Stupid player tricks!

[Kylearan]

Well met!

A short while after we started playing AD&D 1st edition back in '87, our party of 6th level characters came across a hermit's house near a mountain pass. The old guy invited us for supper (it was around noon on a bright and sunny day) and so we entered his hut and had lunch. Unfortunately, the food was poisoned and my magic-user fell unconscious. Now for the fun part. The hermit becomes gaseous, and one player (who had a bit of gaming experience) has his character flee in panic, crying "Run for your lives, it's a vampire!!". At noon. In bright sunlight. So, after a mere 500 yards of screaming flight in all directions, the other players rethought their actions and went back to kill the ogre mage...

Kylearan

 

[Belen]

I had a guy playing a mage in my campaign. Finally, one of the big battles of the campaign appears deep in a mountain in a room with a lava pool in the center. It was a high level game and he had an item that absorbed any magical damage dealt to him for a certain number of rounds. He could cast inside the shield, but only on himself.

He decided to levitate above the lava pit, while he buffed in order to avoid any chance of facing melee. Now, you have to remember that the shield prevented magical DAMAGE. The opposing mage simply dispelled his levitate.

End of story....at least for the mage....

 

[Rel]

Around 4-5 years ago, we were playing Rolemaster. The party mage had just wound up putting himself in a permenant catatonic state when a risky spell went bad (raw manna shot out of every orifice on his head). He made a replacement character.

The whole basis of this campaign was that we represented a VERY small enclave of people that worshipped the newly reborn "God of Light" and we were doing some recon into the adjacent Huge Evil Empire that worshipped evil gods. The replacement character was a Paladin of the God of Light.

As we get ready to walk into the capital city of the Evil Empire, I comment to the Paladin that he might want to cover up those huge holy symbols on his armor and shield. He removed the ones on his armor and put them in his saddlebags. He refused to cover up the shield and instead hung it on the side of his horse.

I argued with him at great length that this was not an effective means of disassociating himself with his deity who was after all the enemy of the Evil Empire, INTO WHOSE CAPITAL CITY WE WERE WALKING! He proved very stuborn on the matter and I finally gave up and tried to distance myself from him as best I could.

Of course we got arrested.

After my character escaped and reluctantly freed his character from the same jail I roundly chastised him for the trouble he'd gotten us into. His defense was, "But I wasn't even carrying the holy symbol! It was on the horse!"

Jackass.

 

[Panthanas]

Once during a game that I was playing in, one of the other characters had found a ring of Three Wishes with one charge remaining. He was waiting for the perfect moment to use the wish.

Well, our party was in the midst of fighting a powerful vampire and his undead minions, getting seriously beat, when the player states, "I want to use my wish to save the party!"

The DM says, "Sure, how do you word your wish?"

The player responds with, "I wish the vampire and all of his minions were dead..."

The rest of the party proceeded to smack their foreheads in dismay.

 

[Grundle]

I break the wagon open. With a sword. It required a Bull's Strength, the dropping of my shield, and all three daily Smites, but hey, it did the trick.

Was it an eevviill war wagon?

 

[Dark Dragon]

The wizard in our party is known for making some REALLY stupid things. Here's the one that cut his lifeline:

The party was enslaved in a city sacked by the Dragon Chult and its allies. A powerful dracolich acted as a guardian. Somehow, the wizard manged to bring the ring and the amulet of dragon calling into his possession. To drive the lich and the cultists off, the party hoped to call a great wyrm red dragon (who was sleeping somewhere in the nearby mountains). The wizard used the items, but was arrested some seconds later and bound to the outer side of the city wall to starve to death...Some minutes later, the red wyrm appeared in the skies, beginning his attack. The wizard had memorized a silent, still Charm Person...and cast it against the wyrm. The wyrm noticed it and made a dive against that little human at the wall...The wall was crushed and the wizard's body spread out over the city when the dragon rushed through...

 

[MarauderX]

After an adventure against an evil illusionist, the party mage basically lost his mind... the player would keep remarking "I disbelieve that I see the 10 ogres in front of us." The illusionist put the party through their paces, and tricked the players more than they missed their Will saves. After that the rest of the party had to drag the mage to his feet during battle half the time. He never did get better, and is now named Brian Wilson.

 

[Murrdox]

One of the first 3rd Edition games I ran... a new party was wandering through a dungeon that they had been captured in.

They came across a large chamber with a very powerful artifact in the central alter (I think it was the Mace of St. Cuthbert). Anyways, it turns out a Beholder was the guardian of the artifact. The party was NOT equipped to deal with a beholder, and as a DM, I only threw it in so they could attempt to talk their way out of fighting it.

Instead, to "amuse" the beholder, one of the party members shoved another character into one of the beholder's vertical pits in the room. Voila, the poor character slides down into the Beholder's lair where it keeps all its magical artifacts and petrified victims.

I was a nice DM, and allowed the character to climb out of the pit, after repeatedly telling him that even THINKING about trying to steal any items would probably result in a disintigrate spell being sent his way.

 

[BlackMoria]

Party was going through the Return to White Plume Mountain. Party goes into room with 8 magic windows (artifact level items) that looks into the heart of a volcano. Party had run in with a major evil bad guy with two magma elementals and other minions. All of the party except the wizard get 'subsumed' by the power of Keraptis.

So wizard find himself fighting a evil bad guy, some evil minion gnome and drow and the rest of the party (the two magma elementals were destroyed in the battle). Realizing he had no chance of survival, the wizard gambled on at least restoring his fellow party members to his side and level the playing field by casting a Mordenkain Disjunction from a scroll.

Players were upset as item after item failed the saving throw. While the resolution of the spell was wrapping up, some wag mentioned that it was a good thing the windows had saved.

DM: Windows? What? oh......right, yes. I had better check on that. <checks spell description> 50% chance of artifact level items being disrupted.

Silence. Everyone looks at everyone else with the 'I think we going to get pumped up the rear' look.

Me: Oh.... my........god

Result: Four windows fail. 20d6 damage per round.....no end duration. All of White Plume Mountain levels that are at or below magma level fill with lava, which is 3/4 of the dungeon.

Bad news.....everyone dies. TPK. Good new.....we stopped Keraptis (the BBEG was below magma level)

 

[BlackMoria]

A more recent example of 'intuitive' thinking.

Our party recently completed The Banewarrens. Two incidents stand out, both involving the Barbarian character.

Incident 1: Party had some difficulty with a sorceror Lamia which was located at the bottom of a 50 ft pit. The barbarian's solution was....well.....shall I say unorthodox.

Solution: Tie 10 feet pole to hilt of his greatsword. Then jump into pit and while in free fall, place his feet on the crossguard of the greatsword and hold the pole, greatsword point down. You got it. 'Death from above' with a improvised pogostick. DM creatively figured a way to calculate damage (counted as a charge attack with a 'spear-like' weapon (double damage) and another doubling for a nearly 300lb barbarian's falling weight for triple damage). Killed the Lamia with the attack.....

Incident 2: Barbarian (yep...same guy) find himself trapped in small room which seems to be moving. Barbarian knocks hole in wall and climbs out to find himself in front of the moving room he escapes from....and the room is still moving. 15 ft in front of him is a large hole (100 ft deep) and a wide passage heading to the right almost to his immediate right.

Now, intuition would say - duck down the passage to the right.

Solution: Barbarian climbs into hole and hangs by his fingers from the edge.......only to have the sliding room crush his fingers, causing him to fall 100 ft for 10d6 damage..... then have the sliding room fall into the pit on top of him for an additional 15d6 damage. Incredibly, the barbarian survives this. When asked why he just didn't go down the side passage, he said that it was 'too obvious' and he figured the room would follow him down the passage and the smart move was to do what he did. Or so was his reasoning. D'oh.