Character Deaths

Remove all ads!

So back when I played (way back in the days of 1st or 2nd edition DnD, I'm not sure which one now & I sure didn't know then) I played an elf fighter-wizard. I did pretty well with him and eventually he was something like 10/14th level, something like that, back when both of those levels were fairly high (I mean, your h.p. and saves barely went up anymore after 10th level in almost any class in those editions, class abilities were fairly mundane, feats didn't exist, and in the end it mostly came down to what magic items you had and how many spells you had access to in terms of winning encounters). So a new DM shows up on a rainy weekend and all of us decide to play this special, one-shot, totally insane adventure. Sneak into Tiamat's lair and steal some magic staff. Within 3 rounds, my character had been breathed on (while the party's paladin and fighter were whacking away, my character's Disintegrate or something had managed to do serious damage to her so she targeted my PC) and took something insane like 250 points of damage, knocking him down to a -60 or something. Dead, dead, dead. So the DM ruled all of his magical items survived the breath but the PC was dead; the party's cleric resurrected him back. Two rounds later, my PC was breathed on again, and again, completely dead, but all his items survived. The cleric brought him back again (of course, this is back in the days when high-level clerics did nothing but heal other characters during high-level fights). Three rounds later, my PC took something totally insane like 400 points of damage from Tiamat (knocking my PC to something like -100 hp or something absurd like that) and the DM ruled that not only were my PC's items destroyed, but he was completely turned into ash. (Of course, my PC already sustained a permanent -2 CON adjustment, which is what happened when you were raised/resurrected back then). The cleric didn't have any more resurrect/raise dead spells left (had used 1 each on the rogue and the fighter, besides the 2 on me), and a round later, the cleric died too.

I was crushed. Interestingly, the rogue and the paladin survived the battle and killed Tiamat. Of course, the rogue back-stabbed the paladin right afterwards, killed him, and took all of Tiamat's loot as well as the paladin's kit in a bag of holding, and left the paladin's body in Hell (or the Abyss--I can never remember where Tiamat was supposed to live). Man, that was a badass rogue.

I rarely played PCs after that, almost always DMing. There are some GREAT stories there.