The party was polymorphed into a smaller size to transverse a small cavern. We stayed in there too long and the spell began to fade. As we grew back to our normal sizes we nearly went 'squish' but some DM-intervention rolling kept us from becoming cavern-paste due to expansion.
My DM thought it would be a fun idea to take a party of adventurers into Myth Drannor. We did not use premade stuff - he crafted the entire thing. He set up blade barriers around buildings that he didn't want us going into, and otherwise we were just supposed to be going into a library, finding a scroll, and getting out. Of course, we see a building with blade barriers around it and think "Oh! I wonder what's inside!"
So a party of level 2 characters finds a way past the barrier and we open the door, only to encounter an undead beholder. Of course, we don't run away, we charge into combat. The beholder tore us apart - our mage was the first to go, bashed up and down against the ceiling by one of the beholder's eye stalk powers. Our fighters and bard followed suit. I, as the cleric of Torm, was pushed up against the ceiling as well, although I managed to avoid taking damage from it. So the beholder held me there while it fought everything else. I kept emptying bottles of holy water on it.
As the thief went down, we took out the eye stalk that was holding me up and I dropped to the ground. I started bludgeoning the beholder with my +2 (yeah... DM had let me find a +2 for some earlier insanity I had gotten up to) morningstar, and finally the beast went down. I dragged my entire party out of Myth Drannor and healed them up, having achieved level 4 from the kill.
Not exactly a dungeon but our party was overhelmed by a bunch of evil trees in a dark swamp over the trail to a powerful wizard home. That was a nice homebrew adventure... until this encounter. I was the last party member alive and, as a paladin, i tried hard to save my party but the final result was a really total party kill. AD&D 2nd edition, my best character until then, a level 5 bold paladin with strength 18/93 (+2 attack / +5 damage).
Mine was during a campaign that a friend made to actually kill us all, mainly so we would learn how to act like actual adventurers instead of kick down the door, kill monsters and loot. Our rogue was killed by a vampire and had his neck snapped. the Barbarian was chocked to death by a cursed amulet. My character was crushed by a giant. and several others were killed by various traps (like a hallway with the gravity changed to make it feel like it was a pit instead). At the end of all of this was a Solar angel in a room of personal gravity (whichever direction you willed to be the ground, was) filled with torches. The ranger of the group managed to pin the Solar angel and kill it using the torches, and to this day we insist that rangers are OP.
If My shield can't protect you, nothing in the realms can.
Shortly after our victory over a gnoll chieftain who was attempting to open portals into the Abyss in the ruins of a demonic fortress named “Slaughtergarde” we received a letter from the Burgomaster of Barovia, a little-heard of country a few weeks journey to the west. We arrived at the gates of the country that stood at the edge of the Svalich woods with much trepidation; our sorceress had seen herself die in gruesome fashion in the reflection of her personal mirror and since seeing that horrific vision had lost her reflection in *any* mirror. This made our entire party uneasy and the shadowy Svalich woods did nothing to brighten our disposition.
Nevertheless, we pressed on. On the road we encountered a hunting pack of wargs which we dispatched. We arrived at Barovia to find a place under siege by the undead. These zombies were incredibly hard to kill; we'd cleave them in two only to sometimes have their remains rise back up and fight us! We eventually prevailed against the tide of undead, including putting down a creature called an “entomber” a huge zombie encrusted in grave dirt that shoved our dwarven paladin so far into the ground in the town center we had to *dig* him out! We learned the local priest, a man named Danovich had gone mad after the death of his son and many suspected him of being at the source of the undead plague that had swept over Barovia.
We went to the church and upon entering were beset by more undead and the crazed priest himself. He read from a page that looked like it was torn out of the unholiest of books and snuffed the life out of our rogue, the tiefling named Chagrin (my character). The rest of the party pressed him hard after that and drove him down a hole in the church floor. They pursued only to be attacked by the stitched together remains of Danovich’s son (and countless other corpses). During the melee the skulking Danovich, calling on his Death Domain powers killed the sorceress, only to be struck down by our cleric.
Mourning, wounded and disheartened, the surviving members crawled out of the hole only to be greeted by villagers armed with scythes, pitchforks and even proper military weapons. They had come to the church in a rally to help our brave party but after seeing the body of the rogue and discovering his tiefling heritage turned against us. Weakened and trapped as we were, we could put up little resistance against the angry, xenophobic and fearful mob and so every last one of us fell. Our bodies were burned at the stake but perhaps our murdered souls took some solace in seeing the villagers be mauled by the werewolves that attacked them after being drawn to the bright fires and smell of burning flesh.
This was a pre-made adventure, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft for 3.5 edition with some old school Ravenloft flavor added. I was actually the DM and I controlled the rogue in the story as an NPC as he had been my character until circumstance dictated I took over DMing. I didn’t MEAN for it to be a TPK, honest!
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So a party of level 2 characters finds a way past the barrier and we open the door, only to encounter an undead beholder. Of course, we don't run away, we charge into combat. The beholder tore us apart - our mage was the first to go, bashed up and down against the ceiling by one of the beholder's eye stalk powers. Our fighters and bard followed suit. I, as the cleric of Torm, was pushed up against the ceiling as well, although I managed to avoid taking damage from it. So the beholder held me there while it fought everything else. I kept emptying bottles of holy water on it.
As the thief went down, we took out the eye stalk that was holding me up and I dropped to the ground. I started bludgeoning the beholder with my +2 (yeah... DM had let me find a +2 for some earlier insanity I had gotten up to) morningstar, and finally the beast went down. I dragged my entire party out of Myth Drannor and healed them up, having achieved level 4 from the kill.
Nevertheless, we pressed on. On the road we encountered a hunting pack of wargs which we dispatched. We arrived at Barovia to find a place under siege by the undead. These zombies were incredibly hard to kill; we'd cleave them in two only to sometimes have their remains rise back up and fight us! We eventually prevailed against the tide of undead, including putting down a creature called an “entomber” a huge zombie encrusted in grave dirt that shoved our dwarven paladin so far into the ground in the town center we had to *dig* him out! We learned the local priest, a man named Danovich had gone mad after the death of his son and many suspected him of being at the source of the undead plague that had swept over Barovia.
We went to the church and upon entering were beset by more undead and the crazed priest himself. He read from a page that looked like it was torn out of the unholiest of books and snuffed the life out of our rogue, the tiefling named Chagrin (my character). The rest of the party pressed him hard after that and drove him down a hole in the church floor. They pursued only to be attacked by the stitched together remains of Danovich’s son (and countless other corpses). During the melee the skulking Danovich, calling on his Death Domain powers killed the sorceress, only to be struck down by our cleric.
Mourning, wounded and disheartened, the surviving members crawled out of the hole only to be greeted by villagers armed with scythes, pitchforks and even proper military weapons. They had come to the church in a rally to help our brave party but after seeing the body of the rogue and discovering his tiefling heritage turned against us. Weakened and trapped as we were, we could put up little resistance against the angry, xenophobic and fearful mob and so every last one of us fell. Our bodies were burned at the stake but perhaps our murdered souls took some solace in seeing the villagers be mauled by the werewolves that attacked them after being drawn to the bright fires and smell of burning flesh.
This was a pre-made adventure, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft for 3.5 edition with some old school Ravenloft flavor added. I was actually the DM and I controlled the rogue in the story as an NPC as he had been my character until circumstance dictated I took over DMing. I didn’t MEAN for it to be a TPK, honest!
More contests coming in the near future.