The Saga of Kiki Coberal

I was just a fledgling Dungeon Master.  My stories and the characters that inhabited them were fairly one-dimensional.  That is, they were, until one player came up with the idea of Kiki.

Kiki was, in most respects, a fairly standard wizard with one exception.  She was a witch.  According to “The AD&D 2^nd edition Complete Wizards Handbook”, witches gain their magic by making a deal with an extraplanar entity, usually a demon or a devil.  Her player and I worked out a story where Kiki was the servant of some sort of serpent spirit and was plagued with nightmares that were caused by glimpsing into the entity’s inhuman mind.  For us, this was pretty advanced stuff – up to this point our adventures consisted of me flipping open to a random page in the Monster Manual and having us fight whatever appeared therein.

Kiki joined an adventuring party (I can no longer remember who her comrades-in-arms were) and the group set out on a quest.  They may or may not have had a simple encounter at the beginning of the adventure, something involving rats or goblins which the party would have easily defeated.  The party eventually stopped to rest.  They set up camp, establish watches and turned in for the night.

At this point, I’d like to stop and explain one of the key differences between AD&D 2^nd edition and D&D 3.5e.  In 3.5, you have Listen and Spot checks.  If you, the player, roll higher than the Dungeon Master’s Hide and Move Silently checks, you notice an enemy and may take action to defend yourself.  In 2^nd edition, the DM rolled a single six-sided die.  If the result of the roll was a 1 or 2, you were surprised.  Now back to our story…

Kiki was asleep in her tent when the trolls found the campsite.  A Surprise Check was rolled and the party’s sentry was taken unawares.  I had the trolls randomly select a target by rolling another die.  I can’t remember if our third consistent player had joined our gaming group yet but realistically, I would have used a d6 with two numbers assigned to one player, another two numbers to Kiki and the last two to the NPC in the party.  The dice (and therefore the trolls) chose Kiki.

At first level, Kiki would have had a maximum hit point potential of 6 (4 for being a Magic User and 2 more for a high Constitution score).  Trolls, in addition to their regenerative qualities, come equipped with a pair of claws that deal 5-8 points of damage (1d4+4) and a bite that does 5-12 (1d8+4).  I rolled for the troll attacks against the unarmored, sleeping target and even rolling minimum damage would have netted 15 points (enough to take poor Kiki to -9) and probably scored somewhere in the mid-range of possibilities, pretty much killing her instantly.  As I narrated the results of the attacks and the gross amount of damage the trolls inflicted on her, I declared that the troll basically swallowed her in three big gulps, devouring her completely, tent and all.

It was probably one of the most inglorious deaths ever suffered by a player character in one of my games, rivaled only by the death of Captain Cygnus Keenblade of the Blazing Cutlass who was killed by a ballista bolt while sitting inside his cabin at the rear of the ship).

Kiki’s Legacy has become a cautionary tale about proper watch-standing instead of a story of Epic Character Development through Role-Playing instead of Roll-Playing.  Years would pass before I played (or DM’ed) another character with as complex a backstory as Kiki’s.  Her untimely (and admittedly uncool) demise probably set back my growth as a player by at least five years.

Kiki, wherever you might be, I mourn your passing and salute you for what I am sure would have been a phenomenal tale that was cut short by the capriciousness of dice and DM.