OD&D First Character Death


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Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
Fighter (think) choked to death on spores in the dungeon in the old Red Box.
I still live with the wound. To this day I refuse to believe that something called "yellow mold" can nonchalantly masquerade as gold tableware. That was dumb when I was 10, and it's still dumb today. :mad:

The first non-intro dungeon death was a MU poisoned, cocooned, and sucked dry by spiders in a homebrewed dungeon called, fittingly enough, "Spider Castle."
No ongoing spider-related trauma for that one, though. I grew past it.
 

Salthorae

Imperial Mountain Dew Taster
There's been so many... I honestly don't remember my first death. I remember the first ALMOST death.

Playing Temple of Elemental Evil, my dwarf fighter opened a door in the moat house (I think, exact location escapes me) and set off a spear trap. He took them full force but survived... though I'm sure he died in there at some point!
 

Bitbrain

Lost in Dark Sun
The players in my homebrew campaign had their first TPK a month ago. They fought a homebrew CR-13 Fire Drake, and it roasted them with dragonfire.

Being the evil overlord he was, the dragon’s master brought them back to life to serve as gladiators for his entertainment. The PCs’ allies tracked them down and managed to free them, and the players in turn were able to take their revenge by leading a slave revolt, killing both the dragon and its master in the resulting chaos.
 

Lidgar

Gongfarmer
My very first character ever (in Bluebook D&D) died in the first scene to a magical stalactite I forget what they called them falling from the ceiling. One die roll... an death.
Care to share yours?
I think the critter you are searching for is piercer. Those, along with green slime, were the bane of early dungeons.

Alas, I also have had so many deaths, it would be like picking a random corpse out of an overpopulated graveyard. Well, for those that actually left a corpse...
 

Mostly a DM, but my first character death (I think) was my paladin, Sir Toril (name blatantly stolen from Abeir-Toril). Died holding off Githyanki (who were reasonably upset that the group had invaded their citadel in the Astral Plane) so that the rest of the party could escape. A true and proper death for a paladin.

The first PC that died while I was DMing, that I don't remember. But my twin brother does. Apparently his very first character ever was a cleric, who died from either a rolling boulder or pit trap. Somehow, he got over that and we still game together to this day.
 

alienux

Explorer
I don't remember my first character death (would have been sometime in the 80s), but I do have a most memorable character death (which I've shared here before).

A couple of years ago, I was teaching my now 13 year old son some basics of DMing, and he was running Death House for me as a solo character. I was exploring the 3rd floor of the house, and had just defeated a specter in the nursery room. After I left the room, I opened a storage closet, and I was immediately attacked and beaten to death by an animated broom (I missed on all of my attacks, and the broom hit on all of it's attacks). I failed all 3 of my death save attempts, and that was that.
 


Istbor

Dances with Gnolls
Hmmm. Good question.

I have had characters retire or fade out from the party.
A Human Arcane Archer that got banished back to his material plane.
A Drow Samurai who decided to quick the party for a Nymph they met in the forest (I didn't care for Samurai).
Countless others where the campaign just kind of faded out.

I think my first was a Chaotic Evil Human fighter. After the party imploded, the survivors were captured by Drow. We attempted to escape, and in the process got ourselves killed by spiders.

There was I recall one we used to game with that had his characters die, like, all the time. It was almost impressive, looking back.
 

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
My first character death was in the d20 conversation of Call of Cthulhu. I found a hidden panel in the ceiling, opened it, and looked in, to see a horrifically twisted mirror image of the room I was in, which I fell into, landed on the floor, and died from the fall damage.

My first D&D character death was in an introductory dungeon that included a wishing well. I wished for a magic weapon, and some monster (can’t remember what) rushed into the room wielding a magic weapon, and proceeded to kill me with it.
 

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