The D&D Darwin Awards.

[Gundark]

#1 We used to have this rogue who had this very high reflex save quite often he would tumble into a melee to use his sneak attack then tumble. Once in melee he would have the 2 sorcerers cast fireballs with his evasion and his high reflex he figured he would never have to take any damage. Well the one time he did his thing and one sorcerer let fly with a fireball......the rogue rolled a 1 failing the save. Feeling rather beaten up the next sorcerer let fly with a fireball......that rogue again rolled a 1 doing enough damage to kill him.

#2 When we were 3rd level the party was doing a dungeon crawl, we got to this chasm that had a rope bridge that spaned accross it. On the other side orc archers began shooting arrows at us. The party fighter declared that he was going to run accross the rope bridge. The problem was the fighter was wearing full plate and had a crappy dex. After failing a balance check the rest of the party stood there and watched the fighter plumit about 300 feet.

#3 of the DMs in our group rules that when a 1 is rolled for an attack something bad happens. Well the fighter and the rogue were fighting side by side in this climaxtic battle. The battle had lasted for some time and the fighter and rogue were feeling a little worse for wear. The fighter's turn to attack came and swung with all his might and the roll came up a 1. Basically the fighter accidently hit the rogue beside him, and rolled maxium damage......dead rogue.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

2E game.

The scene:

2 fighters, a wizard (me), a cleric, and a rogue are locked in a life or death struggle with a group of ogres.

One of the fighters is right on the cusp of death, having been hit three times in quick succession. The cleric, who has cast all his prepared healing spells, can't do a thing to help.

The "quick witted" rogue, who is currently well back from the battle throwing darts, hits upon a "brilliant" idea. He takes his potion of cure light wounds, soaks a dart in it, and throws the dart at the fighter. His reasoning? "It'll work just like a syringe, and deliver the potion into the fighter."

His roll? A natural 20. The result? The fighter is hit right between the eyes with a wet dart for enough damage to kill him instantly.


Patrick Y.

 

[Jdvn1]

Our barbarian killed the BBEG, once, by tackling him into a huge pit of lava. He thought he was going to die anyway, so he decided he'd try to take the BBEG down with him... great cinematic.

 

[ARandomGod]

Two scenes for me.

1) Party approaches a fountain filled with gold and silver coins at the bottom. The theif takes a stick and pokes into the water to see what happens when the stick touches the gold. The stick dissolves in the acid that had passed for water.

The paladin says "I drink the water"

Low level paladin with a high level of stupidity. The rest of the party tried to stop him but he was adamite. He was going to drink that water. And, he did... It was a particularly gruesome death.

2) Ranger character hears a high pitched scream, goes to investigate and finds two eagle sized dragon like creatures hunting. One had killed a rabbit and was flying away. He shoots. They let the rabbit go and attack. After mauling the poor ranger to 1 hp, the GM decided generously that the two would fly away. They hadn't been hurt, after all. As they're flying away, the ranger takes another shot... So they came back.

That was the third time that day he killed a character.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

One of the PC's has acquired an evil artifiact that bends the wielder to its will. He tried to fight against it while fleeing from the rest of the party through the countryside. They party is tracking him and it looks to the party like they are following a mouse full of bad drugs. They follow for days until coming to a river.

This is where the first set of immortal words are spoken by the party Druid/Ranger. "I am going to build a bridge." Now the river is swiftly flowing and about 70' across. During the work, he gives the rest of the party instructions on constructing his engineering project, which he alternately describes as a boat or a bridge, seemingly at random. When all is said and done, the result is either a bridge than does not span the river, or a boat that is built completely wrong. Several characters jump aboard and begin the crossing. About halfway across, the thing literally comes apart. The result is ugly.

Next session. The party realizes the fleeing character did not even cross the river, so they search the bank and pick up his trail again. They finally catch up to him at about the same moment the agent's of their enemy (who wants the artifact). Said agents are three large adult red dragons. They are arguing with the possessed party member when the shadow of the dragons falls on the struggle between the troubled soul and the party fighter (read tank). The fighter has a mighty composite longbow pointed at the character and he is near death, having been plunked with arrows already upon giving wrong answers to the party's interrogation. The fighter has time for one last shot...the dragon is approaching, the cursed PC has 1 HP left. He shoots the PC instead of the dragon. Really ugly result.

Same campaign. Two players are running an elven mother and her half-elven son. The son is mortally wounded and losing blood (crit). His mother sheds her leather armor and squeezes it onto her son (who is a few sizes larger to say the least) to stop the bleeding. They begin crossing a bridge 50' above an underground river with Ath (the son) tightly bound into the little elven female's suit of leather armor and being carried across the bridge. His carrier slips and he is dropped 50' into the river... bound tightly into the too small armor...

I also had a character who fell through a trap door into a slide filled with acid coated razor blades (same campaign), which then dumped him 300' feet to the ground. He survived and used magic to get back to where the party was, then promptly fell through the trap door a second time. End of story.

DM

 

[Fingol]

The group is faced with a puzzle of sorts. They don't really know what to do next. For one person in the group there is an additional challenge. The rouge with aspirations to be an assassin is struggling with an even more morally challenged character in the group who happens to be the fighter. Knowing he can't win toe to toe he decides to make the most of their current dilema.

He has some weak poisons with him that render people unconscious if they drink a lot of it. So he tells the group that the only way to solve their current issues is to enter a dream state. To let themselfs relax and to together walk the dream lands searching for the answer there. (He did a much better job than I could) He has just the potions to do this.

The group look at him, look at me (I manage to keep a straight face...no one is asking for any skill checks to see if there is a 'drug' that could do that, or similar....and it is not too hard the rouge has not told me yet of the full extend of his plans.)

To a man they go along with it.
The fighter keeps on making his saving throw and he has to keep on drinking his 'dream potions', the rouge says he will drink last as it is not sure that he might not have to brew a new batch.

As the fighter keeps on making his save the rouge is getting desperate but finally on the second to last potion the fighter finally fails his save. For some reason the fighter did not want to voluntarily fail the save, he insisted that he needed to fail it. He had this idea in his head that otherwise he wouldn't dream right. Which no amount of fast talking from the rouge managed to 'put right'.

All the other characters wake up after a while. The rouge has buried the fighter in a shallow grave not 10 yards away. The rouge first accuses them of not dreaming right as he and the fighter never saw the other characters. He then tells them that the fighter died in the dreamlands only because the group wasn't together and that all he could do was make a run for it after the fighter died taking some of his gear with him....lamenting the fact that the magic armor stayed behind....its chain mail and nicely folded up in the bag of holding on the rouge.

He keeps the two matching hand cross bows the fighter had and distributes the gold the fighter had on him to the rest of the group and they were ready for a new adventure. All of them forgot about the puzzle, they had gold to spend and there was a town not 10 miles from them....

 

[maddman75]

I always win this game. I had one paticular player that always seemed to die in pitiful and painful ways. I'll call him Player X. We had a similar thread on the newest Nothing-board, and here's my answers. Enjoy. I ground through 27 PCs in RttToEE, almost half of them due to a single player's actions.

#1
The characters were traveling through some caverns to get to a dwarven stronghold. They came to a chasm. It was 200 feet down, then they had to go 50 feet back up the other side. The group was 3rd to 4th level. Not an insurmountable obstacle but some planning was needed. They started figuring it out - how much rope they had between them, how many times the sorceress could cast Spider Climb, and so on.

Player X is playing a barbarian. I'd figured he could at least pull that off. While everyone else is debating, he looks at his character sheet and says 'Hey, I've got a 4 in climbing!' He starts climbing down without consulting his group, or even thinking of them really. He gets about 20 feet down before he blows a roll by more than five and plummets to his death.

#2
**Minor RttToEE spoilers**









I'll vauge this up for those that don't want to be spoiled. At one point, the group is on a platform decending into a pit. They threw a torch over the edge, and knew they were several hundred feet from the bottom.

Well, a Grell flies up and starts attacking with its tentacles. The group is NOT having any problem getting to it. There's a polearm user and several archers in the group. Player X tells me he's drinking a potion of spider climbing. I don't know why, but I soon find out. THe next round he takes a flying leap at the creature and 'sticks' thanks to the potion. It works womderfully. The next round he pulls out a dagger and starts stabbing mercilessly. He managed to kill the fearsome grell.

Then he, again, plummeted to his death. To this day I don't know what he expected to happen after he killed the Grell.

#3
** spoilers for Heart of Nightfang Spire **









The characters were making thier way down the huge stone tower of Nightfang Spire. It was going a little slow, with the rogues being rather cautious about traps, searching every door and passage. Player X can't take it.

"Man, this is dumb. We haven't even found one trap in this whole stupid dungeon! I walk right through the door."

And as fate would have it, just on the other side of the door he fell through the trap door, over the razorbaldes, and down the slide out the side of the tower a hundred feet from the ground. He had a single hit point left.

I almost felt bad for him when he walked into the second one, and died.


#4
Another Player X story. The stupidity struck not in play, but in chargen. In addition to being a complete fool when playing, the kid tried to be a munchkin, but he wasn't very good at it. Case in point - the weakling mage.

Now a weakling mage is a fairly typical archetype, but there's weak and then there's *weak*. I use a nonstandard ability score method. Just set your scores to what you want, so long as the modifiers add up to 8. Three even, three odd.

So Player X decided mages don't need strength and busted his STR down to 3. Now an 8 or 9 would be an character with a flaw. 6 or 7 would be a challenge but fun. A 3 is "holy crap you can't even lift your own bedroll!" I had long ago stopped looking at his new characters. If there was a problem, he'd surely get killed long before it disrupted the campaign, so I had no idea this was going on. The character had great Int, Con, and Dex.

This lasted until the characters got dumped out of a small rowboat into the water. All I required was a DC 12 Swim check. And I'd give you three or four rolls before the current swept you off - just a bit of tension, not meant to be a serious threat. However, when you have no skill and a -5 on the roll from being the world's biggest wuss, that's quite a challenge! His brave munchkined-out mage died when his rowboat overturned.

#5
** Minor RttToEE spoilers***







After his latest character loss, player X decided to make a rogue. A master at hiding, he had his stealth skills maxed out and cloak+boots of elvenkind. All but invisible. I really think his main problem was that he never considered teamwork.

Anyway, stealth-boy decides he can go off through the mines on his own signifigantly far from the group to check things out. Now scouting isn't a bad idea, but being too far away from your group is. He went far enough that it would take the group several rounds to get there if he starts screaming.

He wasn't seen, but it turns out that a half a dozen dire apes don't have to see you. Scent is a great ability. The encounter went something like *SMASH* *SMASH* *SMASH* *CHOMP* *CHOMP* *SLURP*, leaving him a bloody puddle on the floor by the time the rest of the group could catch up.

 

[Turanil]

This one happened a long time ago, during ADD 1e or 2e, when Hold Person could affect up to three persons at the same time. A really stupid event:

The three PCs enter an underground orc lair. There is a large corridor with two doors on the side walls, and a great ornated double door at the end of the corridor. The latter is opened, as is one of the side doors. Sounds of picking and mining come from this side door. PCs come there discreetly, and see past the door orcs digging a room. In fact they still were building this underground temple. As the orcs didn't notice them, being working with their back toward the door, the PCs decide to kill them by surprise. The stupid thing is that they all of a sudden decided to attack screaming like madmen. (I mean: the players screamed, to show their players furiously charging and screaming). So combat begins with screams...

Meanwhile, the great double door at the end of the corridor opens on a temple hall where the orc priest was praying. So, logically the priest comes to investigate. What does he find? The three PCs fighting the orcs laborers, but now it's the PCs who have their back toward the door! So the orc priest cast a Hold Person (maybe his most powerful spell if I remember well) and all the three PCs FAIL their saving throws!! Of course, as they had nearly killed the orcs laborers, the orc priest didn't keep them alive to interrogate them or what not. He killed them one by one while they were held by the spell...

 

[Psychic Warrior]

The rouge with... the rouge has not... the rouge says he...the rouge is getting desperate... rouge managed...The rouge has buried...The rouge first accuses...the bag of holding on the rouge...

Ahh...must...stop...typing


ROGUE!! ROGUE!! IT'S ROGUE!!


You must now type out It's rogue not rouge 1000 times.

Good story though!

 

[Psychic Warrior]

This one happened a long time ago, during ADD 1e or 2e, when Hold Person could affect up to three persons at the same time. A really stupid event:

The three PCs enter an underground orc lair. There is a large corridor with two doors on the side walls, and a great ornated double door at the end of the corridor. The latter is opened, as is one of the side doors. Sounds of picking and mining come from this side door. PCs come there discreetly, and see past the door orcs digging a room. In fact they still were building this underground temple. As the orcs didn't notice them, being working with their back toward the door, the PCs decide to kill them by surprise. The stupid thing is that they all of a sudden decided to attack screaming like madmen. (I mean: the players screamed, to show their players furiously charging and screaming). So combat begins with screams...

Meanwhile, the great double door at the end of the corridor opens on a temple hall where the orc priest was praying. So, logically the priest comes to investigate. What does he find? The three PCs fighting the orcs laborers, but now it's the PCs who have their back toward the door! So the orc priest cast a Hold Person (maybe his most powerful spell if I remember well) and all the three PCs FAIL their saving throws!! Of course, as they had nearly killed the orcs laborers, the orc priest didn't keep them alive to interrogate them or what not. He killed them one by one while they were held by the spell...

SO a battlecry and unlucky die rolls were enough to get a TPK? Seems a lot harsh imo.