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While fighting a lich, my rogue had found the phylactery.  on the lich's turn, he mind controls a friend and decides that it was time to use that vorpal sword hed been saving.  knowing that i was not getting out of this situation, i put the phylactery on my shoulder and turned into the swing.... dead rogue, doomed lich... totally worth it :P

Sadly, I've not had a character die since I mostly DM.  I will, however, describe the most memorable character death in one of my campaigns.

The party was chasing some sort of BBEG with their airship onto a floating isle where his fortress was.  One of the players (who was absent that session) stayed behind in the airship while the party went onto the isle.  The enterance to the keep was trapped with a trapdoor that led to a shaft through the isle and onto the countryside thousands of feet below.  All but one of the characters, Gluteus Windstorm, passed their Reflex Saves to avoid the trapdoor.  Being a (typically) kind-hearted DM, I allowed Windstorm and each other a player a Dex check to catch the poor character.  All fails.  Giving Gluteus the benefit of the doubt, I had the absent player's character position the airship below the isle while the players were working up to this point in the adventure.  So Gluteus survived to play another day.

Except that player decided he didn't want to sit out the boss fight in the adventure.  So, he had the airship's crew fly him back up and drop him off in the courtyard.  (Something that could now be done since they deactivated the crystal that was putting a wall of force over the top of the isle.)  Gluteus Windstorm took the precaution to carefully tie a rope around his waste and tie said rope off somewhere secure.  DC 10 Use Rope check.  At the time, the rules system said to wait to actually make the check until the roll was relevant.  The trap door was still open, so Windstorm would just need to climb the 10-foot section of the wall (it was a large pit) from the edge of the pit to the fortress's entrance.  The rest of the group, thinking Gluteus was dead, had already moved on, so he was on his own here.  Climb check roll was an 8 (full plate wearing fighters had some terrible modifiers) and and the Use Rope check was a 6.  So, down the poor character went a second time, and not enough time had elapsed for it to make sense to re-position the airship below the isle again.  Hilarity ensued, and one of the other players had even posted on Facebook later: "What has to be going through your head the SECOND time you fall down the 200-foot shaft?"  Now the interesting part: the character didn't even die.  Terminal velocity in 3.5 was 20d6 and he had enough hit points that, after damage was rolled, he didn't even drop to zero.  (I guess I lied earlier when I said I'd talk about a death.)  This is now part of our gaming group's lore.

Given the rules of 4e, this really wasn't something that could have happened at all, though.  First, the DMG had guidelines that prevented hazards from doing more than a certain amount of damage.  (Which would have stymied the creation of a perfectly-good trap.  Remember: the character was just supposed to fall onto the airship, not fall to his certain(ish) death.)  Since the fall was basically an undetermined amount of feet, and 4e has no rule for terminal velocity, his character would have actually died, so I would have been forced to create a pit-trap that wouldn't have been nearly as memorable.  Sure, it would have been balanced, but our group would not have had as much fun.

Now don't take this as an I-hate-4e post.  I DMed a campaign that lasted a year and was a blast in 4e.  Rather, I'm just answering dmgorgon's post.

This was one of my friends deaths who was trying D&D for the 1st time.

Rogue steals gold from party, plants it on barbarian to avoid suspicion.
Barbarian decides to eat the evidence.
DM decides system shock survival for every 10 gold the barbarian eats.
Barbarian eventually fails system shock survival role - dies.

Jan 20, 2012 -- 12:07PM, wuzzifizit wrote:

  First, the DMG had guidelines that prevented hazards from doing more than a certain amount of damage.  (Which would have stymied the creation of a perfectly-good trap.  Remember: the character was just supposed to fall onto the airship, not fall to his certain(ish) death.)  Since the fall was basically an undetermined amount of feet, and 4e has no rule for terminal velocity, his character would have actually died, so I would have been forced to create a pit-trap that wouldn't have been nearly as memorable.  Sure, it would have been balanced, but our group would not have had as much fun.

Yeah I don't use that rule either.     If my 1st level party wants to climb the mountain and set up an ambush point next to a 400 foot drop I'll let them.     I'm not going to say that a 400 drop is not level appropriate or unbalanced.