I’m doubling up because I don’t have much to say about day 12. Also I’m lazy. D&D is the only game I’m playing right now so it’s the oldest.
Memorable character deaths. This is mostly going to sound like sour grapes “you killed my character!” ranting. Which I guess it is. But in a fun way.
Tubal-Kane was the first character I put backstory effort into after a while of throw away guys for short campaigns. He was from a magiocracy land where his family were big magic aristocrat assholes. He wasn’t very magically talented and became an alchemist which was commoner shit. His family disowned him and he lived with the non-magic people out in the country. His deal was his was a chef and a distiller and a brewer and he cared more about his alchemical foods and beverages tasting good than being effective.
I think we were level 11 and the campaign was chugging along when we were traveling and we saw some people and boom dude cast disintegration, save failed, Tubal-Kane is dead with no chance of coming back. Seems like a bit of a rip off. The replacement guy was a rogue/sorcerer that wasn’t well made and died in the next adventure as well. I believe the campaign petered out after that.
There was an island adventure campaign where I was playing a swashbuckler who wasn’t well designed and died fighting an ogre. I wanted my next guy to be better so I took the gross step of consulting the internet, character optimization sites were big back in those days. I ended up with a fighter/rouge with one level in three different prestige classes and all the cheaty-but-legal feats and magic items and bullcrap and man oh man was he ready to rumble. First adventure with new dude, we get into combat immediately, first attack from an oni that looked like the Butcher from Diablo, critical hit, ultra mega times four damage, new guy is dead. Dead dead, not dying and can be healed, immediate death. Never even got to do anything.
I don’t remember this, doesn’t seem like something I would do even as a kid, but the person involved has such a clear memory that I accept it. He says that I had his character put in a box and thrown in the ocean to drown with no chance of getting out or avoiding it.
I had a bard that wanted to be friend with worgs and was lured away from the party and eaten by worgs. That seemed right.
Semi-recently I was accused to “always trying to get my characters killed” which hurt my feelings a little bit because I’m a dumb baby. I can see why people would say that though, because I’m bad at making characters so my guys are easy to kill, and I generally like playing my characters mildly recklessly, and I don’t like the idea of resurrection magic. When someone dies I prefer for them to stay dead. I get it, because I’m so smart and with it, raise dead gives you a way not to screw up your story if you’re telling one, but it reminds me too much of the olden days when as long as it wasn’t a TPK you just paid a couple thousand gold and everyone was back and dying didn’t mean shit.
That accusation was level after my monk was trailing a gnoll and leapt out to ambush him and died horribly because monks kinda suck. I didn’t mind dying but it was bullshit because I sneaked away from the party to do stuff.
Rogue and rogue-like classes are probably my favorite but also I kind of hate them. For me one of the worst things at the table is when one person is going on a solo adventure while everyone else sits there like an idiot. Which is what rogues are good at. You can either be a shitty fighter or sneak around doing rogue stuff and making everyone else wait on you. So when you play a rogue you can either not do the one thing you’re good at or steal all the table-time. It’s a bummer.
Wex was a halfling rouge/sorcerer, notable because I usually play humans, and we needed a magic book to save the world so we stole it of course. The paladin ratted us out to the authorities and we were arrested and I requested trial by combat. I was murdered in one round by the half-dragon judge monster. Everyone else was convicted, paid a small fine and was let go.
Magnus was the only paladin I ever tried to play. We were trying to stop a cult of Set and bunch of other snake-gods forming a union of evil jerks and I lied to a cultist so I could infiltrate their meeting. I was warned by the DM that paladins can’t lie I was on thin paladin ice. At the meeting a fight broke out of course and after being told to clear the area people were still blocking us so Magnus attacked with non-lethal damage. When they still wouldn’t get out of the way so we could arrest the cultists he went lethal. Paladin powers revoked. A paladin with no paladin shit is just a weak fighter so he died in the next adventure. Some kind of snake-lion-scorpion thing bit his head off.
One time a guy was playing a goblin ranger and we all got mummy rot. We were doing the math of who could get healed when, the funnest part of any RPG, and he was the one who was going to risk a 10% chance of mummy rot death. Dead dead dead for that guy.
One time we were playing a game and a dude wanted to play a warforged character. I don’t remember why but for some reason he was a dwarf instead and he kept talking about how he wanted to be a warforged every session. We were in the warforged laboratory and his guy died and the DM was like, there’s this magic thing that can transfer your soul into a warforged body and you can be alive again as a warforged. And he was like “nah”.
I had a Shadowrun street racer who was killed by a classic mafia poison-gas elevator. I asked the GM, can I try to escape somehow? No was the answer. I must have really been a jerk in that campaign. In my defense the first 77 times I played Shadowrun I was asked to join an existing campaign and the other characters were all doing secret shit that I wasn’t allowed to know about.
The last time one of our fringe RPG people ever played it was a Star Wars game. He made a Jedi duelist and didn’t get to do a lot because all he was good at was fighting and it wasn’t that kind of game. So the GM added in this big climatic scene where it was time to lightsaber fight the Sith guy. Sith guy wins initiative, critical hit, Jedi duelist is dead. Dude never played an RPG again (so far).
Your talk about playing recklessly reminded me of the Fool class in Die RPG. The whole point of it is that you get advantages as long as you’re acting reckless. Also you can skill up such that other players mostly end up bearing the consequences of your actions.
I’ll take 50% of the blame for both Wex and Magnus’s death. I’m pretty sure I also died a couple times in that recurrent D&D game. For some reason you guys always resurrected me, even though I wasn’t an optimized flying warlock, who’d turn invisible and eldritch blast from as far away as possible.
For some reason this gave me this idea, we need to start going to cons and selling people life insurance for their characters. You know for fun. Like how you can pay to have your friend arrested and put in Klingon jail.