When was the last time you offed a fellow player's PC?

[AxeMental]

I've only done this a few times (playing greedy bastards) but its been at least 20 years. The game is so dangerous it just seems like your shooting yourself in the foot. Curious if anyone still messes with this sort of thing. What about not going that extra mile to save someone say during battle (letting them die so you can loot their bodies or take more of the treasure for yourself). Now this I've done more recently (always playing the personality of the PC, I of course, would never do such a thing).

[T. Foster]

I don't think I've ever offed a fellow player's character deliberately, but a couple-three years back I managed to accidentally kill two of wheggi's PCs -- one with a wand of polymorphing (he failed his system shock roll) and then a few sessions later another one with a misthrown oil flask I've lived in constant anticipation of wheggi getting his revenge ever since...

[Juju EyeBall]

I fumbled and took out Philotomy's character when were playtesting Tomb of the Iron God with Matt.

[simrion]

Never happened intentionally player-to-player. My wife's character killed my character by committing the death blow on a Giant and the DM randomly determined the Giant's remains to fall upon my character! Fortunately the Cleric could Raise Dead

[ScottyG]

I can't remember ever off-ing another PC, but I have attacked, robbed, and bullied other characters. I have one evil fighter PC who has done it for most of his adventuring career. It's not something that ever comes up in our main campaign, but occasionally we'll takes breaks and do some anything goes, P vs P gaming.

[Terrex]

I never did it. Occasionally, it occurs when someone is under charm, human control, etc. In terms of voluntary action, I can remember it happening twice in all our games. The most recent incident happened about 5- 10 years ago:

The PCs were battling the forces of Tezcatlipoca in a major outdoor combat. They were scattered about the plain at the edge of a forest. A PC druid had entangled a number of the Tezcatlipoca forces. An evil sorceress in league with the Tezcatlipoca side used a wand of defoliation to counter his entanglement spells and release many of the entangled Tez forces. Needless to say, the druid took note of the nature destroying wand.

Later in the battle, the sorceress was slain by another PC. He prompltly took her valuables including the wand. The PCs were victorious. Later, the druid PC asked the PC that had slain the sorceress about the wand. The slaying chracter told the druid he found no such wand. That night, the druid searched the other PC's gear and found the wand. He not only took the wand to destroy it, but he slayed the character that had lied to him while he was sleeping!

Needless to say it was a tense moment at the game table (PC v. PC killing was pretty much unprecedented). But, all the other players respected the druid's decision. That druid character is highly respected to this day...

(I originally mentioned this here)

[PatW]

Never happened. Although I've DM'd when it happened, with the bunch of high-level pregens for Vecna Lives! Some of the players were so entranced by the big list of spells they had from all those 20th level characters, they couldn't be bothered trying them out on any enemies. They just started lobbing them at each other right then and there. Didn't even get into the first room of the first dungeon. Ahh, the Circle of Eight, who knew they were so bloodthirsty...

[Solinor]

Since no one else has done it I will just say I have probably done it enough for all of us.

It mostly happened in pick up groups where as soon as my PC was ready to join the ongoing campaign my better's tried to let me know my place.

The funniest was where I brought in a 5th level fighter Minotaur (Playing 2e) with 20 Strength and specialized great spear and shield. There was a bridge and two of the PC's were fighting on the bridge with some monsters. The 8th level bladesinger decided to cast fireball into the melee and killed both his companions. I said to him with derision "You should be more mindful of your friends elf." He turned to me and said shutup stupid bull!" Well my surprise attacks, which were 3 if I recall were all natural 20's and I did somewhere around 58 points of damage, killing the bladesinger immediately.

Sorry, but I laughed pretty freaking hard.

Another time a character was bullying my chaotic neutral elven thief/magic user. On the character sheet I had spelled out that he didn't take well to insult and threats. So I asked a crazy cleric in the party to cast hold person on him for a fee. I had no intention of killing him at this point I just wanted to scare him. He failed his saving throw and was held. He had a magical tattoo or something that allowed him to shape change and although held was able to activate this power. He turned himself into a bird but was still held. I picked his little bird body up and the player started screaming "I am so going to kill you when I get out of this!! I am so going to kill you when I get out of this!!" Our characters were standing next to a tree at that moment and I began to beat the little bird against it repeatedly.

I have several other such examples but its sad to say I have commited PCicide. But every time the DMs felt my actions could be justified.

[Chainsaw]

I haven't, but back when I was DM'ing in high school, my brother's ranger killed my friend's necromancer (both were in 5-7 level range). The friend's guy was always bullying my brother and driving him to take all the risks, so there was eventually an ambush or something when the necromancer was weak after a battle. The ranger subdued him, tied him to a tree and left him to die (they were deep in an arctic wasteland). I gave the friend a "saving throw" to be rescued by some random adventurers each day for a few days, then he died. The friend was bitter after that and the game wasn't ever really the same. He didn't think I'd favored my brother or anything - he was just pissed that I hadn't concocted some miracle that would keep him alive.

[geneweigel]

It was definitely during the Forgotten/Lance rising time of the late 80's but although I've almost exclusively DMed for the same old lot I did play in other campaigns over and over again. Most of that was a lot of bad turns into second edition "story time" (NOTE: the bad "story time" type DMs were around back when I started in the way early 80's as well. They just had an easier time with new 2E TSR.) So although I DMed a bunch of altercations that ended in demise, I haven't killed a player character as a player character in a 3 dog's ages...

NOTE: My player character was slain by another player character a few years ago at a con but I'd rather not get into the entirety of that fiasco.

[geneweigel]

I think the last "formal character duel" between characters that I participated as DM was 1988 or 1989. I can specifically recall a formal duel by my character which was in 1985 but never another for me.

[Ska]

Hmm-has been quite awhile and only after my PC was attacked first.

Saying that, I have left stupid mofo's to die after they have botched an attempt at me or other PCs. I remember one particular game when a friend playing a half-orc fighter botched an attempt to destroy a black pudding following the group. A trap had been planned involving luring the thing over some oil and then killing it with lit oil bombs. The fool half-orc screwed up and ( intentionally) threw his oil bomb before the thing was over the spilled oil. The group was forced to run. My PC (an elf thief) yelled at the half-orc for ruining the plan. The half-orc (18.+ strength) lifted my PC off the ground. I said lets discuss this later as the monster was still following the group. The half-orc put the thief down and then, apparentty forgetting about a pit trap which we had discovered earlier, made another mistake. After threatening, and laughing at, my thief, he proceeded to walk over the pit trap and fell in. The last thing he saw before the pursuing black pudding caught up to the now jammed open pit trap was my elf bidding bye bye.

[BlackBat242]

The only time I can remember was in early 1986.

I was playing a 1/2-Drow Cleric/Assassin (NE) who had been hired by a party of mostly neutrals. The adventure had gone well, and she was feeling good about this particular group*.

Then came a shift to a new adventure... and the DM popped the party to another world via a plane-shift by one of the party. The party was immediately captured, and hauled up in front of a tribunal (very LN society that was at war and treated all strangers as spies unless they could prove they weren't).

One of the party, apparently seeking to curry favor, denounced my character as "not trustworthy" (she had done NOTHING against the party up to that point), and the rest agreed with him. This got my PC stripped of her rights, and assigned to them as a slave (see personal history notes)... but also earned them the trust of the tribunal, so they were given unrestricted passage rights.

Then they volunteered to go clear out a dragon problem the area was having.

When we were entering the dragon's lair my PC was hanging back as the last in the group, and had starting dropping back to see if she could escape from the group, when the dragon (black) whispered from the darkness, offering her magic items and to not chase her if she helped against the party.

When the party entered the main chamber, and started across the pile of treasure to attack the dragon, she (from her position in the back of the party) assassinated the next rear-most PC (which the others didn't notice, as they were engaging the dragon), grabbed a couple of items from the stack (and that PC's travel pass), removed her poisoned hand crossbow dart from her victim, and escaped from the lair.

I felt it was justified, as she had not betrayed them in any way, but they had betrayed her by causing her to become a slave once again!


The players all agreed that, from her viewpoint, she was acting correctly... the PC she assassinated had been the first to denounce her... and no one had bothered to tell her that this was that PC's home area, and he knew the tribunal would be using Detect Alignment on us, and would imprison her just for being NE.

They were actually helping her to keep out of prison, but they hadn't bothered to explain any of this either before or after we faced the tribunal.


The party eventually killed the dragon, but half the party was dead, and they never did catch up to her. They actually thought the dragon had killed the other PC via magic, and they weren't certain whether my PC had been killed by the dragon before they entered the chamber or if I had run off (they forgot to check for the travel pass on the dead PC).




* she thought they would be willing to help her "thin the ranks" of the local Drow... as a half-breed she grew up being a slave to the slaves of the Drow... when she escaped she vowed to be a nightmare to them.

[grodog]

In the Penn State game in which I was a player (as a NE drowic 7th MU demonologist), I joined the campaign at 3 levels below the highest level PC, and 1-2 levels below average party level (which was 8-9). The most powerful PC was a 9th level fantra (CN paladin variant from Dragon), who had attacked my PC during my introduction to the party. I naturally held a grudge. He later decided on a whim to betray the party to a huge ancient Leung dragon of some sort---I forget which flavor of Oriental dragon it was, but it was gigantic and scared the hell out of our party of ~12 7th-10th level PCs.

The PCs found out about his betrayal (via one of our familiars spying on him IIRC), and we conjured like madmen to try to stop him: an air elemental, soul eater (from Moldvay Expert, via implore), something else, and a goristro were conjured to kill him. My PC conjured the goristro using a _gate_ scroll, which I had a 55% chance of misreading; the dice, however, were on my side that day The goristro was able to teleport without error, and blocked the fantra from his flight to the dragon, which allowed the other monsters to catch up. The fantra still nearly escaped, however: he was able to dismiss the something else creature, killed the air elemental via a vicious series of attacks including 2 critical hits in t he same round, and would have been able to outrun the soul eater and goristro if he was able to withdraw from battle. Eventually, however, the soul eater and goristro pinned him down and killed him (and naturally, the soul eater got to eat his soul).

That was the fall of 1991, and was about my fourth or fifth session in the campaign: quite a way to kick a campaign off

[Clangador]

I tried about 8-9 years ago playing 3e. THE DM SAVED HIM!