You died because you were dumb.

[Crasical]

A few weeks ago, I had my first ever PC character death. And no ways around it, I died for -stupid- reasons, totally my own fault. I figure, though, that the way to take some of the sting away is to think about it and try and see what I did wrong, and what I can take away from it.
I want to hear your stories about when, in the words of Space Quest 5, You died because you where dumb, and what lessons you've learned from those deaths.


Shirou was my first true melee combatant PC, after playing a 2e Cleric, a PF Inquisitor and a 3.5 Druid. We where running the Red Hand of Doom module, and I had rolled up a Hexblade 3/Monk 2/Warblade 2 with an eye towards getting Mettle and Evasion with all the Diamond Mind save replacers. I had picked up a Valorous bastard sword and Shock Trooper, looking for getting Leap Attack when I earned a new feat. I never got the chance, because after an impressive showing in the first combat and a hasty ruling by the DM that Valorous only doubled the actual dice of the weapon and not the extra damage for power attacking and strength, we ended up in a fight with a Hydra. A bit, nasty Hydra, which the two party sorcerers got to work containing with a shadowy slow field and a set of Emerald Planes that hemmed it in. I really didn't want to charge in on that thing with no support, so we sat plinking at it, it's regeneration meaning we weren't dealing any lasting damage. I eventually decided to move in and full attack, trying to cut off a head so our dragon sorcerer could blast it with fire, and try and kill the thing that way. One attack hit and severed a head, the other whiffed, and the rest of the heads tore him apart before I could act or any of the party could save him.

So, what did I learn from this?
1. Not everything needs to be killed to be 'defeated'. The beast was pretty helpless, even if we couldn't kill it, we could still have ran or searched it's lair for loot while it was trapped.
2. If it looks like it's better at melee than you, you're probably right. The monster had a much nastier full attack than I did, and I spent the first few rounds of the fight using a crossbow and waffling about it, not sure if I wanted to engage the thing or not. I eventually decided I did, and it was to my detriment.
3. Learn a backup style of comat. I had sunk just about everything into charging, and the hydra attacked from a swamp, making just about all of that useless. If I had thought to pack some javelins, I might have been able to contribute from safety. Instead, I ran straight into the monsters jaws, because I hadn't thought that far ahead.


So, playground, tell me your own stories of untimely death, and what you learned from it.

[Katana_Geldar]

Had a TPK in the second week of encounters because the players made poor decisions. And they rolled badly. And I rolled well.

IMHO players who die because of stupid decisions deserve what they get.

[Dienekes]

I'm mostly the GM, and my players have done some stupid stuff: Separating in the magical lair of a super lich because one of them wanted to read a scroll while the others didn't want to wait so stepped through an obviously rotating portal
Spat on the king, in front of his guard
Blew up a trap door, in the middle of a stealth mission because they wanted to see where it led to (it led to a trap).
Stabbing a giant planet destroying bomb with a lightsaber

But for me my favorite moment of my players stupidity leading to untimely death was when they decided to attempt to "rocket jump" by firing a rocket at their own feet in a d20 Modern game, killing not only themselves, but one other party member.

As far as I can tell, my players have learned nothing from these events.

[Kane0]

Fighting an erinyes with only fire spells...

That wasn't me though, I was the one who was trying to get past the SR as a gish.
When i figured out i wasnt going to get anywhere near what i needed, i tried to buff my party with blur, fog cloud (she had a bow) and such. Little did i know she had true seeing also. And I was the only one in the party with Know (Planes).

2 rounds and about 6 attacks later (3 into me, meaning me = dead) she had pretty much decimated us with her +whatever flaming composite longbow before we managed to drag it to the ground with a rope attached to an arrow.

[Crasical]

:smallsigh: No offense, but pointing out other people's 'dumb mistakes' is easy. I'm asking you to tell me about your failures, and what you learned from them. Unless you're telling me you've never had a PC die, or never learned any lessons you took to heart from the event?

[TheOOB]

Be careful of orcs. They wield a 1d12 x3 weapon, this means the damage on a successful attack can deal(before bonuses) 1-36 damage. It is very possible for one to one-shot a a level 5 wizard straight from full to past -10.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Well, my dumbest PC death (actually well over 100 deaths) came from the first time I tried to play Neverwinter Nights.

The events, in order:

- Holy crap, this camera tutorial is an awful gigantic wall of text! From now on I'm skipping them and I'll mess around with stuff to figure it out on my own.

- Who's this (first person you see outside the bedroom, the item seller guy)? Meh, I'll run past him, he'll just give me a gigantic wall of text to read.

- Whee, I'm casting all my spells to see what they look like! Only idiot developers would thrust me into the heat of a battle without giving my spell slots back, so it's okay.

- Okay, Talking to Aribeth now- HOLY CRAP WE'RE UNDER ATTACK

- No spells, no weapons, no nothing, 4 hit points, dozens of goblins everywhere! **** **** **** **** ****



Thank god for the respawn feature that just lets me get right back up, but I must have died at least 5 times per goblin I had to face. (Didn't know you could run back to the bedroom to rest. Still, not like my precious 4-5 spells would have helped much against the endless goblin hordes. Yes the summon monster spells last for weeks in NWN, and you can use a panther familiar to actually fight things, but I didn't know that at the time.)

[TheOOB]

Well, my dumbest PC death (actually well over 100 deaths) came from the first time I tried to play Neverwinter Nights.

The events, in order:

- Holy crap, this camera tutorial is an awful gigantic wall of text! From now on I'm skipping them and I'll mess around with stuff to figure it out on my own.

- Who's this (first person you see outside the bedroom, the item seller guy)? Meh, I'll run past him, he'll just give me a gigantic wall of text to read.

- Whee, I'm casting all my spells to see what they look like! Only idiot developers would thrust me into the heat of a battle without giving my spell slots back, so it's okay.

- Okay, Talking to Aribeth now- HOLY CRAP WE'RE UNDER ATTACK

- No spells, no weapons, no nothing, 4 hit points, dozens of goblins everywhere! **** **** **** **** ****



Thank god for the respawn feature that just lets me get right back up, but I must have died at least 5 times per goblin I had to face. (Didn't know you could run back to the bedroom to rest. Still, not like my precious 4-5 spells would have helped much against the endless goblin hordes. Yes the summon monster spells last for weeks in NWN, and you can use a panther familiar to actually fight things, but I didn't know that at the time.)

Thats almost more of a low level wizard problem than a NWN problem. Burning Hands wrecks the NWN tutorial though.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Still though, I cite it as an example of my own stupidity because I don't think I could have possibly been LESS prepared. Once that was over, I said to myself "Okay, NO WAY they intended it to be that difficult." I started over with a new character and made sure to very carefully read, do, and get everything in the tutorial area before I moved on. This time, I got through everything with little trouble, even actually coming out pretty far ahead due to all the scrolls I saved up. So I'm convinced I only had such a hard time of it the first time because I was just being an idiot.

[Aidan305]

Not me, but a player in a campaign I ran:

Lantern Archon in a pitch dark dragon's lair, well over 300ft from the rest of the party down a very deep hole shouting at the top of its voice "Hey Guys, there's nothing down here!"

Chaos mage snapping and murdering an observing monodrone on Regulus.

Bard insulting a Slaad Lord and dimension dooring away just as the rest of the party Plane Shifts.

[Aeryr]

Did not die (ended at -2 and was luckily healed) but once playing a ranger that tended to avoid melee I was ambushed and charged by a frost giant weilding the biggest Axe I've ever seen. Luckily I did my save to avoid instant death.

I learned from that to always have, at least, three runaway plans from every situation. It proved worth it when I outrunned a dragon with my horse (it was a TPK except for me).

Also sometimes RP reasons lead my characters to the edge of evil - stupid, or far beyond (I like to give them a couple of red buttons) from those I learned to always have a plan to be resurrected in case you die. One of my characters actually went berserk because a "doctor" lied to him, he killed the guy in the center of the marquet square, and started a killing spree, almost lived to tell the story.

Once one of my players, playing a fourth level rogue, infiltrated an orc camp and tried to pick pocket the BBEG without cover nor hiding. That was... pretty stupid.

Additionaly (not on D&D) once playing GURPS my character set a C4 charge and then taunted the BBEG to come closer. I understimated the subsequent explosion, by a lot, but toke the BBEG to hell. I learned from that to be far away from explosions.

[Morghen]

Not me: Vampire game. Somebody used [slashy attack] on a scary house-sized demon-type thing. Blood splattered out of the wound. As soon as the blood hit the ground it started sizzling and burning holes in the concrete. About two rounds later, one of the Vampires fighting the scary house-sized demon-type thing used a power that pulls blood out of your victim and brings it directly into your body for immediate use. This is the same blood that just ate through concrete about 10 seconds earlier. He died.

Me: Thieves are not built to charge into melee. I didn't die, but even worse, I kept doing it. Enough to where it kind of became a tagline during melee. "If Casey didn't get stabbed in the face, it wasn't really a fight."

[DigoDragon]

My dumbest death was in a Dragonlance game. The party human fighter and my character (a kender rogue) stumbled into a dungeon messhall where two dozen well armed "Tucker's Kobolds" were having a snack break. We techhnically had surprise round.
We could of run. Their armor would have slowed the kobolds down.
We had a decent chance of reaching the rest of our party.

But no.

Instead I jumped on the fighter's shoulders and we both charged into that room like a couple of fools. I have to say though, we took half those kobolds down before we ran out of hit points. :smallbiggrin:
Best dumbest death I ever had.

[Lucianus]

I was playing a Level 14 Mind Blade with a DM who was VERY generous with the treasure. I had an AC of 48 I do believe, just from the unrestricted purchase of any magic anything I wanted. My stupid death happened as such;

DM- The door has a sign over it reading, "All who enter shall die!"

Me- I have a high AC! Nothing will hit me! I'll run through to door to the back of the room and draw the baddies attention! (Stupid move #1)

DM- The Rogue said there was no one in the room when she looked through the key hole.

Me- They're probably just invisible, I charge in screaming all macho-like!

DM- Think about what you are doing for a moment. Are you sure this is the best move? (My DM was actually warning me not to do this and I ignored him. Stupid move #2)

Me- I run in!

DM- You trip a magic rune, make a Fort Save.

Me- Oh, well my saves are good. *clatter* Umm, I rolled a one. How many dice of damage?

DM- You die.

Me-.....

[Urpriest]

This one time in a rules-light horror system, our consciousnesses had been put into toys. Mine was an awesome crash test dummy that could fall to bits and put myself back together.

We were fighting the final boss, the evil spirit caterpillar-thing that had been animating various toys in the first place. It grabbed me, and proceeded to rip me apart.

Now obviously, the GM meant this as a chance for my cool powers to come in handy. Obviously, I was supposed to fall to the ground "dead", then backstab the thing with the pair of scissors that I wielded like Illidan's glaives.

I realized this. I really did. But here's what went through my head:

Y'know what would be cooler than killing the bad guy? Killing the bad guy, and advancing science in the process! In this horror campaign I was the designated party skeptic, and I wanted this to be more than just an unexplained mystery. So instead of just falling to the ground "dead", I started talking to the guy. I told him there was a whole world out there, and though we might not defeat him someone inevitably would. If he gave himself up to be studied in a lab rather than waiting for the army to kill him then he could continue living and feeding, possibly achieving some of his goals still.

One bad persuasion roll and he hurled my head across the room where it was eaten by one of his minions.

The moral: when the GM throws you a chance to shine, take it! Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

[Covah]

I haven't gotten a character killed because I was dumb. My character deaths have all been either because it was a situation where the character would sacrifice himself for the party or it's just the way things happened.

Now, I've had many characters who got close to dying because I was dumb and then were saved by the party.

The most recent one was we're trying to infiltrate a temple and using the sewers to gain access from under the temple. Well, we found a room with some undead in it. I'm playing a cleric and I was having a really off day. Well, I move into the room and identify the undead. And that was all I did. I used a single move action. Well, the undead went next and charged me. They knocked me from full health to 10 hit points and drained 12 points of strength. I was dumb not once but three times in that situation. I should have cast Life's Grace which would have prevented the strength damage but I didn't. And I could have activated the Death Ward on my armor and prevented it as well. But I didn't. I could have also tried rebuking them when I moved into the room. After realizing how bad I messed up, I was perfectly ok with the fact that my character was going to die. But that didn't happen because our warlock teleported me out of immediate danger.

The lesson I learned was pay attention and try and remember what your character can do.

[TheCountAlucard]

No offense, but pointing out other people's 'dumb mistakes' is easy. I'm asking you to tell me about your failures, and what you learned from them.I think it pretty wise to learn from other people's mistakes as well, though... :smallamused:


Unless you're telling me you've never had a PC die, or never learned any lessons you took to heart from the event?Only once, ever, has a PC of mine died, and only because:


The GM had deliberately set pretty much every factor of the battle against us.
My character was on his own, fighting a character who must have had orders of magnitude higher experience than me, and he had reinforcements.
The opponnent was using an instant-death power that had been fixed with errata, and the GM refused to let me look up said power 'til after my character had died, despite the fact that post-errata, my character would've been immune to it the whole time.
The opponent was using another power that had been changed in the errata - said power was increasing the cost of our own powers by ridiculous amounts, and despite the GM's willingness to retcon my character's death, he refused to change the way the power worked, saying, "It's their one trick!"

Obviously I didn't learn my lesson there, because I kept gaming with him. It took 'til the session he demanded we argue with him over the finer points of another character power for over two hours before I decided I was gonna quit. :smallsigh:

[Elemental]

I unfortunately haven't played very much because I can't find a good group.
But there was one instance where I learnt an important lesson.

Just because you find a loophole in a protective spell that should allow you to easily bypass it, does not mean that the object protected by said shield isn't in itself extremely dangerous.
I mean, the shield responded only to blood, so transforming into a bloodless creature seemed like the perfect choice. Until I died.
In hindsight, a long branch would have worked better.

[Lonely Tylenol]

The only character "death" I have endured was in a one-off adventure using a homemade system, where I had created a balls-to-the-wall Conan-type axe-swinger for a little dungeon romp. In the first level of the dungeon, we (the adventure had three people in it) were walking down a hallway, when all of the sudden we triggered a trap, and the wall behind us began to slide down, trap-door style. The DM described the door as slowly closing behind us, at which point the other two party members decided to book it back under the stone slab before it walled them off completely. Not I! I was a Man of Action, and I wasn't going to let a little irreversible wall trap stop me from throwing my head back in laughter and heartily slaughtering all who stand in my wa--

"...Guys?

"Is anyone there?"

"No, we went back behind the wall," came the reply from the other party members.

"You find yourself alone in total darkness, trapped behind the wall. Do you have a torch?"

"...The elf has all the torches."

"Very well. With no way back, nobody to help you and no way to light up the corridor, you stumble about in total darkness searching for another exit, and fade away into the black."

":smallannoyed:"

Moral of the story: If the rest of the party turns tail and runs, don't be a hero. And if you are, make sure you marked down a bleedin' torch on your character sheet, or something!

[Elyssian]

Well If I had to choose the most memorable dumb death I've put a PC of mine thru it would be my ranger I played for several years. So there is 100' deep pit and the rogue is at the bottom after falling due to a failed climb walls check. I can see that he is still twitching at the bottom so the rest of the party sets up a rope so I can climb down and retrieve the rogue. So everything is going fine get to the bottom of the pit heal the rogue climb out, simple. Well the rogue goes first and takes the rope and me in my infinite wisdom decides to show up the rogue and beat him to the top with my climb walls. At this point I was high enough level to have a 99% climb walls and start my climb so the DM has me roll a check and of course I roll 100% and fail, so now he has me roll a d10 to see at what point in the climb I lose my grip and 10 again so 10d6 falling damage not so bad I was at full health even max damage wouldn't kill me. Well it was half my hit points and someone points out I need to roll for system shock no problem with an 18 CON I have a 99% and for the third roll in a row the dice betray me and roll 100% so its me instead of the rogue they have to scrape of the bottom of the pit...

Lesson of the day don't show off when it doesn't mean s***

[prufock]

Stupid for in-character or out-of-character reasons? I've had plenty of the former, but I don't recall any of the latter (though they may overlap with the former, depending on your point of view).

ULUK, the half-ogre barbarian/monk/fighter built as a grapple monster died through his own stubbornness. While investigating a wizard who has been animating corpses for nefarious purposes, his spellcaster buddies had all been disabled, mentally indisposed, or fallen prey to traps. Yes, somehow a MONK managed to make it to the wizard's lair all but unscathed, with no spellcaster support. And yes, he decided it was a good idea to take on said wizard anyway.

Deimos, a sorcerer/dread mage/nightmare spinner who completely had no fear of death would often factor his own demise into his combat tactics, with the insurance of an in-party healer who could Revivify, Raise, or Resurrect him as need be. I think he died a total of 4 times.

[Friv]

I think I can manage a pretty good one. Allow me to relate to you the story of the Deadly Wishing Well.

Our party - a team of 3.0 level 5 characters, poorly optimized. A human rogue, a human fighter, a human cleric, a halfling wizard, and an elven ranger. (I was the cleric, and was playing mainly healbot and buff.)

We are following a treasure map that the rogue 'acquired', and it seems to lead to a wishing well along a major road. This seems odd. Most of the party thinks it is probably a scam. The rogue, however, decides to climb down the well and take a look.

A short time later, the rogue is at the bottom of the well, yelling up at us that there is a massive cavern and there are gold coins scattered along the ground with about two feet of water. The party is unconvinced, for reasons that I don't recall, and begins to discuss whether to lower a rope down or something.

Unbeknownst to us, the cavern is also home to a water naga (CR 7, a challenging but not insurmountable encounter). It begins to slither over to take a looksee at what all of the yelling is about, and finds a lone human yelling up a 30' hole that everything's fine goddamn it come down.

One failed Listen check, one failed Will save, and a Hold Person later, and we can't hear the rogue anymore.

This prompts a fierce argument; the wizard and cleric want to go down, the ranger and fighter think it's too dangerous. Finally, we get a rope together, and agree to climb down and take a look.

I go first, reaching the bottom in time to see something vanish around the corner with our now-unconscious rogue (knocked out by the naga, who was planning to eat her later). I rush in pursuit without waiting for the fighter. Rounding the corner, I see the naga, who sees me and tosses a lightning bolt in my face. The naga rolls well, and I am seriously injured.

Meanwhile, the fighter has reached the bottom of the rope and is starting across the cavern, and the wizard starts down - and rolls a 1. The ranger lets go of the rope to grab the wizard and misses. The wizard falls - and is knocked unconscious and starts to drown. The fighter doubles back to try and drag the wizard out of the water.

Back at the naga, I drop my best healing on myself and start charging forwards to save the rogue. The naga blasts me again. I try for a Sanctuary spell, the naga makes its save and blasts me again. I try one last trick, don't recall quite what, but it fails and the naga bites me. I fail my save against poison, lose 4 Con and thus 10 HP, and am now unconscious and dying.

The fighter hears me cry out in pain, props the wizard against a wall, and runs after me. Above the well, the ranger is slowly realizing that it was his rope we were using, and he has no way to climb down after us. The fighter and wizard hadn't bothered with healing potions, since the ranger and I could both heal, so only the rogue and I had such potions. As such, the wizard stayed unconscious, and the fighter wound up in a 1-on-1 battle with a water naga.

This went about as well as you could expect. Afterwards, the naga returned to grab the halfling, and ate the lot of us. The ranger bit his lip, and then walked briskly away whistling innocently.

[kieza]

I think I've told this one before, but...

One player in a party of 6 decided to run ahead of the rest of the party and hit the next encounter while he still had a powerful buff active (This was 4e, and the buff was Rain of Steel, giving him an auto-hit on anything that started its turn next to him). I warned him that I didn't make a practice of adjusting encounter difficulty on the fly. He went ahead with it. He found a barracks containing signs of life, broke down the door, and charged in. Unfortunately, he didn't close to melee that turn, so the buff didn't kick in. He then discovered that the soldiers he had attacked were wizards and swordmages, and the wizards proceeded to push him away and slow him. On his next turn, he still didn't close to melee, and then they did the same thing again. He finally got the message at 1/4 health, and he tried to run away. The swordmages then used their powers to pull him back and clobber him unconscious. The party never found them or the body.

Lessons learned:
1) A powerful buff is no substitute for the rest of the party.
2) When the entire party and the DM advises you against something, listen.
3) The DM plays tactically and does not pull punches.

[Averis Vol]

all lessons are from the same campaign module:
1) dont underestimate city of the spider queen, its only meant to hurt any but an uber-optimized group.
2) if you ARE going to underestimate this module, make sure the DM is atleast a good one.
3) lastly, if you are the archer, do NOT walk off alone through the illusion wall hiding the cave full of bebilith and a sorcerous vampire. they only want to cause you harm :smallfrown:

but seriously, only three members coordinated their characters (me the fighter and the bardblade) the other three went completely against the party (we were the pre established Paladin SWAT team of lathander, complete with flash bombing rooms before entering) one was a Chaotic stupid assassin devoted to cyric, one was a sorcerer who threw away two spell caster levels for the winged template, and the last was a fighter who used a hand crossbow and rapier but NEVER went into melee, and literally only contributed 1d4+2 dmg a round :smallfurious: suffice to say, we're thinking about letting the fighter get stomped and personally burying the assassin so far in the underdark not even the drow will find him. >_>

[Dienekes]

:smallsigh: No offense, but pointing out other people's 'dumb mistakes' is easy. I'm asking you to tell me about your failures, and what you learned from them. Unless you're telling me you've never had a PC die, or never learned any lessons you took to heart from the event?

I've sadly never had a character of mine die. The GM before me was a pushover who never challenged us, and would wiggle out of killing the players. It's part of why I took over so many years ago.

[Techsmart]

Unfortunately, I rarely get the chance to play as a pc (1 campaign and 3 one-shots total, 0 deaths so far), so most of my "dumb pc" stories have to kind of be based on other people's demise.
Level 1 party on their first major trip, consisting of
human binder
dwarf cleric
human druid
human bard.
human fighter (campaign setting limited players to elf, dwarf, human and gnome).
They are clearing out a cave for the local township, with several close encounters already. The party is exhausted (fighter, druid's AC, and binder are at 1 hp after healing back from unconscious, druid and bard are out of spells and inspire courages, cleric at 1 spell), so they find a narrow cave to rest in. The cleric, however, still has near-full HP, so he wanders off while the rest of the party is resting. While travelling, he finds an unguarded wooden chest (the kobolds originally guarding it were already killed). The chest itself was fine, but there was a darkmantle residing on the caverns ceiling. A few grapple checks later, and he was dead.

Same player, playing a sorcerer. walks into the middle of town and pretty much says "Hey everyone, look what I can do!" He pulls out the bag of chaos (a bag that has "when you put an item in, roll 1d4. 1) does nothing, 2) devours the item, 3) first inserted object out fast enough to be destructive, 4) creates an outward burst 20' in radius, deals 2d6 force damage on all in radius and bullrushes all in radius out to edge). He rolled a 4. The bridge he was standing on was about 100 feet above the river bed that he landed on.

[Tengu_temp]

I never died out of stupidity, only bad rolls (and that was when I was a kid who played RPGs to kill monsters and take their stuff, I switched to a way more narrative-based style since then). I had my share of really dumb decisions though, the biggest of which was probably falling as a druid for giving an artifact to an elven wizard, even though my goddess was whispering to me not to do that. His arguments were really reasonable and convincing so I thought she was being prejudiced and didn't want a rival power to grow in strength. Turned out, he was a bad guy in disguise. Oops.

[Ashtagon]

Had a TPK in the second week of encounters because the players made poor decisions. And they rolled badly. And I rolled well.

IMHO players who die because of stupid decisions deserve what they get.

Gosh you're a harsh GM. When I GM, I might kill off characters, but never the players...

[TuggyNE]

Gosh you're a harsh GM. When I GM, I might kill off characters, but never the players...

That one never gets old. :smalltongue:

Also, could the OP fix the spelling error in the title? I'm getting a little tired of seeing "you where [sic] dumb."</nitpick>

[Antonok]

All 3.5:

Me- The party consisted of a Blighter (me), a Dr. Necro(J), and a Summoner(P) (a homebrew version someone in our group made).

We were investigating a typical cult hideout type house when me and the summoner hear something upstairs. We decide to go see what it is while J continues his search downstairs.

We get up there and after a bit discover a nice big ol' Marilith. Roll initiative. Basically the entire 3 round fight consisted of me and P avoiding the thing til it takes a double move. My turn comes around and we're just out of its reach. So what do I do? I hide behind the summoner who conveniently has teleport.

10 attacks in a round makes for quite a dead PC...

P- Hooboy, where to start. There was the templeted monstrosity he made for a one shot after he got Savage Species. Adventure started out, we hear a rumor about dead ppl coming back to life, go to the latest victims funeral, coffin opens, bodak sits up, he fails his save (Ok, granted he rolled a 1, but he only had like a 1 to his save to begin with).

Then theres the above mentioned Summoner in the same campaign. At this point it was the above group plus a Cancer Mage who went out of his way to get all the diseases he could (plus a rather nastyhigh save one the DM made for the campaign). This time we were in the frozen north and the DM asked us if we all had stuff for the cold weather. He didn't, so the cancer mage gave him his extra cold weather outfit he'd been wearing.

We all heard it, just no one caught it... until the next session.

[Crasical]

That one never gets old. :smalltongue:

Also, could the OP fix the spelling error in the title? I'm getting a little tired of seeing "you where [sic] dumb."</nitpick>

Okay, done.

[TheCountAlucard]

Now I wanna play a Dread Necromancer named Doctor Necro. :smalltongue:

[Swordguy]

I almost never get to play, so I only have one story. So I'll then share a few stories from people who played in my games (or whom I played with).

Mine (Elven mage/Face, Shadowrun 2e)
We had to break into a facility and sabotage their industrial production line. it was an Ares facility that made surface-to-air missiles. The idea was always to use a vehicle in somebody else's markings (another corp) to confuse the issue, but I spearheaded the idea and convinced everybody to use a helicopter for the mission, because "nobody in their right mind is going to use a heli to assault a plant that makes surface to air missiles". I was right, as it turned out: you don't do that in your right mind for a very good reason. TPK.

Idiot #1 (Scorpion Courtier, L5R 3e, I was GM)
<GM>: All right, you're standing in front of the Lion army. Your efforts have succeeded and the Lion general (who is a Matsu) had agreed to meet with you to hear your concessions in exchange for not stomping Scorpion lands into paste.
<Idiot>: All part of my cunning plan. Now that he's in front of me, I punch him.
<GM>: What? O-OK. You've got surprise, given that you're at a diplomatic meeting and he's clearly not expecting an attack. Roll it out.
<The Lion General is knocked down and, while not unconscious, is out>
<Idiot>: Excellent! Now that he's down, I pee on him!
<GM>: You...you pee on him?
<Idiot>: Yes!
<GM>: On the Matsu? In a culture where bodily waste is considered incredibly "unclean"? In front of his assembled army of 30,000 berserkers?
<Idiot>: Yes! And I dare them to do anything about it!

Idiot 2 (A Priest of Sigmar, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2e, I was in the party)
<Idiot>: *looks out over the army of Chaos camped outside the walls*
<Idiot>: Y'know what? We've been fighting Chaos forever. They've got such devoted followers, and we have to beg and borrow troops to defend ourselves. I wonder if there's anything to this whole "Chaos" thing... HEY! HEY YOU! YEAH! THE FOLKS WITH THE SLANEESH BANNERS! CAN I HANG OUT WITH YOU GUYS? *hops over the walls while everyone else is staring at him like he's been caught molesting a badger*

Idiot 2 (Entire 1st-level D&D party, AD&D, I was GM)
<party>: "We want to fight a dragon. Are there any around here?"
<GM>: "Guys, OOC for a sec, look. This is not going to end well."
<party>: "Don't care, we want a dragon. It's dungeons and DRAGONS. Are there any around here?" <rolls dice without prompting> I rolled a 2 on my local knowledge NWP to find out if there's any dragons.
<rest of party>: <rolls dice> "I got a success too." "Same here." "Yup, got a success. Any dragons?"
<GM>: *facepalm* Sure. Just...sure. There's a dragon three weeks east - the people in the common room are all abuzz with the news that it burst out of a local mountain called Whitehorn, torched a village, and killed a sextet of the King's Champions who were there at the time and tried to stop it.
<party>: "YAY! We load up and head out!"
<GM>: "Oi. I sure hope this isn't going to end up as a story on some internet webcomic site forum someday."
<Three weeks pass. Party is mostly 2nd level from random encounters>
<party>: "YAY We're here!" *walks up to the dragon's lair*
<GM>: "The dragon is clearly sleeping. You can hear a bass snoring from deep inside the cavern that rumbles the stone under your feet"
<party>: *goes inside*
<GM>: "Inside you see a massive red dragon on a treasure pile. Molten drool dangles from his jaw and has melted through the gold and into the stone floor. There's a reek of sulfur and death in the air that makes it hard to even breathe, and you can feel your stomachs tighten at the though of facing a beast that the great hall of the King couldn't even hold. It's hard not to think of your swords as sewing needles in comparison to his great bulk. He doesn't seem to have awakened or noticed your presence yet. What do you do?"
<Party Fighter>: "I walk up and poke the dragon awake."
<GM>: "Ok, back outside you...wait. You what?"
<party Fighter>: "I poke the dragon awake. Turek says "We're taking your treasure, foul wyrm. You'd better leave before you get hurt."
<GM>: ...
<GM>: ...
<GM>: ...
<GM>: Roll new characters, you idiots.

[Ornithologist]

Okay. My story!

My character was basically a paper elemental that could hide in books to spy, but could never lie, because he came from a book of justice. So, defending this museum during night from the first encounter, the thieves detonate this giant fireball at me, and i crit fail my save, the gm crits for damage. My paper elemental proceeds to light up the night like a Christmas tree, and in the end I save the party through the party cleric using my ashes to make a barrier spell to protect from the fire that had consumed the building.

Thing I learned: Even dead PCs can still help the party.

[Righteous Doggy]

I've only had one character I made die. I was a round away from summoning the shadow of the world snake to end the game. Then I was gone for a day. Then someone killed me while I left the game, no save(not that I could've rolled one)
Lesson: I had god awful friends in high school.

[Slipperychicken]

Turned out, he was a bad guy in disguise. Oops.
Didn't die from this mistake, and I only made it once. Don't trust people (and especially sketchy old men) you meet in dungeons, and never hand them any special items you're being paid to find, even if they promise your characters wildest dreams, and especially if they are somehow aware of the whole party's wildest dreams and promise it to them without failing a Bluff check.

From that incident and several similar ones, my group is seriously considering a "kill on sight" policy for any moving thing we encounter during missions, except party members (and even them if they betray us). In hindsight, every act of mercy we've made during a mission was a mistake.


All 3.5

#1
My second time playing a melee'r, and I was bragging about my character's damage potential for weeks before the game started. Party was hanging out, watching a military parade for the country we're working for. Suddenly, the BBEG swoops in, loudly propagandizing the ongoing rebellion (he's basically a Sorcerer version of Lelouche from Code Geass) while his minions attack the parade. My character, a Shock-Trooping, Leap-Attack-Charging Barbarian/Bear Warrior, used Sudden Leap and his full movement to charge the closest group of minions (on the other side of the map, surrounded by mooks with spears, who later turned out to also be fully-buffed minibosses), the mooks had previously set spears against my characters' charge (a free hit for x2 damage, plus AoOs), my allies were both totally incompetent and ~200ft away, and I made several abysmal rolls. They killed my character in two rounds.

Lessons learned: Never get too far from the party. HP is not enough of a defense. Don't dump AC into the negatives. Don't brag about how much damage your character deals.

#2
Core only, pretty much no-wealth game. The only planes are the Material and Ethereal (this'll be important later), and there's no ability to Teleport, Plane Shift, or even summon creatures. I joined the game midway through, with a GM I wasn't familair with, who I later discovered wasn't too fond of casters, and his players rarely used them. The party Sorcerer had recently quit "for schoolwork", so I was supposed to replace her.

I briefly played a "Wizard" in a very heavily-houseruled/homebrewed world, with about half the published monsters, spells, and classes either banned or nerfed to uselessness. Some of his personal homebrew melee classes were hideously overpowered. I'm talking free-action Etherealness and 6/day Timestop overpowered. Houserules basically made my character into an INT based Sorcerer (didn't need a spellbook, which I liked) with fewer spells/day but more known.

The GM every so often glanced at a sheet which was handwritten and almost full (his notes are usually typed) and I could hardly make out.
Me: "Your notes? Don't you usually type those?"

[GM shows me the sheet]

GM: "Not my notes, it's List of characters this campaign. Here"



Me: ....

Eventually, after encountering some horrifying, lovecraftian horrors in our Magnificent Mansion (the spell completely precludes anyone or anything entering without my character's say-so, and I notified the GM of this), then Dominates my character right through his Mind Blank (which grants the most explicitly-worded and broad immunity to mind-affecting abilities in the game). I hand my character sheet over for him to use during the second combat I've seen in this campaign.

Me: "How the **** did a Dominate get through Mind Blank?!"

GM: "...It's weird"

Me: "Weird?! There's no ability in the whole ****ing game that gets through Mind Blank! And especially not in Core!"

GM [after some more bickering]: "Listen, these guys don't follow the rules"

Me: :smallfurious:


Turned out these creatures came from a plane which no one ever knew about, and was basically Far Realm with the serial numbers filed off (Core only, no planes other than material or ethereal, remember?). The party rushed into a bossfight, after I buffed them and my PC heavily, nearly depleting spells/day doing so. The boss Plane Shifts (more likely another GM-fiat effect, since the spell itself was banned.) the whole party to this plane with no saving throw. Apparently, transport to this plane automatically works (no save) and strips travelers of all buffs, no save, no CL check, nothing.

Standing there with his puny little d4s of hit points, and AC around 14, he tried casting several spells, and each one had no effect due to the various, shifting traits of this plane which my character literally could not have known in advance. He quickly died, since his attempts to re-buff himself all failed. I quit the game after that session.

Lessons Learned:

The moment the GM declares an enemy is not following the rules, and screws you over with it, quit the game now and never look back.
You can never be sure the GM won't fiat your characters buffs away, so always have half-decent saves, hp, and AC, since he has a harder time fiat-ing those away.
Core only is (usually) the mark of an inexperienced or overly-restrictive GM.
If your group uses houserules, clarify every one [I]precisely, before you make a character, and long before the game starts.

[Need_A_Life]

Hmmm... this one's tough. I don't usually lose characters to stupidity, though I must admit I've done some stupid things.

One who died:
Star Trek game. We're smugglers in the Neutral Zone and we're basically in a Mexican stand-off with some other criminals. I'm a badass pilot and our ship is upgraded to a truly ridiculous degree, so after a while, I grow impatient.
Me: *mimes firing*
GM: Okay
*Dice rolling. Enough to take the opposing ships out in the opening barrage.*
Our 'Captain': Did you just open fire?
Me: Uh, yeah. Can't you see those three disabled ships?
Our Captain: You are hereby re-assigned to 'Airlock Duty.'

Moral of the story: Even if you can get the job done, sometimes it's better not to.

Lots of stories about saying "I've got no plan, no weapons and nothing to lose... Leeroy! Jenkins!" and surviving, though.

My rules of survival:
[LIST]
If Invisibility is a thing in the game; get it.
If you can either have one really powerful, but specialized ability or one merely useful, but very versatile ability, go for versatility.
Combat should be quick, brutal and merciless. Get out alive, even if that means you're the only one. Yes, running away is a viable option.

[Edog]

I've never died to my own stupidity (at least, not in tabletop games) but that's mainly because I haven't been a PC in...three years? I've finally convinced a friend to DM now, though, so I can be a player again! Yay!

One of my players, though, made a particularly stupid decision that really stood out to me. He was a paladin/sorcerer ubercharger who could hit for over 50 damage with a couple of buffs. Anyway, after they drove off a dragon and its goblin rider, he decided to give chase with the fly spell he had active. Straight into the goblin base, with several ogres, without his party and (most stupid of all) after I warned him twice that he would probably end up dead. No prizes for guessing what happened.

And afterwards, when the dragon was healed, the others moved in and annihilated the enemies with little trouble, thanks to team work.

[Mixt]

Let's just put it this way, telling the Ancient Silver Dragon that has your party of vile criminals at his complete mercy to "Go fu*k Tiamat" after having been given an ultimatum that may let you walk away alive from the encounter = BAD IDEA!

:smallsigh:

[Krotchrot]

Let's see...Last Saturday in our Star Wars D6(YES!) game I nearly flew out of an airlock into the vaccum of space because another of my species went into a flying panic at seeing my character. Also that same game we landed on Yavin 4 to give some Jedi supplies and I thought I'd be all cool and take out one of Yavin's Apex Predators...by myself...Needless to say...Massassi Tigers are NOT to be messed with unless you really want a hurting.

[Vknight]

I rarely play but here are some from my players.

Party: Lets destroy the Evil guy fused to the magical crystal so he can be stopped!
Gm(Me): Guys the crystal keeps the city afloat you can't just destroy it.
-Fight- In which the crystal is destroyed the bad guy is dead and they leave...
Me: You all feel light as though the city is falling.
Party: We continue to make sure he hasn't done something else
Me: you walk back to the cities surface and then you feel the ground below your feet give way, before the city crashes downwards.

Facts to Know
-They knew the city's singular crystal kept it afloat
-They had read how to kill one inside without breaking the crystal but skipped that(Would take to long)
-They had a way to separate the guy but didn't want him to try and teleport away
-They also had a way to fix the crystal but left that behind for a later mission.


More Later

[Delwugor]

Never, ever, ever cast Silence on a Witches Coven without knowing what is going on. My stupidity lead to a near TPK, only the character that ran away survived.
But it was one of the best gaming sessions! Dumb yes and I'd do it all over for that amount of fun.

[jindra34]

About the only things I've learned from deaths I have had is never rely on relatively new players making a smart choice when an obvious safe one is available, and that not to play with a DM who thinks 4 gestalts of level equal to the parties highest is a fair match for a party of 6.

[comicshorse]

Idiot 2 (A Priest of Sigmar, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2e, I was in the party)
<Idiot>: *looks out over the army of Chaos camped outside the walls*
<Idiot>: Y'know what? We've been fighting Chaos forever. They've got such devoted followers, and we have to beg and borrow troops to defend ourselves. I wonder if there's anything to this whole "Chaos" thing... HEY! HEY YOU! YEAH! THE FOLKS WITH THE SLANEESH BANNERS! CAN I HANG OUT WITH YOU GUYS? *hops over the walls while everyone else is staring at him like he's been caught molesting a badger*



You know I'm not convinced thats just the smart way of dealing with Chaos :smallsmile:

[Slipperychicken]

never rely on relatively new players making a smart choice when an obvious safe one is available...

Or expect them to avoid fantastically stupid ones, either. I think that sort of thing comes from misunderstanding the system: thinking that, just because you can do anything, means that it's a good idea, or that you'll have an acceptable chance of success. Often enough, it's that kind of thing that (IMO) should've lead to character deaths in my group, but don't because my GM is a pushover.

Examples include:


Making literal deals with devils. (happened way too many times)
Punching questgivers.
"Leeroying" into a dragon's face (as a Warlock) and hitting it with an EB, point-blank.
Selling a MacGuffin to the (very poorly-disguised) BBEG.
Chatting casually with the BBEG after he failed to pay for the MacGuffin (he only said "32000". He didn't say he was paying in gold, and not hostile undead :smallannoyed:) and tried to kill us, with the party utterly refusing to start smacking him, even after my character engaged in combat. That must have been the only time they refused to start a fight.