Stupidest things PCs/DMs have done

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Here's a minor one from Grasp of the Emerald Claw.

[sblock]We were raiding a lost giant temple. Much fun. (In Eberron, the old giant civilization was magically powerful. If we ever saw weird magic on the continent of Xen'drik, chances are, it's giant magic.) We knew the Order of the Emerald Claw (terrorists in heavy armor) had gotten there before we did. They had stolen a powerful McGuffin from us, and we wanted it back. We thought there were going to use it to do something horribly evil in the temple. Unfortunately, our party, being unable to agree on anything, and being too smart to split up, decided to search every room in the temple. It was like playing Diablo ... in a bad way!

We knew there were Emerald Claw member and drow in the temple; the former were dangerous but the latter were wimps.

We found a promising room. There was only one door into it (a human-sized door, probably used by former elven slaves), but we believed (at the time) there was another door leading to some part of the temple we hadn't seen. Unfortunately, around the door were a bunch of dead members of the Emerald Claw, who looked a little ... dehydrated*. We could estimate the area-of-effect of the trap based on the distribution of the corpses, as my Int 17+ wizard put it It's always nice when you have allies, but not when these allies are unknown to you and would probably do the same thing to you. Thinking it might be a magical trap, my halfling wizard character cast Detect Magic. There was an aura of necromancy so powerful my wizard couldn't have replicated it. Neither the OotEC nor the drow likely had the magical prowess to do so; it was probably a giant trap. Since I could still detect magic, the trap had probably reset. Either that, or it was powerful its "faint" aura was beyond anything I had ever seen. I'm not going in there!

We wanted to get into that room, but we were afraid of the trap. Except our paladin of the Undying Court. It was obvious he wanted to walk into the room, but that was only OOG - in-game, he said nothing more suspicious than "maybe we should try to go around it". While we were bickering, he walked into the area of effect "to see what it would do". *Sluuuuuuuurp!* Well, he lived, only because he made his save, so he took only half damage from the 15th-level Horrid Wilting effect. All of his lay on hands went into keeping himself in fighting shape, and even then he was low on hit points. We ran away, and didn't come back there for several days. (It took us that long to raid the temple.)

* In the adventure, it's actually a Wail of the Banshee trap, but the DM nerfed it, on the grounds that the trap was too powerful for a 6th-level adventure.[/sblock]

 

[Rothe]

More of a Doh! moment than true stupidity.

Party of six low level adventurers (level 2-3) need to cross a room filled with spear bearing skeletons (20 total). IMC having the weapon makes them much more dangerous. The party correctly surmizes they are not your average skeletons from their glowing red eyes. The skeletons are in a evil temple complex and the party had slain several of the priests and the high priest. Unfortunately 2 of the party had been "marked" as enemies of the god in their encounters. The party correctly surmizes that wearing the unholy symbols they took from the priests will allow them to cross the room. The 4 unmarked members cross wearing the unholy symbols. They also guess that the unholy symbols won't help the "marked" PCs. The marked PCs run across the room, skeltons activate, a touch and go battle ensues, one PC almost buying it and consuming all the party's healing stuff to avoid death.

After the battle they say, "Maybe we should have taken the skeletons spears away before entering," which would have worked.

 

[Lalalei2001]

In Paranoia, a player died by saying his name too quickly.

Computer: "Citizen, please state your Identity"
Com-R-Rad: "Com-r-rad"
Computer: "I'm not your comrad, and you are a pinko commie traitor." *sounds of lazerfire* "Have a nice day"

 

[SiderisAnon]

Stupid Player Tricks

There are numerous stories from my years as a gamemaster. Here are couple of the ones that are the most memorable for me.



In a 2e D&D game, the party was in a situation where the bad guys had retreated down a hole in the fortress basement with flying magic. Dropping a light stone down the hole, the party could tell that the hole was about 12 feet across at several hundred feet deep. One of the PCs has a Ring of Feather Falling, so another PC gets on his back piggyback style and they jump down the hole. However, the PC wth the ring decides the slow fall is taking too long, so he drops a light stone and when it gets just past his feet, he pulls off the Ring of Feather Falling with the intention of putting it back on as soon as he can see the bottom.

At the end of the 300 foot fall, the two PCs are moving very fast, and the light stone only gives them about 20 feet of warning of the bottom - a fraction of a second. I was kind and gave both a Dex and an Int check to try and get the ring back on. He critically failed both.

Splat.



In another 2e D&D game, this time in college, the party were exploring a dungon and had come to a dead-end passage. There they were ambushed by a group of goblins. The goblins were using some very crafty tactics, but eventually the fight went poorly for them. The remaining goblins fled through 3 foot high passages, closing panels behind themselves, temporarily stopping the party's pursuit. Then lamp oil began pouring out of holes in the ceiling and onto the party. The party's thief pulls out one of the prepared fire arrows he always carried, lit it, and shoved it through one of the holes the oil was coming out of.

Whoosh. Boom. (Though the party did survive.)



Finally, one from Shadowrun that became a running joke. The party is trying to get into a warehouse to go after some bad guys inside. After most of an hour of planning, where they realize that no one has made a character capable of picking a lock, they come up with this complicated plan that involves simultaneous strikes and the use of grenades ducktaped to the door to get inside the building. They sneak up to the building and are just in the process of planting the first set of charges, one of the players finally thinks to ask, "Uh, hey, did anyone actually check if the door was locked???"

Which, by the way, it wasn't.


--SiderisAnon

 

[Hussar]

Had a blindingly stupid player moment today in my World's Largest Dungeon game. A truly fitting situation given the number of "pull the lever" threads of late.

Here's the setup: Goliath fighter finds a pair of statues with very pretty gold plated spears, shields and tabards. He asks the DM (me) about the spears using his very high craft Weaponsmithing skill. I reply that the spears are masterwork at least.

He then rushes back to the party and snatches the rogue to get him to check things out. We're good so far. The rogue checks things out and discovers the delayed blast fireball trap on the statues. The rogue, not interested in spears, says that he isn't going to risk disarming the trap, particularly since he recently died from almost exactly the same trap.

The goliath fighter then pulls on the spear. Nothing happens. Pulls on it again. And again, and again, each time failing his Str check to pull the spear out. By now, there are rather a lot of off color jokes about the Goliath pulling frantically on his spear, ahem. Well, on the fifth round:

Boom.

Off goes the 16 die delayed blast fireball. 51 points of damage. The fighter makes his Fort save for massive damage. Sitting on the floor, he chugs a potion to get some hit points back, stands up and... you guessed it, starts pulling on the spear again.

For 5 rounds.

Boom.

57 points of damage. Rolls a 2 on his fort save for a total of 13. He dies.

 

[Merkuri]

Damnit, Hussar! Away and I were fighting over who was gonna post that!

 

[awayfarer]

Ha! What she said.

 

[Lalalei2001]

LOL! Hussar, that's hilarious!

 

[Hussar]

Hang on, if you like, you can actually read the transcript.

The Death of a Goliath

Search down about 3/4's of the way.

 

[Lalalei2001]

Ok

EDIT: PWAHAHAHA! HILARIOUS!