When we introduced myfriend Mike, we were nuts about the new 2e Skills and Powers set. I loaned the book to Mike, who gave it a quick read.
When he made his character, he played an elven mage, at first level. He spent points to make sure that his character could use a sword, though. And he bought a variety of weird skills.
The session involved evading an orc war party that was in the forest, and the group was doing a pretty good job. They were being chased by a mounted party of goblins, and were running uphill to a defensible position. Suddenly, Mike's elf turns around and draws his sword. The whole group was stuck in a fight against a more mobile enemy in poor ground to fight on - much of the group was seriously wounded, although the mage got off fine. Afterwards, we reminded Mike that mage's shouldn't use swords unless it's last resort - "Mike, you didn't even cast a spell!"
"Oh, yeah.... right."
Later, one of the characters was knocked to negatives by an arrow. The fight was still going on, but the cleric ran to heal his downed companion. The mage beat him there, though, and pushed the cleric out of the way. "I have a healing skill!" Mike said.
The Cleric's player tried to explain that Healing skill wasn't as good as Cure Light Wounds, but Mike would hear none of it. He tried to heal the character, and failed. The Cleric pushed the mage out of the way, saying "I'm a healer. Why don't you go cast some spells?" or something to that effect.
After the fight, we looked at Mike. "You should be casting spells in combat, Mike. Let the healer do the healing."
In fact, at one point, we even offered to let him change classes, since he seemed to focus on combat so much. Play a fighter or something. But: "no, I want to be a wizard".
This pattern carried on throughout the session. The group would be about to do something when the elf would draw his blade and lead the fight into a combat that they probably should have avoided (this was an evasion-based adventure, not a combat one!). Several times, the group rolled their eyes and realized that Mike was going to get them all killed.
It came to an end when I described that the group could see the campfire of an orc party in the woods nearby. They decided to go investigate. When they get close, they see perhaps fifteen orcs sitting around a large fire.
"I'm going to sneak into the camp" Mike says, just before the group's ROGUE was about to say the same thing.
"That might not be a smart idea" I said, slowly.
"Why not? It says on my character sheet that I have 'Stealth'". (Ah... 2e!)
"It's not the same... you should probably let the-"
"I'm sneaking in."
So, the Mage sneaks into the camp, making his way into the orc chieftain's tent. Meanwhile, the Rogue is lurking at the edges, doing a fine job with his hide in shadows rolls. Then, the inevitable happens: the mage is spotted by an orc.
Rather than casting a spell that would take the orc out, he draws his sword. Of course, the Orc just laughs, punches the Mage in the face, and drags his limp body out to his friends.
"Look what I've found. That scrawny little runt we've been looking for!" he says. The rest of the orcs begin to gang up on the mage, taking turns punching him, and kicking his limp body.
Mike looks towards the rest of the group. "Aren't you guys going to help me?"
The rest of the group are laughing their butts off. "Hell, no. We'd rather watch." They're laughing even harder when the orc chieftain busts the elf's wrists so he can't cast any spells (like that'd happen!) and the orc party throws his unconscious body on the fire. Meanwhile, the group's rogue is busy looting the orc chieftain's tent, when one of the players reminds him "make sure you grab Mike's spellbook - we could sell it to a mage who will actually use it!"
In that whole eight hour session, the mage didn't cast a single spell!
***
Mike played with us for another two years or so, and he became a fairly strong player, but he never lived down his experience as the Elven Mage with a sword.
