Stupid things players have done that turned out to be very useful

[KoDT69]

As the title says, what have you or your players done out of stupidity, boredom, spite, whatever that ended up with a positive outcome?

A Batman Wizard decided that a Succubus was not worth his spell slots so he used his initiative to backhand her in the face, thinking it would do nothing but the rest of the party had it handled. He rolled a 20 and we had some critical hit tables. He basically B****slapped her back from whence she came!

2 Rogues ditched out of a guard job to get drunk around a fountain where a minstrel band was warming up for a show that evening. They offered the band to play music for them to dance to instead of playing the regular show, doubling the salary which was exceedingly high but they never questioned it. They were actually Assassins going after the lord of the house, but were paid off by drunk Rogues who ditched security detail but still did their job!

[Karl Aegis]

I stabbed the wall and it started bleeding. Fey are weird sometimes.

[EdrickVonHaslen]

A first level 3.5 party of which I was a part (Wizard, I think, but it doesn't have much bearing except for the floating disk) took an egregious amount of time running logistics on the efficacy of toting around a warehouse supply of empty barrels come upon in a spare room of *insert dungeon here*. Wound up floating-disking them around and dragging them on makeshift sleds (made of spare barrel parts) to what end we hadn't the foggiest. They just seemed useful, and by the gods we hadn't gotten ANY treasure after three sessions so we were of a mind to MAKE some dadgummit treasure if we had to. There was talk of skinning kobolds for their hides and questions as to their current market value so that we might sell them to a cobbler for shoe material.

At any rate, we're carrying around a crap-ton of empty barrels as well as our collective chip at just how empty they all are when we come upon a bottleneck hallway leading into the next room/vestibule/inner sanctum. We scooby-doo stop and totem-pole peek around the corner, and find out we haven't been spotted by what appears to be a contingent of human guards populating the coming room/abattoir/murder-hobo-shootin'-gallery.

We formulate an elaborate plan to stack the barrels two ply and up to the ceiling and begin slowly pushing them down the hallway. The bad guys cotton to it pretty quick and charge up to do some hands-on, preemptive guarding, but with our improvised cover, we make hard targets. Long story short, those empty barrels gave us enough of an edge with a couple reach weapons and ranged attacks that we got through an ECL 3-4 encounter without nary a scratch at first level with four PCs.

The barrels further served to trip some nasty traps, hold some doors fast, and provide rolling, loud, and fortuitous distractions throughout the rest of the dungeon. We even wound up taking a rest in them as a sort of natural camo.

[frogglesmash]

One time a friend of mine ran a brief pseudo-d&d dungeon crawl campaign where any action you took had what seemed like a 50/50 chance of ending in death (we knew what we were getting into so it was alright). At one point I got really tired of being super cautious so I said **** it, and leapt -weapon drawn- down a well. As luck would have it I landed sword first on a Balor's skull, killing it instantly while simultaneously cushioning my landing enough enough to prevent my demise.

[Mystral]

My level 2 character (wizard, D&D 4) was once confronted with a big demon. Like, tall as a city wall, and able to walk right trough one. Titan big. She had been given some sort of magical flask that was supposed to be used to fight demons, but I failed to ask how exactly those things were to be used (I just assumed it would be like holy water, only far stronger).

As the DM told me later, she was supposed to unstopper the flask, and some sort of divine being would jump out and fight the demons. But, failing to know that, my character did the logical thing and mage-handed the flask into the mouth of the demon. The DM asked me to roll to hit, I guess he assumed i would miss, the flask would shatter and the being would jump out. Sadly, or luckily, I rolled a 20 and the flask landed square in the middle of the demons mouth, making it implode. The DM had to take a break there, resting his head on his hands in exasparation.

Also, I levelled.

[LastOblivion]

When our party was split i told the ranger that was with me to leave a mark next to the secret door the evil wizard lead us through (I had marked the last one with blood and doing it a second time could alert the wizard to what i was plotting). The ranger had not be paying attention to what was doing at all, so he was oblivious to what i was trying to do. The ranger dropped his pants and left a "mark" right on the wall. When the evil wizard tried to ask why on earth he did it he told him that "marking his territory" was just a ranger thing and the wizard would not understand.

Later when the rest of the party was fleeing through the tunnels from an undead hoard, they were easily able to find the secret door in time thanks to the druid's wolf smelling the ranger's "markings." That's how our ranger saved the party for the first and only time.

[EdrickVonHaslen]

A misunderstanding between two of my players in a homebrew setting I was running set the stage for what amounts to one of the greatest displays of muderhobo idealism I've ever witnessed.

Party is thus: Ranger (archer), Scout/Barbarian/Cleric of Erythnul (pinball dervish), Knight/Paladin of Tyrrany (Face Tank), and I think there was a wizard or somesuch.

They come upon a town in the efforts of following some lead about a smuggling ring modeled much after the black wizard factory hamlet in FFIX. Basically an aboveground town and belowground secret laboratory/factory where all the men worked during the day. The lack of men around leads the players to suspicion and some strange attempts at philandery with the women. Not important. They get a bee in their bonnet about the inconsistencies in the town and go to see the mayor with the idea that they're the 'Big Damn (anti)Heores' and he should 'help them with their inquiries.' He shuts them down at the door with excuses that he doesn't have time to entertain guests due to the needs of his invalid son. Offers them the hospitality of the town and points them in the direction of someone who can show them about and slams the door in their face.

Ignoring his advice, they begin to investigate and generally poke about on their own. Find a secret entrance to the underground factory. Decide that 'diplomacy' is a good idea. Their diplomacy SOP consists of holding a sword in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

The Knight kicks in the door of the Mayor's house and the Ranger rushes in, grabs his invalid son off the couch while the Pinball holds back the Mayor, and drags the poor soul to the town center which consists of a well and a large distress bell. He then begins to ring the bell loudly as the party joins him, mayor in tow.

A crowd gathers around as the Ranger holds the kid at arrow point. Cue diplomacy tactics. "Show us the factory or the kid gets it. Don't wander off or the kid gets it. Don't sneeze or the kid gets it. Then we start on all of you."

pullingmyhairoutbutwthi'llrollwithit.jpeg

Pinball turns to the Ranger and says, "Follow me. If you lose sight of me for more than two minutes, kill him."

Ranger hears, "If I'm not back in two minutes, Kill 'em"

Rest of the party and a couple townsfolk head off down the underground structure to investigate and get caught up in an encounter with the defense mechanisms while the Ranger sits tight holding the draw on the kid. At this point I say nothing, having noticed a discrepancy between what they had planned and what was transpiring. This was their game now, and really I was just fleshing out the world.

Two minutes pass and the Ranger looks around before shrugging and coo-da-grawing the invalid. He then looks up at the towns folk and says, "Whelp. This is what you call 'guilty by association,'" and proceeds to take aim at the nearest kid. He nat 20's twice and I flavor the moment with wide eyes and, "You lift him from the ground and peg him to a tree." He continues to fire off shot after shot with the idea that 'If you shoot the children first, the parents will come back and I wont have to chase them.'

The rest come up after the encounter and wonder at all the destruction and at the Ranger chilling out on the side of the well. The Ranger pipes up, "I have a new idea. Let's kill the rest of these guys, take their s***, and use this place as a base of operations."

...And they did, really.

[Chronos]

Here's one from way back in 2nd edition days: We had spotted a bandit ambush on the road ahead in time to avoid triggering it. The party rogue offered to sneak up on them, which seemed a good idea to the rest of us. Except that the party rogue was a kender, and his idea of "sneaking up" involved skipping gaily right down the middle of the road, wearing bright-colored clothes, and whistling loudly off-key.

It worked. The bandits, of course, focused all of their attention on the kender, and did what anyone who's ever met a kender tries to do to them, but apparently the random number gods were busy laughing their butts off, and every single attack the bandits made missed. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was able to close with them unmolested, and beat them.

[atemu1234]

Got drunk at a strip club. Stumbled upon a drug dealer working for an organization runned by the BBEG.

[Rhyltran]

So we had a party member in our group that was a fighter. The guy's girlfriend got him to try out D&D for the first time (which he ended up enjoying despite thinking he wouldn't) and decided that his character was going to be evil. He drove us nuts because a lot of his antics led us into getting in a lot more trouble than we would have had he not existed due to him being the worst murder hobo I've ever seen in my time playing D&D.

So we're talking to this mindflayer that is severely wounded (we're still mostly low levels) and it explains in it's own way that the ruins we were exploring was more of an elaborate tomb where no one escapes. He begins explaining that the thing in the ruins is even smarter than his own species. At this point we inquire more asking what exactly he meant by that but murder hobo fighter decides he's bored standing around listening to the mindflayer talk and asks to roll initiative. He defeats the mindflayer's roll, the rest of the party's roll, and rolls a Natural 20 to hit. A confirmation roll is made and he gets a critical hit killing the mindflayer.

We found out later that the mindflayer had a method of escaping (it had a ring of invisibility). We got there just after he had been injured not giving him time to heal. That the fighter saved us from a very nasty fight with his lack of patience. While he got us into more trouble than we would have been most of the time he also did things similar to the above which worked out. Most of the party was on the evil/neutral spectrum so we tolerated him.

Come to think of it another famous incident involved us being lost in a system of tunnels. We had a native resident acting as a guide and the guide proved to be very useful. Even helped us in some difficult parts. At some point we all ended up in critical condition in a major fight that I will spare the details of. The only one left standing was the fighter and Druid but the druid didn't come with us. The fighter gave an exasperated sigh in real life then plainly asked to roll initiative. We knew where this was going and became annoyed with him ooc (most of us liked the guide)

He decided to kill the guide for one simple reason. He didn't like his manner of speaking (accent). Turns out the guide was paid to get our trust and eventually lead us into a trap. We didn't know this and neither did he. His murder hobo behavior once again inadvertently saved the party. Oh, and he wasn't left standing because he was powerful (he was on the lower end of our party. The weakest member actually) it was because he was deemed the least threatening and survived on that basis.

[HolyCouncilMagi]

In the preantepenultimate session of a campaign I was running about a year ago, the party was fighting against the Big Bad of the campaign, with the Big Good's second-in-command (who they had taken a very great liking to throughout the campaign) helping out. The party wizard had recently invented and was currently maintaining a spell specifically designed to weaken the Big Bad, giving the rest of the party enough of an edge to fight him on mostly equal ground, and some lucky rolls added up to him being overpowered. He had known about the wizard's spell, and was counting on his lieutenant showing up to help him out (I ran a turn timer for how long it would take), and based on who had taken how much damage, the lieutenant ended up going for the Big Good's second-in-command to finish him as he arrived... But one of the PCs, whose player was hopelessly idealistic, had actually just gone next to the second-in-command with a readied action because he wanted to stop the finishing blow from going out, hoping to spare the BBEG and help him reform. (This same BBEG had personally killed thousands, several of whom the party knew. What the player was thinking, I had no idea.) This put him in exactly the right position to save the second-in-command from the lieutenant's surprise attack, and while the BBEG did manage to escape, they defeated the lieutenant without anybody dying. This, in turn, meant the second-in-command was alive to show up during the final fight against the BBEG and hold him off while the PCs defeated the Divine Essence he had summoned and used to make himself immortal (they would've fought both of them at the same time, with the BBEG immune to harm at first, otherwise).

So trying to spare the mighty spellcaster and mass murderer, who tried to kill them, their loved ones, and tons of other people for personal gain, resulted in them getting to keep a powerful ally, whose help allowed them to fight the two main enemies of the campaign's final fight separately instead of both at once.

A job well done for the idiot, I suppose.

[lytokk]

Party came up to an ogre who had miserably failed his hide check in order to ambush the party. For flavors sake, I said the ogre was "hiding" behind a bush that was several size categories too small. Party was level 3 or 4, and with the lack of an ambush, would have been a cakewalk for the party. I decided to give him a level in barbarian just to bring the difficulty up a scootch. The party prepped, when the druid stepped forward, and summoned a squid to give the ogre a cookie. So, what we've got is a raging ogre, charging the party, only to be intercepted by a squid with a cookie.

What the party didn't know was that the entire tribe of ogres was being mind controlled by a succubus trapped in an amulet. I felt that a situation like that would trigger a will save just for the pure WTF moment. Thanks to the +2 to will saves from raging, the ogre made his save against the suggestion from the succubus. The party got some information, and sent the ogre back to the closest thing to an authority they could find.

Had the ogre not been mind controlled, it more than likely would have just rushed past the creature and attacked the party.