Stupidest things PCs/DMs have done

[Sigurd]

A low level party (3rd I think) was well beyond its depth.

They had entered a sealed tomb, breaking the seals of protection. As the DM I had _told_ them they were powerful seals of protection.
The had gone down the dark stairway. Each step had caused them to quiver in their bones with fear and a sense of dread.
They found the giant sized sarcophagus with terrible images of a lighting wielding monster and warnings of impending doom on all those who open the sarcophagus.
I told them they were too scared by the aura of evil and power to act normally in the room. The Sarcophagus lid was huge, too large for them to lift and it was covered in arcane runes to bind the creature within. There were a grand total of 4 party members.

'Ok, we can't lift it' I take out my hammer and spikes and I'm going to try and break it open.....

They were the best friends, and first meals, that the vampire giant had in decades...


Sigurd

I couldn't exactly repopulate it with a bunny at the last moment.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Most of the stupid things I have been a part of or witnessed have been a result of stupid role playing. For example, I once witnessed a PC attempt to calm a very disturbed crowd that just had their homes destroyed by armies of undead and lizard-men by poly-morphing into the likeness of an individual that (as was well known to the PCs and all of the NPCs) heralded the Apocalypse.

Needless to say, the world's highest diplomacy check can't put a peasant in a "Happy Place" when they are CERTAIN the end of the world is near.

Why not? After all, if he is really good at diplomacy, he ought to be able to convince them that the end of the world isn't imminent!

If not, then what's extremely high diplomacy for?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Had a dwarf fighter who essentially repeated the parents' scene at the end of Time Bandits...

It was an obviously magical altar in an obviously evil temple, and I had him touch it bare handed.

POOOOFFFF!

Another time, another player's wizard hastily erected a Prismatic Sphere to protect the party from the pyrohydra that was bearing down upon them...without accounting for the fact that my female Paladin was NOT within its boundaries.

POOOOFFFF!

I volunteered my CN gnomish Illusionist/Thief, Fast Eddie, to be thrown across an underground chasm with a rope about her waist.

The oversized Cave Fisher hiding above in the dark critted, caught and crunched her- spaghetti style.

POOOOFFFF! er...SLURP!

 

[Kweezil]

The PCs have just arrived in a strange extra-dimensional complex, set up as a series of trials to protect the tomb of an anicnet wizard (the Tomb of Stefan d'Amberville from Castle Amber). Their first encounter is a mechanical blue dragon-contruct, which is currently busy knocking the party into next week, in a room where the only other exits appear to go into the elemental planes of fire and air.

DM-Kweezil: You're up <tiefling psychic warrior>.
<tiefling psychic warrior>: I dimensional slide into the elemental plane of fire.
The rest of the players: O__O?

To this day, I've no idea why he did it. He said something about thinking that his racial fire resistance would protect him. Maybe the mechanical dragon was so scarey that he decided to immolate himself rather than fight (they beat it the next round, when they realised it was massively vulnerable to water, and turned a decanter of endless water on it).

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

In the group I play in had a collective brain fart a while ago... Forgot to buff up before a fight with some psionic gith(yanki?). At 17th level with nearly 2 years playing that campaign... Was meant to be a 'speedbump' encounter and came 'this close' to a tpk.


As a GM - paladin character falls out of a boat and into a lake, can't swim very well in all that armour... The other PCs are trying to drag him out, when they see a giant turtle moving beneath them. The party psion says: "I'll distract it, you save the paladin." Rather than using any of his vast array of mental spells, the player decides to jump into the lake and "I'll polymorph into a giant, tasty looking salmon". Bite + Swallow whole.

Same player, Shadowrun - running through the Universal Brotherhood series. Short version - fighting a bunch of evil giant magical insects that (sort of) hatch eggs inside people. On finding out about them, he decides to walk into their base and cut a deal... Hmmm.

And again, same guy - playing Deadlands - got talking to a demon, then started asking it for help - in return for which he will offer it 'unspecified favours at a later date'. Like that's going to end well?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Had a whole high-level D&D party do the same bargaining thing with Asmodeus...no, it doesn't end well.

 

[Rockwolf66]

Ok, Party member Decides to get the Wilf Elf Barbarian Drunk. One blackout latter...it seems that she accidentally hit him a couple of times and he gets knocked out the second story window. Just don't ask about the landing.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Always bear in mind that playing D&D, or any RPG, for the first time, might overwhelm people so much that they can't detect sarcasm any more.

We had a couple of new players in the party. One of them played the typical dwarf - a lot of metal protecting him. We were on a ship and saw a hyrda approaching, obviously attacking. The dwarf states his intention to jump on that thing and attack. We stop him, telling him that he won't make that jumb yet, that there's no footing, no handy battle platforms and such, on a slippery hydra, and that his armour will drag him down in no time. He doesn't jump in after all, and we fight - and kill - the beast.

Afterwards, I say jokingly: "Hey, dwarf, why don't you jump in and look if it has any treasures with it" to tease him about his jumping idea.

And he jumps.

That's brilliant!

When players come up with something like that I (usually) run with it. It would have been a terrific challenge to improvise up some 'evil math' with which to carry out the conversation.

Lots of equations adding up to 666?

Jumped on a DBF thinking that the glowing stone it left behind was a magical jewel.

A what? DragonBellied Fox?

Charged a sleeping HARD at 1st level.

HARD-what? HARD-A.S.S?

 

[crystal]

lol, I was in a small room barging with a meige, and I almost had him, when suddleny one of my companions comes rushing into tha room, sees me and this meige. and without thinking he cast Ice storm. Mind you this room was only like 10 x 10. We all froze. Killed tha meige, me, my familure, and my companion....Lol, dumb ass......

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

We had this Cthulhu game about 20 years ago. During a game one of the guys miscopied the address of these cultist and our party went to the wrong house. The GM kept asking him if he was sure he had the info correct, which he insisted he did. The group of PCs barged into this house, strung the butler up in a tree, tortured the people inside, etc. demanding to know where the cult was meeting that night. All the while it was the house next door (which was determined after all of the NPCs had assumed room temperature. Not our finest moment...