What are fun ways you've killed player's characters?
From time to time being the DM can be extra special rewarding by killing players in inventive and often unstoppable ways. Here are my ideas.
http://simplednd.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/5-despicable-ways-to-kill-players/
I haven't killed a player yet, because I don't think I'd make it in jail.
I also haven't killed all that many player characters. One was dragged off his horse by wolves during a chase scene and eaten. Another was murderized Hero-style by archers. A full TPK came about when all characters failed their saves against a bodak. All in one campaign, actually. That was a bloody one.
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
Head of Vecna.
My PC was once dominated and told to get rid of another PC. He knew she had a bag of holding so when she went to sleep he created a rope trick directly above her and levitated her (with her bag of holding) into the rope trick. 
A player character in my campaign was used as a vessel for hatching hundreds of little spiderwitches (half spider, half witch, all evil). Over the course of a few days the character was cocooned, until eventually the eggs hatched, and her body exploded, releasing a wonderful family of young spiderwitches.
Imaculata wrote:
velkymx wrote:
Putting on a Necklace of Strangulation is despicable way to die...
Plaguescarred4 wrote:
Truly. I recall fondly my 2e Witch Kit Wizard who had a whole collection of precious, cursed items he used to great effect.
Good times. Good times.
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
Wild Mage. Roll a wild surge at level 1, get the Fireball result.
Another fun way is to give a housecat a level of rogue and let it sneak-attack people...
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
A couple of years ago, (ok, more than a couple...like...five or six - 3.5 era) we had a guy come play with us that we had all previously MUDded with - he was with us on the immortal staff and I had known him for about eight years online, so I figured it couldn't be all bad. He arrived and we discussed the way things normally go in our games. He indicated he had no problems with high lethality, one-hit kills, etc., and proceeded to write up a level 5 wizard. You see where this is going, right? So, the party has a couple of encounters, and everything's going fine. They go underground, and I have them all make Spot checks, because there are several ninjas in the shadows. They all fail. The ninjas jump out to attack. I assigned the attacks to the people the ninjas were closest to. The one against the guy with the wizard hit, critted, and rolled close to max damage. On both hands (two-weapon fighting). I rattled off the damage to him, and it slowly dawned on him that he was dead. He gaped at me for a second, screamed, "WHAT'S THE POINT IN PLAYING A CASTER?!" And stormed off to another room to sulk. And cry. Over an imaginary ninja in a game of make-believe killing his sheet of paper. We still laugh about that one to this day.
1) 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, a trap door in a tower trapped with a Slay Living spell. Player went up, player came down dead.
2) A bag of holding armed with a one use head explosion trap to anybody but who the bag of holding belonged to. Player stole bag, snuck into corner, opened it up to peer inside, head exploded everywhere. How do you explain that one to the tavern master and all of the tavern's patrons?
3) Trap floor opens up to a 30' drop, if the players survive, they then have to worry about the water quickly filling the room to drown them, as the trap door seals themself in total darkness.
4) Room with a crushing ceiling that seals you inside with no escape.
5) A pit of magical darkness filled with Gibberlings!
My most memorable death was from back in the days of Basic Set D&D. My first ever PC was a Lawful Cleric. Our merry band's first encounter was with a pair of skeletons awoken by us entering their tomb. In my attempt to turn them, I rolled snake eyes (you rolled 2d6 for turning). The DM (my older brother) decided that with such a terrible roll, instead of turning, I had made the skeletons angry. Both charged me, and with a pair of swings from their short swords, down I went. Such was the short 10 minute adventuring life of this 8-year old's first PC. I learned very early in my RPG career to accept death. It was a good lesson, I think.
Why didnt it work? Well see, the fatal flaw in the plan was this: He never once in 2+ years actually talked to me about his plan. Nor did he have his character do any research into Lich s during play. He A) foolishly thought that just because something was printed, that that's how it automatically worked, B) was intentionally trying to trick me by not discussing the plan. He thought (wrongly) that I wouldn't allow him to become a Lich. In truth I was fine with that. I just had my own ideas about how it was done. Had he asked, had he done something through RP other than collect things.... He didn't though, and so I let him believe any fool thing he wanted to about the process. Hey, if you want your character to Multi-Class, collect odd things, invest a fortune in a piece of jewelry, and guzzle toxic chemicals? I'm not going to stop you.He didn't talk with me first ... so I didn't talk with him first about how I want to do things ... check ... mate!
1: Player climbed in a bag of holding to avoid falling damage and suffocated (Not my fault!),
2: Players dressed up as drow to find some information, walked to the first female drow and spoke the words "you are such a bitch" (All where male characters),
3: Player charmed another player to jump into a portable hole, while holding a bag of holding (Not my fault!),
4: Players who just met the Vistani saying "Sure, i'll play a card game" (Deck of many things, not my fault!),
5: Player who went into a room with cockatrice, didn't talked to the other party members, got petrified, became angry with me for "A good DM would have stopped it" and left the party. Didn't even let the remaining players turn him back...
6: Magical trap, a hole in the ground and a portal on the bottom. the exit of the portal was a few feet above the hole. When a character entered the trap he kept falling for a while and the other characters tried to rescue him by "sticking a pole so he can grab it". Killing him instantly (It's like getting hit by a pole with a speed of 200mp/h or 360km/h).
So, only nr2 is my fault... In the others the player chose their paths...
And only in nr1 and nr5 i let the players die. In the other cases I made sure there was a way to bring the characters back.
Noon wrote:
Ran a Waterworld style fantasy campagn once.
The group were on a Valta'Veri "Brineblood" tribe catamaran and sailing near 'Dark Water' - that which sits over old flooded cities, charged with negative energy from the deaths of so many people. The vast flooded plain once belonged to an empire and only flooded to about 100 ft depth in many places.
This huge area was called the Shoaling Sea and was dangerous.
Anyway...
... fleeing from 3 Darkblades (catamaran of the Harrowkin - Githyanki trapped in the world when it got cut off from the planes during the cataclysmic flood), the Valta'Veri pilot was forced over some Dark Water and a host of zombies rose from the depths to attack. (think Harry Potter when Dumbledore drinks from the cup of despair).
The Sorceress in the party was grappled as they fought on the edges of the cargo netting (which doubled as the deck between the catamaran hulls) and she was pulled under the water. She was roped onto a safety line, but it was long enough to allow her to be fully submerged.
It was with increasing horror the player realised that the party didn't have the strength to pull her out whilst the zombies clawed at her legs, crawling up her body as she drowned. Round after round ticked by and we all read and re-read the drowning rules to make sure we were getting it right... essentially her death was on a slow countdown and there seemed nothing anyone could do to stop it...
Finally the player playing the pilot had a great idea and his character raised the spinnaker and turned square into the wind (which was more towards the pursuing Dark Blades), and it was straightforwards to justfy as DM at that point that the force of the acceleration and sudden change of direction shook enough of the zombies loose for her to be pulled free!
She was one round from dying of drowning.
That near-death experience of a character has stayed with the player, a female friend of mine whose been RP'ing for many years, as the most traumatic she has roleplayed.
So... not a death, but in terms of drama, as good as one.
Shasarak wrote:
Noon wrote:
Once in a mine/smithy a character was doused with molten silver followed with an iceball to solidify the poor chap into a lovely statue.
CCS wrote:
Running a 3e campaign back in the day. Around 12th-level at the time, if I recall. The party just finished a drag-out battle in the sky against the BBEG (blackguard and his black dragon "mount"). They managed to KO the blackguard, triggering his contingency to teleport him away to safety. But it left the dragon (only partly wounded). The dragon, capable of becoming invisible, did so and fled down into the safety of forest below. Our resident foppish elven fighter/wizard (still wounded from the fight) immediately decided to give persuit on his own and flies off in search of it. With his rediculously high Spot bonus, I let him in on a large amount of movement in the trees below, like something big disturbing the leaves. He swoops down to investigate. And promptly gets eaten by the dragon.
Duh. What did he expect?
CCS wrote:
Why would I waste time and energy killing PC's when they do such a spectacular job of doing themselves in?
On the other hand, during a 4e campaign, after using up all of our daily and encounter powers (and using up a decades worth of good luck and karma on dice rolls) to slay a white dragon, the DM threw a second white dragon at us. He admitted later that he was tired of running the campaign, but didn't want to let us end on a win.
Castillo_de_Santiago wrote:
CCS wrote:
arderkrag wrote:
Noon wrote:
arderkrag wrote:
Have a party of highly optimised and insanely high DPR killing machines and then cast confusion on them. It didn't end in a TPK but from memory at least one of them died pretty quick. Bonus points if you have the lone NPC who cast the spell then flee as you giggle maniaclly. Extra bonus points if you have that NPC than harrass the players over the next few sessions.
In my defense the fact the NPC cast confusion was in the module I was running. Although it is my fault that every time they travelled through that swamp there was a chance the NPC would spot them and cast confusion on them AGAIN before fleeing.
Fortunately they were of a level where death was a mere speed bump.
Orethalion wrote:
I never set out to try to murder the PCs, but its been known to happen. Let's see...
In a 3.5 campaign killed the scout when he tried to run past an iron golem he was in combat with while at low health, for basically no reason.
Same campaign, hit the wizard with a Slay Living spell or similar Save Or Die effect. And that's when we formed a sort of gentlemen's agreement to not do that to each other. Whoops!
I also killed the Monk with a full attack from a Marilith.
Recently, in my 5e campaign two characters got reduced to 0 by a dragon and both failed their first death save. The bard healed the paladin, who was supposed to get up and heal the ranger, but the ranger rolled a 1 on his save and promptly died. Of course, this was the last session of the semester at college and the player was moving away, so it ended up being a pretty awesome send-off for the character. Later, I had the main villain reveal himself by burning down the town the PCs were staying in, and kill the fighter with a Finger of Death (the player was also moving away, and thought it was awesome that he got to make a heroic, if futile stand against a powerful lich in his final moments). These were all first-time players, by the way. Welcome to the end of the apprentice tier, suckers! Now the kid gloves come off!
arderkrag wrote:
Killed a guy with bees in a trap. That was pretty sweet.
I had a DM who had a special 6 sided die with body parts on each side. One for each limb, one for you torso, one for your head. Every time a monster scored a critical hit, he rolled the die and that limb was severed. If he rolled the "head" you were decapitated.
Needless to say I didn't continue gaming in that campaign for long.
17 wolves.
masterfat78 wrote:
Loooong time ago in a campaign far, far away....I had a character hit an orb of annihilation with a staff of power, softball style...it was such a ridiculous move that I pretty much ruled "Hiroshima" and everyone died. End of the summer before school anyway, so spectacular end to the campaign.
While attempting to kill one innocent stirge that had attached itself to the party's cleric, the group paladin rolled a critical fail with his battleaxe. I ruled that he instead had a chance to hit the character...natural 20, critical hit on the cleric, max damage plus roll for damage= double max damage= dead dead cleric.
I had a group that was battling a group of dragon cultists and their dragon-riding leader. The cultists and the dragon proved to be a very tough fight, with the whole party near death, and only the dragon-rider leader left. He broke free from the character he was fight against, and tried to run away, but in order to do so, he had to run right past the party's 1/2 orc fighter. As the rest of the group yelled at him to finish him off, the player said, "I'm too badly hurt to get into another fight, so I'll let him go...". The leader promptly sounded his dragon horn, summoning 2 more dragons who were near the area and tpk ensued. We have never, ever let that player (who happened to be my brother) forget about that one.
I had a cultist imply that a member of the party was a spy for the cult while being questioned. They managed to off each other and most of the town due to their paranoid plotting and counter plotting. The actual spy survived but with severe sanity damage and several missing limbs, he was the henchman Chedwick.
FrankD20 wrote:
Not sure if this counts as a despicable way to kill a PC, as I felt he had been sufficiently warned, but here goes...
First session of a new campaign included an encounter where some goblins raided a caravan, and the PCs came to the rescue. The goblins offloaded some of the goods and escaped via teleportation magic provided by a human wizard overseeing the operation. The PCs learned the goblins took a couple crates of grenade-like objects.
Fast forward to a couple sessions later. The PCs enlist the aid of a diviner to locate an evil wizard they had been tracking, who turned out to be the same one leading the goblin raiders. Having performed a service for him, he performs Scrying on their target and observes the wizard distributing grenades to some goblins in a barn just outside town, then heading into the nearby farmhouse where he has the family bound and gagged. Feeling time is of the essence, the players rush to the farm! They are cautious on the near-approach to the farmhouse, and with the element of surprise, they defeat the wizard inside handily.
Recalling the goblins in the barn, they then move to take care of them. Now, the diviner in his vision described the evil wizard "handing out some small, clay globes to the goblins," but I'm not sure the party understood these globes were the grenades stolen in session 1. Just goblins, right? The cleric kicks open the door, and the party wizard runs in first. He sees the goblins in the loft at the back of the barn and fires off a spell, missing, then takes cover behind a stall near the front. Fighter does the same, shooting her crossbow.
Two of the goblins go next, and in their panic, lob their grenades down the aisle of stalls, landing them such that the cover provided by the stalls is meaningless.
These grenades do 5d6 dmg in a 10 foot radius, dex save for half. The fighter makes both saves and is knocked down to -5. The wizard is outright slain. The cleric pulls the fighter outside to safety. It's worth noting the wizard and fighter were husband and wife IC, so she's pretty shaken when she comes to. The ordeal threw a kink in my story plans as well, since I had been counting on the wizard being alive for a plot hook a little later. I felt kind of bad about killing the wizard. 5d6 is big damage to be throwing at level 2 characters. I consoled myself with the fact they had been warned, and that its kind of dumb for wizards to run in first.
The only really despicable kill I can remember, was back in 1e when I was in junior high, where surpise save or die situations were par for the course. I set up a sphere of anhilation in a wall and described it to the party as a hole of darkness in the wall. One of the PC's decided to stick his head in and have a look at what was behind the darkness.
If you've ever stuck your head into a sphere of anhilation.....you might be a deadneck!
Orethalion wrote: