Party pooper: 5 ways to wipe out your D&D party
Posted by Yax on August 3, 2007
I can already picture my players as they’re reading this! Relax, I don’t intend to wipe out my party and I don’t suggest that anyone should plan to kill all the PCs in their game. But…
If I’m going to kill a PC I might as well do it right
And if I’m wiping out a party I’ll definitely make sure I make it memorable - maybe even fun! There aren’t many reasons to do this - becoming a nun, leaving to climb Mt. Everest without a guide, or taking a vacation in the Gaza strip could be reason enough to think the game will never be played again. Or maybe your players are incorrigible - even after you’ve thrown dice at them. In these rare cases you might need…
5 ways to wipe out a Dungeons & Dragons party
- Make it heroic
- The players might not mind as much if they feel like they chose to die for some greater cause - saving the world, getting a kitten off a tree, whatever.
- Make it a superhuman feat
- Killing a thousand orcs on the field of battle before being overrun by another thousand of them should leave the players with a feeling of satisfaction. If you don’t think 1000 orcs is impressive enough to make your party feel good just make it 2000.
- Use the why won’t you die technique
- Find a reason for the PCs to be able to absorb an incredible amount of damage before they die - a la Faromir in the LOTR. I think having an NPC - ideally an interesting NPC - scream “Why won’t they die?” will have a positive and lasting effect on party members - even after they get wiped out.
- Make it gory
- Vivid description of the scene is the key here. Nasty wounds on the battlefield. Torture. Being eaten by an undead. You name it. I would hope that if the scene is impressive enough, the players would remember it fondly even though their characters died in it.
- Go apocalyptic
- If everyone else dies with their characters, the players shouldn’t hold it against you.
Have you ever been happy your character died?
Let me know if you have any ideas about this. What kind of death is acceptable for a PC?
You missed out the sixth option, I feel: make it funny. Arguably this might just be a modified version of the heroic or superhuman deaths, but there’s great comedic potential to be had from the sort of scenario where the player’s got everything pinned on that one Jump or Balance check (because you know how it is, they have to show off by leaping across the chasm)… only to screw it up completely.
“With one mighty leap Throbgar soared halfway across the ravine, only to misjudge his jump completely and tumble 500 feet to his death…. you can try raising him, but you’d have to scrape him up first!”
You’re right. Funny works. I don’t know how I could have omitted that one. Bringing a PC to life is also pretty funny if it’s done through reincarnation instead of raise dead.
I’ll never forget that bear-monk.
Ah, the old random reincarnation tables. One of the all-time greats. I shall have to code something like that, shan’t I?
I see multiple options. Generous. Standard. Stingy. Humiliating. Hilariously humiliating.
Do it! Oh, please, I need that random reincarnation generator!
Make it frustrating…
I like HUNTING them. Set on the party and instead of the stand and fight…do what a party would do, sneak up disrupt the spell casters and simply wear them down.
My favourate is to set on them with lots of Kobolds that they can not get at. “Ninja” Kobolds of a similar level o the party
Folk’s tend not to take these chaps seriously, but my group got hunted down after disrupting a Kobold warren. And it was very touch and go…I nearly had them all
Another time it was half a dozen Orc Ranger Werewolves who hunted them and haunted them for the best part of 5 sessions, before they finally bit the dust.
Ninja kobolds? I wish I had thought of that. Not only can it screw the players over but it has tremendous comedic potential.
too bad now next time we see kobold i’ll go with the baddest spell in my arsenal. Yup it’s going to be ”Summon White Ninja” for them!!!
As requested, Yax, here’s a rough-and-ready (emphasis on the rough) random reincarnator. Good for 1E, 2E, 3E and generally buggering about too.
[...] reincarnation generator is very dear to me because it was kind of a request that stemmed from a discussion on how to kill all your PCs - right here on DMing. Only kill them all if you really have to, of [...]
[...] The monster cannot be killed. Give a usually easy opponent an immunity to your party’s main strengths. It’s not nice but your PCs don’t need to know they didn’t stand a chance! Be careful not to kill your whole party. [...]
is there a story behind the ”Summon White Ninja”??
I think that if they are ALL goign to die then it would have to be in the middle of a huge war, and the DM should be nice a bout it.
I just think white ninjas always beat black ninjas in a fight. Good guys beat bad guys.
lol, are they any different??
Dude, I made a really good death, my friend Mike wanted to play a moogle character, and actually did a pretty good job of making a balanced character race. However, he was already a Dwarf in the campaign I was going through, so I picked a cinematic way for his Dwarf to die and for the moogle to be introduced to the party.
The dwarf wondered into a temple, a vampire is sitting on the alter and seems to know the party was coming, he insults the dwarf and Mike’s character (something underbarel I think…) charged the vampire, who sidestepped and ended up back handing the dwarf, I rolled my die but still pretended to get an instant kill roll and the vampire hit Mike through the chapel wall and a couple miles away onto a deserted island where the moogle was sitting, counting gold out of a chest he had found on that island.
The players thought it was funny, yet terrifying at the same time, so they ran, and finally found the moogle… the story goes on from there but the campaign ended shortly after because Mike wanted to DM and made the game too “kick in the door” style, which I didn’t like, I at least want a storyline to my campaign.
My favorite PC death:
I was playing a smashmouth Ogre, the sort of tank and protector of the group. DM was tired of my character always surviving and finding loopholes (he used darts). I was getting bored of him, too. So I stood back and took the missile hits while the theif was picking a lock. That dropped my hit points to One. Then while the party was escaping a burning castle we turned the corner and came face-to-face with a Beholder. I charged, figuring this would be my suicide run. DM ‘rolled’ INI, and we hit at the same time. Beholder turned my to stone while I was charging, so the excelleration hurled my stone body through the Beholder. Very heroic.
i had a 1st level illusionist called “larin”
he was doing ok and lasted a little while! just before my friendly dm was about to give out a much needed dose of xp to take me to 2nd level,larin fell off a castle battlements 50 ft to his death!just as he was falling i asked the dm if i could cast a spell?he looked at me a bit strange and with a shrug said “well yeah go on then”cue the phantasmal force of a huge trampoline….SPLAT! we still laugh at “larin the lacking in levitation” to this day
This was in an Ars Magica campaign, but applies to the question:
I had a Companion who was viking based. I was leaving the military for home, and our GM gave me a heroic death. I charged thru a horde of minions to defeat our nemesis Bad Guy. He killed me, but I was able to land a “final blow” that destroyed him. I still tell that story fondly. BTW, a great tip for all GMs out there, when you have someone leaving your campaign for good.
I’m running a Sons of Grummish game for my party. There are 3 PCs and two NPCs they hired on. Halfling Rogue, Gold Dwarf CLeric, Gold Dwarf fighter,I ran the Half-Orc Ranger and my fighter is running a Sorceress. 3 of them are level 3 and 2 are level 4. I was hoping with enough side treks before they get to the actual Orc Stronghold they would gain a level or two.
Here’s a fun one: The cleric unable to turn an Ogre Zombie and forgetting that his heal spells harm undead.
Needless to say that was that after the Ogre got a few good roles.
Sons of Gruumish, it’s a bitch.
I had one character death that was totally satisfactory. This was in 1st Edition. I was playing a dwarven cleric. A “beholder” attacked us, but it turned out to be a “Gas Spore” - when we attacked it, it burst and EVERYONE in the party failed their saving throws against the spore infection, including my character. I spent the next half hour of game time having my character gather all the party’s stuff together, and then using these, along with my character’s spells, to coordinate a cure for all the characters. However, we were exactly one cure method short to save all the characters, so my character decided to cure everyone else of the spore infection, and then my character went off into a corner to pray and, shortly thereafter, die.
That was a great, totally satisfactory way for that particular character to die. He saved the party, and sacrificed (martyred) himself. He was ready to “go home” and remain in the halls of his ancestors, and I was totally prepared and happy to roll up a new character…
However, the DM decided that such sacrifice should be rewarded, both to me and the character. Suddenly, my character was standing before his deity (Clangeddin Silverbeard), who bestowed him with several gifts and artifacts. Onto my character’s beard was placed two rings, which fit onto and held his beard’s braids. These were equivalent to magic rings (I can’t remember their powers), which were labeled (in Dwarven) “right” and “left,” respectively. :) Furthermore, his already magical battle axe was given the additional power to “return” upon being thrown. He was then returned to life, his dark hair white as snow.
Totally, and completely satisfactory.
Comment by Yax on August 18, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
“just think white ninjas always beat black ninjas in a fight. Good guys beat bad guys.”
Comment by Stûnibu on August 19, 2007 @ 5:26 am
“lol, are they any different??”
Yeah, the ninjas wearing white clothings say “please” before, and “thank you” after, assassinating you. :)
What about the Death by Red Dragon. thats just about its own category.
Death by red dragon is always acceptable.
I had my PC’s wandering through a miniature version of Ravenloft for part of a campaign, and they made it through to the top of the castle by employing incredible ingenuity and, of course, luck. They were a force to be reckoned with, both physically and mentally. They went out onto the castle’s battlements, and a zombified Red Dragon, the “pet” of the castle’s keeper, appeared and began making strafing runs at the PCs, whose only method of defense, since none of them could cast spells, were stationary crossbows mounted between the buttresses. As the PCs began losing, one of them ran away by himself and got trapped in a hall of living statues, where he was inevitably slaughtered without his companions’ help, and the other two, even having heard their friend’s cries of pain as he was hacked to bits, resolved to keep firing tiny pointy things at the huge, armored, undead dragon. In the end, they all became crispy critters, because they wouldn’t trouble themselves to duck back inside beyond the dragon’s reach. I had hidden some Arrows of Dragon Slaying nearby, too.
All those are fine ideas but why not talk them into killing themselves or even better… “GREED”, killing each other?! You can make it funny, heroic, end of the world, and epic all at once and in the end your players will laugh and thank you for the time of thier gaming lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It works TRUST ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Evil Laugh)
That’s a great idea timbvampire! Just the thought of a party that’s been through hell and back slowly turning on each other until they finally murder one another puts a tingle in my spine. Deception, misdirection, guile - might go well with a horror campaign so that the party is totally freaked out. Your players would have to be into it though, otherwise this would get boring fast
The general idea is to screw them over at every turn but make them laugh about it. It works fantastically if you make them use their heads and work together as well as use their own skills to obtain an item or goal. I have had sessions were every player hated anther in the party but was forced through different circumstances to get over it and work together or die. In the end my players were plessantly surprised and psyched to play the next quest.