D&D 5E Most Humiliating Way To Go

[R_J_K75]

In a 2E campaign our party is assessing the situation after a battle when we see a lone figure approaching. The human male stops about 10' from the party and introduces himself. The party Berserker declares a called shot to cut the strangers head off, steps up, rolls a natural 20 and lops off dudes head. Turns out the "stranger" was the new player/character the DM was introducing to the party. If the guy played that character all of 2 minutes that's a lot.

 

[MNblockhead]

Messy.

He forgot the last step when you release the ghouls.

 

[Lanefan]

Worst one I-as-player ever had?

My previous PC had died and I needed to bring something new in. Well, in this case something new meant something old: as I had some spare PCs booting around the game world the DM found a way to bring one in, the story being he'd been adventuring on his own and ended up as a prisoner in the complex the party was exploring.

The DM places me in the dungeon and he and I both wait for the party to find me (my character was known to half the party but they had no reason to think I was there). And we wait, and we wait, and we wait. For five sessions, as the party explores every possible bit of the complex except the part I'm in (and as I also don't know where my PC is, I can safely play a party NPC in the meantime, which I did).

Then at last they find me, strapped to a torture table that hyper-magnifies the effect of any touch or contact. One of the the other characters who recognizes me rushes over to the table, "Hey, it's us - what are you doing here?!", and slaps me gently to wake me up.

The table magnifies the gentle slap into a thunderous blow.

Broken neck.

Dead.

Sigh.

 

[Mannahnin]

In my 5 Torches Deep / B/X old school game I've been running this year, one of the toughest characters was a Zealot (Cleric), played by a very tactical and cautious player.

The game features poisoning weapons, including as a core class feature of the Thief class, and I had fleshed that out to a rule that Thieves can poison blades safely, but anyone else can TRY to harvest poison or poison a blade, but they have to take a check or risk poisoning themselves.

One night en route to the dungeon the party got a random encounter of Crab Spiders; a common low-level menace in B/X, they have old-fashioned Save or Die poison, but it's noted to be weak and you get +2 to the save. The party got through the fight intact, and the Zealot decided to harvest poison; I advised "Ok, but you will have to take a check to avoid accidentally poisoning yourself." He took the risk. Blew the roll. His knife hand slipped cutting out the slippery venom gland, and he got a dose. Ok, Con save. Welp; at least he has a good Con and there's a bonus. Fail. Cleric goes down foaming. The party has no antivenom. They ask, "Can we do anything?" Me: "Sure; what do you have in mind?" Them. thinking of real-world first aid: "How about we tourniquet it off and elevate his body, lowering the arm to reduce the amount which gets to his heart?" Me: "I'll allow it. He can re-roll the save". Fail.

Just one of those nights when a normally-cautious player says "Ah, what the heck?" and then the dice all fail him.

 

[Oofta]

In one of my first 3.0 games, the party came across an orc encampment. Obviously outmatched, I assumed they would ambush patrols, create distractions or simply wait to come back another day.

Nope. The party rogue decided to sneak into camp into the largest and most colorful tent where he finds a large chest. Not bothering to check for traps, he opens the chest (full of copper, silver and other relatively low value loot) and a shrieker starts, well, shrieking. Rather than grab a handful of coins, he tries to drag the entire chest away with the shrieker still giving the alarm. He can barely make it budge,

Meanwhile the monk rushes into camp to help their buddy's aid and is immediately hit by two orcs which both crit. We didn't even bother to roll the dice. The fighter sees what happened to the monk so they try to leap a small ditch, blow the roll and gets stuck in the deep mud. The rogue who started all of this never gives up on the chest and is still trying to drag it away even though they've only made a few feet. I didn't even bother to roll his death as half the camp attacks.

The wizard after having seen her entire party commit suicide by orc cast expeditious retreat and ran away to start another party.

 

[R_J_K75]

Worst one I-as-player ever had?

My previous PC had died and I needed to bring something new in. Well, in this case something new meant something old: as I had some spare PCs booting around the game world the DM found a way to bring one in, the story being he'd been adventuring on his own and ended up as a prisoner in the complex the party was exploring.

The DM places me in the dungeon and he and I both wait for the party to find me (my character was known to half the party but they had no reason to think I was there). And we wait, and we wait, and we wait. For five sessions, as the party explores every possible bit of the complex except the part I'm in (and as I also don't know where my PC is, I can safely play a party NPC in the meantime, which I did).

Then at last they find me, strapped to a torture table that hyper-magnifies the effect of any touch or contact. One of the the other characters who recognizes me rushes over to the table, "Hey, it's us - what are you doing here?!", and slaps me gently to wake me up.

The table magnifies the gentle slap into a thunderous blow.

Broken neck.

Dead.

Sigh.

Is there a dislike button? IMO thats some pretty crappy DMing to make you wait 5 sessions to bring in your new character only to have you die from something the other players wouldn't have known about.

 

[Stalker0]

Our last 2e campaign ended when one of the party cast a fireball in a bog full of swamp gas.....boom!

Our first 3.0 campaign ended because....of a wall. As the DM was still learning the system, we didn't really understand how climb checks work. So we have to climb this 200 ft wall. Every 10 ft the DM requires a new check, and the check increases with each one. One by one we all go barreling to our deaths!

In terms of personal death, we had a ranger with a suped up dire badger that they rode. We were fighting on this mountain top, so the ranger tied himself to the badger incase he fell. In the fight, the badger and the ranger fall off a cliff, the ranger lands on a lower cliff, but the badger keeps falling, pulling the ranger off the new cliff. Then the badger lands, but the ranger keeps falling...and on a nat 1 roll this pulls the badger off the next cliff. The ranger falls 100 ft with the badger landing square on him, killing him instantly. People were laughing so hard on that one they literally had to leave the room because they couldn't get enough air.

 

[Sacrosanct]

My very first game of D&D, my older brother DMing. I was a cleric in Palace of the Silver Princess. I killed the skeletons in the first room but 1 hp left. The module map was on the floor between us, so my left was his right. He asked me which direction I wanted to go. I said left, because that was the door. He responded, "You walk into the wall and take 1hp of damage." :/

Another one:
I was DMing ToEE, and one room has a giant pool of transparent liquid. Of course in those old D&D days, nothing is safe, and everything is a trap. The pool was acid. The players were all pretty experienced and not new to D&D. But Dave doesn't make good decisions (in life or in game lol). So when he said he was gonna run and jump into the pool....well...Ok then.

 

[Voadam]

In my old group we decided to play the D&D like card game Munchkin on nights the DM couldn't run the game. One guy was hesitant because he does not like games where the other players are against you and he generally does not like losing or feeling ineffectual, but he goes along with trying it out. His first turn the literal first door card he draws is Cthulhu, he's got nothing to get out of the fight and dies instantly, and so everyone else gets to loot his corpse for all his cards.

To add insult to injury due to a misreading of the rules we did not realize that in Munchkin when you die and on your next turn when you start as your dead character's same level sibling you are supposed to get a set of new cards like at the start of the game. So he started off his next round just with the one draw card and could never gain any traction throughout the game, losing to every encounter as a level 1 munchkin with no stuff.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The most humiliating way to go is in the third round of a fight with a band of orcs, dying from a regular attack that rolls an average amount of damage.

In other words, to die in such a way that no one ever thinks either "what a way to go out!" or "that was so funny!" I think any character death that people can tell a story about is pretty good. But one that is in no way memorable, that's humiliation.