Your rogue died gloriously, though, didn't he? I had to laugh because his death reminded me of a campaign where I was a player. We had (at the time) seven players and and the DM. I believe all of us were about sixth to eighth levels and had been traipsing about hunting a marauding green dragon that seemed to have summer and winter homes in different areas. Anyway, we found it, and we had an epic battle that all of us wish we hadn't had. But we just couldn't retreat and have it known that we ran from a dragon! No way, not after all the boasting we did! (see? it's easy to digress, Olan !!)

So we stayed, and began falling, one by one. Those still able to fight were doing damage, but the dice dieties were angry with all of us that day. And some of us were in the periphery of more than one blast of the dragon's breath after we fell. As each character fell, the DM sent the player out of fhe room and maintained a closed-door policy until the entire group was killed. After all, since the characters were "out of it" so should the players be. We didn't have a problem with that, because he was a good DM and this particular campaign was really good. But, once outside the door, and as the group grew one by one, we all discussed this tactic of his of killing of an entire party. We were -- to a person -- incensed that he would kill us off like that and ruin a good story line.

To make a long story short (too late!), at one point, the only one left with the dragon was a thief, a generic-as-you-can-make-them thief. And he seemed to last the longest alone with the dragon. If he was dead, why didn't someone come out so we could go in and hang the DM? Finally the thief's player stuck his head out the door and said we could come in. Oh, were we angry! The DM informed us that we were all alive and concious, but sleeping. What? Was this all a mass hallucination? A bad common dream forced upon us by magic? Here, the DM turned the story over to the thief's player, who informed the rest of us, as he informed the players as they awoke, that he had managed to kill the severely weakened and damaged dragon -- with hand crossbow bolts! It took all of his quiver but one, from around a corner of a passage. He had two bolts in a row -- in a row! -- that hit full 20's. Both were on called shots at the eye to hit the brain! Any way the dragon's dead, he had nursed us back to health (or thereabouts) by pilfering supplies from the wagon we had brought and from our own packs. Elapsed time for the party's "useless delvers" status? Total seven days.

From then on out the thief demanded that, not only were we to be more respectful to him for saving our collective backsides, we were to refer to him henceforth as "Wyrmsdeath". He became insufferable as a character, but it made for good roleplay.

I know. I didn't really die, but it all played out so well that I thought I had, and didn't like the method at the time. ...

I thought I'd relate an event that ended a long campaign based in Mystara (an old campaign setting from the '80s for the uninitiated).

The PCs were all a bunch of rogue, desperadoes and just generally very unpleasant people. It consisted of a deeply racist orc, an insane barbarian (one too many hits to the head), an (annoying) elvish cleric, and my character who was a mercenary treasure-hunter.

The majority of the PCs had all been geased after falling foul of a very powerful cleric, and forced to end the life of an upstart snake creature that was striving to become a God in its own right. At first the group decided to resist the task imposed upon them, but when they started getting sick they had no choice but to try and complete it. Privately my character was thrilled at the news. He had not been geased, and being a hunter of rare artifacts it was right up his alley.

So the group entered the vast ziggarat that was this creature's domain. And it was vast. There were traps everywhere and nagas around each corner. Furthermore there was a band of catfolk who had infilitrated the same structure and were fighting a war of their own against the snake-men. Worse still when we finally saw the snake creature we were supposed to kill, any courage we had left us. It was huge and bloated and filled a 50'x50' room all on its own.

So the PCs decided to do the wise thing and run!

It was after we escaped that things got interesting. In our explorations we had come across a half-orc who had ignored us but was single-handedly slaughtering nagas. After we escaped the ziggurat the same orc approached us. He produced a dagger that he claimed was an artifact that could kill the snake-creature and he wanted to trade it. His reasoning was that he knew that we needed to kill the snake, and that he wasn't interested in doing it himself.

We looked at the half-orc. The half-orc looked at us back. We noted the medley of wonderful weapons the half-orc carried alongside the dagger. The half-orc yawned. We decided to overpower the half-orc and pillage his corpse. The half-orc changed into an bronze dragon.

Needless to say we all died a horrid and brutish death.

A short lived level 5 fighter, only survivor of a group that went to explore the underdark. Got speared by a lucky goblin upon reaching the surface.