dumbest thing a character has survived

[Alhazred]

This all happened in the same Stargate campaign, in which I played the party's archaeologist/linguist. This fellow had a streak of dumb luck.

First, with his Strength of 6, he attempts to rappel down a 400-foot cliff. He begins to lower himself over the side, I roll my Climb check... and get a natural 1, a critical fail (for those keeping track, that's -1 with modifier). The GM activates the critical fail and my character falls the length of the rope to which he's tied before coming to an abrupt stop. Okay, second Climb check... another natural 1. And so it continued for several rounds, natural 1 after natural 1. Finally, about 100-feet above the ground, the rope breaks (too many abrupt stops after a long fall) and the archaeologist plummets into the river below. I fail my Swim check and, were it not for our commander, I would have drowned. Later that session, we found the secret passage down the side of the cliff.

Same campagin, same character. As the party's linguist, the archaeologist is designated party-spokesman on several occasions. Big mistake. He decides to quiz Odin on his knowledge of Norse mythology. He tries to negotiate a peace in the middle of a battle. He makes several unflattering comments about the arch-villain's (a super-goa'uld) choice of wardrobe. He (in conjunction with the party scientist - who eats any food offered) activates alien devices - the party was once teleported into a goa'uld mothership, whilst on another occasion my character was teleported to an alternate dimension by himself. Imagine an archaeologist trying to explain quantum mechanics, multiple universes and such to the Army. I was condemned as a goa'uld spy (though the resident physicist thought I was simply mad).

Same campaign, same character. Despite his complete lack of martial proficiency, the archaeologist happily launches himself into battle. Ironically, thanks to several natural 20s, he killed more henchmen than the party sniper.

I miss my archaeologist.

 

[Chroma]

Elven ranger, hunting in the woods, trampled by a moose... good thing his hunting buddy found him before he died.

 

[Horoku]

I was DMing for a 1st level party, going after an evil wizard on his own turf. For the information of the forum, the evil wizard was a 4th level human wizard... infected with Wererat lycanthropy, and possessing the "Control Form" proficiency. It's a 2E campaign, because I'm strange like that.
So anyway, he comes out from behind a big curtain, and I give the following description:
"Stepping from behind the tattered curtain on the east side of the room is a foul little man in purple and gold robes. He stands about five feet tall, and smells of filth and refuse. His nose is long, and pointed, and his face is surrounded by scraggly whiskers. He addresses you with a weasely little buck-toothed grin, and looks you all up and down. He has yellow eyes! So help me, YELLOW EYES."

So, one of the PC mages proceeds to say to him, "You, sir, are ugly and dispicable."

Then he pauses when he sees my look of grim amusement, and says, "Can I make an etiquette check on that?"

..."No, Bruce. You can't."

Anyway, a couple magic missiles, a casting of Blindness, a Color Spray, and a very gross transformation later, the party somehow managed to survive. I was impressed.

 

[DarkSoldier]

This all happened in the same Stargate campaign, in which I played the party's archaeologist/linguist. This fellow had a streak of dumb luck.

My character survived a near-direct hit from a glider cannon. It's not a "dumb" survival, but I was prone on the ground, and the operator of the cannon was pretty much aiming directly at me.

Following that, I obliterated Marduk with a single staff blast, and then got my arm blown off by my traitorous ex-CO.

 

[Gargoyle]

Leaping into the Abyss

I played an egotistical human fighter in a Spelljammer campaign back in 2E with a low Int and Wis. He constantly survived against incredible odds, despite awful decisions.

He and his crew were attacked by a demon of some sort, and in his typical style he scored a critical hit, forcing the demon to open a portal to the Abyss to escape into. He immediately leaped into through the translucent portal intent on finishing the wounded demon off...not for any moral reason, just out of pride. Instead of killing the demon, he found that he was faced with several of them...and he had not even been able to don any armor.

The other player characters sighed and assumed he was toast. Due to a series of incredible dice rolls he survived the attacks of several fiends and managed to jump back through before the portal closed. He then casually wiped off his sword and said "Got him," to the amazement of his crew (the player characters).

The other players knew better of course, but their characters thought he was incredible, so it was great fun playing him as this larger than life hero who was secretly terrified that the demon would someday hunt him down. As captain of their spelljamming ship, he consistantly made bad decisions that the first mate covered up or twisted into intelligent ones.

 

[DM-Rocco]

The stupidest thing one of my players did, (I wasn't around, but they talk about it from time to time) was when they were a young party of around level 3, they put some food in a clearing and hide in some bushes and waited until an Ettin came by. One character leaned in towards the others and said to the DM "I wait until the Ettin grabs for the food, and then I shoot him in the head", actually, I think they all died , guess that doesn't count.


The stupidest thing I ever did and lived to tell the tale, was when I was playing 1st edition (but after Unearthed arcana) I had a 29th level Wizard/23rd level Druid and we needed Asmodeus' 1,000,000 diamond from his staff for a spell component, to save the world of course, and to get it we needed to go through each of the planes of hell. When we got to Tiamats lair, we tried to sneak past her and go through the portal to the nineth plane of hell (our DM had Tiamat ascend to the ruler of the 8th plane), but it is hard to sneak past Tiamat and her five dragons.

Of course a fight broke out, we ganged up on the Big red first and when he was killed I cast time stop (don't know why I didn't cast it before, duh), only to find out that Tiamat wasn't effected by Time Stop (damn DMs and their rules).

Of course I was surprised, but I did the only thing I knew how to do when I was low on spells, I tried to talk to her and reason with her. To my surprise, her great red head began to agree with me and was going to let us pass, as long as we agreed to kill Asmodeus (well, how else would we get his staff after all), but the sneaky black head almost killed my PC with a bath of acid while I was distracted.

After that, we made a run for it, four out of eight made it. I almost fell, I was almost number five to go down, I was at 49 hit points, made my save as the red head breathed on me as I entered the portal, made it out on the other side with 4 hit points, whew, almost lost him.

 

[ironmani]

Dumbest thing I saw in a game was during the adventure "Night Below" we were trying to get a clan of goblins to relocate further from a small farming villiage. Now there are five of us all at 2nd level. A human fighter, a dwarven cleric, an elf mage/rogue (me), a half elven ranger, and an elven blade dancer. Now we are in the goblins cave and there are about forty of them. An the blade dancer and ranger begin to talk in elven about attacking the goblins. I quickly explained to them in no uncertain terms, in elvish, that if they made one threating move, I would web them in place and offer them to the goblin for thier amusement.
Dumbest thing I ever did in a game, was durning a fight near a river, I was knocked over and dropped my sword in the water. Not thinking, I said I jumped in the river to get it back. No swim ranks, and I was in half plate. Needless to say I failed my check, and was swept away. The DM felt bad for me and let me make a str check to pull myself along the bottom of the river to the bank. I never did like that sword anyway.

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

well I guest having annoyed the all powerful omnipotent rogue into dumping me in the abyss was dumb

 

[moticon]

Fly to avoid Giants?

Last week in my daughter's gaming group they surprised a small hill giant hunting party. 3 Hill giants spread about the battle map attacked from 3 different directions. The wizard (7th level) was blasting away at the one on the right, but was also *Very* exposed to the return fire of the giant's boulders. After two of those he was down to 4 hit points. He had already cast fly earlier and his decision on how to use it was to fly 90' straight up and cast another offensive spell... Uh Oh... With his AC of 14 he was suddenly a sitting/flying duck. The other party members groaned (as did I) knowing full well he'd be a target.

I decided to give him a break because there was also a wolf and druid attacking the giant although not doing much damage. I rolled a die to select the target, with the odds on favorite being the wizard. He *was* the target.

The boulder easily whacked him and it was time to roll the damage (2d6+7).. I roll the dice out in front now so I can't fudge it. I decided to roll them one at a time... 7 HP damage to start, first d6 was... a 5! The only way he could survive was a 1... 2nd d6... a "1"!

The whole table shouted and the cleric ran pell-mell to help the slowly descending wizard... It was great drama and now the party is taking bets on how long before he really does die...

Moticon

 

[Laman Stahros]

2E Night Below

Party was attempting to attack (at night) a keep in the forest. They snuck up to the side of the keep (1/2 on one side of the gate, 1/2 on the other), and the spell point using wizard (PO: Spells and Magic) used his boots of levitation to float up above the wall so that he could cast fireball down on anyone behind the gate. The problem was that the ground just inside the gate was soaked with multiple barrels of oil. One fireball later, the floating wizard turned into a flaming meteor flying into the trees, the party on the ground was scorched by flames shooting out of arrow slits, and the gates were 50 feet away from the keep. Amazingly, the wizard survived. The player never was able to get the party to listen to one of his plans again (yes, it was his idea to try this.).