I summon a infernal badger and have it bite your ankle....

[CyberThread]

So now for the other end of the spectrum, what is some of the stupidest (not funny in this way), but just outright bad or dumbest things you have seen as a player or DM, others do that made you face palm.

[Arc_knight25]

Going to have to go with the player that is playing a very squishy caster is always the 1st person into a room looking around and scouting when they lack the necessary skills. Many times we've had to pick them up off the floor. They are more suited to playing a sneaky class or frontline combatant role.

Hour long debate on rules is always a fun one. And stupid rules at that, something that doesn't really pertain to what is happening in game at the time.

[Chronos]

I once saw a character try to open a stuck trapdoor by jumping on it. It worked.

Funny thing is, the player was probably the wisest person I know. He was just accurately role-playing a low Wis character.

[Sir Chuckles]

"How do I add up my to-hit bonus for melee?"
x3 per encounter. Every session.
For the past four years.

[lytokk]

DM (me): Ok, now the captain of the guard has given you the mission to go clear out a bunch of kobolds that are attacking caravans. Does anyone need to do anything before you leave town?

Players: No, we're good

DM: now did anyone remember to buy a light source? I know its been a while since we played and I want to make sure

Players: No, I don't think we'll need one

(thankfully after getting there the bard realized he got another level 0 spell known and took light)

[Yogibear41]

"How do I add up my to-hit bonus for melee?"
x3 per encounter. Every session.
For the past four years.

I feel your pain friend. :smallfrown:

[Alaris]

So now for the other end of the spectrum, what is some of the stupidest (not funny in this way), but just outright bad or dumbest things you have seen as a player or DM, others do that made you face palm.

Yup... alright. I've got something special for you today.

A player (Aasimar Fighter I think) was arrested for one thing or another in a major city, and is taken to the court. He is charged with various crimes, and decides that, rather than paying the 100 GP or so in fines he would have to pay... he will instead "Challenge the integrity of the court system, and the Sherriff himself!"

This in itself was kinda funny... or so we laughed at the time. The Sherriff then took this as a personal charge against his honor, and challenged the PC to a duel to the death! This was arranged for the next day.

The rest of the PCs arranged with the underworld to have the Aasimar's Weapon enchanted and poisoned, to essentially auto-kill the Sherriff. We pooled several hundred/thousand GP into this... way more than would have simply been necessary to pay the fine.

The Aasimar and the Sherriff arrived in the arena... and after EVERYTHING we had done, the Aasimar undid his armor, and threw his sword down, and shouted "This is what is wrong with the system!" The Sheriff promptly walked forward and killed him. It was a duel to the death, regardless of whether the PC chose to fight.

-.- So in the end, we wasted several hundred/thousand gold, for the PC to be stubborn and refuse to do anything. This is only ONE of the many things this particular Player has done that are... incredibly stupid. One of his more infamous quotes was "I want to play an Iguana."

[Ghost Nappa]

In a campaign I'm in right now, our Level 1 Cleric (of whom we are mildly annoyed with for in-character reasons) got into an encounter without knowing the following:

1) His AC
2) His Saves
3) His BAB
4) His Domain Spell
4.5) Which Domains he actually had
5) Blade Barrier is not available to a Level 1 Cleric
6) An explanation of the world's religion.

This was the fourth session and he had not previously missed a session. It was NOT the first combat he was in either. The entire exchange wasted about 20 minutes and was quite painful to endure.

Edit: To Further clarify, there was a lot about spell-casting and and Clerics he DID now. The lack of consistency in his lack of knowledge was perhaps the most awkward conversation of assumptions I have ever heard.

[Deathra13]

Had a player get his arm caught in a bag of devouring, He had one party member trying to help him, and the merchant who was selling the bags offering to cut off his arm to avoid being eaten. His response "I jump up and try and get the bag over the merchants head." Even after his party member immediately lets go seeing the flaw in this, and he is asked by everyone if he is sure this is what he wants to do he proceeds and gets eaten, then proceeds to argue that it wouldn't have pulled him in faster just because he was no longer braced. half an hour of argument over that one.

[Hyena]

Once I played with a player, who insisted on doing the stupidest things just to spite other people or be unique, like:
1) Insisting on rolling stats in an incredibly high powered campaign (pointbuy 90).
2) Playing a winged housecat.
3) Squeezing an airspeeder into a lift, which is smaller then said airspeeder.

He also tended to write his posts for a very long time. Like, two hours. In a skype game.

[Amphetryon]

*Zippy the Rogue reaches for jewel deep inside an opening barely large enough for his arm to fit* "Make a REF save, Zippy" *Rolls, fails* "Zippy loses a finger to the razor-sharp blade that slashes out when he comes in contact with the gem."

*Zippy ponders for a moment.* 'The trap must be sprung now, so it's safe to get the gem!'

<several exciting minutes in Zippy's life pass. Later. . . .>

"So, Zippy, why have all of your friends taken to calling you 'Lefty,' now?"

:smallamused:

I honestly can't decide whether to blame Zippy's Player, or the DM, or both, for the above.

[Kane0]

"I don't want to attract attention. I cast darkness"

To be fair, we made light of the situation by trying to convince people to cast magic missile at it.

[Lord Haart]

Actually, the 2*2 squares airspeeder was explicitly described as being all-around smaller than the 2*2 squares hutt, who had been using the same 2*2 squares elevator almost effortlessly. But i certainly like the mythologised version better.

[ArqArturo]

Of these, I have lots, especially with my sorcerer.

We were running away for our lives from a band of goblins, which devolved into a war between two goblin tribes (which felt like more), it was me (human sorcerer), a human paladin, a dwarf monk whom we called the Unarmed Machine Gun (BTW, the DM let the insane houserule that the Paladin could grab the monk, Spring Attack with him with smite evil while the monk could use flurry of blows, but only once per day), a human monk that was the unarmed shotgun, a hengeyokai rogue, and a gnome illusionist.

We were pretty much at the end of the line, when a huge group of goblins expecting us. I had just turned level 6, and I chose fireball (I was the designated blaster) as my spell, so I said, pretty this:

Me: EveryoneduckrightnowFIREBALL!

I managed to kill the goblins, but, I also almost hit the dwarf monk (evasion), and the paladin had a front row seat of the edge of my fireball. So after the escape, the paladin grabbed me by the neck and started yelling "Don't you ever do that again! You endangered the entire party!"

I also chased a red dragon that chose to leave us alone. Did not end well.

[Renegade Paladin]

Actually, the 2*2 squares airspeeder was explicitly described as being all-around smaller than the 2*2 squares hutt, who had been using the same 2*2 squares elevator almost effortlessly. But i certainly like the mythologised version better.
Ooooo, awkward. :smallamused:

[Feint's End]

Happened last weekend during our first real session with my new group. Our Swordsage jumped down on a entangled Goblin (from my Entangling Debris) and dropped all the stuff he carried to start a grapple and keep them from fleeing. Only problem was he had our only torch and he dropped it ... our Dm rolled for it and well ... it landed in a small body of water at the bottom of the staircase. The rest of the combat was very "dark" (especially funny because nobody had darkvision) though luckily it was almost over at that point and I had entangled the rest of goblins.

[Hyena]

Ooooo, awkward.
Nah, I knew for a fact he reads this forum.

[ArqArturo]

"I don't want to attract attention. I cast darkness"

To be fair, we made light of the situation by trying to convince people to cast magic missile at it.

I see what you did there :p

[Chronos]

Quoth Hyena:

1) Insisting on rolling stats in an incredibly high powered campaign (pointbuy 90).
Wait, why would you even still call it "point buy" when you're doing point buy 90? Just say that the starting array is five 18s and a 16. Or frankly, just say "straight 18s", because really, that -2 in your least important stat is never going to matter.

[pwykersotz]

My favorite dumb moment for myself was the following.

GM: "You see a beholder! It turns to focus its central eye on you."

Me: "I close my eyes!"

At the time, I had thought that a beholder used gaze attacks. Fortunately, through their tears of laughter, my party managed to pull me back.

[Feint's End]

1) Insisting on rolling stats in an incredibly high powered campaign (pointbuy 90).


I don't mean to offend you but how comes people believe high point buy means high power? The only classes which actually increase from high point buy are MAD classes and even those not by much. High power is a campaign using t1 classes and allowing a certain level of cheese or Gestalting.

[MukkTB]

Last session I played we were fighting a large enemy war band. The baddies had 4 heavy crossbowmen, a leveled leader, and 10 warriors. These warriors were 19 AC, level 3 with good strength and con scores. Heavy armor and no mounts made them really slow.

I was playing a level 4 necromancer with some nasty pets. I had 4 level 3 NPC mounted archers under my command. We have a level 4 fighter and a level 4 healbot cleric. (We didn't make him build it that way. He did it on his own.)

We were winning the ranged fight slowly and kiting around the outside edge of the group. This wasn't good enough for our fighter. He was pissed that we were wasting time being cautious. So instead of discussing what to do or coordinating a charge he just ran right into all of them. He was lucky that he didn't get dog piled into oblivion. The levelled baddie decided to 1v1 him while the fighters took a couple rounds to rush us. He'd already died once that session when he got isolated and surrounded by monsters.

[Kane0]

Snip

TL:DR = LEEERRROOOOYYYY!

[Scumbaggery]

Oh my. These I have plenty of.
___________________________________
Party: 4 characters, each 3rd level. Consisted of a Ranger, Druid, Fighter, and a Cleric.

The group went to go scout the woods for goblin raiders that continuously attacked a small hamlet every few weeks. They were ambushed after a few failed spot checks.

DM: "Okay, so they get a surprise round. Everyone go ahead and roll for initiative."

Fighter: "17."
Druid: "13."
Cleric: "1 (:smallfrown:)"
Ranger: "I go forage for food."
DM: "Wait, what?"
Ranger: "I rolled a natural 20, so I'm gonna go forage for some food."
DM: "You're abandoning the party to go find food?"
Ranger: "Yeah, I don't feel like fighting."
Party: ".........."
DM: "....F****it, you find some mushrooms."

edit: for colors

[ryu]

TL:DR = LEEERRROOOOYYYY!

Hey. At least he has chicken.

[ArqArturo]

Oh man, this happened a few hours ago!.

Now we need to avoid a war between three city states, but, a bunch of goblin mercs (thus, intro to the infamous Alchemist cooked up in this forum) have added to the chaos, by burning and incineration the This-is-not-Venice city.

We managed to convince one of the mooks (the new player playing the alchemist), to stop burning everything, and when we thought we could keep this out of control, in comes the person that hired the goblins: A vampire.

It was a fight we couldn't win, so most of us ran, except my, a half-orc wizard with the spellslinger archetype/sorcerer. I decided I could take my chances to take on the vampire, since so far my fire spells were working.

I couldn't do much, and when the vampire was about to grab me to drain levels...

Me: I grab my gun and shoot myself to avoid him getting a minion.

... But it did not do the trick, the vampire still grabbed me, and now I'm his minion :smallfurious:.

Oh yeah, everyone's kind of angry at me, too. The DM just giggled.

[asnys]

This was about a decade ago. The game was at a gift shop that for some reason had a back room for gaming. The owners insisted that anyone who wanted to join be allowed to, so we had a lot of one-time-wonders, including one at this session, playing a wizard. We were planning a raid on a cave full of goblins, I forget why. I was trying to play tactically, and proposed setting an ambush at the mouth of the cave and luring the goblins out into an ambush using caltrops, cover, and tactical positioning. Newguy says "nah, that's too complicated, let's just rush 'em." We argue back and forth and back and forth, this must have taken 20 minutes. The other players either don't care or side with me, since we've pulled this tactic before and it's worked out well, but Newguy just ignores everything I say and keeps insisting on just charging in. It's a classic gamer spat, going round-and-round in circles.

I don't really recall how that argument ended - I want to say he won, just because I was sick of arguing about it, but I may be misremembering. We're getting to grips, our meleers engaging their front line while the spellcasters are just a few steps behind them. I want to emphasize that - we've got a map drawn out on graph paper and this is close-quarters combat, everyone packed tightly together, Newguy is 10' to 15' from the front line. We come to Newguy's turn in the initiative and realize he's wandered off to play Magic: the Gathering in the next room.

The DM calls out to him (paraphrasing):

DM: "It's your turn, I need you to tell me what you want to do!"

Newguy: "I'm in the middle of something!"

DM: "Come on, I need you to pick a move!"

Newguy: "I cast fireball!"

DM: "On which goblin?"

Newguy: "Closest one!"

...

Now, I think I mentioned the DM couldn't actually kick him out of the game. He did rule, however, that Newguy fumbled his spellcasting, and that, rather than letting off a fireball in his own face, he accidentally opened a bizarre vortex that swallowed his character, never to be seen again. I don't recall seeing that in the SRD, but nobody objected at the time - not even Newguy, who didn't realize what had happened until after his M:tG game was done, by which time the last of the goblins were long gone.

[rexreg]

Player is a member of the Fated (2nd ed. Planescape) & is purchasing a map...
Player: I want to buy a map.
Merchant: pulls out map & quotes price
Player: No. I want a good map.
merchant takes map behind counter, pulls out same map, & quotes a higher price.
Player: No. I want the REAL good map.
merchant takes map behind counter (again), pulls it out (again) & quotes a price that is higher yet.
this sequence was repeated several times...the Player haggled the merchant's price up from 5 gp to 1000 gp...
he was expelled from the Fated

[Sir Chuckles]

I had rather silly moment recently in the campaign I'm right now, as a Barbarian/Wizard/Rage Mage.

The party kept getting ambushed by the same Catfolk Scout (Meaning the Barbarian ranks in Survival were worthless), so my character, being quite furious began this exchange:

Me: "Get back here or I will BURN THIS FOREST DOWN."

DM: Nothing happens. How long do you wait?

Me: About 30 seconds. And then I burn it down. I have five flasks of Alchemist fire and half a dozen fire-based spells prepared.

DM: Three people come out of the forest and put out the fire with Create Water.

Me: I kill them. (I hit two with my Tigerskull Club and they both instantly drop)

DM: The third guy starts panicking and crying.

Me: I punch him in the face and demand answers.

Long story short, it ended with me hunting down and killing a cabal of Necromancers who were using the fire department as a front. All because a Catfolk Scout (Which I never found again! And am still looking for!) that kept harassing me.

[lunar2]

in a group i used to play with, we had one player who was the consistent dummy of the group.

we had a houserule that conditions such as stunned or held ended the first time you were hit. we told him about the houserule. the cleric held an ettin, and the wizard told the guy with the scythe to do a coup-de-grace. instead, he charged and hit it.


of course, the next spell the cleric cast was to hold him, and let the ettin get his revenge.

[Flickerdart]

In my second ever D&D game, I summoned a celestial badger to test the safety of some suspicious looking ground. The DM ruled that the badger didn't want to risk it, the fighter tried to grab the badger and throw it in, but the badger ran away and attracted the notice of some unpleasantly violent golems.

[ryu]

In my second ever D&D game, I summoned a celestial badger to test the safety of some suspicious looking ground. The DM ruled that the badger didn't want to risk it, the fighter tried to grab the badger and throw it in, but the badger ran away and attracted the notice of some unpleasantly violent golems.

You see? This is what happens when you don't fluff badgers as disguised captain planet. All badgers. Even the homebrew badger aberrations.

[Razanir]

"These are not the prisoners you're looking for..." *rolls bluff and succeeds*

[Volos]

As a DM I've had to start rolling a D1 for some of the more retarded questions my players have thrown my way. "Can I use the enlarged Barbarian as an improvised weapon, then cast enlarge on myself making my weapon Barbarian bigger and then..." The player hears a THUD from my side of the DM's screen. My face goes thusly: :smallconfused:. "Yeah, that'd be a no." With my patented D1, all the answers are no. (The D1 is a large ball bearing)

Some of the stupidness I have seen as a DM coming from my players...
-A full caster challenging a boss to a one on one melee-only duel
-A Barbarian taking on a full caster in a one on one not melee-only duel
-The entire PC group deciding that they do not need to rest when everyone is on single digit HP and no one has anything higher than a 1st level spell left
-One player in particular who asks to wield other players as weapons, tries to jump across 100ft ravines without magical aid, would rather attack a building than a clear threat, refuses magical healing simply on a whim even though this puts him a single strike from death, and such forth

As a player recently I've had a DM who insists on making his own adventures from scratch. He is new at running a game and is the aforementioned player who asked about wielding a Barbarian. When building his custom adventure he didn't take into account the classes or abilities of the PCs running in his campaign. And he refuses to fudge rolls or change scenarios regardless. DMs must adapt, otherwise everyone is going to have a bad time. Instead we're stuck with a Druid who doesn't know how to prepare or cast spells, a Barbarian who is using two-weapon fighting and shield bashing instead of a big two-handed weapon. and a wizard who made his spell selections based on what his DM told him to prepare for even though that is the exact opposite of what they are facing. :smallfurious:

[Bullet06320]

in a vampire larp,
I managed to rat out all the vampires to the local werewolves,
botched a robbery so bad, that an entire shopping mall burned down,
destroyed a gang and our influence with it
and pretended to be a lost german tourist, more than once
not my finest moments gaming, but rather entertaining, lol

had a guy kill my new character in revenge, for killing his last character(which was done completely incharacter), of course after coupdegarcing my new character while he was sleep, while standing over the dead body, holding bloody kukris in hand, starts yelling and screaming at the corpse, waking the rest of the party, which promptly kills him

while running a game, we had a character that got in sum legal trouble, and was sentenced to sweep up the courtyard of the castle for a week, well, while sweeping, he decides to escape and climb over the wall, taking his broom with him, and decides to continue sweeping all the way back to where the rest of the party was staying, the guards just followed the clean sweep trail, and rearrested him, lol