Ah, the stupid things PCs do...

[Saeviomagy]

I think it speaks volumes about the excellent quality of ENworld DMs that every other time I've seen one of these threads, most of the player stupidity has actually been the DM failing to explain situations to players.

Anyway, my example is as follows:
The party rogue was convinced that he was the world's greatest trapsmith, and had convinced the rest of the party of the same. His MO was to check for traps and succeed, attempt to disarm the trap and fail miserably (because he'd managed to end up with a terrible disable score), trigger the trap, save against it and survive unscathed, then bluff the rest of the party that he had successfully disarmed the trap (I meant to do that!).

In this case, the trap was a particularly nasty one guarding a passageway that the party knew for a fact looped back to where they'd already been. It consisted of not one, but two rays of enervation (ie - they drain 2d4 levels each on a successful touch attack). The rogue at this time was level 16.

The trap is initally triggered by the rogue as he steps on it's trigger while searching for a secret door that they know must be there (as they've already gotten to thefar side of it). It misses.

The rogue searches the trap trigger, finds it, and works out that the trap automaticallly resets after each attack. He decides to disarm it.

He rolls quite well, but this is a really tough trap and he triggers it anyway.
One of the two attacks hit, draining him of 2 levels.

Incidentally, I let my players roll their own disarm checks - so he knows that he needs at least a 20 on his roll to disarm it.

He tries to disarm it again. The second time, his luck runs out. The first enervate hits, draining him of 3 more levels. The second enervate crits him, and drains 14 levels, killing him instantly.

Later on the party had to battle his wraith, because not one of them passed the religion or arcana checks to know that they needed to take precautions.

 

[malcolypse]

I'm wondering about the mental state of the leader of the agents who seemed so unperturbed that Dead-Agent-Steve of the 20-odd bullet holes had got up and was moving around.

apparently dead-agent-steve was a zombie when he was recruited. the reason he wasn't worried was because you can only lose so much sanity from one source, and he had known ead-agent-steve for a while.

 

[malcolypse]

Malcolypse, could you please use capital letters? Using only lower case makes your posts very hard to read.

Cheers!

Appologies. Just for you, I'll give it a go. I have a very short attention span, though, so when I inevitably forget, you have to stay on my case. When I do fail, throw things at me. It's the only way I'll learn.

 

[radmod]

In Traveler and any other game with a big red button, one player (the same player) would always push it. Boom!

In the realm of "DMs make bad players", a DM (from '75 on) joined my campaign. The party promptly declared him to be party leader. The target was a small fort of bandits. Frontal assault would be suicidal.

His plan:
Infiltrate the fortress by dressing three men and two (comely) women as tomato sellers.
The result:
The boss came on to the walls, looked at them incredulously, turned to his second in command and said,
"Kill the men. Rape the women."

 

[Wolf1066]

I think it speaks volumes about the excellent quality of ENworld DMs that every other time I've seen one of these threads, most of the player stupidity has actually been the DM failing to explain situations to players.

Not in my case - the GM went out of his way to explain that the local miners had a very bad relationship with both local and off-world spacers and there really were a lot of explicit warning signs between the landing port and the mines and even more signs all the way into the mines to the subterranean bar - we just didn't give a rat's arse.

Young, dumb and full of... something.

Still, we survived it intact.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Not in my case - the GM went out of his way to explain that the local miners had a very bad relationship with both local and off-world spacers and there really were a lot of explicit warning signs between the landing port and the mines and even more signs all the way into the mines to the subterranean bar - we just didn't give a rat's arse.

Young, dumb and full of... something.

Still, we survived it intact.

I'm sorry I don't seemed to have phrased things correctly.

In OTHER threads on OTHER sites, often the humerous player errors are things that are obviously a miscommunication from the DM of the scenario.

In THIS thread, I've seen none of that, and I think it's great!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Back in the day a friend and I were bored and other players didn't show, so we ran a Dark Sun solo. The player went through all the trouble of picking powers for a triple-class elf (level 3 in various classes of which I forget, but no doubt one was thief).

He was wandering down a dusty path when he saw a tangle of thick, thorn-covered, vine-like growth on the side. Thinking to get water from the plant, he cut it open, only for the 'inside' worm-like part of the plant to snag and strangle him dead. Game over. Never forget that one (Do others remember those plants from one of the flip-format modules)?

 

[thedearhunter]

Last session was one of the dumber things ive seen. The PC's were preparing to ambush a weapons shipment coming into a city. They set up on high bluffs flanking the road, and prepared the attack. As the heavily guarded convoy came through and the warden was about to drop a boulder down on them, the rogue decided that the best plan was to make a giant leap into the back of the main wagon.

He did just that, and then proceeded to get immediately dropped by the brutes in the wagon. All that time prepping an ambush, gone to nothing,

Also, on that, i seem to be noticing a trend that Rogues tend to be the stupidest characters. Character issue or player issue?

 

[Lord Captian Tobacco]

Where to start?

The party (low level, 2nd ed, D&D) has this mage. He had the most powerful spell available - 'Sleep'. Buut he had this habit of targetting the leading baddie, thinking that the leader would be the one out front. Unfortunatly, by the time the spell went off, it would also catch the party fighters too.
After being put to sleep - again - for the fourth time, the fighter kicked his butt over the moon...

--------

Different group
High level 2nd ed D&D. Knowing that the Koa-to live in semi-underwater lairs the party planned accordingly. The mage even brought extra Water Breathing scrolls (not sure how the papyrus would hold up under water) and the cleric cast Continual Light on different pieces of gear. All went well until they faced the Kraken.
The mage unleashed a Lightning Bolt.
Which detonated/discharged/grounded at the end of his finger, killing most of the party...

 

[coyote6]

Also, on that, i seem to be noticing a trend that Rogues tend to be the stupidest characters. Character issue or player issue?

I call it the "crazy ninja syndrome". I was at a con one year, and every single person playing the rogue/stealth person was crazy-dumb. The Iron Heroes rogue (or is it thief? I forget) wanted to use his one dose of poison to KO an entire nomad tribes' worth of horses; he then wanted to use their (dung) fires to set fire to the tents -- I don't think he understood what a dung fire was.

And that was just one out of four.