Aarakockra druid got hit in the air and lost conciousness, fell down, rolled a 1 and died. I was the DM. First character death ever.

Flight is overpowered! /s

I've been seeing /s every where ​ what it mean

used to indicate sarcasm where it may be difficult to recognize

ok, thank you

Sarcasm

put them in a tight space where flying isnt much of an option

Or just have any enemies with ranged attacks or spells.

A sample size of 1 does not make for good evidence. Plus people's issues with infinite level 1 flight extend far past being able to fly in combat.

This is what I tell my characters who want to make an Aarakockra just “because flight is op”. I guarantee you’re going to be getting sniped and losing conciousness and dying to fall damage.

I totally agree. Flight is strong, but it alone is not a character. Eg. A leader of a crime syndicate is a strong flying swashbuckler who became infamous by swooping down from the skys picking up a target stabbing them multiple times and dropping the body in a location to to send a message. He has wants/needs flaws etc, so a character. Not amazing, but more fleshed out than just "has flight = good"

Best. CoS- had a level 5 wizard fighter MC. The party got really cocky and we decided to hunt up some vampires who were smuggled into the city. Got caught in tight spaces, failed using a 7th level spell scroll. So the next turn with like 2 health left, the rest of the party dead and not yet completely surrounded. I rolled a nat 20 on a str/athletics check to impale one of them with my glaive and subsequently take it through the window with me as the room was in fire. Technically I would have died from the like 6 AoOs, but we just let the cinematic play out of this window shattering as an armored wizard and this vampire spawn fall to their death

The vamps can always choose not to waste their OAs if it looks like you'd die anyway.

If this is the sahuagin fortress from Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I had a TPK in the same exact place... I was the DM.. I still feel guilt :')

Spirit Guardians makes that whole situation an actual joke, much to my own dissappontment when I DMed it. My players basically waltzed through the arena crowds and down the hallways towards the big room with the army when we played through this lol. Our cleric had a massive AC so I couldn't proc enough Concentration checks to actually make it any kind of challenge. Add on the fact that our paladin had a spell-storing ring from Forge of Fury with Spirit Guardians in it and it was all over.

Mine happened at level 3. I knew going in too that this was level 7-9 minimum but my pc didn’t. Sahuagin are surprisingly decent statwise.

Not me but a player I DM'd for. Players break into an armoury in my Renaissance-tech setting, I figure they might pick up a few firearms, maybe one or two grenades. The party had a gunslinger and guns are expensive, I figured I'd give him a chance to add some variety besides just his pistol. Anyway, the blood hunter asks me how many grenades he can fit in his bag. I run the math, it's some 40 or so. I warn him that grenades are a new, volatile technology, fuses are not always reliably-made. He knows what he's getting himself into, and at this point I'm just hoping that's he's the only one who ends up getting killed by this. Anyway, fast forwards about 5 sessions, he still has 34 grenades. First nat 1 throwing one. Fuse burns out in his hand, detonates, and 33 more in his back go off in a chain reaction. Most of the party has enough cover to where I can reasonably give them a dex save for a survivable amount of damage, but the blood hunter and the paladin who made the mistake of standing next to him are both annihilated. The hill they were stood on and the local golin tribe, too. About a quarter mile away, the gunslinger is setting up camp for the night when he sees a small object flying through the air very fast towards him. He moves out of the way just in time as a human skull, smoke trailing from the eye sockets, lands next to him before rolling to a stop. And a few seconds later, a strangely familiar, wide-brimmed hat, battered and with several holes burned through but still more or less intact. It drifts on the breeze before coming to a stop in its classic, jaunty angle atop the blood hunter's skull one final time.

Okay that is an amazing description for the final moments with the hat but I gotta ask why the party were on a hill fighting a goblin encampment while the gunslinger is that far away and setting camp. (And did the gunslinger take any of the armory stuff too?)

Oh this scenario got really weird. So after the armoury the players encountered someone from the gunslinger's backstory (long story short it's a vengeance thing). The gunslinger decides to attack him in broad daylight and gets arrested, but manages to break out the prison and flee the city. The rest of the party take on a bounty to recapture him on the basis that if they don't, someone else will. They follow him out the city a few hours after him, and are on the verge of catching him when they get hit a random encounter. And yeah he took a musket and a backup pistol for when the main one misfires

Smart to pick the backup pistol And I didn't think the grenade events would be so close together. Like a day or two at most?

A little longer than that. When I said after I didn't mean immediately after.

I feel like that is a dm misstep. You don't kill PCs for rolling 1 on their own attacks, that basically means the highly trained professional fighter has a 5% chance to behead themselves with each attack role. They will be dead before session 3. When you role a 1 the attack should fail and something detrimental but temporary should occur. And above all else, a player failing their attack role should never under any circumstances ever have the potential to kill their allies unless it's cause the enemy lives and kills them. You killing paladin because of another players bad choice is flat out wrong and bad dm'ing. You should have had the throw fumble and given them a chance to move to react and make a Dex save to dodge damage. There is no such thing as unavoidable damage in dnd and your Paladin would of and should have lived but you deprived them of that with lack of rules knowledge. And your blood hunter shouldn't have been killed either, but it seems you had that in mind from the beginning. If your players are cool with this type of thing then that's cool I guess, I'm happy you've found a group with standards around the same depth.

As u/Alkemeye mentioned, I don't use critical fumbles for regular weapon attacks, just for these grenades, because as I said before, they are a volatile new technology and fuses are sometimes made poorly. If you ever played 7th Sea 1st Edition, this is where I took the idea from - and in that game, they actually have 10% chance to explode in your hand, and are guaranteed to inflict a Dramatic Wound. A 5% chance and some hit point damage is pretty lowkey by comparison to the original. Obviously, hitting yourself with normal weapons every time you roll a 1 is unrealistic and annoying for martials, but this was not a normal weapon, and the players knew that. ​ There was a dexterity save for half damage, like almost every explosion-like effect in official D&D. The issue was that each grenade was dealing 2d6 slashing and 2d6 fire damage, so even if by some miracle the paladin passed every single save, you'd be looking at much, much more damage than a level 6 character can take. I did actually bend the rules in my party's favour by giving those who had some degree of cover the equivalent of a monk or rogue's Evasion feature, which normally should not happen, but I wanted to minimize the number of casualties as much as I reasonably could. ​ >You killing paladin because of another players bad choice The paladin was present at the armoury, too. He had every chance to tell the blood hunter it was a bad idea, as did the rest of the party. He also could have kept his distance from the blood hunter, knowing the risk of being nearby. He did neither of those things, and while I did feel sorry for the player at the time, it was ultimately something that he could have prevented. ​ >And your blood hunter shouldn't have been killed either, but it seems you had that in mind from the beginning No. What I had in mind from the beginning was to provide an interesting tool for those members of the party with higher dexterity to deal some aoe damage without needing a spellcasting feature. I thought the possibility of injuring themselves with it would counterbalance the naturally higher damage of 4d6 compared to any PHB weapon enough to where they wouldn't be rendered obsolete. I did *not* have in mind that any one player would take more than around 3 of them, which could still of course be dangerous but certainly wouldn't kill anybody by itself. The blood hunter made his choice, and the party gave no advice to the contrary, and the rest is history. ​ The one mistake I do believe I made there was giving the players access to such a large supply in the first place. I should have given them a smaller amount first, and only once they had gotten used to the risks of using them should I have run the armoury break-in adventure. That said, I still only consider myself partially responsible for what followed.

Except this isn't a universally applied rule to every weapon in the game, but a misfire rule applied to the grenade specifically because the technology it uses is still being developed in universe. There is a reason for a fumble roll existing when the grenade is used and it was communicated clearly by the dm and acknowledged by the player who decided to use it despite the warning. Most thrown devices such as vials of acid/alchemists fire/holy water fall under the use an object action to throw/splash and can only be used once per turn regardless of extra attacks. The only examples of player characters that are negatively affected by the chances of rolling additional nat 1's with thrown weapons are thief rogues/similar subclasses that give the use object action as a bonus action, and hasted creatures. I don't know whether the grenade could be thrown using an attack as part of the attack action here so I could be wrong, but it's a very possible solution. If so it becomes slightly unfair to characters with extra attack but only if they are making multiple grenade attacks per round. This is still consistent with the logic the player and dm agreed upon beforehand however, that every use of a grenade has an opportunity for them to malfunction. The reason the dm didn't bother with a dex save wasn't because of unavoidable damage but likely because the damage of having 34 grenades detonate on the player's immediate person would outright kill the player regardless of whether they save or not. If each grenade does 3d6 damage (using the Powderhorn from the DMG as a baseline) that is 102d6 of damage to roll. Not to mention that dividing that between the 70 dex saves for both characters is absurd and would bring combat to a grinding halt (although I do know some groups that would do it entirely to see exactly how these damage rolls play out). Also, the concept that there are no sources of unavoidable damage in 5e is false. Half damage on successful save spells/effects will always do damage to a target unless it has evasion, magic missile always deals damage unless the target is a caster with the shield spell prepped and cast, hitting an enemy with ensnaring strike guarantees 1d6 piercing damage every turn for a minute unless the target burns actions to escape or the ranger's concentration is broken. There is no misstep on the DM's part here.

My party was lvl 2 and we were fighting a group of zombies, I was a monk and nobody in the party had radiant damage. Our luck was shit, not a single zombie died as they kept making their undead constitution saves (our dm was rolling in the open) again and again they would rise until eventually my char fell and I failed my first death save then rolled a 1 on the next one. After that the zombies didn't make a single save and were quickly killed. Our dm jokingly said "your soul appears before orcus demon lord of the undead, it seems he was satisfied with your sacrifice." I told the dm my character's soul would attack orcus and promptly got him tortured for eternity. Thus began a long line of characters bearing the family name who's quest was to get revenge on orcus and free the souls. (They never did, it all ended when a high lvl caster npc used modify memory to make me remember defeating orcus but in doing so lose my power and be reduced back to my current lvl at the time)

Playing in the Warcraft Universe (some homebrew changes and a custom system). Had this Priest/Fury warrior hybrid from Alterac that had 1 years (out of game) character development and was at the stage where she always tried to redeem the villains and started trying out more cunning ways to deal with problems. So I rescued a previous villain that my party had defeated (Jandis Barov) from a magical prison (Dalaran) because I thought that she was on the right track and would help me infiltrate the Cult of the Damned (Necromancer Cult). Well I did successfully rescue her and she did bring me to her Boss (Baron Rivendare) but he didn't believe my motivations and didn't buy the "betrayel" thing so he ordered his minions to kill me. It was so scary, basically we were in an underground dungeon and a very long way away from the exit. So once they closed all the doors and the flesh constructs started mobbing me I frantically tried fighting them off and running away but they did surround me (just like in the picture but in a much wider place) and kill me. My first character death that was epic and heartbreaking at the same time.

Mine was in an similar scenario. But i had cast an fireball centered on self to let my brilliant light shine a ray of hope xD

I just recently killed a player with a Skeleton. It wasn't even the first session; it was the mini-adventures I ran to get them up to speed, so the character technically died before Session 0. And, it's not the first time I killed a character with a Skeleton; I've only ever killed players with skelebobs. I think Orcus cursed me. It's all good; the character came back as a homebrewed Hollow One and it was quite a shock to the rest of the group, in-game and out of game.

Level 12 Hexblade, with a pact he had to take to protect those he loved. He denounced his patron a few days before the encounter, and then 3 deathknights appeared, 3 hellfire orbs, nuking most of the party's HP. My OC screams to the sorc to TP the others out, and she did, leaving my PC and his spouse on the battlefield. My PC at 10 hp, lied to his spouse to get her to run. Telling her that he never loved her, telling her that shenwas nothing to him. A great deception roll at disadvantage later his love was running, and with her safely out of threat he snarkily tried to teleport out of the deathknight range... Only for his patron to laugh and strip him of power, as the deathknights mutilated him and cut him to pieces. The next day, his best friend held a funeral for him while ny character was fighting the demons of his past in the Fugue Plane, to return to those he loved.

Love it.

worst : character gets eaten by a hydra and the cursed sword he used sends his soul to the stygia plane. which i liked cause it was fitting ending for using clearly evil tools to eventually win a war. Though it left a sour taste in my mouth when the other players were more bussy dispelling the sword than to to say anything about his death or acid covered corpse. i am talking : >Long rest immidiatly to get the spell slot back for dispel magic, destroy the sword and not say or do anything involving the the character. They eventually did bury it only after the other new character involved asked if they should do something with whats left of the body. Best: my 2nd char, a fighter gets overwelmed and died , but it took 3 Hobgoblin warlords to finally cut him down. warlock(celestial) tried to ressurect me, but she was already out of spell slots. and we didnt realize that after 2 rounds of combat in order to not retcon 2 entire rounds of combat , we played it out that the body was slowly dusting away. as the spell was incomplete and no magic was there to hold the body in place as was ment to heal. similair to Sion's passive from league of legends unlike the worst he did have a good goodbye scene and funeral.and it was the first major PC death that the campaign had at that point.

Both of mine happened in the same dungeon-crawly campaign. First, the worst: I was playing a squishy sorceress, hiding at the back of the party, doing my thing, when the big monster we were fighting (can't remember specifically which), teleported behind me and grappled me. It did a great deal of damage while it was grappling me, and knocked me out in one turn - but I was still alive! Then the party healer, in his infinite wisdom, decided heal me back to 1hp on his next turn. The monster, who was about to drop my body to the floor, now finds that it's holding a conscious threat again. So it does another great load of damage as part of its grapple, and this time it kills me outright. This is my worst death because it was such a stupid and avoidable one, that wasn't even really my fault, and I was really enjoying that character. Even the visual is dumb; character is picked up and crushed unconscious, then wakes up immediately, and then the monster just crushes her to death again. Good job, healer. The best was later in the campaign. I switched to an evil swordswoman. The party was mostly neutral, so she actually worked OK in the team, given that it wasn't an overly political or story-rich campaign. We made it all the way down to the final level of the dungeon. We're about to fight the final boss. Its opening move is... to blind the entire party. We really screwed our saving rolls. Then, in our confusion, we became separated. My character realises that she's lucked out and has stumbled on the way back to where we came from, where an elevator is waiting to whisk us back to the safety of the surface. I was completely blind and helpless, we are a party divided, and TPK looks inevitable. So I did what any good evil character would do. I groped and stumbled blindly down the corridor looking for that sweet, sweet elevator. When I find it, I grope around trying to find the way to activate it - I know that lever is around here somewhere! - when I suddenly hear an ominous noise behind me. Something is in the chamber with me. I raise my weapons in a feeble attempt to defend myself, but I'm immediately overwhelmed and killed by... something. Against all the odds the party actually does manage to regroup and defeat the final boss, and the surviving members scramble back to the elevator to escape the collapsing dungeon where they find... a perfect statue of my character, weapons held uncertainly in front of her, face twisted into a horrifying silent scream, recoiling in terror from an unknown assailant. Despite being blind, she very much saw it coming. My friends asked if they should haul her back to town to be resurrected, but I declined. This death was absolutely perfect for that treacherous evil bitch. Alone and blind, on the cusp of salvation, but ultimately unable to escape her fate.

Yeah a Gorgon took out my party one time too.

Playing a princess, convince my siblings to join me in convincing our father to give up the throne with some evidence he's been working with dark powers. Older sister made the arrangements and we all confront him alone in the throne room in the middle of the night. He has a speech about how we're all ungrateful, ignorant children and a fight occurs. Turns out a hero king known for slaying dragons against 6 princesses and princes around level/CR 6-10 is a one sided fight. Absolutely wrecked us all. The DM seemed shocked, apparently she was absolutely sure we would win a 6 on 1. And that's the story of my princess's second death, the last words she heard before being thrown at the throne and falling unconcious, "If you want my throne that go and take it." And then nat 1 death save followed by a 3 the next round.

Thats cool. I'm not sure how the plan was ever meant to convince him though. Wouldn't "these guys are dark powers, you should stop working with them, for X reasons" been more likely to convince him?

By confront I mean verbally, talking to him with no one else around. It was reasoned that if we all approached, all of the heirs speaking with one voice, he wouldn't be able to ignore us all.

I know what it means, that's why I said convince. I'm talking about WHAT you guys chose to say.

I had a situation much like in the picture! We were ascending this tower that seemed to be guarded by a bunch of these small, green, blob-like "Bleeps", who were really friendly, and had a tendency to blow up if they took any damage. But they were really cute, and we didn't want to kill our way up the tower, so I started making friends! Once I was surrounded by about 10 of these guys, we saw the problem, but didn't really have a good idea of how to solve it, so we just pressed on, nervously laughing... We encountered an enemy wizard also ascending the tower. One poke from their familiar/summon, and they all went up. I remember my DM reading the rules for massive damage out loud. "Mac, how much HP do you have?" "38." "Cool. You take 448 points of damage."

Kept asking if there were brothels since session 0, found brothel session 5. So I split the party to go find brothel.....succubus. With constant WIS fails, snu snu killed me. Plus side my CON saves, made her reconsider her profession 😤

I never thought I would die this way. But I always hoped.

Can't we just cuddle?

Antimagic field flying angels against my panzer-wildshaped druid That felt much more of an execution than a death

I once had my character ride into combat with a cloak of invisibility wrapped around his head. The intention was to draw the attention of the enemy combatants and maybe frighten a few of them. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to discuss this with the rest of my party, who were already fighting. And thought I was cursed. (Long story.) So that’s how my ingenuity was rewarded with a one-hit kill by my own party’s best archer.

I had a character who got to become the avatar of Death for 3 minutes. He took down something like 1-2 thousand enemy troops on a battlefield, starting with the general he had sworn vengeance against, and died happy. Well, contented, anyway. No regrets for me or him.

My lvl 5 warlock was one shot by a zombie beholder's disintegration ray before we even got to roll initiative.

what are the monsters? And also why were they all individual and not as a horde? The action economy is the sole reason of this character's death I believe

He died of old age while waiting for their turn

They are sahuagin. I would guess this is from Ghost of Saltmarsh, and infiltration of the stronghold did not go well.

The patented Colville screw!

They’re Sahuagin. Only 11 of them could possibly attack the character at once. Depending on their health, if this dude had a decent AC he could’ve totally walk away from this battle if he disengaged and got the fuck out of dodge, leaving his bud to die. Especially if he’s a raging barbarian, he could’ve survive this encounter at level *three*.

Dragonborn Paladin. We and my party were lvl 6, and we got captured and tried to escape from a prison. It ended in a big fight with a lot of guards, but the Sorcerer dropped to 0 hp, and I do what my character would do. Run till the sorcerer, carried him to safety, heal him, and engage in combat with 7 enemies. While the rest of party run to safety, I got destroyed, while I screamed "Come on, you group of Motherfuckers, It's all you have?"

Best: Epic boss fight that left 4 out of 5 party members dead. I was not the lucky one. Worst: When my shadow monk was beaten to death by 4 Slaads in a brightly lit dungeon room with 5 healing potions in his bag.

Had a player who was always getting killed. So much so that he had to have 2-3 characters rolled up at all times as a "just in case" measure. He pulled out a new character because of a recent death and joined the party as they went to explore a cave that the local cult had been using as a base. The party sneaks in and discovers a room with about 8 cultists playing cards at a table. The hand ends and a few of the cultists stand and cheer while the other cultists loudly grumble over their loss. This guy comes out of hiding and joins the cheering cultists (I still have no idea what he was trying to do). The cultists stop cheering, pull daggers and effectively turn this guy into swiss cheese. He gets downed after the 4th stab and immediately got 3 death saves from the 4 remaining stabs. Brand new character, dead in less than one round of his first combat.

>(I still have no idea what he was trying to do) As a GM, I would have felt honour bound to say, "So... what's your intention here?" because it sounds like they were NOT on the same page.

I did. His intention was to "try to blend in and get information on them". I mentioned that he didn't have their uniform on. He said, "they're cultists. They're crazy. They probably won't notice." His next character lasted slightly longer.

My only death was in a one shot. Playing a warforged bard, and my DM let me have a horn of blasting. Very first time I used it, I rolled a 1 and blew myself up. Enough damage to kill me outright, no death saves.

Not me, but my gf who I was dming for. I was rolling in the open and rolled a natural 20 on her level 2 wizard. It was her 2nd time playing. I felt so bad.

The closest my character came to death was the knocked unconscious but in-story it would have been one of those “He’s not breathing!” followed by the deep breath and sitting up and having seen the light and told to go back because it wasn’t time yet. My Tiefling Druid who started warlocking is one of those “say yes to anything” types (hence becoming a warlock) and can be naive at times, which has led to undo risk at times. This time, though, we had just cleared out a tomb of some vampire spawn and their vermin infestation and came across an ornate sarcophagus of enormous size with ancient writing all over it. Probably a plot hook for a future event. The writing is very old and only one of the party speaks one of the languages enough to decipher it’s a warning and alluding to what is entombed. So my character had the understanding languages spell, which requires touch, so he walks up and lays hands on the sarcophagus. He is immediately hit by some massive protective ward, flung across the room into a wall, and reduced to 0 hit points, requiring healing to survive. Out of all the impulsive stuff he’s done, including becoming a warlock and doing petty dirt for his fae patron against her relatives, it was doing something logical and of use that nearly killed him. Bonus near-death was the same character in the final dungeon of the mini-campaign. We knew there would be the possibility of death due to this. We had freed the dragon guardian and turned him to our side, and had pushed back against the Shadow Thieves group we had raced to the dungeon, so they decided to just suicide bomb the place and try to take us all out and run. That failed, the bomb got intercepted and footballers back in their direction to the exit and blew up. The explosion was massive and would have been an instakill except the blast literally came to an end at the square next to my character. No DM fudging or tweaking for drama. My character just managed to be on the outskirts of the final instakill kaboom.

Worst: l2 wizard, got introduced stuck to a wall, barbarian cut my hand of trying to free me, and after 10mins of dungeon crawl, dragon saw me, and used fire breath, it got double my hp two times over :D. Best: Kobold fighter, a knight trying to save an elf village from an orc attack, we found the boss with 7 other orcs around him, I had the idea to call for the village guard beforehand, so we had a hunter and 3 guards, my character and a rogue, with reinforcements on their way. The rogue who had only half his total hp called the 9ft tall boss orc to a duel, fell in the second turn, I took command of the guards and charged. I had the sentinel feet and some good rolls, the boss ended with >20hp and we killed the other orcs. We had one last turn before the reinforcements arrived, our guards were killed, only I and the hunter were alive (stealthy bugger 30ft away), only the boss up, but he crit, and I fell. The boss tried to flee when the other 8 guards, the 3rd player (Paladin), and the 7ft tall captain with the glowy sword appeared, but was shot down. 4 of the guards where medics, with advantage bc they were helping each other, I failed the 3 checks, and all guards rolled bellow 7 in the medic skill... F And that's why I never help any elven village in any game I play.

Fireball gone wrong.

Who else remembers the older editions when Fireball filled up a volume, not a radius?

What are you using for combat?

I cast fireball

Ghosts of saltmarsh, i played a dwarf cleric who was just gregori rasputin, and his religion was Russian orthodox completely unchanged. During the excursion to the lizardman swamp and the battle with Thousand-Teeth, I taught the lizards how to make black powder bombs using my associate’s degree in mixology. Volunteering to be the bait to get the big lizard to swallow our barrel bombs, I was in fact swallowed myself. The experience of being eaten alive, the force of the explosion, and the trauma of being blasted hundreds of feet in the air did me in, but for a good cause.

Just happened yesterday. Me and my viking buddy went into the arena and had this epic battle. Well I came out with 13 health but he wasn't so lucky and died while fighting. So the player behind him was super angry with me that I didn't save him but my plan was to revive him after the fight. And I did. I told the other party members that he was just sleeping (I'm a great liar) and I would heal him in my room. So I get my creepy necromancer book out and get to work. Rolled a nat 20. Fuck yeah. I now have an undead Viking slave who doesn't know he died and has to do my bidding. I can't wait for the other party members to die hehe. Ps: The DM said he was scared I would use the ending he planned in a bad way and become the big bad myself. I so hope I can do that lol.

Not mine, been a forever DM for over a decade and most of the times I've been a player the game was either munchkin'd to hell or didn't last long enough for my character to die. Worst: Accidentally killed a PC during a prologue to the main game. Not D&D, a game called Rifts. Character is basically Kratos from the older God of War games with a less angry personality. On Olympus sparring with a fellow minor god (who had nerfed stats). The sparring match is close and intense, the NPC is on just a few health, I think "I should have him do a power attack as a last-ditch effort, then surrender because he'll probably miss". Critical hit, does like 600 damage (actually 60,000, but Rifts has a weird damage system) and brings the PC from about 70% health to 0 in one hit. I roll in the open, so there was no fudging. So the PC is on his knees, sword sticking through his chest, and the NPC falls to one knee out of exhaustion. I think fast and say something like "Your grievous wound glows with a gold-white light and the blade falls from your chest. You are restored to life by the magics of the arena, which are in place to prevent this very occurrence". Nobody was supposed to die, it was supposed to be a sparring match. But, nonlethal damage isn't a thing in a system that has commonly-available and comparatively weak pistols capable of leveling 10-story buildings with one shot.

Very intelligent lizard wizard. But not much of the ways of life. He was a disgrace to all other lizardfolk since he was the opposite of them. He was in a dungeon and heard”one must die, one must die…” so when they took a long rest he wanted to sacrifice someone. And being not very smart in the way of life he added himself to the randomness. Ended up sacrificing himself to the alter. Lived a good life

I was dming a homebrew setting for my players one time, and they went to the bottom of a ruin to retrieve a crate of volatile experimental ammunition. But when they found the crate full of ammunition, they decided to crack it open with their weapons. And I warned them several times not to do that, with the classic “Are you sure?” And they did it anyway. Understandably, the crate detonated and it should have killed them, but I decided not to because it was their first time really playing dnd. Later those same players decided to walk directly into a dragons den without preparation at all, banking on a single one-shot legendary spell to save them. And they failed their stealth rolls, so they became ash.

Had a Tiefling Fighter/Rogue (3.5 e) in an evil party running through Castle Amber. Two of our party members had lycanthropy... and my character had become all but obsessed with becoming a lycanthrope as well. Ot should be noted the other 2 players were a couple in the real, and had built there characters based almost entity in material from the EEF sourcebook. So he bartered & negotiated with the Werewolves to have them turn him. After 2 gaming sessions we came to an agreement, and the deal was struck. They, in fact, did not turn me into a werewolf; they just raped and murdered me, and then divided up my gear. Told the party "it didn't take, apparently he wasn't strong enough." Had to make a new character. TLDR; raped to death by a couple party members.

Lovely party you’ve got there /s

Ah yes, the beauty of an all evil party

Had another one in 3.5e; lvl 6 insectile ogre who was almost an unstoppable force of brute strength and blind/dumb rage, was and terribly rude and uncouth. Rolled a natural 2 vs a slay living spell cast my our extremely couth and timid cleric, whom my character had shoved out of the way to get into a room. Only a 1 or a 2 on the roll would cause me to fail the save.

Have not died lol, cuz I am lucky and we rarely get round to a session

Worst character death: grave cleric in Barovia. Awful traumatic place but firmly believing the New Lord Death sent her to learn it, understand it and help the trapped souls there. She died in the wilderness, trying to make her peace with the end rapidly approaching as her comrades fell around her while she tried to rally and organize them. It felt awful and pointless and the paladin of Sune died with her, party lost their doomguide and heartwarder and with it the moral center of the party that now has gotten into some really…pragmatic decisions. But it ended up being a powerful part of the story and, if luck holds, finally, she may be reincarnated in the next couple sessions after a year of real time. Best character death: Actually in a vampire: the masquerade game. My character played a ghoul bodyguard/servant of the young vampire party. Very perceptive, very good with his arming sword, old and gruff but longsuffering. A meeting in a skyscraper went bad and the very much not combat oriented party had to escape. My character had a power where he could make himself light as a feather, thought about diving out a window to safety. But he stood his ground in front of his charges as the elevator took forever to call, holding back a feral vampire host that had lost himself in a frenzy to another player’s disrespect. My character held his own and forced the enraged vampire back, dodging parrying and slashing. The door finally opened and the party escaped just as an enemy minion took an *incredibly* lucky shot as it became evident it’s master was losing the fight, killing my character. The last thing the group saw as the elevator doors closed was a grimly satisfied smile as my character collapsed in a pool of blood. His sword was recovered and hangs in a black sash above the fireplace now, and it was later used to help kill a powerful enemy.

This post did a lot better than I was expecting. Context for this character death involved a DM, who later complained about our group in a DM group I was in, when he gave the Saltmarsh Sahuagin final fight plot hook to a level 3 party. Ignoring the specific level requirements suggested and the basic premise of how modules worked, the player in me was screaming and my character was like “yeah sure”. I don’t know why he was surprised by the near tpk, but essentially my pc bought time for my worthless team of people, with useless multiclassing at level 3 instead of having real spells like spike growth, to escape. Polearm master, attacks of opportunity, and the DM probably not rolling with advantage (Sahuagin) despite the insurmountable odds for this fight meant my level 3 Zealot Barbarian took like 4 rounds to die. All in all a 10/10 death in my view.

We planted a bean, we rolled 96, we opened the door, we began a new campaign next session.

Not mine, but one of my player's. Character was a tiefling wizard, which is all well and good, except that he was evil... Wasn't a problem for the most-part, but the players knew he was clearly evil. He had tried to flee when the party was attacked (and failed miserably), ran over a party member with a cart, killed valuable NPCs, yada-yada, and all that jazz. The problem was that these events weren't enough on their own that they couldn't be explained away in-character as honest mistakes or some other thing, which kinda ground on the party. On the other hand though, it did mean that we had some character depth and internal conflict, which often turned out entertaining for all involved. Now, I am a DM who believes in flooding my player's with magic items and balancing it with harder encounters. That's how the wizard ended up with a Wand of Wonders. He had been using it for a little bit and was wearing down the daily charges. They had been fighting drow in the Underdark and eventually worked their way to the drow city where they faced the shadow dragon that had taken control. During the fight, the wizard position himself that if anything went FUBAR he was gonna turn tail and run, because of this, be was by himself near the city entrance. His turn comes up and he fires the Wand of Wonders... It's chaos magic ends up casting Enlarge on the dragon... As as if to rub salt in the wound, the wand ran out of charges, for which you roll a d20, which Nat 1ed, meaning the wand crumbled to dust in his hand. He turned to flee but the dragon had the next turn. It flew over to him and breathed its shadow flame on him. It did enough damage to knock him unconscious, to which he exclaimed, "Well, I'm dead!". We were all kinda laughing at this point and I responded with, "No, no, you ar-... Oh...". I kept reading the shadow flame ability... If a creature is reduced to 0 HP as a result of this attack, the creature is killed outright and a shadow spawns in their place. Woops! Moreover, the party now had to slay the shadow of their former party member in addition to the dragon, which turned out to be some small amount of catharsis for the people who the wizard had caught the ire of. The party eventually managed to kill the, now powered-up, dragon and went on to save the world, as you do. But they always remembered their fallen... Associate. TL;DR: An evil wizard party member used the last charge of a Wand of Wonders to accidentally Enlarge a shadow dragon, which then turned around and shadow flamed him to death.

My first character I ever made. His name was Cranknock, a gnome roge. Was not edgy, just small enough to the point where people just ignore him. He died when distracting a dragon to save his fellow party members. Would have survived if my Nat 20 did not fall on the floor. Died from poison fire. My fellow members made a crappy grave and carried on.

My bard was eaten alive by ghouls in curse of strahd, not sure if it's that terrible but it's so far my only character death

Had a lvl 3 sorcerer that died because the party left him after he was downed after a single hit. TBF the party was being chased but still a healing word would have helped. I bring in a twilight cleric who lasts two sessions. He died to a zombie T-Rex's single bite attack that crit.

hum hum .... ***MY LIFE FOR AIUR***

My player died to getting dropkicked by an armless boss after they slipped past the big bulky golem and took off both of the mage's arms.

Worst as in didn’t happen. We were playing a “flashback” mini campaign, which has just an npc princess telling our party how she got kidnapped (The dm wanted to give the party a chance to try new characters, since we’d been playing for over a year by now). So anyways, pretty explicit that we were either going to die, or going to fail at the rescue somehow, with good/bad endings for our characters depending on what happened next. We had a part member trying out a wizard, and he just kept trying every spell to basically undo the story. Like trying to teleport us all away from the danger while her castle was being invaded. Well like I said, this was a railroaded mini arc, with a definite ending. So I don’t know why he bothered. Anyways, I was playing the captain of the guard so I was constantly throwing myself into the danger zone to help her escape, knowing I would die, but during the last encounter the wizard used a Dimension gate to teleport him and the princess out of danger and leave us to the fight alone…. Well, that didn’t work obviously. So instead of a heroic death, the evil party just took us prisoner and chased down the last player and the princess, and he was the one who got murdered.

Currebtly my only character death, but we where Fighting a huge flesh golem that was controlled by one if the other players due to shenanigans after they died, i was using my boots of flying to attempt to stay out of the fight as a squishy sorcerer who needed a long rest They then jumped up 30 feet, grabbed me out of the air and put me on saving throws, from which i then died

Got disintegrated by the body of a regenerating lich we killed (or some kind of magicy undead thing, still not sure) after following the clerics lead and casting dispel magic at a projection of it that was threatening the cleric for looting it (we needed a ring off of it for someone we found in the dungeon). Spell failed (and we were dumb and cast it on the projection instead of his body anyways) and after a failed counterspell from our warlock, my poor lil fairy druid got turned to ash. I only had one or two hp less than I needed to survive it because I wasn't fully healed. My character had been very adamant shortly before this about not helping anyone else in the dungeon because we were struggling to survive and she didn't want her or her friends to die 😭 It was very sad and I cried. Cleric ended up making a deal with the undead to bring her back in exchange for his crown we'd taken earlier that seemed to be the main source of his power which is probably bad news for us in the future.

worst: when the dm attacked me whit a 100 monsters at once bcs they are a hivemind

I had a high elf with white skin who was a sun soul monk dedicated to ill-mater so when I had my soul destroyed my hands were chopped and a rope soaked with my blood was taken and my hand and rope became a holy symbol for the nation

So we ran into that Gold Dragon...

Low level 5e. Party was clearing a "haunted" house. So far, just run of the mill scooby doo antics ie its just bandits scaring locals. I open a door in the basement, inside is at least 4 animated skeletons, 1 with a fancy hat. I shut the door and tell everyone else we need to barricade them in as we are too worn down to fight them now. We opened the door after like a turn instead of a rest. It did not go well.

OP, what is the context?

Best death I've had as a pc was my conjuration wizard. Long story made very short, our party reached level 20 and began the quest for ascension by striking a deal to Kill Umberlee in her own domain on the elemental plane of water, this eliminating her forever. We killed her, but her minions outnumbered us on a comical level and got their revenge killing us in turn. The worst was my draconic sorceress, last hitting an adult white dragon at level 8 for something like 40even fire damage, only to be crushed when the corpse just so happened to land on me.

DMing for a group of work friends, and one of them made an Aarakocra archery fighter. The group had snuck up to the walls of a bandit camp, and make a plan that he would fly up and provide covering fire after they began the assault. Which he does… immediately… before any of the guards were distracted by the fighting… and he decided that his character would let out a mighty ca-caw… letting everyone in the base know where he was. I gave him a surprise round, but instead of moving away from the camp, he decides to fly closer to the center. Ended up being a pincushion for all the archers and dying.

I hit a flower and then died because of it. Stupid musk creeper.

Best: Grappled a boss to take him out in a holy hand grenade suicide attack. Worst: Used a lightning attack... while in knee deep water.

Not my character, but I was the DM: Playing CoS, the party is going through Argynvostholt with relative ease. Suddenly the Artificer decided to walk into a room without checking anything and triggered a Wall of Stone glyph and trapped himself in a room with 3 phantom knights and was stabbed to death over the course of the next 30 minutes IRL (for some reason everyone decided they wanted to play out the whole thing)

Reminds me of The Lone Berzerker of Stamford Bridge

I was the DM. My level 1 party was going through the First Dungeon for Babies™️. They were fighting a single Duergar, who spent his first turn enlarging. Next turn rolls around, Duergar attacks the cleric, nat 20, near max damage, while enlarged. Did 19 damage to a character with 9 max HP. Instant full-health to dead. I described as the Duergar swung his WarHammer and where the cleric was once standing was now a pile of goo and bone shards.

A pc yeeted me in to a clif acidentaly on session zero

This was Pathfinder 1st Ed, my character was LN fighter/bard and the only one in the party that cared about law and order. Not in a Judge Dredd kind of way but just in a " it is important for a functional society" way. Toward the end the party was actively antagonizing him about it. When we came across the BBEG and he gave the "we are not so different" and "I am returning law and order to this world" speaches, my character looked at the party who was chaotic assholes in his eyes and went "screw it" and turned on the party. My character died but took out half the party with him since the fight was intended to be a hard fight against the whole party.

Worst death is where my DM sent 4 oni to kill my sea elf cleric, froze the cleric through PLOT, then rolled dmg on one of the cones of cold. I had survived, so he just decided all the oni got to do max damage on my character and killed me out right, then smashed the remains in to pulp. leaving the rest of the party alone. ​ Best death was later on in when I stubbornly kept playing at that table, and my sea elf barbarian paladin (previous character's brother) 1v1'd his BBEG by using the rogue (his best friends) magical items to get me that 1 on 1 fight. I won the fight by having another player lock us in a force cage, and another surround it with wall of force. After the fight all the 100 of the totally there to begin with super ninja rogues with +3 longbows cut me down. Did i cut short the campaign? yep. Did I ever play at a game he DM'd again? nope. It was satisfying all the same. This is also when and why I became forever DM

The closest I’ve come is being hit with a 9th level disintegrate. 120 health gone in an instant… He survived and went on to die of old age, still though.

Two years of CoS and Yawning Portal sequentially from level 1 to 8 and none of my characters have died somehow. However, in each game there's a person who's gone through about 4. Best death was our Orc Grandma Paladin who died in a heroic fight against a young black dragon. She managed to climb on it's back, grapple it with a lasso, and wail on it while succeeding 6 rounds of contested checks while the dragon flew around the cave and dove underwater. Her luck finally ran out and the dragon gave her a one shot smack. She fell from its back 40 feet in the air into the deep muddy lagoon. She was immediately out of range of the healer and out of line of sight as well. She rolled a 20 on her first death save but immediately took damage from drowning and went unconscious again. She didn't wake up a second time. Edit: Forgot, her next character died due to a one shot too. Got hit by a very high rolling Cone of Cold, Instantly died and became a popsicle. Then the boss punched her to shatter her, lmao.

Looks a whole lot like ghosts of saltmarsh chapter 5, floor 2, room 24 to me. 33 creatures: 25 at 1/2CR, 5 at 1CR, 3 at 3CR. That's a 22k XP room. Only comes down from Deadly to Hard for four PCs when they are at level 14. Also the entire place is deep under water. It's a fuck around and find out room for sure.

Either they didn't get the memo that this is a stealth mission or someone fucked up

Best - My paladin/barbarian in the final session facing down a Ghoulified Red dragon being ridden by the BBEG (a friend of my character's; we differed on politics but respected each others commitment to our religions). My character was standing alone outside of the cathedral the rest of the party was sanctifying. He prayed for divine aid, raged, and charged. The DM told me that my character was hearing a celestial choir while going to town with his axe on the dragon. Every time I got hit by a claw, I was asked for a fortitude save against paralysis. Every time I was told I succeeded, even on a nat 1. I eventually brought down the dragon (it was only large sized) and began to scale it to get to the BBEG, murder in my eyes, ready to end it. The BBEG cast Dismissal. This was 3.5, and I was confused. I told the DM I wasn't an outsider; it should have no effect. The DM told me that what he dismissed was the celestial providing me backup. I then got to roll a 1d4 for every save I had failed and been allowed to ignore. I was fighting while paralyzed and tearing my own body apart. I took 24 con damage on the spot and instantly died. But the dragon was dead and it forced the BBEG to face the party on foot, where he could be defeated. Worst- I was playing Age of Worms in 3.5. The party was invading some sewers after doppelgangers, and my character died to one of their early defenses. We were level 5 or 6, so a rez was out of the question. I began to roll up a new character, a drunken master (pre-prestige class) monk. I finished statting him out right as the party engaged the doppelgangers, who the DM had decided not only needed to outnumber the party, but who all had to have 5 levels of rogue in addition to doppelganger HD. I asked the DM if my new character could help, and he said I'd start off in chains next to the battle. I made an escape artist check, failed, got stabbed by a doppelganger, made the escape artist check, got flank stabbed by another doppelganger, made one attack roll, and got stabbed to death by the doppelgangers on me. They then proceeded to wipe out the rest of the party. Shortest character life, less than an hour from character conception to character death.

Human Hombrew Deathknight(basically anti-Paladin) A former nobleman who, after the woman he’d loved had been killed, gave into a fit of madness and charged on horseback to kill the beast who’d done it despite being injured and doing so alone. May Darthus find his beloved in the afterlife, and his squire learn from his fatal mistakes and failings as a warrior.

Could I, perhaps, get away with citing all the *near* deaths of my PCs? Considering between the three there've been probably 15 'near death' experiences . . . and one did actually die there for a bit (They got better.) (Also, the one that actually *did* die? That was the only time for them. The others . . . One's been halted at 5 (Or maybe it was 6 'near'-deaths) and the other's, well, the remainder of that.) Edit: The highest level PC is 6, and he's the one that's nearly died the most . . . (Not just because of his level, though. I've had him do some stupid shit.)

My worst one was a nat one stealth check in a drow prison, got fed to spiders, about 10 mins into the campaign

We were fighting Karg if you know you know. My whole party scrambled up this steep gravel uphill except me. They started combat. I spent 2 turns scrambling my short dwarf butt up it. When I got to the top I decreed. "Go on I'll give you the first hit" as I used every thing to get up and I was the pseudo tank as a forge cleric. He walked up. Crit killed me from full health to Insta dead. Everyone laughed. They threw his body in the fire.

Three words: Sentient. Traffic. Signs.

I was running from a fight with a few bone devils, because I was very injured, and a squishy wizard, when I ran into a teleportation circle that immediately teleported me to another room, which was occupied by a pair of nothics and a demilich. One of our party members was a necromancer, and as soon as he saw my corpse, he decided to reanimate me. I had no more flesh left on my bones, so none of them knew it was me. I stayed with them for the rest of the campaign as a skeleton.

Not me but a player in my campaign. This story is easily one of our favorites to this day. I'll be telling the whole thing, so you can scroll to the last paragraph to get the player death.The party was just 3 players:Tabaxi Wizard who was the definition of glass cannon, and really quiet. (Kotaba)Tiefling Druid who was the designated "mom" of the party. (Fyllo)Halfling Barbarian who had a love for warhammers. (Devin) There was a group of NPC's who sought held these giant cat and mouse games where they would kidnap a bunch of Tieflings, trap them in a massive arena, and kill them all but one, taking the bodies of the others as trophies. The survivor was then set free. Naturally, Fyllo got captured, and the other 2 went to save them. The arena was protected by a bubble shield designed to not let Tieflings in or out, and it was in the middle of a valley in a remote mountain range so it was easy to protect. In the center of it, all the Tieflings were released with a 5 minute head start. The hunters then started to cut down all the Tieflings. By this point, Fyllo had made friends with a purple Tiefling who was a travelling merchant named Dave, who had no combat experience. Dave told her about a group of Tieflings that exchanged information with him right after capture, and that they were hiding in a cave system. Right as he finished telling Fyllo, an arrow killed him. They were a group of exclusively Tieflings who had tracked down the hunters and purposefully got captured to learn the location of the arena and alert the authorities in the nearby towns. There was a Ranger who led the team (name never stated), a blind sorcerer (Arros), and an old druid (Lily) who had renounced violence. They hid in a cave and explained that they had seen the bubble shield, and that it was held by towers holding in energy somehow around the valley. By this time, Lily (in the form of a hawk) had left and returned, explaining that two people were causing chaos in the center of the valley, clearly neither hunter nor Tiefling. They were drawing in attention from the hunters. Fyllo figured out it was Devin and Kotaba (neither of which were known for their smarts), and they were very non-stealthily trying to break her out. (by the way, at this point, the whole party is level 3, but both Devin and Kotaba had killed 30+ hunters, so as a DM, I was panicking a bit. By this point, a NPC had joined Devin and Kotaba; a teenage bard girl named Karni who played a tuba that also turned into a death laser, because that's cool as balls.) When the two groups met they had an epic Rorkes Drift moment, before needing to retreat back into the caves. After a bit, they all found an old fort built into a cliffside, with the entrance hidden by a waterfall. They used the fort to take a short rest, prepping for an assault on the closest tower. Kotaba, the Ranger, and Lily kept watch. After a bit, some hunters were spotted viewing the area. Kotaba took out one, but the others got away. After a bit, about 20 or so wheeled over siege equipment and started taking potshots at the fort. A ballista then took out the supports, resulting in the fort beginning to collapse with everyone in it. After some INTENSE scaling of the cliff and falling fort, the party escaped via a hatch in the top of the cliff. UNFORTUNATELY, the hatch was right next to another group of hunters who were preparing to jump into the fort, resulting in the party (most of them 1/3 HP, and Kotaba unconcious), booking it to the nearest tower. When it was clear the sheer amount of baddies would overtake them, Arros made a final stand, and died, 15 arrows and 3 fireballs later. Devin tried to go back for him, killing 3 hunters in the process, but had to retreat, watching him die. When they got to the tower, they realized that the shield is powered by an orb of energy that was protected from all sides. Devin then told the others to leave, and run for the shield. He was gonna destroy the orb with his hammer, making a gap in the border. As soon as they left the tower, started beating the orb with his warhammer. The others ran towards the shields edge, and then...*Devin got company.* About 5 guards entered the tower and started attacking Devin. He threw 3 handaxes, each killing on hit, and killed another with a few swings of his hammer. By now, he had 6 HP left, so he couldn't afford taking the last one in combat, so he threw him down the stairs to buy time. He kept hitting the orb. The hunter returned. He threw him again, and broke the orb. It exploded with a bright blue light, killing Devin instantly, and turning everything within 100 feet into dust. (edit: yes the rest of them escaped. they also held a funeral for Devin, Arros, and Dave)

What software is this?

I made a joke that I would commit suicide with my monkey goblin (chaotic alignment) DM didn't believe me and goaded me on all week before our session. He forgot by the time the session started. I bought 2 vials of jellyfish venom or whatever basically just a paralysis poison. We were raiding a small cave of bandits probably 6 or 7 (being lvl 4 pcs, it was an easy encounter) I ran up to 2 melee using bandits and drank a vial. Rolled a 2 on my save and paralyzed myself in front of the enemies. Chanted "coupe de grace" until DM had them mark me. It was great fun. We refer that character as chaotic chaotic alignment.

Best was a mini TPK. Half of our group couldn’t make it but they told us to continue without them. It was me the bear totem barbarian with a sentient sunsword, the bard, and a warlock. We fight out way into a large room full of oozes and some dude named the pudding king. We take out a bunch of oozes, bard goes down and me and the warlock are bloodied. More oozes slain, warlock goes down. It’s now just me and the last ooze. I give everything I have, crit in my last hit aaand… the ooze just barely lives and takes me out too (em revealed it had 2 health left). Not wanting to lose my character, my DM had the sentient sunsword use it’s connection to the god lethander choose me as a champion and I came back now as a zealot barbarian. Was a cool way to come back as well as narratively become a zealot. We all agreed it doesn’t make just any sense to choose zealot, a god chooses you. My character then fought his way through hell to grab the souls of his friends and it became a huge thing. The party deaths led to my favorite campaign moments of all time.

Maybe not my worst PF1 death but it's memorable because it happened in the first 15min of a session: My monk tried to grapple the boss but fails. The party tanks fails to get the aggro. Boss hit me one time, I take a lot of damage (nice 2H power attack brah). Second attack misses and I use my immediate action to grapple so I can both pin them to the ground and cuff them during my next turn. Unfortunately the boss' dog acts next, crits and drops me to exactly -1 hp. The party support heals me a bit, I try to get up during my turn and get sliced in two (I end up at exactly -con). My character was a reckless guy who dreamed of wrestling with a dragon but got killed by a mere humanoid and her dogs. We weren't high level enough to have a resurrection spell at hand. I could have got a reincarnation but it felt like an actual death and I had another character ready for later.

Best? My War Cleric fighting off awakened trees summoned by evil druids long enough for the last remaining party member standing to save the rest. Ultimately he fell and it looked like they'd get past, if not for a nat 20 revive right after. My boy got right back up, took his angelic form and raised divine hell on those trees. But, at only 1 hp he fell and the warlock couldn't reach him in time. If my cleric didn't hold the line, it would've been a tpk. Worst was my warforged monk failing every acrobatics check from a giant squid destroying the ship the party was on. Then to flex, he failed every death save. My bot boy didnt even stand a chance.

I know those tiles that's ghosts of saltmarsh in the fortress

Worst character death is the only one I’ve experienced so far, Our party is fighting a giant orc gatekeeper who is really dumb so we are tricking him into juggling fireballs and whatnot then our barbarian is like “screw it” and runs in a greatswords his knees and wipes his foot clean off The orc then fails a dex save and falls ontop of our warlock killing him instantly

What software is this? Aspiring DM looking for useful tools

When I was poisoned and had to get to town before the poison killed me, and I had to make one final roll for poison damage before getting there. I was in good shape because I had to roll 6d6 and take that much damage but had something like 33 HP left... I rolled five 6’s and a 5. Died on the spot.

In a homebrew system where you roll for attack and defense. A nat 1 in defense meant the enemy hit is a crit. He also used Massive damage rules (a Nat 1 meant sudden death due to pain shock). During an encounter my character died 4 times during during that battle. Everyone of them from intercepting an attack and getting a Nat 1 in Massive Damage check. He had an artifact to auto-ressurect him, it had 2 uses. The group had to use an elixir of resurrection during the battle (and after that). The other one was a dick move from my DM. We were in a sand trap, facing suffocation. My character had a magical cannon and we had seen other people use those kind of cannons to propulse itself to the air. After using magic and artifacts to save my friends, being unable to free myself from the sand, I said that I'm using the cannon to go to the skies (with some body gesture from my part). He said that I had to roll a d% to see "which way of the cannon is facing downward" because "I hadn't precised that". I rolled under 50, so apparently my character put the cannon on the sand to shoot upward and bury himself to death.

I rolled up a human barbarian in LMoP, modelled him straight after Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan the Barbarian. In the first dungeon, I tried to tame one of the wolves and failed. We moved on. Got to the final room and ran into the bugbear, some gobbos and a wolf. So I tried to get the wolf to change sides. It hesitated. It thought about it. It decided to turn against the bugbear. Then the bugbear hit me with a crit for 24 damage and the world went dark. The other PCs valiantly fought on and won barely, only one of us leaving that cave alive. All through the fight, the wolf laid on my prone body, attacking anyone that got near. Thus was the demise of my first ever PC, Grug the human barbarian, who had made a wolf companion for mere moments.

Got downed by the leader of a group of gnolls, I was playing a twilight cleric who's quite self sacrificing so I just went into the mess avoiding hits until suddenly three hits got me and I was down. I failed 3 death saves in a row. If I had managed to survive one more round I would've been healed. (We play with non-resetting death saves, so healing me wasn't wise if I was going down again) While it was sad and completely anti climatic and I was crying lots, my DM played it really nicely and we ended up getting 3 different plot lines to bring me back (one PC wants to do a pact, I have my own ideas, and there seems to be things afoot on the NPC side), so it was actually pretty good, fun and interesting the ideas that sprouted out of my death, as pathetic as it was, she died as she would've wanted to, helping others. Will be hard to choose between my current character and my cleric whenever that whole mess gets sorted out tho.

My half orc bard, who the DM forgot he gave a Wand of Spectral Steed to, used said item to move the entire party around a group of bandits (in the hopes of ambushing them). Our next encounter was like five CL higher than our party because we "skipped stuff", and I was hit with a spell that I would have needed a nat 20 save to survive ... I rolled a 13 or something like that. Cue an hour long argument about us "skipping" anything when the DM has complete control over the game world, we weren't playing a fucking video game. So I rolled up a Summoner and wrecked the action economy for the rest of the campaign.

I think my best was being the only one in the party still conscious, with complete limbs and knows how to pilot the magical airship after the grand BBEG battle. I decided to drive the magical airship with a magic device that is tantamount to a Hydrogen Bomb. My last words to everyone was, "It's ok, just finish the orphanage I was constructing." Gave them a thumbs up and metagamed a little bit by singing "Leaving on a Jetplane" while piloting the thing to space

Worst: Death by getting captured by ettercaps from a random encounter in my sleep and failing 3 death saves in a row. It wasn't like unfair or anything like that, it was just anticlimactic and disappointing.

Jumped off my wyvern and plummeted down to deal damage to the maintain giant king. Took out over half his HP (and my own), then got ready to 1v1 him. (I was playing a very reckless character and in my defense, even the party realized they'd fucked up sending VIKTOR to do recon.) King took a round to grab his weapon, I knocked out another chunk of his HP. One more turn should kill him. He slammed his hammer on top of my head and planted me six feet straight down through rock like a plant. OHKO. Dead by the time my allies arrived to save me. Don't worry-- he was reincarnated into a wyvern-folk and got acid spit. The tales of Viktor also include punching a wraith to death, suplexing a wizard, suplexing a full-sized dragon off a church roof (while enlarged), and introducing the new player's character by noticing him eavesdropping and grabbing his collar *through the wall* to drag him in. My one and only foray into Pathfinder. What a ride.

I was playing with a PC's Monk who had a +2 to CON. Failed 6 CON saves in a row and died of exhaustion in an area that prevented resurrection. Our only death as of level 9 and it was because his dice decided it was just his time to go

Not my death (nor really an actual death) but my friends' party almost got tpk'd by six rats

The worst character death I've had was in Pathfinder. I forget the module, but I was playing a halfling ranger who had a triceratops companion, and the both of us were dragged under water by a damn kraken. Spent the whole session rolling and failing to escape before drowning. All while the rest of the party were nowhere near me to help. Second worst death, also in Pathfinder (Carrion Crown): human cleric fails a Will save to some insta-kill spell.

Technically not a death, or a pc, but close to one. Had Doru from CoS get nearly killed from being flung off a cart into the wheels of said cart. It was being pulled by 2 Draft Horses and held about 500+ lbs of cargo. One, not a pretty sight seeing a guy being torn in two by a cart and two, took 80 damage (after resistances) and was brought down to 2 hp.

Had an artificer in a 3.5 campaign that was obsessed with constructs. When I missed a couple sessions the DM decided my character was dealing with a case of gout and fell behind. When I later had to leave the campaign because of work, we claimed that the character decided to try replacing their faulty legs with mechanical ones. Unfortunately they failed the will save required by their transition to a half-golem and went insane and had to be put down by some other traveling adventurers.

Probably my personal favourite of all time and also my only character death. On two separate occasions, in two separate CoS campaigns both run by the same DM, l had the alchemist's fire my character was carrying blow up in my character's face(s) while they were being eaten alive by a monster. Technically the first time I didn't die but was just making death saves, the second time I did die instantly but was resurrected, so I'm counting them as equivalent. It's not a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice.

Level 3 party was fighting through a city overrun with skeletons to rescue survivors and ran into a bone golem. After a few turns of combat, the party decides to run away, but my Dhampir Necromancer refuses to flee. She rolls a nat 20 to avoid being restrained by the thing and manages to dodge around it by running in and out of alleyways. Keeps it busy for a few turns while whittling its health down. Gets it down to 11 hit points before it manages to knock her out and holds her hostage in its rib cage. Party prepares to enact a bombing run over the golem by having the Aarokockra Monk drop explosive arrows on it. Just as they arrive, roll nat 1 on death save and she died. They enact the bombing run, finishing it off, then find my body in its remains. The Blood Hunter, who was ironically a vampire hunter, grabs her body and sprints to the nearest town to get her revived, which works and she is revived but as a full human this time. And that was my first ever character death. I was admittedly disappointed that I was changed to human because I never actually got to use my Dhampir abilities that I was really excited to check out, but I got Inflict Wounds, or as I call it, The Bitch Slap of Ultimate Destiny out of it so it wasn't a bad trade off in the long run.

The worst character death I have seen was wen our teifling bard who was nice to everyone and helped my character whit some stuff died trying to stop a fight between a bone devil and some town folks because he understood the bone devil and was trying to help it but it killed him and the town folks attacked him as well

Was running a modern 5e campaign. Party was getting beaten pretty badly by the BBEG to the point where we were about to get TPKed. My wizard came up with a plan to take out the BBEG. Our DM allowed a homebrew rule where an alchemy jug could produce *any* substance so long as it was reasonable for the character to have knowledge about that fluid. My wizard was a scientist, so he told the rest of the party to teleport out of the BBEG's demiplane. Once they got out of dodge, he pulled out his alchemy jug and stated what he wanted it to make... *antimatter*. The resulting explosion leveled the entire demiplane and killed both my character and the BBEG.