"PCs usually die of stupidity"

[Nifft]

What kind of stupidity?

1/ Stuff the players should have known about. (Don't jump in lava, etc.)

2/ Stuff the players thought they knew about. (Meta-gamers stink!)

3/ Good RP'ing. ("Fly, you fools!")

4/ Bad RP'ing. ("You have insulted my honor! I will triumph because I'm a PC!")

5/ Inappropriate RP'ing. ("O Noble Ogre, I will sing tales of your kindness if you let us pass! And don't eat us! Please put down the halfling?!")

6/ Inappropriate not RP'ing. ("You want to talk to a dragon?! They're evil and I'm a knight! Charge!!!")

7/ Not knowing when to quit / surrender / retreat / rest. ("We can handle one more room...")

8/ Intra-party conflict.

9/ The fool played with an EVIL PSYCHO KILLER DM!!! Mua-ha-ha!!!

10/ Your poll! That's what's stupid! (Brilliant addendum posted below...)

(keep yer pants on, a poll is coming...)

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

1) Players should have thought of - by far all the instances of the rest put together wouldn't equal this.

PS - why not a poll? ( or am I jumping the gun...) edit: oh. I DID jump the gun!

Example: The trolls are eating our horses, but didn't bother us, 20' away! Let's continue fighting even though half our number has fallen in 12 seconds!

 

[Nifft]

Hey, look, it's a poll!

-- N

 

[Aeson]

My handle here is from a character the DM says died from stupidity. My character was never the good guy nor did he do things for others. I always played wizards a bit different. This guy took on a Cleric in hand to hand and won. In one encounter we were facing the bad guy and the party was not doing well. I had a few hitpoints left. I tried to sneak up on him and use my last spell, Vampiric touch. He saved and turned around and used death touch or harm on me thus killing me. Aeson never did anything for others but he tried to save the others when he had a chance to run and save his own skin.

 

[Zenodotus of Ephesus]

This isn't at all about characters with a low intelligence score, is it?

 

[Orius]

In my experience, it's almost always not knowing when to quit. Pretty much every PC I've offed as a DM was a result of the character continuing to fight when retreat was a better option.

 

[davidschwartznz]

I voted not knowing when to quit, but thats more a of symptom. The real problem is lack of teamwork. Its never good when the only healer tries to be a frontline fighter.

 

[Psion]

Need... multiple... choices.

But I settled on the one most did... tactical foolhardiness.

Followed closely by a general case of "you're doing WHAT?"

 

[atom crash]

I had a player watch his PC die, with several potions of healing on his person, simply because he forget to check his hit point total at the beginning of the session. The group had been in several fights the previous session and hadn't remembered to heal up. Now the other players remind him to check his HP before they get into a fight.

Not knowing when to quit, and not knowing when to run away, account for all the really nasty situations my low level players get into. "We can take these 5 owlbears, no problem." Or, "Hobgoblins? There's only two dozen of them! How tough could they be?"

 

[lonesoldier]

This is interesting, I was playing a human LE Paladin 8. I had a Tiefling cleric 5 cohort. We were both devoted to an unknown god. (My GM is a cool guy, he let me make up a god that is somewhere between Rallaster from the BoVD and Nerull from Greyhawk). At any rate, the party decided that I am too focused on my goal and must be destroyed. At this point, I had two mercenary drow rouges working with me as well.

The ranger 8 thought he would stealthy kill us, but he rolled low on his Hide check and the Drow rouge 1s spotted him. We were in my castle, so I did have a BIT on an advantage. MY cohort loosed some spells, ranger failed his saves. I carried him to the altar and my cohort sacrificed him. ^_^

This gave me enough XP to level to 9th. I kept going on the jagged and wide path of the Anti-Paladin, taking Dark Speech as my level 9 feat. I also had a couple of low level followers (Armed them with crossbows, this is important later).

Next came the bard. Always hated him, knew he was talking behind my back, or singing. Bastage. I used Dark Speech to weaken a bridge, and the LE bard charged across, cut the bridge as he was halfway. He instantly cast featherfall, so my crossbow men open fire. He took enough to hits to go limp and get washed away by the canyon river. I hope he's dead. The search party cam back empty-handed.

The last guy realized what was going on. By this time I had cut a deal with the drow empire, saying I would give them the other half of the planet. Fools, I planned on becoming my god's avatar once he was awakened and slaying them all. With about a 200 strong drow army I attacked the wizards castle in the night. I ended up teleporting into his stronghold with a cadre of drow rangers/fighters (having spellcasters who are greater than you on your side rocks), while several portions of the wall were turned from rock to mud. I ended up capturing the wizard (he eventually was pinned by the drow). The cohort sacrificed him too.

GAME OVER.

I blame them really. I don;t understand why they had to try and kill me, surely they did not think I would be ready for such an attack?