What makes stupidity fatal?

[Tom Cashel]

This one happened pretty recently.

The party is on one side of a magical portal (which is closed). They know full well that an evil wizard, an evil fighter, and their ogre minions are lying in wait for them on the other side.

They come up with an intricate plan to quietly activate the portal, send the Shadowdancer through to sneak around and check things out...assuming the coast is clear the rest of the party will join him and they'll all head for the hills, coming back later to deal with their enemies.

Obviously, the point of the plan is stealth.

Everyone hides in the portal room. The Shadowdancer gets ready to enter stealth-mode.

The second the portal is open (co-locating both sides), the player of the druid says, "I yell to my companions, 'Go through the portal now!! I'll cover you!!!' "

He's been known as the Hollering Druid ever since! We often admonish him to use his "inside voice."

 

[Ruined]

There was a session when we were a bit younger involving a Ring of Wishes with one charge left. Our party went to battle on another plane, guns blazing, to take down the enemy. And the enemy quickly proved too tough for us. So we need the quick escape plan. The player with the Ring decides to extricate us by sending us back to our home plane, presumably Earth.

Player: " I wish we were transported to the Elemental Plane of Earth."

DM: "Is that what you say exactly?"

Player: " Yes."

[groans heard from around the table]

DM: " Okay, you all find yourselves encased in shale and granite, with nothing to breathe..."

TPK ensues.

Ah, the joys of gaming in our youth.

 

[Rel]

In my last campaign there was a Ranger whose favored enemy was Gnolls. The party was battling against a village of Gnolls using hit and run tactics and doing a pretty good job of it. Every chance the Ranger got, he went on and on about what a savage, brutal and thoroughly untrustworthy race the Gnolls were.

Then, the Gnolls sent an emisary to try and work out a "Peace Agreement" (i.e. buy time to figure out a better way to attack the party). So the party struck a deal with him: Their most powerful warrior would challenge the Gnolls most powerful warrior to a one on one fight. Whichever side won would leave the area and trouble the other no more.

When the day for the fight came, the entire able-bodied fighting segment of the Gnoll tribe showed up. They formed a ring and the Gnoll champion stepped into the ring to do battle. Then the Ranger stepped inside the ring of 30+ "untrustworthy" Gnolls to engage in an honorable one-on-one combat!

The funny part was that I didn't even need to have the rest of the Gnolls jump him (which I was going to do without hesitation) because the Gnoll Champion beat him all by himself.

The party turned out to be the untrustworthy ones since they attacked the Gnoll Champion as he was about to coup-de-grace the unconscious Ranger (who got killed in the ensuing melee anyway). Thanks to a scroll of Fireball that the Sorcerer had recently acquired, they managed to fend off the Gnolls. After the battle, they said, "That whole "single combat against Chaotic Evil monsters" thing probably wasn't such a good idea, huh?"

Bingo.

 

[-Warlord-]

Reminds me of a battle between two of my players and a demon.

First, it was the party who released the demon in the first place...because it could be usefull. Bad idea #1.

Second, two members of the party figured out it might have been a bad idea to have done so, and returned to confront the demon by themselves. Splitting the party....bad idea #2.

Bad idea #1 + bad idea #2: two partymembers get clobbered by demon and flee. The demon takes the teleport-without-error shortcut, and meets them at the gate of the castle, with a wall of fire between him and the two partymembers.

Combining bad roleplaying and worse rule-knowledge, they jump through the wall of fire to smack the demon "cause a wall of fire does only 1d4 damage".
With their hitpoints low already, both brainiacs ended up crispy at the demons feet.

 

[EricNoah]

PCs in a Planescape campaign approach a tower in the city of Sigil. In front of the tower's door are a few scorch-marks and even some ashes and human remains.

DM: So, what do you do?

PC: I walk up and open the door!!

DM: (stares) ... Oh....kay.... you and the party are hit with Chain Lighting. Make your saves....

 

[WayneLigon]

Long ago in a Traveller campaign: We are mercs on a questionable ticket, doing an undercover job for a planetary warlord. Any word of what we've done gets out and the Imperium will be all over this world like white on rice and the Warlord's head will be on a stick.

We return to the warlord's base, mission successful.

Warlord. "You've done much better than I expected. Line up against that wall to get paid."

So.. we do. Then the machinegun nests open up on us and mow us down like wheat.

GM: I cannot believe you guys actually lined up.

 

[Celebrim]

Actually, I have rarely had a TPK occur over a single encounter (thinks and thinks). Usually when peoples heads are together like that, they reason out a pretty good course of action. And I'm not likely to kill the whole party because of the impetious actions of one person, and I'm pretty good at secretly fudging the dice when I've underestimated the power of my NPC's, and furthermore, I'm usually quite willing to let a party run away to fight another day if it is at all reasonable that they would be able to do so. Usually, TPK's occur because the party becomes separated (which is the first portion of the stupidity), and then while in this weakened state, each separate group or person does something that would be only slightly reckless for the whole party but which is far to bold of an undertaking for a single character.

The closest thing I've ever had to a TPK occuring in a single encounter was not due to stupidity, but due to members of the parties conscious (and I thought reasonable under the circumstances) decision to kill each other. Only one survived.

There have been several situations in which I have foregone oppurtunities for a TPK. In one, my PC's were goblins (in a all demi-human campaign), and I made a random encounter roll. I smiled and said, 'By the light of the half moon, you see a band of humans - unarmed and nearly naked - shambling toward you across the rock wastes.' The party choose to hide and and wait for the humans to come closer. They asked a few questions about thier equipment. I told them that they appeared to have none, that thier clothes were tattered, and there appearance quite unkept. The party turned to each other and smiled, 'Alright, lets kill us some humans!'.

You can probably see this coming.

Werewolves.

 

[Henry]

The 2nd level PC's are tracking a missing courier. Their trail takes them to a seedy bar. The PC's decide to patronize the bar, and one will start a fight, while the others will sneak in to the obvious entrance to the back half of the bar.

The fight ensues. One PC sneaks in, alone, into the back entrance. He is ambushed, and captured.

The PC's, seeing one of their member enter and not return, decides to send ANOTHER single member into the back room. He, too, is ambushed, and does not return.

They are about to send a THIRD, ALONE and UNPREPARED PC into the back, before the fight catches them all in it, and the constables arrive to break it up.

The first PC (who was captured with little effort struggle) is found naked and cold on the doorstep of a temple, missing one finger.

The second PC, who put up a bit of a fight, and actually hurt someone) was never found - except for his eyeballs, which were sent by courier to the party. They resurrected the PC, and gave up searching for the courier altogether.

The sad part is, had they went in as a group, the fight was evenly matched.


--------------------

Same PC's, clearing out a goblin war party in a cavern. Trapped in a ravine in the cavern is an Umber hulk (well beyond the party's capacity, and I was sure to describe it as such.) The 'hulk was making a home in the bottom of the ravine and had no reason to go further up, only down to food.

Two of the PC's decide to leave the party, which has gone to fight the goblins, and try to kill the Umber Hulk.

The main party, diminished by 1/3rd of their strength by the maverick PC's leaving, have a hard fight, but win.

They had to come back to retrieve the remains of the two maverick PC's, who were serving as the 'hulk's supper by now.

They also had to have the local militia come in and kill the 'hulk, because it has suddenly discovered that two-legged food came from above, as well as below.

 

[Piratecat]

I once had the entire party try to jump into a sphere of annihiliation, thinking it was a teleportation gate. A solid black teleportation gate. That was clearly being used for waste disposal. Huh... who knew?

I, myself, did something asinine in the first RPGA event I ever played in. We had captured a powerful demon using a potion of demon control. The demon, dominated but petulant, cast a continual darkness spell on itself.

"Get rid of that darkness!" I said.

"I can't," rumbled the demon.

"Well, can't you dispel it or something?" I asked. I realized what I said a half-second later, as did the other players, all of us simultaneously screaming "No!" But by then the demon had cast dispel magic, dispelling both the darkness AND the demon control, and was starting to rip us into little itty bitty pieces....

I've still never lived that one down.

 

[Mercule]

It wasn't a TPK, but it was... interesting.

I usually have a "one warning" rule as people are breaking in new characters and figuring out their limits. Basically, I'll give a character one break, no matter how bad they screw up. This tested that principle.

The 2nd level PCs had found the goblin king and his four bodyguards in a round room with a 10' diameter round pit in the middle with no discernable bottom (that'll be important in a sec). The two fighter types had come into the room and each set up a position to block anyone trying to come around the pit. The bodyguards respond accordingly, spreading out to engage the PCs.

The 8 str wizard comes into the room and sees the goblin king unguarded. Despite having his full compliment of spells for the day, including Magic Missle, he shouts, "I jump over the pit and attack the goblin with my staff." Having no skill in Jump, and a penalty due to strength, he manages to roll a 10 exactly, jumping five feet. Since it was a 10' pit, that's pretty much right in the middle.

I did take pity on him and let him hit a patch of vines (the pit was pretty overgrown) and take like 3d6 damage. Believe me, though, the "one warning" rule now has some boundaries.