting the death of a necromancer, (and what thinking character would?) kicked the necromancer to check if he was dead. Suddenly the necromancer's body was inhabited by a daemon. Sorrow was on the frontlines of the first attack. This enraged him so much, he didn't even think of stepping aside to let the party cleric heal him. Plus, it didn't help that the party's defender (me) was trapped in a duel downstairs.
So Sorrow is right in front of the daemon, and man was it ugly. It was an amorphous, twisting blob with mouths and eyes that appeared and disappeared at random all over its body. The thing's main attack was to grab someone, and begin to chomp on their flesh then, and there. Luckily, it looked like we might pull through and beat the hell-spawn.
But Sorrow was still standing right in front of it, bleeding from multiple wounds. So the daemon grabbed Sorrow and began to eat him, doing enough damage that Sorrow was already dead. But while his flesh was being consumed, the Tiefling bard ripped of his own horns and stabbed the thing through its eyes, which just so happened to stay in one place for long enough to get the killing blow in. As the daemon died, an explosion tore through the warp, incinerating both the monster and Sorrow.


Like Tar, I usually retire my characters Im attached to, but I have lost two. Remember the defender in the story above? Well he won that duel with the Khorne champion, and passed out (7 hp left man, I was flipping out. All healing and surges were gone as well). When the party cleric woke him, he learned his best buddy in the world had been killed. Now, this was a lawful good paladin of Bahamut, whom had been having to but up with a neutral ranger who was a petty thief, a sorcerer whom was perverted and made jokes about Bahamut being a god of gays, and the unknown aligned cleric, whom made jokes about his manhood (she was the only female in the party, fyi) because he refused to hit on females in game. (I dont see the point, why waste playing time with flirting with my male DM as he has to awkwardly rp a female?) At any rate, he had put up with it to his breaking point. He tried to get the group together and agree on his plan of how to leave the still infested castle, but they refused to listen. So, the pally pulled out his new sword he had won in his duel and made a deal with the deamon inside. He regained all his hp and powers and then some. The sorceror flew off the castle, never seen again, and the cleric got her soul eaten. He let the ranger go, and I had to give up control over that character because my DM said he was way too powerful for a PC now. So, we had to make new characters. Have a metioned that was the last game of the semester before summer? Yea, my group was pissed at me :smallcool:. You dont mess with my pallys :smallbiggrin:

The other character I lost was a Tiefling swashbuckler named Xavros. I had just broke up with my gf and didnt wish to play DnD, but my friends thought it would distract me. We never found out what the mission was, because the mayors messenger kicked Xavros out of town after Xavros pulled a blade on him. Xavros lied, saying he was attacking a PC that had also attacked the messenger, but the npc wouldn't listen. So Xavros climbed the mayor's office, and when the npc showed up, he jumped down, landed on his shoulders, and put his sword through the guys skull. Turned out it was the mayors nephew. Xavros got burned at the stake XD

Ihouji
2010-06-27, 03:43 AM
2nd edition found out the hard way dragons to not give piggy back rides during combat, not even to halflings.

I was just trying to get to his squishy vital parts for a sneak attack.

Totally Guy
2010-06-27, 04:02 AM
Holden, my Human Bard got zapped by the Dark Lord in the climactic encounter. But that was only my second session with the group. In the previous session the gnome wizard had died and been reincarnated as a goblin. No such resurrection for me. The zap was soul destroying.

Curmudgeon
2010-06-27, 04:05 AM
AD&D 1st Edition Wizard with 1 hit point. First time out, dead pretty much instantly.

onthetown
2010-06-27, 09:38 AM
I've gone through so many characters and deaths at this point that I forget what the very first was, but the first one in this campaign was when my Ranger/Wizard got caught and imprisoned in some sort of ice palace thingy. They chained her up to a wall (made of ice, of course) and told her to stay there until they had use of her for their evil plans to take over the world. When she finally realized she couldn't escape conventionally, she cast Shatter; it broke the ice around her and collapsed the ceiling on top of her. She effectively committed suicide rather than seeing herself be used for evil, so the DM allowed resurrection once the good party charged the place and dug her up.

Another good first one in another campaign, I think a bit earlier, was when my other Ranger failed her Fort save, got petrified by a cockatrice and was smashed to bits. I hate those damn birds.

Thajocoth
2010-06-27, 10:13 AM
4e Dwarf Fighter. The DM sent us into a dungeon that would cease to have air 24 hours after it suddenly had air. We didn't know how long ago it suddenly had air... So we did not extended rest despite being out of, like, everything. I think we were on the dungeon's last fight, at least.

This was my only character death.

Dracons
2010-06-27, 12:02 PM
3rd edition. I was a 4th level CG Human Ranger. After being turned down by Torm clerics for help again, my character muttered that Torm sucks.


Torm the god then struck me with lightning bolts several times. Not only did it slay me to the point only a true res could bring me back, if it did I was told my charisma would be 3 due to the massive damage it did to me.


Stupid DM was in Love with Torm, and told me that is what Torm does. Randomly strikes lightning on anyone that dares insult his greatnest.

Scorpina
2010-06-27, 12:21 PM
Sounds a lot more like Talos than Torm to me.

balistafreak
2010-06-27, 12:29 PM
1st level Barbarian with 18 Constitution gets critted by a greataxe at full health and explodes.

I've never ever joined a game at 1st level since. :smallannoyed:

Dracons
2010-06-27, 12:42 PM
Sounds a lot more like Talos than Torm to me.

You would think so. But it was Torm. That DM's fave god is Torm all the time. He killed alot of people from Tantras, because he was convinveced after his last DM told him that Torm hates them for what they did during time of troubles.


Alot of his characters worship Torm. He does do Torm's dogma.

You can insult all the gods ya want in his game, even to their face if you run into them. Just not Torm. Torm is all powerful.


I really hate Torm.

Cogidubnus
2010-06-27, 12:43 PM
These seem to be roughly 2/3 DMs being total jerks, the other 1/3 is mostly crits. Interesting.

As for me, I;ve never lost one yet.

Knaight
2010-06-27, 01:02 PM
Time to add another factor here, using the stories of the first deaths from players in games I've GMed.

First one first, a little game called Glyphs. The party is fighting the servant of a demon, one of the recurring enemies, in the basement of a magical museum loaded with portals. They know the guy has limited flight, hellfire, and hellwater, which is a transformation into an ink like substance that can be used to escape. One of the characters grabs the guy and holds him, in desperation he blows the ceiling up directly above him. So, both of them are pinned under rubble and injured, and he goes into hellwater form to escape. Enter another player.

PC2: "I shoot a lightning bolt at him."
GM(me): "You'll hit both of them."
PC2: "I know, I shoot it anyways."
PC1: "What?!"
PC2: "He'll probably survive. I shoot it."
GM: "No, he probably won't."
PC2: "Eh, sometimes we have to make sacrifices."
GM: "Rolls for demon servant. He's dead."
PC1: "Rolls for himself. Minimum roll. He's dead."
PC2: "Totally worth it."

In another campaign, the first death was due to one player abandoning the other to their enemies, when he had a vehicle and could have driven over, grabbed the guy, and high tailed it. Instead, he high tailed it.

Now introducing: 1/12 Players being total jerks.

Volthawk
2010-06-27, 01:04 PM
3rd level gnome Bard who failed an insanity check; I started singing very loudly in a bar, an orc picked me up slammed me against a wall crushed my lute and said stop singing, I summoned an instrument and plucked an F sharp then he threw me down a 400 foot pit.

...

Your bars have 400ft pits?

balistafreak
2010-06-27, 01:07 PM
...

Your bars have 400ft pits?

That is madness!

*is kicked into said pit*

mucat
2010-06-27, 01:31 PM
...

Your bars have 400ft pits?

Yours don't?

...ah, wait, they have English pub food. I'll stick with the 400' pits. :smallbiggrin:

Kol Korran
2010-06-27, 03:35 PM
my first character was died as a 4th level Rogue back in the days of 1E. (what race you ask? there was no distinction between races and classes then. all rogues were humans). our DM decided to be a meanie, and half the group were poisoned by soem monsters, so we were making our way out of the dungeon, when we were attacked by 2 gargoyles.
(side note: i was 9 then, and didn't know what a gargoyle was. neither did the DM exactly. i ended up imagining it like a huge sandy toned worm with wings and horns for some reason.)
only one of us had a magic weapon, and we didn't catch up to the fact we weren't causing them any damage until it was too late. (back then there was no DR, just plain immunity) My rogue beacme gargoyle food.

Lord Loss
2010-06-27, 04:00 PM
AD&D 1st Edition Wizard with 1 hit point. First time out, dead pretty much instantly.

Out of curiosity, were you killed by a skeleton?

drengnikrafe
2010-06-27, 04:34 PM
My first (and last, if memory serves) character death was my 3rd character. He was an elven wizard, and we got into a fight with an entire army. I don't remember exactly what killed me, since there was so much stuff there, but I'm pretty sure it was either several waves of arrows or several lightning blasts. In any case, 6 seconds later the party druid rushed over and used resurrection, bringing me back as a halfling. I would've felt more angry about losing my chance at a noble death if I hadn't proceeded to blow most of the remaining army up in the following round, and probably saving the party.

Yeah, any campaign I've ever been in has been pretty nonlethal.

TheSteve
2010-06-28, 12:49 AM
My Magic User/Thief.
We were in this event where we all sat at this ghostly banquet table with a bunch of different courses.
Each item would be presented, and you would choose whether or not to eat.
If you ate, you either got a buff or a debuff of some sort, but you didn't know what it was until you ate.

Janus chose to drink red wine...which got him drunk, and removing my ability to have him choose whether or not to eat the next course.
Percentile dice said he would. It turned him into a ghost bound to the manor we were in.

Dingle
2010-06-29, 05:56 AM
My first rpg was a one off d100 cthullu

Malacode
2010-06-29, 06:53 AM
My Sorcerer in a current campaign. It's alright though, he got better.

I wasn't even at the session where he died! He was used as a meatshield and distraction for hungry monsters, a job better served by someone with MORE THAN 20 HP. I'm not bitter about being a level behind the party for several months, nooo....

Ormur
2010-06-29, 07:09 AM
My wizard was murdered by a succubus in his bed.

Surprisingly it was just a plain coup de grace, not even any foreplay. :smallmad:

Simba
2010-06-29, 07:15 AM
My first character death was in first edition Shadowrun, quite a few years back.

I had an Orc Samurai (a fighter, augmented with lots of cybernetic implants) and we were in the last session of a long campaign that braught us from 0 to almost 200 Karma. That is quite a lot in Shadowrun.

Anyway, as it was the last evening, the GM took off the velvet gloves. We had to infiltrate one of those magacon office towers, but it was all an elaborate trap. We had lost the moment we decided to enter.
After a long and hard escape we were almost out of there, with some heavy wounds, but all still alive. I decided to let my guy die a heroic death and played rearguard. He could have just run away, outpacing guards and chummers alike, but he stayed, turned around and ambushed the 20 or so guards hot on our tails.

Well, the others escaped, Panther died and our GM decided to prolong the campaign, leaving me with a dead character and some agressive thoughts.

panaikhan
2010-06-29, 07:43 AM
The only character death I can remember (so, possibly the only one and therefore the first) was in shadowrun.
A rigger, paralysed from the waist down from a childhood accident, who was controlling armoured drones from his unmarked van.

The van was destroyed when the building it was parked next to collapsed.
Why did it collapse?
Because the BBEG was standing on it's roof, and the entire party launched the best of it's arsenal in one volley (including the rigger).

Duskranger
2010-06-29, 07:58 AM
Sadly I do not know if my first character has died or not. It was a cleric who was built first as a level 5 cleric, but would become a lvl 10 cleric because the opponents would be fighting our party (this game had in the same world an evil and a 'good' aligned party). Sadly the DM said that since the evil party was more fun to DM we would not have the battle.

At the moment my character came in the game a big army (not even the evil guys, just a big conquering army) attacked the city and my character sended a letter for help to his village(long live birds that can deliver mail).
What I do know is that help arrived (in the form of an army and a dragon :smallbiggrin:) and the army was eventually defeated.

I do not know if my character survived the attacks of the army or if he is still living in that world/ was killed by the evil guys.

Still he was my first character I did not know anything about DnD but still have his stats and all. I was very proud of him.

I will miss him:smallfrown:

Dienekes
2010-06-29, 08:00 AM
Star Wars d6.

My friend blew up Coruscant. Killed the entire party.

balistafreak
2010-06-29, 08:48 AM
Star Wars d6.

My friend blew up Coruscant. Killed the entire party.

Not exactly your friend, then, was he? :smalltongue:

Janus
2010-06-29, 11:11 AM
First real RPG character death was in a (very simple) custom system. I can't remember the exact details, but we were playing a more lighthearted game, and my paladin was crushed by a fat guy falling on him.
He got better, though.

My first D&D death probably doesn't count, but whatever-
I played 4e for the first time at a local game/comic store. I was given a pregen character, a human barbarian with vampiric heritage *facepalm*. The adventure went well enough (I suppose. DM struck me as being rather bored with everything), and we had little room for roleplay, so I just commented that my character whined and angsted about his accursed state as a vampire.
I had to leave after the first encounter, and since no one was going to play him, I decided that his vampiric heritage caught up with him and he spontaneously burnt up in the sun.


Janus chose to drink red wine...which got him drunk, and removing my ability to have him choose whether or not to eat the next course.
Percentile dice said he would. It turned him into a ghost bound to the manor we were in.
We seem to have similar tastes in character names, you and I.

Rosalinath
2010-06-29, 11:27 AM
First character death was in 3.5e playing as a paladin/Blackguard Elf named Lilin. I played her fairly effectively but didnt understand the concept of running the f*#k away from anything that was 8 times my size. We were on a cavern bridge over a giant pool of acid. When we got half way over it, and after several spot/listen checks and a couple of failed reflex saves, An Wyrm black dragon busted out of the pool and took half our party (of 6 at the time) out and into the pool, killing them outright. Now instead of running like a good crazy I decided to launch myself onto the things back, chopping down at it. We both went down into the pool with the three pcs, me dying and the dragon leaving with just a scratch. I was really sad about that :smallsigh:

Cealocanth
2010-06-29, 11:31 AM
I haven't had my first character death yet. I assume it'll be horriffic and heroic. Zhen Li Fen, what a heroic, but stupid, way to go.

Rosalinath
2010-06-29, 11:36 AM
thank you kindly :smallbiggrin: she died a (anti-)hero, although a stupid one. The fun part about that is that she appeared like 2 years later as an npc in the same group as before, busting open a hole into the material plane from the 1st layer of Hell and covered in demon blood and coated in hellfire. Confused the heck out of me because the dm never told me ahead of time :smallamused:

Postmodernist
2010-06-29, 12:02 PM
I don't remember my first character death, but I do remember a good one. I played a sub-optimal (but fun!) dwarven paladin in Living Forgotten Realms. I was running a few DM slots at a convention, so I got to participate in the slot 0 for the adventures, despite the fact that my character was about 3 levels under APL. Our regional writers were notorious for writing nigh-impossible mods, and this one was no exception. My poor level 5 paladin was eviscerated by a bone claw while the rest of the party spent most of the time getting beaten down or attempting escape. Afterward, the party druid Reincarnated me. I lucked out and rolled Human, almost granting me a complete character rebuild. After that, he was known as Kurt Rockholme, the tallest dwarf in the Principality of Ulek.

Chen
2010-06-29, 12:31 PM
I recall my first 3.5 death. I had only played AD&D before that and this was right around when 3.5 had just been released. So we had our 3.5 core books and a bunch of old class books from 3.0 (Sword and Fist, Defenders of the Faith etc). Chose a fighter since I didn't have time to read all the spells and whatnot and managed a pretty decent build for a first look at things. Improved trip + Knockdown worked pretty well in a game where people hadn't realized just how broken some spells were yet. Anyways was doing pretty well in the game until we ended up fighting some dinosaurs. I think I got swallowed whole by like 3 different tyranosauruses before I died to the last one. The funny thing is that it would have been even worse if they had actually just continued biting instead of swallowing considering the damage that was being dealt. After seeing the awesome power of the dinosaur I ended up making a druid and the whole play group than realized how broken druids could be (especially after one water encounter when wild shape+animal growth resulted in a completely OP giant squid with 8 attacks every round and an absurd grapple check).

Pietato
2010-07-07, 08:42 PM
Okay. So I'm in the Wargamers, and they've got a year-long 3.5 campaign going, but I don't join in until the last quarter of it. So I join in with a Ranger/Beastmaster because riding into town on an elephant is entertaining. I don't speak much(Took me a while to get into the groove of the setting,) and don't really offer much in the way of combat effectiveness due bad purchasing decisions, but the party accepts me regardless.

So the final villain rolls around, everybody smacks him up, he dies. Stuff I have no comprehension of happens, an evil God is reborn in the room we're all in and flings a fellow PC through a wall and out the giant tower we're in. Naturally, I jump on my flying tiger and go after him.

Then I get angry evil God in my face. My response?

"... Howdy."

Meteors. I am vaporized. Or I would be, had I not turned on a ring of spell turning a minute or two earlier.

So I get hit with more meteors and die.

Also. Yay first post.

Malificus
2010-07-07, 08:49 PM
My first character to die was a Lasombra Child in a Vampire the Masquerade campaign.

It was a Sabaat campaign, and I was mostly paired with a Brujah. We collectively covered each other's flaws, but this time I was stuck by myself, and ran into the ST's god-character villain. I was able to distract him and escape, but the sun was rising, and I had no time to get to shelter. So I hid in a dumpster, under the trash.

Then a Dumpster Truck came and I died as it emptied out my shelter.

The DM was kind of a jerk.

expirement10K14
2010-07-07, 08:54 PM
Annoying traps. Our party were faced with a room where there was a 40ft pit of acid across the center, with ten feet of floor on the opposite side before a door. We all got across (don't remember how, the wizard probably did it). Our party rogue opens the door, which leads to a stone wall, and the ten feet of floor give out to a second pit of acid, filled with sharks. Round one all but two characters go unconscious. Round two sharks kill them.

DM said there was a secret door on the side we started on, but we never searched for it.

RandomNPC
2010-07-07, 09:12 PM
I DM to much. No deaths for me. I've killed off charcters, some for stupidity, some because they lost to the dice, one because I let inter-party conflict go to far.

My one time my character should have died the DM told me not to roll dice quite yet, and had the DMPC save the day with a big smite for the enemy, and healing potions handed out and used in one big free action. It was a poor save on DMs part.

Andion Isurand
2010-07-07, 09:32 PM
A wilderness encounter with a pair of ogres while traveling near the Snowflake Mountains in Faerûn.

My dwarven cleric was finished off by a critical hit from one charging with a battleaxe on a natural 20 (confirmed with a natural 19) and rolling 11 on the d12. I took 50-something dmg when I only had about 33 HP left.

Khellendross
2010-07-07, 09:40 PM
I've only had one. My 4e dwarf fighter died in a module that they made. We had a total party wipe. Before that I had been in 4 campaigns in 3.5 and never died.