Ah, the stupid things PCs do...

[Lord Ipplepop]

I have 2 pretty stupid cahracter tricks to report (actually, there are literally hundreds more; however, we'll go with just 2):

1) 1ed CoC game. The characters are checking out a "haunted" house that the neighbors are slightly concerned about. Up the stairs, into the attic. There is a hangman's noose in the center of the room and 3 ghostie-types on the other side. One character charges, grabs the noose and swings towards the spiriti sancti and proceeds to Bruce Lee his way into the history books... as it was the last thing conscious mistake he ever made. They all set upon him, and he was dead almost immediately.
The culprit? C'est moi.

2) 1ed AD&D game. The 1-3 level party wanders into yet another nameless dungeon searching for treasure. Five minutes into the game, comes the first encounter: 8 orcs. The 1st level M-U charges to the front to do his best Gandalf imitation, unleashes his mighty ONE magic missile, and realizes- much too late- that 1 spell and 2 hit points does not a warrior hero make. The hapless character was a one shot- one kill victim.
The cuplrit?? me, again. That mage was my first character, adn I was 5 minutes into my first ever game.

 

[wolff96]

One from last Saturday, actually... My Rise of the Runelords game.

The players are working on retaking a fort from Ogres. And these aren't your garden-variety ogres, either -- many of them have significant levels and hit like trucks. Two of the players matter to this story -- one a super-heavily armored character, who prioritizes defense above everything else and has an AC around 30. Not bad at all for level 8. The other is a Fighter/Mage type who has around a 20 AC, but a much, much higher offense.

They're fighting on a wall above a courtyard. There are a bunch of ogres below in the courtyard, pelting them with (rather ineffective) arrow fire. Another comes out to face them ON the wall, precariously balanced. The heavily-armored character gets knocked from the wall down to the courtyard, where he's swarmed by ogres. After making a valiant last stand and killing a couple, he goes down and is killed.

The other character -- blocked from the Ogre on the wall by the party Rogue, trying to buy time for the magic-users to kill the ogre at the cost of her own life -- decides to VOLUNTARILY JUMP DOWN and face all those ogres. The ones that just killed the far-more-heavily-armored character with FAR more HP.

He was reduced to a grease-stain in incredibly short order. His reasoning "My buff was about to run out!" A level one buff. That he could have recast at least five more times. *facepalm*

--------------------------

Oh, and the rogue survived. The ogre rolled a Natural 1 on a balance check and fell off the wall just before it was going to kill her. (And I roll all dice in the open, so it wasn't any fudging. )

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, the first time I ever played D&D, I was a human fighter with a handaxe and a potion of cure light wounds. I was ... uh ... young? Young-ish, anyway.

1. In mortal combat, I killed my first enemy ever - a vicious wolf! I then proceeded to ask the DM how many gold coins and experience I received for defeating such a foe. Up until that point, my roleplaying experience consisted entirely of Nintendo games - Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy foremost among them.* In those games, killing enemies of all stripes gave you gold and XP, and since D&D was kinda like them, I figured it would work the same way. Everyone had a good laugh, asking such things as, "Where would the wolf even keep the gold? In his mouth?"

2. Same game, at the end of the evening. My fighter is dangerously near death, and has spent several combat rounds basically trying to not die, rather than attacking the enemy. As the game wraps up, the DM asks me why I didn't just drink my potion to heal myself and get back in the fight. I pointed out that I hadn't sustained any "Light Wounds," which, to my mind, would be caused by some kind of holy source (as opposed, I guess, to "Dark Wounds," which would be caused by undead and similar creatures or unholy magics). I pointed out that, given that we were supposedly the heroes, having a potion to heal wounds-caused-by-good-guys seemed a bit odd to me as starting equipment, but then I was new at this and had already botched the wolf thing earlier in the evening. The DM then pointed out that, no, it meant it was a weak healing potion, to which I asked, "Oh - well, then would it have been any help at all, then? I was pretty heavily banged up."

And so began a multi-decade RPG career.

* This is also why I was using just a handaxe; in Dragon Warrior, the handaxe was a pretty damn good weapon that you had to wait until the 2nd or 3rd town to buy! In D&D, I

 

[Lady89]

FAMOUS LAST D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) WORDS

This is the best stupid PC last words ever

 

[kaomera]

The first group I DM'ed for in 3.0, the fresh 1st-level party was traveling through a swamp and came across the half-eaten carcass of an eight-foot long crocodile. Large, semi-humanoid footprints led away, so they followed them. They came to a small muddy hill, and could hear noises, as from a large animal, coming from the other side. The party proceeds to climb the hill, even the two that I pointed out where very bad at sneaking. They find themselves looking down on a troll, digging through the mud and generally making a mess, but it (miraculously) doesn't notice them immediately. They seem unimpressed. I inform them that some of the PCs recognize the monster. I double-check to make sure that they know what a D&D troll is. Several of the players roll their eyes at me.

The plan the PCs come up with is as complex as it is brilliant: "CHARGE!!!". I think "Well, they must know something I don't. Or have a plan. I hope..." They toss a total of zero flasks of oil and/or alchemist's fire, the sum total possessed by the group, apparently. One player does have a torch, but declines to light it yet, in case it goes out. The Wizard first refuses to move forward and cast his burning hands, then when he does so smacks the troll with his staff "to get it's attention first" before letting loose with the spell. The two bow-wielding PCs wade in with their back-up weapons, and the rogue forgoes a surprise shot with his crossbow.

So awestruck is the troll (and the DM) by the PCs exploits that a full two rounds of combat go by before the troll retaliates, during which a net grand total of absolutely no hit-points of damage is done to the monster, after accounting for regeneration.

I amuse myself with lavish descriptions of just how ineffective the whole attack is, while inwardly cringing at the thought of another three-hours plus wrangling the players back through the character-creation process. This impresses the players about as much as the troll did in the first place, and they are disinclined to flee. The troll starts ripping PCs in half, the burning hands does little more than annoy it, and after half the party lies dead one of the players questions whether they can actually beat this thing. "I highly doubt it, " I suggest helpfully.

Fleeing proves equally problematic. Had the PCs been willing to abandon their dead... Oh, wait, no, I mean the dead's gear... Anyway, apparently trying to remove armor from a dichotomized corpse does not actually assist in getting away from a hungry monster - who knew? Also, said monster, being a native to the swamp and long-legged to boot, is the odds-on favorite in any footrace that may eventually take place, although the field of competitors rapidly dwindles as they refuse to get themselves to the starting line...

Of course, as funny as this is in retrospect, it's all my fault. I should not have allowed them to come into close proximity with a creature that I did not expect them to attack and defeat. They, apparently, thought this must be some kind of lower-level troll equivalent... I'm a bad, bad DM.

 

[Dice4Hire]

The stupidest players I ever met were the ones who did not show up to my game.

How much stupider can you get?

 

[Dice4Hire]

Once in A DC Heroes game in college, I ran a trio of baddies against a trio of heroes. In DC heroes, most people choose to be bricks, Mentalists or Psychics, and are usually strong in their own area but weaker in the other two. SO the party and the enemy was basically he same

In the first fight, the party went up against their counterpart, brick vs brick and so on.

And got stomped. Mostly because the enemies were aiming attack at the non-counterparts and doing a lot of damage.

This also happened the second fight when he heroes recovered and found the gang again.

However, before the third fight I pointed out that the party might want to use the enemies' tactics against them.

An it as a slaughter. The party cakewalked them.

Good thing there are very few TP KILLS in superheroes, TP KOs, does happen, though