Your character does WHAT?!!!

[leporidae]

The setting was a newly built small town deep in monster-infested wilderness. What I had planned as a minor event - the NPC LG Cleric of the third largest church in town planned a protest rally against a small tax increase - shifted the entire direction of the campaign. Her plan was to attract members for her church, as well as put some pressure on the party, who had become important figures in the other churches and town in general.

Several of the PCs, especially the CG cleric/bard, join the rally, get carried away by the rhetoric, and begin to call for a revolution. They take over the rally, transform the crown into an angry mob and lead a charge on the guard barracks. A very surprising outcome to me considering that 80% of the city guards were co-religionists of the cleric/bard, and the party's and townsfolk's prior complaint with the guards was that they were too cautious, and were refusing to patrol until they received reinforcements (which the tax increase was going to finance in part).

The guards fire a few warning shots over the cleric/bard's head as he leads the mob against the stone keep (hastily built, and in no shape to resist a determined attack even with crude siege tools) where they live with their families. I think this through for several minutes to make sure I'm not just killing a character for doing something unexpected, but the guard's best option is to take the cleric/bard out permanently and quickly. His charisma is holding the mob together, in addition to the 'bard bonus' to combat, and sense of personal betrayal. The first volley of 25 heavy crossbow bolts is entirely targeted at him, 15 hit and make a messy end for a 5th level character.

In a sense, it was a risky tactic for the guards, if any of the other PCs had been willing to take up the cleric/bard's banner and lead the charge the mob would have been even more enraged. But they knew the guards would have time for at least one more concentrated volley before they reached the walls, and the other PCs dived for cover. Without a leader the mob fled as soon as the guards started firing at them.

That night the guards and many of the leading citizens slipped out of town, leaving the party in total control, and me throwing out several pages of future plans.

 

[kolikeos]

i remember playing a mad sorcerer and got pissed off by some idiot in a crowd inside the big city
i said 'i cast fireball on the loser'
the dm 'you know how many people you are gonna kill?'
me 'as much as i can get in the area of effect, and i make sure this guy's in there too'
sure enough, lots of civilians got killed and lots of high level law enforcers arrived to take care of me and my party, strangely enough the other party members had no objection to fighting the guards with me
the fight went bad for us so i used my scroll of teleport to get us out of there, obviesly ended up about 7,000 miles away into the desert with no way of getting back

 

[AmaraTrapspringer]

Hasn´t any of the characters in your game done something so stupid,nonsense or simply outrageous?

I remember while DMing Return to the Tom of Horrors that after having explained thoroughly and lengthfully to the players how careful they had to be with the Necromancers near the tomb´s entrance(There´s a whole school of Necromancers here,okay? Remember:a whole school filled with mages with high level teachers. ) they went to an inn and the fighter bumped into a Necromancer at the inn´s door.
The Necromancer said something like:
You moron!! Mind your step!!
Fighter: I chop his head off......

He actually did.

There was this instance, where my Half-Elf Ranger Artemus, and our Halfling Rogue Simo came across a couple of wizards "Supposidly" Trapped in thier encampment/house by an insane fighter.

Well we did what any "GOOD" adventurer would, we staked out the "Fighter" and his minions, and as soon as we were able, we attacked.

We wound up killing him as well as most of his followers.

Upon investigating further inside what we assumed was his warpost/home, but as fate would have it, it ended up being a Temple of Heironious...He was just a fanatical Paladin.

We spent a good time attoning for that one.

So what do you all think?

 

[Corbert]

My wife was playing a humanoid hummingbird rogue, and had flown to investigate screams and battle noise coming from a merchants caravan. It was too late by the time she got there, all the NPCs were dead. She wanted to hide and sneak up to see the situation. I asked her what she was doing, and she replied she was going to fly nearby 20 feet off the ground, "just high enough no one can see me". When the other PCs caught up with her they managed to recover her corpse from the ice dome teh devil had cast on her.

 

[Chimera]

Current Group;

Players A and B seem to have problems sticking to the group plans. They're getting seriously annoying, though one of them seems to think that it's all Role-Play, and thus, it's all ok.

A plays a Psy Warrior. Our party's tank, so to speak. We're battling a group of Orcs holed up in an old keep. Half the walls are crumbled down, so the Orcs have put up pallisades to cover the holes. On either side of the pallisade are 5' squares of rubble, costing double to move through. The group plans to make a 'hit and run' strike, tearing a hole in the pallisade, striking hard, then running away.

A's character Enlarges, then tears a 10' hole in the wall. The next round, the party Cleric and Rogue run into the keep. Now keep in mind that neither of them fights very well (we were only 2nd level) and that we're badly outnumbered. Also keep in mind that we now have a 10' gap in the wall.

A's character, instead of rushing in to combat like a 'party tank' should, decides to hang back and tear another 10' hole in the pallisade. While we're under withering fire from the Orcs and the Cleric and Rogue have already run into combat.

I was spitting mad. A and two other players just looked at me and tried to explain how they all thought it was a good idea because we might somehow need a larger hole to run away through.

B.... Leave it to say that some people have this wonderful idea that they're role-playing really well when their character is suicidally reckless and we spend hours arguing with her about really simple plans that she refuses to cooperate with.

In the last session, my Wizard sat with Mage Armor and Protection from Arrows on while baiting a trap for a Manticore. The plan was for it to spray me with tail spikes, at which point I would pretend to be injured and screaming in pain in order to trick it into landing next to me. Then we would spring the trap.

During it's overflights, checking out the situation, A refused to sit quietly and kept manifesting Psi-warrior powers, failing the checks and thus, giving off visual and audible signs. Evil glares and demands that he STOP DOING THAT had no effect. B kept wanting to jump up and shoot the manitcore and only the efforts of half the table kept her from ruining the ambush. (It also wasted a lot of time at the table, arguing with her to KEEP TO THE PLAN and stop screwing around.)

 

[Herobizkit]

So we're playing a Superhero GURPS campaign, and one of our heroes finds a missile launcher that holds a payload of 20 and an assortment of missiles - acid, ice, high-explosive, plasma, and one with a nuclear warhead. He loads it all up and is as happy as, well, a man with a missile launcher can be.

We ended up facing off against a massive mecha that was running rampant through the city. We entered a 10-story bulding for cover, shooting at it from the ground floor through some large office windows. After a few rounds and a couple of shots with the grenade launcher, we still hadn't put a dent in it. The thing was moving towards us, and would have be in melee combat on its next turn.

The PC with the grenade launcher gets frustrated and says, "F* it. I fire all my missiles in one huge volley."

FOOM.

The mecha is destroyed, as well as the cityscape for several miles. We end up fried, as well as buried and crushed to death under ten stories of office space.