The Sacrifice Play
He was a good boy. From his first appearance, Patches the Unkicked reminded us all that Evil too can have friends. He was just a little dog, but Patches had a big heart, and it loved Antipaladin most of all. Patches was well-trained. He was protective. He made friends easily, and he worked tirelessly to keep his master safe. All the way to the end, Patches the Unkicked was a good boy. What more can be said of any dog?
This sort of moment may be unusual for The Handbook of Heroes, but it’s not unusual for the gaming table. All it takes is one big crit. One failed save. One miscalculation. And suddenly the madcap adventure takes a turn into tragedy.
If you’ve ever been part of such a moment, you know how the energy in the room can shift. Shock gives way to frantic suggestions. Do you have anything on your spell list? Can you get to him in time? And as the group collectively realizes that the worst has happened, and that nothing in the inventory or the rulebook can make a difference, the quiet comes around. The GM has no help to offer. Someone mutters a curse beneath their breath. There’s a pewter mini lying on its side on a vinyl mat, and a thousand possible storylines narrow down to only one. “Whose turn is it?” someone asks. The game goes on.
These characters that we know and love are conjured things. They’re born of bad accents, random chance, and laser printers. And no one but a handful of close friends huddled in a basement rec room or the shared imaginary of a VTT knows who they were. Like Prospero’s spirits, they fade and fray with time and memory, disappearing into fond reminiscence and you-had-to-be-there.
So now, before the wicked spirit of Demon Queen can escape into that portal, I propose we pause beside the fallen form of a fictional dog. Let’s memorialize all those heroes who died in our own campaigns. If you have a fallen companion, mentor, or long-lost-love in your own campaign journal, write their epitaph. Tell us what deeds they did in life, and why they mattered to you. Because once upon a time, my own wizard lost his best friend. And every loyal heart deserves its own memorial.
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;_; *cries*
Oh, Patches… You were the best boy.
I done played myself with today’s comic. Sobbed like a baby while writing today’s rant. Afterward my own dog was like, “Please stop hugging me.” lol
Jokes on Bad Cat, by sacrificing a loving, trusting doggo in a ritual, she fulfilled the conditions to turn Patches into a full-blown Hellhound.
https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Vile%20Dog%20Transformation
I hope the authors run with it and we get Hellpatches the Unkilled.
I hope they don’t use that spell, though.
Read what happens to the dog at its conclusion…! 0_0
Can lawful good boys even be hellhounds?
Absolutely. It worked for Dante in Shadowrun: Hong Kong, at least.
Dragonfall, not Hong Kong
I suppose you could always homebrew a celestial version. Angel doggo!
Isn’t that just a hound archon?
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Hound_Archon
Lol. Big buff dude with derpy puppy head.
There’s no pic.
fixed
It’s Magus who’s casting it though. If anything this seems more like a recipe for Anti-paladin’s full on face turn, becoming the new Paladin after Paladin’s moved on to… whatever he’s trying to do.
> after Paladin’s moved on to… whatever he’s trying to do.
Look, the position of Divine Herald is very straightforward:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/epic-motivation
You just have to make Monty Python references for the gods’ amusement:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/doing-the-impossible
How dare you make it rain all over my face.
As I discovered while writing this comic, estradiol is a hell of a drug. Patches’s facial expression of love and pain absolutely killed me.
Rest in pieces patches, you where the goodest boy.
I think the death that stickst the most with me right now is the recent death of an animal companion( a dire racoon named draugh) my ranger had. We where in a nasty encounter with a ooze that if it reduced you to 0 hit points it killed you and took control of youre corpse.
And the ooze was about to coup de grace the wizard, but the animal companion got a aoo, grappeled it. And took the attacks meant for the wizard. Of course this killed it and it rose to fight us. And so the worst feeling of this all is to put down the hero of the encounter.
I will never forget you lord draugh, protector of all the woodland critters
Hail Lord Draugh, whose like we shall not see again!
*pours mead onto ground*
This tale takes place in the cursed lands of Barovia, and thusly has many tears staining the diaries of woeful travellers. While many shallow graves may dot the fields, two in particular were close to my heart.
I was playing a elven bladelock named Sasha, who was pretending to be a wizard after failing to become one through traditional means. They were made up of my wort qualities, with a mask of arrogant intellect hiding fragility and desperate need for validation. When the Mists brought the party to Ravenloft, the druid Novalu showed unconditional kindness to us all, working together with us all, doing our best to keep us all safe, and generally working with us and to help us. When Strahd turned the villagers of Barovia into a mob to take an innocent woman, Novalu was knocked unconscious while protecting her. After out-of-game reasons lead to the player leaving, Novalu didn’t wake up.
Out of respect for Novalu’s attempts to not harm the terrified Barovians, we did not actively seek retribution. But nor did we do anything to stop Strahd’s minions from burning that village to the ground.
The next of our party lost was a wizardly rogue by the name of Zoradoth. He had enough intelligence and arcane skill that Sasha respected him, but not so much that their fragile ego would be jealous. When it came to planning and investigating, Sasha enjoyed working alongside him. While our relationship was more formal than emotional, they truly enjoyed his company, and found themself starting to truly care about someone else.
My memories are still unclear on what exactly happened. I believe he was going out on some supply run with an NPC ally of ours, Ismark when the random encounter table was rolled, and Strahd attacked. Zoradoth turned invisible and split off from Ismark, both trying to escape and hide in the forest. Strahd went after Zoradoth, and, well. No living creature emerged from that encounter.
Ismark made it back to the village, and described his encounter. Upon saying that Zoradoth was likely dead, Sasha flipped out. They screamed at Ismark that Zoradoth is both stealthy and a wizard, he’s slippery, he CAN’T have died. They screamed at any mage to start casting sending over and over until Zoradoth could be reached, screamed at Ismark for abandoning Zoradoth, screamed at Zoradoth for going off alone. They were angry at anyone, everyone, for a very long time. But eventually, things got better. And even then, it was until a long time after that Sasha could finally accept, that he was gone.
To the druid Novalu and the arcanist Zoradoth. May the mists part before their spirits, and reveal the way out from The Demiplane of Dread.
*pours mead onto ground*
I have not the heart to tell you. For me the grief is still too near.
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
Most of my group’s memorable deaths were group deaths. There’s the time I wildly overestimated how much of an ogre-infested fortress’s garrison the party could handle at once, and the time my brother lost two characters to the same mosquito swarm (which also killed my character), and the undead squid thing that OHKO’d the half the party which couldn’t cast dimension door.
But there’s one death story which stands above them all.
Our group was playing Rise of the Runelords under a DM who, flatly, did not read the adventure module before the session started. In one dungeon, there’s an overleveled monster in a closet who’s supposed to be stuck in the closet, charm people into the closet, and rip them to shreds. The DM only saw that there was a monster in the closet. (Though he wasn’t sure whether it was attacking with claws or an axe or what, which we still make fun of him for.)
We quickly realized it was a hopeless fight. We were weak from fighting all the goblins, we’d expended or lost critical resources, and the monster was just not a balanced encounter without being trapped in a closet.
The party cleric knew there was only one way forward. One of us would need to sacrifice himself, delaying the beast while the rest escaped. He would die, that the rest of us could live.
The barbarian wouldn’t let this stand. He owed the cleric too much to just let him die. So he, too, stayed behind, joining the cleric in one last glorious battle.
The gunslinger’s rifle was busted in the last goblin fight, and he didn’t want to buy a new one, so he stayed too.
(We still give his player crap for that.)
There are many would-be pirates who have been lost to those accursed mosquito swarms.
> a DM who, flatly, did not read the adventure module
That’s too bad. “Scary, but with a tactical / morale / personality-based weakness” are some of my favorite encounters. That’s what makes the game more than bashing stats together.
So here’s to the berserker and the servant of the gods! May their deeds echo in the halls of heroes. And may that gunslinger’s rifle echo in the antechamber of was-also-there!
Lady Ahzad, Elven Wizard and courtier… Or at least that’s what she told everyone. Pulled in an interdimensional arena, and made to fight for her survival, she never told anyone about her true past as a beggar on the streets of one of Osirion’s cities. However, despite her attempts at selfishness, in the end her compassion is what won out. She gave her life to save a new group of gladiators caught in one of the matches, leaving her research and her familiar to Vesryn, the elven rogue and alchemist she had met in the pit and had fallen in love with.
Everyone cried when I posted the letter she had left for him in her journal, and that got me going too. p_q
The reading of the final letter is one hell of a platform for waterworks. In my own megadungeon, one of the character’s lazy uncles had crashed on their couch for most of the adventure. Turned out he had a curse of weakness, which is why he’d passed down his magic weapon to his nephew. It also turned out the that nephew was actually his son, and proper heir to the noble house.
Tears were shed that day, I can tell you!
So here’s to the Lady Ahzad! Who made herself noble not through deceit or hard-won titles, but through love.
Rest in Violence, Patches. You were, unfortunately literally, too good for this world 🙁
We don’t have many character deaths in our games, but they always hit hard when they happen.
While writing today’s rant, I kept flashing on the “paradox of fiction” from my academic life:
https://iep.utm.edu/fict-par/
Wild stuff for all of us who have shed tears over imaginary people.
My own story is in memory of a heroic villain. A half-blue dragon, meant to be little more than a stepping stone in the party’s journey. An early roadblock with no purpose other than to eventually fall in battle, that would grow on to become so much more. Spoilers for early Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
Langdedrosa Cyanwrath was the champion of the forces who assaulted the hometown of the heroes, ending the conflict with a duel against the party’s barbarian. Unlike many of the others they had fought against that night, the half-dragon spoke with dignity and acted with honor, albeit the dark honor of a career villain. In two rounds, he had the barbarian on the ground – and then stopped the barbarian’s near death by using one of his own potions upon them. “I eagerly await our next fight,” he said before releasing prisoners and returning to camp.
The party’s hexblood had played a clever ruse, slipping an Eerie Token on the half-dragon champion. Eventually witnessing the champion being dressed down by his superiors for his mercy, the party discovered that he had gone against orders and prevented greater bloodshed. “War is fought between soldiers, civilians should play no part in it”.
When the party was captured chasing the enemy’s forces, it was Cyanwrath who aided in their escape, wanting strong opponents to test himself against – rivals he could grow stronger to defeat. The party were people he could respect – as they were strong, as he was. The party’s dragonborn paladin, in particular, drew his attention. He would face against the party whenever he could, and the party grew to respect him in turn.
He would eventually get the glorious death he dreamed, slain by the party as a fortress fell around him. His forces defeated, he stood as the last champion of a destroyed army. In another life, maybe, they’d have been friends.
“Tell my tale to those who ask. Tell it truly, the ill deeds along with the good, and let me be judged accordingly. The rest is silence.”
I miss this style of villainy in most of my own games. I always had a soft spot for the wicked knight and the unrepentant king. The sort of grand, Shakespearean sendoff that the baddies get in Shakespeare or Malory or “The Worm Ouroboros.” More often the baddies die to the sound of these shenanigans:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dignity
I am very grateful and very blessed to have a group I can talk openly with! I made it clear from the start that this guy was a ‘reoccurring rival/tragic villain’ sort of guy in his first appearance, and the players treated him as such. Even with the alert, the players and their characters liked him and enjoyed having him be a part of their story.
The players had been mentioning liking ‘complex villains’, but it’s hard to get any bad guys to live that long, especially ones that the party fights multiple times. I’m super happy my players trust me enough to pull this sort of thing off. <3
You ever see the villain’s escape kit over in PF1e?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/#TOC-The-Villain-s-Escape-Kit
Finding an excuse for a villain to make contact with the party and still get out unscathed is hard to pull off. Having a few backups handy is always a plus.
I’ve had a minor one. I’m playing a halfling paladin with a dog (mastiff) mount. Little buddy (I say this but, y’know, he’s bigger than my character) went through a bunch of stuff with me and survived some pretty dangerous situations (including a surprise fireball that WOULD have killed for sure him regardless of save, except that by pure coincidence I was keeping watch on the other end of the room and therefore my dog and I were the only party member not caught in the radius), but ultimately it was a fall that did him in, of all thing ; I needed to climb a big incline in the middle of combat, botched my roll hard, then rolled nearly max damage on the fall.
The mourning didn’t last very long however – because of all his deeds my buddy had gone to good boy heaven, and since I had reached level 5 with the very same fight that saw him fall, he was all too happy to answer the call once I cast Find Steed for the first time.
This was actually sort of planned beforehand with the DM, where we had agreed from before the campaign even started that once I could cast Find Steed, it would still be the same dog – the initial idea was that I would somehow “convert” him into a celestial spirit with paladins powers, but the dice decided to build a better narrative than this.
> a surprise fireball that WOULD have killed for sure him regardless of save
Trusty steeds HATE fireballs. 🙁
> once I could cast Find Steed, it would still be the same dog
It’s a good solution to this problem:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/loyal-steeds
Why’d you have to do this to me, Claire? I had always assumed that Patches was another in a long line of 1 white mana dogs with no activated abilities ( https://scryfall.com/search?q=otag%3Amartyr+t%3Adog+mana%3Dw ) and then this happens!
I haven’t had a pet lost in-game, in part because I haven’t been able to play as much as I would like, though in hindsight I realize I have had lots of pets with characters. I have, however, lost a pet in real life, and it really is painful (Z”L Furball, a very good rabbit).
In another response you brought up the paradox of caring about fiction, and, while I didn’t have time to read through the whole thing, my personal solution is that despite not technically existing, the people and events in a work of fiction can still be real, and their stories still matter. At the end of the (excellent) EXU: Calamity, DM Brennan Lee Mulligan said: “Why do we tell stories? To try to make sense of a world that can be terrifying and enormous. In Exandria, I don’t know that your story will long be known. I don’t know who will remain to tell it. But it did happen and it did matter.”
While he was referring to the events in universe, I feel that he was also talking about the fictional events in relation to our world. Yes they weren’t real in this universe, but they still happened and they still mattered, and that is why storytelling is so incredible. To tell a story is to fabricate a world, and that world is not an illusion but a real thing we can connect to and care about. I’m sad about Patches dying because I genuinely cared, not just about him but about Antipaladin, too, and the story they are in.
> I have, however, lost a pet in real life, and it really is painful
My own poor greyhound has a bone cancer. He’s gone through doggy-chemo, but even though he’s doing OK right now I don’t know how long I’ve got him. TLDR: I wasn’t prepared for the emotional rollercoaster of seeing this moment depicted. 🙁
> they weren’t real in this universe, but they still happened and they still mattered, and that is why storytelling is so incredible.
I always love Neil Gaiman on this point:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17764-fairy-tales-are-more-than-true-not-because-they-tell
I’m literally making a collage of that quote for an assignment (if you see me on campus remind me to show you a picture).
Hit me with that on Teams of whatever. I wouldn’t mind taking a look. 🙂
I’m so sorry to ruin the mood here, but I have to point out that while the wording of that quote is from Gaiman, it’s a reference to and paraphrasing of a passage by G.K Chesterton:
https://alleysiande.com/random-thoughts/gk-chesterton-an-actual-quote
Love this week’s comic, despite its content!
I stand happily corrected. Thanks for setting me straight!
Ladies and gentlemen, after I saw today’s instalment, I had to draw this. Lest you forget, I don’t just draw cute little chibis.
“For Patches”.
https://www.deviantart.com/grendelkin/art/For-Patches-937113577
https://imgflip.com/i/711f18
But we know (I forget from where) that Magus currently has access to (and has inadvertently used) Wish via Demon Queen’s body. If everyone figures what’s going on in time, they might be able to use that to bring Patches back. Right?
:'(
Rook remains my most poignant character death. He was a very fun character to play being a mixture of Robin Hood and Jack Sparrow. He was an archer/rogue who had some homebrewed luck feats that let him crticially fail on a 1 or 2 and critically succeed on a 19 or 20. So with a 1 in 5 chance of either being awesome or failing spectacularly it was never a dull moment. Through a bargain he had made with fey creature he had a limited ability to alter his luck by choosing to turn a critical success into a fail and caching it for use to increase the odds at a later time. Much adventuring later and he has fallen in love with a fellow rogue who has been captured by the bad guys. After raiding the local badguy hideout the party learns that their captives are being disposed of right now at the cliffside across town. The party races to save the day and Rook steadily burns through all of his luck making impossible coincidences to make it there in time. He uses his last bit of cached luck to pull his love back from the cliff edge…. and then he rolls a nat 1 on his Acrobatics check and confirms the fail. He used up all of his Luck. A stone turned under his foot. He fell. The rest of the party arrived a minute later to find her sobbing on the cliffs edge.
> homebrewed luck feats that let him crticially fail on a 1 or 2 and critically succeed on a 19 or 20
This seems like a really solid way to let individual players opt in if they like crit fails. Nice workaround for the Master Clownshoes problem:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
> A stone turned under his foot.
Damn that’s a good death. Well bloody done!
Don’t worry Antipaladin, Patches wil be off scampering with Lady Celestial in Heaven.
So unless AP atones… they’ll never meet again…? o_o
All dogs go to Mount Celestia.
My gunslinger with the literal incarnation of murder and slaughter trapped in her head, a sociopathic assassin who had recently begun to learn to feel and love again, who took a blast from a linnorm meant for a friend.
God rest ye soul, Penny Josephine Merigold Belum
That one still fucks me up
Linnorm death curse? Yeah. That’ll do it.
Here’s to Penny! My the gods show her spirit kindness for the good she might have done.
*pours mead onto ground*
“Oh, do not look at me so. A smile better suits a hero.”
“A knight lives to serve. To protect. To sacrifice. There is no greater calling. Leave me to mourn, and give chase. For my son, and for the nation he loved. Go.”
https://youtu.be/WMyIv_8wMSk?t=117A
I haven’t cried this much in forever… which goes terribly with the covid I’m trying to get over right now.
You and me both, dude. 🙁
VENGEANCE!!!! 😉
I’ve always been a fan of shouting, “Revanche!” in the Frenchest possible accent.
A warlock party member had a Pact with a Fey entity of some power, perhaps not fully arch-fey, but still more than your average trickster. The party member had made the pact when they were young and impulsive, she did not take the time to fully appreciate the dangers of entering such a pact until her death, a Drider tore her heart out and ate it.
We were able to resurrect her, but not without considerable difficulty due to their Patron’s claim on her soul, and the act of doing so left her bereft of the magics the pact had provided.
Soon after, we met with one Lord Elsideon, newly appointed Lord of the Winter Court at a state function, and our Patronless Warlock managed to impress him enough that a new pact was offered. Suffice to say, she read the conditions carefully this time.
Elsideon proved a valuable ally beyond his function as a Patron, and it was a terrible moment during the campaign’s climax that he sacrificed himself for the cause. We paused for a moment, looking to our Warlock with concern. Would we be able to finish things if she lost her powers again?
Turns out he had foreseen this possibility, and gone through the trouble of naming our Warlock as his heir, and moments later she suddenly become her own patron. With the full power of the winter court at her disposal (along side other suitably thematic 11th-hour superpowers for the rest of the party), we managed to save the day
This is the kind of moment I think about when warlock players shout, “You shouldn’t be able to mess with my powers!” Doing so in a cavalier way without the player’s input is obviously a no-no. But when you trust one another and work to build a story moment together, the narrative payoff can be fantastic.
At the climax of the epic-level campaign I played as “Arinen Blayke” (I’ve mentioned him before), a player who had left the game brought back her good-aligned bard in conspiracy with the DM as one last obstacle to us attaining undeserved godhood. When she was with us, she’d easily been my favourite in the party and so, when all her tricks were played and I was the only PC left standing, it was oh so hard even for my ruthless sorcerer/fighter/politician to do the sensible thing and finish her off. But he did.
I did chicken out later and in my epilogue, I brought her back. But still, most powerful character death I’ve witnessed (and caused), and a high-water-mark I’m always hoping to one day surpass.