Character deaths: What are some you've witnessed?

As players or DM’s, what are some deaths you’ve seen? Were they preventable, or luck of the dice?

A player fell into a pit trap and broke something important. It certainly could have been prevented, as I made a point of the trap area being significantly different than the surrounding terrain. One guy even made a point to warn people to watch out for it, but when somebody crossed without falling in, it was quickly forgotten. On the way out, though, kertrapped!

We have a whole wiki page of character deaths here. Most of them were reasonably preventable… In particular, the giant piles of deaths (the morlocks, the ghouls, and the wyverns) were reasonably preventable - morlocks could have been avoided if they hadn’t pushed deeper into the dungeon when they were out of resources, ghouls if they’d checked the ceiling, and wyverns… well, if they hadn’t run out in the wilderness without mercenaries, it would have been less bad at least.

Well, quite memorable: i once played a gnome illusionist/thief 11/9 (or so) who found a potion and after taking a sip, the GM told me that Taskin (the gnome) felt rather weightless. I tucked the potion away, writing on my charactershett: potion of flying…A couple of sessions later, our party fought a red dragon high on a mountain plateau. The beast flew high in the air, making barbeque out of us with his fiery breath. So, Taskin drank the potion, operated his rope’s integrated pulley system to raise the robe ankle high, to get a proper running start, jump of the cliff and fly superman-like, magical dagger raised high, towards the dragon in order ti pierce his soft belly…Well Taskin flew, but downward…SPLASH…my GM never told be what that potion was. But it was definately not a potion of flying…

At first level, Samson was stabbed by a kobold, stabbed by two skeletons, and lived long enough to die because he wasn’t watching where he was going and fell into a pit … headfirst.

Also at first level, Radegund stood her ground in a narrow door and held off two ogres long enough for the party to escape.

At fourth level, Grimoald was standing in the wrong place when a giant scorpion came rushing out of the ground. The sting was short but painful, and even resurrected, he was never able to see again.