My First Character Death

My very first character was a Dark Elf Ranger/Magic-User (don’t judge, I’d been playing for about 5 minutes and hadn’t read any of the novels) named Gray Wolf.


I didn’t really know much of anything about Dungeons and Dragons at the time, just what I’d read over the shoulder of the kid who sat in front of me in Mr. Quick’s Sophomore English class.

I had decided that I was going to use flails as my primary weapon.  I had visions of Gray Wolf going all Bruce Lee on his enemies, smashing and bashing and nuchuking them to death in the most awesome of ways.

Sadly, this was not to be.

My very first encounter was with a bear. 


I’d seen Crocodile Dundee.  I knew how Animal Empathy was supposed to work.  I held out my hand and made cooing sounds at the bear but apparently, holding out your hand and making cooing sounds at a bear translates into “Please, maul me”.

The bear was happy to oblige.

I was shredded before I could even lay a hand on my weapons to defend myself or run away.

Moments after death, I was revived by a kindly passing wizard who called himself Fizban the Fabulous (again, don’t judge – I had been playing for all of about 20 minutes and still hadn’t read any of the novels).

After being brought back from the dead, I continued on my merry way – in search of thrills, fame, and fortune.

I soon found a cave and within that cave I confronted a pair of goblin warriors.  I dispatched them with alacrity and searched their bodies whereupon I found a blue gem (Wooooooo….sparkly).

I continued into the cave and after several twists and turns stumbled across a wizard in the middle of some fell rite and attacked. 

I failed to notice him noticing me. I charged.

He turned to face me and cast a lightning bolt spell. I raised the blue gem I found, thinking that it might have magic that would protect me from the blast.

Turns out, not so much.

I died (again).

But, my DM was merciful and as I lay on the ground bleeding out, he allowed me to notice a potion bottle on the ground.  I crawled over to it, pried the stopper out with my teeth and downed the contents.

My wounds healed, I rose to my feet, invoked the innate drow ability of faerie fire on the nearest goblin minions and fled.

The goblins shrieked and gave chase, followed closely by their wizard master.

I managed to drop a couple with my bow as I ran and managed to get out of the cave where I called upon another dark elf ability – levitation.

I rose up above the entrance to the cave, drew my flails, cast the only spell I knew (Shocking Grasp) and waited.

The goblins poured out of the cave in a rush and continued along the path, thinking to catch me before I escaped into the woods.

The wizard appeared shortly after the goblins and I cancelled my levitation and dropped on him from above, beating him with my flails (one of which was still electrified from the spell I had just cast).  He dropped like a sack of bricks and I quickly searched his body before running off in the other direction. 

I learned two things that day.

The first was never try to “Crocodile Dundee” a bear.

And the second was to look around before running recklessly into battle – a lesson that my arcane foe would have benefitted from as well.