Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
I think I just took 2d4 points of INT damage IRL.
Stupidest things PCs/DMs have done
- Thread starter Lalalei2001
- Start date
STARP_Social_Officer
First Post
I love how so many people's first reaction when encountering a foreign substance is to taste it.
Aeric
Explorer
I recently did something fairly stupid that could easily have ended in a TPK.
Our party was hired to find some children who had gone missing from the city. During the course of our investigations, we had discovered that the kidnappers took the children to their base deep underneath the city, where they were sold into slavery.
The party navigated through the upper levels of the dungeon, where we found nothing but traps and hostile enemies. Shortly after reaching the lower level of the dungeon where the slavers lived, we opened a door and were asked by the guards inside, "who are you?"
Everyone is stunned, except for me. My character (a drow swashbuckler) steps forward and tries to Bluff the guards into thinking that we are there to buy slaves. He has an average Charisma and two ranks in Bluff, but I roll surprisingly well and the guards buy it.
We are taken through the remainder of the complex, mark the locations of all the pit traps which the guards deactivate for us along the way, and go straight to the boss' room where the auction is being held.
Up for auction at this point is one of the missing children. My character manages to win the bid for the child, much to the chagrin of the rival bidder.
My character approaches the auctioneer with the bag of money, and manages to make an untrained Slight of Hand check to palm a dagger in the other. The idea was to stab the auctioneer in the throat when he reached for the money.
The auctioneer was wearing full plate armor, complete with a visored helmet.
The next session started with us stripped of our possessions and in the slave pens.
Our party was hired to find some children who had gone missing from the city. During the course of our investigations, we had discovered that the kidnappers took the children to their base deep underneath the city, where they were sold into slavery.
The party navigated through the upper levels of the dungeon, where we found nothing but traps and hostile enemies. Shortly after reaching the lower level of the dungeon where the slavers lived, we opened a door and were asked by the guards inside, "who are you?"
Everyone is stunned, except for me. My character (a drow swashbuckler) steps forward and tries to Bluff the guards into thinking that we are there to buy slaves. He has an average Charisma and two ranks in Bluff, but I roll surprisingly well and the guards buy it.
We are taken through the remainder of the complex, mark the locations of all the pit traps which the guards deactivate for us along the way, and go straight to the boss' room where the auction is being held.
Up for auction at this point is one of the missing children. My character manages to win the bid for the child, much to the chagrin of the rival bidder.
My character approaches the auctioneer with the bag of money, and manages to make an untrained Slight of Hand check to palm a dagger in the other. The idea was to stab the auctioneer in the throat when he reached for the money.
The auctioneer was wearing full plate armor, complete with a visored helmet.
The next session started with us stripped of our possessions and in the slave pens.
Merkuri
Explorer
Lalalei2001 said:
Aeric said:My character approaches the auctioneer with the bag of money, and manages to make an untrained Slight of Hand check to palm a dagger in the other. The idea was to stab the auctioneer in the throat when he reached for the money.
The auctioneer was wearing full plate armor, complete with a visored helmet.
The next session started with us stripped of our possessions and in the slave pens.
If you ask me, these both sound like variations on the "you didn't ask" syndrome to me. Facts like, "all of your ropes are still tied together" and "the auctioneer is in full plate" should be things that the characters notice, even if the players don't. If a player has his character act on bad information - regardless of whether it's his misunderstanding or the DM accidentally leaving something out - they should be allowed to revise their actions (within reason) after being informed of the actual situation.
I'd think after the first knot went by in the rope that the person holding it would've said, "oh sh--" and would've grabbed for it. If the idea was that one end of the rope was tied to the jumper and one end was tied to something else, there's no way you wouldn't notice the extra 150' of rope in between. And if the slave-buyer hadn't realized the auctioneer was wearing plate armor, he definitely should have once he was handing over the bag of money and deciding where to stab.
Players shouldn't be punished for not noticing things they would've easily seen had they been there in person, IMO. D&D isn't a riddle (though it may contain them).
Kae'Yoss
First Post
I got another, even with pic!
So the party fought its way through a dungeon filled with Spawn of Tiamat and Dragons, searching for Ultramarine, which they think is a blue dragon of some sort. There were Dragons and/or dragonspawn of all five colours in separate parts of the dungeon, all decorated with tapestries showing the respective dragons.
They enter a large room, showing designs of all 5 dragons. In the middle, there's a large magic circle. What does the gnome warmage do?
He steps right up.
And this appeared!
Best kind!
So the party fought its way through a dungeon filled with Spawn of Tiamat and Dragons, searching for Ultramarine, which they think is a blue dragon of some sort. There were Dragons and/or dragonspawn of all five colours in separate parts of the dungeon, all decorated with tapestries showing the respective dragons.
They enter a large room, showing designs of all 5 dragons. In the middle, there's a large magic circle. What does the gnome warmage do?
He steps right up.
And this appeared!
Aeric said:
Best kind!
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
Merkuri said:
Right on.
glass
(he, him)
I don't want to name names, but a lot of these strike me as stupid (or just bad) DM moments more than stupid player moments, and on that basis, I present my own recent stupid DMing moment.
The first encounter in The Whispering Cairn (Age of Worms part 1) is
The PCs have just finished generating their characters, and we just have time for one encounter before everyone heads for home, to give the characters a bit of a shakedown. Unfortunately, one of the players has come up with a really cool
character, and I want this simple combat encounter as it is getting late and there is plenty of more complicated stuff coming up in future sessions.
So I decide, without looking closely enough at the stats, to swap them out. For boars.
Turns out, boars are CR 2 and very, very nasty. Three of them is certainly too much for a party of 4 1st level character (even if they are gestalt). One hasty HD reduction later and it is still a tough encounter, but at least it wasn't a TPK!
glass.
The first encounter in The Whispering Cairn (Age of Worms part 1) is
a trio of wolves.
wolf-themed
So I decide, without looking closely enough at the stats, to swap them out. For boars.
Turns out, boars are CR 2 and very, very nasty. Three of them is certainly too much for a party of 4 1st level character (even if they are gestalt). One hasty HD reduction later and it is still a tough encounter, but at least it wasn't a TPK!
glass.
Let's see. I am always playing the ultra-chaotic idiot character.
I've eaten black mold to see if it would be a good ingredient for my friend the cooks delicious foods.
I've grabbed an orb on a pedestal, it was a shockinggrap trap, then I grabbed it again thinking the trap was gone but it was auto-reset.
I called the leader of the temple of elemental evil a "ugly melted garbage face" to his face...that got the town attacked by a dragon and a bunch of spider-killers.
I smashed a mosaic on the ground 10 times, each time having to make a will save until I finally failed becoming insane all because my character hated mosaics.
I told my friend to fireball the room and that "I'd be fine, I'm a fighter!" when in actuality I would not be fine. I in fact would be dead.
One of my players when I was DMing was playing a druid. He was on an airship in an Ebberon campaign that was crashing to the ground. He had been playing his halfling "Action Jack" like Crocodile Dundee and forgot he had spells and druid abilities, so he used a ring of feather fall land safely instead of summon natures alley or wild shape letting his animal companions and a friendly npc fall to their deaths.(he had two animal companions from his prestige class)
One of the stupidest things one of our friends always plays a character named Gabriel or William. We complained about how lame it is that he only uses two names and that he should be more creative. His next character was named Willbriel...
I've eaten black mold to see if it would be a good ingredient for my friend the cooks delicious foods.
I've grabbed an orb on a pedestal, it was a shockinggrap trap, then I grabbed it again thinking the trap was gone but it was auto-reset.
I called the leader of the temple of elemental evil a "ugly melted garbage face" to his face...that got the town attacked by a dragon and a bunch of spider-killers.
I smashed a mosaic on the ground 10 times, each time having to make a will save until I finally failed becoming insane all because my character hated mosaics.
I told my friend to fireball the room and that "I'd be fine, I'm a fighter!" when in actuality I would not be fine. I in fact would be dead.
One of my players when I was DMing was playing a druid. He was on an airship in an Ebberon campaign that was crashing to the ground. He had been playing his halfling "Action Jack" like Crocodile Dundee and forgot he had spells and druid abilities, so he used a ring of feather fall land safely instead of summon natures alley or wild shape letting his animal companions and a friendly npc fall to their deaths.(he had two animal companions from his prestige class)
One of the stupidest things one of our friends always plays a character named Gabriel or William. We complained about how lame it is that he only uses two names and that he should be more creative. His next character was named Willbriel...
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