D&D General Times You've Wanted to Kill Your Players

[Asisreo]

You read the title right, friends. This isn't for the squeamish!

This is a place to post your stories where you, no matter the reason, you wanted to kill the person behind the character. Unleash your murderous rage upon the thread!

I'll start, as an example:

For new players, I like to go slow and make sure they completely understand the game. So, I'll walk them through the process of playing until they can finally understand how to play on their own.

Well, in one campaign I started a while ago, I had a certain player roll fairly low on their attack and damage rolls. Now, I have them go step-by-step in the process. "Don't forget to add your proficiency bonus and ability score. That should be a +5." I did this for practically every round of combat for the first 5 sessions we played and during those 5 sessions, he still barely ever hit. I wondered why, eventually he notices the druid, who he sits next to, add her strength modifier to her attack. He goes "Oh my God, we're supposed to add!? That's why I roll so low!"

I EXPLICITLY TOLD YOU THAT EVERY TIME ITS YOUR TURN!!! Ugh, eventually he got it, though. And it's fine because later the dice deities punished him by having him roll a nat1...as a halfling...into another nat1. So lucky the dice gods got to him before I did!

Also, it doesn't have to be confined to them playing D&D. If your son ate your leftovers without asking and you DM for him, you can absolutely vent here as well. Only qualifiers are that they are your players and you felt a rush of bloodlust.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, I've had some players like that--they just never seem to learn...

I have one player right now who keeps wanting to add his proficiency bonus to damage as well as his attack rolls. I have to keep reminding him not to. Even when I help him fill out his character sheet, he still forgets things or how to do stuff.

It can be very frustrating. Not to the point of wanting to kill him, but still...

 

[Greenfield]

I ran a superhero campaign once upon a time. Most of the group were part of a team, but one player always ran an outsider, one who wasn't associated with anyone. Each game the GM (usually me) had to come up with some contrived excuse why his character would be drawn in.

Finally I got sick of it and told them we were starting anew. New campaign, new characters. I asked everyone to design two perfectly normal human beings, complete down to the skills they needed to hold a job.

I then ran a "White Event", a cosmic-accident thing that gave everyone there a shot at powers. Both of their character got charged with cosmic-whatever and ended up with powers. They would then get to choose which one was theirs to play, and which they'd turn over to me, as DM, to use as the foundation for a broader super-community. Some would become allies, some would go Villain.

And the first thing Mr. Lone Wolf did with his character was flee the scene so nobody could get to know him, or have any basis for ever working with him. We'd be right back to pretzle-twisting the story so he'd be involved, the one thing I was trying to avoid.

I gave in. Next adventure started and everyone was on board, except him. Nobody knew how to reach his character, nor why they should, and I didn't make any special effort to drag him in. He sat there for the entire session, waiting for the usual dramatic entrance/introduction and his opening curtain never came.

I had privately vented to him about how frustrating it was to deal with his "You have to ask me real nice" approach every adventure, and he kind of hand-waved it. Figured that I had to keep doing it if I wanted him in the game.

But the joke was on him. I didn't want him in the game. We played at the FLGS, and shop rules said I had to accept players who wanted to join, so I couldn't actually throw him off the table. (This came up with the shop owner, after Lone Wolf complained). I said he was welcome to join the game, but that as far as I could tell, "join" wasn't something he was willing to do.

He expanded his antisocial behavior the next week, alienating the shop owner and got himself thrown out. Problem solved.

 

[Charlaquin]

Last night. My players were exploring a haunted house. They knew they needed to find a family portrait. They spent like 15 minutes going over the rooms they had already seen, trying to figure out where this portrait could be. They had only explored like half the house. I even said, several times, “it could also be in part of the house you haven’t been to yet,” but they seemed thoroughly committed to re-treading the ground they had already covered.

 

[Shiroiken]

Trying to end my first 1E, I was working on an epic finale to my 1E campaign that had gone well beyond reason (average level was 33). I was running various filler while working on it, but I accidentally left my notebook after a session. A few days later, one of my players asks me about Daemons, a monster I'd never used before that featured prominently in my finale. A quick interrogation revealed that the host had found the notebook, and they'd both read all of it in preparation for the adventure.

I had spent probably 15-20 hours working on it, and was very, very proud of myself. Instead, I had to completely start over, since the plot had an important twist these two knuckleheads ruined. The final version was probably better, but it took me a LONG time to forgive them. I should have booted them from the game, but instead I just punished their characters severely (which they accepted).

 

[Fenris-77]

The real problem is that I've run out of space under my patio.

 

[J.Quondam]

The real problem is that I've run out of space under my patio.

Concentrated lye can help with that. But it's hell on the surrounding soil.

 

[Fenris-77]

Concentrated lye can help with that. But it's hell on the surrounding soil.

You need to add some other stuff and do that in a big tub. It all washes down the drain. Stew Maker FTW.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I can't...I love my players too much even when they forgot they had an ability that would have prevented another character's death, after I've given my "the game runs smoother if you know your abilities" speech. At 2nd level.

 

[Faolyn]

I had two players (no longer game with either of them, for unrelated reasons) who, instead of telling me that they didn't like the genre of game I was going for (horror, Ravenloft), deliberately built goofy characters in an attempt to sabotage it (one went for silly, childish humor, the other was pure jerky Chaotic Neutral). Even though I asked the players on multiple occasions if they were OK with horror, were enjoying the game, or if there was anything that they felt needed to be changed to make it more fun.