I see a lot of discussion about pc death and tpks. I am curious, over the years, how many characters that you actually cared about, have died? In my case in over thirty years of gaming, I remember about half a dozen. Please feel free to describe the circumstances as well, if you are of a mind to.

The guys I have lost take on a fonder sheen in death than they did in life, usually.

Morgan the drunk bowman who kept rolling 1s... He died in the lair of a phase spider.  His Halfling companion rolled his corpse down the hill and dragged it back to town.  Later he was Resurrected as a very sober ftr 3/cleric NPC.  He was more fun before he died.

Hm... Come to think of it, there was another archer I lost. But he was a superhero. His team was fighting bad guys in a moon base.  First he shot off a smoke arrow which meant he couldn't see. Then he shot an explosive arrow into the same area... Piercing the hull of the base and sucking everyone in the room out into the vacuum. RIP.  His telekinetic partner was able to save herself and the brick didn't need life support, but the rest of the team dead. Hilariously.

I had a blind monk in 3e. No more need be said there.

The LG cleric who stupidly played with the deck of many things and drew the minor death...

More but those are the most memorable ones.

Below fourth level? Too many to count. Dozens. We used to run something like the DCC funnel, where a couple of us would make up 5-6 characters each and the ones left after a session or two were the keepers. Fourth level and above? Probably five or six. Highest level PC I had die was a level 9 Ranger (torn apart by trolls in the Dark Tower).

Keep in mind I've been the DM more often than not. My players probably have a much higher body count.

Yeah, I don't really count things below about 3-4th Level, since I usually didn't care much about them until that point... But, if you were really invested from the get go, they would count.

Only one irrevocable - Zana Than, human Ironborn Ftr-6, she died leading the attack on an Orc fort - killed by an Enlarged Ftr-6 orc champion, who took her to around -23 hp in one attack routine. It was a Midnight game, and she was the last of the original 1st level PCs to die. I was really fond of Zana, still miss her.

Four major ones, some of whom I've described in other threads here. The bard who died and was Reincarnated and ended up a Gnoll and had to retire and the Mage who died, was Reincarnated as a otter, and died again are the two most memorable ones.

I play a magic user so Im pretty used to characters getting offed. Comes with the robes and pointy hat.

15 - 30 in the past 12 years, perhaps a few more, a few less. But to be fair - since I was 16, I've GMed about 5 games for one I've played, on average.

Like the others I've lost too many low levels to count, and that includes CoC characters who tend to have short lives anyway. Two more experienced characters stand out though:

Osric Skalmandari, a 6th level AD&D cleric. Killed in White Plume Mountain. The party was beat up too much and we were retreating out to rest and recover when two Efreet suddenly appeared at the exit. We simply didn't have enough left to defeat them, TPK.

Ju-Jeng Peng, a Hero System - fantasy Martial Artist. Technically he wasn't killed, but a Mage Guild learned his body had been taken over by an evil spirit being. They decided to take a bunch of body parts for testing and experimentation: an arm, a leg, an eye, etc. A minor deity owes him a favor though so it's plausible he could be restored to full health. Last seen in a greatly diminished mental state, sitting on a pier doing some fishing.

And there were several times when a TPK came real close, like one wounded man left standing fighting with his bowie knife close.

Quote from: Doughdee222;753919Ju-Jeng Peng, a Hero System - fantasy Martial Artist. Technically he wasn't killed, but a Mage Guild learned his body had been taken over by an evil spirit being. They decided to take a bunch of body parts for testing and experimentation: an arm, a leg, an eye, etc. A minor deity owes him a favor though so it's plausible he could be restored to full health. Last seen in a greatly diminished mental state, sitting on a pier doing some fishing.

You could say his possession....cost him an arm and a leg, then?

They are legion, they haunt me in my dreams, the armies of the dead.

Quote from: Rincewind1;753931You could say his possession....cost him an arm and a leg, then?

Yes indeed. And more. Damn those evil spirits. Peng was strong on offense, weak on spirit defense.

I don't think I've ever had a PC die.

Part of it is that I've GMed about ten times more often than I've played, part of it is that I've almost always played in campaigns that were far more about character development and RP than tactical wargaming, part of it is that I've only been in a handful of D&D campaigns ... as opposed to EPT, Runequest, RM, TFT, GURPS, Champions, Bushido, various homebrews.

I usually GM, so I've killed many more than I've lost. But the numbers are low, after almost 30 (sigh) years of gaming.

As a player, I've lost a first level thief in basic D&D (just had to try to pick a lock - that's what thieves do, right?) and a very high level bard in the final encounter of PF's RoR.  And that's it, even after playing in six other campaigns, some of them fairly long-running.

As a GM, I've killed about a dozen PCs, most of them in my last campaign, which was set up after the West Marches model, with deliberately high risk of PC death. It had a certain charm, but the players resented making new characters because it took so long (this was in E6 PF).

I think all the long-running campaigns we've played (I've mostly played with the same 3-5 people for all these years) had a low incidence of PC death. During our run of RoR, we've had two PCs die (before the final encounter, when all but one died). My first homebrew AD&D 2 campaign similarly had three deaths in the span of three years of weekly games.

Quote from: Ravenswing;753966I don't think I've ever had a PC die.

Part of it is that I've GMed about ten times more often than I've played, part of it is that I've almost always played in campaigns that were far more about character development and RP than tactical wargaming, part of it is that I've only been in a handful of D&D campaigns ... as opposed to EPT, Runequest, RM, TFT, GURPS, Champions, Bushido, various homebrews.

That too is why my losses are so low as well, both gm'ing and system specific. However, I lost many more in Runequest (1st Edition) than I lost in D&D, though in both cases I exclude those just started characters (which would push the numbers into double digits).

I never had a lot of losses when I started playing because my DM at the time let players start with a significantly larger amount of hit points to help make lower levels less lethal. Despite that I still lost probably about half a dozen characters, usually by trying something stupid.

When I switched to 2nd ed and a new dm there was a period of a few months where I just couldn't keep a character alive cuz I was used to having more hit points at lower level.

I think the most embarrassing character death I had was a character trying to jump over a spike pit trap and completely botching the dex roll.