I'll share some of mine too. Back when I was a wee lad in my first campaign we had a party of 10 people and we very chaotic people too so naturally we got into a lot of bad situations.
1. One time we went hunting for dinosaurs because being wee lads we thought having a dinosaur would be easy, after a quick search we found one and suddenly my friend declares "I want it's tail!" and runs up and stabs it. The dinosaur then turns around and one shots him and me and my other friend happily loot the body(we were a very greedy bunch too)
2. Another time a bunch of giant mosquito bunnies as my friend tells me(I couldn't make it to that session) was attacking them so naturally my friend went for the high ground (the tallest near by tree) and then jumps from it miss the enemy and faceplants into the ground killing him.
3. My friend grew bored of his character in the middle of a fight with pirates so he grabs onto the captain and jumps overbroad while singing the Canadian National Anthem
She got revified shortly after, but my rogue was peeking into the next room and fumbled a stealth check and got power word killed by the evil witch lady we were looking for. That was pretty funny. Was also before I got reliable talent, so not something likely to happen now.
I didn't die, but in one of my first D&D experiences we were doing Dragon Heist and when the troll showed up at the start, my level 1 paladin was like 'oh no better go kill that thing and keep these people safe' and got immediately splatted before the bartender took the troll down.
My tabaxi rogue at level 1 in the death house (Strahd). Fumbled a perception roll to see a door was actually a mimic and tried to pick the lock. Mimic got a critical success on the attack roll. My tabaxi failed the first death saving throw, party medic tried to use medicine to stabilise him and fumbled resulting in another 2 failed death saves. One very dead tabaxi later…
My tabaxi rogue at level 1 in the death house (Strahd). Fumbled a perception roll to see a door was actually a mimic and tried to pick the lock. Mimic got a critical success on the attack roll. My tabaxi failed the first death saving throw, party medic tried to use medicine to stabilise him and fumbled resulting in another 2 failed death saves. One very dead tabaxi later…
Yeah honestly I don't understand mimics in low level adventures, I guess really a lot can kill you in them but we just did something with a mimic in it, my artificer failed to notice it and walked by thinking it was just another chair, 1 critical hit later for 24 dmg and my 11 HP artificer was dead instantly. It was.. kinda funny? kinda not really? more of just a "holy shit" but kinda just ruined the session for everyone DM included
Yeah you need to be careful with damage values at lower levels, especially the first couple levels. If something can bring a pc from full health to not just KOd, but dead dead on a single hit, maybe that's not appropriate for a level 1 adventure unless you're specifically running a hardcore survival type game.
Not the funniest death but certainly the luckiest/unlucky east I’ve ever seen -
back in 1e-3.5 days party of 7 level 17-20 characters make the mistake of attacking Lolth in the DemonWeb Pits. Initiative order was the rest of the party, Lolth then me. They attack and do diddly squat. She basically waves her hand does aTPK on them then looks at me. My dumb A** move? Called shot head shot with an arrow of slaying and I rolled a Nat 20 DM proceeded to try to come up with every possible save etc to keep from killing Lolth between us we rolled 10 critical fails in a row. Someone outside the game clearly wanted (that) Lolth dead.
Back in 2e days, my mage (sorry, wizard) was killed by his friends because they though he was in league with a black dragon. My mage ran down the street away fro his friends who were trying to kill him. They were flying in the air on the now charmed black dragon. One of the PCs had a magic bow. He held the "energy arrow" in the bow until it grew incredibly big and then blasted me with it, leaving a big crater in the street. My "friends" landed to check my body. Now, we were using wills for our belongings and everyone had agreed to abide by the wills. My age had a Staff of Power, and I quickly changed by will to say that I wanted my staff destroyed. The party fighter broke it over his knee, resulting in a massive magical explosion that killed most of them.
In a 3e game I played a mute rogue child. In battle with a giant insect, he trued to jump off a ledge for a sneak attack from above, but I rolled a critical failure, and the insect swallowed me whole as I jumped right down its gullet.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Honestly, it's fine to laugh in the face of death, but the Grim Reaper is amused about that. It's fine to use "gallows humor" as long as the DM warns you ahead of time that people may die laughing. As long as they are laughing with you, instead of laughing at you, that's fine.
Ask me about how my first character ever, a level one Ranger, got eaten by a Beholder. Maybe we will both laugh about it. I wasn't amused at the time though. The game was moderately serious.
my friend had a large bounty so he teamed up with another player and turned himself in I don't know how he planned to escape prison in the day before he was to be executed but it didn't work and he was killed. As the DM I was laughing very hard on the inside.
While playing Tomb of Horror, we were in a dungeon that was just brimming with traps. We had a fighter and a rogue trying to get to the treasure at the end, I was a monk who was too wise to risk the traps without knowing the secret. ( the secret was something about having to go through the dungeon on piggy-back to avoid setting off the traps). So after avoiding a couple of blade traps, the fighter realizes the solution to the clue and throws the smaller rogue up on his back. They successfully maneuver up a spiral staircase, and grab a bit of treasure.
Then the fun began.
The fighter crit failed a dex save coming down the staircase while carrying a halfling who is carrying a jug filled with acid.
So they both tumble down the stairs, setting off all the traps and splashing themselves with acid and taking falling damage all at the same time *BONK*SPLASH*ZAP*SIZZLE*BANG*THUD! all the way down to the floor. The fighter barely survived, but everyone at the table nearly died of laughter. It's still one of my favorite D&D memories even though we never got around to finishing the campaign.
My tabaxi rogue at level 1 in the death house (Strahd). Fumbled a perception roll to see a door was actually a mimic and tried to pick the lock. Mimic got a critical success on the attack roll. My tabaxi failed the first death saving throw, party medic tried to use medicine to stabilise him and fumbled resulting in another 2 failed death saves. One very dead tabaxi later…
Yeah honestly I don't understand mimics in low level adventures, I guess really a lot can kill you in them but we just did something with a mimic in it, my artificer failed to notice it and walked by thinking it was just another chair, 1 critical hit later for 24 dmg and my 11 HP artificer was dead instantly. It was.. kinda funny? kinda not really? more of just a "holy shit" but kinda just ruined the session for everyone DM included
The mimic deals an average of 11 damage per hit with its Bite (1d8+3 piercing plus 1d8 acid). A critical hit will deal an average of 20 damage, with a range of 7-35. It deals less damage than a CR2 ogre (2d8+4) on a critical hit.
I think you have to just accept that at level 1, sometimes you're going to get crit and die. I guess that Mimics are a bit annoying in that regard given how hard it is to see them, but it doesn't really matter if you saw the ogre or not when it crits you. Character death at level 1 really shouldn't be a big deal, and personally I think it's fun. I guess if you'd put a ton of work into a backstory you might not feel that way, but then that would imply you'd never be happy with a character death.
And of course...
"After the death of Barry the artificer to a mimic, the party was shortly thereafter joined by Larry, his cousin. When Larry succumbed to a griffin, Harry the artificer rose to avenge his cousins..." Their family has a lot of children.
White Plume Mountain : Player grabs and equips Armor of Vulnerability - Finds out it's cursed from bludgeoning dmg and can't remove it.
Tomb of Horrors: Same player with equipped cursed armor. Decided to walk through the one of those secret tunnels and fell into a huge pit trap - Fell down to the bottom- Forgot what the damage was - But made him go splat.
"After the death of Barry the artificer to a mimic, the party was shortly thereafter joined by Larry, his cousin. When Larry succumbed to a griffin, Harry the artificer rose to avenge his cousins..." Their family has a lot of children.
Yeah love those family connections, a friend of mine back in 1e had a family like that - all fighters - family traits: STR-18+, Int 6-
Way back in 3.0, I was in a group that played in the local comic book store, so we had a number of people who would just show up and make characters on occasion. There was one guy who would come in, play one game, get killed, then disappear for a few months. It was a regular thing for him. All of his deaths were his fault. He was a real edgelord, always doing things with his characters to show how edgy and dark they were- his sorcerer filed his teeth, for example.
First, when the party was at 1st level, he made a wizard. The party was in town, and he and another player running a cleric came in to join the party. We were doing downtime interactions, so the two of them decide to walk into the roughest bar in town, where the wizard proceeded to deliberately antagonize the patrons.
Of course, this led to the bar's bouncer ordering him to leave, at which point he tried casting a Sleep spell on him (forgetting that spellcasting provoked attacks of opportunity) and getting punched unconscious for his trouble.
This would have been the end of things, but his partner the cleric decided to hit the bouncer with his mace. He killed the bouncer, at which point the entire rest of the bar pulled weapons and dogpiled him. The two of them were arrested for murder and while they were unconscious they were both found to be Vecna worshipers (the cleric was a cleric of Vecna and the wizard's player had made a big point about telling everyone that his character had a tattoo of Vecna's holy symbol on his chest) and were immediately executed by the town guard.
That was about the last time that the guy who'd played the cleric ever showed up, but the guy who'd played the wizard came back a few times. Most times, he'd get killed due to starting fights he couldn't finish or because he wanted to show off how edgy he was by doing his own thing in a fight away from the rest of the party. But there was another time that really stood out.
The party had come up upon a rather suspicious traveling merchant (actually a devil, but we didn't know that) who was offering "gambling" for magic items- you had to put up a magic item of your own as a stake and if you won, you got the item you wanted but if you lost you had to give him yours.
So, our edgy guy was really determined to get a magic item. He was playing a monk this time and didn't actually have any items to put up as stakes (though he'd tried to pickpocket one of the other PCs earlier in the session despite having no ranks in the skill). The item he wanted wasn't even something that was particularly useful to a monk, it was just some random Wondrous Item or something. So after arguing with the GM for a bit, he finally blurts out that he'll wager his soul.
I'd watched a couple of other players who'd decided to try the gamble, and there was not a great chance of actual success. But he was determined and by that point the GM had gotten annoyed with his antics, so they let him roll.
He fumbled the check.
Cue the devil taking its true form and physically ripping the guy's soul from his body, laughing the whole time.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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I'll share some of mine too. Back when I was a wee lad in my first campaign we had a party of 10 people and we very chaotic people too so naturally we got into a lot of bad situations.
1. One time we went hunting for dinosaurs because being wee lads we thought having a dinosaur would be easy, after a quick search we found one and suddenly my friend declares "I want it's tail!" and runs up and stabs it. The dinosaur then turns around and one shots him and me and my other friend happily loot the body(we were a very greedy bunch too)
2. Another time a bunch of giant mosquito bunnies as my friend tells me(I couldn't make it to that session) was attacking them so naturally my friend went for the high ground (the tallest near by tree) and then jumps from it miss the enemy and faceplants into the ground killing him.
3. My friend grew bored of his character in the middle of a fight with pirates so he grabs onto the captain and jumps overbroad while singing the Canadian National Anthem
Black Lives Matter
Count as high as you can before Nikoli_Goodfellow Posts!
Extended Signature, The Best Paradox, We all knew it.
I participate in the Level 20 Gladiator Arena with several champions they are all in my extended signature Win Streak: 0 Total Wins: 19 Total Loses: 6
She got revified shortly after, but my rogue was peeking into the next room and fumbled a stealth check and got power word killed by the evil witch lady we were looking for. That was pretty funny. Was also before I got reliable talent, so not something likely to happen now.
I didn't die, but in one of my first D&D experiences we were doing Dragon Heist and when the troll showed up at the start, my level 1 paladin was like 'oh no better go kill that thing and keep these people safe' and got immediately splatted before the bartender took the troll down.
A goat pushed my friends Paladin off of a mountain. He’d killed Vampires and other undead, and yet a goat killed him.
My tabaxi rogue at level 1 in the death house (Strahd). Fumbled a perception roll to see a door was actually a mimic and tried to pick the lock. Mimic got a critical success on the attack roll. My tabaxi failed the first death saving throw, party medic tried to use medicine to stabilise him and fumbled resulting in another 2 failed death saves. One very dead tabaxi later…
Yeah honestly I don't understand mimics in low level adventures, I guess really a lot can kill you in them but we just did something with a mimic in it, my artificer failed to notice it and walked by thinking it was just another chair, 1 critical hit later for 24 dmg and my 11 HP artificer was dead instantly. It was.. kinda funny? kinda not really? more of just a "holy shit" but kinda just ruined the session for everyone DM included
Yeah you need to be careful with damage values at lower levels, especially the first couple levels. If something can bring a pc from full health to not just KOd, but dead dead on a single hit, maybe that's not appropriate for a level 1 adventure unless you're specifically running a hardcore survival type game.
Not the funniest death but certainly the luckiest/unlucky east I’ve ever seen -
back in 1e-3.5 days party of 7 level 17-20 characters make the mistake of attacking Lolth in the DemonWeb Pits. Initiative order was the rest of the party, Lolth then me. They attack and do diddly squat. She basically waves her hand does aTPK on them then looks at me. My dumb A** move? Called shot head shot with an arrow of slaying and I rolled a Nat 20 DM proceeded to try to come up with every possible save etc to keep from killing Lolth between us we rolled 10 critical fails in a row. Someone outside the game clearly wanted (that) Lolth dead.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Back in 2e days, my mage (sorry, wizard) was killed by his friends because they though he was in league with a black dragon. My mage ran down the street away fro his friends who were trying to kill him. They were flying in the air on the now charmed black dragon. One of the PCs had a magic bow. He held the "energy arrow" in the bow until it grew incredibly big and then blasted me with it, leaving a big crater in the street. My "friends" landed to check my body. Now, we were using wills for our belongings and everyone had agreed to abide by the wills. My age had a Staff of Power, and I quickly changed by will to say that I wanted my staff destroyed. The party fighter broke it over his knee, resulting in a massive magical explosion that killed most of them.
In a 3e game I played a mute rogue child. In battle with a giant insect, he trued to jump off a ledge for a sneak attack from above, but I rolled a critical failure, and the insect swallowed me whole as I jumped right down its gullet.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
i love this
Black Lives Matter
Count as high as you can before Nikoli_Goodfellow Posts!
Extended Signature, The Best Paradox, We all knew it.
I participate in the Level 20 Gladiator Arena with several champions they are all in my extended signature Win Streak: 0 Total Wins: 19 Total Loses: 6
Honestly, it's fine to laugh in the face of death, but the Grim Reaper is amused about that. It's fine to use "gallows humor" as long as the DM warns you ahead of time that people may die laughing. As long as they are laughing with you, instead of laughing at you, that's fine.
Ask me about how my first character ever, a level one Ranger, got eaten by a Beholder. Maybe we will both laugh about it. I wasn't amused at the time though. The game was moderately serious.
<Insert clever signature here>
my friend had a large bounty so he teamed up with another player and turned himself in I don't know how he planned to escape prison in the day before he was to be executed but it didn't work and he was killed. As the DM I was laughing very hard on the inside.
Black Lives Matter
Count as high as you can before Nikoli_Goodfellow Posts!
Extended Signature, The Best Paradox, We all knew it.
I participate in the Level 20 Gladiator Arena with several champions they are all in my extended signature Win Streak: 0 Total Wins: 19 Total Loses: 6
1e my wizard cast his 1 magic misslle then tried to climb a tree to get out of the way but crit failed and fell for 5 dam. only had 3 hp
While playing Tomb of Horror, we were in a dungeon that was just brimming with traps. We had a fighter and a rogue trying to get to the treasure at the end, I was a monk who was too wise to risk the traps without knowing the secret. ( the secret was something about having to go through the dungeon on piggy-back to avoid setting off the traps). So after avoiding a couple of blade traps, the fighter realizes the solution to the clue and throws the smaller rogue up on his back. They successfully maneuver up a spiral staircase, and grab a bit of treasure.
Then the fun began.
The fighter crit failed a dex save coming down the staircase while carrying a halfling who is carrying a jug filled with acid.
So they both tumble down the stairs, setting off all the traps and splashing themselves with acid and taking falling damage all at the same time *BONK*SPLASH*ZAP*SIZZLE*BANG*THUD! all the way down to the floor. The fighter barely survived, but everyone at the table nearly died of laughter. It's still one of my favorite D&D memories even though we never got around to finishing the campaign.
days of walking through a hex crawl, short of supplies. one character has a jug that can create various liquids each day.
to taunt us while we are thirsty he exclaims "i uncork my jug and just gulp down everything in it, loudly so every notices how much i'm wasting!"
DM: "umm, ok....and since you created acid in the jug this morning i need you to start rolling for damage."
The mimic deals an average of 11 damage per hit with its Bite (1d8+3 piercing plus 1d8 acid). A critical hit will deal an average of 20 damage, with a range of 7-35. It deals less damage than a CR2 ogre (2d8+4) on a critical hit.
I think you have to just accept that at level 1, sometimes you're going to get crit and die. I guess that Mimics are a bit annoying in that regard given how hard it is to see them, but it doesn't really matter if you saw the ogre or not when it crits you. Character death at level 1 really shouldn't be a big deal, and personally I think it's fun. I guess if you'd put a ton of work into a backstory you might not feel that way, but then that would imply you'd never be happy with a character death.
And of course...
"After the death of Barry the artificer to a mimic, the party was shortly thereafter joined by Larry, his cousin. When Larry succumbed to a griffin, Harry the artificer rose to avenge his cousins..." Their family has a lot of children.
Yawning Portal Campaign
Yeah love those family connections, a friend of mine back in 1e had a family like that - all fighters - family traits: STR-18+, Int 6-
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Way back in 3.0, I was in a group that played in the local comic book store, so we had a number of people who would just show up and make characters on occasion. There was one guy who would come in, play one game, get killed, then disappear for a few months. It was a regular thing for him. All of his deaths were his fault. He was a real edgelord, always doing things with his characters to show how edgy and dark they were- his sorcerer filed his teeth, for example.
First, when the party was at 1st level, he made a wizard. The party was in town, and he and another player running a cleric came in to join the party. We were doing downtime interactions, so the two of them decide to walk into the roughest bar in town, where the wizard proceeded to deliberately antagonize the patrons.
Of course, this led to the bar's bouncer ordering him to leave, at which point he tried casting a Sleep spell on him (forgetting that spellcasting provoked attacks of opportunity) and getting punched unconscious for his trouble.
This would have been the end of things, but his partner the cleric decided to hit the bouncer with his mace. He killed the bouncer, at which point the entire rest of the bar pulled weapons and dogpiled him. The two of them were arrested for murder and while they were unconscious they were both found to be Vecna worshipers (the cleric was a cleric of Vecna and the wizard's player had made a big point about telling everyone that his character had a tattoo of Vecna's holy symbol on his chest) and were immediately executed by the town guard.
That was about the last time that the guy who'd played the cleric ever showed up, but the guy who'd played the wizard came back a few times. Most times, he'd get killed due to starting fights he couldn't finish or because he wanted to show off how edgy he was by doing his own thing in a fight away from the rest of the party. But there was another time that really stood out.
The party had come up upon a rather suspicious traveling merchant (actually a devil, but we didn't know that) who was offering "gambling" for magic items- you had to put up a magic item of your own as a stake and if you won, you got the item you wanted but if you lost you had to give him yours.
So, our edgy guy was really determined to get a magic item. He was playing a monk this time and didn't actually have any items to put up as stakes (though he'd tried to pickpocket one of the other PCs earlier in the session despite having no ranks in the skill). The item he wanted wasn't even something that was particularly useful to a monk, it was just some random Wondrous Item or something. So after arguing with the GM for a bit, he finally blurts out that he'll wager his soul.
I'd watched a couple of other players who'd decided to try the gamble, and there was not a great chance of actual success. But he was determined and by that point the GM had gotten annoyed with his antics, so they let him roll.
He fumbled the check.
Cue the devil taking its true form and physically ripping the guy's soul from his body, laughing the whole time.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.