A deadly combination: Our group's min/maxing moron.

[Tough Butter]

I set up this thread for only two reasons. To laugh/vent over one of the relentless players in our group, yet also to see if you playgrounders have similar stories.

When me and my teenage friends were learning a new system to stray away from D&D, we decided to try a G.U.R.P.S. campaign for zombies, set in 1986 Tokyo.

It looked to be really fun, and my co-DM decided to take full responsibility for this one, so I could play, too.

So we roll up our characters and then each present them to the DM. We have:

Me, a pickpocket and single dad from Manhattan who moved away with his son to leave his past behind

A university professor with hemophilia that can swing a bat well

An ER physician, nothing much as he was a new player

And finally, we have A.

A was an MMA turned WWE superstar legend that when the bombs fell, mutated into a half-zombie with massive strength, jumping height, and near-invunerability. He toted a full size basketball net with the pole.

Gurps was not designed to have a team this one sided. And our DM certainly payed the price for it.

With lots of whining and convincing that this character will bring interesting role play opertunities, A gets let in. A has not yet role played. His one big disadvantage, was the he mutated a rare form of MS, causing him to go brain dead every once and a while. What we didn't know was that he could choose when to have it happen, and would only use it to get out of role playing.

Anyway, my main irk with A was last session.

We had formed a band of survivors and were moving to a new base in uptown Tokyo when we encountered a group of policemen swarmed by a large amount of zombies. After a small amount of fighting in this plaza, I dived into an empty restaurant to form some makeshift molotovs. I emerged with plenty (Very High roll) and our team let loose. Of course A was busy RKOing the zombies in the centre of the horde, and catches on fire.

Realizing the destructive potential of fire, A demands I give him the lighter, which I do, and starts lighting stuff up. The zombies swarm the party and I end up next to A, who lights me on fire and knocks me down to low HP. He's also on fire.

The zombies are thinning out, but we don't think the party will make it. I then am reminded and yell out to A:

"Use the extinguisher! You used it as a battering ram once!"

To which a says with a dead serious face:

"Right! I light the fire extinguisher on fire!"

...what...

He then rolls.

Crit. Crit. Crit. 3 Crits.

It explodes instantly. DM then ends the session.

Ooh boy, can anybody else relate to these players? Got stories of their own? I can't wait to hear the answers!

TLDR: Player wants hack and slash to the extreme. Party burning alive, lights fire extinguisher on fire, 3 Crits, party dies.

[Fri]

That's honestly pretty amazing.

[RazorChain]

Well I must put the sole blame on the GM this time. Gurps has a lot of room in character creation and the GM has to decide what to allow. Even if you build a character with 150 points + 75 from quirks disads then you can easily break the system by buying advantages that only belong in a super powered game.

[Mr Beer]

GURPS needs careful GM-ing with character design.

BTW it's a terrible system for D&D-style min/maxing because any seriously low Basic Attributes will leave you horribly vulnerable and most high point Disadvantages are dangerous, well, disadvantages.

[thedanster7000]

Shouldn't have let him munchkin like that in GURPS, considering it's possible to get an attack that kills anything you choose instantly within about 3 of our universe's span for about 40 points. Especially in a zombie game, it's just not appropriate.

I want to play a GURPS zombies game now though...

[SethoMarkus]

I'm just hung up on the fire extinguisher catching on fire I know they can explode in certain conditions (mostly pressure), but I don't think a cigarette lighter can set the metal casing on fire like that...

But yeah, as much as the player is being an unrelenting munchkin, the DM is the one that decides what is or is not allowed...

[Flickerdart]

I'm just hung up on the fire extinguisher catching on fire I know they can explode in certain conditions (mostly pressure), but I don't think a cigarette lighter can set the metal casing on fire like that...

It can totally happen.

[Slipperychicken]

But yeah, as much as the player is being an unrelenting munchkin, the DM is the one that decides what is or is not allowed...

Well I must put the sole blame on the GM this time. Gurps has a lot of room in character creation and the GM has to decide what to allow. Even if you build a character with 150 points + 75 from quirks disads then you can easily break the system by buying advantages that only belong in a super powered game.

I agree completely. However, it takes some courage and confidence as a GM to tell a player no, especially when this person is your friend and will not stop bitching until you do what he wants. If you're not used to telling people no, it's hard to do. It looks like the GM in this case was a teenager without that much experience GMing, so I definitely sympathize with him.

I think the GM should not have allowed this player to use the character that he did, but at the same time I think he deserves a little slack given the circumstances.

[Koo Rehtorb]

This is what you get for playing GURPS.

[SethoMarkus]

I think the GM should not have allowed this player to use the character that he did, but at the same time I think he deserves a little slack given the circumstances.

Oh, certainly. I'm not trying to say "Bad, GM! Bad!" Everyone at the table is at least partially responsible since it seems that they were expecting different types of games. That said, I don't think anyone, GM or munchkin player included, were in the wrong. If everyone were on board for that, a "Hulk smash zombie!" style game sounds hilariously enjoyable! I don't see enough information to accuse the player of intentionally trying to disrupt the game, or to call the GM out for doing a poor job. Mistakes were made and lessons learned (hopefully), and a great story was the result

[Honest Tiefling]

Yeah, I've had experiences like this. They were trying to argue that their abomination (as in a literal abomination created by magic) who barely was a humanoid would be tolerated by agents of a kingdom (Cormyr) known to be on the Goodish side of things on a very important mission because said abomination was a part of an organization (Thay) said kingdom had diplomatic ties with. Keep in mind that diplomatic ties were only really there because they weren't seen as being as bad as other forces and Cormyr just came out of a war and didn't want to start another war with a very powerful nation. But no, let's bring their minion onto our super important mission given to us by high ranking nobility! I'm sure the Regent won't mind this one.

[Telok]

In my D&D group we have this one guy, loves the combat, doesn't rp, gets bored during the talky bits, likes necromancy, can't really grasp anything beyond melee combat, blasty spells, and self buffing.

He read about the Lord of the Uttercold build. The one where a wizard takes the feat that turns half the damage of a cold spell into negative energy, controls a big bruiser of an undead, and keeps his minion alive by blasting away and catching it in the area.

Sounds right up his alley, he gets to play in melee with his undead, blast with spells, and scratch his necro itch all at the same time. It turned out to be too complicated for him. His first real fight with that character saw him sand his zombie dragon into another room away from the party and attack some not-yet-but-now-they-are-enemies there. He then spent the next four rounds turning invisible, buffing up, and moving up next to the most dangerous melee enemy in our current room.

He cast Vampritic Touch and engaged in melee at the same time his zombie in the other room was destroyed. Turns out that the guy he attacked was a duskblade, who let loose a Wraithstrike, full power attack, channeled spell with a two handed sword. And crit.

Twenty plus flat damage and about eight or ten d6, doubled. Next character please.

[Cluedrew]

I'm not going to say that this is A's fault... OK the fire extinguisher thing was stupid. But hey it was pretty much in character.

Still yes, this is pretty much a mismatch. There are interesting things you could do with a mutated wrestler that goes brain-dead. But this was not the game for it. If the other characters had been a retired army commando post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the doctors who create the zombies and a cereal killer who is desperately not going to try to kill the living, A's character would fit right in.

I guess the fact that he insisted on playing it after seeing the other character was a bit of a problem. And how he played it. I mean mismatches in expectation do happen. But when that happens, especially when there is one odd character out, you have to make some effort to reconcile that. And that didn't seem to happen here, he just seemed to continue to play a different game than everyone else.

[illyahr]

Still yes, this is pretty much a mismatch. There are interesting things you could do with a mutated wrestler that goes brain-dead. But this was not the game for it. If the other characters had been a retired army commando post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the doctors who create the zombies and a cereal killer who is desperately not going to try to kill the living, A's character would fit right in.

Take that, Corn Flakes.

Had a player in a 3.5 campaign who loved the sneaky rogue type. This particular game, he was playing a ninja from an island off the coast of the main continent. He wants to know if he can be an opiate dealer and I tell him as long as it's a background thing for his character and doesn't interfere with what he's doing.

Game is going fairly well other than a few breaks for silliness (Ninja: I roll through the shadows! Me: There aren't any. Ninja: I am a shadow, so I roll through myself!) Ninja finds a few 'magic mushrooms' that he carries around as a base for his opiates. Group comes across a small farming community that invites them in to eat. They are making pasta with meatballs and (without thinking about it) mushrooms. Ninja asks (remember, different culture from off the coast) if mushrooms go well with pasta and volunteers the mushrooms he has to be added.

When the family started tripping hardcore, the ninja got nervous and tried to assassinate them before the rest of the party found out. When the rest of the party showed up, the only survivor was convinced a steak knife picked itself up off the table and started attacking everyone. This area was known for hauntings so the characters had no proof that that wasn't what happened. One of the other players was not amused, however.

[Kantaki]

Take that, Corn Flakes.

Had a player in a 3.5 campaign who loved the sneaky rogue type. This particular game, he was playing a ninja from an island off the coast of the main continent. He wants to know if he can be an opiate dealer and I tell him as long as it's a background thing for his character and doesn't interfere with what he's doing.

Game is going fairly well other than a few breaks for silliness (Ninja: I roll through the shadows! Me: There aren't any. Ninja: I am a shadow, so I roll through myself!) Ninja finds a few 'magic mushrooms' that he carries around as a base for his opiates. Group comes across a small farming community that invites them in to eat. They are making pasta with meatballs and (without thinking about it) mushrooms. Ninja asks (remember, different culture from off the coast) if mushrooms go well with pasta and volunteers the mushrooms he has to be added.

When the family started tripping hardcore, the ninja got nervous and tried to assassinate them before the rest of the party found out. When the rest of the party showed up, the only survivor was convinced a steak knife picked itself up off the table and started attacking everyone. This area was known for hauntings so the characters had no proof that that wasn't what happened. One of the other players was not amused, however.

Please tell me this motivated the survivor to become an adventurer to enact horrible vengeance on all steakknifes.

[ATHATH]

Please tell me this motivated the survivor to become an adventurer to enact horrible vengeance on all steakknifes.

I think the survivor was the ninja, who made up the knife story.

[Kantaki]

I think the survivor was the ninja, who made up the knife story.

Ah yes, that's possible too. Might even be more likely.
I interpreted „survivor” as in „...of the ninja’s killing spree” and not „the last guy standing in the room”.
The story is still absolutely hilarious.

Anyway, the topic was moronic character actions, right?
I think I remember a few from the rpg-sessions in summer camp.
(the fourth session was DSA (the dark eye) the others some obscure sistem I don't remember right now)

Spoiler: 1. Our very first session.

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The quest: Explore some ruins for a magic academy. Whoever returns the staff that was hidden deep within will be rewarded with becoming a apprentice. (Who can guess what will happen?)
Now, after somehow collapsing some old mill over our party we have our first injured -before the adventure has really started- lacking the ability to heal and hoping to get rid of some rivals some of the group (especially vocal someone we will just call I) vote to leave them behind.
Of course we don't. Anyway, we reach the dungeon and after some other mishaps -among them throwing a shelf across the room because the whole group wanted to help moving it and a very annoying vampirette that acted way to intelligent for us- we reach the central chamber and find the staff.
Now what is the obvious next step? Well, I decided now would be a good time to determinate who gets the staff and the reward.
Unfortunately it turns out that the staff can only be moved by the whole party carrying the thing together. More importantly: infighting made obtaining it pretty much impossible.
Endresult was that we ended up trapped between a unobtainable mcguffin and nigh-untouchable foe.

Spoiler: 2. what (should have) continued no. one

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Now this one was pretty straightforward. The lucky apprentice and his minions are supposed to find a magic orb in a witch’s cave. Minor complication: It is hidden among fakes that will petrify whoever picks it up. Oh, and the cave is on an island. Should be a piece of cake, right?
Now we reach the cave and on insistence of a single party member (not me. This time.) we immediately storm onwards.
The guardians -I only remember two stone bears- are more or less swiftly dealt with.
We reach the throne room and find the orb on the first try.
I secure it in by backpack and we want to return home.
Unfortunately we forgot to secure our boat meaning we have to swim (or do some magic, but our apprentice didn't suggest that).
To avoid the mcguffin (and my stuff) getting wet I hold my backpack over my head and enter the water as careful as possible.
BOOM! The resulting explosion wipes out our party and a large part of the cave. Turns out the orb didn't like water. Couldn't the academy have said something about that? I mean they knew about the fakes but not about the instant nuke, just add water part? Mages are useless.
TPK by loosing your boat has to be pretty unique I think.

Spoiler: The village idiots vs. the vampire

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Unrelated to the previous two. We are some villagers trying to stop- or at least survive -a vampire.
Now as a little help we get a amulet that keeps the monster away. From the wearer at least. Light/ fire has a similar effect. Water might harm him or drive him away.
The latter point in mind I suggest that our first stop should be a nearby lake to arm ourselves. Only when we reach our goal we realize we have no way to transport the water. Now, since we don't want to waste more time (failing to) prepare properly we want to attack the vampire before he rises. With this „plan” in mind we make our way to the lokal graveyard. After further attempts at bad comedy- including but not limited to halfgiants throwing their halfling (pixie? something small and throwable at least) buddies over the graveyard walls -we leave without any results.
The inevitable happens and Drac surprises us in the middle of a forest.Obviously we panic. My first idea is to throw the amulet at the vampire. The results are... less than impressive. Seriously, at this point they still listen to me?
Drac proceeds to wear us down with strafing runs, recovering whatever damage he takes by drinking our blood while evading our ineffective flailing as a bat.
As a last resort I snatch up the amulet and run away as fast as possible, the party following holding whatever lightsource they have.
But we all survived. That's a improvement in my book.

Spoiler: 4. How to end an adventure before it even starts.

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Long story short, we are on a ship and discover someone holding for dear life on a large piece of driftwood.
Since no one can swim (well the pirate could, but she was comatose or something) and don't think of asking the crew for help the elf and the himan warrior decide that letting someone drown is cruel. A single arrow ends the poor guy’s/gal’s misery. And to our quest because we just killed the adventure hook.

Another point of stupidity goes to tying a rope to a arrow shooting it without specifying where we shoot it. The plan was to create a climbing aid to get on a mountain. Instead we wasted ammunition and rope.
This happened either in one of the above trainwrecks or in another one that I have forgotten.

Or to make things stort: A party of Jims is a terrible idea.

[RyumaruMG]

So my players are infiltrating a bandit hideout to rescue a kidnapped villager. Fairly straightforward, right? They get to a room filled with bandits, being chewed out by their leader. He leaves through the door opposite where the party is crouched.

Take note of that.

After a brief discussion of what to do to pass this bottleneck, one of the players has an idea. See, he has an item that is effectively a Hat of Disguise - he can use it to make himself look like anyone he's seen. So, his bright idea, since the party doesn't want to potentially alert the rest of the fortress to the fact that they're there, is to impersonate the bandit leader.

The item works perfectly, so he strides into the room.

See where I'm going with this?

The bandits look up, confused, and one of them says, "Wait, boss, didn't you leave through the other door?"

Now at this point, I tell him, "Okay, what do you say?" There's a large number of different ways to do this. I was expecting him to maybe just shout at them and through the leader's authority around. Bluff something about a secret passage. At the outside, accuse the real leader of being a fake.

The player's response?

"Uh... no I didn't."

Cue the rest of the table facepalming and a fight breaking out.

[illyahr]

I think the survivor was the ninja, who made up the knife story.

Nope, there was one member of the family left that the ninja didn't have time to silence before the rest of the group arrived.

Unfortunately, the campaign ended a couple sessions later due to player issues.

[Tough Butter]

I almost forgot to say my biggest pet peeve with A.

Not only did A dislike role playing,

He disliked it when other people role played.

So you know... Half the dang game.


For instance, one time we we're in the middle of a fight as some of our members tried to murder the rest of our squad. We were fighting a horde of zombies in a penthouse flat. As we finished the enemies, we got backed into a balcony by the traitors. Suffering from post combat shakes, My character couldn't fight back and the party was overwhelmed. I then emerge from the hallway and try to defuse the situation by putting their leader at gunpoint.

Crit! I successfully calm them down. I take some of their gear, have them drop their weapons, and then announce that they are free to go. The party is relieved, except for A, who announces:

"Great work! Now they're defenceless! Easy kill!"

... Or something along those lines.

A tries to suplex one of the raiders of the balcony.

The group is shocked, and then dissolves into laughter when we see the face on A as we know what he rolled. Crit fail.

A practically dies here. I still argue that he should have died, but he says the comatose state we found him in (And then left him in, as we had no gear to repair comas) was just his MS, and he recovered 1.5 hours later.

A is still a good friend of mine though.

[Cluedrew]

Not only did A dislike role playing, [h]e disliked it when other people role played.

I don't mean to be too critical but I think A probably has better ways to spend his time than an activity he neither enjoys doing or observing.

I mean, what is he expecting to get out of a role-playing game? Is he not really sure what role-playing is?

[Telok]

I don't mean to be too critical but I think A probably has better ways to spend his time than an activity he neither enjoys doing or observing.

I mean, what is he expecting to get out of a role-playing game? Is he not really sure what role-playing is?

The combat. I've got a similar guy in my group. He loves running off to 'trigger the next fight' or just running in first and attacking and calling that 'scouting'.

[nrg89]

I've played 3.5 for many, many years and me along with three other players just could not help ourselves, we power gamed all the time and tried to sneak in the most ridiculous stuff past our DM in high school.

Now I've grown past that. If anything, I learned that saying no is a good idea and I also know what to look out for as a DM myself. I will tolerate a little optimizing but I can tell a focused build from one that's a mix of flavor and power in the systems I run. If someone wants to take a great feat I let them explain how their character got it but if they come up to me with an anthropomorphic fox cleric that has chosen the Time and War domain for the bonus feats (and Time's awesome spell list) I say "I see what you're doing here, could you please put Savage Species away? I'm ok with powerful characters, but I don't want a super powered campaign".*

Cut your DM some slack and be prepared for a balancing act. In real life we make a mix of calculated choices and emotionl ones all the time, we might realize that in our city a car is more expensive than the subway but we might also feel that a house is more what you want than an apartment.
If you can predict character behavior without relying solely on what's tactically correct, I'm usually ok. But in the OP's story, that is not the case, because he just goes brain dead. Ask him to describe his character by what motivates him, what his opinions are, everything but what he's capable of.

*Now, this goes right out the window anyway around 10th level, but let's make the most of it till then.

[Sabeta]

I don't have just one player. I have an entire PARTY!
This is 4e by the way.

Jon: The Halfling Rogue of Unspecialization! A very fragile character is new to D&D and therefore scared to do much besides attack, and usually gets very close to dying.
Jish: the Warforged Fighter from Big Dumb Fighter School of Fightering. Incredibly powerful. Incredibly stupid. He's largely the responsible for most of the shenanigans.
Jane: Me, the Dwarven Storm Cleric who was told be a healbot Cleric because I'm a girl, and went Storm instead.
Jake: The Elven (Half-Elf?) Druid whose, like, totally not a stoner maaaaaan...
Jun: A Human Rogue who is very knowledgeable about D&D, and has played a min-maxing thief character. Would rather loot people's houses than help.
Jeorge: I don't even remember his role, but he was probably yet another thieving rogue
Jock: Another Jish, except this time he's a Minotaur whose so ferocious he requires a muzzle at all times.
Jill: Jock's girlfriend, another ****ing rogue. Except this time in limited "sexy" edition.
Josh: A DMPC Tiefling Warlock/Sorcerer who was clearly optimized to hell and back.
Dave: The DM's best friend who was also optimized to hell and back. I'm not sure on his class, but he had a Daily power to drop an Angel into the battlefield that completely wrecked fools.
Gir: The Human Werewolf. I believe he was a Wizard normally, and on Full Moons had to roll Wisdom saves to decide if he could control himself.

Spoiler: Session One

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After a brief introduction we're essentially told that Zombies have infested Waterdeep, and that they're bad. We're allowed free reign to investigate.
1) Jish decides to ignore common sense, and immediately tries to climb a guard tower. He manages to get about 40 feet up before falling, and then promplty realizes there's a door. He goes through it, but the guard won't let him climb. He attempts to push his way past, and the Guard attacks him for 18 damage. He goes down, and is promptly thrown in prison.
2) Jun decides to ransack the mayor's house. He finds a blank piece of paper, and fails a Will Save to discard it. The DM was clearly punishing people for not trying to look for clues, and so the Thief winds up with a cursed piece of paper.
3) Jeorge decides to go into a shop. He murders the shop keeper and begins looting. The DM makes Jeorge cry IRL by having half of his loot be letters from home. All of which were things like "I packed you your favorite lunch. I love you sweety." to "Have a nice day at work daddy." Jeorge is humiliated and goes home for the day, but not before adding a single-use Arrow that can instant-kill just about anything (it creates a miniature black hole at the impact point)
4) The Rest wind up in jail because Jish namedropped them when trying to talk his way out. They all admit to being accomplices in a desperate attempt to reform the group and get the game under control. At this point, Jock, Jill, Jake, and Jane are not in the game.
5) The session ends with, of all things, a Succubus bailing everyone out of prison. We later learn she's the one responsible for the chaos in Waterdeep, and she extends an offer to join Orcus' side. At this point everyone goes NAH BRAH. LAWFUL GOOD WE GOTTA DO THIS QUEST! and attacks her. She flees, and the end result is the deaths of about half of waterdeep.

Yes. half. She creates a Zombie Epidemic that we're unable to destroy fast enough, and ultimately ends up with the entirety of Waterdeep dead in some form or another. That ends our first Session.

Spoiler: Session Two

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Somehow manages to be even more impressive than the first.

Having discovered our Moral Compasses, we finally take on a quest. The DM railroads us all into a Tavern, and this is also where my character gets introduced.We get a quest to exterminate goblins. Jeorge is still absent from the humiliation of last session, and Jon felt bad about not playing an active enough role and is finally starting to to come out of his shell. On the way towards the Goblin caves I decide to be "so random XD" and intimidate a tree. I score a crit, so the DM rewards me with an Acorn. He then declares that it is my new Holy Symbol, and if I keep it long enough something good might happen.

We arrive at the goblin's cave at night, and it's blocked by a rather impressive Waterfall. We begin our attack, and of course all hell breaks loose.
1) Turns out it's a full moon. Gir transforms into his Werewolf form, and that prompts a Will Save. He fails, and is no berserking. He targets the nearest bloodied target, which thankfully is the Goblins for now.
2) Jon tries to fight, and gets repeatedly damage. He starts to run away to try and save himself.
3) I'm pretty beefy, but many of my attacks miss. I manage to kill the boss though which was cool.

So at this point the gobs are mostly dead, we have a rampaging werewolf, and we're all bloodied. So naturally, I try rolling something to calm him down. I don't remember what it was, but let's pretend it was animal handling. I succeed! We calm the werewolf. At this point Dave announces "I'M SCARED OF DOGS!" and attacks the WW, which sends him back into a rage. Jish, being the brilliant fool that he is decides to diffuse the situation by attacking the WW; crits, and cleaves him in half.

Jish is then forced to make a Will save, and on a fail he begins attacking Jun. Jun ends up forced to hand over that blank piece of paper from earlier, but he tries to fight for it. Seeing the piece of paper, I am now forced to make a Will Save, I fail but get intimidated out of trying to take it by Jish. Instead the NPC that I'm just now remember takes it from him, he tries to read it (apparently words have appeared) and then stops moving. DM's best friend realizes that the area around the NPC has become tainted, and drops in his arcangel to retrieve the paper. The NPC crumbles into dust, and the ArcAngel explodes. Jun finally gets tired of not having his paper, and walks into the cursed territory to get it. He dies very quickly, but manages to get the paper out of the zone, where it's reclaimed by Jish. Lastly, Jon tries to take the paper, but his promptly killed by Jish.

Thus ends that session. Three dead.

Spoiler: Session Three

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Gir, Jon, and an NPC are dead. The DM moves away, so our DM is now the DM's best friend. As a consequence, both characters retire. Jock, Jill, and Jake are added to the game, and Jeorge finally feels brave enough to return.

I won't go into too great detail here. A lot of minor events happened. Jill managed to persuade Eotenas to be good guys despite not even being able to speak Giant, so that was something.

Before I go on, I need to explain Jeorge a little more. He has absolutely zero self-esteem, and we're military. Showing weakness is an invitation to be exploited, made fun of, and ridiculed. We have briefings all the time about not doing just that (as it too often leads to suicide), but to be honest it doesn't always help.

So we're off questing about. Some crazed Wizard is cooped up inside a giant flying head, and we help him fight off an army of bugbears or something. During the commotion however, Jeorge ends up getting jumped by assassins. He goes missing, but we can't tell where to. We find a single clue...which ultimately leads us back to waterdeep. After quite a bit of investigating we finally find the poor guy.

He's tied to a pole like a witch burning. A dark-robed woman stands about 20 feet away with her bow drawn towards him. Knocked is a single jet-black arrow, and she's screaming at him.

She's the shopkeeper's Wife. She sold the family business in order to pursue her quest for revenge against the one who murdered her Husband. Since we identify Jeorge as an ally, we're poised to stop her, and several assassins appear. Just before combat begins though, Jeorge admits to his wrongdoings. He goes off on a speech about how terrible he feels about it all and how he doesn't know why he did it. This is met with "Feelings won't bring my husband back."

At this point the DM offers us a chance to intervene...but our collective LG alignment kicks in and decides that this is justice, and he deserves to be punished. She knocks the arrow back, fires it off, and Jeorge is promptly consumed by a Black Hole as the arrow penetrates his chest.

We had a few uneventful games after that, but none of them really went anywhere or were terribly exciting. In fact the group disbanded completely after three more sessions.

[Tiktakkat]

Reminds me our Champions group.

I was playing an Iron Man rip-off BDF who punched instead of blasted.
I learned that I could do a "move through" maneuver - basically a body slam tackle - and take no damage if I used a shield.
I also realized that if I used a stunned enemy as said shield and he took any damage he would not be able to recover from being stunned until after I finished beating the conscious enemies up.
So . . . several sessions later our group "genius" decides to get in on the fun.
He is playing a Flash rip-off speedster, who does the "run in circles and hit the bad guy 10 times" thing.
He decides my maneuver would be perfect for him.
He also decides that the best choice for a shield is . . . another member of the team.
Who of course took a few points of damage and remained stunned for the rest of the battle.

Later, when facing down a version of Thor, I was sneaking up and finding weakness multiple times for a super-charged "backstab" while the human shield player was trash talking Thor to distract him.
The "genius" decided to contribute by mentally paralyzing the trash talker so we could try a diplomatic approach and talk Thor out of fighting.
Right as Thor geared up a haymaker.
On the now helpless human shield/trash talker.
Leaving me to go for the ego play and try to one-shot the BBEG and letting him die horribly if I tanked my roll, or give up the sneak attack, grab the paralyzed guy, and take off.

As it happens, the GM actually liked his stupid antics, as whatever I didn't think of the other guy did, and we would roll over any encounters if we didn't have the genius getting in our way constantly.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Take that, Corn Flakes.

Had a player in a 3.5 campaign who loved the sneaky rogue type. This particular game, he was playing a ninja from an island off the coast of the main continent. He wants to know if he can be an opiate dealer and I tell him as long as it's a background thing for his character and doesn't interfere with what he's doing.

Game is going fairly well other than a few breaks for silliness (Ninja: I roll through the shadows! Me: There aren't any. Ninja: I am a shadow, so I roll through myself!) Ninja finds a few 'magic mushrooms' that he carries around as a base for his opiates. Group comes across a small farming community that invites them in to eat. They are making pasta with meatballs and (without thinking about it) mushrooms. Ninja asks (remember, different culture from off the coast) if mushrooms go well with pasta and volunteers the mushrooms he has to be added.

When the family started tripping hardcore, the ninja got nervous and tried to assassinate them before the rest of the party found out. When the rest of the party showed up, the only survivor was convinced a steak knife picked itself up off the table and started attacking everyone. This area was known for hauntings so the characters had no proof that that wasn't what happened. One of the other players was not amused, however.

I had a similar situation. There's a semi-regular player in my IRL group, lets go with AB. AB plays the same kind of character, which mainly a slight variation of a self-insert. This results in a character who always mixes up their own magical elixier's that get them super stoned or whatever. This is important.

We're running some AP for 3.5 Eberron, I don't remember its name. But we are at a noble-soiree where we know a Vampire dude whose been trolling the party for a week or so will be (and we know he's planning on attacking the party and the Party at the same time). AB's bright idea to flushing out the Vampire is to dump a ton of Super Drugs (TM) into literally everything in the kitchen, so all the party guests, the Party included, gets super high. The reasoning that the Vampire will be immune and be the only one not tripping balls. AB forgot that the party will be tripping too. Also neglects to tell the party (Read: intentionally does not consult the party).

Now, luckily, I managed to crit my Fort save and was able to solo the Vampire till the rest of the party sobered up. Needless to say, I and the rest of the players weren't terribly thrilled with AB.

[Fri]

3) Jeorge decides to go into a shop. He murders the shop keeper and begins looting. The DM makes Jeorge cry IRL by having half of his loot be letters from home. All of which were things like "I packed you your favorite lunch. I love you sweety." to "Have a nice day at work daddy." Jeorge is humiliated and goes home for the day, but not before adding a single-use Arrow that can instant-kill just about anything (it creates a miniature black hole at the impact point)

This is beautiful.

[Sabeta]

This is beautiful.

The true beauty was that the one item he managed to get ended up signing his death. Our DM was a bit of a power-gamer and ran a super lethal campaign, but he was a good storyteller and came up with things like this on the fly.

[Telok]

This week I learned that the party had given my wizard's quasit familiar an amulet of "Draconic Vigor", essentially the best ability of a Dragon Shaman in a necklace. Mind you, they made this decision last week, it's just that I didn't know untill half way through this week.

The consesus among us was that the quasit "forgot" to tell his master about this untill someone mentioned it. Which, honestly, seems perfectly normal for a hired demonic assistant.