The escapist curse!

[Kae]

So playing Ravenloft in D&D 5E has been a lot of fun but sadly it came to an end, some stuff happened and I fell into a lake in state of horror, due to this the party had to make a choice, save me or save a little girl that was also drowning and had been shot by an arrow, unfortunately, I was not chosen and due to dire circumstances was not revived, so my body is being carried in a bag until my friends find a way to resurrect me, although there is a high chance that this might be the end for this character.

But that's when I realized, this is the 3rd time I have lost a character to this exact same scenario[footnote]As in party members having to make a choice between saving me and another player character or NPC from drowning.[/footnote] in this year!

So what do you think guys, have I contracted the virus of the drowning decision?

Is this where all the drowning threads went?

Have you been cursed too?

Will I die to a feminist whirlpool while my crew has to decide between saving my pangender character[footnote]Makes sense considering it's an immortal being that keeps being reborn over and over again and has been both Male and Female throughout different points in history.[/footnote] and a dog in the Pathfinder pirate campaign?

Does the curse extend to real life?!

 

[DrownedAmmet]

To quote a great philosopher: "Learn to swim! Learn to swim! "

 

[Asita]

*shrug* I did have a character who couldn't swim once, and when this became a relevant fact, one of the girls in our group ended up saving him. Funnily enough, it wasn't even that rough, just somewhat deep and he'd never learned how to swim. Even ignoring that, he was a blind man in open water, so someone would have needed to at least guide him back to shore anyways.

 

[Fappy]

The only character I have ever had die was one-shot by Disintegrate. A Lich we were reluctantly working for resurrected me shortly after and informed me that I owe him my life

 

[Kae]

To quote a great philosopher: "Learn to swim! Learn to swim! "

The character could swim, it was just too long a distance and he was too fast so they were not able to get to him in time after they saved the girl, unfortunately due to a curse and a failed will save I could not control the character, so I just had to keep throwing dice until eventually, they failed, and then when disadvantage kicked in I just had a bad time, kept rolling 2s and 3s and I just didn't have enough athletics or constitution to make it.

Really, I had a water breathing potion in my backpack so I shouldn't have died, but like I said curse, couldn't do anything about it, damned ghosts.

The other character was a life-priest trying to save someone's life, so he had to keep swimming and the water was really deep, the mermaid[footnote]The character did not know there were mermaids that could save people there, so he couldn't just let him drown.[/footnote] was not fast enough to save all 3 people that were drowning and unfortunately, I got the short end of the stick, the other one was a rogue that went too far ahead and didn't have athletics, he fell off a bridge with a bunch of people and choices had to be made and since he wasn't that good a person they decided to get him last, so it didn't work out well for him.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I played an extraplanar human druid from the City of the Star on Elysium, once.

Hence why she couldn't see colours properly anywhere but. Living permanently in the City of the Star and regularly venturing out into the 1st layer and acclimating to the otherwise blinding colours. Rest of the multiverse mostly looked muddy browns and dark greys. A druid with zero survival because she used to just whistle and a flock of birds would deliver her fruit and vegetables in exchange for a few acts of kindness like helping them build a couple of nests.

That character did not do well with the occasional demiplane jaunt into the mists. So I feel your pain.

Also.... Yes, somewhat?

(Edit) I got to be exalted and have an Elysium Thrush as an animal companion, though

She did eventually become a little more scrappy as she experienced more of the worlds beyond. But that was a fun character.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Huh, one of my friend's DND 3.5 characters almost died by drowning the other day actually. He rolled a -2 on the DC 10 Balance check to not fall off a rickety bridge across a river, a -2 on the Swim check to swim over and then a Nat 1 on the CON check to not start drowning. Fuckin' Wizards man.

We were ready to let him just get carried out to sea to die because none of us were risking the DC 10 to save him until one of us remembered we had the "call the merfolk" horn (saved some merfolk from water zombies, long story.) Crossing the bloody thing was only attempted because we had limited charges on the horn so we tried to do it ourselves. Christ our campaigns are one shitshow after another. Nobody has died in that newest campaign yet over 5 or so sessions though which is crazy for our dumb asses. Well one did but the queen merfolk owed us a favour and she has Cleric levels so we got him revived. We owed him an averted TPK anyway. We got destroyed by this ogre shaman and Borkus comes in and oneshots the guy from full HP. Thank fuck for maximum damage rolls on a 6d4...

One of our characters actually did die to drowning in a previous campaign too. We got split up and two of us jumped into a sewer to dodge the police, taking 8d6 fall damage (we broke out of jail for mass murder, vandalism and attempted assassination of a pope, long story.) Obviously eventually any sewer will end via ocean so they chanced it. One of them died via bad Swim checks and just not preparing decent spells like I dunno, Water Breathing? Water Walk? Endure Elements? He was a damn SRD Cleric and he decides "there's no time!" Jumps in without taking off his plate mail armour and kills himself. The other guy was fine though, he was a walking tank.

Fuckin' Davos will go down in history as the hero of bad decisions over his entire lifespan.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Once during a game I was DM'ing, my 4 players were exploring a fire-themed pyramid.

They were all on pretty low health and were fighting a Fire Energon in a 30x30ft room. They fought two of these before and were feeling confident they could take it, knowing how much damage it could take, even if it was a bit of a risk. And indeed, they had it on the ropes, with it having only one hp remaining. So the Psion player enthusiasticly decided to swiftly finish it off with an Energy Ray. This killed it.

Unfortunately, they had all forgotten Energons explode in a 20ft burst upon death. I rolled max damage, they all failed the reflex save. Complete party wipe.

Endure Elements?

The DM in me forces me to point out Endure Elements wouldn't save him from drowning, although it would let him enjoy sinking into the briny depths at a comfortable room temperature. Then again, it would help if you used the environmental rules from Stormwrack or such and hypothermia was the reason he started drowning in the first place.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Once during a game I was DM'ing, my 4 players were exploring a fire-themed pyramid.

They were all on pretty low health and were fighting a Fire Energon in a 30x30ft room. They fought two of these before and were feeling confident they could take it, knowing how much damage it could take, even if it was a bit of a risk. And indeed, they had it on the ropes, with it having only one hp remaining. So the Psion player enthusiasticly decided to swiftly finish it off with an Energy Ray. This killed it.

Unfortunately, they had all forgotten Energons explode in a 20ft burst upon death. I rolled max damage, they all failed the reflex save. Complete party wipe.

Endure Elements?

The DM in me forces me to point out Endure Elements wouldn't save him from drowning, although it would let him enjoy sinking into the briny depths at a comfortable room temperature. Then again, it would help if you used the environmental rules from Stormwrack or such and hypothermia was the reason he started drowning in the first place.

Yeah but knowing our DM he would make the Swim or CON DC harder because of icy water in the first place. He started drowning because the water was in a huge sewer pipe eventually leading to the ocean and the fast rapids of the water in the pipe made the DC pretty fuckin' hard to start with + heavy plate mail dragging him down + bad Swim checks and he was unconscious making CON saves even before he left the pipeline system into the ocean. The water was flowing so fast he was dragged underwater almost instantly.

He was a level 6 or 7 Cleric so I still have no idea why he didn't take an hour to redo his spells into something useful...

 

[The Wykydtron]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

Wizards are a nightmare to DM for. In the campaign i'm DMing for right now, they have a Wizard spec'd into Abjuration and he freaking butchered my first somewhat major boss fight, poor Bodkin my level 7 Necromancer... His Mummy backup was forced away from helping him via Wall of Stone then he casts Explosive Runes on the guy's spellbook and as a DM I have no idea how the technicality of how that actually works but the spell doesn't state that that tactic won't work and it was a really cool idea. If someone is super knowledgeable on the obscure rules like that do let me know.

So the guy looks at his spellbook to cast, spellbook blows up for 8d6 damage, spellbook is a pile of ash, my level 7 Necromancer is now a level 1 Commoner. Also their Monk died because of that too because he was grappling the guy as he activates the rune and 8d6 on a level 3 character onehit him.

Fuckin' Wizards man.

 

[Saelune]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

Wizards are a nightmare to DM for. In the campaign i'm DMing for right now, they have a Wizard spec'd into Abjuration and he freaking butchered my first somewhat major boss fight, poor Bodkin my level 7 Necromancer... His Mummy backup was forced away from helping him via Wall of Stone then he casts Explosive Runes on the guy's spellbook and as a DM I have no idea how the technicality of how that actually works but the spell doesn't state that that tactic won't work and it was a really cool idea. If someone is super knowledgeable on the obscure rules like that do let me know.

So the guy looks at his spellbook to cast, spellbook blows up for 8d6 damage, spellbook is a pile of ash, my level 7 Necromancer is now a level 1 Commoner. Also their Monk died because of that too because he was grappling the guy as he activates the rune and 8d6 on a level 3 character onehit him.

Fuckin' Wizards man.

I will add, wizards memorize their spells. They dont need the book as a component to cast. The Necromancer just wouldnt be able to memorize spells for the next day which is usually irrelevant in a life or death battle currently occuring. Atleast that is Dungeons and Dragons, and presumably Pathfinder.

 

[The Wykydtron]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

Fuckin' Wizards man.

I will add, wizards memorize their spells. They dont need the book as a component to cast. The Necromancer just wouldnt be able to memorize spells for the next day which is usually irrelevant in a life or death battle currently occuring. Atleast that is Dungeons and Dragons, and presumably Pathfinder.

Oh I will keep that in mind if I ever send another Wizard at them, i'm planning some enemies with Druid spells backed up by plant creatures or something later so that cheese doesn't work. I'm usually too nice to them though even if I try to put some pressure on them. I think something is hard enough but they find some way around it or their Ranger just fuckin' roasts it in a couple of turns or something. Both of the character deaths so far were PVP related.

Suicide by grappling a bomb and bad character judgement. Guy picked some homebrew necromancer-ish thing when we have a classist Wizard who has Boots of Levitation so he never has to walk upon the ground because he's so posh, he looks at this disgusting necromancy and after an hour into a session casts Cloudkill on him. He was level 3 so there was nothing he could do. He just drops dead on the spot.

Honestly, save or die effects are the worst thing in DND, especially in 3.5 where it feels like half the Monster Manual has something like that and I can't in good conscience make one of my enemies cast something like Finger of Death as a DM. It's just not fun for anybody, i'd rather throw a well aimed Fireball any day. I don't particularly like 5e but I hear they're moving away from that sort of stuff in that edition which is a good thing.

 

[Saelune]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

Fuckin' Wizards man.

I will add, wizards memorize their spells. They dont need the book as a component to cast. The Necromancer just wouldnt be able to memorize spells for the next day which is usually irrelevant in a life or death battle currently occuring. Atleast that is Dungeons and Dragons, and presumably Pathfinder.

Oh I will keep that in mind if I ever send another Wizard at them, i'm planning some enemies with Druid spells backed up by plant creatures or something later so that cheese doesn't work. I'm usually too nice to them though even if I try to put some pressure on them. I think something is hard enough but they find some way around it or their Ranger just fuckin' roasts it in a couple of turns or something. Both of the character deaths so far were PVP related.

Suicide by grappling a bomb and bad character judgement. Guy picked some homebrew necromancer-ish thing when we have a classist Wizard who has Boots of Levitation so he never has to walk upon the ground because he's so posh, he looks at this disgusting necromancy and after an hour into a session casts Cloudkill on him. He was level 3 so there was nothing he could do. He just drops dead on the spot.

Honestly, save or die effects are the worst thing in DND, especially in 3.5 where it feels like half the Monster Manual has something like that and I can't in good conscience make one of my enemies cast something like Finger of Death as a DM. It's just not fun for anybody, i'd rather throw a well aimed Fireball any day. I don't particularly like 5e but I hear they're moving away from that sort of stuff in that edition which is a good thing.

My overall goal has never been to kill my players. My goal is to facilitate a story. The one exception so far was a rule lawyer/game breaker player who wanted to have as high AC as possible. So, well, I used a save or die spell that doesnt care about AC, and he died. This was the final battle of the campaign though.

I personally love 5e more than 3.5. I actually follow the rules more now, where in 3.5 I made my own to fix problems I had. I just wish they would release actual rule supplements. They only have released pre-made modules in book form, which is confusing. The first actual supplement though I have pre-ordered. Its mainly a monster-manual, but with added rules for creatures. Im guessing turning things like Orcs and Goblins into playable races, and other things pertaining to monsters.

 

[The Wykydtron]

It wasn't in my circle of friends (just heard about it at school) but a legendarily bad DnD roll for a time spell ended up sending the big bad villain back in time and space to the hometown of the heroes. Upon figuring out where/when he was and knowing who the heroes were, he nuked the place killing everyone and making a new timeline.

So in other words...

Fuckin' Wizards man.

They apparently restarted the campaign with new characters at a different town.

Fuckin' Wizards man.

I will add, wizards memorize their spells. They dont need the book as a component to cast. The Necromancer just wouldnt be able to memorize spells for the next day which is usually irrelevant in a life or death battle currently occuring. Atleast that is Dungeons and Dragons, and presumably Pathfinder.

My overall goal has never been to kill my players. My goal is to facilitate a story. The one exception so far was a rule lawyer/game breaker player who wanted to have as high AC as possible. So, well, I used a save or die spell that doesnt care about AC, and he died. This was the final battle of the campaign though.

I personally love 5e more than 3.5. I actually follow the rules more now, where in 3.5 I made my own to fix problems I had. I just wish they would release actual rule supplements. They only have released pre-made modules in book form, which is confusing. The first actual supplement though I have pre-ordered. Its mainly a monster-manual, but with added rules for creatures. Im guessing turning things like Orcs and Goblins into playable races, and other things pertaining to monsters.

Honestly no DM really should aim to explicitly kill their players (I hope) but I really find it hard to even properly challenge them when I DM, granted I may have gone slightly overboard with the magic items they have but too many magic items beats no magic items I think and they're all early to mid level wondrous items right from the book so nothing gamebreaking. I've decided to go for a more TV show esque "Monster of the Week" with the overarching world just sort of there in the background. Last time was a couple of Umber Hulks and once they had the loot one big Umber Hulk showed up (CR 14, straight from the book vs 4 level 4 characters) which is kind of a dick move since it had something ridiculous like a +23 chance to hit and 15 ft range but I had a strong feeling that they'd get out, which they did. Abjuration is full of utility spells after all.

I'm not a really good writer and if I try to make a proper story driven campaign like the one our best DM is running i'd basically be making the PCs play a worse version of his campaign I feel so i'm going for something less serious. I'm toying with the idea of bringing poor old Bodkin our Level 1 Commoner back because he was only locked up not killed but that may be a lil bit obvious and kind of a dick move. Recurring bad guys are something every DM wants in their game though so maybe the next one gets away if possible. I'm sure they'll find a way to remove her escape route though.

 

[Saelune]

Honestly no DM really should aim to explicitly kill their players (I hope) but I really find it hard to even properly challenge them when I DM, granted I may have gone slightly overboard with the magic items they have but too many magic items beats no magic items I think and they're all early to mid level wondrous items right from the book so nothing gamebreaking. I've decided to go for a more TV show esque "Monster of the Week" with the overarching world just sort of there in the background. Last time was a couple of Umber Hulks and once they had the loot one big Umber Hulk showed up (CR 14, straight from the book vs 4 level 4 characters) which is kind of a dick move since it had something ridiculous like a +23 chance to hit and 15 ft range but I had a strong feeling that they'd get out, which they did. Abjuration is full of utility spells after all.

I'm not a really good writer and if I try to make a proper story driven campaign like the one our best DM is running i'd basically be making the PCs play a worse version of his campaign I feel so i'm going for something less serious. I'm toying with the idea of bringing poor old Bodkin our Level 1 Commoner back because he was only locked up not killed but that may be a lil bit obvious and kind of a dick move. Recurring bad guys are something every DM wants in their game though so maybe the next one gets away if possible. I'm sure they'll find a way to remove her escape route though.

Combat is my weak point too. I dont really care for it, but thats one reason I prefer DMing. I also unload too many powerful magic items, but my players are greedy anyways.

Most of my "writing" is in the world building. I learned first hand too many times how wasteful overplanning is, that I generally underplan and just try to roll with the punches, but otherwise have a general outline. Hell, I intend to no longer even set up final boss fights, cause all drama and ambience and all that usually is for naught as they end up one hit sniping the boss. Instead, the current campaign, the main antagonist is a demon who I intend to have show up from time to time, and when they kill her, they kill her. But everytime she isnt killed she comes back more prepared. Still plenty of stuff they will have to do afterwards though.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I've only really just started my first Pathfinder campaign (3 sessions in total) and I'm yet to be stuck in a situation like that. I have gone fishing for Reefclaws, though.

Spoiler: Fishing story

The idea was that we would run the beginner's box campaign as a jump off point. The first few encounters were fine. We made good progress, got around a couple basic traps and then everything took a turn for the weird.

One of the rooms our party entered was covered in spider silk and housed a rather large spider. As it turned out, our rogue is an arachnophobe and noped out as the fight started, running away from the rest of the party into parts unknown. The rest of the party finished off the spider (well, our casters set most of the room on fire, which ended up killing the spider, so close enough...?) and then spent a short while looking for our runaway rogue. We couldn't find him, so we moved on.

A short time later, the party, still minus the rogue, came across a lake. In the middle of said lake was a chest. Being slightly suspicious, we threw a decent sized rock into the lake, which caused a disturbance in another area of the lake. Before we could actually determine what it was, the party started to hear the sounds of battle. Turns out our rogue ran into a group of goblins. While he could speak goblin, he wasn't a very diplomatic sort and the goblins turned on him and started attacking him. By the time the party made it to the battle, our rouge was already bleeding out.

After killing or driving off the goblins, looting their corpses and then looking after the rogue (in that order), we returned to the lake. I'm not entirely sure how it it happened, but almost immediately the discussion turned to how we could get whatever was in the water out of the water. In the end, our barbarian and our druid's lion went fishing with a goblin hooked into a grappling hook that was attached to 30ft of rope. The rest of the party would stand slightly away from the bank with their ranged weapons drawn to attack whatever came out of the water. The reefclaw managed to survive the surprise round, but died before it could make an attack.

 

[DarthCoercis]

I have a drunkard Dwarven Battlemage who hangs in prime place on my GM's "Wall of Shame" for tossing a delayed-blast fireball into a large room of a mountain occupied by Kobolds and failing to notice that it was their equivalent of a latrine. Not only did the explosion cause a TPK, it ignited a gas seam that annihilated the mountain and a large chunk of Garweeze Wurld.

For reference, the "Wall of Shame" is reserved for characters that die or cause a TPK in an excruciatingly shameful or hilarious manner.