Stupidest things PCs/DMs have done

[JustinM]

I dunno - I've always thought it was sort of mean to penalize players for missing information.

But then again, maybe that will teach them to listen more carefully.

But he missed information and then missed an obvious hint, too. He didn't just say water droplets bouncing off his blade, but raindrops. You don't get rain inside a cave. He went from inattentive to stupid in a real hurry.

 

[AnonymousOne]

I had one last game.

After our party cleared out an excavation of some obnoxious undead and a ridiculous ghost, we came across this pool of what appeared to be water. Our Technomancer (homebrew class) tries to take a sample with a vial, the vial snaps the string it's attached to and sinks.

Debate ensues and my character strips down to his breaches and jumps in.

DM: Make a Will Save
Me: I had a feeling that was going to happen. *rolls* Natural 20.
DM: Damnit, you weren't supposed to live through that...

The Technomancer pulled me out and it turns out I was slowly turning to gold. It required our cleric and several low level NPC clerics to fix me ... it turns out the pool turned anything dipped in it to gold ... gold with taint. So I was turning to tainted gold. A series of potions infused with pure gold caused the lesions and metal coming through my skin to stop. My Rogue PC now has ivory white skin, Pure gold eyes, and gold/blond hair.

Being impetuous can cost you a PC...

 

[Lalalei2001]

^ Good thing it wasn't untainted gold. The PCs might have let you stay that way so when you died they could sell you as a statue

 

[AnonymousOne]

^ Good thing it wasn't untainted gold. The PCs might have let you stay that way so when you died they could sell you as a statue

It's okay, I have a Warlock all ready rolled up in case this Rogue bites the dust.

 

[Goobermunch]

I had one last game.

After our party cleared out an excavation of some obnoxious undead and a ridiculous ghost, we came across this pool of what appeared to be water. Our Technomancer (homebrew class) tries to take a sample with a vial, the vial snaps the string it's attached to and sinks.

Debate ensues and my character strips down to his breaches and jumps in.

DM: Make a Will Save
Me: I had a feeling that was going to happen. *rolls* Natural 20.
DM: Damnit, you weren't supposed to live through that...

The Technomancer pulled me out and it turns out I was slowly turning to gold. It required our cleric and several low level NPC clerics to fix me ... it turns out the pool turned anything dipped in it to gold ... gold with taint. So I was turning to tainted gold. A series of potions infused with pure gold caused the lesions and metal coming through my skin to stop. My Rogue PC now has ivory white skin, Pure gold eyes, and gold/blond hair.

Being impetuous can cost you a PC...

Eerily similar to one of my early D&D experiences. About 15 years ago, I was playing in a friend's homebrew setting. I was the chaotic, impulsive rogue type (actually a fire wizard). At one point during this game, I nearly killed the entire party (three times in about 10 minutes) after falling under the sway of an evil sword/artifact (which had the special purpose of destroying the noble armor/artifact worn by our paladin. Long after we'd recovered and moved on, we were wandering the wilderness on our way to wherever we were headed, and found a mystical fountain.

When you look into the fountain, you see your pure self. Then, you make a will-type save (probably mind control). If you fail, you drink from the fountain. Then, you get a second fortitude-type save (Poison, Paralysis and Death Magic, I'm sure). If you fail that save, you become whatever it was you saw.

So our Paladin goes up and looks into the fountain. There, in his reflection, he sees the golden form of his noble armor. He then fails his two saves and immediately becomes a walking suit of golden armor. Not that big of a change for him. A couple other party members roll the dice and take a look. No one fails their saves.

Then it's my turn. I take a look in the fountain and see a swirling mass of colors and sparks. I make my will save and decide to drink anyway.

As I'm rolling my fortitude save, I casually ask my DM what it was that I'd seen.

"Pure chaos," he replies.

Fortunately, I made my saving throw.

To this day, I wonder what it would be like to play pure chaos.

--G

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Sounds like my players. They've never been quite that dumb, but the one thing you can count of them to do is fight when they can't win. Then die. Then complain it's my fault.

Heck, when I write adventures, I specifically design to this requirement. Always assume that the players won't take no for an answer, and will blame you if they can't do what they want to, no matter how ridiculous it is.

For example, in one adventure, the players are supposed to view a historical (nonmagical) artifact, which is then subsequently stolen. So, I can't have the PCs standing guard, because they'll die trying to prevent the theft. The local guard, therefore, tells them that they can't stick around. Fair enough. Of course, some PCs won't accept that; it's there, it'll probably get stolen, so they have to stick around to prevent it. So, I dealt with it by having the guard adamantly refuse them, and turn them away. Most (well, many) players take the hint and leave. Those that don't will typically hide, and try to sneak back in to guard the artifact. So, the adventure as written gives them the option of doing this--then seeing the artifact already stolen, the PCs caught by the guard, accused of the crime or at least breaking and entering, and being thrown in jail. Players typically won't be too upset by this. They're the sort that will have been in jail before, they can break out. But then one of the adventure's bad guys, having been placed in jail earlier, breaks himself out of jail by slaughtering the jailers and animating their corpses. The PCs, locked in a cell, denied their equipment, and under the effect of a silence spell cast by the bad guy, are unable to affect the course of action. This is where the players get the actual punishment for being stupid above; the simple denial of affecting the outcome eats away at them. However, the bad guy finished up by freeing the PCs as well before leaving. Since the PCs survive and are free again, they don't blame the DM; they blame the bad guy.

Otherwise, I'm left with a situation like I had once, as a player. Our party was in a major battle with the BBEG, and we do terribly. Everyone except one person falls. We're all unconscious, in negatives, when the BBEG turns to the one PC still standing and gives him the chance to surrender. One of the players of a fallen PC, not even yet stabilized, calls back, "No! We can take them!" Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

 

[Lalalei2001]

^ Nice save. Level-headed players should play more often ^^

 

[Switchblade]

Most stupid thing I've done in a game (not including times where I was roleplaying my PC into a dumb situation or drunk) was in one of my first ever games where I learn several important lessons.

One: When setting a booby trap it is usually considered polite to let the rest of your team know you did this.
Two: When unfamilar with the game you should ask how powerful the charge you are placing is, puting down a small nuke when you think you are placing an antipersonel grenade can cause complications.
Three: You should check the blueprints of the spaceship before you place the charge, not after. Finding the ship is only 25m long when you thought you were boarding something a lot larger and the galley you trapped is in the thin neck of the ship and within 4 meters of the outer hull in a 180 degree arc is an unpleasant sensation after finding out you have placed a charge which will atomise everything in 20m.

Almost total party kill (I dived into the escape pod the second I worked out what I'd done) on what was turned out to be a deserted ship with no decernable threat was not my finest moment. The PC was swiftly retired.

 

[Switchblade]

Dumb things PC's have done:
2e First time anyone got to a high enough level to cast 3rd level spells in any game we'd played to that point I attacked the party with some frog men while they were traveing through a slow moving swampy river in a wooded barge. Wizard casts fireball. At a target 10 feet away. On a wooden and tarred deck. The rest of the party were a little scorched, the wizard and his spell book were charred.
Shadowrun: Party are sent to sabotage a nuclear reactor in the bottom of a bunker. They get lost and stop to ask at a guard post where the secret nuclear reactor core is.
Shadowrun: Runner is at the check in desk at Heathrow airport. He decides he needs to get a baggage handlers uniform so walks up to the nearest one and proceeds to slit his throat. In front of the check in desks. To make matters worse it turns out he doesn't own a knife, he is using a scalple from his medikit and has no armed combat skills. He defaults (with a HUGE penalty) to his strenght (his dump stat) and gets beaten up by the baggage handler. He seemed genuinly supprised to find there were a lot of armed police officers around the airport. He at least had the sence to go quietly. Player 2 then mounts a rescue. He goes in to the station and pretends to be player 1's lawyer. The fake ID doesn't quite cut it but not suspitiously so. The desk sergant says "there seems to be a fault on the credstick, do you have another one?" so player 2 hands him another fake ID, different name, different permit list, different.... Player 2 gets busted. Player 3 does the entire run on his own unimpeded by the other 2 before mounting a sucessful rescue (as he didn't want them loose until after the work was done).

 

[Numion]

Player 2 then mounts a rescue. He goes in to the station and pretends to be player 1's lawyer. The fake ID doesn't quite cut it but not suspitiously so. The desk sergant says "there seems to be a fault on the credstick, do you have another one?" so player 2 hands him another fake ID, different name, different permit list, different.... Player 2 gets busted.

Hehee

Once my player had landed into a planet with totalitarian regime in Traveller: The New Era. They also needed some uniforms, so they put a decoy on a road, and waited for a patrol to stop by. Once this happened, one PC jumps up from his hiding place, submachineguns in each hand, and empties two 40-round magazines onto the guards.

they did get the uniforms, but they were riddled with dozens of bulletholes, and were qutie bloody.

Once in Cyberpunk 2020 the same players were operating a blackmarket bodybank. Two characters were coming back from .. um, probably some illegal activity, and are standing in the corridor leading to their HQ.

PC1: "BTW, you still owe me 100 bucks, can you pay it back?"
PC2: "Yeah, I'll get back to you on that."
PC1: "No, I wan't my money!"
PC2: "And I'll give it to you .. LATER!"
PC1: "Why is it so diffiucult with you? I know you have the money, and 100 bucks is pocket change anyway."
PC2: "Okay, it's like that, huh, getting on my nerve for some pocket change? Here's your money, bitch." *Opens fire with automatic shotgun*
PC1, bleeding to death. PC2 goes through his pockets, leaves scene .. regaining a bit of consciousness, PC1 raises his .454 Smartlinked 'Super Chief' revolver and lets out a parting shot. Explosive round to PC2s head. One less character.

In CP2020 a GM didn't even need an 'adventure' to keep things interesting.