Me: The room is 40 feet by 40 feet and completely empty. Once you all enter the room, the door behind you shuts and you hear a clicking noise. The floor is stone tile and the wall is exposed brick covered in...(asks Ranger to make a DC15 Nature check which succeeds)...non-dangerous mold. Inside the walls at about 3 feet high and placed every 5 feet along each and every wall is a hole about two inches square.
Halfling Rogue: I look at one of the holes.
Half-Orc Barbarian: I stand ten feet back from the door foward with my sword ready in case anything comes through, readying an action to charge.
Elf Ranger: I help him examine the holes
Elf Wizard: Me too
Human Fighter aka Mr. Impatient: While they're all staring at the holes in the wall, I open the door and see what's in the next room.
Arrows criss-cross around the room and EVERYONE gets hit. 6 out of 8 players were down, and the two that were standing were the (thankfully for the party) the cleric and the fighter who triggered the single most obvious trap in D&D history.
4 words: Dragon falls everyone dies.
(a few more words, don't use attacks that knock things that are above your fellow party members out of the air when the things way a lot more then said party, and the party is unconscious. Our dead bodies totally killed that frelling dragon though.)
As a DM, I so nearly took out a player who shot at a Hippogriff flying overhead like this. The game was running smoothly - A village was under threat from a flight of Hippogriffs who had migrated into the area and the PCs 'volunteered' to clear them out. As they went out into the lower hills I had them all roll Spot checks to see the tiny dot flying in their direction. Only the Ranger (lv2!) spotted it and pointed it out to the others.
The party, rather then taking cover so the beast couldn't swoop and strafe decided instead to prep their ranged weapons/spells. It was a semi-efficient decision since they managed to kill the hippogriff just 1 round after it got into range - reducing it to -3 while it was right overhead. well, a Hippogriff weighs exactly a ton (we used the 'Damage from falling objects' rule for 4D6 damage). I had the players roll a quick reflex save vs DC 10 and all passed. Except the Ranger who rolled a 1.
22 damage to the 22hp Ranger
and a good laugh was had by all.Come to think of it his next Favoured Enemy was Magical Beast :D
Our small four-man raiding party were doing fine on a quest, with 4 of 5 encounters passed without trouble. The fifth encounter was where things got sad. Our Berserker had just left the table for a toilet break (he gave us permission to start without him since he was last in Ini anyway). So our über-deadly rogue (had killed every single enemy on that quest) decided to go stealthy and hide under the bridge (a wide board) between our ship and the enemy's, and readied an action to backstab any enemy that stepped onto the plank and throw them over the edge of the board. When our Berserker came back, the hadn't noticed the rogue hiding under the plank, so he went up to the plank, and cut of the enemy's only way of boarding our ship by throwing the plank into the water... The rogue tried to grab onto the enemy ship... and failed his Acrobatics Check, fell into the water... and didn't know how to swim.
And of course our Berserker had to sell our only life-vessel just to get the money he needed for that new, shiny axe that hadn't hit anything the entire session.
We...well, most of us...ran as quick as we could. The Xvart then proceeded to kill himself, activating Death Throws on himself and killing the Balor - which in turn activated Death Throws on it. Most all of us took 200 damage and 2/3 of the party was already pulling out new characters.
Initiative is rolled. Old character goes first, roll, nat 20, roll, confirm, roll max damage x 3 for 24 points of damage to his brand new level 1 wizard. Rolls were open on the table no less.
At half a combat, 3.5 edition, 3 seconds total. A contender for shortest lived legitimate character ever, and still a pretty good tale at the table all things consider.
Ironically.. three characters down the road he would bring in a new PC on an 'opposing' side during a combat again.. with similiarly disasterous results.
players are traversing through a goblin lair in 3.5. Going is rough, but they are making progress. in one of the earlier fights in the lair, the party finds a few stoppered glass flasks with a glowing orange liquid (party didn't have anything prepared to identify, but did determine that the two flasks were magical - no one could read goblin).
In the final fight, things are going very poorly, it looks like it will be a TPK with no help from me. At the end, the last character standing (the one with the orange flasks) is standing near 3 or 4 goblins, 1 bugbear gang leader and his entire party is down or dead while he is in single digit hp.
Well, he pulls the flask from his belt....
I'm thinking "oooh smart move, he'll toss the alchemists fire at the clump of monsters, and if he doesn't get hit by that bugbear, he's got a good chance at winning."
The player pops the top and guzzles.....the alchemists fire! thinking that it is a healing potion.
to be fair, he didn't know what it was, but it was still a hell of a funny finish to an otherwise unremarkable TPK.
Combination funny/most awesome. While being chased on hippogriff-back by flying demons far more powerful than the PCs in Ashtakalah (if that's how you spell it), my friend's sorceror casts obscuring mist or fog or something on the area around a big tower, and flies into it to trick the demons into crashing. The hippogriff and the guy flying it make their reflex saves. The sorceror doesn't, gets clotheslined by an outcropping, and falls about 400 ft to his death. It would have been a total loss, except his trick worked, and the demons failed their saves, smashed into the tower, died, and allowed the other PC to escape with his life.
You know what they say: 'You can't make an omelet without breaking a few legs'. Or is it 'eggs'? I'm not so sure.
We were playing an eberron prepublished module, something about stopping a vampire guy.
we've tracked this guy's trail to an airship tower right before the airship leaves. We arrive on the top and the airship is making ready to pull away from the platform.....easily within running distance.
only problem? the 6 or 7 hired thugs also on the platform, whose sole job is to stop us getting on the airship.
it was actually a great setup, one of those fights where "kill the bad guys" is NOT the primary objective.
anyways, i've got a psion (nomad), so no problem for me. My wife is playing another character (i forget what and just provokes the heck out of the thugs, arriving very battered, but alive, on the ship.
Finally, there's our friend, i think it was a fighter of some sort....a character with a good strength score and solid jump check. This guy decides to circumvent the issue and leap over the numerous other openings - around the thugs, and land on the ship.
he tries his first jump - pass!
the next jump over the next opening - pass!
the next jump over the next opening - pass!
now he's got a clear line to the boarding ramp and the side of the ship....
here comes the jump.....*rolls a 1* - SLAM into the side of the airship.
roll to catch hold: another 1....
he fell a LONG way down to his untimely, but quite amusing demise.
the icing on the cake? as we pulled away, the DM said that the boarding plank fell and managed to skewer his body like a groteque wooden tombstone.
coincidentally, his next character in that campaign was a thrikreen monk with something like a +40 jump modifier....
The day this encounter took place there was 8 players and we are traveling in the wild between towns. About half way to the next town the group is not surprised and run into a level 5 Orc controller and 20 minions Armed with bows.
No problem as our group is 4 level 6 pc's and 4 level 5 pc's. 2 rangers (6th), 1 paladin (6th), 1 barbarian (5th), 1 wizard (5th), 1 Shaman (6th), 1 Cleric (5th), 1 warlock (5th).
We roll initiative and the 5th level War Wizard rolls a 20 with a +2 initative giving him a 22 and he goes first, with the Orcs having a 19 and the controller an 18; the rest of the party is below the orcs initiative.
The wizard having taken the feat of toughness, has 42 hit points and runs ahead 5 to get in range of the controller and the line of 20 minions; who started 24 squares away. The wizard is now 19 squares away cast fireball on the controller and would also hit a few minions on either side of the lead orc.
The wizards of course misses, now the 20 minions let lose with 20 bows shots on the pin cushion who had tried to fireball them. 15 hit the wizards low AC of 20 and doing 61 points of damage.
The wizard's player goes "wow, I didn't think that would happen."
Earth to wizard, the DM called 20 bow armed minions. You don't run forward and cast a fireball, with the orcs going 2nd.
We were playing 6 pcs as 3 people, while i was also DMing and playing.
Using essential characters premade from games day.
3 hours in, going good, heal, kill, damage, tank etc. hide.
Then i asked my players.cousins if they want me to be more than a challenge and opt to kill them off.
They said yes.
So i used the orc's burst arrows, each x2, doing over 40 damage on a burst. or something like that.
3 hours of patient killing killed almost everyone by just a burst. because tehy decided to close up and heal each other and hide at teh temple.
The others that were hiding got sneaked from outer walls by drake and bandits.
Oh the pain, the pain of it all.
I swear sunderpeark temple adventure encounters gest 10x harder each enctouner. and the first one is already harder. reccomended for 5-6 lv2s. we were lv 2, i couldnt kill them all. and we died fast.
LOL what do yo ureally think auto magic missile 6damage was really helpful?
Nay, the monsters had 9 or 11 attack + d10/12 damaage plus they get 10+ bonus per closest ally.
And they had the best rolls than the players.. 95% of the time. so were goners.
DM: Everyone, make a Perception Check.
Me (skipping the others cause I can't remember them right now): 50.
DM: Okay, you hear a sneaky person enter your inn-room. Judging from the noise his footsteps make, you can deduce that he is approximately 5'10" and weighs 210lbs, not counting his clothes and equipment.
Me: That must be that annoying guy who's been trying to kill us for the last 2 weeks. I grab my bow and an arrow.
DM: While you're prone and you can't see in darkness? Suit yourself.
Me: I fire an arrow at him.
DM: Roll it.
Me: *crit* Natural 20. (Only one the entire session, but it saved our assets, so I guess its okay)
DM: I don't be-frikking-lieve this. Okay then. You place a well aimed arrow in his throat. He lets out a loud death rattle that wakes up the rest of you.
Me: *makes silent snoring noises*
Runepriest: "What happened here?"
Assassin: "No idea. I didn't do it."
Warlock: *Looks to my character* "Why is he sleeping with his bow in his hands?"
That's right. The sneaky guy got killed by a sleeping guy with little skill in using a bow.
This was way back when I joined my first D&D group for my very first D&D session (3.5). I don't know if I had just rolled up the character horribly or what, but in his first fight with a group of goblins, my elf rogue was litterally killed in one freaking hit by the first attack of the battle... If there were ever a more hillarious way of starting D&D, I haven't heard it.
The second is a bit more elaborate, and probably a bit funnier. This was semi recent, perhaps several months ago, when our DM had us take a break from our main campaign to roll up new characters and play an adventure that helped flesh out one of the main NPCs that had been helping us.
The party was on the run from the authorities after my fire genasi sorcerer accidentally burnt down a tavern during a fight with some assassins. While heading through a small canyon, we were attacked and barely made it through a fight with some bandits or assassins or somesuch, only to hear the sounds of even more enemy combatants coming our way. As pretty much the entire party was bloodied or worse, we hid in a cavern that we had luckily spotted just in the nick of time. As we made our way into the cave and my genasi's firey noggin illuminated the interior, we found ourselves face to face with a dragon.
The dragon just happened to be what I think our DM called a Blight Dragon, and was subsiquently covered in boils, pustules, and all manner of disease ridden blemishes. As I usually tend to play the negotiator of the party, I did the sensable thing and began speaking with the dragon, diplomaticly appologising for the intrusion and such. It was all going surprisingly well until the changling bard of the party piped up... I should mention that this character's player always delighted in the sort of roleplay that caused all manner of shenanigans and chaos. True to his nieve, loud-mouthed bard's personality, he butts in with some line like "Hey Mr. Dragon, why the heck you so durn ugly?". Needless to say, the dragon attacks.
But wait, it gets worse! So the party is barely holding on to dear life as we fight the dragon, and even though my character and a few others have health in the teens, there seems to be a dim flicker of hope that we might prevail. That is until one of the other party members, a goliath barbarian, notices an odd lever on the wall of the cave. I can't tell you what prompted him to pursue his curiousity, but he pulled the lever... which promptly caused the floor of the cavern to crumble from beneath us, sending the party along with the dragon plumetting over fifty feet to another cavern below. Lucky for us, the impact was enough to kill the dragon... unlucky for me, the fall killed my genasi. Though I at least had the satisfaction of having the loud-mouthed changeling join me in death as he smashed into the ground next to me.
I was a DM in this game:
players are traversing through a goblin lair in 3.5. Going is rough, but they are making progress. in one of the earlier fights in the lair, the party finds a few stoppered glass flasks with a glowing orange liquid (party didn't have anything prepared to identify, but did determine that the two flasks were magical - no one could read goblin).
In the final fight, things are going very poorly, it looks like it will be a TPK with no help from me. At the end, the last character standing (the one with the orange flasks) is standing near 3 or 4 goblins, 1 bugbear gang leader and his entire party is down or dead while he is in single digit hp.
Well, he pulls the flask from his belt....
I'm thinking "oooh smart move, he'll toss the alchemists fire at the clump of monsters, and if he doesn't get hit by that bugbear, he's got a good chance at winning."
The player pops the top and guzzles.....the alchemists fire! thinking that it is a healing potion.
to be fair, he didn't know what it was, but it was still a hell of a funny finish to an otherwise unremarkable TPK.
I was really hoping you'd tell that story. (I'm the player in question) I think I was playing a greatsword fighter at the time and due to poor tactics everyone else was down and the only thing I was thinking was I need to stay up somehow. Well the 2 bottles both contained red liquid but the labels were different so I took a 50/50 shot at getting the healing potion and ended up looking like wiley cayote after chasing the road runner.
Another funny death was in my first campaign I was ever in. I was playing a sorcer and we'd just gotten out of the dungeon complex on our way to our next adventure. We got jumped by a group of dire wolves and barghests I think it was. Well our bard had about 5 of 6 of the enemy surounding him so I'm asking out of game if its alright to drop my sudden metamagic maximized fireball on him as it'd probably kill all of them and he's got a good save. He agrees saying yeah it's looking like a TPK otherwise. Needless to say I think he rolled a 2 on his reflex save and ate the full damage burning up along with our enemies. I beleive the only thing left was his lute and his feathered hat.
Needless to say, this player ALWAYS found a way to kill himself from stupid and mostly idiotic behavior.
First he was playing a warlock, some sort of Evil Alignment, And I was playing a newly made Lawful Good Paladin. We where in the middle of a large city under attack by Dragonborne who where spreading a plague around that pretty much would kill everything. As we barracaded ourselves in a bakery linked to a basement we where hiding out in, we ventured to the ground floor to see what was going on. The warlok player opened the front door and hugged the outside wall to see better while I covered him with my large shield to block the door, letting him in if the **** hit the fan. Now this plague would only infect you if a dragonborne from this marching army bit you, or if someone bit by a dragonborne bit you. So I was defending him from any dragonborne or infected towns people we may see. I tell him to get back inside the building because it wasnt safe. He looks me in the eye and says " Oh but I love to watch the pain and suffering of the innocent.".....
I shut the door and lock it, leaving him outside to be ravaged by the monstroceties outside. The last thing he saw before he died was his arm being ripped off by himself, now insane by the plague, and beating the infected towns people with his arm. The group and the DM (but not the warlok player) thought this was a just punnishment.
Second week of the game, he plays a Half-orc Monk. The DM used her own gods for this campaign setting, which were large dragons. Well the city we where now in after fleeing the last city was the patron city of the black dragon godess, whom the monk player worshipped. He got bored of playing a good character and decided to BURN DOWN HIS OWN TEMPLE!!! Myself, playing my Paladin, and another player decide to see what all this smoke is coming from. Well from the skies (by the grace of the DM) flew down a great black dragon. The Godess herself came to her temple and killed the monk. But me and the other player were graced by her and receaved daily powers to conjure a shadow mist. YAY!
Third Game, Me still a Paladin and the Warlok/Monk player picks a new class. Honestly I can't remember what it was. We had to fight a winged deamon in a room with a 100 foot pit in the center. My friend who played a magic user blasts him with a magic spear and the deamon plumets into the pit. The Magic user PC then jumps into the pit onto the deamon and rides it down to the bottom, and kills the deamon. Everyone else climbs down the pit with two lengths of 50 foot rope tied to eachother, and reaches the bottom of the pit safely. The warlok/monk/??? (actually a Ranger I think) player decides to jump into the pit. He dies 100 feet later.
This particualr player would find new and exiting ways to kill his character off at least once a game session, without even trying. At least he kept the game freash with new things happening all the time each week.
I like that it happened all on its own, that's the creepy part, but I'd have tryed to find a way to work it into the game and campagin as a na ctual cursed item.
So our party had just cleared a whole dungeon which had culminated in a sparring match against a Gold Dragon (something about he had to test us to see if we were ready to fight the ACTUAL Big Bad). We beat the dragon pretty handily, so we were feeling pretty good about ourselves as we strolled in to the lich's lair. Now, this particular lich hadn't done the ceremony 100% perfectly, and so even though he had all the powers of a lich, he was completely insane. Instead of following lich-protocol and opening with Time Stop and Delayed Blast Fireballs, he attacked us in melee with his vorpal sword. Still managed to drop the rogue in one round though. Round 2, he Fears our fighter so bad she runs completely back out of the dungeon. So now it's down to me (the cleric) and my buddy the archer ranger. Lich runs up to me and paints something on my shield, then vanishes. After we determine that he really is gone and not just invisible, I decide to knowledge (arcana) what he wrote on my shield, in case it was important. I critically fail my check. Turns out, he had written Explosive Runes, and since I crit failed, I took max damage. My head explodes. The ranger manages to bring me back with a scroll, I res the rogue, we find and calm down the fighter, and then prepare to finish off the lich. I won't bore you with the details of how we actually killed it, but it involved the Archer(!) ranger rolling 3 nat 20's in a row on a melee attack, stealing the lich's vorpal sword out of his hands, and beheading him with it. So. Much. Win.
But, since he's a lich, we have to destroy his phylactery too. His phylactery happens to be a giant hourglass, and my character somehow ends up getting trapped inside it (think of that scene from Aladdin), and starts to suffocate from the sand. My party realizes I'm about to die again, and so the same ranger that saved me before rolls the sunder check to break me out. Double 20's, followed by double 1's. The DM rules that the ranger fires an arrow into the hourglass, shattering it completely. However, seeing as how my character was INSIDE the hourglass, the arrow also manages to pierce my heart, killing me again. Two deaths, one session.
But, we managed to kill the lich, ending the campaign. So I still consider it a win.
During the first session, my mount, which was a steampowered treaded armchair, malfunctioned while we were travelling near some cliffs, turned right towards the edge and desided to hit full throttle. On the way, I nearly roadkilled Simmons, our gunslinger. When I hit the ground 100 feet later, it also exploded.
The next session, I made a mad scientist who specialised in explosives. I managed to stay alive almost the entire 9-hour session, even got to blow up a hotel and rob a bank. Then, we were protecting a baby in its room at night in a remote village where kids had been disappearing (don't ask how we got there from robbing a bank... our party leader wasn't too fond of that stunt. Or the hotel I blew up as a distraction), some sort of zombie hag broke in. Of course the logical thing to do was to throw a vial of explosives at it, right? Except I fumble my throw check, and the vial also suffers a catastrophic malfunction.
So I drop it, fall on top of it, then it explodes with enough froce to collapse half of the wall and sprays poison gas everywhere. I instantly die, the zombie hag flees, and the more-than-half-dead party saves teh baby and drags KO'd carcass of Simmons out and manages to revive him. He then spends a week recovering form poisoning while everyone else passed their saves.
For the 3rd session, I make a mad scientist who had made himself a foldable gatling gun. Suprisingly, he stays alive for the rest of the campaign, and none of his inventions malfunction a single time. but when simmons gets captured by deputies of teh big steampunk city and is being taken away via steampowered cart and I'm trying to save him, a stray bullet of mine hits the valve on the boiler of that thing. Deputies quickly abandon ship. Simmons FINALLY gets killed hugging a boiler that explodes with enough force to leave a house-sized crater.
Later, of course, he comes back as an undead gunslingerand rejoins the party, with his psycosis being infernal sadistic hatred towards mad scientists. He fails to get me killed thouhg =P
3.5 game, our party wizard throws a fireball into the enemies campfire in the middle of a swamp, that the dm had descibed as being filled with highly combustible methane gas. We were even wearing special masks to protect us. Killed himself, the entire enemy encampment, the people we were trying to save, and took the rest of the party down to half health.
Everything went well until he got a curse...Those who would steal at least one gold piece from a treasure would become greedy...
So, he was Twice Greedy!!! Greedy² !
Then, there was this rogue who tried to learn the value of a gem! He overpriced it...A lot!!! So he wanted to keep him for himself. But the Dwarf wanted this gem! So, they start to fight each others...On top of a tower! During this fight, the Paladin took the gem and said:"Enough with this gem!" and he threw it off the tower!
This dwarf died in an epic roleplay!!!
Now you'd think that would be the end of him, but he actually survived falling in. That's when things got wacky. The Cleric shouted "I jump over the pit and pull him out!" The DM then told him to make a jump and a strength check. He failed the jump check, but made the strength one. So the DM tells us: "The cleric falls in, but he throws the Sorceror out". Then the ranger attempts to do the same thing, and gets the same result, he falls in and throws the cleric out. The Paladin tries too, and exactly the same thing happens. Finally the Druid makes an attempt and actually gets the reverse: he makes the jump check but fails to get the Paladin out. The DM rolls damage, and he dies.
A balor. A freaking balor!
Our party level was somewhere around 12 at that point in time and nobody had any real experience with the game aside from myself and the DM. My rogue, Khaylem, suddenly decided that this really tall red thing that was on fire was NOT something that he was interested in meeting. The rest of our party, including the DM's NPC, a drunk cleric named Folikar, all shared my sentiment. All, that is, except for our newest player, a chap by the name of Ed. Ed was playing a monk/justicar (from Manual of the Plains) and decided that this was just another obstacle on the road to his glory, and his deity's glory by proxy. So he looks at the DM and says "I charge."
Those are the two words I hate hearing in a game. Nothing ever good comes of them.
So he charges.
He charges right past the Balor's 10' reach, and the DM takes his attack of opportunity. Ed looks up with the most beautiful "I just effed up" face. The DM rolls. Natural 20. The DM rolls again. 18 + whatever. Of course it's a hit. The DM looks at Ed and says "Your monk continues to charge. Actually, your monk falls to the ground. Your monk's head continues to charge, rolling across the ground. The Balor steps on it. Your monk's head squishes, five feet or or so away from your headless corpse. The Balor waves his vorpal sword and beckons to the party."
Ed got up, tore his character sheet in half, and laid down on the couch with a pillow over his head. He ignored us the rest of the evening. We felt bad, but he would hear none of our comfort. He screamed, however, when the DM revealed that the events of the entire evening had been nothing but an intricate dream sequence sent by a lesser deity to prepare us for the road ahead.
The PCs were in a typical dungeon filled with various traps cause it was some generals hide out where he was hiding war funds. They got into a few fights, disarmed few traps, etc etc. After one tough fight everyone was patching up but our poor ranger had head in clouds (OOCly on his cell phone) when the cleric was healing everyone up and called out if others needed healed a few times with no response from the ranger. Everyone assumed all was fine and carried on but then the rogue missed a trap, thanks to her anklets of floating she didnt set it off, but the ranger was next in line falling into a pit with serrated spikes along the walls. He fell and took alot of damage but was alive. Got up and after some thought and planning everyone got over the pit. Hours later the PCs were heading out, the same hall way, totally forgetting the pit was even there as it reseted itself. The rogue floated across with ease, the fighter and ranger were side by side. The pit swinged open and the fighter dove to other side with rogue (passing the save) The ranger, once again failed and this time going into the negatives. But by some miracle stablizied at the bottom, the fighter gets the idea to make a lasso and grab him, Im nice so I say "Sure the spikes are big enough so you easily avoid them as you reel him up." Then the fighter decides "Oh wait the cleric is on other side I throw him to the cleric" after me saying "Are you really sure" he says "Yeah I can make it" He throws the baddly damaged ranger over the pit and .......... rolls a 1 droping the ranger head first into the biggest spike in the pit.