The lovely stupidity of some players...

[Jack Haggerty]

Regarding the zombie-diver... You did have make a Bluff check vs the Zombie's Sense Motive t see if they believed him "playing dead".

Failure = Zombie beat him to death, then eat his brains.
Success = Zombie mistaken think he's dead, and eat his brains.


Anyway, we had a recently blunder. I wan't lethal, but it could have been...

The party was hunting down a glass shard from a magical mirror. After climbing down into an Otyugh's cess-pit, and after crawling through a low tunnel at the back of its trash heap, they emerge in a set of caves. They end up fighting a medusa to gain possession of the shard.

On their way out, they come across a cavern that is covered in moisture. Water slowly drips from stalagtites on the ceiling and runs in little streams to a murky yellowish-brown pool on the cavern floor. Unlike the rest of the caves, this one is completely clean of the mushrooms and luminescent moss that grows elsewhere. In the corner lies what is apparently the remains of a half-orc warrior... His skeleton lies on the floor, dressed in nothing but a chain shirt, gauntlets, helmet and shield. A battleaxe head lies nearby...

One player thinks, "That half-orc must have died a very long time ago, for all the organic material to have worn away like that."

Another player asks, "What's in the pool, can I see the bottom?"

To which I reply, "It's a bit murky, but you don;t see anything on the bottom of the pool."

The first player suggests, "It must be sediments and minerals from the cave water. That's why it's all yellowish."

The party paladin finally decides to strip down next to the pool, pulls out his bar of soap, and casts Create Water over his head. He wanted to take a shower and clean off all the filth from the Otyugh's pit.

Right about the time he was naked and soaping up, the Ochre Jelly, disguised itself as a pool of murky yellow cave water, slides up around his ankles...

 

[Joker]

Ah, the good old days.

It was when I was still new to AD&D and so my perceptions about how things worked were a little distorted.

We were given a mission to check out a keep from some kind of wizard or someone like that.

This are the following dimb-witted things I did in this three part mission.

1.) My character (Then a 3rd level fighter with the barbarian kit.) "knocks" on the front doors. Our Dm tells us that we hear some orcish sounds from within the keep and on top of the battlements.
My characters reaction: "They're just illusions."
I continue to bonk on the door which leads our Dm to say that the orcish sounds are getting louder and more aggitated.
My characters reaction: "Pretty good illusions."
Then I simply pull the massive doors open and the Dm informs me that 40+ orcs are storming out.
My characters reaction: "****"

The gods thought it was so funny that they turned back time so that they could watch it again. We pretended that nothing happened and the Dm brought us back the moment before I knock on the door.

2.) We kill most of the orcs and the rest flees. Now we have a whole keep filled with magic items. So my character goes treasure hunting. There's this main room, so to speak, that had a throne in it and a balcony with rounding stairs leading up to the balcony on both sides of the room. I come up with the wonderful idea that there is a treasure in the throne. So I look if there are any secret doors or something in the throne. Nothing.
My characters' reaction: "Must be one of those magically sealed treasures."
So I pull the huge marble throne up the long winding stairs, which takes several hours, and then gracefully toss it off the balcony. It shatters into hundreds of pieces and it turns out it holds no treasure.
My characters' reaction: "****"

The throne ended up being worth over several thousand gp's plus it some kind of magic property. Oh well.

3.) Someone in our party discovers a magic door leading to some kind of basement. It was dark so I throw a torch in there to light things up. And boy did I light things up. Turns out it was a library filled with all kinds of books, including spellbooks. The whole thing lights up.
My characters' reaction: "Would have used em for a campfire anyway."

My character finds a ring and puts it on. It turns him chaotic evil and because of the predominately good group there are a lot conficts in interests and Conan ends up getting dead by one of the other players. What, I told you I was new to the game.

There's one more thing I did, well actually two things but the bell just rang.

Tata.

 

[jollyninja]

ok, here is one i did last week,

i'm playing this dwarf fighter with a high int but a really low wis. so my idea is a guy who comes up with great plans that allways have some really obvious flaw that he has not considered. he never tells the party about the details of his plans (they are often in midbattle and seldom if ever actually endanger anyone but himself). anyway, back to the story. we stop out trek through the plains for a mid day meal and are attacked by a purple worm (how is that for bad luck) which after sustaining a great deal of damage retreates back into the ground. i ask the dm wiether or not it left a tunnel or if the ground filled in after it. the dm decides that if he rolls a one, there is a tunnel. he rolls a one and groans. my dwarf hands one end of his 200 ft rope to a strong fighter type and dives into the hole to chase the purple worm. now as you know, this can end only badly for my dwarf in most cases but the dm had another encounter planned for lunch, long story short, the fighter type got snatched by a really big flying lizzard, both he and the dwarf made their strength checks to hold into the rope and my dwarf was ripped from the hole at great speed, being flung 50 ft from the hole, and nearly dying.

 

[jollyninja]

here is another one,

i'm playing a 2e wizard who has just taken on a new apprentice. now you will think that this is gross metagame thinking but it's not, the character had been driven quite mad over the course of the campaign. to test the strength of his new apprentice, he tells the young maiden to cast a magic missile at him figuring that it's a really good indication of the power of a wizard. the little whore was an spy sent to collect some of his more dangerous magical items for an elven kingdom. also she was a wild mage. power surge.........huge boulder..........dead level 12 wizard...........angry player who just killed his own character.

basically, the only way characters die in our campaign is by thier own stupidity. either by biting off way more then they can chew or just momentary lapses of reason.

 

[WinnipegDragon]

****POTENTIAL SPOILER FOR RETURN TO THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL****

The game I am currently DMing is taking place in Hommlet. The party will be doing RttToEE, but I decided to start them at level one in the Hommlet, so that they could have some familiar environs before everything starts. It's been going really well so far, and they are going to do one more little quest, before I spring the temple itself on them.

They've taken root in Hommlet, and even bought a house in which to stay. The funny part is this:

*** HERE IS THE SPOILERY BIT ***
There is a fellow by the name of Chatrilon Unosh, who seems like a good enough fellow, down on his luck, and will do odd jobs. He is actually an assassin working for the temple, and his real job is watching for potential threats to the temple, and gently guiding away anyone who might be on their trail. If they persist along that path, he will try and kill the interlopers.

Well, the party has bought this largish home, and since they are off adventuring, they need someone to take care of the place while they are away. Who have they employed? Mr. Unosh of course. He's practically become their best friend... I can't wait to see the look of surprise on their faces when they get to close to the temple.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

 

[MasterOfHeaven]

Regarding the zombie-diver... You did have make a Bluff check vs the Zombie's Sense Motive t see if they believed him "playing dead".

Failure = Zombie beat him to death, then eat his brains.
Success = Zombie mistaken think he's dead, and eat his brains.


Anyway, we had a recently blunder. I wan't lethal, but it could have been...

The party was hunting down a glass shard from a magical mirror. After climbing down into an Otyugh's cess-pit, and after crawling through a low tunnel at the back of its trash heap, they emerge in a set of caves. They end up fighting a medusa to gain possession of the shard.

On their way out, they come across a cavern that is covered in moisture. Water slowly drips from stalagtites on the ceiling and runs in little streams to a murky yellowish-brown pool on the cavern floor. Unlike the rest of the caves, this one is completely clean of the mushrooms and luminescent moss that grows elsewhere. In the corner lies what is apparently the remains of a half-orc warrior... His skeleton lies on the floor, dressed in nothing but a chain shirt, gauntlets, helmet and shield. A battleaxe head lies nearby...

One player thinks, "That half-orc must have died a very long time ago, for all the organic material to have worn away like that."

Another player asks, "What's in the pool, can I see the bottom?"

To which I reply, "It's a bit murky, but you don;t see anything on the bottom of the pool."

The first player suggests, "It must be sediments and minerals from the cave water. That's why it's all yellowish."

The party paladin finally decides to strip down next to the pool, pulls out his bar of soap, and casts Create Water over his head. He wanted to take a shower and clean off all the filth from the Otyugh's pit.

Right about the time he was naked and soaping up, the Ochre Jelly, disguised itself as a pool of murky yellow cave water, slides up around his ankles...

That wasn't stupid. That was fantastic roleplaying. In fact, if I had been DMing the game, I would've given the players extra experience for not metagaming, and the Paladin even more for properly roleplaying the fact he wouldn't want to be walking around with sh*t and garbage all over him.

 

[willpax]

One from last session

My brother brought in a new player (but, he claimed, "very experienced") to my campaign.

They were on top of a rather large, obviously supernatural, obviously powerful creature (that they had originally thought was a large spider-shaped platform because of course spiders don’t get that big).

The magician lights up the large cavern, and everyone notices that there is a large circle surrounding this large creature.

The new player, who has been hugging the wall and taking potshots with his bow, decides to take an arrow and drag it across the circle in the dirt.

I give him several warnings. First, the incredulous "Really?" Then, I insist that we wait until his intitiative to do the act. The magician (the only character who would have had knowledge of these engravings) is screaming "NO!" at the top of his lungs from atop the huge creature, correctly guessing that this circle is designed to keep said creature in the area.

My new player goes ahead and breaks the circle. There is now a demon loose in the world--a major plot development that I had never expected, and will enjoy immensely. But I'm not sure what the player was thinking. . .

 

[Junebug]

A few years ago (in 2E), the assassin in our party decided to single-handedly storm a building that was protected by several archers, all of which had line of sight to the front door. He runs to the front door, tries to open it.... locked. "That's OK, I pick the lock." We try to explain that it will take several minutes to pick the lock (I forget the exact rule), he says something like "I crouch down" and I think he may have said "cover me". It took a few rounds, but the archers made a pincushion out of him, and he never tried retreating.

 

[Mayhawk]

Dumb players

This one has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever seen a player do:

Back in the AD&D 1st Edition days, when I was in college, I played with a bunch of guys who were ten years older than I at the minimum. One of these guys was playing a thief. Our DM described to us the entrance to a dungeon that essentially amounted to a shaft going about ten feet down to a clay covered floor.

The thief was wearing a girdle of storm giant strength. Our DM allowed us all to randomly roll about three magic items when we created our characters (mid-level), and the thief got the girdle. He also had a sheep as a pack animal carrying all of his stuff. Not very characteristic of a thief at all.

We all entered this room about twenty feet into the clay-floored dungeon and found a chest at the opposite end of the room. There were no signs of any other creatures, no foot imprints in the clay, no signs of anything having placed the chest there , or anything. There was this closed chest. We didn't trust the situation, so we tasked the thief with searching the chest and the immediate area for traps.

Here's how he decided to check for traps:
First, he climbs back up the shaft to where his sheep is. Then, he ties a rope around the sheep and anchors it up top so he can lower the sheep to our level. After dragging this poor, unwilling, braying sheep twenty feet down the hall, the thief resolves to throw the sheep across the room at the chest. What did that accomplish? We had a pretty good dinner later, as the impact against the wall behind the chest (the thief missed the chest) broke the poor creature's neck.

The DM didn't even dignify the pitiful trap check with a die roll for success.

 

[Andor of the Blade]

In one game, I DMed (2E), one of the players wanted to play a wizard. He was an experienced player, and in his early twenties. As part of the campaign, each PC had to undergo some testing to determine if he was qualified to wield the authority and power he would receive, in this case; mastery of the arcane arts. He is first level.

For one of his tests, he was given a wand of fireballs with two charges left in it, a scroll of Light and and a scroll of Levitation. He was told to make sure he understood the effects of these majicks (i.e., read the spells and know them). He then had to go into a cave and defeat a troll. A short summary of the conversation.

DM: You are at the entrance of a cave.

Player: I use the scroll of Light to cast light on a small stick. i then proceed into the cave carrying the stick.

DM: After travelling about twenty feet, you go around a bend and see a troll in a large cavern (50 foot diameter, 30 feet high). The troll is on the other side of the cavern. He just notices you now.

Player: I take out my dagger and charge the troll.

DM (and all other players watching): Whaat?

Player: I attack the troll with my dagger.

DM: OK.

We do one round of attacks.

DM: You're dead.

Player: Damn.

DM: Why didn't you use your scroll and wand?

Player: I wanted to save them in case I really needed them later.

To this day, we are wondering what the situation would be that he "really needed" to use them.