comic deaths

[DThomson]

Over the years we have had a lot of roleplaying & as a result a lot of bizarro stuff. There was the DnD thief with wings and a penchant for divebombing enemies with an outstretched longsword, ususally causing more damage to himself (his second trick was to scout ahead, annoy the enemy & get them to chase him into the of unsuspecting arms of the rest of the party - cue much screaming when a level-draining spectre could keep up with him). And I have lost count of the amount of times my Travellers have crashed their ship into a planet.

But comic deaths ...

In TNE the classic was the jailed accountant who had a specially made heavy armored briefcase which he could hide behind. While escaping from his imprisonment his tragically low DEX meant that he fell out of a first floor window (that means second floor to you Yanks), the briefcase overbalanced him, he took the first part of the damage to his head, and then the second part, and then the third. One dead accountant and three (other)players peeing themselves with laughter ...

The clincher for us though has to be the same player though, in an Ars Magica campaign (punctuated by horror, realism and bar-room brawls). Fighting the nasties on the second (third) floor of a tower and losing, his powerful hedge wizard decides that defence is the best option. He casts a rampart of earth spell, hoping to create an impenetrable wall between his party of 6 and their foes. This works for two rounds, and then the whole tower - not built to withstand the weight - collapses, killing enemies and friends alike. The result - the wizard survives, as does one NPC servant. Cue Mr Accountant's player laughing and three non-plussed players with no need to dig graves!

Which all goes to show, if you ain't doing it wrong you ain't doing it right ...

 

[Murph]

Love the Hollywood Overacting Effects table in Cyberpunk 2020. Great stuff. We added to it.

 

[kaladorn]

Dear Lord, let me count the answers:

T2300: My character, who had spent the duration of the campaign avoiding space because I *hate* explosive decompression. How did I die? You guessed it. Why? Because the other PCs decided to have a major incident while attached to a beanstalk's orbital station and they threatened to blow up the powerplant. The authorities cut off our outer hatch then blew the capillary tunnel before we could (well, me....the loyal one gaurding the hatch who hadn't been involved in creating the situation...) get into vacc suits.

Traveller: A player who had been a rather murderous dupe for another player throughout a campaign (Rebellion time frame) was effectively collusory in his own death. The player who was using him realized it was time to sacrifice the pawn (to clean up things and remove a loose end). One of the other players tried to kill the dupe, and so he called his erstwhile friend and said he needed help. The plot-master said "come out to my boat, I'll have Sam meet you there." The dupe hopped on his grav bike and off he went. He was rather bionic (injuries in the service), but when he was met by S.A.M. in mid-air, that didn't help much.

Recently we had a player attacked by a randomly generated traveller creature. It was 65000kg. It was a trapper. It damaged him and knocked him out. Another PC leaped in to the rescue and picked him up and slung him out of the area, but got caught himself. A third PC, in an attempt to help him out, dropped the Scout Courier's front landing skid onto the creature. It didn't do the creature any good, I must admit. Nor, OTOH, did it do the character who was entrapped any good as the piloting roll was a catastrophic failure. OOOPS!

My favorite death from AD&D was a second level wizard of mine... we were attacked in a corridor by a bunch of while apes, mage at the back of the party. As the apes gradually dropped the fighters, then the sort of fighters, the poor mage was eventually left on his own. Knowing he was done for, he pulled out the wand he had found earlier and triggered it. Turned out to be a wand of ice and I'd set off and ice storm. It killed all the apes. Unfortunately, not knowing what it was going to do, I'd targeted it a little too close.... and it killed the 7 hp wizard too. Now I know how you find adventuring party corpses in modules....

Paranoia would be too easy to find a good death from. A surprising number of them begin with the phrase "Let's see what this new device from R&D can really do!" or "Hey, why are you pointing your gun at me?!".

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

So many and so little bandwidth...

Traveller

Me in 'Across the Bright Face', upon finding our party's ATV blocked by rioting miners on Dinomn, "I'll fire the mining laser over their heads, that'll get them to disperse."

Two PCs during 'Twilight's Peak' who ignore the warnings of the leaderless and soon to be suicidal Droyne Warriors and stay to try run a 'First Contact' scenario.

PC captain(!) who avows that his Marava-class trader can 'outrun' the cruiser's spinal mount.

PCs who believe they can swing on a rope made of bedclothes from one level to another inside 'Research Station Gamma'.

PC who believes he can jump between two interurban trains, each moving at 50km in *opposite* directions.

Me, "All he has is a knife? Good!"

Half of a party of PCs who believed you can hike 40km across a salt pan with *no* water whatsoever.

PC who, despite having no demolition skills, decides to blow open a safe and 'shelters' himself behind a desk in the same office as the safe.

PCs in Chamax Horde who decide the only way to prevent the nuclear bombing of the chamax infested penninsular is to sabotage the planet's nuclear weapons program. It may be a backwater world, but guards are guards.


Space:1889

Me, during a boarding between flyers on Mars; "C'mon laddies, one taste of cold steel and they'll all surrender!"

PC on Venus, 'Nonsense, snakes do *not* grow that large."

Me facing rioting towns folks along a distant canal and speaking to interpretor; "Tell these savages I will not put up with their beastly behavior one minute longer."


En Garde

Me; "The best swordsman in Paris? Excellent, win or lose, I'll make a name for myself!"


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[kaladorn]

These stories of LEW's remind me of a worthy almost death:

Party of various dwellers of the Underdark in the custody of slavers (something to do with some shenanigans at a temple and not being willing for all of us to sacrifice an appendage). Knowing that when we're chained to the oars, we're dead men, I decide that I'm going out fighting on the deck. I race up to the Captain, whip my chains around his neck, and (realizing I have a high constitution and he has likely a lower one and is higher level) I decide to take him overboard for a little 'underwater breath-hold experiment'. As it turns out, he daggers me a few times while we're down there (meanwhile my fellow slave PCs are using thumbs in eye sockets, throat biting, and other waaaay overboard techniques to clear out the major slavers).

The funny part is, I expected to die when I went overboard (hoped not to, but didn't expect to live). In the end, the Captain drowned. I did not.

Why?

Earlier in the adventure I'd picked up and put on a mysterious necklace/amulet. It turned out (though I had no idea when I went over) to be a necklace of adaption. I could breathe water.

Handy that. Turned a suicidal move into a Brilliant Strategy (as opposed to my usual, which is the reverse....)

 

[Zutroi]

I ran a physician character in a Harn game, and was superficially wounded in battle with some Gargun (for the uninitiated - Orcs, for all practical purposes). Looting the bodies, I insisted the greasy concoction they carried must be some kind of salve, everyone else thought it was most likely poison. Certain I was right, I smeared the stuff on my cut, promptly keeling over dead.

I STILL say it was ointment!

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Zutroi:
I STILL say it was ointment!

You were just hyperallergic and had an anaphalactic shock reaction. Obviously, someone else should have tried it as a control....