I shared this story a few weeks ago on Facebook and thought this might be fun to see other peoples stories.
My first Character was a Thief Named Tulio. Tulio's backstory was he was part of the Thieves guild and through that had connections to the city's main crime family that none of the other players knew about when he joined up. He then had to go a few weeks purposely screwing up disarming traps, and stealth checks ending with him leading the group into a massive kill zone. This was because while he worked with the party out side the city walls he couldn't do anything inside the city to go ageist the guild. The look of horror and rage when I said my Thief walked back into the hallway and locks the door behind him still haunts me. They ended up surviving, and hunting my ass down in a bar after explaining myself and Tulio's tragic backstory the fighter of the group walked up , placed his hand on my arm struck me with his ax ( Nat 20) killing me , and leaving my decapitated head at the crime bosses dinner table.
That is awesome, good for that fighter. Yet I too have a story of betrayal that ends in death for the duplicitous rogue. So way back in the my 2nd edition days as a player our group stumbled upon a Death Knight. As each of us scrambled to run away I made the mistake of climbing up a chimney, which turned out to be decorative than useful. Just as the Death Knight was about to hurl a fireball up the chimney and end my miserable existence I made a bargain with the Death Knight. He lets me live and I complete a task for him and he gets to have my soul when I die. Of course the Death Knight wanted me to acquire some gemstones for him, the same gemstones the party was currently searching for. So my thief lied to the group and told them that he bargained all of their souls so that they would help him. Well the rouse lasted until we ran into a sage and the cleric asked how they could escape such a bargain. It was then revealed that I had no power to bargain their souls and that I had to be lying. Needless to say they weren't happy with my rogue and quickly dispatched his soul back to the Death Knight. Sometimes I can still hear his screams in the quiet of the night (j/k).
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As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!
Our Ranger checks at every shop for rare or unusual items. After a while, he finally found a shop keeper with some 'special' merchandise. So the ranger bought a bag of powder without knowing what it was. He tested with a taste, got low Con roll and ended up with a nasty acid trip. Turns out he bought drugs. We were about to leave town and the ranger barely made it to our cart, high as a kite and passed out. We got to the next town and our goofball Sorcerer was being annoying, so the Ranger decided to play a prank on him by dosing him with some of the drugs. Right before the dose, the Sorcerer failed a meaningless ability roll and used a wild magic surge to reroll it. The random spell effect was reincarnate. So for the next minute, if he died, he would come back as a random race. He felt invincible, but he was also heavily tripping on drugs, so he ran straight into a lake and drowned. A Tiefling ran into the water, but a Tabaxi came out.
I think the best death story is the one I watched on one of the most recent episodes of Critical Role. I do not want to give away spoilers to anyone who plans to catch up...but it was so obvious to even someone who has only played a short time and to see a somewhat experienced player perform a stunt that could only end in her demise was the best 20 minutes of online material I have ever watched. It was a moment where you could see in Matt's expression that the session was going to be ruined by such a noob move by someone who should have known better...for those who are wondering, and need to see it. It was at the start of the sessions adventure, "Taryon my Wayward Son." about 12 minutes into episode 97...
This is set in the dragon age universe. My character Feridy Garal was the leader of a new small grey warden team. Her team consisted of a reaver elf named Valarian, a human cleric named Hanan, a wizard named Adokac, and a human rogue named Etna. They grew together and became a close family.
After a while of seeing signs of a new blight An Archdemon came with thousands of dark spawn and the grey wardens gathered for a great war. Some how Feridy and her team ended up being apart of the final team to fight the Archdemon directly. When the Archdemon dies its soul will go to the nearest creature with dark spawn blood (which all grey wardens have) and if a grey warden is that creature they will die but the Archdemon will die with them. After a long grueling fight when the Archdemon was falling and everyone knew it was about to die they all looked around and saw that Feridy was the closest one to the demon. We all rolled high enough to attempt to jump away before the soul of the demon moved. Everyone jumped away except for Valarian who had come to see Feridy as a member of his tribe and so Valarian jumped toward the demon ultimately being the one the soul went to. He saved Feridy (I literally cried because I felt so bad about it).
Feridy and her party raced over to try and save him but there was nothing to be done. They party gave him a beautiful goodbye service where they followed the traditions of his tribe and ate his heart so that his power would live on in his teammates. And Feridy is never going to be the same. We recently started playing in this universe again after several months break. It is still hard to not have Valarian there anymore.
If you enjoy the Dragon Age games it will be fantastic to play in a world you love. And even if you don't the combat system is really fun. Our group have about half people who had played the game half who never had. Everyone enjoyed it but I definitely think the dragon age nerds got the most out of it. It is my favorite combat system for sure.
Playing D&D At a library, girlfriend and brother also coming. We've had over 15 Sessions. I had made a Half-Elf Bard named Elstaer. God, I loved him. He was smooth with the ladies, a master thief, and a Wonderful bard, known across the land. My Girlfriend was a human Warrior, and an aristocratic one at that. My Brother was a Human Ranger named Deputy Sheriff Jimbo. The rest of the group had really good characters. In short, we had all grown fond of each other's characters. It was during the ' Final Battle ' of the campaign that we lost many people. 5 Of the 11 People playing had died. This big-ass ******* dragon was ripping us apart. Finally, Elstaer had enough of this. He said: "That's all, folks! " He Quickly jumped into the dragon's throat. I rolled a 20, however, death was inevitable. He clogged the Dragon's throat with himself and his Lute. The dragon choked to death, falling to the ground. Through some GM Collaboration and Story purposes, the only thing that fell out was his Most prized possession.
A Coin necklace wrapped around an old love letter tumbled out of the Dragon's throat. Elstaer had won the campaign.
Of course, the thing is still going on to this day. That was the end of the main quest. Elstaer, and all the others who had fallen during that battle, were remembered.
On a side-note, one of the characters who had an affinity for Elstaer kept both items.
On another Side-Note, I apologize for my shit sentence writing. I typed that up real fast.
Prepare for the story of a lifetime, a bit lengthy but I digress
One minor thing, our D&D group treats all 1 and 20's on the d20 as critical fails and successes, whether it be an attack, saving throw, ability check... etc. It makes for more memorable moments, this being one of them. Also throughout all our campaigns, we've had very few character deaths, a few at most.
Now lets begin.
The best time I've ever had, and the most I've laughed playing D&D was our last session of this most recent campaign. Let me set the scene: party of 6 level 7 characters (Dragonborn paladin, Dragonborn barbarian, Dwarf fighter, Drow monk, Half-elf rogue, and Tortle warlock) have to find the mayor's daughter, who was taken away for some ritual to summon a demon. We had to find a ritual book that was well guarded and a key to unlock a vault which had the ritual dagger. Long story short some dark elf wizard guy already stole both of these ritual items and headed to the nearest town to start it. Us adventurers took off on our horses, chasing after him... There is one horse in particular that needs to be mentioned- There was 6 of us, and only 5 horses, so the only logical thing to do was to put the Dragonborn barbarian [7'2" 325lbs], and Tortle Warlock [6'6" 850lbs] on the same horse. This obviously didn't make sense so we decided that to support the weight, the horse was actually a gigantic Apache horsecopter with the body structure of a table. We rode back to town to see the city on fire, oh yeah, side note; I forgot to mention that our Dragonborn Paladin set the whole forest on fire, but the city fire was not caused by him. Anyway, the city was infested with shadow creatures slaughtering the civilians. Upon killing a few, we notice a huge aztec-like pyramid in the center of town. The warlock, barbarian, paladin, and rogue immediately head up the stairs to the top while the others tend to the wounded; they are greeted by the evil dark elf trying to sacrifice the mayor's daughter. Battle starts and we decide that the rogue goes for the daughter while us 3 reptiles fight the elf. A few rounds of combat go by, I-hit-you-you-hit-me style while the rogue tries to lift the daughter and take her to safety. The problem was that he was a measly 5'1" with 9 strength. He struggled and struggled, all the while our DM looked at us very maniacally hoping to see a critical fail. Well he got his wish, the rogue tried to lift the daughter and got a 1, well he didn't just lift her, he basically chucked them both down the pyramid, knocking them to 0 hp... There goes one of our teammates, not to worry there was still a 3 against 1, boy was I WRONG! The warlock poly-morphed into a giant ape and then the barbarian got absolutely annihilated, even in his rage mode he was knocked to 4 hp from about full. This is where he had a great idea; and by great I mean there was a 0% chance it was going to succeed. His plan was to hold his greatsword above his head, and have the giant ape pick him up and throw him like a spear into the evil dark elf. 3 things went through my mind at that moment; how is this going to work, how is this going to work, and HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK!? A few minutes later and it's the warlock/giant ape's turn. He picks up the barbarian and starts to violently shake the d20. At this point the DM says "If you get a 1, he's dead" a few seconds of shaking and the die is tossed, it clatters across the table and comes to a stop, it's a... a... a... 1. No, this isn't happening. I rub my eyes... still a 1. Welp, it was nice knowing ya. The DM gets all giddy and describes the most epic moment of all time. The giant ape rears back and throws the barbarian as hard as he can but instead of aiming for the elf, he just throws. The barbarian goes spiraling like a football WAY off into the distance (like team rocket blasting off) headed straight for the burning forest like a meteor. He hits a tree and completely vaporizes into mist. At that point the Drow monk and Dwarf fighter are coming up the stairs; they plan on seeing their friends all fighting side by side... haha NOPE, first they see the rogue and mayor's daughter tumble down (way too fast to catch), then they see their friend get meteor spiked over the horizon; they join the battle. After a bit the battle ends from the giant ape grabbing the dark elf and squishing his head with the other hand. Man, could that have gone worse? I should have never thought that, because oh boy yes it does go worse. Everybody starts looting the dark elf while the giant ape goes and tries to help the rogue from dying. To get the most distance he runs and jumps from the top of the pyramid down to the bottom where he sees the rogue. DM says roll for athletics. Me being optimistic I think "our party has gotten all our fails out of the way, this can't go wrong" BOOM rolls a 1. The giant ape soars through the sky and lands directly on the rogue, squishing him to a pulp instantly. Man, that's 2 team kills, not only in one session, but within 20 minutes of each other... that might be a world record! After about 5 minutes of nonstop laughs we contemplate if they could ever be revived. Yes they could. Somebody looked up resurrection and true resurrection and found out, and I quote "This spell closes all mortal wounds and restores any missing body parts." We say, just scoop up the rogues body and put it in a barrel, the guy playing the rogue responds with, "a barrel? b***h you can put me in a baby food jar." and for the barbarian meteor, we could just find a few ashes of him, ahhh but nobody in this world had any type of resurrection spell. We end up returning the mayor's daughter back to him and have a memorial for our fallen comrades. The memorial consisting of a small puddle of flesh and guts for Oofer the rogue, and just our memories of Abassi the barbarian.
Ok, one of my friends created a half-elf ranger Rikkle, who redefined the meaning of murderhobo. He was psychotic. Over the course of his adventures, he murdered his own wife, and robbed and killed his way through the world. Anyhow, he tried to fight an ancient green dragon on his own... and died in the first round of combat.
But that was not the end of rikkle. He was resurrected by an evil being, and continued to wreak havoc, until his original player's new character fired a flaming ballista into him.
Human, male, standard-issue rogue kind of a guy. Callister.
There was some nasty, cold-war-about-to-go-defcon-1, kind of tension between Wood Elves and a local kingdom of Mortals. A bunch of Dwarves waited to come out of their caves and kill off the winners after that fight was over. And just five plucky adventurers, trying to prevent apocalyptic war.
All of it was stirred up by the Goblins. But nobody was clever enough to figure that out, no matter how many times something caught on fire in the most suspicious way possible.
In our home-brew campaign world (Wessem), race relations tend to be godawful in the best of circumstances. This was not the best of circumstances.
Also in this world, Nieblings (Drow with a different name) are stunted and grotesque, instead of glamorous, emo, and pretty. Think Albrecht from the Wagner operas. Not really germane to the character death, but should give you an idea of what the party looked like. One of our number was a Niebling spell caster, Klebukalee. Rest of our party were Moaem, Mortal spell caster; Gregor, meatshield Mortal fighter-type; Dourik, male Dwarf fighter and leader of the party.
On our way to figure out why the Elves would have torched their own woods (they didn't, it was the Goblins), we met a pack of wargs.
Kle stepped up and threw a web spell at the wargs. Good shot. Most of the wargs were stuck in a gooey pile of web.
Most of the wargs.
The remaining four or five of these guys stepped to their right and went after our Niebling. Kle ran to the opposite side of the pile of web and grouchy, still immobile, other wargs. And she kept fleeing. From above, it might have looked like some weird merry-go-round.
Dourik and Gregor stood ready to repel the charge, a shieldwall of two. Which would have been great if the wargs had been charging them, instead of circling around other wargs, on a chase to maul the Niebling.
Moaem rifled through the bag of treasure items, trying to find something to help. The player was still new to the game, and didn't really catch-on how to do this. Which might be why she kept suggesting dust of disappearance as a way to make the enemy disappear and not bother us any more. “Goddammit, Moaem! That was a bad idea at White Plume, and it's still a bad idea here! Put that away!”
Kle and her pursuers, going counterclockwise, had made a circuit of the trapped wargs. Then Callister came in, going clockwise.
Cal ran past Kle, dirk in each hand, and bulled into the wargs. I think he managed to score about 4 hit points of damage before they ate him to death. Dourik and Gregor joined soon after, and killed off the wargs.
They managed to find a cleric, which took weeks of in-game-universe play. And Cal failed that whole resurrection save bit. So permanent death.
I told Kle's player that Cal had a thing for Kle. But that whole racism thing. See above. Their clans would never have approved. And it made for a great unrequited, tragic love story. So hell yes I said that.
The land burned. The forest was a ruin. The kingdom fell. Mortals reverted to barbarism. Dwarves and Goblins fought each other to extinction. All was ash and blood and sorrow.
I'm guessing Klebukalee died sad and alone. Dourik had a maimed leg by the end of things. Gregor went off to join the clergy. Callister was still dead. Moaem never did find anything helpful in that damned bag.
In one of my first campaigns, i was a elven rogue called Xanphia. this is how she died
while we where fighting about 4 giant squids and a few hundred(dozen)sea monsters at the end of the campaign i decided to go release the prisoners from the underwater dungeons. i succeeded, and for my final battle i leapt into the last krakens mouth and cut him up from the inside. i died of course. then the dm set up a funeral for Xanphia.
In the first campaign I played in, ran by a friend, we had a Orc barbarian, and the player would say hes unkillable. We were level 2-3 and he once tried fighting a beholder with one other person and won. The DM felt he made it to easy, because beholders aren't meant to be killed easily, especially for level 2 players. He had us do a chapter where we were all level 3 at that point, and then an ancient red dragon came into a city, then insta killed the barbarian to show us we could easily die. One other person died as well, but his death wasn't the funny one. The person playing the barbarian gave a lot of excuses like him having danger sense so he couldn't be killed. He still says his characters are unkillable in other campaigns, but finds more ways to say that he shouldn't have died every time its brought up.
The BBEG of my first campaign killed my 2nd character with Power Word Kill. Was a shadow monk named Brutuseth Dreadjoy. Balineth just dropped him and everyone was out of spells slots out in the Plane of Wind 'n had to leave his body behind.
We then played a prequel campaign and I played a Conquest Paladin named Alistar Pridebreaker. Dude had a soft spot for children, as they were innocent and unknowing to the badness of the world. He rescued and looked after this child over the course of this year-long campaign. Eventually it becomes apparent that this child turns out to be Balineth, the woman who killed my favorite character from before. Thought it was well done by the DM, as Alistar saw many signs but his flaw was that he was too trusting of those who he could not see as evil, and a child that was a vessel for an evil God just went under his radar. Thus, I babysat the woman who killed me later down the line.
I was the DM for a new player, whose elven ranger had just dropped in a duel against cultists. First death save was a fail. "Don't roll a 1!" we told her.
You all know what happened next.
Good news is, she wasn't turned off by the experience and still plays in our group. Maybe the ensuing TPK actually helped...but that's a story for another time.
I was running SKT for a group of 3 players. One of them was playing a Gnome Wizard, a Necromancer specifically.
The party discovers giants are raiding the High Road, finding a couple taking a rowboat back to a larger ship. They, of course, follow with the use of Invisibility and Water Walking.
Upon reaching the boat, the party begins to assault it, focusing simply on sinking the ship and leaving the giants to fend for themselves.
Eventually, the ship is starting to go down, so the party begins to retreat and wait it out. One member casts Invisibility, targeting themselves and a nearby ally. This leaves the Necromancer as the only visible character. A giant on the ship sees this and hurls the cannonball he was holding right at them.
Crit. 36 damage. Did I mention the Necromancer had a Constitution score of 3? His max health was about 12. (The player behind them enjoys the chaos of weird and low stats.)
Instant death. Decided to roll 1d6 to determine dismemberment. Originally opted to ignore the head, too small a target for the giant, but they Gnome's player insisted. So it became 1: Head. 2: Torso. 3-4: Arms. 5-6: Legs.
The die was rolled. It showed a 1. His head was gone, completely, probably attached to the quickly sinking cannonball.
The party still managed to recover what was left of him, later just using raise dead to have him tag along as a zombie, just with a gourd for a head and plenty of perfume and hooded attire.
I once played a character who suffered from Lycanthropy. We had no cleric. We were out of the city thankfully and one of our other characters had died. We found this old woman who could reincarnate. After she reincarnated our fallen I just looked at her. My character was dealing with the guilt of knowing I had killed some helpless villager during the last full moon. so I looked at the old woman and asked. "Does death cure lycanthropy." Wasn't a wererat any more.
A character from one of my campaigns, Errik, died in a place called The Spires - a cluster of towers hidden in the middle of the Sea of Swords where the Inquisitors brought any captured mages they found (in my world, magic is very rare, and during this campaign was highly illegal. The PCs had discovered the location of those the Inquisitors had taken and came here to free them).
They discovered that the mages were chained up with cold iron (a mana suppressant, preventing mages from casting) and were having their mana siphoned into great crystal orbs. The PCs fought their way through the largely unmanned towers, freeing as many captives as they could, until the Inquisitor fleet arrived.
Cleverly boxing the Inquisitors in the tower, a wounded Errik created an impassable barrier that would hold the Inquisitors at bay whilst the mages and his friend and ally Treeva comandeered the Inquisitor ships and fled to a stronghold of the resistance. The barrier however, needed to be sustained, and so Errik had to remain, knowing he sealed his fate. Eventually, drained of mana, the barrier fell and Errik made one last valiant attempt to buy his people the precious moments they needed. His body was cleaved in two by an Inquisitors greatsword.
Though pursued, Erriks actions allowed the once captive mages to flee to safety, where they would join the resistance. Though permanently magically stunted, these men, women and children still possessed magical ability, and went on to, alongside the resistance, liberate more of the Inquisitors prisoners. This was the start of a major historical event in my games called the Mana Wars.
Errik sacrificed himself to save 400 people, and became renowned as a hero within the resistance, and later, a local legend within the secret outcast villiages, filled with the descendants of the mages who survived the Mana Wars, who would never have been liberated if not for Erriks actions.
So I know I've already replied to this with the story of Elstaer - But I decided to write again.
This was my 2nd campaign, and I had made an Aarocokcra Fighter. To make a real simple story even simpler -
We were going into a cave with reports of Kobold presence. The first thing we saw outside the cave affirmed this belief, a Dead merchant, his head crushed. We ran in. Ya see, I had a Neutral Good character, so I decided to show his " good side " by having him go first.
Legit five seconds into his run his head was busted open by a boulder and he was killed.
Our Tiefling Rogue got killed, turned into a vampire, and then my paladin had to kill him. He was the de-facto leader of our party, since he managed to keep a general order to the group. He taught my paladin about the darker parts of the world, and why it was important that I never changed. He helped our druid cope with the loss of his home, and our sorcerer recover from his wild magic surges. On a visit to my paladins home town, there were people disappearing to a mind flayer camped in a cave outside town. When we found out, we set up outside the cave and made camp for the night since we were beat down by some of it's minions. As the only human in our party, I was constantly made fun of as being 'boring' or not special by NPCs and occasionally the party. One of my characters fellow paladins had shunned me for failing a mission earlier in the campaign, and my paladin doesn't have much except his faith. Our rogue was on watch with him and said, "Thunderbringer (my last name which he never used before), look at me. I'm a copy of the things you swear to destroy, and just a week ago, you were ready to fight an entire tavern because they priced my ale one silver piece higher. If there's more to the world than money, I think you know what it is." During the fight, the Mind Flayer grappled him and used the mind consume attack. I had one attack of opportunity, and got a 5 total. My paladin watched our rogue get his brain sucked out. Afterwards I beat the Mind Flayer into paste, and we tried everything to bring back our rogue. There were no temples nearby and we were only level 3. We buried him in my family backyard, and gave him a tombstone with his last name and mine. Later, we got reports of vampires abducting people in a small city nearby. When the druid and I entered the catacombs to investigate, I beat the shit out of this vampire lady with some divine smite, but our rogue was there too. At first we thought he was helping us, but then he tore me apart. Our druid tried to get him to come back to his senses, but he knocked him unconscious. My paladin tried hard to talk him down, but when I took my first swing, I crit on a divine smite. As he staggered backwards he looked me in the eyes and said, "It feels... warm." He was calm, not hurt, then faded away as he burned into ash. My paladin (and myself) took a long cry after that one. I have a small picture that was drawn by our druid, it has me giving the rogue a ride on my shoulders, which happened at a carnival once partway through the campaign. There was one thing that survived after the divine flame destroyed him, it was a symbol of Bahamut I gave him during the first session. He planned to sell it, but changed his mind after we had spent time together. I kept that necklace wrapped around my hammer for the entire campaign. Godspeed you majestic horned bastard, I'll miss you.
I shared this story a few weeks ago on Facebook and thought this might be fun to see other peoples stories.
My first Character was a Thief Named Tulio. Tulio's backstory was he was part of the Thieves guild and through that had connections to the city's main crime family that none of the other players knew about when he joined up. He then had to go a few weeks purposely screwing up disarming traps, and stealth checks ending with him leading the group into a massive kill zone. This was because while he worked with the party out side the city walls he couldn't do anything inside the city to go ageist the guild. The look of horror and rage when I said my Thief walked back into the hallway and locks the door behind him still haunts me. They ended up surviving, and hunting my ass down in a bar after explaining myself and Tulio's tragic backstory the fighter of the group walked up , placed his hand on my arm struck me with his ax ( Nat 20) killing me , and leaving my decapitated head at the crime bosses dinner table.
That is awesome, good for that fighter. Yet I too have a story of betrayal that ends in death for the duplicitous rogue. So way back in the my 2nd edition days as a player our group stumbled upon a Death Knight. As each of us scrambled to run away I made the mistake of climbing up a chimney, which turned out to be decorative than useful. Just as the Death Knight was about to hurl a fireball up the chimney and end my miserable existence I made a bargain with the Death Knight. He lets me live and I complete a task for him and he gets to have my soul when I die. Of course the Death Knight wanted me to acquire some gemstones for him, the same gemstones the party was currently searching for. So my thief lied to the group and told them that he bargained all of their souls so that they would help him. Well the rouse lasted until we ran into a sage and the cleric asked how they could escape such a bargain. It was then revealed that I had no power to bargain their souls and that I had to be lying. Needless to say they weren't happy with my rogue and quickly dispatched his soul back to the Death Knight. Sometimes I can still hear his screams in the quiet of the night (j/k).
As for me, I choose to believe that an extinct thunder lizard is running a game of Dungeons & Dragons via Twitter!
Our Ranger checks at every shop for rare or unusual items. After a while, he finally found a shop keeper with some 'special' merchandise. So the ranger bought a bag of powder without knowing what it was. He tested with a taste, got low Con roll and ended up with a nasty acid trip. Turns out he bought drugs. We were about to leave town and the ranger barely made it to our cart, high as a kite and passed out. We got to the next town and our goofball Sorcerer was being annoying, so the Ranger decided to play a prank on him by dosing him with some of the drugs. Right before the dose, the Sorcerer failed a meaningless ability roll and used a wild magic surge to reroll it. The random spell effect was reincarnate. So for the next minute, if he died, he would come back as a random race. He felt invincible, but he was also heavily tripping on drugs, so he ran straight into a lake and drowned. A Tiefling ran into the water, but a Tabaxi came out.
I think the best death story is the one I watched on one of the most recent episodes of Critical Role. I do not want to give away spoilers to anyone who plans to catch up...but it was so obvious to even someone who has only played a short time and to see a somewhat experienced player perform a stunt that could only end in her demise was the best 20 minutes of online material I have ever watched. It was a moment where you could see in Matt's expression that the session was going to be ruined by such a noob move by someone who should have known better...for those who are wondering, and need to see it. It was at the start of the sessions adventure, "Taryon my Wayward Son." about 12 minutes into episode 97...
This is set in the dragon age universe. My character Feridy Garal was the leader of a new small grey warden team. Her team consisted of a reaver elf named Valarian, a human cleric named Hanan, a wizard named Adokac, and a human rogue named Etna. They grew together and became a close family.
After a while of seeing signs of a new blight An Archdemon came with thousands of dark spawn and the grey wardens gathered for a great war. Some how Feridy and her team ended up being apart of the final team to fight the Archdemon directly. When the Archdemon dies its soul will go to the nearest creature with dark spawn blood (which all grey wardens have) and if a grey warden is that creature they will die but the Archdemon will die with them. After a long grueling fight when the Archdemon was falling and everyone knew it was about to die they all looked around and saw that Feridy was the closest one to the demon. We all rolled high enough to attempt to jump away before the soul of the demon moved. Everyone jumped away except for Valarian who had come to see Feridy as a member of his tribe and so Valarian jumped toward the demon ultimately being the one the soul went to. He saved Feridy (I literally cried because I felt so bad about it).
Feridy and her party raced over to try and save him but there was nothing to be done. They party gave him a beautiful goodbye service where they followed the traditions of his tribe and ate his heart so that his power would live on in his teammates. And Feridy is never going to be the same. We recently started playing in this universe again after several months break. It is still hard to not have Valarian there anymore.
~I am a Halfling Warrior at Heart~
~Tempus Fugit~
I haven't played the Dragon Age RPG is the system good?
If you enjoy the Dragon Age games it will be fantastic to play in a world you love. And even if you don't the combat system is really fun. Our group have about half people who had played the game half who never had. Everyone enjoyed it but I definitely think the dragon age nerds got the most out of it. It is my favorite combat system for sure.
~I am a Halfling Warrior at Heart~
~Tempus Fugit~
Alright boys, let's go
Playing D&D At a library, girlfriend and brother also coming. We've had over 15 Sessions. I had made a Half-Elf Bard named Elstaer. God, I loved him. He was smooth with the ladies, a master thief, and a Wonderful bard, known across the land. My Girlfriend was a human Warrior, and an aristocratic one at that. My Brother was a Human Ranger named Deputy Sheriff Jimbo. The rest of the group had really good characters. In short, we had all grown fond of each other's characters. It was during the ' Final Battle ' of the campaign that we lost many people. 5 Of the 11 People playing had died. This big-ass ******* dragon was ripping us apart. Finally, Elstaer had enough of this. He said: "That's all, folks! " He Quickly jumped into the dragon's throat. I rolled a 20, however, death was inevitable. He clogged the Dragon's throat with himself and his Lute. The dragon choked to death, falling to the ground. Through some GM Collaboration and Story purposes, the only thing that fell out was his Most prized possession.
A Coin necklace wrapped around an old love letter tumbled out of the Dragon's throat. Elstaer had won the campaign.
Of course, the thing is still going on to this day. That was the end of the main quest. Elstaer, and all the others who had fallen during that battle, were remembered.
On a side-note, one of the characters who had an affinity for Elstaer kept both items.
On another Side-Note, I apologize for my shit sentence writing. I typed that up real fast.
Prepare for the story of a lifetime, a bit lengthy but I digress
One minor thing, our D&D group treats all 1 and 20's on the d20 as critical fails and successes, whether it be an attack, saving throw, ability check... etc. It makes for more memorable moments, this being one of them. Also throughout all our campaigns, we've had very few character deaths, a few at most.
Now lets begin.
The best time I've ever had, and the most I've laughed playing D&D was our last session of this most recent campaign. Let me set the scene: party of 6 level 7 characters (Dragonborn paladin, Dragonborn barbarian, Dwarf fighter, Drow monk, Half-elf rogue, and Tortle warlock) have to find the mayor's daughter, who was taken away for some ritual to summon a demon. We had to find a ritual book that was well guarded and a key to unlock a vault which had the ritual dagger. Long story short some dark elf wizard guy already stole both of these ritual items and headed to the nearest town to start it. Us adventurers took off on our horses, chasing after him... There is one horse in particular that needs to be mentioned- There was 6 of us, and only 5 horses, so the only logical thing to do was to put the Dragonborn barbarian [7'2" 325lbs], and Tortle Warlock [6'6" 850lbs] on the same horse. This obviously didn't make sense so we decided that to support the weight, the horse was actually a gigantic Apache horsecopter with the body structure of a table. We rode back to town to see the city on fire, oh yeah, side note; I forgot to mention that our Dragonborn Paladin set the whole forest on fire, but the city fire was not caused by him. Anyway, the city was infested with shadow creatures slaughtering the civilians. Upon killing a few, we notice a huge aztec-like pyramid in the center of town. The warlock, barbarian, paladin, and rogue immediately head up the stairs to the top while the others tend to the wounded; they are greeted by the evil dark elf trying to sacrifice the mayor's daughter. Battle starts and we decide that the rogue goes for the daughter while us 3 reptiles fight the elf. A few rounds of combat go by, I-hit-you-you-hit-me style while the rogue tries to lift the daughter and take her to safety. The problem was that he was a measly 5'1" with 9 strength. He struggled and struggled, all the while our DM looked at us very maniacally hoping to see a critical fail. Well he got his wish, the rogue tried to lift the daughter and got a 1, well he didn't just lift her, he basically chucked them both down the pyramid, knocking them to 0 hp... There goes one of our teammates, not to worry there was still a 3 against 1, boy was I WRONG! The warlock poly-morphed into a giant ape and then the barbarian got absolutely annihilated, even in his rage mode he was knocked to 4 hp from about full. This is where he had a great idea; and by great I mean there was a 0% chance it was going to succeed. His plan was to hold his greatsword above his head, and have the giant ape pick him up and throw him like a spear into the evil dark elf. 3 things went through my mind at that moment; how is this going to work, how is this going to work, and HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK!? A few minutes later and it's the warlock/giant ape's turn. He picks up the barbarian and starts to violently shake the d20. At this point the DM says "If you get a 1, he's dead" a few seconds of shaking and the die is tossed, it clatters across the table and comes to a stop, it's a... a... a... 1. No, this isn't happening. I rub my eyes... still a 1. Welp, it was nice knowing ya. The DM gets all giddy and describes the most epic moment of all time. The giant ape rears back and throws the barbarian as hard as he can but instead of aiming for the elf, he just throws. The barbarian goes spiraling like a football WAY off into the distance (like team rocket blasting off) headed straight for the burning forest like a meteor. He hits a tree and completely vaporizes into mist. At that point the Drow monk and Dwarf fighter are coming up the stairs; they plan on seeing their friends all fighting side by side... haha NOPE, first they see the rogue and mayor's daughter tumble down (way too fast to catch), then they see their friend get meteor spiked over the horizon; they join the battle. After a bit the battle ends from the giant ape grabbing the dark elf and squishing his head with the other hand. Man, could that have gone worse? I should have never thought that, because oh boy yes it does go worse. Everybody starts looting the dark elf while the giant ape goes and tries to help the rogue from dying. To get the most distance he runs and jumps from the top of the pyramid down to the bottom where he sees the rogue. DM says roll for athletics. Me being optimistic I think "our party has gotten all our fails out of the way, this can't go wrong" BOOM rolls a 1. The giant ape soars through the sky and lands directly on the rogue, squishing him to a pulp instantly. Man, that's 2 team kills, not only in one session, but within 20 minutes of each other... that might be a world record! After about 5 minutes of nonstop laughs we contemplate if they could ever be revived. Yes they could. Somebody looked up resurrection and true resurrection and found out, and I quote "This spell closes all mortal wounds and restores any missing body parts." We say, just scoop up the rogues body and put it in a barrel, the guy playing the rogue responds with, "a barrel? b***h you can put me in a baby food jar." and for the barbarian meteor, we could just find a few ashes of him, ahhh but nobody in this world had any type of resurrection spell. We end up returning the mayor's daughter back to him and have a memorial for our fallen comrades. The memorial consisting of a small puddle of flesh and guts for Oofer the rogue, and just our memories of Abassi the barbarian.
Man what a story, I hope you enjoyed it.
Ok, one of my friends created a half-elf ranger Rikkle, who redefined the meaning of murderhobo. He was psychotic. Over the course of his adventures, he murdered his own wife, and robbed and killed his way through the world. Anyhow, he tried to fight an ancient green dragon on his own... and died in the first round of combat.
But that was not the end of rikkle. He was resurrected by an evil being, and continued to wreak havoc, until his original player's new character fired a flaming ballista into him.
Human, male, standard-issue rogue kind of a guy. Callister.
There was some nasty, cold-war-about-to-go-defcon-1, kind of tension between Wood Elves and a local kingdom of Mortals. A bunch of Dwarves waited to come out of their caves and kill off the winners after that fight was over. And just five plucky adventurers, trying to prevent apocalyptic war.
All of it was stirred up by the Goblins. But nobody was clever enough to figure that out, no matter how many times something caught on fire in the most suspicious way possible.
In our home-brew campaign world (Wessem), race relations tend to be godawful in the best of circumstances. This was not the best of circumstances.
Also in this world, Nieblings (Drow with a different name) are stunted and grotesque, instead of glamorous, emo, and pretty. Think Albrecht from the Wagner operas. Not really germane to the character death, but should give you an idea of what the party looked like. One of our number was a Niebling spell caster, Klebukalee. Rest of our party were Moaem, Mortal spell caster; Gregor, meatshield Mortal fighter-type; Dourik, male Dwarf fighter and leader of the party.
On our way to figure out why the Elves would have torched their own woods (they didn't, it was the Goblins), we met a pack of wargs.
Kle stepped up and threw a web spell at the wargs. Good shot. Most of the wargs were stuck in a gooey pile of web.
Most of the wargs.
The remaining four or five of these guys stepped to their right and went after our Niebling. Kle ran to the opposite side of the pile of web and grouchy, still immobile, other wargs. And she kept fleeing. From above, it might have looked like some weird merry-go-round.
Dourik and Gregor stood ready to repel the charge, a shieldwall of two. Which would have been great if the wargs had been charging them, instead of circling around other wargs, on a chase to maul the Niebling.
Moaem rifled through the bag of treasure items, trying to find something to help. The player was still new to the game, and didn't really catch-on how to do this. Which might be why she kept suggesting dust of disappearance as a way to make the enemy disappear and not bother us any more. “Goddammit, Moaem! That was a bad idea at White Plume, and it's still a bad idea here! Put that away!”
Kle and her pursuers, going counterclockwise, had made a circuit of the trapped wargs. Then Callister came in, going clockwise.
Cal ran past Kle, dirk in each hand, and bulled into the wargs. I think he managed to score about 4 hit points of damage before they ate him to death. Dourik and Gregor joined soon after, and killed off the wargs.
They managed to find a cleric, which took weeks of in-game-universe play. And Cal failed that whole resurrection save bit. So permanent death.
I told Kle's player that Cal had a thing for Kle. But that whole racism thing. See above. Their clans would never have approved. And it made for a great unrequited, tragic love story. So hell yes I said that.
The land burned. The forest was a ruin. The kingdom fell. Mortals reverted to barbarism. Dwarves and Goblins fought each other to extinction. All was ash and blood and sorrow.
I'm guessing Klebukalee died sad and alone. Dourik had a maimed leg by the end of things. Gregor went off to join the clergy. Callister was still dead. Moaem never did find anything helpful in that damned bag.
I ended up marrying Kle's player in real life.
Damn, that was an awesome death.
In one of my first campaigns, i was a elven rogue called Xanphia. this is how she died
while we where fighting about 4 giant squids and a few hundred(dozen)sea monsters at the end of the campaign i decided to go release the prisoners from the underwater dungeons. i succeeded, and for my final battle i leapt into the last krakens mouth and cut him up from the inside. i died of course. then the dm set up a funeral for Xanphia.
In the first campaign I played in, ran by a friend, we had a Orc barbarian, and the player would say hes unkillable. We were level 2-3 and he once tried fighting a beholder with one other person and won. The DM felt he made it to easy, because beholders aren't meant to be killed easily, especially for level 2 players. He had us do a chapter where we were all level 3 at that point, and then an ancient red dragon came into a city, then insta killed the barbarian to show us we could easily die. One other person died as well, but his death wasn't the funny one. The person playing the barbarian gave a lot of excuses like him having danger sense so he couldn't be killed. He still says his characters are unkillable in other campaigns, but finds more ways to say that he shouldn't have died every time its brought up.
Also known as CrafterB and DankMemer.
Here, have some homebrew classes! Subclasses to? Why not races. Feats, feats as well. I have a lot of magic items. Lastly I got monsters, fun, fun times.
The BBEG of my first campaign killed my 2nd character with Power Word Kill. Was a shadow monk named Brutuseth Dreadjoy. Balineth just dropped him and everyone was out of spells slots out in the Plane of Wind 'n had to leave his body behind.
We then played a prequel campaign and I played a Conquest Paladin named Alistar Pridebreaker. Dude had a soft spot for children, as they were innocent and unknowing to the badness of the world. He rescued and looked after this child over the course of this year-long campaign. Eventually it becomes apparent that this child turns out to be Balineth, the woman who killed my favorite character from before. Thought it was well done by the DM, as Alistar saw many signs but his flaw was that he was too trusting of those who he could not see as evil, and a child that was a vessel for an evil God just went under his radar. Thus, I babysat the woman who killed me later down the line.
Let's make this brief.
I was the DM for a new player, whose elven ranger had just dropped in a duel against cultists. First death save was a fail. "Don't roll a 1!" we told her.
You all know what happened next.
Good news is, she wasn't turned off by the experience and still plays in our group. Maybe the ensuing TPK actually helped...but that's a story for another time.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I was running SKT for a group of 3 players. One of them was playing a Gnome Wizard, a Necromancer specifically.
The party discovers giants are raiding the High Road, finding a couple taking a rowboat back to a larger ship. They, of course, follow with the use of Invisibility and Water Walking.
Upon reaching the boat, the party begins to assault it, focusing simply on sinking the ship and leaving the giants to fend for themselves.
Eventually, the ship is starting to go down, so the party begins to retreat and wait it out. One member casts Invisibility, targeting themselves and a nearby ally. This leaves the Necromancer as the only visible character. A giant on the ship sees this and hurls the cannonball he was holding right at them.
Crit. 36 damage. Did I mention the Necromancer had a Constitution score of 3? His max health was about 12. (The player behind them enjoys the chaos of weird and low stats.)
Instant death. Decided to roll 1d6 to determine dismemberment. Originally opted to ignore the head, too small a target for the giant, but they Gnome's player insisted. So it became 1: Head. 2: Torso. 3-4: Arms. 5-6: Legs.
The die was rolled. It showed a 1. His head was gone, completely, probably attached to the quickly sinking cannonball.
The party still managed to recover what was left of him, later just using raise dead to have him tag along as a zombie, just with a gourd for a head and plenty of perfume and hooded attire.
I once played a character who suffered from Lycanthropy. We had no cleric. We were out of the city thankfully and one of our other characters had died. We found this old woman who could reincarnate. After she reincarnated our fallen I just looked at her. My character was dealing with the guilt of knowing I had killed some helpless villager during the last full moon. so I looked at the old woman and asked. "Does death cure lycanthropy." Wasn't a wererat any more.
A character from one of my campaigns, Errik, died in a place called The Spires - a cluster of towers hidden in the middle of the Sea of Swords where the Inquisitors brought any captured mages they found (in my world, magic is very rare, and during this campaign was highly illegal. The PCs had discovered the location of those the Inquisitors had taken and came here to free them).
They discovered that the mages were chained up with cold iron (a mana suppressant, preventing mages from casting) and were having their mana siphoned into great crystal orbs. The PCs fought their way through the largely unmanned towers, freeing as many captives as they could, until the Inquisitor fleet arrived.
Cleverly boxing the Inquisitors in the tower, a wounded Errik created an impassable barrier that would hold the Inquisitors at bay whilst the mages and his friend and ally Treeva comandeered the Inquisitor ships and fled to a stronghold of the resistance. The barrier however, needed to be sustained, and so Errik had to remain, knowing he sealed his fate. Eventually, drained of mana, the barrier fell and Errik made one last valiant attempt to buy his people the precious moments they needed. His body was cleaved in two by an Inquisitors greatsword.
Though pursued, Erriks actions allowed the once captive mages to flee to safety, where they would join the resistance. Though permanently magically stunted, these men, women and children still possessed magical ability, and went on to, alongside the resistance, liberate more of the Inquisitors prisoners. This was the start of a major historical event in my games called the Mana Wars.
Errik sacrificed himself to save 400 people, and became renowned as a hero within the resistance, and later, a local legend within the secret outcast villiages, filled with the descendants of the mages who survived the Mana Wars, who would never have been liberated if not for Erriks actions.
So I know I've already replied to this with the story of Elstaer - But I decided to write again.
This was my 2nd campaign, and I had made an Aarocokcra Fighter. To make a real simple story even simpler -
We were going into a cave with reports of Kobold presence. The first thing we saw outside the cave affirmed this belief, a Dead merchant, his head crushed. We ran in. Ya see, I had a Neutral Good character, so I decided to show his " good side " by having him go first.
Legit five seconds into his run his head was busted open by a boulder and he was killed.
r.i.p ricardo
Our Tiefling Rogue got killed, turned into a vampire, and then my paladin had to kill him. He was the de-facto leader of our party, since he managed to keep a general order to the group. He taught my paladin about the darker parts of the world, and why it was important that I never changed. He helped our druid cope with the loss of his home, and our sorcerer recover from his wild magic surges. On a visit to my paladins home town, there were people disappearing to a mind flayer camped in a cave outside town. When we found out, we set up outside the cave and made camp for the night since we were beat down by some of it's minions. As the only human in our party, I was constantly made fun of as being 'boring' or not special by NPCs and occasionally the party. One of my characters fellow paladins had shunned me for failing a mission earlier in the campaign, and my paladin doesn't have much except his faith. Our rogue was on watch with him and said, "Thunderbringer (my last name which he never used before), look at me. I'm a copy of the things you swear to destroy, and just a week ago, you were ready to fight an entire tavern because they priced my ale one silver piece higher. If there's more to the world than money, I think you know what it is." During the fight, the Mind Flayer grappled him and used the mind consume attack. I had one attack of opportunity, and got a 5 total. My paladin watched our rogue get his brain sucked out. Afterwards I beat the Mind Flayer into paste, and we tried everything to bring back our rogue. There were no temples nearby and we were only level 3. We buried him in my family backyard, and gave him a tombstone with his last name and mine. Later, we got reports of vampires abducting people in a small city nearby. When the druid and I entered the catacombs to investigate, I beat the shit out of this vampire lady with some divine smite, but our rogue was there too. At first we thought he was helping us, but then he tore me apart. Our druid tried to get him to come back to his senses, but he knocked him unconscious. My paladin tried hard to talk him down, but when I took my first swing, I crit on a divine smite. As he staggered backwards he looked me in the eyes and said, "It feels... warm." He was calm, not hurt, then faded away as he burned into ash. My paladin (and myself) took a long cry after that one. I have a small picture that was drawn by our druid, it has me giving the rogue a ride on my shoulders, which happened at a carnival once partway through the campaign. There was one thing that survived after the divine flame destroyed him, it was a symbol of Bahamut I gave him during the first session. He planned to sell it, but changed his mind after we had spent time together. I kept that necklace wrapped around my hammer for the entire campaign. Godspeed you majestic horned bastard, I'll miss you.