Ambrus
Explorer
Same here, I was laughing out loud.
I have a similar lightning-and-water-don't-mix anecdote; actually a trio of related stories. In a 2e FR campaign one of my players was playing a gallant bard who decided to take lightning bolt as one of his spells to give his character a little eldritch oomph. The first time he cast it was on an NPC who had fled up a flight of stairs. Running to the base of the stairs with the rest of the party in tow, the bard offers some prosaic quip about how the NPC can't hope to escape his arcane might before letting loose with the lightning bolt. The thing to remember about 2e lightning bolts is that they're reflected when they bounce off of barriers. I ask the bard player: "Are you sure?" He thinks about it for a too brief moment and says: "Well, yeah. Why not?" The NPC makes his saving throw as he throws himself to the ground while the bolt hits the wall and ceiling at the top of the stairs and ricochets back down the flight of stairs to engulf all of the PCs who, by this time, are all standing single file as they prepare to run upstairs. In the end, the NPC only took half damage and got away thanks to the fact that most of the party was knocked out of commission or whimpering in pain. Naturally, the bard, with the lowest hit points is the first to fall unconscious.
The next instance sees the party hurriedly crossing a river to flee a pack of wolves who are swimming after them. Turning to make their stand against the pack, the PCs draw their weapons and engage the lead wolves. I describe how the pack is crashing through the river, churning the water and kicking up a wild spray as they charge hungrily towards the PCs. That's when our dashing bard decides to cast his second ever lightning bolt. I ask the bard player: "Are you sure?" He thinks about it for a moment and says: "Yeah, sure." As you might expect, the ten foot wide bolt sizzles as it passes over and through the churning water, causing the bolt's effects to radiate through the water in a thirty foot radius and thereby electrocuting many of the wolves but also the entire water soaked PC party. Once more the PCs find themselves groaning in pain amidst the lapping waves and charred canine carcasses floating all around them. The PCs left standing are desperate to patch themselves up and save their unconscious friends from drowning as the remaining wolves continue to advance on them threateningly. Naturally, the bard, with the lowest hit points is the first to fall unconscious.
The third instance sees our intrepid party in a cavern in which the rearguard has been ambushed by a group of viscous tunneling osquip (giant buck-toothed rats) Having downed an allied tiger familiar, the osquip turn and flees back into a 1-ft. wide tunnel in the side of the cavern. Our dashing bard runs up and, being wary of crawling in after the osquips, decides that to send a lightning bolt down the tunnel after them. I ask the bard player again: "Are you sure?" He thinks about it and says: "It'll go down the tunnel where I point right? Why not?" The reason being that the lightning bolt is ten feet wide I think to myself as I start rolling damage. Predictably the bolt slams into the cavern wall (and does also race down the tunnel incidentally) which is then reflected onto the bard himself and the rearguard he was trying to save. Naturally, the bard, having the lowest hit points falls unconscious and the tiger is charred beyond recognition.
Once the bard got patched up by the other party members, he angrily tore the lightning bolt's page out of his spellbook and burned it swearing that he'd never cast another of the damned dangerous things. He never did.
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As for just plain inexplicable party decisions, once the same party had passed a blockade to sneak into a baron's keep that was under siege to help his daughter (a paladin) who was trapped alone inside. Having found her, they bunk down for the night with the idea to escape before daybreak. Unfortunately, during the night an invisible stalker snatches the lady up and flies away with her while the party tries desperately to stop it. The party sneaks back out of the keep and gives chase. Looking at a map of the area and comparing it to the direction the lady was being carried they conclude that she can only have been taken to some abandoned mines two days away. So they set out and march for a full day towards the mines. Then, in a move I will never understand, the party begins reminiscing about a dungeon they'd explored some months earlier. One of them says: "Remember there was a door nailed shut that we never opened? What's behind it might be relevant. We should go check it out." To my amazement, the rest of the party agrees and dutifully makes a 90º turn as they set out on a four day journey back to the aforementioned dungeon; leaving the kidnapped noblewoman (the gallant bard's paramour no less) to her fate in the mines. Once they eventually do get to the mines, they discover that the paladin lady had been sacrificed to the BBEG's god and subsequently animated as a zombie. She of course attacks her ex-boyfriend the bard in preference to the other PCs.
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