Stupid Player Syndrome


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eh I've mentioned this before but it can't hurt to mention

It was one of the first couple of characters I played. it was a human paladin with a Pegasus mount.

we had a rogue in the party that my character didn't trust.

I decided to spend the night in a nearby tree. I got my pegasus mount to do a flyby and proceeded to jump off and land on a branch.

Did I forget to mention I was wearing a suit of full plate?
 

Three incidents come to mind.

The first incident involved a wizard that had a wand that cast some rather damaging ice spell that the wizard would use against monsters. Now there came a point when the party was trying to save a npc from a monster, and after the fight the npc was bleeding to death. So the wizard thinking somewhere on the lines of ice being able to help with wounds uses the wand on the dying npc. Unfortunetly I don't remember what happened next.

The second incident involved the same wizard. We were stuck in a room with a strange magical ceiling that absorbed anything that touched it. The wizard has one of the partys fighters throw him at the ceiling. The gm then said something along the lines of "As your hair starts to disolve you realize that this was a bad idea."

The third incident occured in a different group and is what I consider one of the stupidest things to ever happen in a game I was involved in. Its winter, theres a blizzard outside, and the partys in small town. The inn costs 5 silver pieces. One player playing a monk decides that he doesn't want to spend 5 silver pieces and decides to sleep outside in the snowstorm. The party was about level three. The monk survived because several members of the party went out to rescue the monk after a few hours since reason did not work. We brought the monk unconsious back to the inn, and the cleric healed him. Despite almost dying the monk still not wanting to pay 5 silvers, turned around to head back out. The innkeeper at that point knocked the monk unconcious with a cudgel.
 

I think Merric is playing with offspring of the kids I played with when I was kid.

Stupid player
Thief is scouting about 300 yards in front of party. The party knows the enemy will be coming up the road just need a warning to start their spell casting. They are fighting a necromancer. Thief notices a bunch of crows flying around which look sickly (undead crows). Seeing the bunch of undead bugbears approaching the mark, she turns and starts signally the party the undead are coming. Instead of continuing toward the party (which would be following the plan), thief decides to climb a tree. An undead crow lands on the branch she sitting on. The thief does not move as the crow looks at her then the undead coming around the bend, then her (the failure to get the second clue). Now the party is holding spells because she is DMZ. As the last of undead gets ten yards by her she cuts loose with her bow halting the last few lines of undead. As she ignores the undead crow on her branch she is amazed that the undead last ranks are turning on her.
After much magic and combat later the party is unable to find her body and numbers of undead corpses are fewer than want she originally reported. She wound up in undead soup pot. And did not have the heart in her to attack the party in her vampire form.

Same player is arrested on minor criminal charge. Now the city had be finding bodies of suspect thieves about every three days but had not been able to find the guild headquarters. The players know this because they had previous been question on if they were members of thieves guild. She is brought before the hanging judge and is sentence to a minor flogging and fine this was with the defense help of two the party members. Members of thieves’ guild are in the courtroom watching her. She stands up and declares that she is a thief and proud member of local guild. She and her defense attorney are then tackled and placed in shackles. Still unable to keep silent, she declares there are members of guild in the courtroom and proceeds to name names and point them out. Which cause me to advance my story line five levels (I had plan on them taking out the guild when they hit tenth). After the dust settled (she was raised also) she was still outrage that the minor fine was still charged against her cut of reward money. I think the fact that the judge tried and sentence the thieves killed in brawl to hanging was big clue.


Same group son of one players. Pat is running a wizard. The group is trying to find the BBEG lair. As the pull off the main road they are halted by two orcs behind a crude barricade. Two fighters on horses advance to barricade. Pat gets mad at the two orcs mouthing off to party and drops a fire ball on them, with the two front line party members inside the blast radius and no warning.
Later the same game, the party finds the lair. Pat goes invisible with another pc. Checks out the territory around the BBEG castle, just before his spell expires instead heading for the tree line which he could make with ease before time, he decides to take his companion with him and explore the inside of castle. He has no more indivisibility spells. He gets halt inside the castle as the guard approaches within ten feet the lets loose with a fireball, which he drops at his own feet.
This and some other mistakes cause this player to be banned from playing spellcasters above level one.

Air Force kid. First he steals from the party, which includes a small fire breathing dragon with cleric levels (the npc medic since no one wanted to run clerics and I had plush dragon prop). Then he lies about it. The party lets it slip but warns him they watching him. He steals from the group again and again. Finally he steals the last time and is call on it by the dragon cleric. He challenges the dragon to single combat and lets the dragon goes first. He upset when the dragon’s breathe did two more hit points damage than he has; (funny he was never concern when the dragon was flaming his enemies). And the party does not help bandage him. Player got mad because I use the breath weapon first. But the dragon always use it breath weapon when he had too.

Air Force kid. He leads the party away from the easy adventure of taking out an orc nest (they were first level). After a receiving a lecture on how his former DM let them adventure where they may, he proceeds north toward the city which is occasionally having giant problems (yes those modules). I pull out my notes of the surrounding and warn the group they are passing near the lands of some evil witches. Instead of avoiding them he gets the party to seek them out. Imagine the three witches from Hocus Pocus. I took pity of them and let the party escape (because I did not want a TPK due his stupidity). When they bed down for night, the kid sneaks back to the witches and offers the whole party up in exchange for reviewing the witches spell books. He was surprise when they decide to make stew of him instead.


This is more oops moment or how Bob died laughing. The party meets a ghost on the third level of dungeon. Everyone laughs off the ghost and make their save. I mention it would be a good idea for everyone to check their age. Dice are rolled and Bob laughs as he gains wisdom and loses strength which really does not affect his pc. I warn everyone the need to roll up a maximum age soon. Bob mentions none of his characters have died of old age. Next week they hit the fourth level of dungeon and another ghost attacks. Bob laughs as he rolls and fails his save. He grins knowingly that his high AC would protect him against the ghost ageing attack. Bob laugh when I roll forty years. He then threw the dice to determine his max age. Bob laugh. We figured he aged one month pass his max age.
 

I'd like to join the ranks of those who put themselves on a pedistal for mockery.

We had just started playing 3rd ed. I was a half elven cleric, 4th or 5th level I can't remember. At any rate we had just recently killed a black dragon wyrmling and upon uncovering a wealth of treasure we had to go back to town and get a cart to haul it back. We get back to the dungon and all of a sudden an adult red dragon came and landed in front of us. Now at this point the rest of the party concluded that there was no way a wyrmling could have ammased as much treasure as it did and obviously somthing was up. I on the other hand remained blissfully ignorant of the fact. I think I was divying up the loot in my head.

The dragon was not immidiately hostile and asked us what we were doing there. I fell back on my cunning knowlage of Dragonlance and came to the conclusion that since evil dragons of different colours didn't get along praticularly well there would be nothing to loose by telling the truth. What followed went somthing like this.

Dragon: What are you doing here?
Me: Well there was a baby black dragon down in that cave there and we just killed it yesterday. We were just gonna go down and take the stuff.
Everyone: *Shocked looks*
DM: uhhhhh.... er.... hokay.... The dragon looks at you with rage in her eyes as she drops her change self spell and you find yourself facing a very very angry black dragon former mother.
Dragon: WHO WILL PAY FOR THIS!
Everyone: *points at me*
Me: Well, if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go roll up a new character.
 

I must admit that when I get a chance to play, I'm often the one who will take a shot at attacking something that is beyond my abilities. Heroism isn't about killing the weak stuff.

Once I played a fighter who was stuck on an island with a Blue Dragon (1st ed), and it may have been Isle of Dread. I think I had a way off the island, but I couldn't resist leaving it alive. So we played cat and mouse for several encounters. After setting an elaborate trap, it kicks my but again and I have to flee. I'm running toward a tall cliff and dive into the ocean below. I had few hit points, but I was hoping I could strip off my armor and evade the dragon. Well, I forgot about the ring of water walking that I wore constantly as it was one of my only magic items. The DM didn't forget, and ruled that the 20 foot head dive was like diving into the ground.

The next story isn't so dumb as it is entertaining. As a DM, I usually run a player through a start up scene to illustrate how combat runs. Our new female player was investigating a dingy campsite, when out of the nearby forest an arrow narrowly misses her.

DM(me): "The arrow is still quivering in the post near your head, what do you do?
Player: "I scream"
DM: "Really"
Player: "Well, that's what I would do if I were there"
DM: "Well, you are playing a hero-type person. You have a bow, arrows, and a sword. You don't have to scream."
Player: "Maybe someone will help me"
DM: "OK, well you see this hairy beast walk out of the woods, it is carrying a bow, but it drops it. It pulls an ax and walks toward you."
Player: "I run away"

She was a lot of fun to play with, and she turneed out to be a great player.
 


In my game on Sunday, I was half convinced two of the players were conspiring to get one of them killed.

The scene: exploring a graveyard, the party encounters a pair of vampire spawn and their skeleton bodyguards. One of the barbarians engages the skeleton, supported by the ranger/cleric. The other barbarian (R) takes on the spawn, which are being sniped by the ranger with the silver arrows. J, the wizard/cleric, is there for buff and support.

During the melee, R is struck twice and picks up two negative levels (fourth level character). Understandable, as he is the only target for the spawn. Soon after, he knocks one of the spawn down to zero hit points and gaseous form. It goes to flee. Great! Now he can focus on the remaining spawn.

Except R decides to pursue the fleeing gaseous spawn. Doing so provokes an attack of opportunity from the STILL ACTIVE AND DANGEROUS spawn. Luckily for R, it misses. J is next. He casts magic missile. Great! He fires two at a time, which has a good chance of taking down the active spawn. Except he decides to target the fleeing gaseous spawn, which poses no threat to the party.

Still active, the remaining spawn hits R again, inflicting yet another negative level. The hit points it gains from the energy drain give it enough unlife to keep fighting for another three rounds. An 11 or above on my D20 would have spelled the end of R, but my die had mercy.
 

D&D 2e party level 15+: they're hunting down the last of a long series of quest items in a semi-active volcano. Moving through the caverns they run into a gas-spore (beholder-looking gas bomb). They attack it, set it off, fail a few saves, move on with life.

A few hours later they discover a fairly scary looking monster (modified manticore). They do some scouting to see if they can go around it and the psychotic ex-elf now-drow cleric finds what he thinks to be a gas spore. When the party leaps to attack, he grabs the "spore" and runs towards the fray. Unfortunately, it's a sleeping bloodkiss, the vampiric variant of a beholder. He barely survives with his life.

Same group, the party is entering a town. The wizard decides that the drow cleric is a problematic individual and decides to polymorph him into a mouse without asking. The drow fails his save, as does his intelligent life-stealing weapon, and they are turned into a mouse with life-stealing teeth. The cleric, aware he's suddenly been attacked by magic, is falling, and that a massive creature is moving next to him, attacks blindly. He scores a critical hit and eats the soul of his horse.
You must understand, this is 3 years of real-time, almost 4 years of game time, and he's had this horse the whole time.
The drow immediately targets the wizard for retribution. (Neither the cleric nor the cleric's player were stupid) The life-stealing mouse begins attacking the wizard fervently, rolling 19 after 19 until another party member casts Dispel Magic on the mouse-cleric who promptly begins to beat the mage about the head and shoulders with his life-stealing weapon.
The rest of the party dives into the fray. The paladin tries to grapple and fails, the psionicist's TK bombs, the fighters and rangers fumble and knock heads together and the other cleric, going last, manages to screw up and Hold's the paladin in place, providing a nice protective barrier for the drow. The bard tries a bit of magic but the drow's Rod of Absorption eats the spell.
The drow wins initiative and applies a massive whoopin' to the wizard, taking him to -3 hps. The drow drops his weapon and surrenders but promises that should the wizard do such a thing again he will not only kill him but will sacrifice him to his dark god and ensure the wizard's soul is tormented for a thousand years.
The rest of the party pretty much agree with the drow (except for the thousand years of torment in a few cases) and only apply enough healing to get the wizard up to 1hp.
 

This was not neccessarily a stupid player moment just a miscomunication

the story involves the one female who played in my D&D game I ran, She was an Elven Sorceress. the party and her had arrived at a town only to find it being ravaged by a horde of orcs, (how orignal I know). AS the party was entering the town the following exchange occured.

Me: You enter the town to see it being attacked by orcs, there are bodies of the dead everywhere.
Sorceress: Alright I want to gather all the children I can find and take them to the outskirts of the city
Me: Alright proceed, everyone else what are your actions?

the other players tell me their actions, some combat ensues

Me: Alright you have gathered about 10 children together and have led them out of the city. What do you do?
Sorceress: I am going to wait with them
Me: Alright as the battle gets fiercer one of the children, a small girl begins to run away.
Sorceress: I shoot a magic missle at it!
Me: Huh????? You are shooting a magic missle at the kid?
Sorceress: WHAT? NO!!!!!! I thought you said one of the orcs was running away?

I let her redeclare her action as a result if I hadn't dunno if she would've wanted to keep playing.
Heh we still have not let her forget about that
 

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