favorite character deaths

[foproy]

not by a character of yours

three of mine were from teh same person.

#1 the half fey: half fey were a homebrew race of a friend, and this kid was playing a monk, anyway we are on the edge of a cliff watching a gnomish submersible docked at a cave, in a bit of brilliance this kid decides to jump down there and hold onto the sub as it disembarks, i am sure you know what happens next.

#2 same game new character, a quickling though another monk, this time he has a phobia of chickens, though it seems that this time it was just, as he was ended when he got turned into stone by a cocktrice.

and #three a githyanky monk, this one gets into a potion shop, attacks one of the other party memebers, (playing an evil character with a group of of chaotic good including a half celestial) cast shatter on a glass case of potions right next to use and fails his reflex save. (the half celestial fighter made that save btw)

[Mister Andersen]

Professor Bernard Quatermass, The Quatermas Conclusion: Finds his missing granddaughter for whom he's been searching the whole film just in time for her to help him, mid heart attack, take out the alien harvester with a kamikazee nuke, saving the world.

The Doctor, Logopolis: "It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for."

Russell Franklin, Deep Blue Sea: I don't care how silly it is, you cannot top bad mofo SLJ getting eaten, mid inspirational speach, by a super intelligent mutant shark.

[Morganti]

I remember a game i gmed in Rapan Athuk... I killed a character 3 times in one night (mostly on accident)
Ring of teleport other + Pool of Lava.
Reincarnation from the l5r d20 source book (still my favorite shugenja spell)

Oh, then there was the quickling... I used to game/work in a bookstore, we were looking for some crazy npc to throw at a party of super heroes, and the quickling was it... the archer rolled a natural 20, and max damage, poor lil guy never stood a chance past its initial wtf surprise attack on the party

[Sletchman]

Happened quite reciently: Player A gets a critical failure on a stabilise check on Player B.  Player B decides to cheat death, and comes up with the story that his wounds are worse then they look, and its Player A's error that he's dead.  The party rates this story a 2, and we roll on the cheat death chart.  Next Player C goes "Isn't he a follower of Religion X?  Don't they have all bodies burned for religious reasons?  We're in a hurry but we owe him at least safe passage into his gods hands."  So they burned him to death... [It was ok because the player didn't have any problems making a new guy, and was all IC for the party so no hard feelings, just really funny to die after "cheating death".]

We were fighting a monster that had a rule that wherever you hit it, a mouth opened up and attacked you in return.  I hit it with my axe, and in return it kills me with a single critical hit.  The funny bit is that we realised after the fight that my Ogre was about 10ft tall, and the moster was about 20ft tall, and naked, which means my target was some kind of demonic reproductive organs, that critically bit me...  [This was a standard DnD monster, and the description was straight outta its stat block.]

[Crafty_Alex]

Death by genital flogging always sucks.

P.S....LOL.

[glimmerrat]

Call of Cthulhu.

Our team is halfway up a snow covered mountain in the middle of a blizzard, investigating some Mi-Go (and later getting butchered by Ithaqua). The party anthropologist smokes a pipe, and he's told by another character to go smoke it outside. He puts on his coat and goes outside for a smoke.

Outside, a Byakhee (sp?) flies past causing the prof to lose the last of his sanity points. The Keeper takes the player outside and tells him that he's gone insane, and to go out in style. The professor has a glazed look come over his eyes - he grabs the frosty woodcutting axe nearby and goes back inside.

He looks at the rest of the party and says "I have come to conclusion that given the circumstances, it would be better for everyone involved if we all die now." At which he takes a swipe at the poor little policeman that came along, beheading him in a gout of blood. Cue: Chaos.

He managed to kill another player character before he went down. I eventually finished him off myself by giving him both barrels of my shotgun from five feet away, getting myself and the other three survivors splattered with gore, driving my character temporarily insane. He sat in front of the log fire, hugging his knees and rocking backwards and forwards, sobbing quietly. He became hysterical when touched.

[Crafty_Pat]

Not my favorite but it comes to mind... Several years ago Rob Vaux and I played a Cthulhu Live con event. I was your typical arrogant aristocrat and he was my shotgun-toting manservant. Toward the end of the adventure - which was fantastic, relying in part on your real-life ability to pick up on an NPC losing his accent to track down the cultists - the monster gets loose. It comes after everyone and Rob steps up... and pushes me in front of it, shooting me in the back. He smirks and steps out a broken window.

I think he was one of maybe three survivors that night, proving the old Cthulhu addage: "I don't have to run fastest - just faster than you."

[VisualStatic]

Sci-Fi Space opera game, I was in.  One of the character, in a powered armor suit, (big STR bonus), slaps another character, not in armor....

The exchange went something like this:

Pete:  I remove his helmet and slap him.
GM:  Roll it
Pete: Natural 20
ME:  Pete...... what armor are you wearing.....
Pete: Oh, damn....
GM: ahhh.. roll DMG..
Pete:  shit... (rolls max dmg)
GM: Ok, you've spun his head completely around.
Medic:  Can I get a chance to save him?
GM:  Sure... roll it...
Medic:  DAMN.....  (natural 1)
GM:  Ok, in trying to set his neck, you pulled his head off.

[TheAuldGrump]

Climactic ending of a game of Cthulhu I ran for a summer festival one year - the PC opening up with a shotgun just as the bad guy turned around.
Holding a twelve stick bundle of dynamite.
Old, sweaty dynamite....
Killed the bad guy and most of the part, and brought the mansion above tumbling down. Upon which the kid yelled 'that ROCKED!' The happiest reaction I have ever had to a death scene.

Dumb deaths I have seen in their multitudes - the PC who drowned with his head in a bucket, utterly convinced that he just needed to find the right command word for what he thought was a ring of water breathing....

The PC who had themselves thrown from a catapult, planning to cast feather fall when he got over the castle wall. Instead he went into the castle wall.

The mage who used his cube of force, turned it to full strength, then tried to cast fireball at his enemies, forgetting that he was in a 10'x10' cube of force. Later the cube went back to its one inch size, and when recovered had a tiny black cube in the corner - mage bullion.

Mages who were killed by their own first edition AD&D fireballs.

The first level fighter who picked a fight with a fifth level ogre, when the party was working for the ogre's partner.

Most of a party who decided to attempt swimming across the analog of the Rhine River, in flood, three miles downriver from a city - because looking for a bridge or boat was too difficult. The one person who didn't drown was also the only one with the swim skill - and he had decided to look for a boat. He came back to find them being swept downstream.

The rogue, who went sneaking off while the rest of the party was busy. He found a treasure vault, but the door closed and disappeared behind him.
Undaunted he pulled out his Djinni bottle and told the Djinn 'Make me a door!'.
The Djinn did just that.
Later the party found the vault, and blocked the door open. They found an ornate door lying in the middle of the room. When the wizard checked it with Detect Magic it did indeed show signs of enchantment! 
So they took it with them, hoping to find out later what it was. As far as I know they are still carrying their transformed friend with them, to this very day. (They couldn't understand why both the player concerned and I were laughing so hard. )

The Auld Grump, hey, you game for over thirty years, and you will see some odd PC deaths too.

[glimmerrat]

An Underdark campaign - War of the Spider Queen. A Drow Fighter has barely survived a pitched battle with a pair of Driders, and decides he needs to get off of that corridor sharpish. He tries to open a door t hide and sets off a 8d6 trap. he had 5hp left.

The same guy once had 3 character deaths in the same D&D session, two of which were the same character.

[Wolverine]

Playing one of the official SFA adventures. The mission required the team to deploy to an area by jumping out of a helicopter from altitude. Sounds simple, right?

We all prepare, the Soldier (who is in the Air Force in real life) runs us through pre-jump checks, and then make our rolls. I roll a natural 1. Realising that things are about to go very, very badly for my character, the Soldier attemps to help, also rolling a natural 1. My character survived, barely, only to be gunned down by hillbillies soon after.

I took over GM'ing duties soon after that.

[Agent 333]

Your GM made you roll to parachute out of a plane? Really? Crit fail = death? That's hardcore evil... I don't even make my players roll for complicated HALO jumps into jungle terrain...

Hmm, lets see... favorite character death... I honestly can't recall any of my characters dying. Every time I get close the GM chickens out and saves me, though usually there's a 'reason' in game why I didn't die on the spot. However, there was one game where I was GMing and a character died spectacularly... a Dwarf Fighter, who had just joined the party either that session or the one right before it (his player's previous character was carted off to an insane asylum...). They were trekking through the Frozen North, when all of a sudden a Rhemoraz pops out from under ground and Swallows Whole the Dwarf. The Rhemoraz was the same CR as the party, and the Dwarf had the most hit points. He still managed to die in a single round in the Rhemoraz's gullet. Rather than risk a TPK, I had the Rhemoraz leave, after filling up on dwarf. Never again have I used a monster that can swallow PCs whole...

[Sletchman]

I love being swallowed hole in DnD, gives you a target rich environment...

We reciently finished up a Mage: The Awakening game, and I discovered that an Archmage of Matter could turn a semi trailer full of water, into a semi trailer full of Semtex, and the Force master could detonate it at range, at his whim.  I'm sure you can figure out how that went.

We got invited for meetings by 3 different groups, each ended us getting ambushed, so when the local vampire lord invited us for a meeting we figured we'd do a pre-emptive strike, with a vehicle full of high explosives, all detonating at once, at his base [which was the local army base].

I make my players roll to parachute out of planes, but its not crit fail = death, its crit fail = "Where the heck am I?" / "I'm stuck up a tree" / some damage from a botched landing, or from steering into a terrain obstacle.

[Wolverine]

Your GM made you roll to parachute out of a plane? Really? Crit fail = death? That's hardcore evil... I don't even make my players roll for complicated HALO jumps into jungle terrain...

To clarify, he didn't die from failing the parachute roll, just suffered massive amounts of damage.

And the parachute roll was written into the adventure. That was the same adventure that taught me that you don't always have to follow the adventure exactly as it is written.

[NezMaster]

I play mostly modern and superhero games..very very few fantasy games..and truly, not all that many deaths. But after 35 years of gaming, a few do come to mind.

Fighting on a rickety bridge, with undead beneath him, the not-so-clever soldier starts firing his machine gun indisciminitely through the bridge. The generous gm mentions the rickety state of the bridge, and the snapping of ropes twice, before the boards beneath him give way and he plummets into the hordes of undead below.
(this was really one of those 'run stupid, it's a horror game moments, and that player generally died EVERY time those moments happened.)

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Listed amongst our greatest rpg quotes ever: ( asuperhero game.)

GM: You wake up bound and tied. You have no idea where you are, or how you got here. It's apperent whoever captured you has no idea you have abilities, because the ropes are almost useless. The room has a simple window across the room, and all you see outside is sky. There's a dresser, and the two beds you are tied to. The room is other wise emtpy.

Player 1: I transform into my wolf form, snapping the ropes, and leap out the window.

GM:(me, a bit concerned) Um..ok...

Player 2:(catching on IMMIDIETLY)  I blast the ropes and, I LOOK out the window, how high up are we, and how far did he fall?

Player 1: AHHHHHHHHH!

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A barbarian facing an ice lord with a prison sheild of ice that did damage whenever you touched it, kept smashing into it, and died at the exact moment the sheild collapsed, freeing the entire party from their prison. Most heroic death we've had, thogh really, he'd have been better off hurling rocks at it or something, but he was being shot at, at the time too. (with ice shards)
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In my vampire larp one player, the cities sherrif, almost single handedly solved the mystery. He broke into a home, found documents, found the tell tale blood stains, and the tape recordings. Basically, he found out that the NPC he'd asked to break into the warehouse with him, was the 2000 year old powerful creature they were looking for. He just looked at me out of character and said. "You know that makes perfect sense..I'm dead aren't I"..sure enough, the rest of the party, foudn his body, planted with all the evidence. They were convinced for several games that he had somehow been the villian.
It sounds a little heavy handed telling it here, but really, the player thought it was awesome, and sites it as one of the best times he ever had dying.