Top 100 Creative Assassination Attempts

[Ignatius]

OK - what are the playground's 100 most creative ways to assassinate a PC that has brought doom upon themselves... I will start us off...

1. Poison their food (not super creative, but how and with what could be)
2. Put a deadly rodent in their bedroll
3. Have a street urchin deliver a note written in explosive runes
4. Create an illusion of a lava pit over a real lava pit. PC notices illusion and walks into the real pit

Have at it...

[Greysect]

5. Shrunken Gorgon head in a spyglass in an observatory.

[Murillio]

6. Hide in a tree, throw an artifact at them that upon reaching the apex of the throw transforms into a humongous extinct whale thus crushing them.

[Belril Duskwalk]

7. Cast Shrink Item on a dagger. Wait until the duration is on it's last day. Stick said dagger into target's sandwich. Wait.

[Templarkommando]

8. I think one of the funniest ones that I've come across was a plane shift trap. In 2.0 my fighter was following the party paladin down a long corridor. Suddenly the floor cracked open and the paladin fell into the plane of fire... it almost sounds like a song.

And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire.

9.If the adventurer wanders into a cave, stoneshape the cave entrance closed and any other exits. It may take him a while to die, but at some point starvation or thirst will catch up with him, unless he's got a really high survival skill.

[Dimers]

10. You'll know you've really pissed off the DM when he has a high-level wizard create a new personal demiplane (empty and featureless) just to plane shift you there and let you starve.

[Ravens_cry]

11. Shrink a small lake of lava into a blanket, using the cloth option and drop on them from above, dismissing the Shrink item effect.

[Dumbledore lives]

12. This one involves some planning and advanced mathematics, but barbarian air drop. You get your high level barbarian friend, and teleport up to low orbit, presumably he has a ring which allows him to survive up there. Then, when the timing and placing is right he unleashes the decanters of endless water/ propulsion device to send him straight down, to crash into your target's house/mansion/castle and destroys anyone left alive after the crater. 20d6 damage really isn't much.

[Templarkommando]

13. Use sleight of hand to get a coin (or several coins) smeared with a contact poison of some sort into his coin purse. Next time he tries to pay for an item he dies from all of his failed saves.

14.lead the character into an airtight room, seal the door and push the button that casts fireball onto the room. If the fireball doesn't kill him, he will die from suffocation. Heck, you can get rid of the fireball and cast something that just removes air from the room.

15. "The Classic" purchase an anvil from a local blacksmith or smith supplier. Drop anvil on character. I guess that one's less creative and more cliche.

16. You're at a party posing as a waiter. Bump into the target hard enough to make him drop his drink. Act very sorry, towel off the target. Replace their drink with whatever poisonous cocktail you desire. Tell him "it's on the house."

17. Your noble/royal target wants to go hunting? Well of course you'll go hunting with him. What kinds of equipment do we need? Basically set yourself up to make everything go wrong on the trip. The noble uses a pike to hold off wild boars. When the shoddy pike comes apart in his hands the boar gets him omm nom nom. As the hunt's guide, try to lead him through all manner of plants and insect swarms that he might be deadly allergic to.

18. gift a dangerous cursed item.

[faith]

19) hire a prostitute and buy the target a drink, after a frivolous night of partying let the courtesan do her job with the target, and interrupt them when the target should be mostly nekkid. brutally murdering them. then light the room of the inn on fire.

[Terracotta]

Have the players enter a dark room with a quick enemy character. Then unleash the magical darkness trap. Through the use of notes, sending players out of the room and so on, have the players accidentally kill each other by making them run into one another and attack what they can't see.

Not a perfect means of engineering PC death, per se, but fun if they can figure it out and stop the enemy in time.

[Terracotta]

Feed the PCs jello at a banquet. Do not tell them until after they've eaten it that it's composed of dormant, tiny/diminutive green slimes.

[Ksheep]

22. While the target is away from home for a while, place a fair number of Necklaces of Fireball. Trap the door to cast flame strike at a pile of these when he enters. Each Necklace that fails its save will detonate, making that many more saves for each of the other necklaces to make.

23. Place Dearn's Instant Fortress under the floor of the outhouse and make a grate of Immovable Rods in the ceiling of said outhouse. When subject enters outhouse, activate the Fortress.

EDIT: Renumbered to match edited double-post by previous poster.

[Vknight]

24: Give a group of rocks with explosive runes to his children to show there parent (Also a necklace of fireballs)

25: Replace one of his servants then level drain him. You will need access to level drain for this to work and its more effective on lower level targets

26: Hire a group of assassins to take the job. Let them fight him/each other, save his life then grapple and kill

27: Use the assassins ability to instantly kill the target

28: Kill his friends, family, and servants. Then let him come at you stupid

29: Same as 28 then raise them as undead to fight him

30: Get a small child tattoo him with explosive runes. Insert necklace's of Fireball into his stomach and teleport him next to the target

31: Use Apocalypse From the Sky to hit his general location

32: Release 1of each poisonous low level creature from the monster manuals inside his personal chambers (Frogs, Vipers etc.)

33: Meteor Swarm...

34: Magic Missile's with various metamagics

35: Gate in a Pit Devil and use there wish ability to wish he cannot resist the poison in his goblet

36: Shot a arrow that has a portable hole and bag of holding at him

[Ksheep]

37. Obtain 20 Vorpal Throwing Daggers… and start throwing. Add Returning just to be on the safe side.

[Terracotta]

[Sorry about the doublepost. Did it by accident and had to change one of them.]

38. The next time the players visit a brothel, have the evil necromancer turn all the whores into Wights. Apply large quantities of perfume, glamor, and illusions to complete the effect and wait for hilarity to ensue.

[hewhosaysfish]

39) A combination of 18 and 26. Give a bunch of cursed items to some low level thugs then send them off to fight the target. Wait until the target tries to use this "amazing loot" he's just aquired then pounce.

[Zorg]

40) Not an assassination per se, but rids you of the target:
Put hypno-rays in their TV so they think their TV is emmitting hypno-rays and they have to tell everyone about the conspiracy. Wave as they're dragged of to the loony bin.

41) While they're asleep, release vampire mosquitos into their room. Wait until they get up and open the curtains... *fwooosh!*

42) Stolen from the Far Side: dress them as a mime, put them on the street in a box made from walls of force and watch them die for their art.

[pendell]

43) Throw subject off a tall building, then drop a large boulder on top of him.

In point of fact, this method of execution was used in the real world . Call it the "Wile E. Coyote" method.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Dimers]

24: Give a group of rocks with explosive runes to his children to show there parent (Also a necklace of fireballs)

You could do something like that in Fallout 2. There was one particular guy you could get a quest to assassinate, and his child would periodically run outside the heavily guarded compound while playing. If you timed it just right, you could plant explosives on the kid such that they went off at the exact moment he had run back in to Daddy. "Look Daddy, I found a flowerBOOOOM"

It's much harder than most ways of dealing with the quest, and using explosives frequently causes the game to crash even with the most up-to-date patch installed, but ... so satisfying!

[Nero24200]

I'm pretty fond of the "take poison, fill a bottle, use presidigation twice in order to make it look and taste like wine" approach.

[Curious]

44. Slipping a blob of Quintessence into the target's lemon pudding.

[Golden Ladybug]

45. Similar to #12, but much more satisfying. Set yourself up 200ft in the air, hold something (a 10ft pole will do) out to one side and cast a Floating Disk over the top of it. Then cast Summon Monster VII to summon a Celestial Baleen Whale on top of that Floating Disk. Remove the 10ft pole, and watch as the Whale falls on top of your enemy.

And quite a large radius around your enemy. Bonus points if you also drop a Flower Pot.

[Alex Star]

46. And this is a plan gone wrong. Back in my early days of playing D&D I had an assassin with a great plan, basically douse any place the mark might touch with a delayed effect contact poison. Well it worked, it also killed the house staff, the first responders who showed up to the situation, and basically anyone who came by to grieve. Stupid low-health NPC's....

[Sdonourg]

47. In an aquatic campaign polymorph into a montrous crab, strangle the victim in sleep, then leave a monstrouc crab corpse near the victim's bed.

One of my players did this... At first he wanted to give crab corpse a dagger.

[Dr. Yes]

48. Part of a nearby building falls off and hits the PC squarely on the head.
49. Set fire to the room the PCs are in. Let it spread to the local wizard's prized brown mold collection in the cupboard.
50. Bring the campaign into the wilderness. Polymorph the offending PCs into geckos. Make it snow.

[androkguz]

51. Put explosive runes on papers. Tons of them. Then fold them into planes or whatever (I used origamis since we where in a Japanesse style place). Then kill your enemies using mage hand to fly the origamis toward them, then opening for you to read them from a safe distance.

[Ksheep]

51. Put explosive runes on papers. Tons of them. Then fold them into planes or whatever (I used origamis since we where in a Japanesse style place). Then kill your enemies using mage hand to fly the origamis toward them, then opening for you to read them from a safe distance.

Except that, by RAW, there is no safe distance. Whomever reads it takes damage, and anyone within a certain distance of the runes also takes distance. Doesn't make much sense, but still...

[Templarkommando]

52. Cast Create water on the ground around your target. Wait a round as they sink into the mud. Cast Mud to Stone. Leave.

53. Catch your enemy on stone terrain. Cast stoneshape and surround them by a stone sphere with a tiny hole in the top. Cast create water into the hole.

54. Arrange for your target to walk through the outer city gates of a well defended city. The bad news is that the guard were practicing dumping boiling water/oil through the murder hole just then.

55. Tell the Paladin that while you are too weak and cowardly to rescue the child who fell into the storm sewer, that you have this torch with you, and he can use it to find the child. Unfortunately, it just so happens that there was a thin layer of oil resting on top of the water. How did that get there? (a pint of oil costs 1 sp) This also works if there is a natural gas leak or something similar.

56. What? That's horrible! They were cutting the grass by the archery targets on long range practice day?

57. (For Renaissance or similar gunpowder involved period) Point to the ship's powder magazine (if there is a sign indicating it is the powder magazine, arrange for that to disappear) and ask them to find the sextant (or some other mundane item) "here's a torch, I think it's in one of the barrels in there." (This should effectively kill everyone on board. Get away as fast as you can.)

58. A rung on a ladder midway up a tall building is trapped to cast grease on every rung of the ladder.

59. The ledge that the target will have to jump to over a deep gorge has grease cast on it.

60. The door is not trapped. The wall behind it with explosive runes cast on it several hundred times is.

61. The wooden plank bridge is not being held up by the ledges at either end of the chasm. Levitate (100 lbs/lvl; 1 min/lvl) is dismissed by the wizard at the opposite ledge when the target has crossed halfway.

62. The mysterious manorial lord's steward directs the party to a waiting room, and locks the door behind. The party is then attacked by every object in the room which has animate object and permanency cast upon it.

63. A trap on the glass floor walking over a tall panoramic view casts shatter on the floor when triggered.

[nedz]

64) Place a Qual's Feather Token (Tree) in their lavatory. At an appropriate moment: activate.

65) Sneak into their room at night and place a Medusa's head on the pillow next to them.