The lovely stupidity of some players...

[DM with a vengence]

In RttToEE, several of my players decided that whomever was in the castle were the source of all of the evil incidents. The Elven Bard/Rogue took on a job as a servent, was assigned to scrub the steps of one of the guard/storage tower. As soon an no one is watching her, she used a grappling hook to latch onto an open window in the main keep, and then hand-over-hand across.

While she is midway across, the head butler sees her and scream. She breaks all speed records getting back to the tower, however by the time she reaches it four guards have gathered below and are screaming at her to get out. She hucks an alchemist's fire at them and plans her next move.

The rest of the party hears the shouting, climbs the wall, and lands in the bailey. We have Spanley McWigglefish, half-orc barbarian, and Hobo the Magical Hoo-Hag, gnomish illusionist.

Meanwhile, another elven Bard/Rogue arrives in the castle through the secret passage, fleeing the stonemason's s shop, which he bought and then Spanley and Hobo set on fire. He sees them, and shoots an arrow at Spanley. Spanley charges him, moving to withing 35', ready to charge him again.

It doesn't happen. Burne (or Rufus), one of the owners of the castle is a 12th level Wizard. He cast's haste, fly, improved invisability, and fly out and fireballs Spanley and the bard/rogue. The both fail and take 30 odd points of damage, the raging high-con Spanley is dropped to the single digits, but the bard/rogue is blasted across the courtyard at around -13.

Rufus (or Burne), the other owner, who happens to be a 10th level fighter, rushes out with the rest of the guard, he screams "Surrender or die!" The first elf, the one in the tower, steps down and surrenders, but Spanley and Hobo try and make a run for it. Burne drops down and catches both in a lightening bolt, killing Hobo and knocking Spanley out.

In jail, the elf tries to escape from a secured courtroom in the Temple of St. Cuthbert by grabbing a weapon and fighting her way out, she's gunned down by dozens of heavy crossbows. Spanley refuses to take the disgrace of a trial, and bites her own leg off.

 

[Kestrel]

Mine was in 2nd edition days. During a run of the Undermountain dungeon in FR, I had the same player do two stupid things. He was playing a drow fighter/mage.

The first instance was the party encountered a large pillar of light, about 20' in diameter. In the center of the pillar, floated a Book of Infinite Spells. The rules for the pillar, if I remember correctly, was that it destroyed any non-living material put into it and no magic functioned within its confines. The player experimented with the pillar, putting his staff in it, which was promptly destroyed, and casting various spells to no effect. Then he gets a brillant plan, he backs up and jumps through the pillar, to grab the book. This is while wearing all his gear. Needless to say, he got the book, but was naked, hairless, and lost all his possessions on the other side.

Much later, the same character runs into one of Halaster's curtains of darkness. These are pretty much a wall of darkness that cannot be dispelled by any means. The player experiments once again, poking various things through it and determines two things. There is some kind of dropoff (a pit) on the other side and that there was a very strong gravity pull downwards. He then backs up, gets a running start, dives through the curtain. He promptly is pulled down a 90' pit, accelerated by a magically strong gravity pull, slamming into the floor. Then he is teleported to the top of the pit, where he is pulled once again to the floor. (This is one of Halaster's traps, the neverending pit) My description to the other players was: "The drow gets a running start and dives through the wall of darkness. You hear the sound of his scream howl deep into the earth below you and then a loud thud. Strangely, a weaker moan starts directly before you on the other side of the curtain, then it quickly descends again, cut off shortly by another meaty thud. (at this point, the player was dead, after taking 24d6 damage) Then there is silence followed by another meaty thud. This continues for a while, the thuds becoming wetter and wetter.

I loved that dungeon

 

[RogueJK]

I loved that dungeon

Heh. Running a party through Undermountain is always loads of fun.

 

[Ulrick]

Here's what happened during a Middle Earth Role Playing game so many years ago:

An evil knight in service of Sauron was rallying a village against us heroes. This took place in the ruins of a small keep. We were hiding behind a wall. I peeked around the corner to see what was happening.

The evil knight was delivering a speech to a small crowd of angry villagers.

Evil Knight: These strangers in your town are the ones causes all your troubles.

Villagers: Yeah! Let's get them.

My Character: (Jumps out from behind the wall) WAIT! WE ARE NOT YOUR ENEMIES! HE IS! I CAN PROVE IT. HE WAS THE ONE WHO...

Evil Knight: Kill them.

The villagers and the Evil Knight slaughtered my character outright. The other heroes were discovered. 2 or 3 more died. The remaining 2 lived, though one had a severed leg and died later.

Ulrick

 

[mtbdm]

Calculus's folly

We once had a PC named "Calculus Abacus" in our group. He was a fighter/mage from a Roman type culture. Anyway, the group finds a mysterious box. Fearing it may be trapped, Calculus decides he will try to open it somewhere away from the rest of the group. But instead of just walking away a good distance, he decided to climb up a tree instead. The punchline is that he opened the box, an explosive runes spell went off and knocked calculus from the tree so in addition to burn damage, he suffered falling damage. I can't remember if he set the tree on fire or not.
When I first started DMing, I had a PC who consistently did stupid things. His name was Spartaelfa. He screwed up so often that one of the other players started a list of "Stupid things (Spartaelfa's player) has done". Often we would read from the list before a new entry was made. This is great conditioning for lazy thoughtless players.
MtbDM

 

[Ssendam]

Stupidity or inexperience?

At University I DM'd for a mixed group of experienced and newbie players. I ran - X2 Castle Amber ("Chateau d'Amberville").

At one point he PC's set up a secret meeting with one of the bad guys in a place of his choosing, (a barn, which is in fact an illusion). A fight breaks out and the bad guy's first spell is Prismatic Spray.

Experienced Player, Cleric, (hit by a ray): "I fall to the ground with my back to him, crying out in pain as I do so. Then I take out my scroll of Blade Barrier".

Newbie, Gnome Illusionist: "I draw my dagger and run forward to attack!"

 

[jester47]

Turkey of Anihilation.

IMC there is a character, a dwarven storyteller (bard) named Gunnar the Red. He is a vetern of the Greyhawk wars and well, the player wanted him to have PTSD. So he is known as the PTSD dwarf and everything reminds him of sometime back in the Greyhawk wars. Needless to say, we are starting a book of quotes from the guy, because they are just too darned funny.

A good example (and I would have let this happen) is that at one point they are on a mission to destroy a Sphere of Anihilation with a rod of cancellation. (no one did their homework to find out about the Gate spell. Anyways, there is a point where they obtain an efreeti bottle, and the diplomat/psion from Urnst opens the bottle and rolls a 99. This gives them 3 wishes. (I was actually hoping this was going to happen because we ran out of time and people were going to be going home for the summer, and I hate ot leave things hanging) So now they have what they need to finish the quest. So a big debate ensues on what to whish for. I tell them that because we could sit and debate the wording and semantecs of the wishes all day long, the Diplomat has to make a better diplomacy check then the Efreeti to make sure the wish can not be misunderstood or perverted. The Diplomat has a +11 bonus to diplomacy, so they canget what they want. So how to use the wishes is debated over.

Durring this debate, our ranger/cleric of Ehlonna states that the wish should be just to destroy the sphere. "We could turn it into somthing, like.... A Turkey! We wish for it to gbe a turkey!" Then form over in the corner we hear "What! And have a Turkey of Anihilation?! No way!" At this, the table just blew up in laughter.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Welpers...

I would have to divide the stories into stupid Player stories and stupid Character stories. If one of my players is playing a stupid character, they tend to be in-character, even if it means harm comes to them.

Stupid Player Story:
In a crossover Mage/Changeling game (yes, I know, boo hiss, whatever...hehe) set in Britain comes my Stupidest Player Story.

The setup: The player was playing a Verbena (basically, a witch [yes, I'm oversimplifying I know]). The Verbena had a familiar, a black cat. One of the players was a member of the British Secret Service (I think we called it MI6 or some crap), and was your standard, normal human that got wrapped up in the storyline. Well, needless to say, when the other characters started flashing their powers around a bit, the Norm got curious and opted to have everyone brought in for questioning. This was accomplished by calling in a dozen or so agents to arrest the PCs.

Well, all of the other characters were intelligent, they complied with the demands of the 12 very well-armed secret agents, dropped their weapons and got down on the ground. Not the Verbena. Oh no. She had to be tough. To make matters worse, she was only being difficult because the agent had asked her to drop her cat.

An hour (real time), several blank expressions and shouts of "Diana, just drop the damned cat" later, the Verbena was pistol whipped and beat into submission.

Stupid Character Stories...

1. In a Deadlands campaign, a Harrowed, taken over by his Manitou, released Tezcatchipotl (Aztecan god of darkness, basically) in the middle of Congo Square in New Orleans. Much fun ensued.

2. Just two sessions ago, the Forsaker in the group picked up The World's Most Obvious Trap; a small box (about shoebox-sized, for all you KODT fans out there) in the center of the room, with no locks, guards or anything, and opened it up. Cost my NPC/PC his expensive suit of armor, as well as some major damage when the fireball spell went off.

 

[Ulrick]

I think it would be great if the player who attacked the gazebo would come forth and tell his story...


This would be perfect thread to tell his side of what happened.




For those who don't know what I'm talking about, ask around. For those who don't know what a gazebo is, tell your DM that your character wants to attack one.

heh heh

Ulrick

 

[RogueJK]

I think it would be great if the player who attacked the gazebo would come forth and tell his story...


This would be perfect thread to tell his side of what happened.




For those who don't know what I'm talking about, ask around. For those who don't know what a gazebo is, tell your DM that your character wants to attack one.

If you're wondering just what the heck he is talking about, you can read the entire story of "Eric and the Dread Gazebo" in Ambient Inc.'s free product "Portable Hole Full of Beer". You can find information on this product and a link to the download location here: http://www.dreadgazebo.com/dnd/hole.html