Everyone (including all of us, I'm sure) has done some pretty dumb things in games. I've seen countless players pull all kinds of dumb or ill-advised actions over the years: deliberately jumping off of 10+ story buildings, pissing off hostile NPCs that vastly outnumbered them, trying to make an impossible and highly dangerous manouver or action -- and failing miserably, and tons of other hilarious actions that rapidly lead to their death.
As a general rule, I try very hard *not* to kill off player characters. It can be disheartening to lose one's favorite character, especially if it's a high-level one that took years to build. Players will get severely injured and incapacitated, but usually they will live on fight another day. However, players will often seal their doom with unwise actions.
I'm sure *everyone* here has some of those. Share 'em.
Here's a few of mine:
A. Leapt To Their Doom
- AD&D 2nd Ed, Original Ravenloft module (the one with that kick-ass castle and featuring Strad). Sometime in the very early 80's. 4 Players.
Basically, they were 12-stories up on a narrow stone bridge between two towers. In front of them was a flat-topped stone tower, about 12' in diameter, with a curved staircase penetrating the interior. Strad showed up behind them and cast a "Improved Phastasmal Force" (an illusion) in front of them of two black dragons swooping out of the heavy black clouds right in their face out of nowhere. What happened next wasn't too pretty:
In a quick action, they all said, "We're going to jump off the side of the tower!"
I said, "Are you really sure that's what you want to do?"
Yes they did and over they went.
(Still trying to 'save' them, I made them all roll 'to hit' in order to jump over the parapet. Of course, they all made their roll.)
They fall eight stories and then smashed through some stained-glass windows (on the roof of the Sanctuary) and fell *another* two stories, before finally impacting on hard oak benchs cemented into the floor. They all died. The falling damage was something like 110 points each - and nobody had that many HPs. Plus, some of them were wearing heavy metallic armor. Essentially, their guts were airbrushed all over the inside of the the Sanctuary.
When I explained to them what they had just done, they all said, "Why the hell did we do that???" - ROFLMAO.
B. Unfamiliar with Blast/Effect Radius.
I could tell you fifty of these. I've seen players fire or throw grenades inside a vehicle they were riding in; I've seen them do it in a wharehouse full of gasoline tanks.
Or by firing off a area-effect spell in a small, confined area and getting caught in the blast. For example, a 1st Ed AD&D Fireball should not be cast at a foe in a narrow stone corridor. Yet, I've seen people do this at least 100 times - blissfully unaware of of the blast radius until it's too late. Or, technologically speaking, firing a high-explosive rocket launcher at a foe inside a wooden sailboat - that you are also in - is probably a bad tactical choice. But people do this all the time without considering the possible consequences.
What are some hilarious deaths you've encountered in your games?
Way back in Shadowrun 1 for whatever reason when I designed the storage room that held the information the PC's were looking for I had designed in, and in game narrated extensively about a twelve foot thick ceiling, carved from marble that was engraved with magical ruins. The players had managed to infiltrate pretty close to it, but got into a running gun battle as they made their final approach. A discussion on tactics between two players turns into a semi serious In Character conflict, and another player decides to have his character break up the argument by firing his grenade launcher into the ceiling-pumping off not one but two fragmentation grenades.
We all literally just stopped and stared at him. I asked quietly, "Are you sure this is what your character would do?" He nodded enthusiastically and replied, "Yeah." The other players then voiced some concerns about this-but he wasn't having any of this and rolls his dice. Which at our table is kind of the seal the deal. Had the other players not expended karma to force a glitch on him it would have ended with a total party kill.
That's hilarious. =)
I once had two character try to *ram* an aircraft carrier with a predominantly wood-constructed speedboat.
You know, any time the GM says, "Are you sure you want to do that?" -- That should be a clear warning to the player to really consider what they are doing.
Well, there was the paladin who was killed while hunting a moose in one of my Rolemaster games. He failed to sneak, it looked at him and then turned away deliberately ignoring him. So our hero beaned it with his sling and it turned with a snort and charged. He readied his mattock but it attacked before he could swing, driving his ribs through his lungs and heart and flinging his armored form high into the air.
The party found an animist to res him but that left him as a devoted servant of the very structured and stuffy church beholden to those nature loving hippies :D
(rules break down is that the moose got initiative the paladin readied his weapon and the moose moved into range in the snap phase, the moose attacked getting an E impact (or was it krush?) critical...)
Thanks for sharing.
Quote from: David Johansen;490605He readied his mattock but it attacked before he could swing, driving his ribs through his lungs and heart and flinging his armored form high into the air.
Ah, classic Rolemaster critical hits. Gotta love 'em!
For me, one of the most memorable would have been when the PCs in Forges of Nuln had been tracking for like a week the fact that someone was going to sabotage the great cannon that was to be unveiled, and were pretty sure that they were going to try to make it blow up; and so at the unveiling... they went and stood out in front as close to the cannon as they possibly could.. Incredibly, only one of them actually died, though others had to use Fate Points.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Blazing Donkey;490606Ah, classic Rolemaster critical hits. Gotta love 'em!
Hmmm, yes ...
Played it once, rolled up a dwarf tank, took 3 hours. Started playing, took an arrow in the eye that turned my brain into slush. Took 5 minutes. Never played it again.
I was running my group through G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King and one my players declared that his elven archer was going to jump down a chute into a lava pit. To be fair he didn't know a lava pit was down there but I did describe the increase heat and intense glow coming from somewhere down the chute. I even reiterated it when he told me what he was doing. Twenty d20 worth of fire damage later he's looking at me stunned as I explain what happened. His only response was to say that he thought the chute went up instead of down.
Quote from: soltakss;490696Hmmm, yes ...
Played it once, rolled up a dwarf tank, took 3 hours. Started playing, took an arrow in the eye that turned my brain into slush. Took 5 minutes. Never played it again.
Well, jeez! If ya can't take a joke...
-clash
In a homebrew AD&D game many years ago we had an arogant player who claimed his paladin could beat anything in a duel, the fun part was when he rolled his attack dice and fumbled so badly that he basically beheaded himself with his own sword(we used a pilfered hit location chart from another game for duels and a fumble resulted in you tripping or in his case harming himself).
There was also the time when my very drunk gnome thief decided to try to sneak into the mayors mansion for abit of late night pilfering and due to the minus's from being drunk and the fact it was pitch black outside managed to slip and fall off the roof of the mansion and into the lake below, the lake incidentally was on the other side to where i should have been in the first place and contained a rather nasty tribe of kua toa who feasted well on his dead body that night :)
Quote from: flyingmice;490699Well, jeez! If ya can't take a joke...
-clash
The joke works better when you have six clones :)
In my last fantasy campaign, the Wolfen were a race of atheist steeped in alchemical lore (which they used to create potions that juiced them up) and a fondness for firearms. During the course of an adventure (during the early days of the campaign) the PC paladin challenged a Wolfen senator to a duel. At the appointed time, the two met, the paladin drew his broad sword and got shot in the head while saluting his opponent.
Regards,
David R
Once while playing a ranger AD&D 1e, I stealthy killed my my way in to a jail house where an adventuring companion of mine was being held awaiting the noose. When I reached him at last, he cried out to the gaurd as I was working the lock on his cell door. I had no idea what his motivation was, but I stopped working the lock and spent a couple of rounds putting arrows into him while he cowered at the back of his cell. Once he was dead, I killed my way back out of jailhouse, and fled into the forest.
Ah, jr high...
As it tuned out, this guy could only think in terms of PvP I think I killed him at least two other times, both in Boot Hill. Each involved stupid ass betrayals like the one above.
Thanks to everyone for posting. Some hilarious reads, indeed.
Here's another of mine:
In a Shadowrun game, the runners managed to trap themselves on the 20th floor of a building. They blew up the elevator and stairs when they found out that security had been alerted and were on their way up.
So the Rigger managed to make a sling that hung between two helicopter drones. Using it, they were able to let one character at a time down onto the roof of a nearby building.
While this was going on, though, a dragon (who was head of security) was *above* them on an upper floor. He arrived in the room just as the last character was about to leave.
The character had 2lbs. of C-4 and he set a timer for five seconds and then ran to leap out the window.
He tripped, fell down, and then got blown out the window by his own explosive.
In another hilarious WFRP situation, I had one guy nearly end up dying because of a combination of very unlucky rolls when falling off a tree. But I don't mean like, a giant redwood; no, the guy was maybe 5 feet off the ground. He lived but only because of a Fate Point.
RPGPundit
See maybe I'm missing something in that story Pundito but that kind of sounds fucked up. It reads, whether you intend for it to come across this way or not, like dude fell out of a small tree and died.
There was an old Ravenloft Adventure (I think it came from a book of short adventures called Book of Crypts or something to that effect) set in Mordenheim's mansion. The entry for the door way said it was so frayed and splintered that any character knocking on it takes d2 damage (or maybe it was d4-1, can't remember). But it was enough to drop a first level mage I ran through it.
Anybody see that nasty "Grimtooth's Traps"?
My whole party got killed by what I consider a very unfair and unbeatable trap:
We came down the hall into a stone room, 12'x12'x12'. Opposite of us was a pair of metal doors. When we opened them, a Flamestrike spell hit everybody within 10' of the door. Then they shut again.
So we stood back and used a halberd to pull the door open, only this time a giant 10-ton block of stone fell out of the ceiling and crushed us all.
(Incidentally, we fired that guy as DM after that.)
I was playing in a big group with a GM who was notorious for having a very common NPC type: The Short-Tempered Uber-Powerful Quest-Giver Guy. Said NPC was harmless as long as you didn't antagonize him, but he was almost always some kind of archmage or superhero with a chip on his shoulder, and it was best to just stay out of his way.
Everyone knew this, except the new guy. We start the game, and sure enough we meet with STUPQGG. New guy decides to get in STUPQGG's face, asking why we should do what he says, he doesn't think STUPQGG is so tough, etc. etc. Everyone else tells him to shut up, partially because his character's about to be killed for mouthing off, and also because it was stalling the game for no good reason, because obviously we all want to play the adventures, so why would we argue with the guy who's getting us on the road?
New guy continues to taunt the NPC. GM warns him in-character that if he doesn't knock it off, he's going to be split open like a pillowcase. New guy mocks and jeers. GM rolls giant handful of dice, informs New Guy he takes that much damage. New Guy dead. Game can finally start.
He spent the rest of the session in the next room, complaining loudly about how he had just been killed out of nowhere, with no warning, and it was so unfair, not realizing how hard he had actually worked to goad the GM into killing him.
We didn't game with him again for some odd reason.
Runner-up was the tournament I played in where some guy went to the bathroom and the rest of the group, who were sick of his antics out-of-character, got together in-character and threw his PC down a mineshaft. He came back from the crapper to be informed he was dead. The GM let it happen because, well, he'd mentally checked out about a day before.
These aren't really that hilarious in-game, I guess, but out of character, they were funny at the time.
The one that comes to mind is a Hero System-based military superhumans game. This is important because it's a point-based system where players design their own characters' superpowers. My friend Gary played a flame projector who could boost his powers by Absorbing energy, and he ended up dying in a burning building because he forgot to buy defenses against fire.
As in, his own powers. :D
JG
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;491022I was playing in a big group with a GM who was notorious for having a very common NPC type: The Short-Tempered Uber-Powerful Quest-Giver Guy.
LOL! I know that type all too well.... Seen tons of DM's use that character.
QuoteRunner-up was the tournament I played in where some guy went to the bathroom and the rest of the group, who were sick of his antics out-of-character, got together in-character and threw his PC down a mineshaft. He came back from the crapper to be informed he was dead. The GM let it happen because, well, he'd mentally checked out about a day before.
ROFLMAO! That's even more hilarious because I can totally relate.
I hadn't thought about it till I read that, but I remember way back when in highschool playing this sort-of GURPS type game called Lejentia. There was this kid in our group who was a total spaz and was always starting unneccessary fights with other NPCs for no reason at all. For example, we'd have just walked into a tavern and he'd brandish his sword and yell, "We're here to kill all the fucking elves!" and then there'd be a big brawl. Or we'd run into some palladin on the road and he'd push the guy off his horse for no reason.
This was back when the whole "RPGs Are Satanic" bullshit was going on and since we played the game at school, one of the rules we had to agree to was that we
had to let anybody play to wanted to.
So one day, he fell down a pit and we all walked off and left him there. The GM ran the game as if nothing had happened. He would cut back to the guy every so often and say, "You're still in the pit." After a solid week (no shit!) of this, the guy left.
One PC, a bard. Locked himself in a wizards lab. Understand, you have to open it from the outside. He for whatever reason, allowed himself (despite the other PC's informing him of their departing) remained behind.
The wizard opened it with a homunculus who flew in and out a small hole, no adult human could fit through, only he had refused to ask it to do anything. Like open the door. He starved to death.
I find it funny because all he had to do was leave with everyone else, or ask the homunculus to let him out.
Quote from: Silverlion;491041One PC, a bard. Locked himself in a wizards lab. Understand, you have to open it from the outside. He for whatever reason, allowed himself (despite the other PC's informing him of their departing) remained behind.
The wizard opened it with a homunculus who flew in and out a small hole, no adult human could fit through, only he had refused to ask it to do anything. Like open the door. He starved to death.
I find it funny because all he had to do was leave with everyone else, or ask the homunculus to let him out.
I have a theory that, whenever a player interprets cues from one GM in an absurd manner, those cues were interpreted appropriately for another GM.
Quote from: Narf the Mouse;491044I have a theory that, whenever a player interprets cues from one GM in an absurd manner, those cues were interpreted appropriately for another GM.
I've no clue. This player was the source of nearly all the silly deaths we ever had, with one or two others who once in a blue moon tried something amazing and mad and just didn't manage to get it to work.
I think when it boiled down to it--he wanted "his way." He (the player) never wanted his character to work with the other characters. He avoided listening to their advice, trying to help them and get them to help him in return. He seemed to want everything to go his way, and was unwilling to ask, coerce, or offer serious alternative choices to the others in play. He wanted to be the star of an ensemble cast.
In a high level 3.5 game, I was playing a Psychic Warrior that was a secondary tank for the party. Said party got into a nasty fight with a pair of Frost Worms (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/frostWorm.htm). We did alright and finally managed to down one of them. Then the GM informed us that it exploded in a massive hail of ice upon dying. Only my character and the rogue with improved evasion were in the radius. The rogue naturally made the reflex save and took no damage. I had no such luck. It's then I remembered that I had Evade Burst (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/evadeBurst.htm) as one of my psionic powers. So I poured most all of my remaining power points into it, rolled, and survived!
Man, did I feel badass. And we were joking that even though the other worm was in the radius as well, it was cold damage.
Then the GM said "Oh, right it also does 8d6 slashing damage, thanks for reminding me." She proceeded to roll enough damage to kill the other Frost Worm, causing it to explode in exactly the same fashion.
I failed the reflex save.
Quote from: Silverlion;491071I've no clue. This player was the source of nearly all the silly deaths we ever had, with one or two others who once in a blue moon tried something amazing and mad and just didn't manage to get it to work.
I think when it boiled down to it--he wanted "his way." He (the player) never wanted his character to work with the other characters. He avoided listening to their advice, trying to help them and get them to help him in return. He seemed to want everything to go his way, and was unwilling to ask, coerce, or offer serious alternative choices to the others in play. He wanted to be the star of an ensemble cast.
...OTOH, some people just seem to have a mental malfunction.
*Shrug* Left my telepathy in my other pants pocket. :)
Anyway - Back to listening to funny character deaths. *Popcorn*
Quote from: Rubio;491227In a high level 3.5 game, I was playing a Psychic Warrior that was a secondary tank for the party. Said party got into a nasty fight with a pair of Frost Worms (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/frostWorm.htm). We did alright and finally managed to down one of them. Then the GM informed us that it exploded in a massive hail of ice upon dying. Only my character and the rogue with improved evasion were in the radius. The rogue naturally made the reflex save and took no damage. I had no such luck. It's then I remembered that I had Evade Burst (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/evadeBurst.htm) as one of my psionic powers. So I poured most all of my remaining power points into it, rolled, and survived!
Man, did I feel badass. And we were joking that even though the other worm was in the radius as well, it was cold damage.
Then the GM said "Oh, right it also does 8d6 slashing damage, thanks for reminding me." She proceeded to roll enough damage to kill the other Frost Worm, causing it to explode in exactly the same fashion.
I failed the reflex save.
Now THAT's comedy. :D
JG
It was not a death, but I recently almost got a surreal TPK. Things went like so:
Forgotten Realms. The Elves from Evermeet try to get back their ancient possessions in the High Forest with a single strike. A HUGE fleet of Elven skyskips materializes over the forest, demons and other feys react with flames and spells, and the re-enactment of the Klendathu Drop from "Starship Troopers" is underway. The players are taken in the middle.
ME: Flames, demons, spells and elven enchantments erupt around you in a chaos of fury and destruction. All of sudden, burning bodies of elven warriors and mages start falling around you, screaming in unbearable agony.
PLAYERS: Whoa... What a terrible sight... uhm... the horrors of war... er... - they they stare blankly at me.
[ME: They cannot be so stupid, uh?]
ME: Please, all of you, make an Intelligence check, DC 9
The players roll the dice and all of them pass the check.
ME: You pause to think things over. After a while your logical mind, coupled with your strong deductive powers, tells you that these bodies must come from SOMEWHERE, you know?
The party looks up, only to see a burning GIGANTO Elven skyship tumbling and smashing down from the sky right over them.
PLAYERS: AYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
At the end I requested a Reflex Save (DC 25) to be allowed to run away in a random direction "or else". Amazingly enough all the party did it (for sure they were motivated), so they only took the collateral damage from the BIG SMASH (10d6). A couple of characters went in the negative (-2 to -5 HPs) but no one died. The real humiliation was how battle around them was unbothered.
A guy has like 5 hp left; and he has to climb down a very sheer rock wall; he takes tremendous precautions to do so, manages his check, and gets down safely. A moment later, a random earthquake occurs and he gets crushed to death by falling rocks.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;491503A guy has like 5 hp left; and he has to climb down a very sheer rock wall; he takes tremendous precautions to do so, manages his check, and gets down safely. A moment later, a random earthquake occurs and he gets crushed to death by falling rocks.
RPGPundit
It's like rain on your wedding day.
JG
I've got two that qualify, i think. One is a case of "well really, he deserved it for trying to be a smartarse," and the other to my eternal shame is mine...
Case number one is Rolemaster. We've got a tricked out Warrior Monk with defences up the wazoo who hardly ever gets touched in combat. Trouble is, the player gets a sudden case of rules-lawyerism that begets his downfall. The party are wandering through an underground grotto, rock formations block the view, the ground is uneven and overall, visibility isn't great - there is no problem with the light however. So, the call goes out for the players to make a Perception check and we all have a go...However, the Warrior Monk's player sudden;y thinks aha! My spacial location awareness skill is better than my perception (that skill basically is like echo-location, helps in the dark, blind warriors and the like). So he closes his eyes, walks at the front of the group by 20 odd feet 'cos he's confident of you know 'seeing' better than anyone else. Anyhow, he contrives to fail his roll and promptly falls down a pit he would have noticed if only he had his eyes open...
This being Rolemaster, he rolls 100 for the crit result...bye, bye Warrior Monk.
Case 2 took place in the only 'evil' campaign i've ever really taken part in, although our idea of evil was stealing from each other and fucking each other over. Anyhow, my Assassin decides to off another character - a warrior tougher than myself. So i get a sleeping poison, daub my blade with it and await my victim in an allleyway. My plan, nick him with the blade, run away, then return once he's fallen asleep. However, in all the excitement, i swing away for a few rounds, hit nothing, get thumped and just when i thought it was all over i scored a hit! Having been rather carried away by the whole thing, i then proceeded to stand my ground for some inexplicable reason while the poison was getting to work and quite rightly got killed for my brainfart. The rest of the party came across my body and found the warrior sleeping soundly by my side.
An inexperienced player did this one:
The party (three people, two veterens and one newbie) is in an underground labrynth of interconnecting caverns. They smell something like rotten eggs and come accross a "pool of greenish liquid that blocks the path, it is too cloudy to see through."
Guess who dove in and attempted to swim accross.
Had another one where the PC's had reached about lv 12 when the party (of 5) met with some of their arch nemesis' in a big battle. The bad guys of course had a shit-load of underlings fighting at their sides. Though the PCs had managed to do some serious damage and despite killing off one of the main NPCs in the battle, it became apparent that they were not going to win. Eveyone began making a retreat. Everyone that is, except for the "i'm a fucking badass" ranger who decided to go head to head with a Minotaur. The Minotaur was beating the shit out of him and had him down to like 5 Hps (this Minotaur had something like +8 to damage) and the idiot ranger just stood there fighting him. Never ran away, never even tried to do something interesting. Just stood there toe to toe. An elf in front of a minotaur.
He died.
I remembered another one:
We were playing Paranoia. One of our PCs had psychic abilities but hadn't told anybody. The PCs got sent out to repair some malfunctioning war robots and got attacked by them. They were all down to like 5hp or something, when the psychic PC suddenly unleashes a bunch of lightning blasts at the robots, destroying them all.
The other PC's (the players that is), all looked at each other and then, almost as one, yelled, "He's a mutant!" And they killed him.
Quote from: Blazing Donkey;493994I remembered another one:
We were playing Paranoia. One of our PCs had psychic abilities but hadn't told anybody. The PCs got sent out to repair some malfunctioning war robots and got attacked by them. They were all down to like 5hp or something, when the psychic PC suddenly unleashes a bunch of lightning blasts at the robots, destroying them all.
The other PC's (the players that is), all looked at each other and then, almost as one, yelled, "He's a mutant!" And they killed him.
I'm not sure PARANOIA counts because that's exactly what's
supposed to happen. :D :D :D
JG
Yeah, that's not even particularly funny by Paranoia standards.
RPGPundit
There was that one time someone fumbled their grenade toss in the ammo dump. I imagined a pretty spectacular light show.