Group had a Swashbuckler Orc companion. He rolled abysmally on almost everything despite having pretty good stats. He rolled three 1s in a row at one point and he became canonically cursed by the gods because that was the only logical explanation. While exploring a old castle, the group encountered a ghost that haunted it. The ghost used it's Horrifying Visage ability and the Orc rolled a 3, which after adding his +4 came out to a 7. Which meant he failed by exactly enough to age 1d4×10 years from the fright. He rolled a 4 and aged 40 years. As a 30 year old orc, he then became a 70 year old orc, which for orcs is ancient. He died of old age later that session.
Not sure if this counts but when i introduced my new character, a half drow assassin recently escaped from the underdark. I mentioned that they had already accomplished a couple jobs in town. Then when showing the druid the job board it was revealed they couldn't quite read common and was picking jobs that had pictures. Meaning they had probably accidentally taken at least one missing persons notice as an assassination job. Either that or the time Aresse accidentally made a revenant.
Meant to be a important bunny box they would have as a talking pet etc, blew it up with explosives latched to a home brew crossbow. I loved making that character, gone forever now
In a case of was this going to end any other way, had a very short-lived npc. Was a goblin summoned by a rune we came across in a dungeon, it called the one that triggered it master and was rude and/or annoying to the rest of the party. The next encounter was against a hezrou that casted paranoia on the whole party meaning everyone that failed (which was everyone but one person and the gob that was too far away) didn't consider each other allies. Gob decided to stand beside the hezrou and swing at it (which led to none of the melees being able to reach it), barb raged and took the most direct/only route. Even if it didn't receive death-by-barb, it was going to get death-by-demon so it was earning its darwin award regardless.
I once took the endurance die hard feats with a barbarian. We were fighting some ogre and if they hit me and dropped me to -6 HP. But because I had the die-hard feet I didn't go down. The next round of combat the ogre attacked me again and did something like 36 points of. The DM asked me when I went down what HP I was at and I said well before that hit I was at -6 HP. How were you still standing? I took the die-hard feet I don't drop until I'm at -10. So the ogre hits you and you smear into a paste said the DM. I Rolled the new character while they moped up the rest of that battle. They came across a bunch of NPCs that were held captive by that ogre. I turned out to be one of them and barbarian just like the party needed again LOL
Our first attempt at a Ravenloft campaign. None of us rolled a healer of any sort so the DM was nice enough to make an NPC cleric for the party. We go off into the fog, run into the first little baddy. The cleric gets hurt, badly and can no longer speak. They hand a vial to one of the PCs and makes a vague drinking motion as that was all they had the energy to do. So, making the logical conclusion, the PC drinks the contents of the vial. The cleric dies and the DM informs the PC that it was a healing potion that he was supposed to help the cleric drink. Oops.
I had a wizard NPC that the party had basically kidnapped. They were playing monsters and a group of NPC adventurers attacked their lair, because they were putting out rumors that it was a dungeon filled with monsters in order to lure in adventurers so they could kill the adventurers, take their gear, sell it to new adventurers, and repeat the process. This one survived the initial contact and one of the players decided to keep her as a pet. They drug her around all over the place and eventually ended up fighting a gibbering mouther. Now, I'd built this NPC up as a proper adventurer and one of the players knew it. What he didn't seem to understand, however, is just because she has a name, a build, had proven herself very useful, and I liked the character very much at that point, that I wasn't about to not let her die if they let that happen. They didn't do anything to protect her and never allowed her the time she needed to do spellcaster things like memorizing spells every day, so at any given point she really only had a handful of spell slots with spells in them and only ever took the time to set spells that didn't need components because she didn't have any. Again, they didn't sleep, and didn't let her out of their sight to even do that much, assuming she wasn't literally stuck to the mimic all day. There are no long rests in Pathfinder. If you don't take the actual time to prepare spells, you have what was left over from the previous day. She also, of course, didn't say: "hey, I'm confused, you should protect me until I can get this confusion to pass" because she's an NPC and doesn't have an out of character meta voice like players do. She just stood there staring at the gibbering mouther as it undulated towards her. I don't hold back on my NPC's. If something happens to that character then it happens. If the thing that happens is that I end up tearing up that character's character sheet at the end of a session, then that's what happens. I don't DMPC. In fact the only time I really want to run an NPC alongside the party is when I'm short on players like when I'm starting off a campaign and half of them decide not to show up and don't tell me until the next week they won't be there. It's not like I killed her on purpose, she failed a save and the players watched as she stood there and assumed I, as the DM, would deus ex machina her to safety because she's my character. Well, so was the gibbering mouther and it thirsted for elf blood. tl;dr: Party kidnaps a wizard NPC and expects the DM to protect it from his own campaign like some kind of DMPC. Surprised Pikachu face when it dies brutally.
Was playing in a d20 modern game and, for very sensible reasons, we rigged a trap to stop potential assassins attacking us in our sleep. A simple grenade in a bed. Problem was that we forgot to disarm it upon leaving the hotel. RIP housekeeping...
Former PC turned legacy NPC in the sequel campaign in Mutants and Masterminds, NPC in question was a teleporting metalbender with a lightsaber, party ran into him as a boss fight on a space station they weren't meant to get to so early (a completely different set of shenanigans). Was doing pretty well fighting against the party of 5 with just him and his wife that was his entire character motivation in the previous campaign to find after they got separated and mind wiped. Fighting a metalbender on a space station is not recommended. Fortunately, the party had the powers necessary to survive when he vented them all into space, and once they gained the upper hand, dropped finishing attacks on both the metalbender and his fire/ice elemental wife. But that's not the end. The party wizard, who was the one keeping them alive in space, had a resurrection spell, provided he got to them in a set time limit, and they were using it to make sure they had a window of time to secure prisoners without any possibility of escape. So the party killed them, set up a holding cell, and then revived them in a place they couldn't possibly escape for future use. This consisted of locking them in adjacent cells that jammed their superpowers, and then for good measure, encased them in concrete so they couldn't physically move or speak. They were fed automatically by the base's staff, but could only move their eyes at any given point. And then the party forgot about them. They meant to interrogate them later, but they just left them alone for a couple weeks. The key point they failed to account for, or just didn't realize, was that the metalbender's and the fire/ice elemental's powers were artificial in nature, a huge part of the backstory written by the player, and that these articial powers were genetically unstable, to the point that those powers were all that prevented their organs from shutting down. I had calculated out how much time they'd have, and figured given the party's expressed desire to interrogate them as the sole reason they revived them in the first place, it would be more than enough. But they were just left in limbo, and because the party explicitly bound them so they couldn't speak, and never did anything to change that, by the time they remembered them, they were both dead from organ failure and neglect. Not just a dumb way to go, but a really sad one too, though it gave a great motivation to have their daughter show up looking for revenge.
During an assassination attempt against our party in a tavern, our Rogue mistook a fleeing guard for a fleeing assassin... somehow, and killed him instantly before scalping him.
I DM'd a campain that was just chaos, in one of the towns the players went trough there was a traveling merchant selling rugs, now the merchant proclaimed these were high quality, verry expensive rugs and sold the party a rug for a few hundred gold. Upon placing the rug in the home of the PC's they found out the rugs were rotten and infested with insects. Clearly unhappy with the rug they went back to the merchant and rolled him into his own rotting carpet and threw him into a river. I slowly explained how the the rolled up rug quickly sank and after a few moments the bubbles just stopped. This did upset the party clerk and the good natured wizard but I decided that since he was laughing all the way the party's barbarian went from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil, starting off some redemption arc. In other campaigns the rug merchant became a reoccurring NPC simular to the cabbage guy in Avatar the last airbender
I am just going to summarize this. Party and I met a NPC who wanted to get to the city. It becomes night so we stop to set up camp, we tell him to get firewood. The NPC decided to climb a tree and snap the branches to get firewood. The NPC falls and snapped his neck. We all just sat silent for a minute for not believing this is how a simple quest ended.
In my case another Dark Conpsiracy tale.. We were chasing a dark elf serial killer through his hideout in a ruined factory. under fire he diecided to dimension walk out to safety but cos he was under fire from My Merc, my sisters Renegade Darlling and the DMNPC T800 he flubbed his rolls and got a nat 1 the dm decided to have fun with it, insted of the gate exloding or just failing to open. The bbeg literally looking at us and taunting about how he was getting away and our families would suffer when he came back, backed through the potal he had created without looking. He had made himself a doorway 50 feet in the air above an active volcano. OFC our Agency characters had orders to kill him and dispose of the body as one of his human servants had already been arrested for the crime (willing dupe to save his master) so we just watched as he fell into the lava and did a gollum. My character activates his comlink "Mission successful"
Plastic surgery. We were playing Edge of the Empire and our doctor attempted help a runaway clone trooper by changing up his looks. She failed her first attempt badly, attempted to fix her horrible mistake and ended up killing the poor bastard XD
Had a decent npc running in to fight the party, grapple specalist. Psion uses stun, rogue sneak attacks, repeat. This npc had best fortitude to resist but kept rolling low. Still a funny encounter.
The drowned goblin story reminded me of the way a mid-level antagonist once died. The starting village was in an absurdly monster-infested area. Bad ogre problem on the roads between the village and the provincial capital. The town was literally founded by someone putting a pin in a map "Go build a logging town there." This bitty little place for some reason had beef with Lord Pathos, the psychotic lord of the province's capital. (don't really remember, I think he felt his authoritah was being challenged) The place was getting rather busier and richer with some successful adventurers operating out of it. Lord Pathos had had enough of our guff, and showed up with his army to take charge of the place. Bad timing. One of the players had just returned from a solo adventure to visit the king (mostly to pay our taxes. Yes really, we paid taxes willingly. Lawful Good is a heck of a drug) and one of the things he brought back was a letter from the king giving the church's high priest (the de facto leader of the town) command over all the kingdom's local forces for a military campaign. Thanks for the army m'lord. Lord Pathos was actually the cousin of the king, too important to completely sideline, and so assigned governance of a border province where his extreme incompetence wouldn't be too much of an embarrassment. He didn't take the news well, so he was taken down into the church's basement and locked in a priest's cell to calm down from his berserk, murderous fury. He was taken away screaming that he would return to his city immediately and come back to kill us all. After that everyone got very distracted. Lots of activity and even a red dragon attack that burned the church down to ground level, followed by a terrible storm that flooded the town. It was genuinely so busy that everyone, players and DM alike, forgot that Lord Pathos had never actually left. When the DM remembered, he had a messenger from the provincial capital ask the party where his lord was, and we honestly answered that he'd departed on horseback swearing revenge. Alone. In ogre territory. And he never arrived, you say? Oh dear. About that time the body of some poor wild-haired man was pulled from the flooded ruin of the church. He must have been some unfortunate indigent that the church had taken in. Whoever he was, he was buried under the name "unknown bum." In-game, the only person who ever figured it out was a priest with a vow of silence. He decided, in light of his terrible guilt, to double the length of his vow.
This actually happened on my negative 1st Pathfinder session, that I sat in on to see how the game was played. This campaign was fairly expansive, and the party was going about their merry way from one country they'd just finished an arc of the story in, back to the country their campaign started in. Along the way, the party manages to stumble into an Erlking and his centaur entourage. This was purely out of bad luck, as the GM simply rolled nat 100 on his custom forest encounter table. The party was level 9 at this point, and in no shape to handle such an encounter. But eventually, a battle does happen anyway, mostly because of botched persuasion checks. The battle quickly reaches the point where only the party's half-elf cleric and kobold gunslinger are left, fighting the few remaining centaurs, and the hardly scratched Erlking, with the other 2 party members out of commission. The GM, taking mercy on the party since a TPK was clearly imminent due to simple bad luck, says "Gunslinger. Roll perception." He rolls low enough to not know what's going on. GM: "All you know is suddenly the Erlking is crushed with a resounding 'THUD!'" GS: "What happened to-wait...where are we?" GM: "He was crushed with a giant blue whale. All the others scatter in fear into the woods." The whole party burst into laughter. It turns out this was a callback to several months ago, near the start of the campaign when they were level 3. The GM decided to let the party 'create' their own future plot points by giving them a Monkey's Paw, basically as a reward for completing their first quest. They were in the middle of a forest, this very same forest, as a matter of fact, fighting a pair of ogres that had chased them as they left the first dungeon. They were low on health and spells at the time, so the gunslinger thought he would quickly pull out the Paw and wish a blue whale would fall right where the ogres were standing at the time of the wish. He never said when.
The town guard my pugilist used as a battering ram died. And a player character in my campaign once accidentally killed someone with alcohol poisoning in a drinking contest. (as DM I rolled two failed saves and then a 1.)
My group had An NPC doomed to die, our party was supposed to be leading this Goliath Nobleman to a particular city, and in one of the towns on the way, we encountered a Black Guard (a player level 15 character from one of our backgrounds). This Black Guard was hunting the Goliath and looking for another person. we knew it was too early for it as the party of 4 was only level 3 and the Goliath was actually level 8, but one of our other party members accidentally triggered something from their back ground, which would have separated then from the group and they would have likely had to reroll a new character, the DM pushed this encounter because the Black Guard was more dangerous than the other background character, but also more conditionally easier to maneuver, and the character we needed him to deal with was a homebrew machine race that would assess the danger and would withdraw if deemed too dangerous... well, that part worked, and now the Goliath was facing him down, and it was decided the 2 would duel to the death... now sit down to a 2 hour period of the DM giving the Goliath a fair chance by actually having the 2 fight it out, and the Goliath kept criting, and the Black Guard kept missing his strikes... we reach the point where the Black Guard just uses an ability to completely regenerate his hitpoints, and now we decide to just decide the rest with a coin flip..... The Black Guard is the one who Dies.... this level 8 Goliath took down a level 15 character with a cheat boost. We agreed from here that the Goliath would automatically level up to 15 just because he soloed this guy. The town we were in was immediately abandoned, though as well, as the Black Guard are a notorious group of 4, and if one of them died, the others would likely respond quickly. The next day as we are going through gate security at the next town, we see a massive explosion with Shockwave come from the previous town, the death of this character led the others to detonate a bomb capable of erasing the town from the map
Here's how Benhark's story ended (but not really). He was a former pc, belonging to a player who had disappeared (online game) without saying a word to the rest of the group. So Benhark, unlike his player, decided to stick with the party after they were done with their quest. We were at the end of the campaign, only two sessions left. The party was travelling by ship on what will turn out to be an 8ish months long voyage. Midway across their cruise, a tropical storm hits the ship. I completely forgot to mention that Benhark would follow the other heavily armored party member in the lower decks of the ship. Big wave crushes against the side of the ship, tilting it dangerously. Every pc on deck rolls dex saves to not fall off the ship and into the stormy sea. Everyone succedes. Yay! Then, one of the players says: "What about Benhark?" I groan and roll. With his negative modifier to dexterity, Benhark is thrown into the sea. With the conditions of the sea and weather, i had previously ruled that for a heavily armored character falling off the ship would be an almost certain death sentence (This is why the heavily armored pc, earlier, had gone into the safer parts of the ship). I *had* plans for Benhark. No worries tho, Benhark came back in campaign 3 and 4 as a very bloated undead in service of the BBEG.
Unlucky NPC in a short campaign i did. Player shoots a leveled 3 fireball at the BBEG, i like to give my BBEG special weaknesses and defenses that work different than you average magic items or armor. So this one was a glas cannon with a deflect magic ring. so if the players spell is hitting, it had a 15% chance to be deflected in a random direction instead. Had a D100 for the directions and well it hit the good administrator the players tried to rescue (bad luck), he was chained to a wall. Only time that thing worked and it flung the spell directly to the administrator. Quickly rolled a D10 for his Body parts 1 was its head... Dice dancing and even with 10 as a reroll option i threw two 10 and a 1... Full damage of a level 3 fireball to a level 1 townsfolk. At least they took out the BBEG afterwards and blamed him for roasting the administrator...
Forced to walk the plank, with a twist! My character was leading a mutiny against a merchant to take over the ship and conduct some pirate runs. Now let's get something out in the open, this particular merchant was a little fat man who left the maintenance, tactical navigation and fighting to his captain, so he was practically useless beyond his claim to the vessel. His mistake was getting involved in slave trading and buying my character because he fancied the look of her. What he hadn't anticipated was she was a very competent sorceress, that summoned undead, creatures and lightning, using the creatures and rebels to push the loyal mercs off the ship in a rush that was designed to secure all stations aboard the ship and force compliance out of the veteran sailors. It worked and the sharks were feasting on the electrified mercy in the water. We had to decide what we'd do with the merchant after getting him to sign over ownership of his vessel to us. We opted to make him walk the plank but underestimated both his weight and his bravery. Effectively, he walked out on the plank, peed himself, slipped on the now sickened wood, fell backward, snapped the plank and plummeted to the waters below, unconscious... 😅
Murdering the guy trying to save him, then unintentionally going into the plane of fire. (ToA Spoiler?) We found some badass, swordswinging mage who was bound to an amulet. We made it abundantly clear we were going to free him, that nobody could leave the tomb before killing the BBEG and that we wouldn't risk his life.. buuut he refused to listen to reason, so we used the amulet, for his own good and our benefit. He didn't care for that, and murdered the wearer after he got zapped unconscious by a beholder. Stabbed em clear through the chest, then bamfed into the plane of fire.. which is, what we then learned, happens when you planestep
My party was trying to get into an underwater merfolk city that was occupied by sahaugin and had a friendly sahaugin with us who happened to be related to the captain of the enemy military. The edgy teen sorcerer decided to be a dick to the guard operating the gate so the guard decided to use the gates defenses on the party. Everyone but the npc survived lol.
I tried to intimidate some people to get out of my way after burning down a prison. One guy rolled a 1, and ran into a wall and just died. For searching him, I then rolled a 1, and my dm said: "He is a man. you find that out the hard way."
...we had a guy accidentally kill a target we split the party cuz i wanted to make sure he didn't die in random gutter so he throws a knife to hit the guy in the leg .. rolls a 1 and hit the floor that bounced to hit the poor guy in the head . It got worse
Funniest NPC deaths, that's a tricky one. With D&D, outside of combat, I can only think of two non-scripted NPC deaths in any game I've ever been a part of, and they weren't funny, the first was tragic, and the second was a direct result of my characters emotional state after the death of the first. My Warlock was unable to prevent a young girls death because our Lawful Stupid Paladin _insisted_ he knew what was best, and physically restrained me while the girl took a knife and stabbed herself in the heart less than 10ft away from us. Later that day, we returned to our Monk's mountaintop monastery that was serving as our base in the region. A recurring character who had been trying to steal the monastery's alcohol brewing secrets showed up again. He was a harmless nuisance at worst. I Eldritch Blasted him off a 1,000 foot cliff. Outside of D&D, we have Wicked Ones, and oh boy was there a lot of silly NPC deaths (mostly due to the game being weighted towards rolling failures, and my party not understanding the rules) My favorite would be when our party had a Demoness Hunter and her NPC minions/hirelings, two Demon Mages. Those mages were *always* failing their spell casting rolls, and spell casting failure can be disastrous. One combat they failed to cast a firebolt. They both passed out from the strain of failing to cast what should have been the easiest spell in the game. Then they unceremoniously caught fire. After the combat was over, their corpses were still smoldering. Because Demons can't truely die, we hired them back the next week. Their deaths became a regular occurrence for failing their rolls moving forward.
He hasn't actually died but we like to joke OOC that our very inexpereinced halfling companion is going to get sntached up by spiders/werewolves/etc. during his watch. Just lets out a quick little "WA-!" and the swoosh of wind as some horrible beast swoops in takes him away while our characters sleep on through the night. It will of course be his fault if this happens and we get ambushed in the night.
Group had a Swashbuckler Orc companion. He rolled abysmally on almost everything despite having pretty good stats. He rolled three 1s in a row at one point and he became canonically cursed by the gods because that was the only logical explanation. While exploring a old castle, the group encountered a ghost that haunted it. The ghost used it's Horrifying Visage ability and the Orc rolled a 3, which after adding his +4 came out to a 7. Which meant he failed by exactly enough to age 1d4×10 years from the fright. He rolled a 4 and aged 40 years. As a 30 year old orc, he then became a 70 year old orc, which for orcs is ancient. He died of old age later that session.
Not sure if this counts but when i introduced my new character, a half drow assassin recently escaped from the underdark. I mentioned that they had already accomplished a couple jobs in town.
Then when showing the druid the job board it was revealed they couldn't quite read common and was picking jobs that had pictures.
Meaning they had probably accidentally taken at least one missing persons notice as an assassination job.
Either that or the time Aresse accidentally made a revenant.
"Nothing in space would decompose you" True, but the bacteria in the body itself especially the digestive track might have a go at it.
Meant to be a important bunny box they would have as a talking pet etc, blew it up with explosives latched to a home brew crossbow. I loved making that character, gone forever now
F for the “Unkillable Tank”
In a case of was this going to end any other way, had a very short-lived npc. Was a goblin summoned by a rune we came across in a dungeon, it called the one that triggered it master and was rude and/or annoying to the rest of the party. The next encounter was against a hezrou that casted paranoia on the whole party meaning everyone that failed (which was everyone but one person and the gob that was too far away) didn't consider each other allies. Gob decided to stand beside the hezrou and swing at it (which led to none of the melees being able to reach it), barb raged and took the most direct/only route. Even if it didn't receive death-by-barb, it was going to get death-by-demon so it was earning its darwin award regardless.
I once took the endurance die hard feats with a barbarian. We were fighting some ogre and if they hit me and dropped me to -6 HP. But because I had the die-hard feet I didn't go down. The next round of combat the ogre attacked me again and did something like 36 points of. The DM asked me when I went down what HP I was at and I said well before that hit I was at -6 HP. How were you still standing? I took the die-hard feet I don't drop until I'm at -10. So the ogre hits you and you smear into a paste said the DM. I Rolled the new character while they moped up the rest of that battle. They came across a bunch of NPCs that were held captive by that ogre. I turned out to be one of them and barbarian just like the party needed again LOL
Our first attempt at a Ravenloft campaign. None of us rolled a healer of any sort so the DM was nice enough to make an NPC cleric for the party. We go off into the fog, run into the first little baddy. The cleric gets hurt, badly and can no longer speak. They hand a vial to one of the PCs and makes a vague drinking motion as that was all they had the energy to do. So, making the logical conclusion, the PC drinks the contents of the vial. The cleric dies and the DM informs the PC that it was a healing potion that he was supposed to help the cleric drink. Oops.
I had a wizard NPC that the party had basically kidnapped. They were playing monsters and a group of NPC adventurers attacked their lair, because they were putting out rumors that it was a dungeon filled with monsters in order to lure in adventurers so they could kill the adventurers, take their gear, sell it to new adventurers, and repeat the process. This one survived the initial contact and one of the players decided to keep her as a pet.
They drug her around all over the place and eventually ended up fighting a gibbering mouther. Now, I'd built this NPC up as a proper adventurer and one of the players knew it. What he didn't seem to understand, however, is just because she has a name, a build, had proven herself very useful, and I liked the character very much at that point, that I wasn't about to not let her die if they let that happen. They didn't do anything to protect her and never allowed her the time she needed to do spellcaster things like memorizing spells every day, so at any given point she really only had a handful of spell slots with spells in them and only ever took the time to set spells that didn't need components because she didn't have any. Again, they didn't sleep, and didn't let her out of their sight to even do that much, assuming she wasn't literally stuck to the mimic all day. There are no long rests in Pathfinder. If you don't take the actual time to prepare spells, you have what was left over from the previous day. She also, of course, didn't say: "hey, I'm confused, you should protect me until I can get this confusion to pass" because she's an NPC and doesn't have an out of character meta voice like players do. She just stood there staring at the gibbering mouther as it undulated towards her.
I don't hold back on my NPC's. If something happens to that character then it happens. If the thing that happens is that I end up tearing up that character's character sheet at the end of a session, then that's what happens. I don't DMPC. In fact the only time I really want to run an NPC alongside the party is when I'm short on players like when I'm starting off a campaign and half of them decide not to show up and don't tell me until the next week they won't be there. It's not like I killed her on purpose, she failed a save and the players watched as she stood there and assumed I, as the DM, would deus ex machina her to safety because she's my character. Well, so was the gibbering mouther and it thirsted for elf blood.
tl;dr: Party kidnaps a wizard NPC and expects the DM to protect it from his own campaign like some kind of DMPC. Surprised Pikachu face when it dies brutally.
Was playing in a d20 modern game and, for very sensible reasons, we rigged a trap to stop potential assassins attacking us in our sleep. A simple grenade in a bed.
Problem was that we forgot to disarm it upon leaving the hotel.
RIP housekeeping...
Former PC turned legacy NPC in the sequel campaign in Mutants and Masterminds, NPC in question was a teleporting metalbender with a lightsaber, party ran into him as a boss fight on a space station they weren't meant to get to so early (a completely different set of shenanigans). Was doing pretty well fighting against the party of 5 with just him and his wife that was his entire character motivation in the previous campaign to find after they got separated and mind wiped. Fighting a metalbender on a space station is not recommended. Fortunately, the party had the powers necessary to survive when he vented them all into space, and once they gained the upper hand, dropped finishing attacks on both the metalbender and his fire/ice elemental wife. But that's not the end. The party wizard, who was the one keeping them alive in space, had a resurrection spell, provided he got to them in a set time limit, and they were using it to make sure they had a window of time to secure prisoners without any possibility of escape. So the party killed them, set up a holding cell, and then revived them in a place they couldn't possibly escape for future use. This consisted of locking them in adjacent cells that jammed their superpowers, and then for good measure, encased them in concrete so they couldn't physically move or speak. They were fed automatically by the base's staff, but could only move their eyes at any given point. And then the party forgot about them. They meant to interrogate them later, but they just left them alone for a couple weeks. The key point they failed to account for, or just didn't realize, was that the metalbender's and the fire/ice elemental's powers were artificial in nature, a huge part of the backstory written by the player, and that these articial powers were genetically unstable, to the point that those powers were all that prevented their organs from shutting down. I had calculated out how much time they'd have, and figured given the party's expressed desire to interrogate them as the sole reason they revived them in the first place, it would be more than enough. But they were just left in limbo, and because the party explicitly bound them so they couldn't speak, and never did anything to change that, by the time they remembered them, they were both dead from organ failure and neglect. Not just a dumb way to go, but a really sad one too, though it gave a great motivation to have their daughter show up looking for revenge.
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@@voidfloof morning big cat
During an assassination attempt against our party in a tavern, our Rogue mistook a fleeing guard for a fleeing assassin... somehow, and killed him instantly before scalping him.
One sentence “can’t have a hostage situation without a hostage”
Several if these stories had me snorting my drink, thanks for alm the uncontrollable laughter
I DM'd a campain that was just chaos, in one of the towns the players went trough there was a traveling merchant selling rugs, now the merchant proclaimed these were high quality, verry expensive rugs and sold the party a rug for a few hundred gold. Upon placing the rug in the home of the PC's they found out the rugs were rotten and infested with insects. Clearly unhappy with the rug they went back to the merchant and rolled him into his own rotting carpet and threw him into a river. I slowly explained how the the rolled up rug quickly sank and after a few moments the bubbles just stopped. This did upset the party clerk and the good natured wizard but I decided that since he was laughing all the way the party's barbarian went from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil, starting off some redemption arc. In other campaigns the rug merchant became a reoccurring NPC simular to the cabbage guy in Avatar the last airbender
Our rogue drank the final boss.
I will not elaborate.
I am just going to summarize this. Party and I met a NPC who wanted to get to the city. It becomes night so we stop to set up camp, we tell him to get firewood. The NPC decided to climb a tree and snap the branches to get firewood. The NPC falls and snapped his neck. We all just sat silent for a minute for not believing this is how a simple quest ended.
In my case another Dark Conpsiracy tale..
We were chasing a dark elf serial killer through his hideout in a ruined factory. under fire he diecided to dimension walk out to safety but cos he was under fire from My Merc, my sisters Renegade Darlling and the DMNPC T800 he flubbed his rolls and got a nat 1 the dm decided to have fun with it, insted of the gate exloding or just failing to open. The bbeg literally looking at us and taunting about how he was getting away and our families would suffer when he came back, backed through the potal he had created without looking.
He had made himself a doorway 50 feet in the air above an active volcano. OFC our Agency characters had orders to kill him and dispose of the body as one of his human servants had already been arrested for the crime (willing dupe to save his master) so we just watched as he fell into the lava and did a gollum.
My character activates his comlink "Mission successful"
Enemy rolled a nat 20 and instantly decapitated me from full health.
Plastic surgery. We were playing Edge of the Empire and our doctor attempted help a runaway clone trooper by changing up his looks. She failed her first attempt badly, attempted to fix her horrible mistake and ended up killing the poor bastard XD
Had a decent npc running in to fight the party, grapple specalist. Psion uses stun, rogue sneak attacks, repeat. This npc had best fortitude to resist but kept rolling low. Still a funny encounter.
The drowned goblin story reminded me of the way a mid-level antagonist once died.
The starting village was in an absurdly monster-infested area. Bad ogre problem on the roads between the village and the provincial capital. The town was literally founded by someone putting a pin in a map "Go build a logging town there." This bitty little place for some reason had beef with Lord Pathos, the psychotic lord of the province's capital. (don't really remember, I think he felt his authoritah was being challenged)
The place was getting rather busier and richer with some successful adventurers operating out of it. Lord Pathos had had enough of our guff, and showed up with his army to take charge of the place. Bad timing.
One of the players had just returned from a solo adventure to visit the king (mostly to pay our taxes. Yes really, we paid taxes willingly. Lawful Good is a heck of a drug) and one of the things he brought back was a letter from the king giving the church's high priest (the de facto leader of the town) command over all the kingdom's local forces for a military campaign. Thanks for the army m'lord.
Lord Pathos was actually the cousin of the king, too important to completely sideline, and so assigned governance of a border province where his extreme incompetence wouldn't be too much of an embarrassment.
He didn't take the news well, so he was taken down into the church's basement and locked in a priest's cell to calm down from his berserk, murderous fury. He was taken away screaming that he would return to his city immediately and come back to kill us all.
After that everyone got very distracted. Lots of activity and even a red dragon attack that burned the church down to ground level, followed by a terrible storm that flooded the town.
It was genuinely so busy that everyone, players and DM alike, forgot that Lord Pathos had never actually left. When the DM remembered, he had a messenger from the provincial capital ask the party where his lord was, and we honestly answered that he'd departed on horseback swearing revenge. Alone. In ogre territory. And he never arrived, you say? Oh dear.
About that time the body of some poor wild-haired man was pulled from the flooded ruin of the church. He must have been some unfortunate indigent that the church had taken in. Whoever he was, he was buried under the name "unknown bum."
In-game, the only person who ever figured it out was a priest with a vow of silence. He decided, in light of his terrible guilt, to double the length of his vow.
Person so desperate to get their children away from the murder hobos they threw their children out of a window
This actually happened on my negative 1st Pathfinder session, that I sat in on to see how the game was played.
This campaign was fairly expansive, and the party was going about their merry way from one country they'd just finished an arc of the story in, back to the country their campaign started in. Along the way, the party manages to stumble into an Erlking and his centaur entourage. This was purely out of bad luck, as the GM simply rolled nat 100 on his custom forest encounter table.
The party was level 9 at this point, and in no shape to handle such an encounter. But eventually, a battle does happen anyway, mostly because of botched persuasion checks.
The battle quickly reaches the point where only the party's half-elf cleric and kobold gunslinger are left, fighting the few remaining centaurs, and the hardly scratched Erlking, with the other 2 party members out of commission.
The GM, taking mercy on the party since a TPK was clearly imminent due to simple bad luck, says "Gunslinger. Roll perception."
He rolls low enough to not know what's going on.
GM: "All you know is suddenly the Erlking is crushed with a resounding 'THUD!'"
GS: "What happened to-wait...where are we?"
GM: "He was crushed with a giant blue whale. All the others scatter in fear into the woods."
The whole party burst into laughter.
It turns out this was a callback to several months ago, near the start of the campaign when they were level 3. The GM decided to let the party 'create' their own future plot points by giving them a Monkey's Paw, basically as a reward for completing their first quest.
They were in the middle of a forest, this very same forest, as a matter of fact, fighting a pair of ogres that had chased them as they left the first dungeon. They were low on health and spells at the time, so the gunslinger thought he would quickly pull out the Paw and wish a blue whale would fall right where the ogres were standing at the time of the wish.
He never said when.
The town guard my pugilist used as a battering ram died.
And a player character in my campaign once accidentally killed someone with alcohol poisoning in a drinking contest. (as DM I rolled two failed saves and then a 1.)
My group had An NPC doomed to die, our party was supposed to be leading this Goliath Nobleman to a particular city, and in one of the towns on the way, we encountered a Black Guard (a player level 15 character from one of our backgrounds). This Black Guard was hunting the Goliath and looking for another person. we knew it was too early for it as the party of 4 was only level 3 and the Goliath was actually level 8, but one of our other party members accidentally triggered something from their back ground, which would have separated then from the group and they would have likely had to reroll a new character, the DM pushed this encounter because the Black Guard was more dangerous than the other background character, but also more conditionally easier to maneuver, and the character we needed him to deal with was a homebrew machine race that would assess the danger and would withdraw if deemed too dangerous... well, that part worked, and now the Goliath was facing him down, and it was decided the 2 would duel to the death... now sit down to a 2 hour period of the DM giving the Goliath a fair chance by actually having the 2 fight it out, and the Goliath kept criting, and the Black Guard kept missing his strikes... we reach the point where the Black Guard just uses an ability to completely regenerate his hitpoints, and now we decide to just decide the rest with a coin flip..... The Black Guard is the one who Dies.... this level 8 Goliath took down a level 15 character with a cheat boost. We agreed from here that the Goliath would automatically level up to 15 just because he soloed this guy. The town we were in was immediately abandoned, though as well, as the Black Guard are a notorious group of 4, and if one of them died, the others would likely respond quickly. The next day as we are going through gate security at the next town, we see a massive explosion with Shockwave come from the previous town, the death of this character led the others to detonate a bomb capable of erasing the town from the map
An aboleth offed itself with a nat 1 attack
2:19 i definitely would not have guessed it
Here's how Benhark's story ended (but not really). He was a former pc, belonging to a player who had disappeared (online game) without saying a word to the rest of the group. So Benhark, unlike his player, decided to stick with the party after they were done with their quest. We were at the end of the campaign, only two sessions left. The party was travelling by ship on what will turn out to be an 8ish months long voyage. Midway across their cruise, a tropical storm hits the ship. I completely forgot to mention that Benhark would follow the other heavily armored party member in the lower decks of the ship. Big wave crushes against the side of the ship, tilting it dangerously. Every pc on deck rolls dex saves to not fall off the ship and into the stormy sea. Everyone succedes. Yay!
Then, one of the players says: "What about Benhark?" I groan and roll. With his negative modifier to dexterity, Benhark is thrown into the sea. With the conditions of the sea and weather, i had previously ruled that for a heavily armored character falling off the ship would be an almost certain death sentence (This is why the heavily armored pc, earlier, had gone into the safer parts of the ship). I *had* plans for Benhark.
No worries tho, Benhark came back in campaign 3 and 4 as a very bloated undead in service of the BBEG.
Unlucky NPC in a short campaign i did.
Player shoots a leveled 3 fireball at the BBEG, i like to give my BBEG special weaknesses and defenses that work different than you average magic items or armor. So this one was a glas cannon with a deflect magic ring. so if the players spell is hitting, it had a 15% chance to be deflected in a random direction instead. Had a D100 for the directions and well it hit the good administrator the players tried to rescue (bad luck), he was chained to a wall. Only time that thing worked and it flung the spell directly to the administrator. Quickly rolled a D10 for his Body parts 1 was its head... Dice dancing and even with 10 as a reroll option i threw two 10 and a 1... Full damage of a level 3 fireball to a level 1 townsfolk. At least they took out the BBEG afterwards and blamed him for roasting the administrator...
3:49 anyone getting star wars vibes?
Forced to walk the plank, with a twist!
My character was leading a mutiny against a merchant to take over the ship and conduct some pirate runs. Now let's get something out in the open, this particular merchant was a little fat man who left the maintenance, tactical navigation and fighting to his captain, so he was practically useless beyond his claim to the vessel. His mistake was getting involved in slave trading and buying my character because he fancied the look of her. What he hadn't anticipated was she was a very competent sorceress, that summoned undead, creatures and lightning, using the creatures and rebels to push the loyal mercs off the ship in a rush that was designed to secure all stations aboard the ship and force compliance out of the veteran sailors. It worked and the sharks were feasting on the electrified mercy in the water.
We had to decide what we'd do with the merchant after getting him to sign over ownership of his vessel to us. We opted to make him walk the plank but underestimated both his weight and his bravery. Effectively, he walked out on the plank, peed himself, slipped on the now sickened wood, fell backward, snapped the plank and plummeted to the waters below, unconscious...
😅
Murdering the guy trying to save him, then unintentionally going into the plane of fire.
(ToA Spoiler?) We found some badass, swordswinging mage who was bound to an amulet. We made it abundantly clear we were going to free him, that nobody could leave the tomb before killing the BBEG and that we wouldn't risk his life.. buuut he refused to listen to reason, so we used the amulet, for his own good and our benefit. He didn't care for that, and murdered the wearer after he got zapped unconscious by a beholder. Stabbed em clear through the chest, then bamfed into the plane of fire.. which is, what we then learned, happens when you planestep
My party was trying to get into an underwater merfolk city that was occupied by sahaugin and had a friendly sahaugin with us who happened to be related to the captain of the enemy military. The edgy teen sorcerer decided to be a dick to the guard operating the gate so the guard decided to use the gates defenses on the party. Everyone but the npc survived lol.
I tried to intimidate some people to get out of my way after burning down a prison. One guy rolled a 1, and ran into a wall and just died. For searching him, I then rolled a 1, and my dm said: "He is a man. you find that out the hard way."
...we had a guy accidentally kill a target we split the party cuz i wanted to make sure he didn't die in random gutter so he throws a knife to hit the guy in the leg .. rolls a 1 and hit the floor that bounced to hit the poor guy in the head . It got worse
F Hank the tank
Funniest NPC deaths, that's a tricky one.
With D&D, outside of combat, I can only think of two non-scripted NPC deaths in any game I've ever been a part of, and they weren't funny, the first was tragic, and the second was a direct result of my characters emotional state after the death of the first.
My Warlock was unable to prevent a young girls death because our Lawful Stupid Paladin _insisted_ he knew what was best, and physically restrained me while the girl took a knife and stabbed herself in the heart less than 10ft away from us.
Later that day, we returned to our Monk's mountaintop monastery that was serving as our base in the region. A recurring character who had been trying to steal the monastery's alcohol brewing secrets showed up again. He was a harmless nuisance at worst.
I Eldritch Blasted him off a 1,000 foot cliff.
Outside of D&D, we have Wicked Ones, and oh boy was there a lot of silly NPC deaths (mostly due to the game being weighted towards rolling failures, and my party not understanding the rules)
My favorite would be when our party had a Demoness Hunter and her NPC minions/hirelings, two Demon Mages. Those mages were *always* failing their spell casting rolls, and spell casting failure can be disastrous.
One combat they failed to cast a firebolt. They both passed out from the strain of failing to cast what should have been the easiest spell in the game. Then they unceremoniously caught fire. After the combat was over, their corpses were still smoldering.
Because Demons can't truely die, we hired them back the next week. Their deaths became a regular occurrence for failing their rolls moving forward.
He hasn't actually died but we like to joke OOC that our very inexpereinced halfling companion is going to get sntached up by spiders/werewolves/etc. during his watch. Just lets out a quick little "WA-!" and the swoosh of wind as some horrible beast swoops in takes him away while our characters sleep on through the night. It will of course be his fault if this happens and we get ambushed in the night.
Didn't they do this video already, or am I imagining things?
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Joooooo what’s good
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Gotta say, not a fan of the additional commentary.
It's been like this for a year or two now
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