Regardless of the realism of whether or not this could actually happen, my players were strongly affected by it.
That is what matters to me.
Four ridiculously buffed claw attacks later, he had done enough damage to kill the demon thrice over. I started to describe the death, but couldn't find the words. Instead I went to the whiteboard, took out a black marker.
"This is you," I said, drawing a roly-poly bear with four arms.
I took out a green marker.
"This is the hezrou," I said, drawing some broken limbs and a head in the bear's claws.
I took out a red marker.
"This is what happens when you meet," I said, and filled the rest of the whiteboard with red scribbles.
I would say the goriest death was in a Cyberpunk game where to silently assassinate a NPC we sent a very small aerial UAV trailing a strand monowire. Now we didn't just cut the guy up with the wire, nope we sent that UAV down the guys throat, cut open his entire throat and internal organs. Silent, no spill (till you look inside) and so was perfect for us.
Uh...how small was the UAV and how big was the guy
???(we're off to destroy a militairy complex, I'm playing the strong frontliner)
gamemaster: you hear the guy behind the cover who threw grenades yelling at his mate to run away
me: I shoot the grenade guy ... :rolls very good:
gamemaster: OK he's dead
me: I use my last action to get behind the cover ... running after the second guy
gamemaster: :facepalm: the grenade guy kamikaze'd: he used his action to pull as many pins from his grenades as possible ... which go off now
me:
my character dies in the blast - (2 grenades were enough to kill me ... 9 of them were a bit much ...)
me: ... wait ... I'm the one with the 50 pounds of C4 ...
Uh...how small was the UAV and how big was the guy
When you can make wire that is a single molecule in length, the UAVs can be also quite small, probably around the size of a flea or smaller.
We had lots of fun with monowire in general. String them up at neck or leg length to instantly kill or decapitate someone entering a doorway, or make a web to turn them into chunks. Use it as a invisible whip. Make bombs made of cut monowire so it floated in the air after the explosion.
We were IIRC around level 7 at the time and being pursued by lots of little search parties of gnolls (We had just assassinated their chief). We easily wiped out a patrol and in an effort to slow down or just throw off pursuit I cut off the gnolls arms, legs and head from the jaw up then used said extremities to prop up the body against a wall with its heart torn out and resting in the lower jaw.
Be it a PC or NPC, what is the goriest death you've had the (dis)pleasure of hearing in a RPG session?
Several years ago during a d6 Star Wars RPG game.
A little background for anyone who doesn't know the system, any time you roll one die is the "wild die" if it comes up a 6, you add it to the total and reroll the wild die, repeating for every 6. This had a fun little incident occur due to my improbable luck with dice.
During a fistfight with a rodian bounty hunter, this exchange came up.
GM: Ok you hit, roll your damage. *rolls the rodian's resist roll*
Me: Okie, that's 3d+2 *rolls for a while because the wild die just won't stop being a 6.* Um, 64 damage.
GM: *blinks slowly* Your fist goes through the rodian's head, gore-a-whirling.
This actually happened last Friday in our evil campaign. Our tank couldn't make it, so we had to use sheer offense and tactics for the night. We have a Tiefling Bard, a Drow Sorcerer, and a Bugbear Crossbow Rogue. The setup here is that we're henchmen for an Arch-Villain and his Swamp Hag "mistress." She sent us to acquire a petrified heart that was being transported via carriage and heavily armed escort to a massive castle nearby our master's lair. We decided to set up at a farm a few miles outside the castle.
To start, we massacred the entire farmstead. The family that lived in the manor and ran the farm were butchered for food, and left to ripen in their wine cellar. The ~20 farmhands were all murdered in their sleep, with the exception of 2 that were roused during the slayings, and ran into the fields, only to be cut down and torn apart by our sadistic Drow Sorcerer.
When the caravan was in range, we lit the worker's bunkhouse on fire, in hopes that the carriage would stop to investigate and hopefully help douse the flames. When they did, our Rogue and Sorcerer opened fire from the roof and second floor of the manor house, respectively. The Rogue was on a roll that night, and was critting left and right with his Large Superior Crossbow. Needless to say, a crit from that thing is almost certain death for anyone slammed by the bolt. The ambush round consisted of the two horses pulling the carriage being killed. The Sorcerer pounded in a full-damage Chaos Bolt into the first one, tearing large, semi-singed pieces of bloody horse flesh off the animal, and hurling them backwards, into the faces of the driver and his co-driver. The first horse collapsed in a hot pile of bone, sinew, and gore. The second horse was no luckier. The first of many crossbow crits started with it. The bolt hit just in front of the horse's ear, and with a sickening crunch and a "shlucking" sound, it exploded out the back of it's skull, sending fragments of bone and brain down it's own back. The horse convulsed momentarily as it tensed up, and fell over.
You can see where this fight is going... and it's only just begun. There are still 15 Dwarves with hammers and crossbows that aren't giving up without a fight.
The Rogue went first, as usual. His vantage point, attack choices, and feats allowed him to duck out of sight every round, then pop back up for combat advantage against pretty much anyone that didn't charge into the manor house itself. Regardless, things just kept getting messier. His second shot of the night crit a crossbowman. It was described as hitting him in the stomach with such speed and force that the hapless Dwarf didn't quite notice what had happened. The Dwarf took a few steps towards the manor as his entrails poured out the massive exit wound left behind, like a tail of viscera, before falling face-first, into the dirt. Another bolt found the throat of the a coachman who was using one of the dead horse for cover. The bolt came from a high angle, and disappeared into it's mark's torso where it came to rest. The poor sap that was on the receiving end was described as dieing one of the most excruciating deaths imaginable, and his lungs filled with blood, before drowning in his own bile.
The final, and most horrific crit was probably the lone Elf hiding in the carriage, guarding the heart itself. When all the Dwarves were dead, he tried to flee. Our Sorcerer winged him from a ludicrous distance before he ran out of range. Unluckily for the Elf, the Rogue had already jumped off the roof and closed nearly all the distance between the manor and the carriage. The Rogue tried to hit him so he could be questioned, but the natural 20 on his attack die said otherwise. The DM described the shot as being "a tad too high" to take out his legs, and "a tad too powerful" to simply slow him down. The bolt entered his backside where the lord split him, tore through his ******, shattered his pelvic bone, and exited through his Elfhood, spraying all manner of filth, blood, and bits out in front of him. The bolt itself stopped after exiting about 6 inches, the rest still inside his lower extremities, as if it were some cruel mockery of what used to be there. Without sockets for his legs to support him, the Elf dropped to his knees, letting loose a blood-curdling scream as he went into shock. His body quivered in a pool of crimson, flecked with brown wretchedness and bone shards. By the time our party reached him, he had already died of blood loss or massive trauma, both of which were delightful results, as his bow caused us a great deal of trouble during the fight.
It was a good day to be bad.
Our circle of friends are pretty jaded, and grizzled veterans of this kind of thing. It helps that our DM is an English major, and loves to describe the carnage. A perfect choice for an evil campaign. There was actually a lot more gore in that particular fight, but I didn't want to write any more that this already impressive rant.
I'll write more if people are interested. ;)
Nevertheless, we rescued the princess, endured all her whining and other ********, and dragged her back home. Her father, the king, decided to double cross us- after all, I was a horrible Gnoll, and my partner an infernal... well, actually no, he was just an old monk. But he figured, no, we'd broken some law of his, even though he hired us to break it (non-interferance crap) and we were to be run through on the spot.
The Gnoll looked the king in the eyes, smiled, and made a strength check. He ripped the princess in half, and used either half as an improvised weapon to beat the king to death. The guards surrendered not long after and we handed leadership of the kingdom off to the one guard who kept critting against us.
Ssssooo... the fighter charged, on his boar... critted on his encounter power, boar hit at well, throwing the dragonborn back and into the air. He then action pointed, charged again while the guy was still in the air...
DM:...As you hit the guy for a second time what used to be his insides are now splattered all across the side of Pete's house, his brains thrown into the guy trying to hide from you and a fine mist fills the air around you.
Fighter: Right. Next?
Yeah... that because a rather normal effect for that character. Fun!
The second story is when I built my garrote wielding rogue. the final fight for Bald1-1 (Think it was that one, Flames of Initiation) ended up pitting my grab-monkey against a bugbear strangler. After he grabbed my character, I then returned the favor and grabbed him. On the bugbear's turn he did some nasty damage to my rogue, leaving him at about 5 HP. The DM was loving it... when asked if I needed help I responded "Nah, I got enough HP left to kill him."
Come my turn and activated my Daily... dealing 3[W] Damage, plus Sneak Attack... Yeah...
Me: I tighten to garrote around his throat, grinning as I do so.. "Hey, bet you can't do this..." activate Lightning Garrote daily power and.....
DM: You tighten the flashing garrote, the bugbear's eyes pop out of their sockets moments before his head is completely severed and it flies up into the air, landing with a plop next to the dead body.
Me: I turn to look at remaining combatants with a grin.
Had character pulled through a car window chest first so that his whole body snapped at the spin his head folding back to meet the heels of his shoes.
Another dropped by a flying creature through a sky-light to land on stone slab on display in a museum in front of the rest of the party.
Skin ripped from the body by a shoggoth, starting at the legs and working it's way up. Character turned his shotgun on himself as it cleared his waist (he was rewarded sanity for committing suicide in that incident).
I had a character poisoned with Tetraodontidae so that they appeared to be dead, but was in fact paralysed and still concious. The rest of the party ordered an autopsy on him, which he remained concious through, right up until they removed his ribs to discover his heart was faintly beating. Actually I think he survived although it was pretty gory.
Playing a 3.5 Pld our party ran into trouble and was near death after fighting through a room of Orcs when we ended up near a side tunnel down which was an Ogre. The party all had higher inits than me and retreated back a room leaving me with the Ogre which then charged me with an oversized Greataxe. There was the following conversation:
DM: How many HP do you have?
Me: How much damage did I take? (I had about 10 and was only 3rd level)
DM: How many HP do you have?
Me: Just tell me how much damage I took.
DM: Ok, the Ogre just critted you for 54 damage, so how many HP do you have?
Me: Before? 10. Now? -44.
DM: From the next room the party is able to see an axe lash out of the corridor and cut your body in half as it is thrown 10 feet backwards through the air until it hits the dungeon wall and slides down it in pieces where it settles as a bloody mess on the floor. You're pretty sure he's dead.
Moral: Always tell the DM how many HP you have.
E Class Impact Crit 100 Roll=Blast annihilates foe's entire skeleton. Foe is reduced to a gelatinous pulp. Try a spatua.
E Class Vibration Crit 100 Roll=+60 Hits. Major body strike. Body is literally ripped into thousands of parts. Foe is made into a pool of bloody jelly. Very Dead
D Class Vibration Crit 100 Roll=+50 Hits. Major head strike. Brain oozes out facial openings, body takes two involuntary steps back and then drops very dead.
and my favorite spell
Evil Cleric List Level 25 Black Channel III-Target's body is turned inside out, coming through his mouth....argh freakin grioss.
ME: You jump a little early in the swing of the pendulum (it was swinging towards and away from the doorway) but you land on your chest and arms in the doorway, bent over at the waist with your legs dangling down towards the pit. You think it might be possible to pull yourself up into the doorway...
PLAYERS: It sounds like you are describing her making it to the door. I thought she failed her roll.
ME: ...when the pendulum finishes it's swing and smashes you flat.
[indent]1) In my old Eberron campaign (3.5), the party's changeling wizard got crit'ed by a cadaver golem wielding a large great cleaver (2d8; x3), oh and it was a full power attack as well. As I recall the damage was around 83, which dropped poor guy to almost -50 hp. I described him as being basically just cleaved straight down the middle.
2) Later in that same campaign, the party was investigating disappearing cattle near the borders of the Mournland. Turned out they were being eaten by a gargantuan mutant bulette. The thing burst out of the ground, getting a surprise round, it delivered a charging bite to the party's swordsage (as I recall using half power attack and getting a crit). I described him as being violently flung into the air and coming down into the monsters waiting jaws where he was violently ripped apart (this was accompanied by the player providing his own interpretation of his character's prolonged death screams over the course of the first round of combat).
3) While not all that gruesome in detail, during the finale of that campaign the party's frenzied berserk ended up soloing a huge zombie dragon that had a contingent harm spell cast on it (effectively forcing the berserker to kill it twice). By the time the beast was finally felled the berserker was more than300 HP below zero (well beyond the capacity of the party's necromantic cleric to restore, as he couldn't spontaneously convert cure spells).[/indent]
Now for NPCs.
[indent]1) In a friend's campaign (still 3.5). The party's warmage wondered off alone. By the time we found him he was in the company of two mindflayers that had dominated him. Though under DM control, the player was still rolling the dice. He rolled a 19 for initiative and was rather apologetic until he saw 3 fellow party members roll 20. Though not violently described, he didn't have to roll any more dice as he was dead before his turn came up.
2) In that same fight fight one of the mindflayers was disposed of by the party's super STR check making Illumian psychic warrior. I don't remember how exactly he pulled it off, but his turn was described as charging into the Illithid, bull rushing him through the nearby stone door and then slamming it into the wall of the hallway so hard their wasn't much left except for paste. Having seen both thrall and companion dealt with so efficiently the remaining Illithid teleported away, never to be seen again (but we like to joke that the attack against the first Illithid was so violent that it actually ripped a whole in space/time which the second Illithid accidentally fell through).
3) Not a death, but certainly a gruesome aftermath. Back in my Eberron campaign, the party was investigating a murder on an airship. Upon getting a few clues pointing to a passenger from Lhazar, they proceeded to burst into the guy's room. In the ensuing fight both the suspect and one of his bodyguards was killed. The party decided to interrogate the remaining bodyguard. The interrogation was led by the aforementioned changeling wizard who at the time had a bound demon (a babau) in his service. The wizard commanded the demon to tear apart the corps of the dead bodyguard and rub the entrails into the face of the still living bodyguard. Strangely the player couldn't figure out why afterwords I told him I was considering changing his alignment to evil.[/indent]
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In my current d&d 4e game, one of my players is playing an Elf Avenger of Tempus. The first hit (using Oath of enmity) was a critical hit.The next turn managed to crit again. Then spent an action point and hit again, this time using Righteous Rage of Tempus. The combined total damage of that one round was enough to drop a level 13 Elite to -30 hp.
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I was playing a strong hero in my friend's old d20 Urban Arcana game. One of the enemies charged at me with a vehicle. I was new to the game so I decided to stand my ground and ready an attack with my chainsaw. I managed to "scratch the paint job" but my character ended up nothing more than a bloody grease stain in the parking lot.
My GM even went so far as to describe the impact and ended with my character's signature cowboy hat slowly drifting to the ground.
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In another game of d20 Urban Arcana, my friend made a Strong Hero/Martial Artist. As part of a quest, we had to infiltrate a 'fight club'. In the first round, my friend managed to critically hit the opponent and drop him well below the -10 mark. The GM described the hit as "blowing a hole through his opponent's head leaving brain matter and chunks of skull on the floor."
In the same game I grew tired of doing the dirty work for our contact, a Drow gangster that operated out of a roadhouse near Sacramento. So I pulled out my steyr AUG assault rifle and shot him using burst fire and double tap (the GM allowed it). The intention was to use it as a 'warning shot' to gain a circumstance bonus to intimidate. What resulted instead was a maxed damage 6d8 x2 (96 damage). In honor of unrealistic death scenes, it was described as the scene from Robocop where Alex Murphy is shot down. (note: Graphic violence and language)
Back in the 2e days I ran Throne of The Bloodstone for a friend of mine. I let him make a level 100 Paladin. I also let him pick out magic items from the various books we had. He made it one night. He was turned to jelly from a stampeed of T. Rexs while on one of the layers of the Abyss.
I had a few while playing 2e as well. As the reward for finishing a long dungeon. We got to pick out any 2 magic items from the DMG. Well the quest giver ended up double crossing us. He used wish spells to get our items .... and they came from Tiamats treasure horde. So now she's ****** about it. She send her form to the Realms and we managed to kill her. We thought it would be a good idea to go to the Abyss and kill her there .. or else she would just cause much havoc on our lives for as long as we lived. Well needless to say we didn't see her hiding just beyond the next dune. it was amazing how quickly we died.
In any campaign within my group, there's a recurring dwarf cleric NPC named Winnin. Whoever is DMing plays a game with Winnin. The game is thus: kill Winnin off in the most violent, unexpected way possible, preferably at a point that shocks the party.
This poor guy has been impaled by ballista bolts and nailed to walls, ripped apart by an undead horde, crushed, bludgeoned, shot, stabbed, and maimed in a number of creative ways. Any time someone introduces Winnin into their campaign, there's always some knowing chuckles from the other group members.
Rules for the Winnin Game:
1. Winnin's race and class cannot be changed, but you can customize his appearance and mannerisms as much as you like.
2. You may only kill Winnin once in your campaign. No bringing him back to life. Raising him as an undead counts as a violation of this rule!
3. Winnin can be as important or inconsequential to the story as you see fit. However, you cannot make any plot points hinge upon his survival. It's not fair to the party because they will fail no matter what.
4. Winnin can be killed at any time. Don't Deus Ex Machina him out of a random death because you have a funnier one planned.
EDIT: I'm also no longer allowed to make called shots. In any system.
.We made fire in a forest inhabited by Ent-like creatures.
As we realized that we were surrounded, the silly magician engaged a tree and was punished with a Nat 20.
The following Crit location throw resulted in a Nat 100. Instadeath.
"With a swing, a Tree hits you with his club-like branches, smites you down and sinks his roots in your flesh, burying you under him." Only seconds later, no sign of Hennas existence was perceivable.
All others fled in panic. ^^
I prefer playing Awakened Characters in SR, so I once killed with Q, Elven Wizard, a guy through a periscope made of optic fibre with a transform others (gold fish) spell. Just sustain it for a couple of minutes, release, and hours later he was found suffocated in his office. ^^
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Cthulhu: We interrupted a ritual of Shubb-Niggurath henchmen. They had gathered under a rock spur, where he hid. We brought 60l gasoline with us, used a firehose and and sprayed the whole bunch of weirdos from above, then dropping lit torches.
We lost a lot of SAN just hearing the 30+ guys screaming to death... :evillaugh
As he was adventuring with the party for a while now, they new his tendency toward not being able to stop frenzying. The NPC commander that was leading them didn't.
After a pretty vicious battle with a Drow scouting party, 2 rounds of mayhem to go for the dwarf, the rest of the party simply vanished as fast as they could, as they generally did in situations like that one.
Commander Saren decided it be best to order the him to calm down. Didn't work, as the dwarf missed his Will save by 1.
In an allowed moment of clarity (as I allowed it), he managed to use the blunt of his axe to hit the commander. Alas, he used his power attack as well.
He crited, slamming the commander against a tree, bending his armour and pummeling his torso. And leaving him at 2 hp.
He critted his next attack too. Clarity didn't have it's go this time.
When the rest of the party reapeared, they found the axe stuck half way through the trunk of the tree, the commanders head on top of it and the rest of his body crumpled beneath.
They decided they would say the drow got him.
They decided they would say the drow got him.
Mwahahahhahahahhaahahahahahaha....Thank You, Dear Sir! *gasp*
For the most part my games aren't very gory. However there were two exceptions.
One was in a fantasy game, where one of the players was fighting a very powerful spirit, currently inhabiting a stolen and repaired corpse. The player kept dodging everything, so the spirit decided to stop with the obvious stuff, and carefully detonated the inside of multiple gourds full of what is basically alchemists fire. The player was not able to jump out of the way properly, and they had something that was fairly close to a familiar, very close to the alchemists fire. The player survived. Familiar guts went everywhere.
The other was very similar, in a technological fantasy game. Futuristic world, psionic abilities, blah blah blah. In any case one of the PCs was psionic, and skilled at very precise telekinesis, although he didn't have a lot of power. He was seen buying psionics enhancing drugs, and the government sent commandos after him, two cars full, one of which was sent about an hour after the previous group.
The first group shows up, he holds his hands in the air, and claims to surrender peacefully. Government commandos going for psychics tend to be well armed, and in this case they had grenades. He pulled the pins on all the grenades attached to one of the people, then set them off. Boom.
The second group then shows up, and this group doesn't have grenades. They turn off their car, hop out, and start firing guns. The psychic manages to retreat a bit, and they follow, going in front of the car. The player then spends a luck point to declare they left the keys in, I allow it, but have the car off. He turns the car on, the commandos hear it revving up, turn around, and it flies at them. I rolled poorly for agility rolls, and the car hit the lot of them, fairly slowly. It was a large truck, and they were pulled under it.
The psychic then lets oil and gas leak all over the people trapped under a car, drops a lighter, walks away, and lights it after getting a safe distance away. The government agents spend the next two minutes burning to death.
Then there was the fantasy game where someone died thirteen times in two minutes. In a game without resurrection.