Well, THAT was dumb...

[TrashTrash]

In my D&D group, there's a kid who's pretty naive in character. This has resulted in multiple close calls, most of which involve him almost dying.

A sampler of these incidents includes:
- trying to fight Thor for no apparent reason
- Annoying and then getting beat up by racist city guards after we told him they were racist
- almost cutting a climbing rope that we all needed to use to escape a dungeon ("But the [giant spiders] will climb up it!" We had to explain that he needed to let us get out before cutting the rope.)

We wouldn't have made it out of several sticky situations without him, but 2/3 of these situations are mostly his character's fault.

This brings me to the point of this thread: What's the dumbest thing a character in your party has done?

[nickl_2000]

You know you can stop another character from talking. My current PC has a 6 charisma and isn't a genius either, he is extremely direct and extremely blunt in his interactions. The other PCs have literally grappled him, gagged him, and dragged him out of a room before. It was part of the fun (but I am pretty careful not to push it to far, since I don't want to tick off my fellow players)


Although the most memorable from this campaign may have been the bard. "I cast disguise self to disguise myself as a bear." Suffice to say, it didn't work

[sithlordnergal]

Sooo, dumb things caused by me. There are a few:

- During a Curse of Strahd campaign, I accidentally caused a forest fire that destroyed over half of Barovia, then blew up Strahd's castle.


- During an out of the abyss campaign, I set a temple of Lloth on fire, set a drow outpost on fire, drew a bunch of demons to said outpost with Thamaturgy, made a bet that I lost that made me lose my hand, and set the lift to the ground on fire after we had reached the ground...and that was just the opening chapter.

I later went on to steal from an elderly Brunor Battlehammer by tricking him into thinking he owed the party money, defaced several Lloth temples, angered an Arch-Wizard so badly he decided to kill us, made a deal with/summoned the Archdevil Zariel to the Material Plane, worked to stab Zariel in the back, almost broke an NPC's mind by casting Zone of Truth while she could only tell lies, and attempted to turn the core of a Demon Lord into a WMD because we learned it drove anyone who touched it completely insane and hurt them. And that was while I was a Cleric and later Paladin.


- During one game I had a Fighter/Wizard and whoooo boy, the things he did. We were playing through Tales of the Yawning Portal, and we started with Sunless Citadel, then went into Forge of Fury. Throughout the course of those adventures he allied himself with thew kobolds, betrayed them to help a young white dragon to kill them all, betrayed and murdered the dragon after the kobolds were dead, and murdered every single goblin, to and including the non-combatant women and children that gave 0 exp, in the entire dungeon.

He later cast thunderwave while at 1 hp in the middle of an Orc tribe's cave, and forced a massive fight with every single orc in the dungeon all at once. He survived through the entire thing with 1 hp.


- Not directly my fault, but I played a stealth mission with a Bard/Wild Magic Sorcerer. During the first encounter my wild magic went off twice, I rolled a 01 which caused it to go off for one minute. During that minute I hit the Cleric with a 5th level magic missile, Confusion, I poisoned the Dwarf with no save, I glowed brightly with enough light to blind a person next to me, caused music to play around me, and gave myself a beard of feathers. Later on in that same module I cast a fireball in a 15 by 15 foot room, then next round I caused each creature within 30 feet of me to take 1d10 necrotic damage and healed myself with it. The uh...the party weren't happy with me.


- Again not directly my fault, but I helped cause some chaos by convincing a DM to give a Tabaxi Rogue/Monk the Boots of Speed, then cast Haste on the Tabaxi. Speed shenanigans were had.

[holywhippet]

In the first session of a D&D campaign I was in we ran into our first battle. To be fair we hadn't yet worked out what we were facing but the party bard decided he'd toss his sleep spell at them. IIRC there were two party members in the range of the spell as well. One was my paladin who, being a half-elf, was immune and the other was the bard himself. Unfortunately for him we were facing zombies who are also immune to the spell. So the bard cast his spell and immediately dropped asleep.

[Corran]

In my D&D group, there's a kid who's pretty naive in character. This has resulted in multiple close calls, most of which involve him almost dying.

A sampler of these incidents includes:
- trying to fight Thor for no apparent reason
- Annoying and then getting beat up by racist city guards after we told him they were racist
- almost cutting a climbing rope that we all needed to use to escape a dungeon ("But the [giant spiders] will climb up it!" We had to explain that he needed to let us get out before cutting the rope.)
Horrible... though, such goofy moments are the sort of things that we tend to remember when reminiscing about old campaign ime. They always provide a healthy laugh.


This brings me to the point of this thread: What's the dumbest thing a character in your party has done?
Don't know where to start and where to finish. I'll just mention my own ''proudest'' moment. Now, I'll say that it was a bit intentional, but if you take into account the consequences, it is the single thing that haunts me the most. PC's are kind of murderhobo (I am playing one of them). So they come across 3 soldiers patrolling outside a city where we were heading. Guards are a bit rude, so my character replies in kind and the whole thing starts escalating. Guards want to arrest my character, the other pc's get in the way to stop them, while trying to defuse the situation. Meanwhile, my character (who was an evil spoiled noble brat) continues insulting the guards (rolling checks to see if they will lose their temper). Things turn violent, we seem about to lose, but my character deals the killing blow to the captain f the 3 guards. I decide it is non lethal damage. I describe it as my character disarming the captain of the guards and having him on his mercy (all this with the blessings of the DM's of course). So, because we were about to lose the fight, I naturally have my character start negotiating an end to the violence (speaking to the two other guards while having their captain at ''gun point''). So in the middle of his sentence, and before the guards react, I have my character regret it and say ''sc**w it'', and cut of the captain's throat. Fight resumes, we lose and get arrested. Session ends, DM tells us that next session there will be a trial. Now, the group had some good cards to negotiate with the judges. So we sit at the table, another player asks me if I had thought anything clever and convincing that my character would say at the trial, hoping that we could make at least some case for ourselves and be spared of the worst. I nod full of confidence. Session starts, eventually the trial is underway. At some point, the judge turns to the pc's and asks if someone has anything to say. The honor falls to my pc (because he had good charisma skills and was a noble; on the other hand, evil alignment and not the wisest of the bunch). My pc, who was used all his life to get away with every ****ty thing he did (at least where he grew up) because he was a noble, starts talking in impatient way. He told them that all this was a farse, and commanded them to stop wasting his valuable time, announce whatever fine he would have to pay for killing the guard, threatened the judges for the fine to not be too high, and demanded all that to be done at once so that he could leave because he was bored. I still remember the looks the other players gave me... it was a **** move, I'll admit. So the pc's get sent to an island prison immediately, where they are to remain for the rest of their lives.

Next session, we tried to escape the island prison. We got TPK'd while trying to escape. And this haunts me.... we could have done a better job at escaping!

[ProsecutorGodot]

The DM didn't want us interfering with the beholder tournament that Halaster holds after you clear out one of the floors in Undermountain so he had the beholder encased in probably prismatic wall. For all I know it was supposed to be entirely indestructible and unable to be dispelled. It was not a forcecage though.

We set about dispelling the wall, the task being near impossible anyway, and about 3 layers in Halaster comes in personally to tell us to stop. I choose not to because I don't want to deal with another Death Tyrant on the trip back down. We're already injured, heading back up, and the DM takes that as an invitation to have Halaster cast Meteor Swarm at us. Which we counterspell, then the DM tries to have him cast it again.

Between my Paladin's strict dislike of undead and the fact that Halaster had indoctrinated one of the previous PC's into being his "apprentice" (we have yet to find a trace of her since then) he wasn't in his "usual talk it out" mood.

My mistake was that I challenged the DM's railroading us into a second death tyrant fight with an epic level wizard. If one of the players hadn't been playing their Bard character that session we wouldn't have had a very good chance of counterspelling a meteor swarm and Halasters attempted counterspell of the counterspell. It would have been an incredibly bitter TPK from all sides.

[Huwman]

Be me >dragonborn paladin
>investigating dungeon of a tower
>room filled with black flammable liquid and growling noises from within
>all attempts to scout the room fail with familiars being snapped up by mystery creature in the dark
>breath weapon ignites the black liquid and causes the tower to start burning and falling down around us
... Never did find out what was in the room

[elyktsorb]

A fighter picked up an evil sword that was always trying to take over them to go on a killing spree, and they told no one. So in the middle of the night on a ship, all of a sudden the sword wins and said fighter murders another fighter who had been sleeping, and then murders a rogue who had been sleeping, then they come out on the deck. I was keeping watch for the night, and I was a ranger, as soon as the possessed fighter went to attack our monk who was also up cause they were an elf, I put arrows into him and took him down. We then brought everyone up with a quick healing spell, but then the fighters player tells us their sword has a property of making people unable to heal after it hits them, which they had thankfully forgotten about. Out of character I was annoyed because this person really didn't care that they almost killed two other characters, and in character I went on a huge tirade telling them to get rid of the sword after we found out it had been possessing them.

I ended up quitting that game a few weeks later because honestly this was the biggest dumb moment, but there were plenty of little ones here and there and a few other annoying things that caused me to leave.

[DarkKnightJin]

- Again not directly my fault, but I helped cause some chaos by convincing a DM to give a Tabaxi Rogue/Monk the Boots of Speed, then cast Haste on the Tabaxi. Speed shenanigans were had.

Tabaxi Rogue/Monk. With Boots of Speed. And Haste. How high was the speed in feet per round if you went all-out?
Pretty sure you at least approached speeds that would get you a fine. If they can catch you..

[sithlordnergal]

Tabaxi Rogue/Monk. With Boots of Speed. And Haste. How high was the speed in feet per round if you went all-out?
Pretty sure you at least approached speeds that would get you a fine. If they can catch you..

Well, the DM just thought all speed stacked at the time. So whenever the Tabaxi's speed doubled, we doubled their current movement speed. So lets see, I think he had Mobile too, cause this was an AL character from Storm King's Thunder back before they removed gold. So he always had 30 healing potions. His speed was...55 from Monk/Mobile, 110 from Boots of Speed, 220 from Haste, and 440 from Tabaxi Speed. And he could Dash three times due to Haste, Action, Bonus Action.

So about 1,760 feet every other round, or 293.3333 feet per second, or 199.99 MPH. Which, according to the internet, is about 9.12 G's. T

he DM only realized what he had done after it was too late. Funny part is we ran into a puzzle that required a lot of movement. A massive room filling up with poisonous gas, and you had to flip four switches to turn off the gas and open the door. Normally it would have taken a party several rounds to do and you'd poison damage. The Tabaxi did it in about 4 rounds at most.

[Huwman]

Well, the DM just thought all speed stacked at the time. So whenever the Tabaxi's speed doubled, we doubled their current movement speed. So lets see, I think he had Mobile too, cause this was an AL character from Storm King's Thunder back before they removed gold. So he always had 30 healing potions. His speed was...55 from Monk/Mobile, 110 from Boots of Speed, 220 from Haste, and 440 from Tabaxi Speed. And he could Dash three times due to Haste, Action, Bonus Action.

So about 1,760 feet every other round, or 293.3333 feet per second, or 199.99 MPH. Which, according to the internet, is about 9.12 G's. T

he DM only realized what he had done after it was too late. Funny part is we ran into a puzzle that required a lot of movement. A massive room filling up with poisonous gas, and you had to flip four switches to turn off the gas and open the door. Normally it would have taken a party several rounds to do and you'd poison damage. The Tabaxi did it in about 4 rounds at most. man this makes me want to build a sonic the tabaxi character

[DarkKnightJin]

Well, the DM just thought all speed stacked at the time. So whenever the Tabaxi's speed doubled, we doubled their current movement speed. So lets see, I think he had Mobile too, cause this was an AL character from Storm King's Thunder back before they removed gold. So he always had 30 healing potions. His speed was...55 from Monk/Mobile, 110 from Boots of Speed, 220 from Haste, and 440 from Tabaxi Speed. And he could Dash three times due to Haste, Action, Bonus Action.

So about 1,760 feet every other round, or 293.3333 feet per second, or 199.99 MPH. Which, according to the internet, is about 9.12 G's. T

he DM only realized what he had done after it was too late. Funny part is we ran into a puzzle that required a lot of movement. A massive room filling up with poisonous gas, and you had to flip four switches to turn off the gas and open the door. Normally it would have taken a party several rounds to do and you'd poison damage. The Tabaxi did it in about 4 rounds at most.

He's not wrong.
Haste, Boots, and the Tabaxi burst of speed all say you double your movement speed. And this doubling stacks.
It's just that the Tabaxi burst requires standing still for a round to recharge. And Dashing allows to move your move speed once more. This includes the doubling that Haste, Boots, and possibly Tabaxi gives as well.

[Chronos]

There was a trapdoor in the floor that we were trying to open, but it was stuck. Low-wis character tried to get it un-stuck by jumping on it. She succeeded.

[nickl_2000]

There was a trapdoor in the floor that we were trying to open, but it was stuck. Low-wis character tried to get it un-stuck by jumping on it. She succeeded.

That player gets inspiration for that one!

[Imbalance]

Less about stupid choices as dumb luck with cursed items, I had donned a suit of looted magic plate armor to attune to it, only to find that it could not be removed and demanded blood from the wearer's slain enemies to avoid starving to death. Eventually got out of it, ate like a pig.

Later, found a nice bag in a treasure chest, reached in to check for contents, arm goes deeper than the bottom, I'm like, "yeah!" Ooc round, DM did a thing with dice, gave a look. Back to me, I ask if I need to attune to it. He says, "give me a strength check.":smallannoyed:

[KorvinStarmast]

I seem to recall that I mentioned this a while back, but back in AD&D 1e, we ran the Frost Giant module and the monk ended up activating the whole darned necklace of missiles (aka fireballs).


If the necklace is being worn or carried by a character who fails his or her saving throw versus a magical fire attack, the item must undergo a saving throw check as well. If it fails to sove, all remaining missiles detonate simultaneously.

Due to a slight miscalcultation of 'position' the monk threw one of the fireball thingies form the necklace and ended up inside the blast radius. So he had to make a saving throw. So he failed. And then they all blew up.

It was a spectacular/hilarious failure.

[Peelee]

Ooooo! A chance to break out Airbear!

I was the dumb one. Long story short (and good story told poorly), I was running a Sorc, and the party came across a group of Dire Bears. I go up to mine, and teleport us both one mile straight up. I then climb around onto the dire bear's back, grab a tuft of fur with one hand, "stand up" on its back, and start wailing on it with my electric whip, effectively surfing the bear down. The party finishes with the rest, and are trying to find out where I went. Well, one of them spots us high up but rapidly getting closer, at which time I make a realization, and Message them "So, uh, I never actually learned Feather Fall." At the last second, due to the rest of the party not being able to help (due to no fault of their own, and after great hilarity in their attempts to fix it), we decided that teleporting conserved momentum, so I teleported myself five feet east and upside down just before hitting the ground (successful Concentration check), and turned midair to land on my feet, only I stumbled on landing (juuuuuuust missed it Tumble check). The bear splatters against the ground in an unsettling explosion, showering us all in blood and guts. So, I did the only thing I could do. All in-character, looked straight at the rest of the party, put one hand up and the other out, and said in the shakiest voice I could, ".......tadaaaa."

Took about ten minutes for the laughter to finally die down, and the legend of Air Bear was born. Legends say a good DM will to this day have a night watch see a bear falling out of the sky off in the distance every other campaign or so.

[sithlordnergal]

Ohh!! There was a dumb moment during Tomb of Annihilation. Two moments actually, and they all involved traps.

- My personal favorite one is one where I nearly TPK'd the party...not by setting off a trap but by being a trap. I had scouted into a room with a throne at one end, some zombie painters, a small room at the very back. I go up, touch the chair, and the DM asks me to roll a Charisma Save. I rolled a 0, due to dumping my charisma and rolling a 1, and the DM slides me a small piece of paper. It informs me I gain 50 temp HP, and must attack the nearest creature.

The party entered the room to find me fighting the Zombie Painters, and a Zombie T-Rex. Not realizing my Moon Druid was cursed, most of the party began fighting the zombies with me, while two members went to search the back room. Things were going well, I had gotten knocked out of my usual form and had become a Giant Scorpion, the Zombie T-Rex was about to fall, and the party in the back had found a full necklace of fireballs.

Well, that's when everything went wrong. The Rogue managed to get the killing blow on the T-Rex and moved over to me, unaware that I was still cursed. The Monk, who was with the Warlock in the other room, put on the necklace of fireballs and found out it was cursed. Every single fireball exploded at once, knocking out the warlock and nearly K.O.ing the Monk.

After that it was my turn, and I immediately attacked the Rogue due to the curse. I got two crits, one with a claw and one with my tail, and instantly K.O.ed him, then moved to the Wizard to attack her. I ended up being one of the deadliest encounters in the adventure, and almost killed the party.


- The next one involved a different trap, where the DM ruled that because I was a beast thanks to Wild Shape, I was immune to traps that effected Humanoids. I would enter a room, search for traps, find nothing, and then the Fighter would come in and fall for the trap. The worst was this mirror that made a deadly, shadow version of yourself. I entered the room, but never actually looked at the mirror, avoiding the trap entirely. The Fighter peeked in, and was instantly K.O.ed I basically Mr. Magooed my way through the entire floor.

[DarkKnightJin]

Ooooo! A chance to break out Airbear!

I was the dumb one. Long story short (and good story told poorly), I was running a Sorc, and the party came across a group of Dire Bears. I go up to mine, and teleport us both one mile straight up. I then climb around onto the dire bear's back, grab a tuft of fur with one hand, "stand up" on its back, and start wailing on it with my electric whip, effectively surfing the bear down. The party finishes with the rest, and are trying to find out where I went. Well, one of them spots us high up but rapidly getting closer, at which time I make a realization, and Message them "So, uh, I never actually learned Feather Fall." At the last second, due to the rest of the party not being able to help (due to no fault of their own, and after great hilarity in their attempts to fix it), we decided that teleporting conserved momentum, so I teleported myself five feet east and upside down just before hitting the ground (successful Concentration check), and turned midair to land on my feet, only I stumbled on landing (juuuuuuust missed it Tumble check). The bear splatters against the ground in an unsettling explosion, showering us all in blood and guts. So, I did the only thing I could do. All in-character, looked straight at the rest of the party, put one hand up and the other out, and said in the shakiest voice I could, ".......tadaaaa."

Took about ten minutes for the laughter to finally die down, and the legend of Air Bear was born. Legends say a good DM will to this day have a night watch see a bear falling out of the sky off in the distance every other campaign or so.

I am stealing that as a (very rare) option for the 'Starfall' event I've got planner in my setting.
Normally it'd be a chance to get "Starmetal" after eatching a starfall, BotW style.
But now I'm gonna add a 10% chance of Air Bear to that.

[StoicLeaf]

My party (I'm the DM) were in the underdark at a trading post near the surface.
They were only passing through, they wanted to get to an old, abandoned dwarven hold. They needed a map, however, and they figured that one of the trading powers of the trading post would have one.
The Duergar wanted them to free a captive kin of theirs: "no, too much risk", they said.
There were 2 drow houses represented at this post, the guard captain of one of them would let them copy their map if they posed as slaves, participated in arena combat and absolutely murdered the champion of the other house who had won the last 5 tourneys.
They thought this was the best option and asked how all of this was to go down.

The guard captain's suggestion:
"Well I can't just put you in chains here, people will have likely seen you come in and that just wouldn't be the same.
I have a fresh delivery of slaves coming in in a few days. The accompanying guards are all mine.
You will travel towards them and identify yourselves as friends of our house and that you wish to be taken as slaves.
My guards will likely take your weapons and armor, I'll make sure to keep them safe once you arrive.
After you've won the tourney you'll be released and I'll grant you access to our maps!"

The players accepted the offer. They did not inform anyone of it.
I thought they might be planning a slave liberation once they met the incoming caravan but then they started taking off their armor, dropping their weapons and putting handcuffs on ..

[manyslayer]

I was DMing Legacy of Fire in 3.5 (the last 3.5 Paizo adventure path). The party is sneaking up on a watch tower manned by gnolls with 2 gnolls on lookout. The ranger and the rogue/sorcerer move up quietly. Ranger takes his shot and takes one out, sorcerer casts magic missile and drops the other one. All good, no alarm raised. Then the sorcerer fist-pumps the air and shouts out "BOOM BABY!" This is totally in character for the sorcerer so I don't know why the ranger player tried to strangle the sorcerer's player. :smalltongue:


In a 2nd editions D&D I was DMing and one character was a shifter (not the Eberron ones but based on some fantasy novel I had read). Basically a human that could turn into a specific animal. The shifter in my campaign was a bull type. They are going up a tower and come across a stuck door. The door was on the outside of the tower (if they had been mapping they might have noticed this). My idea was a Dexterity check to brag the edge before they went through the doorway if they shouldered it open. The character decides to change into bull form to bash it down. Cue the cow flying over the moon scene as he bashes the door down and goes flying, legs going Willie Coyote style. He survived the fall (barely).

[Laserlight]

The party was supposed to locate and rescue a particular slave. They found the noblewoman who bought him, and decided to go interview her. Except they didn't actually ask "where is this boy now?"; after a few not especially relevant questions (which she answered), they attacked. Killed her, her boyfriends, her little old lady cook, and most of her guards. The druid thoughtlessly wildshaped into a giant snake, in a city that hates and fears the serpent cult of Set, which guaranteed an even more hostile response from the city authorities than "murdering a noblewoman and her household" would have gotten. They then sent the illiterate barbarian to search the noblewoman's office for clues.
I still have no idea why they didn't just ask her what they wanted to know. Most fun campaign I've ever run but there was no point in doing much planning, as the players would invariably do something else.

Different campaign. The characters find the place where the sky meets the ground, and meet the caretaker god who is trying to refill the holes where stars have fallen out. He tells them, in so many words, "Do not look through the holes in the sky, for there are Things in the void beyond."
The warlock looks anyway, which is fine, I'd expected that's how he'd make his pact. But another player also decides her character will look. She has no CHA to speak of, and gets infected by a larval Great Old One. And doesn't tell anyone. Goes out of her way to conceal it, in fact, despite the fact that she knows she's losing control to the GOO.

[Tanarii]

Party has no darkvision, and is in a lit room, and they know there are crossbow armed Kobolds down a dark hallway exiting it, and are hiding around the corners.

1st level Monk's player: "I jump out in front of the hallway." Followed by demonstrating his character's braced pose, legs planted, arms out and ready to fight.

A hail of crossbow bolts later, he had a new nickname. Dirt-eater.

[PhoenixPhyre]

A player once flew her hippogryph straight over where we knew there were bow-armed bandits. It died in a hail of fire arrows.

In a very different game, I had a 2nd level paladin go charging into a den of a hibernating dire yeti despite my encouragement to think again. I even gave him several rounds of it stretching, yawning, and generally being big and hungry before it attacked and one-shot him. I then described the chomping, chewing sounds as it ate him out of his armor.