Best Party Death (P&P RPG)

[Arcadian Del Sol]

the traps thread was great, so how about a 'Best Party Death' thread? I'm not talking about when the thief blows an explosive door wide open and kills two other with him, but when the whole party is entirely destroyed and the DM closes his book and says, "well that went well. Who's running the next one?"

I was in a party of level 1-3 characters: paladin, ranger, thief, mage, cleric. We were tracking (in our noob-ness) reports of strange sounds coming from the sewers and found some odd 'mergoblins' - kinda blue, fishy goblins i guess. So anyway, our thief scores a great from-the-shadows stab and kills their shaman, and finds a wand. Mid-battle, he underhand throws it to the mage, who looks at it for three seconds and uses it.

(background: in our group, we dont 'cherish' items with charges. We burn them off right away. Nothing like being a level 5 character in a campaign written for 1-3, hehe).

anyway, it turns out to be a wand that casts level 4 fireballs (level not as in a level 4 mage, but as in, four hit dice). The explosion broke the sewers, and every campaign since then, that area of the city has had a very rank smell (and yes, noises in the sewers). The thief actually made his save-for-half roll, but still took about 5X his hit points in damage.

[Tebonas]

I call this rather the "Best party mass suicide", a party wipeout that happened in ond of our long-standing Shadowrun games.

The characters were a buffed-up indian ex-mercenary with a particulary bad temper (some cyberpsychosis thrown in for good measure), an Irish Coyote Shaman (not the brightest kid and a drunkard, player loved his stereotypes), a highly initiated mage with a bit of a casanova complex, a beautiful yet deadly rock singer/shadowrunner gal (magic adept as well) and an immortal conquistadore who died the first time when he was sacrificed at an altar with an obsidian ritual knife over 700 years ago (thus having a deadly allergy to Obsidian). Pretty high powered characters who basically wiped the floor with every reasonable opposition the DM could throw at us. Therefore he sent us to good old Europe for some Templar hunting, back to Old Europe (Southern France or Spain, it happened somewhere along the border).

Well, those five drove through the land with their jeep, when they were held up by a ragtag band of brigands, led by an ex-soldier of the local army. Through discussing things through, they find out the soldier didn't get his money for some time when the local government dissolved and therefore he got some buddies from his own farming village and now basically owned a toll station in the frigging mountains on a road from nowhere to nowhere. Well, our five super tough shadowrunners (bad ass criminals for years by profession)  are bored and therefore decide to play with the brigands. After all it wasn't about the money, it was about their egos. The brigand leader senses their unwillingness to pay up, so he points out to them the rocket launcher that at this moment is aimed at the jeep from a hidden ex-military base high in the mountainside, and the explosive charges hidden behind rocks on each side of the road, burying the road and killing everyone there if the leader is looked at funny.

Does that force our players to give up their gear,walk to the next town to get replacement gear paid by the vast ammounts of money the have in swiss accounts? Of course not, because those fuckers are tough Shadowrunners, yo!

Standard Procedure, the sissy mage seemingly faints because of the whole stress, while in reality he magically scouts the military base on top of the hill. The brigands don't suspect anything, Casanova tries for the elegant older gentleman vibe when going after girls, so he looks kindy girlish to those rugged mountain farmers.

Trigger happy Indian and Drunk Irish boy ready for the attack while Rock Star babe tries to beguile the brigand leader. Mainly to win time, for this seldom worked with our DM (you would be surprised how many gay adversaries you have when you have a beautiful woman in revealing clothes on your team).

Immor(t)al conquistadore looks around, ready to jump behind the rigged rocks at first sign of trouble. You just don't get to be 700 years old by picking fights you can't win, immortal or not.

Casanova returns, wakes up an mumles something incomprehensive, basically revealing that yes indeed there is a rocket launcher in the base, yes it is aimed at them, yes the man behind the rocket launcher looks like the only thing he can load from behind are sheep, and horses if you provide a ladder.  Indeed, you can all say that in incomprehensible mumbles if your partners are trained professionals, and if the DM doesn't care anymore what the party knows (another clou sadly missed by the players).

So, they spring into action. Indian soldier riddles the brigand leader with bullets. the Shaman obfuscated the area around the jeep so that targeting them with ranged weapons gets difficult, Casanova sends a magical flare up into the bunker to blind everyone, Rock star babe draws her twin pistols and takes cover behind the jeep (this was pre-Lara Croft, thankyouverymuch), Conquistadore thinks he does the sensible thing and covers his own ass.

Boom, Rocket launcher hits the jeep, everybody in there dead (Comment DM: you know obfuscating and blinding doesn't help when the weapon is already preaimed at you), the explosives detonate burying everybody but the Immortal in rubble (Comment DM: What exactly were you thinking do your mind tricks help against fucking boulders the size of your egos?).

Oh yes, there was the immortal. You know the blast from the explosives drove him to the ground behind the rocks, killing him by force. Or by impaling him with sharp shards of Obsidian which his regenerating abilites couldn't handle. Its not like cowardice should be rewarded anyway.

Yes, guess the DM went home with a "Well that went well. They basically killed themself" that day.

[HaemishM]

We were playing Rolemaster with a DM who felt like his entire purpose as DM was to kill the party. He was a very adversarial DM, not so much interested in story as in having combats that killed characters. Rolemaster's charts were great for that.

So we've had one helluva run, a lot of things I forget. I was playing a Wood Elven whirling dervish character (think Warhammer's War Dancers), and he'd already cut one of my arms off the first session (we grew it back magically). So we're out and about much later and run into what is in essence The Lord of the Hunt. Shitloads of wolves or wargs or somesuch beasties (this was in Middle-Earth). He had an aura that caused fear in everyone, and two of our party (about 6 or 7 I think) lost the nut and booked it at the first sign of him. The rest of us unfortunately managed to hold our water and begin the fight.

It was going well until one of our casters, who as a player usually tries to be a much bigger badass then he actually is. He's like the chickenhawk from the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. So he tries a spell that's definitely above him.

Catastrophic failure, resulting in a gigantic magical explosion that kills everyone around him, which happened to be the entire party except for the two who ran. They looked back, saw the explosion, shrugged and kept running for town.

He never DMed for us again.

[Hanzii]

Keeping enough players alive to continue the story was the hardest part of DM'ing Call of Cthulhu. My party had a nasty habit of getting into shootouts with the police - it seemed like their European view on American handgun laws made them believe that nobody would ask questions, if they dragged tommyguns, the occasional anti-tank gun and whatnot everywhere...
But my favourite was when one character was bitten by a werewolf and the party after hint after hint, did absolutely nothing about it.
They did however decide on performing a divination ritual during the full moon to get some important information, when they were stuck.
All were eaten... except one.

[SurfD]

Hehe, I am starting to see a theme here (ever notice that it is nearly ALWAYS the mage who gets everyone killed in a Fantasy Game?)

My most memorable "Near Total Party Wipeout" comes from one of my first games of DnD at school.

We had a party of 6, almost TOTAL stereotype fantasy characters.   Elvish Archer, Dwarven Fighter (played by my brother), Elvish Mage, and Human Thief, Priest and Bard (played by me).

Playing along with a nice dungeon crawl, the two Fighter types are making out like bandits. Dwarf had INSANE hit and Crit rolls: It was kind of like, Dwarf barrels into room, kills nearly everything before any of us have a chance to react, then IMMEDIATELY begins looting bodys and making concieled door checks to find hidden loot.

Anyhow, we had established a marching order: Dwarf, Elf-Archer, Priest, Bard, Elf-Mage, Thief.  The idea being that the Archer could fire over the Dwarfs head, and the Thief would constantly be checking for danger from behind (we didnt expect any, since we methodically cleared EVERYTHING from behind us)

As we are moving along, down a relatively narrow hallway, we come to a "T" Intersection (we are in the vertical part of the T, about 15 feet from the junction).  From either side of the top of the T, step two very angry looking Trolls, which procied to head our way.  The Dwarf roars a battle cry and charges. The mage (very up on his monster lore, but NOT up on his spells, dumbass bastard), knowing that Trolls can regenerate from damn near anything gets a bright idea.  He doesent have Fireball (which would be suicide in such close quarters anyhow) but he DOES have Lightning Bolt.  He tells the people in front to duck, and begins casting.

 The Bard and Priest duck.  The Archer is distracted by the Dwarf's battle cry and the fact that he is firing Arrows at the trolls. The spell goes off. Lightning bolt cracks over Bard and Priest, through Archer (he survives with about 4 hp left) and goes over Dwarf's head.  Priest and Bard stand back up.  Lightning bolt flys down the hallway, cracks through both Trolls, and hits the WALL at the end.  Now, magic Lightning Bolt had an interesting property that if it hit a wall more then 3 feet thick, it REBOUNDED and continued on for the rest of its determined lenght.  Bolt rebounds back down hallway, cracks through Trolls (both die), over Dwarf, through Archer, Priest, Bard, Mage and Thief. Archer dies, Priest dies, Bard dies, Mage survives with 1 Hp (he turned up all 1's on his damage roll), Thief dies (fudged his avoid roll).

The Dwarf turns around. Sees the carnage, and decides to put the mage out of his mizery (he is covered with massive amounts of lightning burns and barely concious).

This same player was later barred from EVER playing a mage again when he nuked half the party to death (including himself) with a Fireball (because he thought it would be a good way to get the Owl Bear to stop bearhugging the life out of the Thief).

[Fargull]

Hmm..

I was the catalyst, but here goes the story.

Party was about 9 months of gaming old.  All the characters are between the levels of 5-7th, general mish-mash of AD&D 2nd classes.  DM has been running various parties through this world for the past eight-nine years.  He was leading us toward a weird plot twist and unfortunately chose to force us down the path.  If any warning had been given, that would have been cool, but he let us blind roleplay it out.  Basically we get surrounded by this huge lizardman army being led by a demoness.  She demanded our weapons and equipment and we would only be thrown into slavery.  At this point, the thief in the party (not me) had the bright idea that an item recovered a session or two ago would be the savior of our situation.  Unfortunately the demoness saw him and with a flick of her wrist shot a bolt of lightning that appeared to kill him and the cleric whose backpack the item resided.  I was playing a ranger and promptly threw my two handy daggers at the demoness and drew my longsword and shortsword.  Everyone was stunned, but hey, she just appeared to kill two members of the party.  The only shining spot before the party was left as a blood stain on the desert floor was the fact one of the daggers actually hit the bitch.  The party understood my actions, I just could not believe the DM led us to that junction without having a (oh shit the party is crazy) backup plan.

[Vespasian]

Our AD&D group was really hardcore with the rules.  Our exp progression was slow and it took us years to get a character to 12th level or so.  I had a fighter I had been playing since I was about 8 years old (my AD&D party was actually formed by my parents and uncle and not my friends in like 1980).  Anyway my fighter was in game friends with another fighter in the party who had a natural intelligence score of 5 and the guy who played him was fabulous at roleplaying that into his character.  Anyway we are in a high level dungeon written by my father and we find a treasury.  The treasury is seperated into different rooms with money, gems and items.  We know that there is going to be some form of trap in there, but nobody has the guts to check it out.  I decide to go for it and go into the room with the gems.  I start picking up bags of them and nothing happens.  The guy with 5 INT yells into me to just grab the most expensive looking item in there and save myself some time.  Listening to him, I grab this exquisite ruby sceptre which was the exact trigger for the trap.  The ceiling falls on my character and he becomes a pancake forever.

[Train Wreck]

Is there a thread somewhere about worst DMs?