The brief history of...

[kirksmithicus]

I know (okay I hope) a lot of other people have had characters who expired shortly after creation. Give us the brief history of .....


My shortest lived character was a half-orc who's name has been forgotten in the mists of time. Our party entered town and headed for the local tavern. On the way in, this guy runs into my character and says some disparaging remarks about half-orcs. They get into an argument, and I tell the DM I'm going to piss on the guys boots. Well the next thing you know my character is laying in a puddle of his own piss and blood. Turns out the guy is a mid level Chevalier. This would have been the "Temple of Elemental Evil" module. I totally deserved to have my character get killed, but it was funny, totally worth re-rolling a new character.

[Ramzei]

Aside from the 2 characters that were made and never played, I had a mage that died rapidly. It was soon after I started playing 2e and I realized I wanted to play a fighter so I killed a guard and died. Rerolled my fighter and everyone was happy.

[Engar]

I had a druid who was killed while I was still choosing non-proficiencies. I joined the ongoing game and was finishing up when the rogue went off the deep end. My character was earlier introduced and announced to be sitting and meditating at a cavern entrance while I finished up. The rogue snuck away from the group, backstabbed my character to take his stuff and then rejoined the party!

Talk about frustrating!

The party was unaware until a fight shortly afterward where both the rogue and the paladin's mount died in combat. As they exited the cave with him they stumbled upon my druid's corpse. After investigating a bit and finding some items they recognized as mine (from the brief introduction) on his person they opted to pool their resources. They proceeded to bury my character (whom they hardly knew), tossed the rogues corpse on the ground outside to rot and resurrected the horse!

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

I had a 2nd level character: 1st level Sorcerer/1st level Druid. He was around 80 years old and there was this great backstory about him, but in order to keep it short, I'll refrain from vearing off topic. Not 1 hour into his first adventure, the party was over taken, mostly because 2 of our party separated(idiots!) from the rest, we were out-numbered, separated, and people were falling like flies. I myself, the sorcerer/druid shot off 2 spells, both failed(bad luck), and was struck down. In the end, the rogue in the party scurried away being the only survivor.

Thoth-Amon

[Tamerath]

lol back in WV a buddy of mine who is a draftsman by trade decided he wanted to make a good hack-in-slash game for us. He had only wrote the beginning parts of the dungeon and it was a hellish maze to be certain. Well for this I went against my Ranger or Fighter/Mage usual classes and went with a Druid/Wizard multiclass. I made this huge elaborate history as well and we started into this beast of a maze and we were getting all turned around and I decide to check out this branch to see if it met up with any other familiar tunnels.....and down I go into a pit laden with spikes. I'm alive...with only 1 hp left. I scream for help....the party comes to rescue me. A heavy armored fighter attaches a rope and scales down the pit (failing his rope use check) his rope unravels and he falls on top of me killing me instantly....I head to the next room and fire up the Xbox

[kirksmithicus]

They proceeded to bury my character (whom they hardly knew), tossed the rogues corpse on the ground outside to rot and resurrected the horse!

That's hilarious and quite practical, the only thing that would have made it better would have been to make the thief into beef jerky. Soilent Jerky, you don't say....

I had a druid who was killed while I was still choosing non-proficiencies.

I've only had that happen when I played twilight 2000, died of old age .

A heavy armored fighter attaches a rope and scales down the pit (failing his rope use check) his rope unravels and he falls on top of me killing me instantly

Ouch........ so exactly how much damage does an over weight and over encumbered meat puppet do?

I had a 2nd level character: 1st level Sorcerer/1st level Druid. He was around 80 years old and there was this great backstory about him, but in order to keep it short, I'll refrain from vearing off topic. Not 1 hour into his first adventure, the party was over taken, mostly because 2 of our party split from the rest, we were out-numbered, separated, and people were falling like flies. I myself, the sorcerer/druid shot off 2 spells, both failed(bad luck), and was struck down. In the end, the rogue in the party scurried away being the only survivor.

...and some DM's wonder why players don't want to create detailed backgrounds for their characters every week


So the moral of the story so far is.........don't play a Druid!

[Webhead]

Well, besides my Traveller character who died during character creation and the veritable army of characters I've rolled up but never played, I've not played too many characters with short lifespans.

I did run a game or two with PCs who died quickly (not by my direct doing, but either by bad luck or player decision).

I ran a Deadlands: Hell on Earth game (post-apocalyptic) where my brother played a Junker (bascially a gadgeteer) who had unwittingly rolled up "Gremlins" as a secret flaw in character creation which meant that there was a chance that any technological device malfunctioned when he used it. Since the character centered on building technology, this was a very, very bad flaw to have (basically imagine if you had a Wizard who was permanently cursed with 20% Spell-failure).

During the first combat encounter of the game at a toxic waste site, he fired his shotgun at an enemy (and I made the malfunction check) and was rewarded only with a weapon jam and a shower of sparks from the barrel. He battered the monster away and spent a round or two unjamming the gun. With the gun working again, he fired (and I rolled for malfunction)...and he got the exact same result. Frustrated, my brother looked quizzically at me for an explaination.

Me: "Sorry, bro. You've got gremlins..."

He got a horrified look and then had his character hurl himself into the pool of toxic waste and begin to breathe deeply. End of character. But it was funny to see the look on his face.

[nijineko]

my shortest-lived character was a wizard. i was playing solo character for this adventure. i managed to roll a 1 on my hp roll.... i walked up to the castle and some giant toads hopped onto it. one magic missle and one round later we had a dead wizard.

my second shortest-lived character-a rouge-(same dm, i think) managed to make it all the way through a dungeon, looted a buch of stuff, avoided or killed a bunch of monsters, defeated some traps, found a scroll of teleport and managed to activate it... only to die because he tried to teleport outside the front doors, which happened to result in instant death if you teleport outside the dungeon in that particular module. i always wondered what a party coming up to the doors from the outside would think of the rich corpse just outside those doors....

[agoraderek]

i mentioned him in the "in the beginning thread", but my first character lasted two rooms in a dungeon. he was 1st level adventuring with double digit characters. two rooms. ten minutes. yet, i was still hooked...

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Another time i was scaling down a rope. Then the idiot dwarf in full plate started to follow, i couldnt say anything for that would be out of character(my character wasnt aware), then guess what happened? Yep, dwarf slips, falls... on me, and we both go free-falling to the bottom. 60 feet later... smack, crackle, and pop. Meat stew for the carnivorous mosters at the bottom. All this happend 30 minutes into the game.

Thoth-Amon

[Aidan]

Another time i was scaling down a rope. Then the idiot dwarf in full plate started to follow, i couldnt say anything for that would be out of character(my character wasnt aware), then guess what happened? Yep, dwarf slips, falls... on me, and we both go free-falling to the bottom. 60 feet later... smack, crackle, and pop. Meat stew for the carnivorous mosters at the bottom. All this happend 30 minutes into the game.

Thoth-Amon

Dungeoneering rule #37: Let the guy in full plate go down the ladder/rope first.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Dungeoneering rule #37: Let the guy in full plate go down the ladder/rope first.

It never occured to me that he'd be so ignorant of his chances. Who'd of guessed that a Dwarf wouldnt be aware of Dungeoneering Rule #37.

Thoth-Amon

[shilar]

Dungeoneering rule #37: Let the guy in full plate go down the ladder/rope first.

Or if for whatever reason he can't go first the rouge should ensure a clear "crash zone" before allowing him to proceed.

[Webhead]

Dungeoneering rule #37: Let the guy in full plate go down the ladder/rope first.

Dungeoneering rule #38: All adventurering parties should carry at least one additional length of rope to tie off any downward climbers and anchor them in the event that they should slip and fall.

Too many parties assume that they can get by with a single set of rope between them...

[cplmac]

Or if for whatever reason he can't go first the rouge should ensure a clear "crash zone" before allowing him to proceed.

I believe this is Dungeoneering Rule 37.5.