Dude, ouch. Ability damage is really a big middle finger from DM. He's saying, "Even if this doesn't kill you, you'll spend 10 minutes recalculating bonuses and saves." A friend's barbarian once took 16 CHA damage. His charisma was 6. He was dead, but we had no idea why. Seriously, how does charisma damage kill someone? What a bullshit mechanic.
My only character death came in the latest 3.5 campaign I played. The death wasn't hard because I had a lot invested in it, but it was representative of the death of that campaign. The DM was a huge Dragonlance fan and very proud of his knowledge of the world. He had clearly written a campaign that in his mind was as epic as any tale from the books, and was determined to keep us chugging along the rails. He was the sort of guy who take control of my friend's kender at times because he believed the personalities of that race would act compulsively in ways he didn't care to explain to the player. In fact that player didn't even start with a kender. The DM decided to morph him with some kind of BS spell.
I could have cared less for his stupid story, and I designed a cleric to knock out combat as fast as possible. I chose metamagic feats and spells to buff abilities to insane levels (at times I could buff strength up to 36) and debuff enemies. I was usually quite drunk during our sessions (my cleric didn't carry a shield; instead his second hand held a glass of gin on the rocks) and spent most of my time making jokes (you know, "all aboard" and "choo choo").
Anyway, one night I came back to the table after a fridge run with drinks in hand to find we were in the third fight of the day. Whatever, no big deal. There were some kind of magical ogre warriors that had come out of nowhere and they were starting their surprise round attacks (naturally we didn't have a chance to spot them or rest after the previous encounter). They each get two attacks. I hear from behind the screen "Oh, critical... confirmed. And another critical. Next guy, critical and critical. *damage dice rolling* Well, they hit you for 85 points of damage." I was pretty wasted, so my first reaction was "Wait, what? Someone's hitting me?" Then I looked down at my sheet. The math took a while, but I was at -30something HP. I told everyone I was dead then ripped the character sheet in half.
It's entirely possible he rolled four natural 20s in a round. I don't believe he did, of course. Hell, he had previously shown off his loaded d20s. Either way, the guy was a douche. I rolled up a new character with a background and abilities even harder to fit into his canon, but the campaign lasted just one more session before breaking up.
It was a lame PC death, but in my mind it sticks out as the rotten cherry on a big shit sundae.
