PDA

View Full Version : D&D Darwin Awards (Dumbest Moves Ever!)



Pages : [1] 2

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 10:56 AM
I joined this forum to compare my recent stupid character move to others' folly. I'm wondering if anyone can match or beat this:

My party consists of eight characters:

Cedric, a battle cleric of Grumbar
Bujulmedi, a cleric/combat medic of Ilmater
Slim, a dwarven fighter specialized in archery "Force Bow with Legs"
Kialbrin, a rogue/deep warden/ scar enforcer
Corona, a blaster wizard, and his familiar, a winter wolf
Rubin, a blaster sorcerer, and his familiar, a wyrmling red dragon
Mercy, a monk/warblade/swordsage/fighter, and
Canary, a Bard/Lyric Theurge/ Sublime Cord (my character)

We were fighting an Ancient Night Twist, 1300 ft away.

Corona and I worked up the following plan: Corona and I go in under cover of invisibility, with haste and my countersong. I also cast harmonic chorus on Corona. Unfortunately, countersong has a time limmit. Corona is still casting fireballs and using blastglobes when this happens so I decide to maintain the harmonic chorus instead of renewing my song. Corona and I both fail will saves against the twist's Dispair Song and are drawn towards it. We snap out of it when the tree beats us nearly to death.
Being invisible, and arround 1300 ft from the rest of my party, I know I can't get their attention undaided. I therefore cast the spell Amplify and scream at the top of my lungs for help. My party hears me, as I intended. Unfortunately, they also hear the night twist, as they had been just out of range prior to my spell.
The next round, I am finished off, and Corona has incased himself in an Outiluke's Resilent Sphere. Eventually, everyone fails a will save and is drawn towards the twist. Rubin's familiar dies and so is given a new save, which he makes. Rubin then slings some spells at it before he fails another save. After healing himself with potions, Corona drops his sphere and gets to a relatively safe position to sling more spells at the twist. It tries to neutralize Corona with phantasmal killer and insanity spells, but fails. It does manage to kill Rubin as well as Corona's familiar before it is felled by his spells. Upon the twist's death, Corona has to save against its death curse, which he fails.

Final Tally of the Battle:
Canary, Rubin, and Rubin and Corona's familiars dead. Corona now has a night twist's death curse on him, so his rest is inturrupted by nightmares. Therefore, he can't prepare new spells. Also, the only spell our party has available to fix it is limmited wish-- which he's the only caster able to prepare it... but didn't have it prepared.

Canary and Corona's Familiar were raised. Rubin's player brought in his back-up character.


So... can anyone top that, or has anyone else seen the spell Amplify used to such diasterous effect?

grimbold
2010-12-07, 11:11 AM
one line for you laddy
"The last 6 doors werent trapped. What are the odds?"
stupid banshee scream
TPK

Douglas
2010-12-07, 11:18 AM
Seems to me like the real mistake there was dropping the countersong. A moderate reduction in damage output is a minor handicap in comparison to failing a save vs the kind of save-or-lose effect this thing was apparently putting out.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 11:28 AM
Seems to me like the real mistake there was dropping the countersong. A moderate reduction in damage output is a minor handicap in comparison to failing a save vs the kind of save-or-lose effect this thing was apparently putting out.

Oh definately! But the Amplify spell did alot more harm than any of our group ever thought it could. Also, what I should have done was to cast sonorus hum before the harmonic chorus, then I wouldn't have had to chose.

Radar
2010-12-07, 11:30 AM
Not a D&D example, but quite fitting:
1. The game was all about pulling the strings and indirect control of a historicaly important guy.
2. The guy in question was a roman centurion and his mother-in-law was a celtic priestes (druides or something) with loads of mystical tatoos and stuff. Needless to say, he didn't trust her one bit.
3. One player decided, that this very important guy would trust his mother-in-law more, if he knew, what all those runic tatoos ment, so he tried to forcefuly implant that knowledge into him. Most of the players tried to persuade this one player, not to. He did it anyway.
4. Result: the roman centurion lost his sanity, started babbling and foaming, and stuff. The only thing left to do, was to rewind the time and needless to say, we botched the roll.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 11:59 AM
Not a D&D example, but quite fitting:
1. The game was all about pulling the strings and indirect control of a historicaly important guy.
2. The guy in question was a roman centurion and his mother-in-law was a celtic priestes (druides or something) with loads of mystical tatoos and stuff. Needless to say, he didn't trust her one bit.
3. One player decided, that this very important guy would trust his mother-in-law more, if he knew, what all those runic tatoos ment, so he tried to forcefuly implant that knowledge into him. Most of the players tried to persuade this one player, not to. He did it anyway.
4. Result: the roman centurion lost his sanity, started babbling and foaming, and stuff. The only thing left to do, was to rewind the time and needless to say, we botched the roll.

That sounds terrible!
What game was this??

kestrel404
2010-12-07, 12:32 PM
Hmm, sounds like Continuum, except you can't really 'rewind time' in continuum.

Grelna the Blue
2010-12-07, 12:34 PM
Well, I have a longrunning necromancer character from the Frealms, specifically Mulhorand. Despite maxing out her Knowledge: Religion, the first time the party ran into vampires she tanked her roll (iirc she rolled a 1), so the GM ruled that they didn't exist in the sunny south and she knew nothing. The party cleric had turned or scattered a bunch of spawn inside a house and we were trying to figure out where they'd gone.

I knew better as a player, but my character tried to use a hand mirror to ascertain that it was safe to poke her head into the fireplace to look up the chimney. It looked clear, so...

Only making an exceptionally difficult Concentration check followed by a Dimension Door allowed her to escape after the spawn pulled her up and bit into her, but she was already down to something like 4 Con by then. Ever since, she's had an unaccountable predilection for the color bright red.

Radar
2010-12-07, 12:38 PM
That sounds terrible!
What game was this??
The system would be called in english "Lords of Fate". It's more then just obscure - apart from a short release in my country, it's nonexistant. The general premise of the game is, that the history is often decided by actions of specific important figures in specific turning points. As the titular lords of fate players have to nudge history into a proper direction (with various magical tools ranging from simple suggestions to doing things personally as an avatar). The thing is, there are two groups of players with contradicting goals. To make things more interesting, you have to keep the VIP alive and sane - nobody knows, what would happened otherwise.
It was actually very fun - I wish I could play it again.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 12:42 PM
The system would be called in english "Lords of Fate". It's more then just obscure - apart from a short release in my country, it's nonexistant. The general premise of the game is, that the history is often decided by actions of specific important figures in specific turning points. As the titular lords of fate players have to nudge history into a proper direction (with various magical tools ranging from simple suggestions to doing things personally as an avatar). The thing is, there are two groups of players with contradicting goals. To make things more interesting, you have to keep the VIP alive and sane - nobody knows, what would happened otherwise.
It was actually very fun - I wish I could play it again.

I bet it was fun! When I said, "that sounds terrible," I meant the actions that led to the VIP going nuts, not the game.

Fallbot
2010-12-07, 12:46 PM
In a 4E game my ranger went ahead on scouting detail and found a room with some big animal stalls and tracks he identified as belonging to offalians. While he signed this information back to the rest of the party so that we could come up with a plan, the guy playing the warlock got bored and decided his character wanted to come look too, poor defences and low stealth score be damned. It played out something like this;

DM: Make a stealth check for me.
Player: Sure! Oh, look at that, a 2.
Warlock: HEY [RANGER] WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT!?!
DM: A pair of grotesque snakelike creatures, composed of the rotting flesh of long dead animals, come slithering out of their stalls looking for the source of the disturbance.
Warlock: OH LOL WUT GIANT ORGAN WORMS!!!

My character was able to get himself to safety. The warlock wasn't so lucky and wound up being eaten. She got better, and went on to taunt a dragon into becoming her personal nemesis.

As a point of interest, in a year long campaign, the warlock has only succeeded on two skill checks as far as I can recall. Her finest hour was getting a 1 on an athletics check to jump a single square over a pressure plate when she would have made it on a 2. She spent the rest of the encounter inside the darkmantle the trap released.

Yora
2010-12-07, 12:46 PM
The group explores a ruined keep to search for two sealed metal crates with alchemical substances that had been left there by the last owners. While exploring the corridors they come upon a 5 meter long portion where the floor has collapsed. There are several ways to get to the other side of the hole by going through other corridors and rooms, and if anyone had payed attention to the map that was drawn as they explored the keep, they could have easily determined that the corridor with the hole only leads back to the main gate through which they entered in the first place. There are still lots of doors and other corridors they have not yet explored and there's no need at all to get to the other side of the pit.
But still, they spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to get across the pit. After I guess 15 minutes or so, they finally start to make a plan to drive spikes into the wall to which they will attack a rope which can be used to climb relatively safely to the other side. But just when they seem to come to an agreement to do this, the 1st level gnome rogue announces that he just tries to jump across to the other side. Of course he fails misserably and slashes on the ground of the corridor one floor below. That player was secretly playing a neutral evil character who stole from his teammates and always left to "explore" and put all treasure into his pockets before informing the others that the rooms are all safe and empty. But unfortunately he survived the fall with -7 hp and the other characters already had the rope at hand and climbed down to give him a healing potion. Of course all the noise had the worgs that patrolled the corridors running, and they had to fight them while the party was split.

Not only was it stupid, it was also completely pointless.

Baveboi
2010-12-07, 01:23 PM
Once, DMing, I had the missfortune to hear someone say "This battles are too easy". We were playing Warcraft D&D spoof, they found out a group of spellbreakers, all using my favourite build to date. They face the bloodelves so uterly arrogantly that I forget my piety and unleash the spellcasting horror on them.

The group was:
Fallen Night Elf Spellthief/Sorcerer/UM.
Half-Dragon Swordsage/Wizard.
Lightning Reavenant Warlock.
and Night Elf Cleric/PriestessOfSelûne
(Note that the first two have 5 levels of gestalt)

I began using my renowmed Maximized Shocking Grasp + Contingency: True Strike + Full Attack. They parried good, lost a handful of HP but were doing ok , but just when I was about to apply some modesty someone turn up and speak besides me: "But our DM can't make strong builds.". I said nothing, but then some went ranting about how the battles are easy and one had the audacity to say in my face that I wasn't good at DMing because of that. My Spellbreakers, Silencers and Arcanalocks (these are build titles, not classes) were all the same level as the party, with lesser gear and 32 pointbuy builds. They had 45 pointbuy. But I fleshed out the most atrocious spell-selection on the entire universe to beat out magic and/or melee alike.

Anyway;
That's the part were the group breaks down. Everyone is saying I'm cheating and I show my rolls, the spells, abilities and whatnot. They scream I was using not oficial material, but so were they even when I said not to.

In the end all of them die. The Warlock was immortal but the Arcanalock held his soul with a scroll of Dimmensional Anchor when he tried to leave. I left the table saying they could "Load Game" to before the encounter and try again. They were a bit more diplomatic this time...

Saint GoH
2010-12-07, 02:36 PM
Scenario: Elder Earth Elemental (found on the SRD) vs. four lvl 6's. We should be able to handle it.... right?
My charger rushes in, doing what he does best. Full attacking with all sorts of delicious power attack, oblivious to the fact that damn thing only has to roll a 4 to beat my AC. The cleric calls some Bless up, giving us all a small bonus. The bard sits in the back, playing her instrument as normal, and the assassin decides to try and flank with me, taking his bloody time (why flank an elemental? I don't know).

Elemental's turn. WHAM. I hurt. As in somewhere around 10hp hurt. Our wonderful cleric, having less then my barbarians d12's, decides I needs teh big healz and rushes the last 10 feet through the elementals reach. AoO. WHAM. Cleric down. WHAM. Cleave attempt, I'm down.

The assassin starts second guessing his decision. Maintains stealth in the bushes. The bard keeps playing, hoping the assassin will do something. Elemental's turn, it doesn't move. Assassin stands still. Mexican stand off. Bard's turn, it went something like this....
DM: Charger and Cleric lie bloody at the feet of the huge elemental, it towers over them, ready to attack any that come close. Assassin is nowhere to be seen.
Bard: So its standing over them?
DM: Yes, READY to take an ACTION. (I kid you not, in that inflection.)
Bard: Ok, well I'm going to run in and give Charger a potion.
DM:...
Everyone else: /facepalm (except the cleric, who thought it was a brilliant idea:smallsigh:)

WHAM. Bard down. Great cleave our corpses for good measure, melds softly back into the dirt. Assassin quietly wanders off, deciding to find another adventuring party in the tavern to help him kill the elemental.

Reynard
2010-12-07, 02:43 PM
Final Tally of the Battle:
Canary, Rubin, and Rubin and Corona's familiars dead. Corona now has a night twist's death curse on him, so his rest is inturrupted by nightmares. Therefore, he can't prepare new spells. Also, the only spell our party has available to fix it is limmited wish-- which he's the only caster able to prepare it... but didn't have it prepared.

He doesn't need to sleep, just rest for an hour or so.

So, you're not completely boned here.

Dienekes
2010-12-07, 03:17 PM
My players thought that it would be a good idea to try a rocket jump TF2 style.

The results were unsatisfactory for all involved but me (GM).

Incanur
2010-12-07, 03:24 PM
Scenario: Elder Earth Elemental (found on the SRD) vs. four lvl 6's. We should be able to handle it.... right?

Not necessarily. That's 5 points of CR beyond the party's level. Running might have been a smarter option. Elder elemental are pretty scary.

Elvenoutrider
2010-12-07, 03:50 PM
Over the course of this semester Ive played an artificer in a 3.5 campaign.

His playstyle throughout the whole campaign can be described as "I run into the room and touch everything/press all of the buttons"

Surprisingly, I'm the only one whose character hasn't died yet, these actions have always had a way to negatively effect everyone but me...

Tryll
2010-12-07, 04:10 PM
My players found a very complex way to hurt themselves:

There were two dragons living on the shore of an underground lake. There was also a long sloping hallway leading down to the equally-sloping beach of hard-packed gravel. The group had fought these dragons a couple of times before, and been badly beaten each time.

But this time the players had a plan!

They fashioned a large and sturdy wooden crate, with wheels, narrow gaps between the boards, and a hinged lid that would be tied shut after the cargo had been loaded. They were very specific on the measurements and design of the crate, as well as its final weight with cargo, but they steadfastly refused to tell me what they were going to put into it. “We’ve written it down in a note, which we will give to you when the time is right,” they said.

“Why can’t you tell me now”, I asked?

With an evil chuckle they answered “We want it to be a surprise.”

They laboriously hauled the large, heavy crate down through several dungeon levels until they were at the top of the sloping hallway. Then they loaded the cargo (“We’ve written it down. We’ll tell you what’s inside in a minute.”) and gave the crate a push down the long sloping hallway. They waited a moment for it to pick up speed, then charged after it screaming their battle cries.

I should pause here to mention that I was an engineering student in those days. I knew the length, slope, and roughness of the ramp, the weight of the crate, and the approximate amount of friction in the well-greased axles. It was no trouble at all to figure out how fast the crate would be going when it hit the water.

On the beach, the dragons heard the rumble of the crate’s wheels and the screams of the group. The crate shot out of the hallway, careened across the hard packed gravel beach, hit the lake at about 30 mph, and started tumbling. Since square wooden crates are not very streamlined, it only tumbled about thirty feet across the water before loosing momentum and sinking. (Remember, there were gaps between the boards, so it was not the least bit waterproof.)

The group emerged from the hallway just in time to see the crate slipping below the surface of the frigid lake water. They forgot about attacking the dragons and ran to the edge of the water, frantically trying to figure out how to rescue the crate. They immediately began bombarding me with questions:

“How deep is the water? Will it take long for the crate to reach bottom?”

“Uh, the lake is pretty shallow; it’s only about ten feet deep at that point. It would already be on the bottom by now,” I answered.

“What position is it in? Is it right-side up?”

“Is that important,“ I asked?

“YES!”

I had them roll a d6, with the “1” side representing the lid of the crate. It came to rest exactly upside down, resting on the lid.

“What was in the crate,” I asked?

“My character!” said one of the players.

Eventually they confessed what their plan had been: They had put the hobbit assassin in the crate with the idea that it would roll gently out of the hallway and come to rest on the beach. They would get the dragons to face away from the crate by all attacking from one side. While the dragons were distracted, the assassin would slip his dagger between the slats of the crate and cut the rope holding the lid closed. He would then slip out of the crate, sneak up behind the dragons, and make an assassination attempt on them.

As it actually worked out, the group had to bribe the dragons to let them retrieve the drowned corpse of their companion.

The dragons kept the crate.

Grelna the Blue
2010-12-07, 04:20 PM
My players found a very complex way to hurt themselves:

There were two dragons living on the shore of an underground lake. There was also a long sloping hallway leading down to the equally-sloping beach of hard-packed gravel. The group had fought these dragons a couple of times before, and been badly beaten each time.

But this time the players had a plan!

They fashioned a large and sturdy wooden crate, with wheels, narrow gaps between the boards, and a hinged lid that would be tied shut after the cargo had been loaded. They were very specific on the measurements and design of the crate, as well as its final weight with cargo, but they steadfastly refused to tell me what they were going to put into it. “We’ve written it down in a note, which we will give to you when the time is right,” they said.

“Why can’t you tell me now”, I asked?

With an evil chuckle they answered “We want it to be a surprise.”

They laboriously hauled the large and heavy crate down through several dungeon levels, until they were at the top of the sloping hallway. Then they loaded the cargo (“We’ve written it down. We’ll tell you what’s inside in a minute.”) and gave the crate a push down the long sloping hallway. They waited a moment for it to pick up speed, then charged after it screaming their battle cries.

I should pause here to mention that I was an engineering student in those days. I knew the length, slope, and roughness of the ramp, the weight of the crate, and the approximate amount of friction in the well-greased axles. It was no trouble at all to figure out how fast the crate would be going when it hit the water.

On the beach, the dragons heard the rumble of the crate’s wheels and the screams of the group. The cart shot out of the hallway, careened across the hard packed gravel beach, hit the lake at about 30 mph, and started tumbling. Since square wooden crates are not very streamlined, it only tumbled about thirty feet across the water before loosing momentum and sinking. (Remember, there were gaps between the boards, so it was not the least bit waterproof.)

The group emerged from the hallway just in time to see the crate slipping below the surface of the frigid lake water. They forgot about attacking the dragons and ran to the edge of the water, frantically trying to figure out how to rescue the crate. They immediately began bombarding me with questions:

“How deep is the water? Will it take long for the crate to reach bottom?”

“Uh, the lake is pretty shallow; it’s only about ten feet deep at that point. It would already be on the bottom by now,” I answered.

“What position is it in? Is it right-side up?”

“Is that important,“ I asked?

“YES!”

I had them roll a d6, with the “1” side representing the lid of the crate. It came to rest exactly upside down, resting on the lid.

“What was in the crate,” I asked?

“My character!” said one of the players.

Eventually they confessed what their plan had been: They had put the hobbit assassin in the crate with the idea that it would roll gently out of the hallway and come to rest on the beach. They would get the dragons to face away from the crate by all attacking from one side. While the dragons were distracted, the assassin would slip his dagger between the slats of the crate and cut the rope holding the lid closed. He would then slip out of the crate, sneak up behind the dragons, and make an assassination attempt on them.

As it actually worked out, the group had to bribe the dragons to let them retrieve the drowned corpse of their companion.

The dragons kept the crate.

That is one of the funniest gaming stories I've ever heard. :smallbiggrin:

Benejeseret
2010-12-07, 04:36 PM
I was DMing a group exploring a Demonologist's Tower that was one big, hollow cylinder and gravity was set sideways pulling to the outside.

At the very base, the party activated some runes/traps and released three Vrocks 'above' them in the tower.

Right off the Vrocks begin a Dance of Ruin for 3 rounds. Each and every round I carefully describe the huge stirring of magical forces, each round getting progressively larger and beyond anything they have ever seen (party ECL 12). I could not have made it more clear that something huge was about to happen. Out of Character I told them to picture a Dragonball Z scene or something from a Final Fantasy limit break summon

The rest of the party took two rounds of attack actions to try and stop it, but as I describe the final round of the mass destructive powers focusing down on them, the rest of the party promptly fall over each other scrambling to get out of the tower door....

Except the Artificer.

Practically on the brink of death from an earlier battle he runs inside(!) on the final round, stands dead center right below focus of surging power, and whips out a Rod of Wonder and fires a chaotic blast at a Vrock. Who turns blue. The artificer then rolls a natural 1 on his reflex save and takes 20d6 damage: obliterating his final hitpoints into the -60's. The Rod of Wonder fails and is destroyed

I jokingly said that every possible Rod of Wonder outcome goes off at once, twice over. His charred body suddenly enlarges, turns purple, and from which an ethereal elephant bursts out spewing butterflies from its trunk, gemstones out its ears, and lightning from its arse. It slows, belches a fireball at the Vrocks and them fades into a shimmer lightshow of fairie fire which blinds everyone as magical darkness closes the scene.

They never recover his body - which reduced down to a 1/12th invisible and ethereal stone statue hidden among the lush tropical ferns and grasses now inside the tower

randomhero00
2010-12-07, 04:38 PM
Party: "She's just a 10 foot fey! Look at how pretty she is *drools* she can't be a good fighter! Let's take her!"
-last words

Saintjebus
2010-12-07, 04:51 PM
*snip epicness

That is quite possibly the most epic death I've ever heard in my life. Was the artificer trying to die?

Yora
2010-12-07, 05:07 PM
The rest of the part took two rounds of attack actions to try and stop it, but as I describe the final round of the mass destructive powers focusing down on them, the rest of the party promptly fall over each other scrambling to get out of the tower door....

Except the Artificer.
This is not for a darwin award.

This has to be the most awsome final stand I've ever heard off. Never in two decades of reading about fantasy badasses have I heards something as epic as this!

That is quite possibly the most epic death I've ever heard in my life. Was the artificer trying to die?
"Always remember, Elan: It doesn't matter if you win or lose, as long as you look really cool doing it."
And he did. He really did.

OracleofWuffing
2010-12-07, 05:12 PM
"Let's not fight these guys, they haven't noticed us yet."
"Okay, let's have everyone roll hide and move silently."
"Sweet, we made it! Time for a Perform (Percussion) check!"

Fearan
2010-12-07, 05:20 PM
An underground river of coldfire (you fall there, you get 20d6 damage). Slippery icy bridge. White dragon (likes his meal frozen). And who would be the hero to step on the bridge? The cleric, of course. BtW, warlock and wizard could simply blast the dragon - and they did. Maybe, we should give the cleric a sign "Bullrush me plz"

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 06:18 PM
He doesn't need to sleep, just rest for an hour or so.

So, you're not completely boned here.

Actually, arcane casters need eight hours of rest to be able to prepare spells the next day. The nightmares prevent this rest, so no new spells for him.

Reynard
2010-12-07, 06:19 PM
Actually, arcane casters need eight hours of rest to be able to prepare spells the next day. The nightmares prevent this rest, so no new spells for him.

Why does he have to be asleep for those 8 hours? "Rest' can mean more things then just napping.

kladams707
2010-12-07, 06:25 PM
We had a paladin that, under the direction of a troll, looked over the edge of a cliff to see if the troll's name was written at the bottom...

Now that is a D&D Darwin Award.

Benejeseret
2010-12-07, 06:48 PM
We had a paladin that, under the direction of a troll, looked over the edge of a cliff to see if the troll's name was written at the bottom...

Now that's a classic Darwin. Question would be whether his Paladin code included chastity, thus making it a Double Darwin


That is quite possibly the most epic death I've ever heard in my life. Was the artificer trying to die?

We're never really sure. He's the guys that's always half asleep or flat out falls asleep during every game we have played. He seemed happy with the outcome.

Tvtyrant
2010-12-07, 06:55 PM
Why does he have to be asleep for those 8 hours? "Rest' can mean more things then just napping.

Because Nightmare specifically prevents casters from prepping spells, and it fatigues them for the rest of the day.

darbythegambler
2010-12-07, 07:33 PM
Not particularly disastrous to the entire party, but these stories are just so dumb that they deserve some merit.

Story 1: The party just finished a mission, so in our down time, the group starts looking for some info. Our rogue decides to go to the shadiest bar in town (words to the DM: I go to the shadiest bar in town). He goes up to someone, asks for some info, the guy he's talking to says "Do you trust me?" Rogue answers yes (totally ignoring all DM warnings and his own successful sense motive checks!) Shady guy then tells him, "Put your hand on the table." Stabbed for some damage, Rogue gets stuck to the table, guy leaves. Next day in game, the rogue goes into the same bar, talks to the same guy! Same thing happens, hand stuck to table with a dagger... I think this part was just for laughs, but the rogue after being stabbed stuck to a table for a second time says to the guy that stabbed him, "You seem like a nice guy" or something like that. What's the moral of the story kids? That's right, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Story 2: This one's much shorter, but still just pretty stupid. This was when everyone in the group was relatively new to D&D (3.5), thus, we thought a nat 20 on anything was auto success and nat 1 was auto failure. Well this one person's first time playing, he knew that skill checks were frequent in D&D, so trying to be active in the game and trying to gather the group together at an inn, he makes a "knock on door check". If that wasn't enough, he FAILED the fake skill check!... This was years ago and to this day we hold it over the poor guy's head.

Shyftir
2010-12-07, 07:37 PM
One time I rolled a Monk.

Talon Sky
2010-12-07, 07:54 PM
Assassin quietly wanders off, deciding to find another adventuring party in the tavern to help him kill the elemental.

Awesome D&D skills, that. My players never think of other possibilities aside from skilling their opponents or dying in the process.

Althrun83
2010-12-07, 08:06 PM
This isn't really a darwin award, but I still think it was pretty spectacular death. (for a lvl 1 encounter)

I just bought the 4e Red Box and decided to run through the downloadable solo adventure just to get a better idea of the whole system. (Always liked DnD, never played a game on paper before ever.)

I rolled a human wizard, and started up the scenerio. If things go well, you get a npc elf fighter with a nice ability where she attempts to use both swords in her hand and do +4 damage if it's successful. So I go through the script, make it past the kobolds, zombie, skeletons, and a poison dart trap, and make it to the final encounter, some tomb rats and a skeletal blackguard. tomb rats go by easy, being minions, and we turn the corner to see the skele running down the hall. It tries to charm me into coming closer so it can smack me with it's fiery longsword, but it didn't make the will check. I toss a burning hands at it, miss and only do 8 damage. The elf runs up and uses the Two-Weapon Rend I mentioned, and smacks the bejeezus out of him for 24 hp.

This bloodied the blackguard, which triggered Fiery Outburst, and knocked the elf down 14 HP of fire damage, so she's @ 10. THEN it had it's turn, and it uses Fiery Doom, and hits her for 22 hp, leaving her immolating @ -12 HP, with a ongoing 5 fire damage, which killed her dead when her next turn came up.

:smalleek:

AsteriskAmp
2010-12-07, 08:07 PM
Player to the God of Magic
-Hey moron...
Maximized Enlarged Empowered Fireball
Player was level 3

He had recently died, his soul was talking to the campaign's God of Magic.
His sheer existence was banished from creation as a result of his soul receiving the fireball, only a void remained, a void felt throughout all the multi-verses, he died despite Quantum Inmortality.

DungeonDelver
2010-12-07, 08:09 PM
Fun little story, I heard this one second hand from three different people, so I'm pretty sure it happened;

Party is around level 10, with a Sorcerer, a Ranger, a Cleric, a Monk and a Drow Necromancer. The Drow is trying to kill the rest of the party, because his job is to sabotage their efforts in the campaign.
The party parks off somewhere to rest. Keep in mind that this necromancer is trying to kill the rest of the party, who are all neatly sitting around a campfire. There's a staff of necromancy sitting in the cart. The necromancer decides to go for the kill.
His plan, his brilliant, wonderful plan is to use fireball. No, not grab the Staff of Necromancy with a 13th caster level Circle of Death that would likely kill at least one of the party members in a single shot, if not all of them, no, a 10d6 fireball. He badly singes the sorcerer but doesn't kill him, the ranger cleric and the monk barely feel it, and they drop him in the first round of combat.

Another short snippet;

We're fighting a lich, and none of us are optimized. We have a Psion/Fighter, a Ranger, a cleric/wizard/mystic theurge (DMPC built when the party was only 2 people), a Dragon Shaman, another cleric, and a rogue.

This lich has been hitting us with debuffs all battle and has generally been screwing with us. (He originally had several dangerous melee undead, but, we fried them in an epic fireball volley).

The rogue is pretty badly hurt, but we're all pretty sure the lich isn't going to be standing much longer, so he elects not to drink a potion to do emergency healing. Cue disintegrate and the party needing a broom to collect our Rogue...

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 09:27 PM
The rogue is pretty badly hurt, but we're all pretty sure the lich isn't going to be standing much longer, so he elects not to drink a potion to do emergency healing. Cue disintegrate and the party needing a broom to collect our Rogue...

hahaha! I've played with rogues I wished this would happen to!:smallbiggrin:

DungeonDelver
2010-12-07, 09:29 PM
It did just enough damage to kill him too, literally. He even passed his fort save.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-07, 11:21 PM
It did just enough damage to kill him too, literally. He even passed his fort save.

:smalleek: I don't think I've ever heard of that actually happening before!

DungeonDelver
2010-12-07, 11:26 PM
Yeah he had terrible luck. Oddly enough raising him proved to be a non-issue. We got the Deck of Many things and got enough wishes to just bring him back with no problems.

WarKitty
2010-12-07, 11:46 PM
Yeah he had terrible luck. Oddly enough raising him proved to be a non-issue. We got the Deck of Many things and got enough wishes to just bring him back with no problems.

That particular item has got to be responsible for enough darwin awards on its own.

DungeonDelver
2010-12-07, 11:48 PM
The Deck of Many things is an item that virtually no one can truly resist. I've been in two campaigns wherein I got a Deck of Many Things, and I ended up drawing in both games. I've always pulled out with good luck though...

Although electing to fight the wraith that can destroy your soul without the means to reliably injure it? Not bright, not bright at all...

TKB
2010-12-08, 12:02 AM
The set up: We are all mid teens in level (around 15ish) and traveling through an abandoned frozen city. After a while we end up inside the giant tower at the center of the city were the Aura of Cold is generating from. We find the generator (a giant magical machine) that is being powered by a pile of different magical items (a new one would be thrown in after the one before it was sucked dry of magic, kind of like coal). After sifting through the pile and finding that all of the items in it are cursed we leave it behind.

The bad decision: The Ranger in the party (TWF built with several level dips, can't remember them all) decided to try on one last magic item before we left, a magic helm. The helm immediately took over his mind, but acted just like him so none of us could tell that something was wrong. After a bit of exploring we find a prison block with an anti magic aura on it. When the rest of us decided to explore it the Ranger started acting weird and refused to go in. Wanting to get our explorations over with, the Paladin and I (the Fighter) grab him by the arms and start to drag him in.

The results: The DM flipped a coin to decide which of us two he would surprise attack. It was me. This was followed by a string of critical hits as the possessed Ranger hit my flat footed @$$ with every single stab and dealt a ridiculous amount of damage. Just enough to drop me to EXACTLY -10 hp. I had just shy of 140 hp at full health. I was not amused. The rest of the party got the helm off of the ranger just after that and he was more cautious after that.

John Campbell
2010-12-08, 01:21 AM
The Deck of Many things is an item that virtually no one can truly resist. I've been in two campaigns wherein I got a Deck of Many Things, and I ended up drawing in both games. I've always pulled out with good luck though...

Last game I was in where there was a deck of many things was the one where the group learned that, if they were going to play cards with my rogue, they should not, under any circumstances, allow him to deal. I made the RL Sleight of Hand check to stack the deck so cold it should have gained icy burst, right in front of five other players and the DM, and then said, "Draw five," and proceeded to deal out a royal flush in diamonds, in ascending order, with the good joker to cap it off as a substitute for the 10, leaving them going, "... You shuffled that. I saw you shuffle that."

(I probably should've thought that one through better before doing it... our alternate-weeks game at that point was Deadlands, which makes heavy use of playing cards in its game mechanics. While I was handling the cards honestly in that game - they're an abstract game mechanic; they don't involve handing an actual in-game deck of cards to an actual in-game character with an actual in-game Sleight of Hand even higher than my RL one, and who totally would take a shot at manipulating the results of an artifact of pure randomness - the revelation that I didn't have to if I didn't feel like it called some suspicion onto my results.)

The time before that, we got bored and ended up playing five-card-draw with the deck of many things. No one survived the first hand. That probably doesn't qualify for a Darwin, though, because it was less stupidity and more intolerable ennui.

Huh. All the really good Darwin Award stories I can think of offhand are Shadowrun, not D&D. Shadowrun is a lot less forgiving of lethal stupidity than D&D is.

Dralnu
2010-12-08, 01:41 AM
1)

This one happened in my RL group's first ever D&D campaign with a seasoned DM. We're a level 5 party: blaster sorcerer, druid, fighter, barbarian, and rogue (me). We find out that an old man in a cabin stole our relic. We decide to co-ordinate an ambush on him. The barbarian and fighter bull rush through the front door, I leap through a window, the druid breaks through the roof as a bear, and the sorcerer covers the entrance. The old man is very surprised.

Turns out the old man is a vampire wizard. We find that out after he regenerates from all of our attacks and is punching us out while giving negative levels and showing off feral teeth. The sorcerer manages to hurt him with magic missiles and in return gets 1shotted by a lightning bolt.

At this point we have two options: 1) flee 2) keep trying to attack. We pick option 2. We all try to grapple the vampire and eventually dogpile on him while I try and make an improvised stake. This may have worked... if vampires couldn't go ethereal, which he promptly did. We decided to flee after that.

Death Toll: The sorcerer and the barbarian. We managed to outrun him and his called wolves.

2)

Same campaign. We ended up in a prison and busted out due to a dinosaur invasion. Carnivore dinos everywhere. We make a break for the nearby forest, but I, the halfling rogue, turn back. There was a jewelery store that I had my eyes set on robbing but never had a chance to. Now was my moment! I ran over there, picked the lock, and took as many jewels as I could carry.

I ran into a pack of raptors. I also couldn't run very fast, due to my heavy load. Did I mention that no flanking buddies suck when fighting as a rogue? I died pretty fast.

Strife Warzeal
2010-12-08, 02:07 AM
1)

This one happened in my RL group's first ever D&D campaign with a seasoned DM. We're a level 5 party: blaster sorcerer, druid, fighter, barbarian, and rogue (me). We find out that an old man in a cabin stole our relic. We decide to co-ordinate an ambush on him. The barbarian and fighter bull rush through the front door, I leap through a window, the druid breaks through the roof as a bear, and the sorcerer covers the entrance.

I thought druids couldn't wildshape until level 6+ let alone be a bear, or was he using some sort of varient?

John Campbell
2010-12-08, 02:17 AM
I thought druids couldn't wildshape until level 6+ let alone be a bear, or was he using some sort of varient?

Druids get wildshape 1/day at 5th level, and their options - any Small or Medium Animal - include the black bear.

Strife Warzeal
2010-12-08, 02:25 AM
Need to read up on my classes then. Oh well, it was a small error.

tcrudisi
2010-12-08, 07:05 AM
Spoilered due to excessive length.


So... can anyone top that, or has anyone else seen the spell Amplify used to such diasterous effect?

Fails Darwin Award criteria: someone else was injured/killed as a result of the actions.


Scenario: Elder Earth Elemental (found on the SRD) vs. four lvl 6's. We should be able to handle it.... right?

WHAM. Bard down. Great cleave our corpses for good measure, melds softly back into the dirt. Assassin quietly wanders off, deciding to find another adventuring party in the tavern to help him kill the elemental.

Fighter and Cleric did what they have done numerous times before in a risky job, but what has always been the safest course. The Bard changed his tactics to one that was obviously not working. Darwin Award for the Bard but not for the Fighter or Cleric.


Once, DMing, I had the missfortune to hear someone say "This battles are too easy".

Possible Darwin Award candidates, however confirmation is needed that every character that died was being ran by a player that taunted the DM.


Not only was it stupid, it was also completely pointless.

Fails Darwin Award criteria: the NE rogue survived with no loss of his ability to father children.


My character was able to get himself to safety. The warlock wasn't so lucky and wound up being eaten. She got better, and went on to taunt a dragon into becoming her personal nemesis.

Fails Darwin Award criteria: character still retains the ability to procreate, although an eye will be kept on this character as we are confident that a Darwin Award will eventually come the warlock's way.


As it actually worked out, the group had to bribe the dragons to let them retrieve the drowned corpse of their companion.

The dragons kept the crate.

The assassin knowingly got into a crate that was built by his peers. Peers which he knew possessed no skills with construction. With some common sense, he would have realized that his crate would probably not float on water. However, he had the foresight to give himself an escape route and this must be considered. Was it enough to take him from "astoundingly bad judgment" to that of "bad judgment"? Ultimately, he is given a Darwin Award because it must also be remembered that he was attempting to go fight monsters.


Artificer running into an explosion.

The build-up of magical forces will often mean an explosion, but not always. The artificer, being someone who studies magic as his job, would have known this. He would have also known that it would be safest to stay back some distance to see what the effect was before studying it. Darwin Award granted.


Time for a Perform (Percussion) check!

Darwin Award withheld for multiple reasons. First, there is no evidence that the percussionist lost his ability to reproduce or died. Second, his actions surely hurt innocent bystanders.


An underground river of coldfire (you fall there, you get 20d6 damage). Slippery icy bridge. White dragon (likes his meal frozen). And a cleric.

Darwin Award not granted. First, there's no evidence the cleric died. Second, the cleric could have had several different, viable reasons for crossing the bridge. The cleric may not have known the bridge was dangerous. Furthermore, he may have believed that crossing the bridge was the only way to save his allies. It's poor judgment, certainly, but not astoundingly bad judgment.


We had a paladin that, under the direction of a troll, looked over the edge of a cliff to see if the troll's name was written at the bottom...

Now that is a D&D Darwin Award.

No, it is not. Darwin Award withheld due to the fact that the Paladin may have well survived. Perhaps he merely looked over in an attempt to trick the Troll into believing that the troll's name really was down there so he could use the same ploy on the Troll. Perhaps the Paladin had boots of flying or had made such jumps many times before.


Two stories: the first about a rogue that gets his hand stabbed into a table twice, the other a story about failing to knock on a door.

Neither story win a Darwin Award. No candidate lost his life or ability to reproduce.


He had recently died, his soul was talking to the campaign's God of Magic.
His sheer existence was banished from creation as a result of his soul receiving the fireball, only a void remained, a void felt throughout all the multi-verses, he died despite Quantum Inmortality.

No Darwin Award given, although he does receive an Honorable Mention. The character was already dead. He had already lost his ability to reproduce so his actions had no impact on the gene pool.


The bad decision: The Ranger in the party (TWF built with several level dips, can't remember them all) decided to try on one last magic item before we left, a magic helm.

No Darwin Award given. The character that died did so through someone else's actions, not his own.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-08, 08:54 AM
Huh. All the really good Darwin Award stories I can think of offhand are Shadowrun, not D&D. Shadowrun is a lot less forgiving of lethal stupidity than D&D is.

That's fine by me.:smallbiggrin:

Darwin
2010-12-08, 09:01 AM
When I first caught a glimpse of the title I hoped this thread was all about my accomplishments :smallfrown:

Chilingsworth
2010-12-08, 09:03 AM
When I first caught a glimpse of the title I hoped this thread was all about my accomplishments :smallfrown:
sorry to disapoint.

Duragonburo
2010-12-08, 10:48 AM
I remember a guy playing a goblin. He decided to go fish in the nearby lake while the other party members go buy all the necessary stuff.

He is fishing, minding his own business, and this one half-orc comes up to greet him. He enrages the half-orc (son of a rock and a pig!), who then picks him up and holds him head-first in the lake. Holds him.

Goblin fails reflex save and fort save, so he decides to, and I'm not joking, swallow a fish so he can breath the fishes air. Of course, he dies before the other characters even know he's in trouble.

grimbold
2010-12-08, 11:18 AM
also
lighting the fart of the party elephant in a tight dungeon room
is not a good idea :smalleek:

Ruinix
2010-12-08, 12:18 PM
i told this one severals time alredy, but it's was so epic that in our group we gave to the player the epic fail award.

after 3 years of running a famous campaing on 3.5 we reach the point of have to face a boss, not the BBEG but still a boss. i avoid names for not spoil the history of this campaing.

our group it's composed by:

dwarf cleric moradin / war priest lev 10. + henchman dwarf fighter
dwarf fighter / DD lev 10
goliath barbarian lev 9 + henchman healer
human marshal lev 10
catfolk ranger lev 9 (my char) + wolf AC


this boss its a druid /blighter lich. anyway, the marshal player had us, the 2 dwarfs and I the Legal chars of the party, trying to convince to make a deal of some sort with the lich and we opposed completly every time he bring this on, 1 full year since we get the filatery till we go to his dungeon, remind this, 1 full real time year.

once we get in the lair of the lich we did the usually kick the door, hack&slash every room; we kill an outsider dragon and a bard/storm caller in the process, both from the main group of enemies, both killed BEFORE reach the lich room, and the group of this 2 belongs had the filatery and was blackmailing the lich for their purpose.

at the lich room. the marshal ask 1 last time to us if we leave him to give a shot with rol & diplomacy, we (the 2 dwarfs and I) complete tired of this give him green light, but under the warning of "if he give us the minor problem we blast his bony a** to hell", the marshal was ok with that and proceed.


after some rol & rolls the lich offer us this:

"leave MY filactery and leave my place in peace and I give you the exact location and name and strenghs of the General of the horde you are facing, he is now with minor guards cause he send all his troops and everything to destroy that town from you are come. I give this intel and we are in peace."

"if you want to discuss this in privated, please take the room of the bard/storcaller"

(very polite after the rol and the diplo checks XDD)

we discuss the idea and come back with:

"this horde is a threat to us as well to you, after they destroy the town they WILL come for you, you know this, they alredy try to force you to help them, and they wasn't very polite. So, we had a counter offer.
We give you your filatery in exchange come with us and help to destroy the head of this horde, and then we are in peace"

with the propper diplo check we put our DM in a situation in wich wasn't contempled on the book of this campaing, and he was thinking in game as the lich and out char as DM XDDDD

then the marshal said:

"if you need to think in private you can take the stormcaller room"

the all table give him a face palm ¬¬

after that we roll initiative. i lost my companion and die but be ress right there, the barbarian and the cleric lost their henchmens too. we expend everything we got and nearly get a TPK, but finally smack the lich.

we goes from nearly and epic win of rol & roll to an almost TPK. all because 1 player-pc hesitate the boss after a diplo check

___

my apologies for the bad english, im argentinian spanish tongue

Teln
2010-12-08, 12:27 PM
Huh. All the really good Darwin Award stories I can think of offhand are Shadowrun, not D&D. Shadowrun is a lot less forgiving of lethal stupidity than D&D is.

Please don't let that stop you from sharing them.

Kiranvonstrom
2010-12-08, 12:40 PM
Low level party (4E) using the adventure from the starter set (Halfling rouge, Dragonborn paladin, Eladrin wizard, Dwarf fighter and Human cleric for the first party, with a human rogue, a human Wu-Jen (adapted from third edition) and a human barbarian as backup characters (two players didn't make backup characters): Unleashed a dire wolf four levels higher than them on themselves to general mayham, not only once, but twice, after going at the encounter again with back up characters. The first time they just pulled the lever that released the dire wolf to see what would happen, but the second time, they tried to disable the lever, rolled a one, (releasing the wolf) and both times the wolf proceeded to massacre the party. The Wu-Jen managed to escape by running away while the barbarian was mauled.
Sorry if that was entirely incomprehensible. Basically, the party let the creature that TPKed them out of it's cage. Twice.

plllizzz
2010-12-08, 12:58 PM
the druid breaks through the roof as a bear

Awesome. Just awesome.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-08, 02:13 PM
I have two more stories for this collection, both involve being turned into pincushions:

1st, Our party wizard decided to go scouting in an area where we knew hostiles were likely waiting. He forgot to cast invisibility on himself, though he had it preped. He did have fly. Anyway, he's flying down a very steep cave and encounters these super archer elemental warrior creatures (I forget what they're actually called.) They see him immediately, let loose with their bows, and one, maybe two rounds later, wizard-shaped pincushion, still floating till his fly wears off.

2nd, I'm playing a mid-level healer with a lamassu companion. Our party is facing down a bunch of arrow demons... what do I do? Well, I decide to fly my lammasu and myself to a "safer" position, blanking for a moment about the aptly named arrow demons. They take my lamassu down like AAA fire, and finish me off after I get up from the fall. Actually, the lamassu didn't get pincushioned, or at least didn't stay that way, since it gets sent back to its home plane apon death, leaving the arrows behind, but still...

doctor_wu
2010-12-08, 03:14 PM
I threw a stick at a magical sword and hit it. The sword then stabbed me and killed me without a save 5 minutes into the campaign.

Do not roleplay dehydrated again.

Logician
2010-12-08, 03:36 PM
This was my first time DMing.

The PCs had just saved a town from a small group of soldiers from a neighboring nation who had been attempting to burn and kill everyone in it. After easily dispatching the soldiers, the party agreed to rest in the thankful town. Early in the morning, however, they are awakened by shouting. A few party members head downstairs to get outside and see whats going on, while the party ranger and wizard look out the window.

What they see is a fairly large force of approximately 25 soldiers, 10 wizards, and several crossbowmen led by a man in more decorated Armour and a cape, signifying him as the leader. The Officer is asking "Where is Emerail" (a plot important NPC not yet known to the party), and then goes on to explain that forces had been sent to several towns all of which were now smoking off in the distance aside from this one, which they assumed meant Emerail was there, being as Emerail was a near-epic sorcerer.

The party ranger then tells me who shoots the Officer twice, both shots hit and one crits, killing the lieutenant. The ranger is then killed the following round by 7 searing rays and 5 crossbow bolts...

His excuse was that his name was Emerson, and thought they were there to kill him. Despite all the information given about Emerail being a sorcerer who had recently stolen a artifact of great importance from their nation, none of which applied to The Ranger.

This campaign is currently 5 sessions long, and out of 5 PC deaths, 4 have been his.

The most recent was him asking Emerail (who the party had just contacted in a series of mostly unrelated incidents ) to kill him, which he did. His reason for this was so he could ask a dead character something, despite me telling him that they, and even utilizing that they had a telepathic connection with which they could speak. A ability he had used multiple times last session.

Zangano Athyran
2010-12-08, 04:53 PM
Sariag - Human skill monkey
Grozzkazza - Half-Ogre tank
Tuskenrach - Orc tank
Kestreya - Human sneaky
Bella Donna - Human melee/ranged (pirate)
DM - Me

The characters had been imprisoned by the king of a desert empire who was known to have the Paragon template (Epic Level Handbook). They were granted an audience with this king. Sariag, who had a lungful to say, proceeded with the following monologue:
"So, let me guess: you are the magnianimous [deleted] who decided to put a portal at the bottom of your palace. What is the big deal about some ancient ruins, that you put people in jail just for looking at them? Are you afraid? Jealous? [Deleted]! I am going to find your enemies and do R&D for them just because YOU didn't like that I happened to be smart enough to figure out your vaunted enchanted lock. Are you listening to me? Because one day the name of Sariag will be a household name! I am the smartest, most innovative, most brilliant scientist in all existence! You...you are a petty tyrant and a cad. I have no time for your juvenille games or your indecent posturing. I rest my [deleted] case." Gives him the bird.
It did not end well for Sariag. However, at the end of the campaign Sariag wound up becoming the God of Science and Alchemy. A happy ending, but he never forgot the pain of being sucker punched by a Paragon.

Dr Bwaa
2010-12-08, 04:57 PM
Artificer Explosion

I have a suspicion that this is basically the fate in store for a halfling chaos mage/barbarian of mine. He isn't as suicidal, but he is largely composed of chaos, going insane, and has a Rod of Wonder... I'd be happy if he went out that way. As DM you did a great job with the consequences :smallbiggrin:

Ulmaxes
2010-12-08, 08:21 PM
My very first campaign.

Me: Elf Wizard, lvl 13.
Artemus: Human Dragon Shaman, lvl 13.


We're tracking down the hoard of a Blue Dragon we had killed earlier (with full party, not just us.)
It was convinent to the plot for the two of us to go do it, so we did.
Eventually find it, kill a few wraiths. No prob.
Then we make our way down its burrow to find a bluespawn godslayer guarding a small hoard of gold and items.
After a few minutes of chit-chat, it's pretty clear that even captain charisma isn't talking our way out of this one. So battle ensues.
Pretty straightforward: he stands up front taking the hits/healing himself, I stand in back and blast.
This works for a grand total of two turns, when suddenly (via a mediocre spot check) Artemis decides that something is BEHIND said godslayer stealing treasure.
In the middle of the fight, he RUNS AROUND THE GODSLAYER (taking att. of opp. along the way) just to see what it was. Of course, he sees nothing.

Now, what does the godslayer do? Continue fighting the little pest? No. Of course not. he goes for Captain Squishy in the back.
One Charge-Critical Hit-Awesome Blow-Power Attack later and my wizard is scraping himself off the nearby cave wall. With health in the single digits, I desperately cast Maze to buy time. It works, but my wizard spends most of the intermission screaming profanities at the shaman. Derogatory comments about his human lineage and mother's supposed occupation included.

SwanyUSD
2010-12-08, 08:23 PM
I wasn't part of this game, but I've heard the story many times...

The DM had setup two of the characters to be brothers. One of the brothers wanted to be an assassin, so to start the game, he gets a letter saying that he can join the guild, and his first mission is to kill his brother. The DM figured that they would discuss it, and go up against the guild.

The game starts off with the brothers walking, talking about what to do. The "targeted" brother is discussing how they should go after the guild, while the other listens intently... for exactly 3 rounds...

The DM, and the dead brother, didn't see it coming... :biggrin:

Chilingsworth
2010-12-09, 01:00 AM
I wasn't part of this game, but I've heard the story many times...

The DM had setup two of the characters to be brothers. One of the brothers wanted to be an assassin, so to start the game, he gets a letter saying that he can join the guild, and his first mission is to kill his brother. The DM figured that they would discuss it, and go up against the guild.

The game starts off with the brothers walking, talking about what to do. The "targeted" brother is discussing how they should go after the guild, while the other listens intently... for exactly 3 rounds...

The DM, and the dead brother, didn't see it coming... :biggrin:

How did the other player take this?

Beelzebub1111
2010-12-09, 01:10 AM
I have a few honorable mentions (These are from 2nd ed, so if the rules seem off)
I charged through an Evard's Black tentacles, and made 9 saves out of 10.
I put on a Talisman of the Sphere without being a wizard
A friend of mine put on a black robe of the archmagi as a good wizard.

holywhippet
2010-12-09, 05:06 AM
A couple I have from Dark Heresy - technically they didn't end in a death, but only because the system lets you burn off a fate point to avoid certain death in most cases.

Same player and same character in both cases - a hive world scum.

First while exploring some mines we come across a minor demon in a room. The room smells of promethium (basically super petrol) and has some large storage tanks in it. The tech priest goes first, warns us about the promethium, and steps back into the corridor to avoid shooting into the room. The scum goes next and after some deliberation, the player decides his character wouldn't understand how dangerous promethium is and fires both of his auto-pistols on dual burst fire into the room. He only needed one miss in order to ignite the tanks, instead he only got one single hit. The resulting fireball would have easily incinerated us if we hadn't burnt off fate points and ducked into a doorway on the other side of the hall.

Later in the campaign (new mission) the scum has been taken in for questioning by the local law enforcement who suspect him of killing both a member of the arbites and my character (I bled out, I might have lived if he'd taken the medicae skill like we'd suggested). He's in a room with a communications terminal and he'd just contacted the local astropath for the inquisition to ask for help. He has told them he works for an inquisitor just prior (but they haven't confirmed this yet). So they enter the room and tell him he's under arrest. He responds by tossing a grenade at them - badly injuring them. He follows up with his dual auto-pistols and kills them. It should be noted that this is inside of the local law enforcement station. He then decides he wants to contact the astropath again - unfortunately his grenade blew out the terminal. So he tries to fix it - and fails. Meanwhile alarms are wailing and the cops set up a barricade and order him to surrender immediately. He comes out, both guns blazing and is cut down by the dozen or so heavily armed police waiting for him. Again, he burns a fate point and is transferred into some kind of mechanised body since they manage to stabilise his head for questioning.

The campaign ended at that point - I almost regret that, I'd love to have seen what he came up with next.

Clovis
2010-12-09, 08:02 AM
Our liege lord charged us to scout an infestation of demons in the nearby hills. We destroyed them, shut down a gate to the abyss and found an artifact native of the race of our liege lord. A PC in our group thought that he didn't like the way we were talking about delivering it to our liege lord and disappears during the night on his watch, carrying the gemstone artifact. He gets stopped by a random horde of goblinoids, was knocked down and told to surrender. He's lying on the ground with some half-a-dozen swords pressed to his throat and torso. He decides to fight.
The goblinoids left a trail easy enough to follow so we were able to recover the gemstone.

Same player, different PC. Lowish levels. A paladin sees giants roasting a human. He charges immediately without waiting for the rest of the group to take battle positions. One club swing later a headless horseman (ex-paladin) crashes to the ground.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-09, 02:03 PM
Our liege lord charged us to scout an infestation of demons in the nearby hills. We destroyed them, shut down a gate to the abyss and found an artifact native of the race of our liege lord. A PC in our group thought that he didn't like the way we were talking about delivering it to our liege lord and disappears during the night on his watch, carrying the gemstone artifact. He gets stopped by a random horde of goblinoids, was knocked down and told to surrender. He's lying on the ground with some half-a-dozen swords pressed to his throat and torso. He decides to fight.
The goblinoids left a trail easy enough to follow so we were able to recover the gemstone.

Same player, different PC. Lowish levels. A paladin sees giants roasting a human. He charges immediately without waiting for the rest of the group to take battle positions. One club swing later a headless horseman (ex-paladin) crashes to the ground.

Sounds like you had an annoying rogue. Did he chose to play a paladin then, or was he forced?

peacenlove
2010-12-09, 03:18 PM
DM ing a party with 3 rogues, a monk (all level 5) and (a level 3) drow wizard.
They encounter a manticore (CR 5, with mostly melee attacks and clumsy maneuverability so it should land sometime) in an open area flying towards them.

Me: You see a manticore flying towards you. It seems really aggressive.
Rogue 1: Umm i don't have a bow
Rogue 2: Neither do I!
Monk (with an AC 22-23, due to some mistakes of mine, note that the manticore had in 3.0 edition a +6 attack bonus if i remember correctly): I hide in the nearby woods!
Wizard: I challenge it (guy with 13 hit points, AC around 14-16) and aim a flaming sphere to it.
Rogue 3: This monster its too difficult, i retreat too (the only guy with a bow)

I leave the rest to your rich imagination :smallannoyed:
(Hint: it involves an impaled drow and the laughing stock of many adventures to come)

Incanur
2010-12-09, 06:17 PM
Yeah, player deaths often happen when the group splits up. One time I had monk/cleric multiclass face down a furious Rashemi berserker (barbarian) who had a blood feud against him. The PC received only limited assistance from the other two characters and got kayoed. Because of the circumstances, I felt the opponent had to finish him off to maintain credibility.

Zieu
2010-12-09, 06:58 PM
Haha, well....this is one of my personal stories, but in my defense it made complete sense at the time (and I still maintain it does today):

After spending a day stocking up in town, the party set off for a nice trek through a swamp for some larger goal I don't remember. Recovering a church's holy items or something. Anyway. The townspeople had told us a legend of a beautiful woman who was travelling with a caravan through the swamp when they were attacked by lizardmen lizardfolk, and her carriage was upturned into a pit of quicksand. A set of seductive, glowing eyes said to be her ghost would occasionally appear and offer to show an adventurer where her treasure had fallen so she could rest in peace, knowing it was in safe hands....

So we set up camp one night, and I stay up for second watch -- the DM's never rolled a random encounter on second watch, so I take it knowing nothing will happen and it won't be my fault. The party cleric is up as well, and we're watching opposite ends of the camp. DM passes me a note requesting a Spot check, whereupon a glowing object appears about 20 metres away. It speaks to me, telling it to follow it, it will show me to the treasure. I say why not? Without telling the cleric, I plod along after it at half pace, whereupon I reached a medium-sized pool -- 30ftx15ft, oblong, with a log extending halfway across. The glowing mote is at about head-height, but it's just a bit too bright to be able to tell whether it's a set of eyes by looking at it.

The mote heads out to the end of the log and hovers over about the middle of the pool. I walk out, make a Balance check to keep from slipping on some moss, and sit down on the end of the log and gently slide into the pool.

Not taking my armour off beforehand. Not tying myself to the log either. Just plopped right in. I quickly start failing Swim checks to keep from getting sucked down. DC 13 Swim to keep from sinking, beat it by 5 and I can swim up 5 feet; my Swim mod is +5. No sweat, right? Wrong. 20 rolls later, I'm 40 feet under the surface and unconscious. DM is horrified, I'm feeling a bit silly at this point, and he brings the cleric player back into the room and tries to get her to help me out. Through what I'm guessing is a bit of DM fudging, he got her to the pool saw the (now red) mote above the pool, ruled that my Everburning Torch had gotten snagged on the pool wall 5 feet down and was visible from the surface. Starting HP: 51, Con = 17 (34 rounds of holding my breath). I came out with -3 HP and some Con damage.

So ok, I was saved by DM fiat because it would've been a stupid, silly way to die very early in the campaign. In reality, my character was dead.

I think that it served a useful purpose though, because the swamp was filled with these motes, Will O' the Wisps, which none of us had seen before, and my "encounter" with them had taught us to be wary of them in the future -- there was a trap later on in the campaign based on the Wisps, so I got to put in my two cents there.

Choco
2010-12-09, 07:15 PM
Famous last words:
"She's a cripple in a wheelchair, what's she gonna do?"

Silva Stormrage
2010-12-10, 12:15 AM
In a recent campaign this gem happened.
The party was going to try and open the gate to a demonologist's tower by taking control of the gate tower. The Half Minatuar Half Fey Druken Master Monk flew in through a window. He spotted one human caster, who was asleep at his post. Instead of doing what the rest of the party was saying, coup de grace, he decided he wanted a minion and tried to charm person it. The dc was something around 14 and he was level 8. The caster then woke up and this is when it starts to go really bad
1: Caster wins inititave, casts glitterdust and the Monk rolls a 2. and is blinded (The room was tiny and he mostly the whole room). Caster than moves away.
2: Monk than wastes his action attacking where the caster was a moment ago.
3: The caster then uses a scroll of summon monster V summons a fiendish tiger who then pounces.
2: Only two attacks hit but one was a claw attack so he had to make a grapple check. Monk rolled a one... The Caster moves out into a corner. the large size monk can't reach him without incuring attack of oppurtunities agianst the tiger.
3: After like 3 rounds of constantly failing to break free of the grapple and the caster summoning a new creature every round the Monk uses suggestion on the caster. The caster barely fails and the Monk than had him dismiss the pets and he then got a suprise round and killed the caster.

So it took a lvl 8 monk (Ecl around 11) around 6 rounds to take out a lvl 6 caster who had so little hp the Monk had to hit him once to kill, not coup de grace but just a regular hit, he had 22 hp and like 12 ac....

The rest of the party gave him much grief when he returned to the group with 5hp :smallbiggrin:

Chilingsworth
2010-12-10, 09:11 AM
wait... half-minotaur, half-fey? the story behind that might almost warrant an honorable mention!:smallyuk:

Tryll
2010-12-10, 10:01 AM
Back in 1st edition days we were working our way through the Tomb of Horrors…

We come up to a huge stone face (don’t remember if it was carved on the wall or if it was part of a statue) and our DM describes it to us, emphasizing that the mouth is wide open but it’s too dark to see what’s inside it. Naturally enough, we are all curious. While the rest of us were discussing what tool we should use to poke into the darkness, one player says “I stick my head in.”

And that’s how we found out where the Sphere of Annihilation was hidden.

Chainsaw Hobbit
2010-12-10, 01:57 PM
I was playing an AD&D game a while back and the party was facing off against a small army of boar-riding hobgoblins (our DM was evil). Anyway, I was playing a halfling thief who had a bag of infinite money (or DM was also crazy). I had only a few hit points left, I was disarmed, and I was cornered by one of the giant boars. I had been awake for about 22 hours and as a result of this my judgment was a little clouded, so I force-fed the boar my bag of infinite gold in the hope that it would die of internal damage.
My character lost an arm.

Silva Stormrage
2010-12-10, 02:03 PM
wait... half-minotaur, half-fey? the story behind that might almost warrant an honorable mention!:smallyuk:

The rules sadly allow it :smalleek:

Choco
2010-12-10, 02:07 PM
The rules sadly allow it :smalleek:

Just like the Owlbear, when all other explanations fail, "A wizard did it!"

Dr.Epic
2010-12-10, 02:08 PM
I knew someone who was playing a ranger just for the free rapid shot feats when they could have easily gone fighter. Said friend also made a fighter that was LG, wanted to ride a horse, and acted just like a paladin, but didn't take any levels in paladin.

Le-vante
2010-12-10, 04:17 PM
Our party was around lvl 17 at the time:

Wizard/..somthing from the book of abberations (formaly human),
Cleric of st cuthbert (half-elf),
Ranger/Dragon stalker(human),
Rogue (kobold),
Barbarian/frenzied beserker (half-orc).


After spending days on a diffrent plane and plundering a fortress of iron, we finaly managed to steal a powerfull artifact from right under the big bad boss's nose. After which we dicide is the optimum time to scarper and return to the material plane, thinking we had atleast a day before he'd find out it had been taken, who took it and send someone out to recover it we decided to rest in a nearby highclass and very expensive tavern.

We were wrong...

After about 4 hours the party was just about to settle down for the evening when the window on the farside of the room exploded, the door burst open and a large red something crashed through the roof. Before we knew it we had become roomies with 2 Rakishars, 4 steal predators and a Pit-fiend.

In the end my charcter (barb/fb) ended up with negitive hp in the hundreds lying facedown on a pile of broken steal predators and thanks to supreme cleave, a greatsword in the wall.
The kobold was a smoking pile of ash and the ranger was left in two. As for the other two, they managed to last untill the pit fiend left with the artifact only to face the wrath.. and the bill of the landlord.

Kurald Galain
2010-12-10, 06:27 PM
Well, I've mentioned this before, but my personal Darwin award goes to the beguiler that decided to charge a red dragon with a rapier just found in the dungeon. Predictably, he missed (twice) then got hit by a full multiattack routine with power attack, for about twice his hit point maximum...

tomandtish
2010-12-10, 07:01 PM
Not D&D and not a death, but I can compete with these in real life.

I’m 18 (1987) and my grandfather has gotten a small Class B firework (one you actually need a license to use). I light it and we back WAY off.

Allow me to clarify that we aren’t entirely sober (translation: drunk as skunks).

After a few minutes, we realize nothing is happening. I walk up and realize the fuse has apparently gone out just inside the hole. I light a sparkler and shove it in. Nothing happens. Repeat a few times.

We light a handful of sparklers and drop them in the top. Nothing. My Grandfather gets some extra fuse, we feed it into the hole and relight it. Nothing.

My Grandfather walks out with a lit propane torch and hands it to me. I put it next to the fuse hole, figuring that if I stay low, I can stay under the level of the things coming out the top.

The side tubing is very thick, and while I’m kneeling there, suddenly “Third Law of Physics” flashes through my mind. I briefly think that this is an unusual though and go back to burning.

Agaain, “THIRD LAW OF PHYSICS”. Ok, I better figure out why this is important. So I ask myself what is the third law? Well, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. OK, but how does that apply here? That means that if you light this thing by burning a hole in the side, it’s not going to go off from the top, it’s going to …

OH S@%$!!!

I turn around, take about 2 large steps, and right as I jump the whole thing blows out the side. I come rolling out of this huge fireball.
After my grandfather and father have put the flames out and I have stopped smoldering, my Grandfather looks at me and says “Oops”.

I miss that crazy old man.

None of my characters has ever been that dumb.

Half-orc Bard
2010-12-10, 07:07 PM
Our party was 3 people

Me the cleric

A wizard

And a dwarf barbarian who was getting drunk.

We went out of the town and found 4 goblins. Not knowing they were stronger than average. So I charge in to fight and missed.The goblins flank me in all directions. All but 1 hit. Luckily I had a high con. Then the wizard trying out his new spell level casts fireball on me and the goblins. Everyone makes their reflex save but me. I mean I am a cleric. Now I don't let him get fireball but the good news is he died too.:smalltongue:

Duragonburo
2010-12-10, 08:27 PM
I threw a stick at a magical sword and hit it. The sword then stabbed me and killed me without a save 5 minutes into the campaign.

Do not roleplay dehydrated again.

Reminds me of the time the party was in the /good/ kings castle, but out of sheer ... They decide to attack the king, because he must be evil. So one character notices that in the middle of the fight the king is standing under the big chandelier in the middle of the room. He decides to end the battle and sever the ties on the chandelier. By throwing his sword at it. He rolls a 1. Sword gets stuck in the chandelier. He get's killed within two rounds. Well, perhaps not killed, more of a falling out. Of a 16 level tower window. Onto a spire.

Ok, the spire thing's made up. But still.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-10, 09:23 PM
Our party was 3 people

Me the cleric

A wizard

And a dwarf barbarian who was getting drunk.

We went out of the town and found 4 goblins. Not knowing they were stronger than average. So I charge in to fight and missed.The goblins flank me in all directions. All but 1 hit. Luckily I had a high con. Then the wizard trying out his new spell level casts fireball on me and the goblins. Everyone makes their reflex save but me. I mean I am a cleric. Now I don't let him get fireball but the good news is he died too.:smalltongue:

Goblins! (http://www.goblinscomic.com/)

Sorry, your story just made me think of that comic!

Kuma
2010-12-10, 11:30 PM
Gestalt Evil campaign in Forgotten realms, Party consisted of Me (Warlock/warblade Social-mancer) tomb tainted cleric/favored soul of nerull, Half-dragon Dragonkin monk/something, Half Iron Golem Fighter/something and his wizard/red wizard artificer creator.

there are two awards going out so far, first off we start at level six so the monk had two levels at the beginning, he never got to third.
the second award goes to the cleric for attempting to grave rob in waterdeep and when caught attempt to bluff (untrained) the gaurds. hilarity ensued.

Anterean
2010-12-11, 12:00 AM
The party (which composition I no longer recall but it had a wizard) are exploring some underground cavern and stumble into a lair of darkmantles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/darkmantle.htm).

As per their usual tactic they cover the area in darkness and starts dropping from the roofs on the heads of the characters.
With his group stumbling around in the darkness with these creatures wrapped around their heads slowly chocking the life out of them the wizard panics and throws a fireball in middle of darkness.

Upside, the dark mantles all died in the blast, down side.. so did most of the group.

R. Shackleford
2010-12-11, 12:28 AM
I'm DM'ing. Level 12, 4e. The party is on the run from what is essentially Freeza. They've encountered him in the middle of razing a town of Dragonborn. The party knows they should run, but our Bladeling Swordmage (who'd previously walked up to the strongest NPC in the campaign looking to kill her only to lose a hand for his trouble), decides to loot the town while the getting is good.

The party, tired of him doing stereotypical CE things like this, let's him run off.

He enters the town, and I roll to see if he would have the misfortune of running into Freeza. Dice say yes. He rolls initiative when he sees him (note that he would've had to roll initiative anyway, but he jumped at the chance). After a few rounds, he's bloodied and shows no sign of wanting to run. By now, even the evil bloodthirsty sword he's acquired is suggesting that he run. He doesn't. So, I decide to use the attack I gave Freeza that was meant to be a wake-up call later in the session, which was save-or-die.

I crit. I show the table, and tell him to reroll a new character.

I ran Tomb of Horrors in the summer, and in one of the traps where you have to open from a choice of booby-trapped doors, our fighter decided that it'd be best to open all of them, despite someone rolling an insight check that told the party that traps like this seemed to have no correct answer. He killed the hireling and the aforementioned rerolled character.

Clovis
2010-12-11, 07:57 AM
Sounds like you had an annoying rogue. Did he chose to play a paladin then, or was he forced?

He chose to play the paladin. Soon thereafter he and the dm decided that this was not his kind of game.

RipperOfShirts
2010-12-11, 08:45 AM
Was playing 4e the day it came out because our DM wanted to take it for a spin. Party was:

Teilfing Rogue (Me)
Dwarf Fighter
Dwarf Paladin
Half-Elf Warlock
Dragonborn Cleric

We were fighting our way through some random dungeon infested with Kobolds. They had us pinned down by 4 automated crossbow turrets in a rather narrow intersection. Out best shot was for one of the Tanks to hold off the Kobolds, the other to shield me as I made my way to the control panel. The Fighter gets there first, I get held up by some entangling effect I now forgot the specifics of.

The Fighter decides 'screw waiting, I can take the heat off the party now!' and slams his axe into the control panel, hoping for the best. Good news was, the auto-xbows stopped dead. Bad news was he triggered an explosion and died from it.

He lasted 3 hours.

tahu88810
2010-12-11, 11:05 AM
I once played a knight/fighter named Fredward the Wayward Knight. He charged everything, everywhere, and always insisted on bringing his horse into dungeons so he could initiate mounted charges down subterranean corridors. One day there was a dungeon where he had to leave his horse behind. In said dungeon, the party found themselves with the need to hop across the top of a series of crumbling pillars that, as far as they could tell, went down endlessly into some kind of infernal void. A group of githyanki monks using dragon chains, which were basically spiked chains that allowed grappling attacks, were attempting to kill them as they crossed. Fredward, being the bad dude he was, caught one of the chains and used it to throw its wielder into the abyss. From then on out, if he wasn't charging he was using his newly acquired dragon chain to grapple.

So time went on, and the party found itself facing off against a large band of monstrous humanoids next to an underground chasm. While the caster in the group worked to counter the opposing kobold sorcerers, and the rogue snuck around killing the archers, Fredward singlehandedly fought his way through a band of gnoll rangers and fighters. Finally, there were only four or five opponents left, including one gnoll who was "Bloodied and beaten, to the point that he no longer could stand straight or still. It looked as if he would collapse at any moment" Which was a DM-to-player codeword for an NPC with diehard who had been forced into the negatives. Fredward pulled out his dragon chain, and proceeded to reel the gnoll in. The gnoll put up a bit of a fight, and a wrestling match ensued. While the party fought to defend itself against the remaining melee creatures, the knight and gnoll rolled about the room, trying to throw each other into the chasm. Fredward won the last roll by 1 point.

Later on, the party was attempting to enter a castle through a secret entrance in the sewers. The only problem was that a large clan of driders had infested the sewers, and the party didn't feel like fighting through them all. Fredward forced the wizard to cast wish for him, and then to wish that the sewers were filled with oil. He then forced his brother, a pyrokineticist, to light the sewers on fire. They snuck into the castle while the world burned.

Once in the castle, the party found itself in a strange room, with only three vials on a table and a magically lit furnace. We immediately assumed it was like that one scenario in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. But, not being part of the system, the Pyrokineticist threw all three vials into the furnace. This unlocked the door, as it was meant to, but the vials, when thrown into magical fire, were supposed to summon an elemental based on their contents. We ended up summoning a humongous fire-air-earth hybrid elemental.
On the first round of combat, everyone pulled back into an alcove while the wizard cast invisibility sphere. Fredward drew his longsword and charged, instead. He was disarmed.
On the second round of combat, the rogue fled. The pyrokineticist moved forward, in an attempt to save his brother. The wizard remained invisible. Fredward pulled back a step, and was smashed in the face as he pulled out his dragon chain.
On the third round of combat, the pyrokineticist was thrown halfway across the room when the elemental backhanded him. The rogue realized that there was nowhere to go to escape the sewer-fires but back into the room he had just left. The wizard continued to observe. Fredward wrapped his dragon chain around the huge elemental, and pinned it to the ground.
On the fourth round, fredward as pinned. The pyrokineticist began to bleed out. The wizard cast magic missile, and the rogue watched on in horror.
On the fifth round, Fredward was crushed to death in his armor. The pyrokineticist stabilized, and the wizard summoned his own elementals.
On the sixth round, through a series of piddly attacks from elementals, the wizard's spells, and the rogue, the huge elemental was killed.

It's since been decreed that I am not allowed to play Knights with less than 14 intelligence :P

Chilingsworth
2010-12-11, 11:51 AM
I once played a knight/fighter named Fredward the Wayward Knight. He charged everything, everywhere, and always insisted on bringing his horse into dungeons so he could initiate mounted charges down subterranean corridors. One day there was a dungeon where he had to leave his horse behind. In said dungeon, the party found themselves with the need to hop across the top of a series of crumbling pillars that, as far as they could tell, went down endlessly into some kind of infernal void. A group of githyanki monks using dragon chains, which were basically spiked chains that allowed grappling attacks, were attempting to kill them as they crossed. Fredward, being the bad dude he was, caught one of the chains and used it to throw its wielder into the abyss. From then on out, if he wasn't charging he was using his newly acquired dragon chain to grapple.

So time went on, and the party found itself facing off against a large band of monstrous humanoids next to an underground chasm. While the caster in the group worked to counter the opposing kobold sorcerers, and the rogue snuck around killing the archers, Fredward singlehandedly fought his way through a band of gnoll rangers and fighters. Finally, there were only four or five opponents left, including one gnoll who was "Bloodied and beaten, to the point that he no longer could stand straight or still. It looked as if he would collapse at any moment" Which was a DM-to-player codeword for an NPC with diehard who had been forced into the negatives. Fredward pulled out his dragon chain, and proceeded to reel the gnoll in. The gnoll put up a bit of a fight, and a wrestling match ensued. While the party fought to defend itself against the remaining melee creatures, the knight and gnoll rolled about the room, trying to throw each other into the chasm. Fredward won the last roll by 1 point.

Later on, the party was attempting to enter a castle through a secret entrance in the sewers. The only problem was that a large clan of driders had infested the sewers, and the party didn't feel like fighting through them all. Fredward forced the wizard to cast wish for him, and then to wish that the sewers were filled with oil. He then forced his brother, a pyrokineticist, to light the sewers on fire. They snuck into the castle while the world burned.

Once in the castle, the party found itself in a strange room, with only three vials on a table and a magically lit furnace. We immediately assumed it was like that one scenario in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. But, not being part of the system, the Pyrokineticist threw all three vials into the furnace. This unlocked the door, as it was meant to, but the vials, when thrown into magical fire, were supposed to summon an elemental based on their contents. We ended up summoning a humongous fire-air-earth hybrid elemental.
On the first round of combat, everyone pulled back into an alcove while the wizard cast invisibility sphere. Fredward drew his longsword and charged, instead. He was disarmed.
On the second round of combat, the rogue fled. The pyrokineticist moved forward, in an attempt to save his brother. The wizard remained invisible. Fredward pulled back a step, and was smashed in the face as he pulled out his dragon chain.
On the third round of combat, the pyrokineticist was thrown halfway across the room when the elemental backhanded him. The rogue realized that there was nowhere to go to escape the sewer-fires but back into the room he had just left. The wizard continued to observe. Fredward wrapped his dragon chain around the huge elemental, and pinned it to the ground.
On the fourth round, fredward as pinned. The pyrokineticist began to bleed out. The wizard cast magic missile, and the rogue watched on in horror.
On the fifth round, Fredward was crushed to death in his armor. The pyrokineticist stabilized, and the wizard summoned his own elementals.
On the sixth round, through a series of piddly attacks from elementals, the wizard's spells, and the rogue, the huge elemental was killed.

It's since been decreed that I am not allowed to play Knights with less than 14 intelligence :P

Sounds like you have some ungreatful party members to me, I mean after so many epic sucesses, one failure? Geez!

Choco
2010-12-11, 12:21 PM
Sounds like you have some ungreatful party members to me, I mean after so many epic sucesses, one failure? Geez!

Seriously, especially since if the Wizard had helped from the start, you likely would have lived...

Gomar
2010-12-11, 01:12 PM
[QUOTE=Zieu;9932253]Haha, well....this is one of my personal stories, but in my defense it made complete sense at the time (and I still maintain it does today):

wow...no way does it make sense, dude!! this is DnD we're talking about, you don't just go diving into swamp-pools by yourself in the middle of the night while wearing your armor....

that is like the trifecta of "not sensible.":smalltongue:

Swooper
2010-12-11, 01:31 PM
I've got one...

So the party recently pissed off a powerful thieves guild (we kind of raided their hangout and stole a magic item from them). Afterwards, we go to the inn where we're staying, and go to sleep. Sleeping in the same room and getting the VoP swordsage to sleep on the floor next to the door (he likes hard beds anyway) is enough precaution against possible intruders, right?

Wrong. An assassin comes in through the window, makes short work of the swordage and shadowjaunts back out before the rest of us even realise someone is in the room. :smallsigh: He could probably have killed us all, but apparently the DM was feeling merciful or something.

Most of us are veteran roleplayers, yet no one managed to come up with the simple precaution of keeping watch that night. :smallredface: We will never forget this again...

Gomar
2010-12-11, 01:48 PM
The rules sadly allow it :smalleek:

But the DM doesn't have to...:smallmad:

ScionoftheVoid
2010-12-11, 03:04 PM
The rules sadly allow it :smalleek:

Sadly? That sounds awesome, I've been looking for templates to apply to stuff to make them completely different from the base creature.

Keinnicht
2010-12-11, 03:25 PM
Awesome. Just awesome.


I shared this in another thread, but it goes here to.

Party:
Gestalt Bard/Wizard 7 PC
Gestalt Druid/Cleric 7 NPC

We come to a town we have been warned is having "zombie problems." The streets are dead quiet. No one is around. No one. The bard tries to gather information. I tell her there's no one to gather information from nearby. She says she's going to perform to attract attention.

Attract attention in the seemingly uninhabited village, at dusk.

Let me repeat that one more time: She is going to loudly sing, in order to have people notice her. In a eerily quiet village. At night.

And that's when the zombies and vampire spawn burst out of half the buildings. Survived only thanks to a few well-placed direct damage spells and Evard's Black Tentacles.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-11, 06:58 PM
I shared this in another thread, but it goes here to.

Party:
Gestalt Bard/Wizard 7 PC
Gestalt Druid/Cleric 7 NPC

We come to a town we have been warned is having "zombie problems." The streets are dead quiet. No one is around. No one. The bard tries to gather information. I tell her there's no one to gather information from nearby. She says she's going to perform to attract attention.

Attract attention in the seemingly uninhabited village, at dusk.

Let me repeat that one more time: She is going to loudly sing, in order to have people notice her. In a eerily quiet village. At night.

And that's when the zombies and vampire spawn burst out of half the buildings. Survived only thanks to a few well-placed direct damage spells and Evard's Black Tentacles.

Is this your one-player party? Just curious.

Alth Falath
2010-12-11, 07:03 PM
And thus we have the tale of Tim, Drow Rogue of many deaths.
Tim joined our group in the middle of one session, and chose to have his character sneak along behind us, not join the party. Cue Drow ambush. The wizard chose to cast prismatic spray, which hits Tim, killing him instantly. Of course, since the party doesn't know it, we figured it was bad luck on the ambusher's part.
One retcon later, Tim joined the party, a rogue with less health and lower ac then the party wizard. He played a melee rogue. This included such tactics as charging into a room as the party looted, getting himself killed in 1 shot by a demon (he chose not to hide). This is but the setup...
We enter a large dungeon, Tim's in the lead, searching for traps. Tim finds an ice trap, and goes to disarm it.
Natural 1, trap goes off, Tim is killed, and revived
We head on, a few random encounters.
Enter a room with a puzzle that involves lava falling from slits in pre-determined ways. Tim goes to disarm the trap.
Rolls a 2, trap goes off, Tim is killed, and revived
We go into the third room, and find an earth elemental. Tim activates his cloak, dives into the earth elemental, and attacks it from within. I banish the earth elemental, and (according to the wording of the cloak) Tim to the Plane of Elemental Earth. This is not a surprise, as I banish almost everything I could.
We retrieve Tim through DM benevolence, and go into the 4th and final room.
Wizard "Hey Tim, I'm going to use you for an arc of lightning to hit the stone wizard, you can make the reflex save of 20 right."
Tim: Oh yea, I have a +19, I'm going to dodge that, no problem.
Natural 1 later, the rogue is dead, and the enemy manages to completely dodge damage, despite being made of stone and a wizard.

WeLoveFireballs
2010-12-12, 12:36 AM
A luverly low level campaign included a kobald pally (war weasel mount but not a special one yet), a human druid (crazy player) and several others. The warweasel has been hurt bad and we spent a while lugging it back to town along with the randomly generated 6000 copper. Everyone wandered off to deal with their own problems and purchase kamiquat juice :smallbiggrin: while the paladin went to the temple, leaving his weasel outside.

"Sorry, Pelor doesn't treat weasels."
Suddenly you smell something delicious from outside.
"I go outside."
"The Farmers are having a big b-b-q and the whole town is invited, this weeks special, Weasel!"
"But...no...not cool."

(Druid)"I'll get revenge! I'll burn their barns down"
"The barns?"
"yup"
"You are a druid?"
"so?"
"ok you are stampeeded by p***ed animals!"
"Entange!"
"sorry you just tried to kill animals obad-hi is angry."
"Help? Anyone?"
(others)"I enjoy my roast weasel, can i get some bread and cheese for a sandwich"
"sure"
"damn"

Escheton
2010-12-12, 01:06 AM
Sounds like a bastard dm, not anything remotely DA worthy.
Good try though.



City of the Spiderqueen.
After entering a crypt and dealing with some tunnels, drow, undead and spiders we come to a large chasm.
Having a 50ft teleportationmaneuver, boots of spiderclimb and a soft landing enchantment on my armor (-60ft falling, always land on feet), I decide to leave my zerging partymembers behind and do some scouting again by jumping off the cliff-face.
On my way down I spot a huge friggin spider.
I choose alert the others by teleporting to higher ground, and walk up and over the wall/ceiling to my partymates. My move ends on the ceiling.
I then spot a group of drow on a plateau.(why I didnt see this before still eludes me). One of which dispelled my boots...

So then I drop down and am swept away by a river and drown in an underwater tunnelsystem...

John Campbell
2010-12-12, 07:06 AM
Okay, by popular demand, my Shadowrun Darwin Award tales:
(These turned out beyond "long" and into "ridiculously long", so I'm just going to post the first couple now, and get to more later.)

We were holed up in an apartment waiting to see if we'd drawn any heat from a run. The shaman had a hearth spirit out doing perimeter patrol for us, and the spirit popped in to tell us that some guys with weapons and hostile intentions had just entered the building. We made a quick check to see if anyone was coming in from the roof/through the window, and, seeing it was clear that way, took what cover we could in the room and waited for them to kick in the door.

All except the sammy. (That's "street samurai", for the uninitiated... combat cyberware, guns, frequently a lame "bushido" code and a katana.) He decided that waiting was... actually, I'm not clear on what his reasoning was. But, in any case, he decided he wasn't going to do it, and pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin - holding the spoon down so it wouldn't be primed - and walked over to the door and opened it. Seeing no one at the door, he stepped out into the hall. And then the two guys who were waiting at the end of the hall, covering the door with readied actions while the third one approached, shot him with SMG bursts. This put him down, unconscious, and bleeding out, but didn't actually kill him, because he was armored and pretty tough - tough enough that we could've mopped up the enemy and patched him up before he actually died.

But when he lost consciousness, he also lost his grip on the grenade. The grenade rolled out of his hand, the spoon popped off, and its timer started. Our shaman threw up a barrier between us and the grenade, the guy approaching turned around and booked it back the way he'd come, and the two at the end of the hall ducked behind the corner. So, when the grenade went off, all it did was kill the sammy.


Later, same campaign, same player, new character. We got in an argument about what the party was going to do next, which ended up being him arguing against everyone else. Well, he decided that the appropriate thing to do at that point was to threaten the rest of the team to get his way. So he pulled out a grenade (are we seeing a theme here yet?), pulled the pin - once again holding the spoon down to keep it from priming - and brandished it at us. We pointed out to him that grenades, not being precision weapons, aren't much good for brandishing threateningly in a small room, because he couldn't blow us up with it without also blowing himself up. He decided at this point to show us, and dropped the grenade at his feet. The shaman immediately brought up another barrier, this one as a cylinder around the sammy and his now-live grenade. One Chunky Salsa Effect later, the player announced that he wasn't going to play Shadowrun anymore because he was tired of "getting screwed over by magic".

Saintjebus
2010-12-12, 09:44 AM
These two stories are personal stories. I am not proud of them.


I was playing a paladin with visions of glory. We were searching a house and found a trapdoor going down. I said, "I step down the hole." I forgot to look how deep the hole was. One round later, Paladin is at the bottom of the hole with a broken leg.


A little later(same session!) we are working our way through the underground dungeon. Every single door has had an electrical trap. We get to the fourth door and I get tired of waiting. I decide that I can run through the door fast enough so that by the time the trap went off, I would be beyond the door. I put my head down, and charged. I actually stuck in the door, the trap went off, and we have Paladin sealed in a can. It took hours with a can opener to get me out, and my Fullplate was ruined.

I don't play pallies anymore.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-12, 06:03 PM
Okay, by popular demand, my Shadowrun Darwin Award tales:
(These turned out beyond "long" and into "ridiculously long", so I'm just going to post the first couple now, and get to more later.)

We were holed up in an apartment waiting to see if we'd drawn any heat from a run. The shaman had a hearth spirit out doing perimeter patrol for us, and the spirit popped in to tell us that some guys with weapons and hostile intentions had just entered the building. We made a quick check to see if anyone was coming in from the roof/through the window, and, seeing it was clear that way, took what cover we could in the room and waited for them to kick in the door.

All except the sammy. (That's "street samurai", for the uninitiated... combat cyberware, guns, frequently a lame "bushido" code and a katana.) He decided that waiting was... actually, I'm not clear on what his reasoning was. But, in any case, he decided he wasn't going to do it, and pulled out a grenade, pulled the pin - holding the spoon down so it wouldn't be primed - and walked over to the door and opened it. Seeing no one at the door, he stepped out into the hall. And then the two guys who were waiting at the end of the hall, covering the door with readied actions while the third one approached, shot him with SMG bursts. This put him down, unconscious, and bleeding out, but didn't actually kill him, because he was armored and pretty tough - tough enough that we could've mopped up the enemy and patched him up before he actually died.

But when he lost consciousness, he also lost his grip on the grenade. The grenade rolled out of his hand, the spoon popped off, and its timer started. Our shaman threw up a barrier between us and the grenade, the guy approaching turned around and booked it back the way he'd come, and the two at the end of the hall ducked behind the corner. So, when the grenade went off, all it did was kill the sammy.


Later, same campaign, same player, new character. We got in an argument about what the party was going to do next, which ended up being him arguing against everyone else. Well, he decided that the appropriate thing to do at that point was to threaten the rest of the team to get his way. So he pulled out a grenade (are we seeing a theme here yet?), pulled the pin - once again holding the spoon down to keep it from priming - and brandished it at us. We pointed out to him that grenades, not being precision weapons, aren't much good for brandishing threateningly in a small room, because he couldn't blow us up with it without also blowing himself up. He decided at this point to show us, and dropped the grenade at his feet. The shaman immediately brought up another barrier, this one as a cylinder around the sammy and his now-live grenade. One Chunky Salsa Effect later, the player announced that he wasn't going to play Shadowrun anymore because he was tired of "getting screwed over by magic".

And good riddince Sammy! These are great, please share more!

Zieu
2010-12-17, 11:44 AM
wow...no way does it make sense, dude!! this is DnD we're talking about, you don't just go diving into swamp-pools by yourself in the middle of the night while wearing your armor....

that is like the trifecta of "not sensible.":smalltongue:

Well, I guess that means I'm eligible for the award then! :smallsmile:

Denomar
2010-12-17, 03:14 PM
We had a Gnome Druid who was being run by a player who may not have all his acorns in one basket.

When the party went to question a local farmer about a murder the gnome decided instead of questioning the farmer that he would question the farmers dairy cow. One speak with animals spell later and the answer he had was "I like food"

Later in the game he went and tried to barter with a worg to help him kill another party member. And he offered the location of a pack horse to the worg for his help. Of course the pack horse had the entire parties stuff with it.

He didn't last very long. Actually another party member killed him shortly thereafter but that had more to do with the fact that he was following the vampire spawn racial levels.

whitexknight
2010-12-17, 03:45 PM
well I saw a couple really epic ones in a game I ran. Two of which happened in the same dungeon. The unrelated on was the cleric and paladin decided to duel over a set of really nice armor, the cleric won... he rolled a crit that sent the paladin to - 30, they were only gonna knock each other out but woops. The other two were both rogues who died with in 20 minutes of each other one of them about 5 minutes after being introduced. In the middle of the dungeon I threw a cryohydra at the party they dispatched the hydra, the rogue, assuming that the hydra was the boss went to open the door behind the corpse without checking for traps and was quickly dispatched the black lotus poison on the door nob. We had a new player that session who also wanted to play a rogue, because the dungeon was going to take up the rest of the session rather than have him wait till next session I had him trapped in a block of ice in a room. The party freed him happy to have a new rogue he then proceeded to walk down a hallway and make his reflex save vs a flamestrike trap... the party heard a swoosh "I'm okay" and few minutes later not realizing the trap reset itself the rogue came back down the hall to let the party know it was a dead end, he failed his save and died from fire just moment after being freed from a block of ice.

ArcanistSupreme
2010-12-17, 05:20 PM
I have several that all involve the PCs going ahead with their plans even after I (the DM) ask them "Are you sure?"

John Campbell
2010-12-17, 06:48 PM
I have several that all involve the PCs going ahead with their plans even after I (the DM) ask them "Are you sure?"

Oh, man, that reminded me of an actual D&D one.

I was the DM, running a 2E AD&D game. One of the players was rolling up a Thief, and asked me if he could get some poison so he could poison his weapons. Well, Thieves in AD&D were pretty weak in combat - their THAC0 progression was basically equivalent to half-BAB, backstab was weaker than sneak attack and a lot harder to pull off, and the armor and weapon restrictions actually meant something - and I tend not to do much with locks and traps, so I decided to let him have some of the fairly lethal injectable poison he asked for to give him a little more utility.

So then he said, "I want to build up an immunity to my poison!"

"Uh... how are you planning on doing that?" I asked.

"I'm going to poison one of my daggers and stab myself with it."

I stared at him for a second, then asked, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

(This is, of course, the point where anyone who's not trying to get themselves nominated for a Darwin says, "No, I was just joking.")

"Yeah!" he said.

"Ooooookay. Save vs. Poison."

He rolled. "Uh, I failed."

"Then, well, uh... you die."

Only time I've ever killed a PC during character generation.

I let him make a new character who was coincidentally identical in every way to his old one... except when this one went shopping for poison, he discovered that there wasn't any to be had because someone who looked remarkably like him had bought it all a couple days earlier.

thatguy73
2010-12-17, 07:41 PM
The groups I've played with have had their fair share of dumb moves resulting in nasty circumstances but most recently was the complete and utter destruction of our party by our own Wizard.

We were playing an aquatic campaign and up againsty a rather tough creature that ahd softenned us all up a good deal and we were reaching the end of our list of possible solutions. Well, in steps the Wizard with some pokemon based knowledge and figured that if the creature is aquatic, and therefore water based, it should be weak to lightening attacks. Before any of us could tell him not to he decided to cast his spells and neglected to account for the fact we were all under water. Our adventurers quickly became a fish fry. On the pluse side it did finally kill the baddie...:smallsigh:

I'm sure this has happened to someone else before (I'm interested to see who), but I'll have to think back a ways to remember some of our other antics.

Ormur
2010-12-17, 11:16 PM
My wizard character has had his share of deaths but one was particularily embarassing. We plane shifted to the plane of dreams and the DM rolled for a destination. My 15th level Wizard, a Druid of the same level and a lower level cleric NPC end up in the dream of a fricking Krakken. It procedes to crush us to death while I couldn't cast anything with verbal components and only had a lesser metamagic rod of silence. Fortunatley I'm a wizard so my contingency pops up and I'm in a nice little bubble where the nasty Kraken can't crush me.

Figuring out all those complicated contingencies and grapples took a bit of time so I came up with two plans. I could use my ancklet of translocation to pop out of the bubble but that would make me vulnerable to being crushed to death. I'd either have to end the enconter with a 3rd level spell or change into something that could speak in water to use my higher level spells (no good spells without verbal components prepared).

Of course I mixed up those two plans in the confusion. I Altered Self into an aquatic elf, translocated out, shot a metamagicked ray of stupidity at a monster with 20+ int (only knew it was pretty smart from the knowledge roll), hardly made a dent and got crushed to death next round. Meanwhile the druid took advantage of the -20 the Kraken got from grappling multiple creatures, outgrappled it as a wildshaped giant squid and crushed it to death.

My contribution to the battle was basically occupying a few tentacles instead of using my 7th level spells to end it a round early or even just sitting in the bubble twiddling my thumbs while the druid dealt with the Kraken.

Hardiron
2010-12-18, 05:34 AM
I got one for you, fairly recent. This event did cause our DM (I play 2 campaigns with the same group, switching off DM's, both essentially refuse to let characters die off) Anyway, I digress.

we are a party of 4+1 follower, lvl 10. I play a halfling battle rogue who has earned a reputation for doing things way out there (drawing mustaches on the dead with a "sharpy") and generally becoming the DM's worst logistical nightmare, and this is the only thing that saved me.

So, we are seeking a mask of power, enter a dungeon, find a bunch of empty rooms with dead stuff in them. Then we find a room with 1 succubus, 2 baboo, and 2 (insert self summoning demon here). So our cleric, who despite horrific stats is far and away the most powerful character in our group, makes a knowledge religion check. Fail. Our sorcerer just got cloud kill, and wanted to try it out. I think you see where things are going now. So we cloud kill the room, shut the door, and delay actions. I will add that before we did this, i sent in a clockwork spider thief to steal the succubus' top (the main idea was if the spider was threatened, he is supposed to sting then run away, well, he evidently succeeded in his previously assigned mission). Now, the succubus is sending out suggestion spells to our cleric. He also happens to not exactly trust the group, myself top of this list, so he actually would "kill the rest of your party". well, go figure he fails that will save too. Seeing this, I turn invisible and run away, our bard casts mirror image, and runs away, right into the waiting arms of a topless succubus. He dies shortly after, despite my heroic attempt to save him. The cleric decides to rain hellfire down upon where he thinks I am, misses me completely, and kills our sorcerer, who's follower dies attempting to save him from the now approaching demons. Now it is down to me and the cleric, who by the way has a skeletal dragon outside that is under his control by telepathy. After about 10 minutes of unsuccessful hide and go seek, the DM hits the universal reset button. The debate to this day continues over who would have won that fight (he was out of most of his spells)

Story 2: how I became Dairchen, the Plague-bringer. Our DM, with his sadistic sense of humor, gave a Belkar knockoff (that's me) a multiplying rubix cube. Whoever grabs it and starts messing with it activates it, it multiplies every 18-24 hours, cannot be destroyed except by high level magics, and if thrown away instantly returns to its activator. So I may have given 8 to a bunch of drunk collegiate commoners and told them they were their "weapons" a few months later, I have successfully recreated the Salem witch trials in game and have decimated an entire fairly large country. My death count is in the millions.:smallbiggrin:

Zapato
2010-12-18, 05:48 AM
I recently DM'ed the 3.5 'Tomb of Horrors' campaign inside a Spelljammer setting (my personal twist). I allowed the players to optimize heavily. Partially to give them a change to go all out for once, and partially to show them that not everything can be solved with fast healing en 60d6 fire damage. Spoiler for those who have yet to play the (awesome) campaign:

There at a point where they have to crush a magic ring in a secret opening inside a wall, but they haven't figured out the riddle yet. So after giving them some hints and having them spin on that for about 40 min. One of the players (a half man / half warforged / half golem) desides to go trial and error and jump into one of the mist archways. Sadly this one teleports organic material (naked players) to the beginning of the dungeon and all the inorganic material (items, clothing, weapons etc) to the chamber with the final boss. Now this trap is funny as hell on 'normal' players but since this guy is half inorganic, he splits assunder and dies. Plus giving all his magic items to the bad guy. Later on one of the players also jumps through (yeah not smart). And spawns naked between pieces of flesh of the old character. And then they knew...:smallbiggrin:

Hardiron
2010-12-18, 05:59 AM
Ooh, almost forgot this one, it belongs right here. My first session I ever played, I had a dwarf fighter who may have been hit in the helmet one too many times, lvl 1, in a dungeon, who finds a bottle with a moderate evil essence (black, gaseous). So i figure this is probably some type of airborne poison or something. We soon come to a room with 4 kobolds in it. I decide to toss said bottle at the floor in the middle of the room, and shut the door. DM fudge to keep from total party kill as a vampire(previously in gaseous form) turns the kobolds into a lovely pink mist, the proceeds to break every door off its hinges on its way out of the dungeon, (shrapnel damage). Dwarf later in game receives compensation from vampire lord for setting him free, including a box that the rogue gets locked in for 24 hours, falls in love with, and is thus named "box boy".

Chilingsworth
2010-12-18, 05:57 PM
Oh, man, that reminded me of an actual D&D one.

I was the DM, running a 2E AD&D game. One of the players was rolling up a Thief, and asked me if he could get some poison so he could poison his weapons. Well, Thieves in AD&D were pretty weak in combat - their THAC0 progression was basically equivalent to half-BAB, backstab was weaker than sneak attack and a lot harder to pull off, and the armor and weapon restrictions actually meant something - and I tend not to do much with locks and traps, so I decided to let him have some of the fairly lethal injectable poison he asked for to give him a little more utility.

So then he said, "I want to build up an immunity to my poison!"

"Uh... how are you planning on doing that?" I asked.

"I'm going to poison one of my daggers and stab myself with it."

I stared at him for a second, then asked, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

(This is, of course, the point where anyone who's not trying to get themselves nominated for a Darwin says, "No, I was just joking.")

"Yeah!" he said.

"Ooooookay. Save vs. Poison."

He rolled. "Uh, I failed."

"Then, well, uh... you die."

Only time I've ever killed a PC during character generation.

I let him make a new character who was coincidentally identical in every way to his old one... except when this one went shopping for poison, he discovered that there wasn't any to be had because someone who looked remarkably like him had bought it all a couple days earlier.

Wow! Definate Darwin! You'd think he'd at least try to take a smaller dose, eh?

NX_Phoenix
2010-12-19, 02:18 AM
The group I play with has a rule for first time spell casters: you get a time reversal on your first fireball after the consequences are played out. It's done in a light-hearted manner and frankly we've found it to be one of the best ways to teach someone to always double check spell positioning. My first fireball (although technically not a fireball) is still the gold standard for the group.

My first caster was a warmage/holy scourge in a 12th level all caster party, save for a single paladin. The paladin's player decided that as a good last resort/one shot desperate enemy destroyer he would have a necklace of fireballs which he would throw if we were in sufficient trouble. Also, at the same time I really liked using greater flameburst when things were in melee with me. This was my SECOND D&D character ever and since I was armored I took up the role of secondary tank. Finally, unlike most times we played we didn't have a battle mat and just did positioning verbally.

Getting onto the incident, we were attacked by a pack of some very agile dog-like things (it's been so long I don't remember) and I had a few around me, so I cast greater flameburst. I thought the paladin was a least 10 feat away...he wasn't. The paladin fails his save as does the necklace, which detonates and wipes out the entire party save for one person who was flying some distance away at the time. After the dust settled we rewound to before the flameburst. Upside: the paladin's idea did work in concept and I never screwed up spell positioning ever again.

darkpuppy
2010-12-19, 09:13 PM
Okay, as far as I'm aware, this definitely qualifies for a DnD Darwin.

In the group I used to run for, one particular player decided he wanted to play a chef turned ranger. One night, while crossing the Anauroch, he decides he wants to spend all night working out how to cook orc. I warn him of fatigue penalties, and cold, and all the other things... he is determined to cook orc. The next day, he suffers heat-stroke, and is carried on an improvised stretcher.

During the day, random encounter with a Desert Dragon. Not only does this player get up and attack the dragon in his fatigued state, he then stumbles into quicksand that he had already spotted (to be fair, both his fort save for getting up, and his spot check, were nat 20s), and his last act, as the party attempts to save him, is not to reach for his team-mates, but the rapidly sinking (and stinking) orc meat in his extremely heavy pack. He sinks into the sand, and the dragon dips its snout to receive a Darwin 5-star seasoned meal.

The player in question then asks why the rest of the party didn't save him.

Psyx
2010-12-20, 06:11 AM
I take it that somewhere in the last 5 pages, someone has TPKed their entire 1e/2e party with a miscalculated fireball?

If not, I'm throwing that one into the pot.

Trekkin
2010-12-20, 06:48 AM
The Shadowrun C.L.U.E. Files are worth mentioning. (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html)

I have a relatively short one as well, involving a Shadowrun street samurai who was less a gun-bunny and more of an explosives nut, the game being rather pink of mohawk. Having lived through a previous run-in with Lone Star after leaving a teammate's body behind, he was prepared: he installed an area bomb in his cybertorso, set to go off if his biomonitor detected he was killed, theoretically leaving nothing behind to be traced back to the team and his player's future characters.

On the run in which he finally left the land of the living, his player took great pains to remind me that his area bomb went off immediately, and that all the other characters were at least three meters away and would therefore take no damage from the area bomb, given his armor.

The blast from the sympathetic detonation of the kilo of C-15 in his smuggling compartment and additional ten kilos in his backpack, however, had a rather wider range...

Gnaritas
2010-12-20, 07:32 AM
Party is around level 10 <...>
His plan, his brilliant, wonderful plan is to use fireball. No, not grab the Staff of Necromancy with a 13th caster level Circle of Death that would likely kill at least one of the party members in a single shot, if not all of them, no, a 10d6 fireball.

It seems if you were the character you would also get a Darwin award...


Circle of Death: No creature of 9 or more HD can be affected.

John Campbell
2010-12-20, 12:03 PM
Wow! Definate Darwin! You'd think he'd at least try to take a smaller dose, eh?
Oh, yeah, for the bonus points: This is an AD&D Thief at 1st level. d6 HD, no maxed first die, and Con bonuses are harder to come by and capped for non-Warrior (Fighter/Ranger/Paladin) classes. He had 4 HP. He could easily have killed himself with the dagger blow before the poison was even taken into consideration.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-20, 12:06 PM
Oh, yeah, for the bonus points: This is an AD&D Thief at 1st level. d6 HD, no maxed first die, and Con bonuses are harder to come by and capped for non-Warrior (Fighter/Ranger/Paladin) classes. He had 4 HP. He could easily have killed himself with the dagger blow before the poison was even taken into consideration.

"Oh Happy dagger, this is thy propper sheath! There rust, and let me die!" Romeo and Juliette

Naeo
2010-12-24, 02:47 PM
To properly explain this, i should give backstory on my campaign.

The Isshuran Isles are at war, the Human nation of Inveria-Menos has begun to expand their territories through force or diplomacy. the humans of Inveria-Menos believe themselves to be the pure race, and true inheritances of the world. All others are impure and should answer to the superior race. Oh, i should also mention the gigantic slave trade this nation has, if it's not human, it's probably a slave in the nation somewhere.

With Jeril and Oschan already under Menos rule, the Allied Islands remaining have set up their defenses and requested assistance from Varema, the city that controls all of the allied islands. (Varema is a much like D.C. where the senate makes federal laws and what not, while states(other nations of the A.I.) make their own set of laws built upon federal law.

The players take the role of a party from Nightengale, a merc group that is under direct control of the senate. They go out and do missions so the navy can remain in a defensive position.

Their first mission, is to check on the nation of Feradel, a Human nation that is in the center of the isles, a prime location for Menos to want.

now that a basic understanding is established, onto the story!

The party has reached tan'zt, a small port town on Feradel's island, they stop for the night, rest, eat, and then in the morning, leave for Fort Fera, the only entrance into Feradel is through the fort itself.

Upon entering, they instantly notice that something has happened here, blood soaks the stone floor, all four portcullis in the main hall are closed, forcing the players to take side halls to get around them.

They ask the beguiler to take point and actively search for traps, while the fighter takes up the rear with the mage and cleric in the middle.

No traps found yet, so they decide to switch up line up, with the Fighter now taking point, and the beguiler at the rear.

They come across a locked door, the beguiler didn't take any skill in Open Lock, so the fighter proceeds to start chopping down the door with his greataxe.

...and garners the attention of 12 Menos soldiers that have been resting in the rooms they didn't check behind them. There's a room straight ahead of them leading into a training room, they're so busy talking amongst themselves on how to funnel the enemies in so they can pick them off safely that they fail to hear the *click* of the fort defense trap, The mage instantly gets shikabob'd when a spike impales him, dropping him to -1 the cleric, fighter, and beguiler all make their Ref safe, and keep going, promising the wizard's player they'll get his body and head back to Tan'zt for a raise when it's safe. All the while, they're getting hit with 1s and 2s from arrows (the NPCs were having bad bad luck with their cross bows, a few killed their own men with misfire.)

They allow the trap to weaken some of the foes, and duck into the training room then hide behind the boxes for full cover. With a few minutes reprieve while the soldiers deal with the trap, the beguiler casts Silent Image and Ghost Noise, mimicing the sound of their foot steps, sends the image of himself down the other hall, drawing the Menos soldiers after it.

They go back to retrieve the wizard's body, and forget about the same trap that killed him, two step over the pressure plate without realizing it, but the fighter, steps directly on it.

This time, the cleric and beguiler fail their ref safe, and drop to 0.
the fighter is left with 1hp, and the remaining soldiers come running back when the silent image simply vanishes, finishing the fighter off.

Had to DM-time reverse that, changed enemy locations, and upped the DC of the trap so they wont as easily get it dealt with.

Though, after attempting it twice, the beguiler put boxes on the ground, and had them walk on the boxes, avoiding the spikes.

Not darwin worthy, but funny none the less.

tl;dr - a spot DC15, disable device DC15 1d6 spike trap, killed off three players, left one with 1 hp, and then monsters finished the character off.

Keinnicht
2010-12-24, 03:15 PM
The player in question then asks why the rest of the party didn't save him.[/SPOILER]

You know, technically you can't get swallowed in quicksand. /nitpick.

Anyways, three stories:

1: D&D. The only member of the party here that matters is the barbarian.

So, we're starting off.

DM: What do you do?
Barbarian: I follow my barbarian instincts.
DM: What's your intelligence?
Barbarian: Uh...8.
DM: Your barbarian instincts tell you to bash your head into a nearby tree. What's your strength?
Barbarian: Uh...18.
DM: You bash your head into the tree as hard as you can. You take...*roll* 11 damage.
Barbarian: Uh...I'm unconscious.

The rest of the party had to rest for several days. Rule of thumb: Don't let the DM decide what you do if your intelligence is 8.

Story 2: Shadowrun.
Both me and another guy are the stupid in this story. Party is an Elf Street Samurai type and me, a psychopathic Ork Adept.

So, we've been sent by the mob to get information from this fellow. We knock on his door, and he answers with a gun. Apparently he knew the mob was after him. This is in an apartment building, not some out of the way place. So the elf shoots him with a flame thrower. Then I slice the crap out of him with a sword. He's dead, we commence ransacking his apartment for the documents he was holding.

At this point, the police knock on the door. I convince the GM to let me use some rappelling rope to rig up a puppet out of the charred, hacked up body of the former resident. He opens the door. Naturally, the police are not fooled, and open fire into the apartment.

So then Elf boy chucks a grenade and we dive out the window.

With the rappelling rope. Using the charred, hacked up body as an anchor. It wedges in the window before splitting in half, and me and the elf land in the middle of the street, followed by two halves of a human body, as an explosion bursts out of the window we were just in.

Everyone on the street is staring at us. I yell "WOOHOO! THAT WAS THE COOLEST ROCK CONCERT EVER!"

Then one of the policemen's hats floated to the ground, and we ran like hell, and were pretty much wanted for the rest of the game and the only people who would hire us were the mob.

Story 3: D&D

DM: You're attacked by a whole buttload of ogres.
Player: I MAKE PEACE!
DM: They reject your offer. They smash you with their clubs. Your turn.
Player: I MAKE PEACE!
DM: They smash you.

By the way, this player attempted to make peace with every creature he encountered. Regardless of the circumstances. And, for that matter, whether or not it was intelligent enough to understand the concept of negotiation. He tried to make peace with zombies, orcs whose loved ones he'd just slaughtered, etc.




Is this your one-player party? Just curious.

Yeah. It's technically a two-player party, the druid/cleric is a DMPC.

Who, surprisingly, is kind of a wuss compared to the bard/wizard. That story actually ended alright. Most of the enemies were Vampire Spawn, who were more annoying than a threat. The two main threats were a Mohrg who was basically turned into a nonencounter by a very successful Evard's Black Tentacles, and the "boss" vampire ran like hell after getting fireballed for half his hit points.

And I fudged things a little, since the original plan involved her not attracting attention immediately, thus being able to heal and buff in between combats.

By the way, I'm never playing a freaking gestalt Druid/Cleric ever again. Sweet Jesus I hate preparing that many spells, especially with that much overlap.

It may not be a one-player party much longer, I know another guy who recently expressed enjoyment of D&D (He'd apparently once played an Eberron game.) so I might try to recruit him.

ScionoftheVoid
2010-12-24, 03:56 PM
DM: What do you do?
Barbarian: I follow my barbarian instincts.
DM: What's your intelligence?
Barbarian: Uh...8.
DM: Your barbarian instincts tell you to bash your head into a nearby tree. What's your strength?
Barbarian: Uh...18.
DM: You bash your head into the tree as hard as you can. You take...*roll* 11 damage.
Barbarian: Uh...I'm unconscious.

The rest of the party had to rest for several days. Rule of thumb: Don't let the DM decide what you do if your intelligence is 8.

What? Seriously, his Int was marginally below average and he thinks it's a good idea to headbutt trees? What was his Wisdom, negative? That is completely uncalled for, and the DM has a very poor idea of the magnitude of a -1 Int modifier.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-27, 10:01 PM
The Shadowrun C.L.U.E. Files are worth mentioning. (http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html)

I have a relatively short one as well, involving a Shadowrun street samurai who was less a gun-bunny and more of an explosives nut, the game being rather pink of mohawk. Having lived through a previous run-in with Lone Star after leaving a teammate's body behind, he was prepared: he installed an area bomb in his cybertorso, set to go off if his biomonitor detected he was killed, theoretically leaving nothing behind to be traced back to the team and his player's future characters.

On the run in which he finally left the land of the living, his player took great pains to remind me that his area bomb went off immediately, and that all the other characters were at least three meters away and would therefore take no damage from the area bomb, given his armor.

The blast from the sympathetic detonation of the kilo of C-15 in his smuggling compartment and additional ten kilos in his backpack, however, had a rather wider range...

Ouch! Though I wonder why he'd bother hiding that one kilo if he had 10 more just in his pack... :smallconfused:

Talanic
2010-12-28, 12:45 PM
What? Seriously, his Int was marginally below average and he thinks it's a good idea to headbutt trees? What was his Wisdom, negative? That is completely uncalled for, and the DM has a very poor idea of the magnitude of a -1 Int modifier.

I suspect it's more a reaction to the idea that the player is asking the DM to choose his actions for him. Like one guy I heard of who asked the DM to roll up his (apparently not-first) character and got a half-orc commoner with 6 INT and all skill ranks (plus skill focus) in Profession: Pig Farmer.

Lesson: Don't try to make the DM do what you should be doing unless you want him to screw with you.

Keinnicht
2010-12-28, 12:55 PM
Lesson: Don't try to make the DM do what you should be doing unless you want him to screw with you.

I believe that was the lesson. But having a negative intelligence modifier makes it even more asking for it than just asking the DM to do your work for you.

Trekkin
2010-12-28, 09:58 PM
Ouch! Though I wonder why he'd bother hiding that one kilo if he had 10 more just in his pack... :smallconfused:

It was part of his sealed "oh <bleep> kit"--his term-- together with some other odds and ends intended to make it easier to get out of a run gone wrong, no matter what he was doing at the time. He also had a certified credstick, a stabilization patch, and a body cavity escape kit in there, if I recall correctly, and cracked a joke about the kit "technically being in a body cavity".

Rihar33
2010-12-29, 12:37 AM
Rogue/sorcerer tried to negotiate with a Blue dragon........ diplomacy check was not needed.

Scarlet-Devil
2010-12-29, 02:51 AM
One time I rolled a Monk.

Bah, well one time I played a monk from first to tenth level and managed to be both active and effective the whole time.

Anyway, mine's from one of my first games, and may or may not qualify, because it was caused partly by my DM's malice, but here goes: I was playing a draconic ranger with the first dragon wings (whatever it's called) feat from RotD, one of my buddies was a human fullblade wielding fighter with a negative in intelligence, and I can't remember the rest of our party, except for the rogue/shadow dancer, played by a complete D&D virgin who joined late in the campaign.

After setting fire to the main guildhall of a powerful thieves' guild we'd been waging private war with for pretty much the whole campaign, we were attacked by an extremely powerful wizard (I judged that he was powerful because I tried to surprise attack him, rolled up in the 30s, and missed completely) in black robes, who we assumed to be the BBEG. My surprise attack having failed, I decided that we should ditch him, so we all made for the nearest manhole. The wizard summoned a bebilith into the sewers (not following us himself), which we didn't stick around to fight. Somehow we got split up, with the fighter splitting off from us and ultimately finding some sort of back entrance into a secret bath house, where he encountered a busty, 16 year old druidess and was given a mysterious XP reward by the DM.

Meanwhile, the rogue and I lost the bebilith, but wound up getting lost in the sewer complex until we encountered a strange old man with very long hair and filthy robes, who offered to guide us out of the sewers on his raft. We took him up on his offer, and were rafted down a sewage river until we reached open air. We then asked the old man where he was headed, and found that his destination was very far away and he wasn't going to stop rowing (we were at that time in the middle of a fairly wide river), so I decided to attempt to jump to shore, and only plunged into sewage up to my knees or so. My rogue companion however, unable to make the jump and apparently feeling spiteful, asked me to throw him a vial of alchemist's fire, which I did.

Our impish DM had him roll a reflex save to catch it, which he fumbled, causing the vial to burst in his hand, spewing its contents on him, the raft, and the surrounding sewage. The old man leaped across to the opposite bank, before the alchemist's fire spread across the 'river', forcing the rogue to wade his way through burning sewage to the bank. Hah, thinking back to it now though, that campaign was filled with strange mishaps like this.

RndmNumGen
2010-12-29, 03:10 AM
More of a newb moment, but it's the closest thing I've got.

During one game I was DMing, one of my players was new and hadn't played before. When the party encountered a bat swarm, he had no idea how to handle it, and fled... further into the cave. The party continued fighting the bats. Instead of going to help them or at least staying put and waiting for his party to catch back up, he continued going further into the cave. He didn't encounter anything for a while, and he started making a spot check every turn(there wasn't actually anything to see, but I guess the deserted tunnel unnerved him). Soon I informed him that he detected a putrid smell, which strengthened in intensity as he proceeded into the cave. He kept going. 3 rounds later, he walked in on the boss monster butchering some human corpses. Realizing he had no chance of beating the creature, he noticed a vat filled with an unusual liquid. Praying the liquid would help him out somehow, he jumped into the vat of acid.

...

Yeah.

Gnaritas
2010-12-29, 03:51 AM
Bah, well one time I played a monk from first to tenth level and managed to be both active and effective the whole time.

This has nothing to do with you and more so with the other players and the kind of game you play. And this is absolutely not meant in a negative way, i prefer these kind of games.

Fayd
2010-12-29, 09:12 AM
I didn't die from it, but...

Yelling "Suck Bolt V lizard!" at a dragon while firing lightning at it may not have been one of my better ideas... just saying.

The dragon was blind. I was hovering. I forgot about magicsense.

Covah
2010-12-29, 10:40 AM
This is from a Shadowrun game I was in.

We had managed to piss off a troll gang by having a shootout in their bar. Well, after a job, we were laying low in a warehouse. One of our contacts called and said that the trolls had found out where we were. So we set up ready to take them on. The only ways into the warehouse were the large doors on the front of the building and a regular door on the side. Both of which were in the main part of the warehouse. Well, our rigger goes into the office and sits in the chair at the desk. Right in front of a window. He takes over control of his combat drone which is waiting for the trolls with the rest of our group. Well, sometime during the fight, the drone just stops. Our rigger had sat right in front of the window and we found him after the fight with most of his head missing from a shotgun blast.

Chilingsworth
2010-12-31, 12:40 PM
More of a newb moment, but it's the closest thing I've got.

During one game I was DMing, one of my players was new and hadn't played before. When the party encountered a bat swarm, he had no idea how to handle it, and fled... further into the cave. The party continued fighting the bats. Instead of going to help them or at least staying put and waiting for his party to catch back up, he continued going further into the cave. He didn't encounter anything for a while, and he started making a spot check every turn(there wasn't actually anything to see, but I guess the deserted tunnel unnerved him). Soon I informed him that he detected a putrid smell, which strengthened in intensity as he proceeded into the cave. He kept going. 3 rounds later, he walked in on the boss monster butchering some human corpses. Realizing he had no chance of beating the creature, he noticed a vat filled with an unusual liquid. Praying the liquid would help him out somehow, he jumped into the vat of acid.

...

Yeah.

I'd say this counts, definately.

Just_Ice
2010-12-31, 01:22 PM
>Bringing the clearly untrustworthy crocodile mounts to the drunk-out-cold party member

>When Lord Limestone, the BBEG, was trying to get the artifact pieces and we were trying to cheat him, I suggested we split up the treasure in seperate locations that only we know of. I hid mine in the sewer. Two players didn't bother to hide it at all, just had it on them. One player didn't specify where they were keeping it until we we captured and tortured, and then revealed he stuffed it in his unmentionables. That was unpleasant.

>Player is surrounded by greaser necromancers that can't stand he's on their turf and are fixing to kill party, demands they graft him a necrotic hand to make up for the one he lost through his own stupidity

Gauntlet
2010-12-31, 02:44 PM
In a party I was GMing, a fighter, cleric and wizard came across a hydra in a swamp. Two founds later, due to some lucky rolls, fighter and cleric were unconscious next to the hydra, which was advancing on the wizard. Realising he had to finish the hydra this round, his only spell effectiv eenough to do so was a Maximized fireball. Unfortunately if he threw it at the hydra, he's scorch his allies to death as well. After some thought, he realised that the only viable target he could hit to hit the hydra but not his party was his own face.

Yes, the party wizard threw a maximized Fireball into his own face. Interestingly he did manage to kill the hydra, and the hired guide managed to bandage the cleric and fighter till they recovered- so his actions actually saved the group from a TPK.:smallamused:

Reynard
2010-12-31, 02:51 PM
In a party I was GMing, a fighter, cleric and wizard came across a hydra in a swamp. Two founds later, due to some lucky rolls, fighter and cleric were unconscious next to the hydra, which was advancing on the wizard. Realising he had to finish the hydra this round, his only spell effectiv eenough to do so was a Maximized fireball. Unfortunately if he threw it at the hydra, he's scorch his allies to death as well. After some thought, he realised that the only viable target he could hit to hit the hydra but not his party was his own face.

Yes, the party wizard threw a maximized Fireball into his own face. Interestingly he did manage to kill the hydra, and the hired guide managed to bandage the cleric and fighter till they recovered- so his actions actually saved the group from a TPK.:smallamused:

Couldn't he aim it slightly off of the ground, so he wasn't caught in the blast?

Traab
2010-12-31, 04:30 PM
Ok, this isnt D&D, but it IS an epic fail for the ages. I was playing everquest, way back in the days when kunark was new. My guild decided we were going to practice raids by running regular zones enmass. We go into cazic thule, and my groups are assigned to this maze area underground. We do well and its time to pull out. I look away from my screen to type something and take the wrong path. Right into a group of mobs. Wait, that wasnt the epic fail. Im a druid so I cast spirit of the wolf and run my ass off back the way I came, with about 4 mobs chasing me.

Somehow I went the wrong way AGAIN and get another couple squads on me. At this point im panicking. They cant catch me so long as I keep moving BUT I DONT KNOW WHERE TO GO! I start running and running, im managing to cover every single corridor BUT the exit path, and the entire maze has respawned at this point and is chasing me. Thats 30+ mobs, any ONE of which would be a close fight for me to take at best. I finally get directions through chat on the right way to go, and I make a break for it, warning them that all hell is on my heels. I get out of the maze, manage to drag another 6-7 spawns into my train of doom, and am booking it for the zone line. What to my wondering eyes should appear? MY ENTIRE GUILD HANGING OUT AT THE ZONE LINE! Im yelling everyone to zone out, zone out! So what do they do? Some genious gets the bright idea to cast an aoe spell and suddenly everything is swamping the raid, insta killing them all one at a time.(Hey, I dont care who you are, getting hit 47 times in a second will kill you FAST!) I think we lost 40 people before the survivors finally decided that taking 5 steps back and leaving the zone would be a good idea.

Jjeinn-tae
2010-12-31, 04:46 PM
Ok, this isnt D&D, but it IS an epic fail for the ages. I was playing everquest, way back in the days when kunark was new. My guild decided we were going to practice raids by running regular zones enmass. We go into cazic thule, and my groups are assigned to this maze area underground. We do well and its time to pull out. I look away from my screen to type something and take the wrong path. Right into a group of mobs. Wait, that wasnt the epic fail. Im a druid so I cast spirit of the wolf and run my ass off back the way I came, with about 4 mobs chasing me.

Somehow I went the wrong way AGAIN and get another couple squads on me. At this point im panicking. They cant catch me so long as I keep moving BUT I DONT KNOW WHERE TO GO! I start running and running, im managing to cover every single corridor BUT the exit path, and the entire maze has respawned at this point and is chasing me. Thats 30+ mobs, any ONE of which would be a close fight for me to take at best. I finally get directions through chat on the right way to go, and I make a break for it, warning them that all hell is on my heels. I get out of the maze, manage to drag another 6-7 spawns into my train of doom, and am booking it for the zone line. What to my wondering eyes should appear? MY ENTIRE GUILD HANGING OUT AT THE ZONE LINE! Im yelling everyone to zone out, zone out! So what do they do? Some genious gets the bright idea to cast an aoe spell and suddenly everything is swamping the raid, insta killing them all one at a time.(Hey, I dont care who you are, getting hit 47 times in a second will kill you FAST!) I think we lost 40 people before the survivors finally decided that taking 5 steps back and leaving the zone would be a good idea.

Was that before shouting "Train to Zone!" was common? Good game that was. :smallsmile: My father had a similar award in EQ when just learning the game, attacking an NPC in Qeynos, many many NPC's of levels 30+ fighting the level one magician. :smallbiggrin:

Darkhub
2010-12-31, 05:03 PM
My party was trying to battle a T-rex, for reasons unkown to them.
theres a druid, wizard, rouge, bard, cleric barbarian and 2 rangers. (the cleric barbarian and the rouge werent there)
the rangers aimed for the eyes. FAILURE
the wizard cast fireball. hits, but not even enough damage to make it flinch
the bard starts a scheme using 200 pounds of ale, a cart, and a match (this was a win)
BUT, the druid runs up to the T-rex and tries to poision it. doesnt work
same turn, he says "i attempt to provoke the T-rex into eating me"
Um... ok.... It eats him next round, and from all the damage it does, and including him taking damage from a teamates critical faliure, He dies. with more then his max health in negatives - belive. the T-rex is A CR 6 monster. the party is all level 6 >.>

Gamerlord
2010-12-31, 05:30 PM
I was DMing, and the group was trying to ambush some thug who were going to try to steal a artifact from a bookstore. Now, once the thugs appeared, the wizard charges right out of the hiding spot, straight into the enemy, and casts burning hands. Now casting a fire spell in a bookstore has the usual effect of starting a massive fire. Now the thugs are in hand-to-hand combat with the wizard, who is only level 2. What do the other players say?

"We will stay in our hiding spots, waiting for the right moment to charge the enemy."

Of course, within a round or two the wizard is dead, and the thugs end up escaping with the artifact book, which the wizard had on her person. And guess who ended up paying for the destroyed books :smalltongue: . Not too mention the cost of a raise dead spell that put the party into serious debt.

Chaos rising
2010-12-31, 05:39 PM
This happened in a campaign I was DMing recently. The party consisted of a
Lv. 3 fighter, a Lv. 2 sorcerer, a Lv. 3 cleric, and a Lv. 3 wizard
The group had just encountered a Goblin warrior with 5 class levels in fighter, and began to battle him. They came close to beating him, despite the wizard almost running out of spells and the fighter being dropped to negative HP, when the goblin made a successful grapple check against the cleric (who decided it was a good idea to stand right next to said goblin and focus entirely on melee combat instead of healing). The goblin held the cleric hostage (the cleric was at low enough health that the goblin could have killed her with a decent roll) and demanded that the other party members move out of sight range, then he would release the cleric and flee. My party did exactly that, and the goblin killed the cleric and drank a healing potion she was carrying on her when the were out of sight. This is where things get really ridiculous. The sorcerer, after waiting for the cleric to come back for a few rounds, decided to go back and see what happened alone while the wizard tried to drag the wounded fighter back to town. The sorcerer waltzed right back to the goblins location (without making a spot check) and was promptly killed. The wizard bombed his hide check, and since he was low on spells, was easily killed by wild monsters.

Chilingsworth
2011-01-02, 01:03 PM
This happened in a campaign I was DMing recently. The party consisted of a
Lv. 3 fighter, a Lv. 2 sorcerer, a Lv. 3 cleric, and a Lv. 3 wizard
The group had just encountered a Goblin warrior with 5 class levels in fighter, and began to battle him. They came close to beating him, despite the wizard almost running out of spells and the fighter being dropped to negative HP, when the goblin made a successful grapple check against the cleric (who decided it was a good idea to stand right next to said goblin and focus entirely on melee combat instead of healing). The goblin held the cleric hostage (the cleric was at low enough health that the goblin could have killed her with a decent roll) and demanded that the other party members move out of sight range, then he would release the cleric and flee. My party did exactly that, and the goblin killed the cleric and drank a healing potion she was carrying on her when the were out of sight. This is where things get really ridiculous. The sorcerer, after waiting for the cleric to come back for a few rounds, decided to go back and see what happened alone while the wizard tried to drag the wounded fighter back to town. The sorcerer waltzed right back to the goblins location (without making a spot check) and was promptly killed. The wizard bombed his hide check, and since he was low on spells, was easily killed by wild monsters.

Ouch! Dumb to:
-- Not heal your party when they need it
-- Trust a goblin...
-- Not at least attempt spot checks in these situations

The rest seems like abit of bad luck.

Ksheep
2011-01-06, 07:41 PM
Great story from my fathers 1st Ed AD&D days. One of the party members had found a Wand of Wonder in a fairly early loot drop, and he started using it on anything and everything the party came across. At first it seemed innocuous enough. Mistake number 1.

The party then went into a rather large dungeon complex. The character with the wand was in the front of the marching order. Mistake number 2.

The first couple of floors had fairly low level creatures, nothing all that tough. They were breezing through it. Then they came to a narrow hallway, about 5 feet across and 5 feet tall and about 100 feet long. The guy with the wand went in first, and everyone else filed in after, with a couple members staying outside the tunnel to keep an eye on any threats that might come up behind them. When the party was about halfway down, they got attacked by a couple of giant rats. Easy stuff, right? Except that the guy with the wand did what he always did… he used the wand.

DM rolled to see what the wand did… then pulled out some scratch paper, started doing some calculations, rolled some more dice, and said something along the lines of "OK, you, you, and you, everyone in the tunnel, you're all dead. Everyone outside of the tunnel, you take X damage. The wand cast Fireball, which filled the tunnel and shot out 20 feet on both ends." With most of the party dead, the remaining members attempted to limp out. They were seriously hurt, and all of their healing methods were dead or burnt to a crisp. They died before they got back to the entrance 2 levels up. Needless to say, the party never let that player have another magic item again.

Moginheden
2011-01-10, 08:43 PM
2 darwin awards in one.

I'm DMing a campaign with a dragon shaman, druid, ranger, warrior, monk, rogue, and swashbuckler. They enter a cave where only 2 characters wide can walk. Every time they turn a corner I make them do listen checks before they turn the corner and spot checks as soon as they have turned it.

The group approaches a corner the druid gets a 30 on his listen check and I tell him he can hear a very faint sound of something large slithering around. He then waves his hands to the rest of the group to stop and be careful around the corner, but none of them understand him. After about 30 seconds of trying to get his point across he shouts to the party as loud as he can, "oh for crying out loud I'm trying to tell you to be stealthy!" The party then continues around the corner and sees nothing.

When they get to the next corner they spot a hidden door and a pressure plate. While the party is arguing on what to do next, the ranger steps on the floor plate opening the door revealing 6 gricks. The party decides to fight in the doorway so they can use it as a choke point and fight them off one at a time. There is plenty of room to do this and most of them have bows that I allow them to fire over the head of the dwarf at the front. I've modified these gricks to be DR 10/slashing or bludgeoning instead of the normal DR 10/magic as they have almost no HP and everyone in the group has magic weapons, (everyone has a piercing weapon except the monk but most of them also have slashing, and the monk obviously has bludgeoning). The group arranges themselves so that the guy with a shortspear is in front and everyone else is using bows, (except the monk who's just sitting there.)

After 3 rounds of doing no damage whatsoever to the grick the druid backs away from the battle, (going deeper into the unexplored part of the cave.) He is then is hit by 2 arrows coming out of the darkness. He doesn't move. Next round another 2 arrows hit him. He still doesn't move. Next round another 2 arrows hit him. I ask him "Do you want to move back towards the rest of the group?" (as this would have been out of line of sight of the arrows as the map clearly showed him.) He replies "no I'll wait for them here." Another 2 arrows hit him and the dragon shaman hits the pressure plate again closing the Grick room sealing it off with all 6 gricks inside.

The party then all readies an ambush for the arrow shooting guys behind the corner... except the druid who's still standing out in the open getting another 2 arrows/round. The dragon shaman is the one with the light source and he also happens to have blindsight so he turns off the light and waits behind the corner for the enemies to come closer. The arrows stop hitting the druid for a few rounds. Once he's no longer being hit he hobbles over to the rest of the group and waits with them to ambush whoever was shooting at him.

3 rounds pass and he gets bored and sends his wolf companion into the pitch black corridor he was getting shot from. Next round the winter-wolves and bugbears, (who both have darkvision unlike the druid's wolf.) finally get to within 60' of the corner the PCs are hiding behind, (they had been moving 10' per round closer ever since the PCs turned out the light that allowed them to shoot the druid.) Since the wolf is the only thing they can see they all attack it, and trip it successfully, (auto-trip attempt on attack from the wolves.)

The druid's wolf manages to get back to the dragon shaman who uses his lay-on-hands clone to heal it up. Immediately, the wolf is sent back into combat, (before the light source is turned on so it's blind.) The rest of the party joins the battle once the dragon shaman gets a turn to turn the light back on and proceeds to kill the 2 bugbear bowmen and their winter-wolves but not before the druid's wolf is killed and the dragon shaman is knocked down to -4 trying to run in save it.

The bugbears were supposed to be deeper in the cave and not attack till after the gricks were dealt with, but the druid first yelling to attract them, then stepping fully lite into their line of sight were too much to ignore.

The druid didn't die, but he would have without the dragon shaman saving him, (the druid didn't cast a single healing spell the entire encounter, only the dragon shaman did.) The druid's wolf companion on the other hand was dead 3 times over. I fudged the rolls twice to allow it to live.


Once the group healed up and the druid got a new wolf they all head back to the same cave and open up the grick room again. They see all 6 gricks together in a big ball squirming all over each other. (Was going for this (http://www.goblinscomic.com/05312010/).) The PCs close the door and decide to use the same plan that didn't work last time setting themselves up in the same formation, (except the druid was closer in to avoid becoming a pincushion from the already-dead bugbears.)

This time when they open the door only a single grick is visible, and it was waiting for them so it auto-wins initiative. After 2 rounds one of the bows gets a crit and I say "it sticks out of the scaly hide and the creature screams in pain." As opposed to the normal, "your arrow seems to bounce off harmlessly" This is apparently enough for the PCs to clue in that piercing weapons don't work. They quickly switch to swords and axes and kill the lone grick.

The PCs then start wondering where the other gricks went and make search checks specifically checking if the gricks are right above them. "You don't see anything." Most of the PCs are wondering what to do when the ranger says "I run into the room." I ask if anyone else is doing anything and they say no. Next round 5 gricks drop from the ceiling and emerge from the rough walls where they were hiding 20' INSIDE the room where no one bothered to search and all attack the lone ranger getting him down to -1 HP. Next round the PCs charge in to save their friend only to have a grick drag him off into a corner of the room to finish eating him, (as is explicitly stated they will do in their entry.)

The dragon shaman uses vigor aura to help the ranger regen and I roll a couple of natural 1s on the grick and have it only use it's bite not it's tentacles so it doesn't kill the ranger right away. The ranger actually wakes up for 1 round while being eaten, (I could have coup-de-graced him but was feeling lenient.) However the next round he failed to get out of the grapple the grick had him in and was hit with all 4 tentacles + the bite going to -11 HP. (The following round the party cut a hole through the remaining gricks to save him, but it was too late.)

Chilingsworth
2011-01-13, 05:55 PM
2 darwin awards in one.

I'm DMing a campaign with a dragon shaman, druid, ranger, warrior, monk, rogue, and swashbuckler. They enter a cave where only 2 characters wide can walk. Every time they turn a corner I make them do listen checks before they turn the corner and spot checks as soon as they have turned it.

The group approaches a corner the druid gets a 30 on his listen check and I tell him he can hear a very faint sound of something large slithering around. He then waves his hands to the rest of the group to stop and be careful around the corner, but none of them understand him. After about 30 seconds of trying to get his point across he shouts to the party as loud as he can, "oh for crying out loud I'm trying to tell you to be stealthy!" The party then continues around the corner and sees nothing.

When they get to the next corner they spot a hidden door and a pressure plate. While the party is arguing on what to do next, the ranger steps on the floor plate opening the door revealing 6 gricks. The party decides to fight in the doorway so they can use it as a choke point and fight them off one at a time. There is plenty of room to do this and most of them have bows that I allow them to fire over the head of the dwarf at the front. I've modified these gricks to be DR 10/slashing or bludgeoning instead of the normal DR 10/magic as they have almost no HP and everyone in the group has magic weapons, (everyone has a piercing weapon except the monk but most of them also have slashing, and the monk obviously has bludgeoning). The group arranges themselves so that the guy with a shortspear is in front and everyone else is using bows, (except the monk who's just sitting there.)

After 3 rounds of doing no damage whatsoever to the grick the druid backs away from the battle, (going deeper into the unexplored part of the cave.) He is then is hit by 2 arrows coming out of the darkness. He doesn't move. Next round another 2 arrows hit him. He still doesn't move. Next round another 2 arrows hit him. I ask him "Do you want to move back towards the rest of the group?" (as this would have been out of line of sight of the arrows as the map clearly showed him.) He replies "no I'll wait for them here." Another 2 arrows hit him and the dragon shaman hits the pressure plate again closing the Grick room sealing it off with all 6 gricks inside.

The party then all readies an ambush for the arrow shooting guys behind the corner... except the druid who's still standing out in the open getting another 2 arrows/round. The dragon shaman is the one with the light source and he also happens to have blindsight so he turns off the light and waits behind the corner for the enemies to come closer. The arrows stop hitting the druid for a few rounds. Once he's no longer being hit he hobbles over to the rest of the group and waits with them to ambush whoever was shooting at him.

3 rounds pass and he gets bored and sends his wolf companion into the pitch black corridor he was getting shot from. Next round the winter-wolves and bugbears, (who both have darkvision unlike the druid's wolf.) finally get to within 60' of the corner the PCs are hiding behind, (they had been moving 10' per round closer ever since the PCs turned out the light that allowed them to shoot the druid.) Since the wolf is the only thing they can see they all attack it, and trip it successfully, (auto-trip attempt on attack from the wolves.)

The druid's wolf manages to get back to the dragon shaman who uses his lay-on-hands clone to heal it up. Immediately, the wolf is sent back into combat, (before the light source is turned on so it's blind.) The rest of the party joins the battle once the dragon shaman gets a turn to turn the light back on and proceeds to kill the 2 bugbear bowmen and their winter-wolves but not before the druid's wolf is killed and the dragon shaman is knocked down to -4 trying to run in save it.

The bugbears were supposed to be deeper in the cave and not attack till after the gricks were dealt with, but the druid first yelling to attract them, then stepping fully lite into their line of sight were too much to ignore.

The druid didn't die, but he would have without the dragon shaman saving him, (the druid didn't cast a single healing spell the entire encounter, only the dragon shaman did.) The druid's wolf companion on the other hand was dead 3 times over. I fudged the rolls twice to allow it to live.


Once the group healed up and the druid got a new wolf they all head back to the same cave and open up the grick room again. They see all 6 gricks together in a big ball squirming all over each other. (Was going for this (http://www.goblinscomic.com/05312010/).) The PCs close the door and decide to use the same plan that didn't work last time setting themselves up in the same formation, (except the druid was closer in to avoid becoming a pincushion from the already-dead bugbears.)

This time when they open the door only a single grick is visible, and it was waiting for them so it auto-wins initiative. After 2 rounds one of the bows gets a crit and I say "it sticks out of the scaly hide and the creature screams in pain." As opposed to the normal, "your arrow seems to bounce off harmlessly" This is apparently enough for the PCs to clue in that piercing weapons don't work. They quickly switch to swords and axes and kill the lone grick.

The PCs then start wondering where the other gricks went and make search checks specifically checking if the gricks are right above them. "You don't see anything." Most of the PCs are wondering what to do when the ranger says "I run into the room." I ask if anyone else is doing anything and they say no. Next round 5 gricks drop from the ceiling and emerge from the rough walls where they were hiding 20' INSIDE the room where no one bothered to search and all attack the lone ranger getting him down to -1 HP. Next round the PCs charge in to save their friend only to have a grick drag him off into a corner of the room to finish eating him, (as is explicitly stated they will do in their entry.)

The dragon shaman uses vigor aura to help the ranger regen and I roll a couple of natural 1s on the grick and have it only use it's bite not it's tentacles so it doesn't kill the ranger right away. The ranger actually wakes up for 1 round while being eaten, (I could have coup-de-graced him but was feeling lenient.) However the next round he failed to get out of the grapple the grick had him in and was hit with all 4 tentacles + the bite going to -11 HP. (The following round the party cut a hole through the remaining gricks to save him, but it was too late.)


Poor Ranger: Getting knocked out, then eaten, then regened while *being eaten!* Ouch ouch ouch!

Escheton
2011-01-13, 06:40 PM
Maybe if your didn't give the druid companions so easy, he/she would not have considered it fodder, but a friend and companion as the class implies they are. It looks though that the player was just daft.

Be less lenient and have their stupidity kill them off more, it might have them wise up.

nedz
2011-01-13, 08:27 PM
I take it that somewhere in the last 5 pages, someone has TPKed their entire 1e/2e party with a miscalculated fireball?

If not, I'm throwing that one into the pot.

This is a Trope.

Every time I ran a 1E/2E game with a novice player who chose to play wizard: I'd watch them get to fifth level, learn fireball and take out the party. Never a TPK, but it was always close.

Gnoman
2011-01-14, 10:16 PM
This only wasn't a TPK because I was generous.


The (roughly 10th level) party is pursuing a level 15 vampire wizard. They meet up with him and his master, who the party immediately learns is level 20 (due to a delayed-blast fireball) standing before a small girl on a throne, in the middle of a ruined city, with a massive amount of magic in the area, and a choir of worshippers on either side. The party bard's first action of the round was to shoot and kill the little girl. The reaction of the wizards should have been a huge clue that this was a good idea. After winning the battle (both wizards escaped but were defeated), and needing to flee from an army of undead that the wizards had summoned, they grabbed their dead and the girl and fled.


They resurrected her, then attacked her when she vaporized an entire temple of clerics with a gesture (she was a godling, and her power had been drained for a powerful spell. Resurrecting her restored those powers.)

Escheton
2011-01-15, 01:38 AM
I fail to see how the party was dumb because they failed to know that the little girl was a godling. Granted it's a bit of a trope to make something in a cute and innocent package ungodly powerful, but still, unless there where far more hints or ways to find out, I don't see how they are at fault.

akragster
2011-01-15, 02:22 AM
Not my fail, but someone else in our group.

It's my first campaign ever, I was a human Fighter fighting alongside a halfling Cleric, a halfling rogue, a dwarven ranger, a human sorcerer (might have been a wizard...), and a guest (our DM wasn't fond of these, so he was prepared to have a no-guest rule if it interfered with gameplay/roleplay) playing a human druid.

Now for the fail. Our party is exploring (I believe an old adventurer's lodge) in order to find the next plot ticket. We come upon a strange pool with symbols around it. When the rogue walks up to the pool, the water takes humanoid shape and mirrors him. He takes this as a sign to stick his hand in it (:smalleek:). The water elemental stuck inside breaks out, now that the spell binding it is destroyed.

Combat starts. A few rounds in, the sorcerer dies protecting the Druid. The Druid (who was unsure of how D&D works) turns into a dolphin, and JUMPS into the water elemental. She dies.

The party flees. The rogue leaves the party because of the guilt of his accidental manslaughter. He and the wizard/sorcerer roll up new characters. The DM decides it would be best if we leave it at the main party. (I'm not blaming the Druid, of course, it's just unfortunate she jumped (literally) into a 6th level party mid-game).

Gnoman
2011-01-15, 08:56 PM
It wasn't the ressurection that was the fail. It was attacking her after she exterminated the clerics.

Moginheden
2011-01-19, 07:39 PM
Maybe if your didn't give the druid companions so easy, he/she would not have considered it fodder, but a friend and companion as the class implies they are. It looks though that the player was just daft.

Be less lenient and have their stupidity kill them off more, it might have them wise up.

I'd figure it was an abuse of the companion.... but he was acting just as dumb being Mr. Pincushion with his character.

Chilingsworth
2011-01-23, 11:39 AM
I'd figure it was an abuse of the companion.... but he was acting just as dumb being Mr. Pincushion with his character.

Yeah. My group had a wizard that did that once, too. Be mr. pincushion, I mean. He ran ahead, without even so much as an invisibility spell on and got pincushioned by archers. :smallbiggrin:

ShadowySilence
2011-01-24, 10:52 PM
This one is pretty long, it gave my party a pretty good laugh by the end:

I just started a campaign a few weeks ago which follows the mis-adventures of a strange military unit called Ye Olde Bad Company. I got some pretty good character submissions (albeit strange ones, but that was kind of the point). One submission was a mind flayer cleric (evil) who was expelled from his home when he made some horrible mistake (I think it was somehow harming their elder mind or something). He lost all his powers and the mind flayer part was merely for show, mechanically he was just like any evil human cleric. The first thing to happen in the campaign is that their old Lieutenant has died and they have gotten a new, stricter one to take his place. Here comes the part that led to the character deserving a Darwin award, his first words after hearing about the Lieutenant is "I would watch *shlurp* what you ssssay if I were you, Lieutenant Sssssaul... You never know what can *shlurp* end up in your sssssuper..." after he has left. Now this may seem like a simple (and not literal threat) sadly for the cleric he decides to actually go through with it (first mistake) and mentions the exact poison he plans to use and what effects it has (mistake two). After a short time the Lieutenant is dying and the cleric is panicky, he sees the door to the Lieutenant's quarters open and is afraid someone might discover he was the killer. He goes to check on (and probably kill) who is in there. Unbeknownst to him, his fellow party members are in there (oddly enough stealing from the dying man) and see the note he was writing (a very personal and sad note). They just start to feel bad for him when the cleric rushes in and rips up the paper, the person he just took it from was a monk (mistake three). The monk punches the cleric square in the head twice (knocking him out with lethal damage) heals him and hands him to the camp guards. The cleric is sub-sequentially put on trial (court-marital) and proven guilty and is to be hanged. In a last bit of craziness the cleric (a worshiper of Nirull) rants on about how Nirull will swallow their souls and he shall have his revenge, he then drinks poison and dies immediately. Lets just say none of us expected this, but it gave us a great laugh! Luckily for the player they are now able to rejoin as a kindly druid. :smallbiggrin:

Chilingsworth
2011-01-27, 05:32 PM
This one is pretty long, it gave my party a pretty good laugh by the end:

I just started a campaign a few weeks ago which follows the mis-adventures of a strange military unit called Ye Olde Bad Company. I got some pretty good character submissions (albeit strange ones, but that was kind of the point). One submission was a mind flayer cleric (evil) who was expelled from his home when he made some horrible mistake (I think it was somehow harming their elder mind or something). He lost all his powers and the mind flayer part was merely for show, mechanically he was just like any evil human cleric. The first thing to happen in the campaign is that their old Lieutenant has died and they have gotten a new, stricter one to take his place. Here comes the part that led to the character deserving a Darwin award, his first words after hearing about the Lieutenant is "I would watch *shlurp* what you ssssay if I were you, Lieutenant Sssssaul... You never know what can *shlurp* end up in your sssssuper..." after he has left. Now this may seem like a simple (and not literal threat) sadly for the cleric he decides to actually go through with it (first mistake) and mentions the exact poison he plans to use and what effects it has (mistake two). After a short time the Lieutenant is dying and the cleric is panicky, he sees the door to the Lieutenant's quarters open and is afraid someone might discover he was the killer. He goes to check on (and probably kill) who is in there. Unbeknownst to him, his fellow party members are in there (oddly enough stealing from the dying man) and see the note he was writing (a very personal and sad note). They just start to feel bad for him when the cleric rushes in and rips up the paper, the person he just took it from was a monk (mistake three). The monk punches the cleric square in the head twice (knocking him out with lethal damage) heals him and hands him to the camp guards. The cleric is sub-sequentially put on trial (court-marital) and proven guilty and is to be hanged. In a last bit of craziness the cleric (a worshiper of Nirull) rants on about how Nirull will swallow their souls and he shall have his revenge, he then drinks poison and dies immediately. Lets just say none of us expected this, but it gave us a great laugh! Luckily for the player they are now able to rejoin as a kindly druid. :smallbiggrin:

Hmm... certainly sounds like this character didn't have a typical mindflayer's intellect, that's for sure. Though if he's in a party that doesn't mind stealing from their dying comrade, maybe a "kindly druid" isn't the best choice either?

MarkusWolfe
2011-01-27, 06:21 PM
"Yeah, I'll 5 foot step and full round attack that dragon. Yeah, I'll take a full round attack from it, but so what?"

So close to dying.....I'm really glad I was playing a barbarian in a campaign with full hitdie.

ShadowySilence
2011-01-27, 07:26 PM
Hmm... certainly sounds like this character didn't have a typical mindflayer's intellect, that's for sure. Though if he's in a party that doesn't mind stealing from their dying comrade, maybe a "kindly druid" isn't the best choice either?

As time has progressed we have actually seen quite a turn around in the group, the rogue (who was actually the only one stealing) returned the money surprisingly.

Chilingsworth
2011-01-31, 12:42 PM
As time has progressed we have actually seen quite a turn around in the group, the rogue (who was actually the only one stealing) returned the money surprisingly.

So, they managed to save the Leutenant, then?

mikeygoround
2011-02-01, 11:55 PM
The greatest unintentional suicide I ever witnessed was our 2nd edition wizard who used Dimension Door to tactically position himself above and out away from a sheer cliff to gain a surprise attack on some giants above the party.

His mistake was in failing to cast any sort of flying or levitating magic BEFORE the Dimension Door, leading to a spirited discussion of how far you can fall in the round that you are recovering after casting that spell!

All the way, SPLAT!


p.s. This character had worked himself from a 16 constitution down to a 5 by the end of the campaign!

Chilingsworth
2011-02-02, 10:00 PM
The greatest unintentional suicide I ever witnessed was our 2nd edition wizard who used Dimension Door to tactically position himself above and out away from a sheer cliff to gain a surprise attack on some giants above the party.

His mistake was in failing to cast any sort of flying or levitating magic BEFORE the Dimension Door, leading to a spirited discussion of how far you can fall in the round that you are recovering after casting that spell!

All the way, SPLAT!


p.s. This character had worked himself from a 16 constitution down to a 5 by the end of the campaign!

You'd think a wizard would have the intelligence to avoid that kind of thing... When dumb (or at least foolish) players play smart characters, I guess.

9mm
2011-02-02, 10:56 PM
"I throw the crystal ball!"

It was an unidentified Orb of Storms, so all of a sudden we were standing in a localized hurricane in the evil temple with spikey walls. Yeah, not my brightest moment.

also Olo's exepades in the ToS also bear mentioning.

Czin
2011-02-02, 11:00 PM
You'd think a wizard would have the intelligence to avoid that kind of thing... When dumb (or at least foolish) players play smart characters, I guess.

Since Common sense and memory are governed by wisdom, maybe he had wisdom as a dump stat?

Ksheep
2011-02-03, 07:55 PM
So, a while back I was playing a (cross-dressing) lumberjack (actually a monk with profession (lumberjack) and perform (sing) who used hand axes). Our party was working our way through a forest when a bunch of elves appeared and told us to leave their forest. A spirited discussion ensued. One of our party members ended up insulting them, and they attacked him.

I decided that it would be better to draw their fire, instead of letting them make a pincushion of our party leader. So what do I do? I draw agro… by taking five-foot step to a tree and making a profession (lumberjack) roll. Got a 27. All the elves immediately attacked me. And I mean ALL the elves, including the half-elf who was in our party. I dropped within a round.

Luckily for the party, the distraction worked, and the rest of the party took out a couple of the elves before the elves called for a truce. They left my body to the wolves.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-06, 03:53 PM
So, a while back I was playing a (cross-dressing) lumberjack (actually a monk with profession (lumberjack) and perform (sing) who used hand axes). Our party was working our way through a forest when a bunch of elves appeared and told us to leave their forest. A spirited discussion ensued. One of our party members ended up insulting them, and they attacked him.

I decided that it would be better to draw their fire, instead of letting them make a pincushion of our party leader. So what do I do? I draw agro… by taking five-foot step to a tree and making a profession (lumberjack) roll. Got a 27. All the elves immediately attacked me. And I mean ALL the elves, including the half-elf who was in our party. I dropped within a round.

Luckily for the party, the distraction worked, and the rest of the party took out a couple of the elves before the elves called for a truce. They left my body to the wolves.

I'm not sure this qualifies as a Darwin, since your goal was achieved. Ca heroic self-sacrifices count as Darwins?

Tennic
2011-02-06, 05:04 PM
So, this doesn't quite merit a Darwin Award, because it didn't result in the offending PC's death. However, it still bears a retelling.

My first D&D campaign, 3.5, about five years ago. I'm playing a Human Cleric of Shaundakul, the power-gamer of the group is a Half-Dragon Ranger and there's an Elven Rogue.

We'd just infiltrated an Orc fortress, if I'm not mistaken, while a battle raged outside the keep proper. The keep was abutting a mountain, so as we got further inside, the stonework was replaced by caves. We head down a long tunnel carved into the mountain and eventually reach a pair of boulders blocking the path, with just enough space between to be able to hear that there's something moving around beyond.

The brilliant ranger walks up to the boulders, cups his hands to his mouth and yells, "HELLO?" :sigh:

So I tell the DM I'm quickly heading back the way we came. I ask how far down the tunnel I can get before the inevitable occurs, and with a wicked gleam in his eyes, the DM tells me, "Not far enough." :frown:

I don't recall exactly what was beyond the boulders- it may have been something of the DM's creation- but it was essentially a giant with a sonic wail attack, not unlike a banshee's, except without the insta-death. So, we're basically standing in the barrel of a sonic gun.

The wail goes off and we all get stunned. The giant moves the boulders and begins pounding on the ranger. If I remember correctly, the ranger and the rogue both made their saves within the next couple of rounds; however, I start rolling miserably and spend about half the battle standing there drooling and dazed about a quarter of the way back up the tunnel. :furious:

Like I said, we all survived; and the ranger was prone to doing stupid $#!%, so I didn't even bother berating him. Still, we got lucky, and I wish the ranger had gotten his just desserts. It certainly would have saved our campaign if he'd had to roll up a new character (however, that's a story for another day).

Chilingsworth
2011-02-07, 11:17 PM
Ouch! What ended the campagin? A TPK or just everyone getting fed-up with the idiot?

Also, how do you know the Ranger's player wouldn't have made another character just as idiotic?

Herabec
2011-02-08, 01:00 PM
So, I'm running a D&D campaign in which the group (at the time of this idiocy) involved a..

Gnome Bard 5
Kobold Sorcerer 2/Druid 3
Elf Paladin 5
Human Fighter 5
Kitsune Rogue 4

The group had just managed to gain a powerful divine artifact for an NPC wizard they were traveling with, whom they did not realize was actually the Big Bad. They gave him the artifact, and he happily crafted a portal for them. They took it without even a second thought...right into the prison-like basement of the NPC's potion shop.

That's not the bad part. They appeared in a large cell and could gaze through the bars to the rest of the room. On the opposite side of the room, in brightly glowing arcane cages were three Outsiders - a Pit Fiend flanked by two Vrocks. None of them could harm the party due to the fields, but the Pit Fiend could offer useful information on their captor, his plans and so on.

They escaped their cell (stupid crowbars), and began chatting with the Pit Fiend. One question 'Why are you here?' was met with a simple, almost chiding response of 'If I didn't *want* to be in this, I would not be.'... Queue the gnome bard deciding this was the time to use his Perform: Comedy to make a crack about the Devil's questionable parentage. He rolls a 1.

The Pit Fiend, having been understandably offended, immediately begins to break out of his cage. To the credit of the party, they knew right off the bat that the gnome had just screwed them over and began running for the only exit to the room which was, fortunately for them, not secured very well. Unfortunately for the gnome, the rest of the group felt he had risked their lives one too many time and became the victim of an 'accidental' trip attempt.

He staggered, but didn't fall...but it was enough time for the rest of the group to get out, shut the door, and hear the sounds of a quickened fireball going off on the other side of the room. Bard reduced to a fine pile of ash...

It never fails to amaze me how parties will turn what are meant to be non-combat encounters into lethal battles. ... And don't get me started on the rogue that nearly got killed on the first game session by a civilian with a rake. >_>

Skaven
2011-02-08, 01:18 PM
Hmm, only one I can think of off the bat was the 11th level ranger who got killed by a badger.

After a huge battle he had like, 3hp left and wandered into a bedroom to try and find loot. The DM described a badger curled up on the bed, the pet of the owner. He runs over and tries to stab it 'its only a badger' and rolls a 1.

The badger got a natural 20.

Nobody knew he'd snuck off to loot the place on his own, so nobody was there to save him from badgery wrath.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-11, 08:00 PM
Hmm, only one I can think of off the bat was the 11th level ranger who got killed by a badger.

After a huge battle he had like, 3hp left and wandered into a bedroom to try and find loot. The DM described a badger curled up on the bed, the pet of the owner. He runs over and tries to stab it 'its only a badger' and rolls a 1.

The badger got a natural 20.

Nobody knew he'd snuck off to loot the place on his own, so nobody was there to save him from badgery wrath.

Badgers are nasty critters, or so I've been told. Ouch!

Traveler
2011-02-11, 10:57 PM
I don't think this Darwin worthy, but dumb enough to be mentioned.

The party is made up of...
A 1st level halfilng rogue by player A
A 1st level human cleric ran by player B
and a 1st human sorceress ran by player C
all of which were played by experienced players.

So, group starts out, goes to ancient ruins, the usual. Eventually they come across minor undead. Cleric trys turning, failed or only got one of them or something. Rogue moves up for melee, getting between the sorceress and the undead. Sorceress decided to throw a javalin at the one the rogue is on. Given that the rogue was a halfling I ruled that if she missed, she had a chance on hitting the rogue. She throws, missed, and hit the rogue :smallamused:.
Fast forward and the party won, but rogue nearly died due to extra javalin in his spine.

Later that session...
Party made a quick trip back to town for supplies, and on their way back to ruins stopped for the night. Cue random encounter. Goblin attack from the darkness of night, cleric and rogue charges (with torches). The sorceress had yet to recover her spells, so she gets her javalin. The one she targets has the rogue between her and it. C is reminded of the previous time she threw a javalin over a PC by both A and B. She tries anyway:smallconfused:. Again the rogue has javalin in his spine.
Fast forward. The rogue was dropped into negatives by the javalin. Thankfully, the cleric was close enough to heal him.

Yet later that session. Party needs to climb down a hundred foot cliff. The rogue called before anything can happen to him, he ties off a rope and goes down first. About ten seconds later the cleric calls he takes off his armor. I ask if he takes time to store it in his back. He says "na, I'll just drop it over the edge". :smalleek:
Beat
I just look at B and grinned for about 20 seconds, waiting for him to quickly change his mind. All I get are confused looks from B and C while A just lays his head on the table. I then say "O.K. Roll to hit at a -5 penalty". Player B takes a moment before his eyes got real big. He rolls, hits.
Ah, days I don't really need monters of traps.

Vknight
2011-02-13, 12:41 PM
In an evil campaign I Dm'ed.

How a Campaign Goes Up In Smoke
The bard with invisibilty sneaks into a Paladin Controlled Fortress to try and steal a map they need. At one point I tell him he see's 3paladins, and 2Inquistors.
(Inquisitor Backstory; These guys hunt down evil creatures and have class levels from 4-7making them a threat to the party. The bigger threatt is the fact there Animal Companions are all Wolves. With levels treated as Rouge.)
He see's them and decides to ignore them good idea.
Makes his way further along then he gets to the entrance of the map room.
I ask how he plans to get in. He pulls out 10Explosive Runes he's had the Wizard prepare ove the last few days. Places those on the door gets out the spyglass reads them and boom.
Now on the one side of the Hallway is a smoking crater leading to the map room. In the center of the Hallway is a still invisible Bard. At the other end 2Inquisitors with Wolves and 3Paladins.
Now the bard runs down the Hallway grabs the map and begins to leave.
Then I tell him the bad news as 2Wolves burst from beside there masters attacking him.
His brilliant escape plan? The Necklace of Fireballs he has from the Half-Orc.
So yeah his plan involves his Ring of Fire Resistance along with other things saving him. Oh they do, Unfortunately the Wolves get there save so he's standing in a crater visible to 3Angry Paladins, 2Disgruntled Inquisitors, and 2Hungry Wolves.
He died next round.

We did some rewinding for him because without those maps the adventure is almost impossible. His new plan activate the Runes well standing near them... He still has the Necklace of Fireballs in this run... yeah.
The map room is gone along with the bard among other things

Chilingsworth
2011-02-14, 06:15 PM
In an evil campaign I Dm'ed.

How a Campaign Goes Up In Smoke
The bard with invisibilty sneaks into a Paladin Controlled Fortress to try and steal a map they need. At one point I tell him he see's 3paladins, and 2Inquistors.
(Inquisitor Backstory; These guys hunt down evil creatures and have class levels from 4-7making them a threat to the party. The bigger threatt is the fact there Animal Companions are all Wolves. With levels treated as Rouge.)
He see's them and decides to ignore them good idea.
Makes his way further along then he gets to the entrance of the map room.
I ask how he plans to get in. He pulls out 10Explosive Runes he's had the Wizard prepare ove the last few days. Places those on the door gets out the spyglass reads them and boom.
Now on the one side of the Hallway is a smoking crater leading to the map room. In the center of the Hallway is a still invisible Bard. At the other end 2Inquisitors with Wolves and 3Paladins.
Now the bard runs down the Hallway grabs the map and begins to leave.
Then I tell him the bad news as 2Wolves burst from beside there masters attacking him.
His brilliant escape plan? The Necklace of Fireballs he has from the Half-Orc.
So yeah his plan involves his Ring of Fire Resistance along with other things saving him. Oh they do, Unfortunately the Wolves get there save so he's standing in a crater visible to 3Angry Paladins, 2Disgruntled Inquisitors, and 2Hungry Wolves.
He died next round.

We did some rewinding for him because without those maps the adventure is almost impossible. His new plan activate the Runes well standing near them... He still has the Necklace of Fireballs in this run... yeah.
The map room is gone along with the bard among other things

Maybe not a "Stupid Evil" character, but definately an Evil stupid chracter!

Vknight
2011-02-14, 07:00 PM
Yup.
The fact the other players still are complaining about it annoys me though. They also still complain in a different campaign were they blew up a rock that made a city fly and said they should survive.

Uhtred
2011-02-14, 08:05 PM
I was GM'ing a Star Wars campaign set at the end of the Clone Wars. My players were Clone Commandos, relatively high level, and an Antarean Ranger of equal level, all escaped from Order 66 with their Jedi commander NPC and on the run from the newly forged Galactic Empire. The Clone Wars were at the time one of my favorite periods in Star Wars history (Got over THAT right quick) but I had, through rigorous railroading and browsing of Wookieepedia managed to, in twenty-odd sessions, soundly thrash them. They had completed a few missions in that time, but mostly involved them being on the run and the consequences that come from being on the run and being Clones and whatnot. So I decided, having heard from two of my players that I was being a really mean DM throwing the might of Imperial Intelligence into the finding of an escaped squad of Clone Commandos, that I would throw them a bone, on a silver platter, with a big red bow and a neon sign labeled "TAKE ME!" The bone came in the form of a pirate lord's collection ship, so a heavily armed and modified freighter, that they took without much of a fight and escaped in. They found its cargo holds loaded with Durindfire gems, jewels of incredible brilliance and value, the gems being worth somewhere in the ballpark of like 6.9 billion credits, along with Jedi artifacts in the realm of lightsabers belonging to Masters Windu and Yoda. I repeat, a powerful warship loaded with virtually unlimited wealth and priceless artifacts. Everything they needed to officially kick serious amounts of ass in a campaign that had kicked their ass for a very long time.
One of my players, conditioned to be paranoid by almost a year of mistreatment at my hand, texts me that he wants to crush and jettison both the gems AND the lightsabers from the ship's cargo chute because "They're hot, people are going to be looking for them!" He texted me this because he didn't want the other players to know he was doing it and stop him. I allowed it because I had allowed such shenanigans in the past to my eternal shame. So he jettisoned the limitless wealth and priceless artifacts, in garbage cube form, out the garbage chute and told no one.
Needless to say, when they found out, they were pissed. He claimed he did what he did to keep the heat off him and his squad. His rationale was that they were already being pursued by the Imperials; they didn't need the pirates coming after them too looking for ten figures in precious gems and artifacts, so he did what he did to protect them all.
Bedlam ensued and the campaign ended a week later. That particular session ended with me closing my laptop that had my campaign notes on it because, seriously, I had nothing that involved them spacing all that loot, and they did technical repairs to the ship for the next hour or so. Then half the players quit because they refused to play with the guy who garbaged all the gems. I offered a Power Cosmic-induced "Do-Over" for them, but the guy insisted he would do exactly the same thing again if given the chance. He honestly had no regrets.
No regrets until one of the other players spelled it out for him. It was as though he had stolen a car belonging to a drug lord, seen the trunk was filled with cash, and dumped the cash in the trash so the drug lord wouldn't follow him, then driven off in the car without leaving any way for the drug lord to know you'd dumped all the money. He would still be coming after you for the car, thinking you had the money. And really, would you rather be on the run from a drug lord WITH limitless wealth, or without it?
To this day, he still doesn't believe he did the wrong thing. He blames ME for not rewarding his creative solution to what he perceived to be a very serious problem for him and his squadmates.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-16, 04:09 PM
D'Oh! Only a fool throws away money!

Kaun
2011-02-16, 05:22 PM
I was GM'ing a Star Wars campaign set at the end of the Clone Wars. My players were Clone Commandos, relatively high level, and an Antarean Ranger of equal level, all escaped from Order 66 with their Jedi commander NPC and on the run from the newly forged Galactic Empire. The Clone Wars were at the time one of my favorite periods in Star Wars history (Got over THAT right quick) but I had, through rigorous railroading and browsing of Wookieepedia managed to, in twenty-odd sessions, soundly thrash them. They had completed a few missions in that time, but mostly involved them being on the run and the consequences that come from being on the run and being Clones and whatnot. So I decided, having heard from two of my players that I was being a really mean DM throwing the might of Imperial Intelligence into the finding of an escaped squad of Clone Commandos, that I would throw them a bone, on a silver platter, with a big red bow and a neon sign labeled "TAKE ME!" The bone came in the form of a pirate lord's collection ship, so a heavily armed and modified freighter, that they took without much of a fight and escaped in. They found its cargo holds loaded with Durindfire gems, jewels of incredible brilliance and value, the gems being worth somewhere in the ballpark of like 6.9 billion credits, along with Jedi artifacts in the realm of lightsabers belonging to Masters Windu and Yoda. I repeat, a powerful warship loaded with virtually unlimited wealth and priceless artifacts. Everything they needed to officially kick serious amounts of ass in a campaign that had kicked their ass for a very long time.
One of my players, conditioned to be paranoid by almost a year of mistreatment at my hand, texts me that he wants to crush and jettison both the gems AND the lightsabers from the ship's cargo chute because "They're hot, people are going to be looking for them!" He texted me this because he didn't want the other players to know he was doing it and stop him. I allowed it because I had allowed such shenanigans in the past to my eternal shame. So he jettisoned the limitless wealth and priceless artifacts, in garbage cube form, out the garbage chute and told no one.
Needless to say, when they found out, they were pissed. He claimed he did what he did to keep the heat off him and his squad. His rationale was that they were already being pursued by the Imperials; they didn't need the pirates coming after them too looking for ten figures in precious gems and artifacts, so he did what he did to protect them all.
Bedlam ensued and the campaign ended a week later. That particular session ended with me closing my laptop that had my campaign notes on it because, seriously, I had nothing that involved them spacing all that loot, and they did technical repairs to the ship for the next hour or so. Then half the players quit because they refused to play with the guy who garbaged all the gems. I offered a Power Cosmic-induced "Do-Over" for them, but the guy insisted he would do exactly the same thing again if given the chance. He honestly had no regrets.
No regrets until one of the other players spelled it out for him. It was as though he had stolen a car belonging to a drug lord, seen the trunk was filled with cash, and dumped the cash in the trash so the drug lord wouldn't follow him, then driven off in the car without leaving any way for the drug lord to know you'd dumped all the money. He would still be coming after you for the car, thinking you had the money. And really, would you rather be on the run from a drug lord WITH limitless wealth, or without it?
To this day, he still doesn't believe he did the wrong thing. He blames ME for not rewarding his creative solution to what he perceived to be a very serious problem for him and his squadmates.

Yeah that was dumb, i have players who do similar things. Generally i find its because they see a problem and they use the first solution that comes to their head to fix it, with out really thinking it through.

When the problems are little if things go pair shaped you can just pass it of with an "ow well".

Its when the problems are big and involve high stakes that **** like that can happen.

Strife Warzeal
2011-02-16, 05:34 PM
To this day, he still doesn't believe he did the wrong thing. He blames ME for not rewarding his creative solution to what he perceived to be a very serious problem for him and his squadmates.

How does he expect you to reward him? He just flushed out all the money and artifacts.

Vknight
2011-02-16, 07:44 PM
His reward is obvious a angry space pirate with all his money back and they have lost everything.

vikingofdoom
2011-02-16, 08:44 PM
Here's one from my RL campaign. Notable Characters:
Elf Ranger 3 (used as comparison)
Dwarf Fighter 3 (main character who died)

This was the DF's first game. He joined partway through meeting up with the group in the entrance to the dungeon. We are in a room with a bunch (7 I think) clearly visible trapdoors on the ground. My sorcerer uses detect magic, spending 3 rounds to find out what was on them. DF jumped into the nearest hole. Takes electricity damage. DM has him jump out right away. He tries it again. Take electricity damage. DM has him jump out right away, again. He does it a third time. Same sequence happens. Fourth time, he dies in the hole due to damage. The DM said that he couldn't figure out a way to have DF not die, because his death was just that stupid. To give the DM's word context, ER tried to attack a vampire in a graveyard, the awakened big wolf in the dungeon, and in a seperate campaign had us tie a rope around his dwarf to toss him in a hole to find out what was in the hole; and still managed to be smarter that DF.

Lemonus
2011-02-16, 08:52 PM
I was DMing a solo campaign for a Chaotic Evil Warlock. He gets to about eleventh level. By that time he was wanted in pretty much everywhere because his a mass murderer. He walks into a city famous for it's epic-level paladins, and starts blazing away. You can guess what happened next.

Vknight
2011-02-16, 09:01 PM
They gave him pie and made him there leader?

mobdrazhar
2011-02-16, 09:57 PM
in a 4e game that i'm in i had my toon last 5 mins into the 2nd session. He was a Goliath Barbarian and at the end of the 1st session he go sucked into a chest what was the entrace to an extra-dimensional space. He finally got let out by another party member at the start of the 2nd session and when he got out he took a swing at the chest and in 1 hit destroyed it (good old daily powers) and thus got sucked back in as it folded in on itself. Well with only an hour of beathable air in the space you can imagine what happened to the barbarian.

gbprime
2011-02-16, 10:14 PM
Great Spell... But Not Now!

Party of 6th level adventurers are tromping through a dungeon complex. We're badly mauled and looking for a place to pop a Rope Trick and rest up. I'm playing the Rogue and I blow a search check when reconnoitering a hallway, so the PC's trundle down it and proceed to set off a Greater Glyph of Warding.

Crapola. Summon Undead V goes off and 4 huge skeletons materialize. We assume that since they were tied to a 6th level glyph, they'll last at least 11 rounds. We also assume that WE will NOT last 11 rounds.

Fighter, Barbarian, and my Rogue form a line and go full defensive, trying to soak damage. The druid and wizard retreat to the backfield via withdraw actions and will throw up the Rope Trick next round for us to retreat into.

Then it's the Fighter/Cleric gish's turn. Normally he backs us up with a polearm, but this time he decides to cast... Hide From Undead. He can get 4 people, and chooses himself, the fighter, the barbarian, and the rogue.

Now it's the skeletons' turn. They cannot see the fighter, the barbarian, the rogue, or the gish. They CAN see the wizard and the druid. And they're size huge, so they can walk through our squares like we aren't there. And they do. The wizard gets pulped, the druid gets hurt, and the gish gets hurt because he took an attack of opportunity on a skeleton as it passed by and it changed its mind and decided to whomp him instead.

Oh, and the way Hide From Undead works, if any one warded creature attacks, it voids the spell for everyone. So he just undid his own spell.

End result... Fighter dead, Barbarian dead, Gish dead, Druid dead, Wizard dead... and my Rogue hid behind a rock until the summon undead expired... 22 rounds later.

Great spell... but not right now!

Vknight
2011-02-16, 10:15 PM
He used an 'Encounter Power' to escape?

gbprime
2011-02-16, 10:22 PM
He used an 'Encounter Power' to escape?

No, an alchemical smokestick followed by a Hide roll... ye olde "poof then vanish" seemed like a great idea when the tanks started dropping.:smalleek:

Percival
2011-02-17, 12:18 AM
One time I rolled a Monk.

Yeah? Me too.

Hengeyokai Monk/Drunken Master/Warshaper.

I kicked the **** out of stuff. Easily the highest DPR in the party. (When I hit >_>)

Did I mention the monk was a 16 year old girl with a Ring of Sustenance? (To all other party members she appeared to live on nothing but booze.)

Deathslayer7
2011-02-17, 12:47 AM
This is bound to get a Darwin. Times two probably.:smallbiggrin:


So we are fighting some Ice Sorceress and the party thinks that "Oh! she's Ice-based and thus should be vulnerable to fire. Unfortunately, they mostly prepare fireballs that have absolutely little effect. (She had fire resist 30). So then one of our wizards specialling in enchantments manages to dominate her. Then, from the back of the cave (as we are leaving), another wizard comes and has brought undead with him.

Before we get into this battle, the enchanter asked her what spells she had still available and she had an empowered maximized fireball. So we get into another battle, and the dominated sorceress and I are in the front. I'm the party's fighter and charge the undead, and then our PC orders the sorceress to cast a fireball on the undead, not specifying not to hit me or herself or using which fireball. So she uses a Maximized Empowered Fireball hitting the undead, herself and me.

Needless to say we are in an ice cave and I'm now stuck underwater with a bunch of burnt undead in a fullplate 20 feet down with a drowning sorceress who managed to knock herself out with her own fireball.

I drowned a few minutes later after she did. :smallannoyed:

ThirdEmperor
2011-02-17, 01:08 AM
Okay, this is an almost Darwin:

The two PCs are traveling through the mountains when a blizzard hits, forcing them to take refuge in a nearby temple. They learn that one of the other stranded travellers has a daughter who went missing two days ago, and head back into the snow to investigate, although they're starting to suspect that steak they ate yesterday wasn't beef. After finding nothing, the one with all the survival skills remembers he's a Seer, and they decide to split up. The one with all the combat abilities but no survival skills heads into the blizzard, while the squishy mage with no combat skills, spells and all the survival skill heads inside to the temple full of suspected cannibals, where he promptly goes into a trance in a storeroom without even bothering to lock the door, despite knowing that there was another Mage monitoring the area for spells being cast. He wakes up in a cell, tied to a wall, and decides to insult the guard, and doesn't stop until he's hit with a chair. Amazingly, the fighter manages to find his way back after repeated fumbles with one arm rendered useless by frostbite and exactly one health point left. He promptly demands to know where his friend is, and doesn't back off until one of the servants knocks him unconscious. Meanwhile, the Mage manages to escape and kill his captors, and knocks out the servant who drags the fighter to the prison. Now they're trying to disguise themselves as servant's, despite both being entirely different races than the servants. As in, the servants are humanoid canines, the fighter is a hummingbird, and the mage is a turtle.

icantsavemyself
2011-02-17, 03:18 AM
I've got two stories.

1) We were doing a Star Wars campaign and it was the time we'd had a campaign last for more than two sessions for about 6 months. Our mission was to kill a Hutt crime lord and make friends with the other who was pro-rebellion. a 3 hour session ended with my friend throwing 8 thermal detonator's and 200 pounds of other explosives into the wrong Hutt's pleasure skiff and telling us to drive away on our skiff as fast as possible, which meant something like 5 mph.

After he found out it would take 10 rounds to get out of the blast zone he decided to hit the detonator when we were 20 feet away. We all died except for one Jedi who was at -6 hit points.

2) In this campaign we playing as (awesome versions of)ourselves in a zombie apocalypse in our hometown of 400 people. The five us were the only ones left in town because the Marine Corps thought it was a good idea to heavily arm 4 idiot teenagers and leave them in charge of an ammo dump. We were out patrolling the town and cutting down trees for firewood when one guy decides to check the local store(the only place that had food) and found out that a giant tank zombie plus a few shamblers were hiding out there.

He thinks it's a good to throw a grenade at it's head and run away screaming. The tank comes out pissed and starts chasing us back to the school. The guy that threw the grenade fell down on let the tank run past him and takes out the LAW he was given and aims at the zombie running straight at our base. He rolls a 1 and shot it backwards at the store further destroying our food.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-17, 02:59 PM
The five us were the only ones left in town because the Marine Corps thought it was a good idea to heavily arm 4 idiot teenagers and leave them in charge of an ammo dump.

Umm... Yeah, 4 teenagers + heavy weapons+ammo, lots of Darwin potential there.

Duragonburo
2011-02-17, 05:57 PM
I'll give you one.

The newest member in our group is a bard who sings beautifully. Well, what better time to show your Dungeon Idol talents than when the group hears the BBEG chanting something?

She started singing with the chanting, kind of using the chanting as music for the song (no bardic powers used, just singing), and the BBEG now knows they're there.

That didn't even stop her. She now sang (in a kind of western sounding song) what all the PC's said they'd do, so now the BBEG knows their battle plan.

And so, total party kill ensued.

mobdrazhar
2011-02-17, 07:19 PM
I'll give you one.

The newest member in our group is a bard who sings beautifully. Well, what better time to show your Dungeon Idol talents than when the group hears the BBEG chanting something?

She started singing with the chanting, kind of using the chanting as music for the song (no bardic powers used, just singing), and the BBEG now knows they're there.

That didn't even stop her. She now sang (in a kind of western sounding song) what all the PC's said they'd do, so now the BBEG knows their battle plan.

And so, total party kill ensued.

Did it end with "Swing the fighter round and round"?

Uhtred
2011-02-17, 08:47 PM
This thread is freaking hilarious! I've got another to contribute.

So my current DM put together his campaign sort of in protest (The guy up there in my earlier post, the money trasher? He DM'd a campaign that was pretty terrible. I'm not sure why we played it.) where he allowed us to be any monster we could find as long as the LA was underneath 5 (Homebrew included. He did it because the first guy was so stingy with his races), since we were all starting as lvl 5 characters, so we ended up with my Centaur, a Minotaur, a Lizardfolk, a Doppelganger, and a Winged Elf, being two fighters, a ranger, a rogue, and another ranger. Yep, no casters. It was a relatively caster-light campaign to start, though, so that was OK.
So we're going down this road. Simple country road on our way to a town where we hoped to rest and the like. We encounter a couple Dire Bears, but the Lizardfolk rolls really well on his spot check, so they were actually pretty far away, we were upwind, and we had just planned to wait until they snuffled away back into the woods. This, of course, is completely unsatisfactory for our Winged Elf, who is not only a first-time D&D player, but also the kid who inspired the "Really?" drinking game I've posted about in a different thread. He flies up and toward the Dire Bears, so we sigh and follow after him at speed. He then lands on the path, declares, "I make an Intimidate check to get them off our path. I'll spread my wings so I look bigger than they are," then rolled something like a 5. They weren't impressed and, in fact, thought he looked delicious. One surprise round later and he was well and truly grappled, and down from 38 hit points to somewhere close to six.
Being a Centaur, I had the highest movement out of the remaining party, quickdrew my lance and shield and charged the second bear (The one NOT grappling our foolhardy comrade) and crit as I did. Centaurs deal double-damage with a lance when charging, and I had crit. So I calculated the crit damage and then doubled it, and ended up one-hitting the Dire Bear. Thus ends my turn. It's the Lizardfolk's turn, and as he's an archer, he decides to shoot. He then rolled a 1. Our DM had him roll percentiles to see whether or not his bowstring broke or he hit our Winged Elf, which, it turned out, he did. Winged Elf down to somewhere around -8 HP. Rapid shot and a charging Minotaur ended combat right then.
That stupid kid isn't with our party anymore, but we still make jokes about intimidating creatures that are faaaaar too powerfully above us to be intimidated, by "Spreading our wings and looking LARGE." Honestly, if I hadn't decided to burn the gold on a Restful Candle and Blessed Bandages, he would have died. As it was, we never let him live it down.

MeeposFire
2011-02-17, 10:32 PM
I was playing one of the official Eberron adventures for 3.5. My sister played a scout whos job was to be the skill monkey rogue.

They were in an Aztec like temple in the jungle. Inside said temple my sister went scouting ahead. She found a giant sized door (literally) surrounded by corpses and a creepy green fog. Knowing that she is in a trap laden temple facing a door surrounded by corpses, evil green fog, and you are the parties skill monkey what does she do?

She tells me that she opens the door. I ask her do you want to do anything first and she tells me no she wants to open the door. I give her several chances to check for traps first and she does not take the hint (the rest of the group stays silent since they are not in the room but they are all look like they know what the problem is).

She opens the door and releases the wail of the banshee trap. She died horribly. The parties druid used reincarnation and she became an orc nosed (from a previous resurrection attempt) human rather than half elf.

When asked why she did not check for traps being the trap checker and getting lots of in game and out of game hints she said "Oh I never thought of that".:sigh:

We all had a good laugh about it though.:smallwink:

Gomar
2011-02-17, 10:36 PM
the servants are humanoid canines, the fighter is a hummingbird, and the mage is a turtle.

You win. 10char

mikeygoround
2011-02-17, 10:54 PM
Ooh, I have one of my own! Exploring a dungeon we came upon a small tunnel leading back to a room of some kind. Only the two thieves (2nd edition) with light armor were slight enough (and foolish enough) to enter the tunnel. The group insisted that we tie a rope to ourselves in case we were incapacitated. Reaching the room at the end of the tunnel we find a locked door that both thieves blow thier pick lock rolls on (lightbulb!) we tie the ropes to the door handle and begin screaming for help so the big dumb fighters would pull the door off the hinges and we could get to what we figured was surely the treasury. The door is pulled free, promptly wedges itself into the tunnel mouth preventing us from fleeing from the wight that was in the second room. Low level thieves, no magic or silver weapons, now REAL screaming for help is occurring and the fighters just pull harder on the ropes...

No one actually died, but the game was called because nobody could breath at that point!

Noedig
2011-02-17, 11:04 PM
In a campaign I was in, the mage elected to go fight phase spiders by himself, when the rest of our party was doing something else. He dies, forces me to destroy my Gem of True Seeing to raise him. He still owes me about 75k gold.
Same campaign, but we're in Sigil now. I tried to cheat at dice, failed, Dim Door'd away and landed smack in front of two hamantula. Got knocked to 1 hp in the first round, and nearly got sold into slavery.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-17, 11:12 PM
In a campaign I was in, the mage elected to go fight phase spiders by himself, when the rest of our party was doing something else. He dies, forces me to destroy my Gem of True Seeing to raise him. He still owes me about 75k gold.
Same campaign, but we're in Sigil now. I tried to cheat at dice, failed, Dim Door'd away and landed smack in front of two hamantula. Got knocked to 1 hp in the first round, and nearly got sold into slavery.

How did he force you to do anything while dead? Also, how would destroying a gem of true seeing help with him getting raised? If it ever was a diamond, it's not one after being transformed into a gem of trueseeing.

TroubleBrewing
2011-02-18, 02:25 AM
I think he's saying that he had to sell it for money to pay for a resurrection. I'm AFB right now, so I've got no clue what a Gem of True Seeing costs these days.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-19, 03:54 PM
I think he's saying that he had to sell it for money to pay for a resurrection. I'm AFB right now, so I've got no clue what a Gem of True Seeing costs these days.

I believe it is worth 75k. If so, then it could have been sold (presumably for half that) and the money used to pay for the diamonds. The wizard then would owe him half the price of a gem of seeing (due to the loss of value from selling) plus the cost of the spell.

I still don't understand how a dead character can force anyone to do anything, unless it came back as some kind of undead. Personally, if the player tried to force me to sell (nevermind destroy!) a valued item to fix his/her stupidity, I'd tell him/her to bleep off and make a new character.

Tennic
2011-02-21, 06:10 PM
Ouch! What ended the campagin? A TPK or just everyone getting fed-up with the idiot?

Also, how do you know the Ranger's player wouldn't have made another character just as idiotic?

Second question first: He did make another equally idiotic character, namely an elven pally with a unicorn mount. For which I wanted to ask him, "What are you, twelve?"

The reason he rolled a new character- and the reason the campaign ended- was that his stupid evil 1/2 dragon ranger raped and killed the rogue to acquire a magic dagger she had which he needed (I found this out at the beginning of a session when the two players and the DM came out of the room where he'd just dropped this bomb).

I carried her to town where she was resurrected, the 1/2 dragon became an NPC and the pally was rolled up. However, the girl playing the rogue was understandably perturbed and left the game after one more session. The DM, being her BF, also left, thus ending the game. :smallfurious:

Lycan 01
2011-02-21, 06:45 PM
Wow. Its bad enough he killed her character, but... he raped her too? I'm sorry, that's just... I just find the idea of a PC trying to rape another PC (or an NPC for that matter) extremely uncomfortable and creepy. I mean, killing another PC for their stuff? Happens all the time. A jerk move, but it still happens, and is sometimes a source of comedy. But rape? That just crosses too many lines, in my opinion. :smallyuk:


I have a few Darwin Awards, but I need to remember all the details of them. Off the top of my head...


Party:
Monk & Paladin... I forgot the races.
Level 5, I think.

This was kind of a casual game, and I had them go up against a Young Black Dragon. Well, they manage to throw it down into a dark pit. As it begins to fly back up...

The Paladin dives into the dark crevice intending to impale the black dragon with his halberd as he plummets at terminal velocity.

Needless to say, he missed. And made a nice smear at the bottom of the dark abyss. :smallsigh:

The Dragon ate the Monk a few rounds later.

Lemonus
2011-02-21, 07:58 PM
The Paladin dives into the dark crevice intending to impale the black dragon with his halberd as he plummets at terminal velocity.

Needless to say, he missed. And made a nice smear at the bottom of the dark abyss. :smallsigh:

The Dragon ate the Monk a few rounds later.

If that had worked, it would have been AWESOME.

Duragonburo
2011-02-22, 06:48 AM
The Paladin dives into the dark crevice intending to impale the black dragon with his halberd as he plummets at terminal velocity.

Needless to say, he missed. And made a nice smear at the bottom of the dark abyss. :smallsigh:


Spoiler - If you've just begun reading or are going to read the Drizzt series

I wonder how Salvatore would have saved Bruenor if he'd 'ave missed too?

Razgriez
2011-02-22, 08:49 AM
I'm pretty sure I can write up a decent number of Murphy's laws of Role Playing games, from some of the troubles I've had with some party members.

Thankfully/unfortunately, few have ever reached Darwin Award levels (No one has died, or lost the ability to reproduce)

But yea... here's some examples


Way back when I first began playing DnD, was in a 3.0 campaign. playing a rather fun homebrew game online. Part of this group, was a buddy of mine from highschool, who got me into the game.

Well in game, One night, we're camping out on the edge of a small forest along some plains. My character, a fighter, was on guard duty. I was just having him practice sword techniques and keeping an eye on things.

What I didn't know however, was that the party's Elven Barbarian, and a new party member, a Half-Gold dragon Fighter, the grand daughter of a gold dragon our party had just talked to, if I recall, had sneaked out of camp, for uh... Well I'll leave it there and not go any further

Enter in, my friend's role in all this, who played the role of the party's sorcerer. We'll call him Donovan because that was his characters name. Donovan you see, is on one hand, your typical mage class character... a cynical, mage constantly going "Blah blah blah Magic powers, blah blah blah blah Ability to warp reality, blah blah.... blah blah, I cast Magic Missile, blah blah blah, "Fireball!"

So Donovan , got curious as to where the two other party members were going. Well he found out, and proceeded to watch for his own entertainment.

Well the DM decided to fling a bucket of karma at Donovans head, Except this bucket had fragmentation bomb in it, in the form of 2 Dinosaurs attacking us. (This was your standard medieval time period game, with some fire arms such as muskets, but they were highly experimental)

Everyone in camp wakes up to my shouts of warning, the others hear it, and begun to run as well to us. Donovan does his standard strategy of using Fly + Fireball and Magic Missile. Donovan is getting so confident with how the battle is going, he flies closer to taunt the dinosaurs.

Bad move, because the type of dinosaurs the DM was using, had ranks in Jump. in one round of dice rolling. that dinosaur dealt 46 damage to Donovan, knocking him down to Exactly -10 HP

So after the battle we have a minor talk around the corpse of Donovan, at which point, the DM and Donovan's player ask "Ok, does anyone have anything to say?

Cue the 2nd bit of karma coming back to bite Donovan in the rear, for you see, his player had just recently given me a link to a certain DnD fans parody song prior to the game. So I began to sing: "Always the first to die... yea... I'm always the first to die, Mage 2 was an elf named...
Donovan: "I hate you"
Me: "^_^ Ok, fine, but I call dibs on your magic gloves of storing."
Donovan: "I swear Razgriez, if you do, I will become a ghost and drain touch you until you are dead!"

We eventually took his body back to the Gold dragon, who was not to happy about the situation, and us needing to use his aid and services to bring Donovan back to life. it basically boiled down to "Ok... what did you do? I thought your group was competent."

Other cases of party member fail.

Bard in another party thinking primary antagonist whose been abusing the powers of an extremely powerful relic of a deity can be reasoned with or is just misunderstood, and thus cast a Cure Moderate wounds upon the guy, when we were fighting him...Only to have the guy transform into a Demon. Darwin did not kick in, and another party member nearly had to sacrifice their life to use the power of the relic to warp reality so as to remove the "demon" and return back to a normal human.

Rogue who was always seemingly running off 20 cups of coffee/pint filled with a bunch of those Energy shot drinks, constantly trying to sneak into areas, and getting caught or worse.

Tennic
2011-02-22, 02:08 PM
Wow. Its bad enough he killed her character, but... he raped her too? I'm sorry, that's just... I just find the idea of a PC trying to rape another PC (or an NPC for that matter) extremely uncomfortable and creepy. I mean, killing another PC for their stuff? Happens all the time. A jerk move, but it still happens, and is sometimes a source of comedy. But rape? That just crosses too many lines, in my opinion. :smallyuk:

Yeah, my thoughts exactly.


Needless to say, he missed. And made a nice smear at the bottom of the dark abyss. :smallsigh:

The Dragon ate the Monk a few rounds later.

I think that's one of the best examples of a Darwin Award I've seen on here. Thanks for the laugh.

Here's one from a recent 4e campaign where the DM started us at level 0. Stats were rolled with 4d6, keep the lowest three. We started outside a city where there's a long line. So, I decide to get in line.

Finally asked an NPC in line what we're in line for and it turns out it's not to get into the city but to enter a stone room that sends you off to a battle somewhere.

Obviously, being 0L, that's not what we want to do, so we leave the line. As we get to the city entrance near the front of the line we ask someone why the line moves so slowly and find out the portal needs time to reset.

So, with the line stopped waiting for the reset, one of the PCs, a goliath barbarian, opens the door and walks inside.

DM: The portal tears you to shreds and leaves a fine red mist. Roll up a new character. :smallfrown:

To be fair, the PC was playing his character's intelligence.

SleepyShadow
2011-02-22, 03:47 PM
This one occurred not too long ago in a 3.5 campaign I was in. We were twelfth level, and near the BBEG of the dungeon. We just had to bypass a pretty obvious trap to get there: a hallway filled with a black, viscous, ooze-like liquid.

I decided to test the depth of the stuff, so my bard stuck her collapsible 10' pole into the ooze. However, we determined that it did not matter how deep it was, since she only got back the portion of the pole she was holding. The ooze dissolved the rest of the pole.

The party spent about half an hour of real-time discussing how to bypass the trap. We had just decided on a pretty simple plan (use iron spikes and rope to scale the wall and go over the ooze), when the bugbear blaster sorcerer jumps into the ooze and tries to swim across.

There was a thirty second pause where everyone stared at the player in silence.

The DM asked, "Are you sure?"

The player replied, "Yeah. I can make it. I've got three ranks in swim, and a 16 Con."

He made it about fifteen feet before he was dissolved.

Volthawk
2011-02-22, 03:54 PM
Here's one from a recent 4e campaign where the DM started us at level 0. Stats were rolled with 4d6, keep the lowest three. We started outside a city where there's a long line. So, I decide to get in line.


4e has level 0?

Lycan 01
2011-02-22, 04:47 PM
This one occurred not too long ago in a 3.5 campaign I was in. We were twelfth level, and near the BBEG of the dungeon. We just had to bypass a pretty obvious trap to get there: a hallway filled with a black, viscous, ooze-like liquid.

I decided to test the depth of the stuff, so my bard stuck her collapsible 10' pole into the ooze. However, we determined that it did not matter how deep it was, since she only got back the portion of the pole she was holding. The ooze dissolved the rest of the pole.

The party spent about half an hour of real-time discussing how to bypass the trap. We had just decided on a pretty simple plan (use iron spikes and rope to scale the wall and go over the ooze), when the bugbear blaster sorcerer jumps into the ooze and tries to swim across.

There was a thirty second pause where everyone stared at the player in silence.

The DM asked, "Are you sure?"

The player replied, "Yeah. I can make it. I've got three ranks in swim, and a 16 Con."

He made it about fifteen feet before he was dissolved.


Why?! :smalleek: Please tell me he gave a reason beyond "I can make it" when all was said and done...

Tennic
2011-02-22, 07:36 PM
4e has level 0?

House rules created by our interim DM.

4d6, keep lowest three for stats. Level 1 HP minus what your class gets when you level. One skill. One at-will. No other class features. I think it was 500xp to get to level 1.

He's since changed the rules a bit to be a tad less restrictive.

SleepyShadow
2011-02-23, 12:21 PM
Why?! :smalleek: Please tell me he gave a reason beyond "I can make it" when all was said and done...

He had two reasons: He had a Ring of Resist Acid 5, and thought we were taking too long planning.

This player has won multiple D&D Darwin Awards ... you'd love the story about his last three characters, too :smallwink:

Burnheart
2011-02-23, 12:57 PM
He had two reasons: He had a Ring of Resist Acid 5, and thought we were taking too long planning.

This player has won multiple D&D Darwin Awards ... you'd love the story about his last three characters, too :smallwink:

Care to share that story, SleepyShadow?

Lemonus
2011-02-23, 01:08 PM
Care to share that story, SleepyShadow?

Yes, please do.

SleepyShadow
2011-02-23, 05:43 PM
Care to share that story, SleepyShadow?

Bear in mind, the character deaths I'm about to relate are ALL by the same player, and in the same campaign. He has been playing for two years (I've only known him a few months), and yet ...

Half-Orc Rogue: Does not check for traps as he splits up from the party. Botches a reflex save and falls down a pit, dying.

Halfling Cleric: Tries to grapple a Huge water elemental. He is drowned shortly thereafter.

Dwarf Paladin: Charge attacks a red dragon using Shock Trooper. The dragon's attacks of opportunity kill him before he even gets to the dragon.

Half-Elf Monk: Picks a fight with the party's barbarian. The resulting combat was short, painful, and ended somewhere in the -30's.

Gnoll Wizard: Uses Expeditious Retreat down a hallway before the party rogue can check for traps. The Exploding Runes allowed us to mail the wizard's ashes back to town in a single envelope.

If I would have been playing in this group longer, I would almost definitely have more stories like these.

Burnheart
2011-02-23, 06:16 PM
Are they all from the last few months?:smalleek:

Tennic
2011-02-23, 06:53 PM
The Exploding Runes allowed us to mail the wizard's ashes back to town in a single envelope.

Thanks for all the funny. That last one put an especially large smile on my face.
:biggrin:

Razgriez
2011-02-23, 07:11 PM
Bear in mind, the character deaths I'm about to relate are ALL by the same player, and in the same campaign. He has been playing for two years (I've only known him a few months), and yet ...

Half-Orc Rogue: Does not check for traps as he splits up from the party. Botches a reflex save and falls down a pit, dying.

Halfling Cleric: Tries to grapple a Huge water elemental. He is drowned shortly thereafter.

Dwarf Paladin: Charge attacks a red dragon using Shock Trooper. The dragon's attacks of opportunity kill him before he even gets to the dragon.

Half-Elf Monk: Picks a fight with the party's barbarian. The resulting combat was short, painful, and ended somewhere in the -30's.

Gnoll Wizard: Uses Expeditious Retreat down a hallway before the party rogue can check for traps. The Exploding Runes allowed us to mail the wizard's ashes back to town in a single envelope.

If I would have been playing in this group longer, I would almost definitely have more stories like these.

Somewhere, there's a De-motivational poster just begging to be made based on this.....

INTELLIGENCE ATTRIBUTE: Just because a piece of paper says your smart..... (Fill in the blank)

Now pardon me, my sides are hurting from laughing too much :smallbiggrin:

SleepyShadow
2011-02-23, 09:09 PM
Somewhere, there's a De-motivational poster just begging to be made based on this.....

INTELLIGENCE ATTRIBUTE: Just because a piece of paper says your smart..... (Fill in the blank)

Now pardon me, my sides are hurting from laughing too much :smallbiggrin:

Something like this one?
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h411/Ohtoha/intelligence.jpg

And yes, Burnheart, they are all from the last three months of game play. Though I forgot to mention his most recent Darwin Award. He just got it today:

Hobgoblin Ninja: Charge attacks (from plain view, not hidden!) a stone golem. After the battle, thanks to the party ranger's ranks in Profession (Chef), the rest of the non-human party had a wonderful dinner of Hobgoblin Pancakes after the party crusader scraped said hobgoblin off the ground with his shield.

Burnheart
2011-02-23, 09:20 PM
Does this mean he is averaging a new character every 2-3 weeks?

Razgriez
2011-02-23, 10:38 PM
Something like this one?
http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h411/Ohtoha/intelligence.jpg

And yes, Burnheart, they are all from the last three months of game play. Though I forgot to mention his most recent Darwin Award. He just got it today:

Hobgoblin Ninja: Charge attacks (from plain view, not hidden!) a stone golem. After the battle, thanks to the party ranger's ranks in Profession (Chef), the rest of the non-human party had a wonderful dinner of Hobgoblin Pancakes after the party crusader scraped said hobgoblin off the ground with his shield.

Out of curiosity, is this player's name Mark, and did he once show up with 50 PC sheets of Bards?. Has he ever shouted to your DM about "another 37 more of me" ?

Raistlin82
2011-02-23, 10:59 PM
Hehehe. My party was great at these. In the years I've been Mastering for them, I collected quite many examples. I'll just list them and you judge. Shame I won't be able to remember them all.

Our party:

Human Paladin
Maxed out Half-Orc Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker (important detail)
Elf Ranger
Elf Druid (overpowered and proud of it, another important detail)
Human Sorcerer (had a thing for ice and fire spells, and also an inferiority complex)


Also, briefly many others. Among which:

Halfling Rogue
Human Cleric


First let me explain. These guys, despite their supposed respective alignments, never did anything that wasn't either Chaotic Neutral or plain Chaotic Stupid. They did things like vandalizing a famous wizard's tower or dipping the team's halfling in thick, black pitch because "why the heck not?"

1) Let's start soft:
DM (me): "While scouting in the NECROPOLIS, an ominous chant attracts you to a small room. You find an ebony altar with a skull hovering above it. There's many inscriptions on the altar, but they're in a language you can't read. The skull is engulfed in green flames and it looks..."
Ranger: "I touch it!"
/collective facepalm :smallsigh:

2) While sneaking in an underground CITY OF THE BEHOLDERS, you'd think people would do anything they can to go unnoticed. Our Rogue? He just decided to cut one of the Beholder's tentacled eyes to keep as a souvenir. He succeeds, he also gets a lot of attention. Despite this, they live through that. He spent the next morning running around the streets of the local city with the thing on his head screaming "I'm a Beholder! I'm a Beholder!" The team chose "The Beholders" as their (first) party title (that's why I chose this avatar image). :smallbiggrin:

3) A rust monster (I think) turned the Barbarian's sword into a fine dust. End of the fight, he doesn't say a word, he stares blankly at the ashes, then he kneels down, hunches over them, closes one nostril with his finger, and proceeds to... er... snort the ashes of the sword (to date, I have no idea why he decided to do that :smallconfused: ). He inhales the whole thing. It wasn't good for his health, but he survived anyway. [This became sort of a mithology gag, since the next guy to play a Barbarian (in a different campaign) felt that he had to one up him, so he inhaled the rests of A VAMPIRE.]

4) A new guy comes to play with us and rolls a Cleric. In three long afternoons, three different DUNGEON sessions, this guy (probably scared by some nasty previous DM, or maybe he used to play Ravenloft) spent the totality of ALL the encounters hiding behind the biggest object there was around. I think he used just one spell during combat, and that was when he was sure the party was going to win. The others were torn between irritation and admiration for his RPing skills (it wasn't RP).
Well, later on there's quite a hard encounter (harder, since the healer wasn't... you know... healing). The Barbarian decides to go in frenzied state to solve the encounter, and he actually manages to turn the tide and win the fight.
Now, any of you that has ever had the pleasure to deal with a Frenzied Berserker knows what's coming next. See, frenzy is not like regular Barbarian rage... it needs time and a bit of luck with the saving throws to get out of it. If you don't, you keep killing. Anything.
The other party members, well aware of this little "clause", proceeded to hide, run away or make themselves unfindable through magical means (they had become so good at this!).
The Cleric? He comes out of his hiding place and congratulates the Barbarian, going so far as to friendly pat on his shoulder. :smallfurious:

5) Our Paladin and our Druid are on guard duty while the others are asleep. They are bored. So they decide to play a game of cards and bet money. Nothing too fancy, just "the highest card wins". Shame is, they only have a "Deck of Many Things" with them (which technically doesn't have a "highest card"...) They still go on with it (and the others were asleep, so they couldn't tell them that was a terrible idea). And like gambling addicts, once they started and realized the situation was grim... they kept drawing cards hoping to fix everything. They gained the enmity of a Slaad, gained and lost a fortune (and a manor), found a loyal servant, conjured an undead (which the Paladin defeated), got a stat increase, then the Paladin had his soul removed from him, then finally the Druid pulls a few Wishes and really manages to fix things for good.
He actually had a spare Wish to use, so instead of discussing it with the Paladin (or the rest of the team) he immediately formulates his Wish, using the most convoluted phrasing I've ever heard. Now, it's hard to translate to English... let's just say he wanted some sort of "power up" in his shapeshifting skills, and instead he ended up having a (already fully grown up) daughter (which incidentally qualifies as anti-Darwin award, I guess).

6) This Druid guy had this overconfidence problem (partly justified by his awesome, overpowered build).
Once, he jumped down a 24 feet deep (I think) well, blade first. At level 4. With a very light armor. On top of an undead enemy. With the rest of the party stuck above. He survived.
But another time, much much later, he was so cocky that, when the party was facing a staircase that they were sure was booby-trapped, he morphed back from some kind of huge monster into elf form and went ahead to step in it (just to prove how invincible he was). He died of massive damage (which, ironically, he wouldn't have if he had triggered the same trap while in his previous, larger form).

7) Last but not least, my sorcerer. The party (level 7) is inside a flour mill (large enough to contain 10-12 people fighting and a lot of flour bags). There was a fight. Blood was shed, flour bags were cut open and thrown around as improvised weapons. And people had jumped from above on a cushion made of flour bags. By now, though, the bad guys are already all dead. The town guards come in and start cutting more bags, looking for a stolen jewel. The chief of the guards (the only NPC I had bothered to give a personality in that tiny village) makes some snippy comment about the party not being able to finish the job by themselves or something... I don't remember the details, but it was something that innocent.
Now, keep in mind that there was flour dust floating all around. They still hadn't left the mill.
My sorcerer decides he doesn't like the guard chief's tone, so, instead of coming up with a smart retort himself, he decides to go FIREBALL (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_flour_explode_in_a_fire) on the NPC (an ally, btw). I think it was an empowered fireball, too.
DM (me): "Are... are you sure?"
Sorcerer (chuckling evily): "Yes. Suits him."
(everybody is staring in terror... somebody shakes their head... one tries to talk, but immediately stops - he probably didn't know where to start from).
DM (me): "You're throwing an empowered fireball on him?"
Sorcerer: "Yes! Revenge! ... Why? What's wrong?"
BOOM.


PS: Me? Nothing special. After years of DM'ing, I finally get to be a player and I roll an artificer (4E). First day on the field, I go set off an obvious trap while the others look on disbelief. I did it out of impatience. You know, because nobody else was taking any initiative and they were just standing there, looking around. Or maybe they were waiting their party's artificer to check for traps, since he was the only one able to. Oh well... :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2011-02-23, 11:07 PM
Out of curiosity, is this player's name Mark, and did he once show up with 50 PC sheets of Bards?. Has he ever shouted to your DM about "another 37 more of me" ?

No. A bard is about the only thing he won't play. He views them as underpowered :smallamused:

@Burnheart: Yeah, he dies about every other week. Right now he's going through the Ogre Mage racial levels in the Savage Species. He said he's going to try a playing a ranger when he maxes out the racial levels.

Doubt he'll make it that long ...

Burnheart
2011-02-24, 10:05 AM
If he is still having fun its all good, but man i can't understand how that could be fun myself, having a new character every few weeks:smallconfused:

Zieu
2011-02-24, 10:51 AM
3) A rust monster (I think) turned the Barbarian's sword into a fine dust. End of the fight, he doesn't say a word, he stares blankly at the ashes, then he kneels down, hunches over them, closes one nostril with his finger, and proceeds to... er... snort the ashes of the sword

Best story I've ever heard. I can't even think about it without getting into a fit of laughter; an instant classic.

SleepyShadow
2011-02-24, 11:06 AM
If he is still having fun its all good, but man i can't understand how that could be fun myself, having a new character every few weeks:smallconfused:

I've actually asked him that before, and his answer really surprised me.

"I don't care how many times I die. You guys are way too much fun not to hang out with."

A bad gamer? Likely. A great guy? Definitely.

Burnheart
2011-02-24, 02:38 PM
I've actually asked him that before, and his answer really surprised me.

"I don't care how many times I die. You guys are way too much fun not to hang out with."

A bad gamer? Likely. A great guy? Definitely.

Yeah he is Definitely a great guy, i wish you many fun years of gaming with him and your other friends:smallbiggrin:

TroubleBrewing
2011-02-25, 12:39 PM
Out of curiosity, is this player's name Mark, and did he once show up with 50 PC sheets of Bards?. Has he ever shouted to your DM about "another 37 more of me" ?

BRILLIANT.

Chilingsworth
2011-02-25, 05:53 PM
Yeah he is Definitely a great guy, i wish you many fun years of gaming with him and your other friends:smallbiggrin:

Yeah, you're lucky!

Chilingsworth
2011-02-28, 01:41 PM
Well, my group started our new campagin yesterday. My wizard was too close to a Dunewinder when it died. Took damage from the death throws, then failed his save vs posion and took seven constitution damage, dropping him to -12 hp. How is this a Darwin?

The player of the other party wizard forgot he had the collector of tales skill trick. If he had remembered the bonus when he made his identification check, we would have known the *@&! things blew up when they died and I would have retreated from it! :smallfurious: :smallsigh: :smallfrown:

EDIT: Also, another character (our swordsage) was killed, and the other wizard was dropped to negative hit points and had to scramble to ensure he didn't fail his second posion save and die.

DontEatRawHagis
2011-03-02, 12:15 PM
In a Spycraft Campaign our DM had to put us at the finale really early on due to the party splitting up for graduation and everything. We ended up at a hotel covered in Claymores/landmines. The only floors not trapped were the basement and four ballrooms on the top floor.

We didn't know this and tried to use the service elevator on the roof. We hit the button and BOOM! Then our triggerman realized what was going on.

TM: %&*, You made a trap master didn't you.
(Apparently he had a long history of jumping through doors without looking because his Defense was so high nothing could hit him. So his previous GM trapped every door with high caliber explosives to kill him)

As hacker I discover that there are no radios or security systems. We get a hostage

Me: I interrogate the minion, "how do you communicate?"
GM: The minion says "We use the pipes."
Me: I listen to the pipes.
GM: Morse code.
Me: I send back a message asking where everyone is?
GM: The pipe goes silent.

Our Faceman(who overpowered himself and gave us a flying airbase): Tell them we have a howitzer cannon pointed at the hotel and that they should surrender.
Soldier: Ill do it I have a high intimidate. *rolls an almost crit*

GM: They get scared and set off the device now.

The device being called the Sun. A super Electro-magnetic pulse device. The entire world went back to the dark ages, and our flying air base hovering over the building decided to drop right on top of us.

Reynard
2011-03-02, 12:43 PM
In a Spycraft Campaign our DM had to put us at the finale really early on due to the party splitting up for graduation and everything. We ended up at a hotel covered in Claymores/landmines. The only floors not trapped were the basement and four ballrooms on the top floor.

We didn't know this and tried to use the service elevator on the roof. We hit the button and BOOM! Then our triggerman realized what was going on.

TM: %&*, You made a trap master didn't you.
(Apparently he had a long history of jumping through doors without looking because his Defense was so high nothing could hit him. So his previous GM trapped every door with high caliber explosives to kill him)

As hacker I discover that there are no radios or security systems. We get a hostage

Me: I interrogate the minion, "how do you communicate?"
GM: The minion says "We use the pipes."
Me: I listen to the pipes.
GM: Morse code.
Me: I send back a message asking where everyone is?
GM: The pipe goes silent.

Our Faceman(who overpowered himself and gave us a flying airbase): Tell them we have a howitzer cannon pointed at the hotel and that they should surrender.
Soldier: Ill do it I have a high intimidate. *rolls an almost crit*

GM: They get scared and set off the device now.

The device being called the Sun. A super Electro-magnetic pulse device. The entire world went back to the dark ages, and our flying air base hovering over the building decided to drop right on top of us.

This doesn't seem like the player's fault. It seems more DM assery to get the game over with.

Jan Mattys
2011-03-02, 12:59 PM
I have a story to share that I think qualifies for the D&D Darwin Award of the century. It is not from my group, but from one of the first D&D sessions of a friend of mine who ended up in my group much later. He told me this story, and I have no reason not to believe him.

Long story short, the part came in front of a lava river barring the path. My friend, being new to D&D and having just enjoyed "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", immediatly assumed there was an invisible bridge linking the sides of the lava-filled-chasm.

He convinced the rest of the group and, without any higher evidence, the whole party made a "jump of faith" forward... meeting a rather instant death in the lava below.

That was, if I recall correctly (but I'm not 100% sure), a lvl 10 D&D 4th ed. party.

:smallbiggrin:

Burnheart
2011-03-02, 01:47 PM
In a Spycraft Campaign our DM had to put us at the finale really early on due to the party splitting up for graduation and everything. We ended up at a hotel covered in Claymores/landmines. The only floors not trapped were the basement and four ballrooms on the top floor.

We didn't know this and tried to use the service elevator on the roof. We hit the button and BOOM! Then our triggerman realized what was going on.

TM: %&*, You made a trap master didn't you.
(Apparently he had a long history of jumping through doors without looking because his Defense was so high nothing could hit him. So his previous GM trapped every door with high caliber explosives to kill him)

As hacker I discover that there are no radios or security systems. We get a hostage

Me: I interrogate the minion, "how do you communicate?"
GM: The minion says "We use the pipes."
Me: I listen to the pipes.
GM: Morse code.
Me: I send back a message asking where everyone is?
GM: The pipe goes silent.

Our Faceman(who overpowered himself and gave us a flying airbase): Tell them we have a howitzer cannon pointed at the hotel and that they should surrender.
Soldier: Ill do it I have a high intimidate. *rolls an almost crit*

GM: They get scared and set off the device now.

The device being called the Sun. A super Electro-magnetic pulse device. The entire world went back to the dark ages, and our flying air base hovering over the building decided to drop right on top of us.

This sounds familiar like i have read it somewhere else, Funny D&D Stories maybe?
edit: I was right Funny D&D Stories thread page 16, more detailed version to.

Provengreil
2011-03-03, 05:44 PM
BRILLIANT.

I A friend on mine once told me a similar story about a guy in his group. all I remember about the story was the line "I hide behind the pile of dead bards."

says it all, really.

as for my little story of stupidity:

level 1 characters. i'm on watch duty, a pig wanders into my vision and takes a nap. don't worry about why, it takes longer to type than it's worth. i think about coup de grace and all the XP it will bring me(we've tangled with this particular pig before once already).

i do it, but my DM decided for whatever reason that it gets one death flail on me first, bringing me to 0 HP. fighter hears the shout of pain, wakes up.

he immediately tries to wake up cleric with "i tap him on the shoulder." since that fails, he, without assessing the situation to see that everything is stable, goes right to attacking him. he kicks. natural 20. confirms. max damage, more than cleric has HP. cleric wakes up, cleric falls unconscious. now fighter, in real life, is literally grabbing his hair and has a OMG WTF did i just do look on his face. He runs over to me, and "drags me back to camp." being in a questionably stable state and all, i begin to bleed out. i stabilize, thankfully, but now fighter has accidentally managed to put 2 of his party members out of commission. had any monsters run up now, we might have been screwed.

All told though i got a bunch of XP off the boar, and fighter learned to consider his actions. very, very worth it.

Firechanter
2011-03-03, 06:08 PM
That sounds like a quote from The Gamers 2. I.e. the one about hiding behind dead bards. Been a while since I watched that flick, though.

DontEatRawHagis
2011-03-03, 11:11 PM
In a paranoia esque game a player of mine had a will of 0. That meant he had to roll below a zero to succeed at anything. He got stuck in a nightmare world created by the Despair Squid. Brownie points for knowing where that monster is from.

potatocubed
2011-03-04, 07:14 AM
In my games we used to run a house rule that when shooting into melee, if you miss by less than 4 you hit the other person.

And yet there was that one guy who just wouldn't quit shooting - and throwing - into melee.

His finest hour, at least from my perspective as GM, was when the 1st-level party were exploring an ancient and undead-infested castle. While in the dining hall the wizard has been knocked down to 1 hp and is being menaced by a skeleton with a sword; rather than get stuck in with a chair leg or something our player decides that he's going to take out the skeleton from a safe distance with a thrown plate - which connects squarely with the wizard's face, knocking him into the negatives.

The wizard survived, thanks to prompt action from the rest of the party, and on the next adventure managed to hit them all with a sleep spell, leaving just him (elf) to face off against a room full of conspirators.

They survived that, too, and went on to leave a trail of destruction all the way across Khorvaire until their ultimate failure when they crashed an airship into a floating ziggurat.

nedz
2011-03-04, 02:56 PM
In a paranoia esque game a player of mine had a will of 0. That meant he had to roll below a zero to succeed at anything. He got stuck in a nightmare world created by the Despair Squid. Brownie points for knowing where that monster is from.

Its from Red Dwarf

Firechanter
2011-03-04, 03:57 PM
The most Darwin-Awardworthy moment I've ever experienced in a game was in Conan D20. I was GM, and the players were all newbies. Basically that was awesome because they didn't think in terms of game stats but what would be cool to do. We had a blast.

This is going to be long-ish; tl;dr version at the bottom.

Only one player was very... erratic in his actions. (Note that this was the only player not hand-chosen by me, someone else brought him along.)
I started the campaign with the classic "You're in jail waiting to be killed in an arena fight" scenario, much like what Roy and Belkar are going through now. Well it fit the bill since the PCs were a Thief, a Pirate and a Pit Fighter (the erratic player). So they make there escape in a really glorious scene and hide in the city. But now the guards are looking for them of course, so they need to get out. They know they are in the middle of a wilderness so they have the sense to hire a guide, a Borderer (a 4th player who joined the group then), and wait until nighttime. The city gates are locked now. They decide to climb over the wall, not a bad idea. Then this player (let's use his character name, Varg) decides to create "a diversion" by setting a house on fire. The wood- or straw-thatched houses quickly catch fire and it spreads, but Varg is caught red-handed by a city patrol. He manages to fight them off, and eventually the whole group escapes over the wall and marches off over the pampas.

Problem: just before, they were some petty criminals that escaped from jail. Big deal, nobody would have cared the next day. Now they are wanted for grand arson, and it's just become personal for the lord of the city.

The next day, the party sees a dust cloud on the eastern horizon, from the direction of the city. They realize they are being pursued by riders, so they find a hill to make a stand. The battle was soon joined and it was pretty tough, but I was confident they could make it... and they did. Before long, all but one of the riders was out, and the last one was down to 3HP or something, with no casualties among the PCs but most of them are pretty low on HP. Except Varg (the strongest fighter in the group), who was almost full. And now it comes...

Varg does not move to attack the last guard. He gets on one of the abandoned horses and makes off to the south. The last remaining soldier sees he is out of luck against the other players, but this fleeing rider might be his ticket to promotion. So he withdraws from battle and pursues the lone rider.
The other characters are glad to have survived that battle, and have no intention to go after this weird bloke who got them into this trouble in the first place. So they just make camp and lick their wounds.

Varg rides on and is pursued by the last soldier, who is also already wounded. And then... Varg just checks his steed and surrenders. "Aha", I thought, "he wants to lure the Soldier close so he can sucker-punch him. Cool." But no, he willingly lies on the ground... and allows himself to be bound... without any attempt of resistance... and is led back into the city he half burned the night before, and presented to the lord of the city.

Need I say more? Ah yes, when this lord is yelling and foaming at him, describing in detail what he is going to do with him, Varg interjects "I'm sorry". XD
So, yeah... I spared the gory details, but made it clear that this character is not going to get out of there alive. Unless maybe if the party moved to spring him from the deepest dungeon before his timely and thorough execution. But the other characters felt no compulsion to do so and continued their travel westwards.

I am really not quick to hand out death to a PC. Building golden bridges, one at a time. But in this case I simply saw no alternative than apply the plausible consequences of his actions.

---

tl;dr:
Player sets a city on fire as a diversion to escape over the walls, which only creates the reason why the city troops go after him in the first place. After killing several pursuing soldiers, he needlessly surrenders to the last surviving guard, and is taken back into the city to be brought to justice.

Chilingsworth
2011-03-05, 05:36 PM
The most Darwin-Awardworthy moment I've ever experienced in a game was in Conan D20. I was GM, and the players were all newbies. Basically that was awesome because they didn't think in terms of game stats but what would be cool to do. We had a blast.

This is going to be long-ish; tl;dr version at the bottom.

Only one player was very... erratic in his actions. (Note that this was the only player not hand-chosen by me, someone else brought him along.)
I started the campaign with the classic "You're in jail waiting to be killed in an arena fight" scenario, much like what Roy and Belkar are going through now. Well it fit the bill since the PCs were a Thief, a Pirate and a Pit Fighter (the erratic player). So they make there escape in a really glorious scene and hide in the city. But now the guards are looking for them of course, so they need to get out. They know they are in the middle of a wilderness so they have the sense to hire a guide, a Borderer (a 4th player who joined the group then), and wait until nighttime. The city gates are locked now. They decide to climb over the wall, not a bad idea. Then this player (let's use his character name, Varg) decides to create "a diversion" by setting a house on fire. The wood- or straw-thatched houses quickly catch fire and it spreads, but Varg is caught red-handed by a city patrol. He manages to fight them off, and eventually the whole group escapes over the wall and marches off over the pampas.

Problem: just before, they were some petty criminals that escaped from jail. Big deal, nobody would have cared the next day. Now they are wanted for grand arson, and it's just become personal for the lord of the city.

The next day, the party sees a dust cloud on the eastern horizon, from the direction of the city. They realize they are being pursued by riders, so they find a hill to make a stand. The battle was soon joined and it was pretty tough, but I was confident they could make it... and they did. Before long, all but one of the riders was out, and the last one was down to 3HP or something, with no casualties among the PCs but most of them are pretty low on HP. Except Varg (the strongest fighter in the group), who was almost full. And now it comes...

Varg does not move to attack the last guard. He gets on one of the abandoned horses and makes off to the south. The last remaining soldier sees he is out of luck against the other players, but this fleeing rider might be his ticket to promotion. So he withdraws from battle and pursues the lone rider.
The other characters are glad to have survived that battle, and have no intention to go after this weird bloke who got them into this trouble in the first place. So they just make camp and lick their wounds.

Varg rides on and is pursued by the last soldier, who is also already wounded. And then... Varg just checks his steed and surrenders. "Aha", I thought, "he wants to lure the Soldier close so he can sucker-punch him. Cool." But no, he willingly lies on the ground... and allows himself to be bound... without any attempt of resistance... and is led back into the city he half burned the night before, and presented to the lord of the city.

Need I say more? Ah yes, when this lord is yelling and foaming at him, describing in detail what he is going to do with him, Varg interjects "I'm sorry". XD
So, yeah... I spared the gory details, but made it clear that this character is not going to get out of there alive. Unless maybe if the party moved to spring him from the deepest dungeon before his timely and thorough execution. But the other characters felt no compulsion to do so and continued their travel westwards.

I am really not quick to hand out death to a PC. Building golden bridges, one at a time. But in this case I simply saw no alternative than apply the plausible consequences of his actions.

---

tl;dr:
Player sets a city on fire as a diversion to escape over the walls, which only creates the reason why the city troops go after him in the first place. After killing several pursuing soldiers, he needlessly surrenders to the last surviving guard, and is taken back into the city to be brought to justice.

This player's name wouldn't happen to be Geoff, would it? Then again, the guy I'm thinking of wouldn't be likely to surrender. Anyway, how did the player take the death of his character? Did he whine lots, or was he sensible enough to realise his foolishness and accept his fate?

Firechanter
2011-03-05, 07:24 PM
He didn't really seem to care. After that he was unsure whether he wanted to remain in the game. At some point we rolled a new char for him (not exactly "rolled" because I use point buy), but he didn't rejoin the game for good. It had been his first spin at roleplaying (just like the others') and decided it wasn't his cup of tea. By then I had come to terms with him as a person, but still silently thought Good Riddance to him as a gamer.
The way I see it, if there was any kind of roleplayer at all in him, it would have been more Narrativist or Indie Gamer, not Gamist or Simulationist.

Ertwin
2011-03-05, 07:59 PM
In our 4e campaign, our party pretty much ended up going around the dungeon, drawing the attention of every enemy, then proceeded to the final boss chamber, and initiated combat, we now have an entire dungeon's worth of enemies comming for us, including at least 2 solos, while we'll be busy fighting the dungeons big bad who is also a solo...we are soooooooooo screwed.

BobVosh
2011-03-06, 01:35 AM
In my game we had a druid who was a big believer of might makes right (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightMakesRight). So the party climbs the towers of the BBEG and into the room with the dragon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDragon) they go. The dwarf fighter basically makes a challenge against the non-literal dragon. The druid gets behind him, etc. So it comes down to if the fighter beats the dragon's champion of choice they win and the BBEG will leave town and never do that BBE stuff again. The BBEG wins the party will work for the BBEG for a month.

Level 3 dwarf fighter vs CR 7 outsider that was a solo type monster for level 5 party. Guess who won?
Also since this is a pathfinder path, guess who had to remake the whole rest of the path?(actually much easier than you would think)