Has your team ever made an epic(ily stupid) decision, only to see an amazing outcome

[bsullivanp]

I'm pretty new to playing D&D, but just had my first "Critical Role-ish" level of epic gameplay. It was fun as hell, but for us, completely born out of a decision so utterly idiotic and bereft of common sense, that the outcome had no business being as amazing as it was. So that got me thinking of how many other stories are out there of people make colossally stupid in-game decisions, only to have it turn out incredibly well?

For us, my newly minted Conquest Paladin and fellow band of level 3 adventurers, fresh off of our triumphant battle against a horde of twig blights (to give some flavor of the caliber of threats were accustomed to experiencing), decided to take on a random quest in town. This one started out simple - to intimidate a rival competitor of the local town blacksmith, who the blacksmith accused of being a vampire even through the rest of the town widely knew this claim to be false.

So we ventured to competitor's home, decked out in a clear gothic motif, and after a couple of Eyes of the Grave & Divine Senses for good measure, confirmed that this rival was in fact, not a vampire. He only really liked gothic stylings. After returning to the blacksmith, who refused to pay us for our time, we dragged him to the rival's home to prove his folly once and for all. I and a single team mate were invited inside and led up to the rival's main chamber, a well lit room, with ample sunlight shining through the floor to ceiling windows. We confessed to the rival the reason for our visit, and after much exasperation, the rival shared his frustration with the continued abuse at the hands of the local blacksmith. As we chatted with the rival, the DM started dropping overt comments. Things like "yes he's very friendly, but he LOOKS like a vampire", and "I feel bad for him too, but did I mention that he REALLY looks like a vampire". As we were led out of the chamber, only after buying two swords from the rival, I randomly decided to turn and douse him with holy water as final proof point for the blacksmith...only to hear the sound of sizzling and burning skin.

As the room's illusion faded leaving us in a pitch black chamber (and me as a human with no darkvision), the DM just facepalmed and shook his head as we exclaimed "Wait, he really IS a VAMPIRE? Oh sh*t!".

At this point, my partner and I were left with two apparently equally impossible decisions...



Of course, we chose..."we got this!". As my partner ran to find the other party members, I squared to take on the Vampire (CR 13, XP 10,000). Alone. In the dark. The party did arrive in time, but if the sheer stupidity of our (my) decision wasn't obvious enough out of the gate, it should have been made clear when on it's first bite of its first successful attack, it outright killed our Warlock (with our DM shaking his head the entire time). Of course, we responded in true Monty Python fashion ("T'is but a flesh wound!"). Yet over the course many rounds, something strange happened. With the help a few strategically placed smites, Protection Against Evil and Good spells, and copious amounts of luck...we didn't actually die. Well that's not true, three of our party did. But we miraculously didn't TPK and actually defeated the Vampire on a last ditch smite/firebreath/silver arrow 1-2-3 combo.

After revivifying our fallen members at the local cleric (using funds from the coffers of the Vampire), our DM was in such utter surprise that he actually had to end the session early because he hadn't yet fully planned out what to do in this case, since "no one in their right mind should have thought to do what we decided to do".

In any case, I'm sure that I did not do the session justice in my retelling here, but I hope that it ends up being a good read and inspires others to share their stories, because I would love to hear if others had similar experiences of epic fails turned into epic stories.

[MrCharlie]

As a DM I just had a party decide to

A. Start peace talks with a wizard tower.

B. Punch a hole through the wizard tower into the astral plane, seeing a TPK machine (Astral Dreadnaught)

C. Decide to capture the astral dreadnaught in an iron flask during the middle of negotiations.

D. Burn through its legendary resistances and saves in four turns while using invisibility, amazing stealth rolls, and blind luck to avoid being seen on a 50-50 roll with advantage. So they rolled a 75% stealth four times, then the astral dreadnought failed a 60% WIS save four times, back to back. This is ignoring the random rolls I was making to see if it looked at them with the antimagic cone, killing the entire plan.

E. Resulting in a trapped astral dreadnought. They then took it into the wizard tower and threw it in an aracne forge (I ruled the wizard tower was technically on the astral plane), unmaking the dreadnought instantly and turning the tower into a teleporting, floating, citadel.

But that's not all!

Then they...

F. Decided to talk to a trapped, ancient, spellcasting, CR 25 Black Dragon they reneged a deal with because they wanted a magic god-killing dagger he was sitting on.

G. Predictably pissed him off.

H. Started a fight with him.

I. Resorted to start pulling out all the random pseudo "Deck of many things" items I'd given them and start taking those random chances.

J. Summoned a random creature of random CR from a bag I gave them.

K. Which was a CR 25 Marut which was hostile to the party.

L. Overpowered, killed, and ate the soul of the dragon while running from the Marut with half the party more than half dead.

M. Convinced the Marut that it was brought here to deal with the dragon and that they had no beef with it, beating its insight by one and convincing it to leave.

N. Left patting themselves on the back while looting the god-killing dagger

Now, they only managed to pull this off because they have some insanely powerful items (for example I gave them Blackrazor, then started buffing it further when it ate CR15+ Souls) and are reasonably high level, but they managed to really roger themselves good halfway through that.

[bsullivanp]

As a DM I just had a party decide to

A. Start peace talks with a wizard tower.

B. Punch a hole through the wizard tower into the astral plane, seeing a TPK machine (Astral Dreadnaught)

C. Decide to capture the astral dreadnaught in an iron flask during the middle of negotiations.

D. Burn through its legendary resistances and saves in four turns while using invisibility, amazing stealth rolls, and blind luck to avoid being seen on a 50-50 roll with advantage. So they rolled a 75% stealth four times, then the astral dreadnought failed a 60% WIS save four times, back to back. This is ignoring the random rolls I was making to see if it looked at them with the antimagic cone, killing the entire plan.

E. Resulting in a trapped astral dreadnought. They then took it into the wizard tower and threw it in an aracne forge (I ruled the wizard tower was technically on the astral plane), unmaking the dreadnought instantly and turning the tower into a teleporting, floating, citadel.

But that's not all!

Then they...

F. Decided to talk to a trapped, ancient, spellcasting, CR 25 Black Dragon they reneged a deal with because they wanted a magic god-killing dagger he was sitting on.

G. Predictably pissed him off.

H. Started a fight with him.

I. Resorted to start pulling out all the random pseudo "Deck of many things" items I'd given them and start taking those random chances.

J. Summoned a random creature of random CR from a bag I gave them.

K. Which was a CR 25 Marut which was hostile to the party.

L. Overpowered, killed, and ate the soul of the dragon while running from the Marut with half the party more than half dead.

M. Convinced the Marut that it was brought here to deal with the dragon and that they had no beef with it, beating its insight by one and convincing it to leave.

N. Left patting themselves on the back while looting the god-killing dagger

Now, they only managed to pull this off because they have some insanely powerful items (for example I gave them Blackrazor, then started buffing it further when it ate CR15+ Souls) and are reasonably high level, but they managed to really roger themselves good halfway through that.

As a DM, my head would be spinning with that happening. Amazing that you could keep track of all that and adjust the narrative on the fly. Kudos, makes my party's craziness feel outright tame!

[Catullus64]

Less impressive than your defeating a CR 13 Vampire at level 3, but your experience reminds me of a similar situation that I improbably survived. In our case, it wasn't a full-fledged Vampire, but a Vampire Spawn (CR 5) and a few ghouls it had as bodyguards; we were level 5. The DM intended for use to cut a path through the skeleton and zombie horde outside the spawn's hideout in a crumbling manor, and then face him and his ghouls as a party; it would have been a tough but doable encounter. Instead we decided that since my character was the only sneaky one (Rogue 4/Cleric 1, a holy witch-hunter type with some anti-undead tools), I should sneak into the crumbling ruin from the back and attack whoever commanded the undead (which we of course didn't know was a vampire spawn) while the rest of the party made the frontal assault.

When I snuck into the hideout and came across the spawn, he was alone. I heard the sounds of more creatures down the hall, and assumed those were the skeletons and zombies. I decided to attack the vampire spawn, figuring it was some pencil-necked necromancer who would go down in a few sneak attacks; soon I was under fire (alone) by not only a CR 5 at Level 5, but also a pack of Ghouls. I had to use hit-and-run tactics throughout the whole manor, throw holy water, cast Protection from Evil & Good, and manipulate doors and windows to let in sunlight from strategic angles, but somehow I finally slew the spawn and nicked the artifact it was using to control the other undead. And not a moment too soon, because I had a good 5 HP left and was still surrounded by ghouls.

So yeah. Probably didn't deserve to survive that one, but somehow I did. I count that as a group decision because everyone agreed to the backline double-pronged assault strategy that landed me in that situation, even if I ultimately made the call to engage.

[bsullivanp]

Less impressive than your defeating a CR 13 Vampire at level 3, but your experience reminds me of a similar situation that I improbably survived. In our case, it wasn't a full-fledged Vampire, but a Vampire Spawn (CR 5) and a few ghouls it had as bodyguards; we were level 5. The DM intended for use to cut a path through the skeleton and zombie horde outside the spawn's hideout in a crumbling manor, and then face him and his ghouls as a party; it would have been a tough but doable encounter. Instead we decided that since my character was the only sneaky one (Rogue 4/Cleric 1, a holy witch-hunter type with some anti-undead tools), I should sneak into the crumbling ruin from the back and attack whoever commanded the undead (which we of course didn't know was a vampire spawn) while the rest of the party made the frontal assault.

When I snuck into the hideout and came across the spawn, he was alone. I heard the sounds of more creatures down the hall, and assumed those were the skeletons and zombies. I decided to attack the vampire spawn, figuring it was some pencil-necked necromancer who would go down in a few sneak attacks; soon I was under fire (alone) by not only a CR 5 at Level 5, but also a pack of Ghouls. I had to use hit-and-run tactics throughout the whole manor, throw holy water, cast Protection from Evil & Good, and manipulate doors and windows to let in sunlight from strategic angles, but somehow I finally slew the spawn and nicked the artifact it was using to control the other undead. And not a moment too soon, because I had a good 5 HP left and was still surrounded by ghouls.

So yeah. Probably didn't deserve to survive that one, but somehow I did. I count that as a group decision because everyone agreed to the backline double-pronged assault strategy that landed me in that situation, even if I ultimately made the call to engage.

That sounds equal parts unnerving and heart pounding. Kudos to you for thinking about the placement of windows and sunlight in the moment, not sure I would have kept my head well enough to think through all of those factors.

[Chronos]

Every single session with my group follows the same pattern:

1: Learn of some challenge.
2: Spend three hours coming up with some crazy convoluted plan where every step depends on having already completed all five of the steps after it.
3: Start the encounter.
4: Do something completely crazy that wasn't even hinted at in the three hours of planning, that shouldn't have any realistic chance of success.
5: Roll a bunch of dice to determine in just what way the completely crazy unplanned thing fails.
6: Somehow succeed anyway.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

Gotta be the Death Knight CR 17 and two Gorgons CR 5 my party decided to take on at level 7. This was born out of some good (and bad) play to avoid tripping the traps in the dungeon that would have both alerted them to the fact that the deepest crypt in the place was not to be messed with and sapped some resources in battles with undead that would have been awakened. I don't think most of the players knew it was a death knight and if they did, didn't realize it was CR 17. So I can't necessarily say it was stupid in the sense that they had no real way of knowing they were potentially over their heads. They killed the 3 with only 1 party member dropping to 0 hp.

Regardless, it's examples like this that remind me that:
1) 5e is set on easy
2) The CR system is pretty useless (particularly in your example where it is a lone opponent). Bosses need allies.
3) As a DM it really is necessary to provide the 6-8 (resource and xp sapping) encounters per day to remotely make 5e challenging with monsters in the ballpark of what players should be facing.

[Dork_Forge]

Gotta be the Death Knight CR 17 and two Gorgons CR 5 my party decided to take on at level 7. This was born out of some good (and bad) play to avoid tripping the traps in the dungeon that would have both alerted them to the fact that the deepest crypt in the place was not to be messed with and sapped some resources in battles with undead that would have been awakened. I don't think most of the players knew it was a death knight and if they did, didn't realize it was CR 17. So I can't necessarily say it was stupid in the sense that they had no real way of knowing they were potentially over their heads. They killed the 3 with only 1 party member dropping to 0 hp.

Regardless, it's examples like this that remind me that:
1) 5e is set on easy
2) The CR system is pretty useless (particularly in your example where it is a lone opponent). Bosses need allies.
3) As a DM it really is necessary to provide the 6-8 (resource and xp sapping) encounters per day to remotely make 5e challenging with monsters in the ballpark of what players should be facing.

How did they manage to ge through that? A Death Knight with a couple Gorgons sounds like a death sentence to 7th level PCs!

[Lord Vukodlak]

So back in 3.5 we were what about 5th level(give or take) and exploring this weird dungeon that was in fact a crashed alien ship. So it had some alien tech inside. Including this pack of firebomb grenades. It was a DM conversion of the AD&D adventure of Expedition to Barrier peaks.
One of the specimens we encounter is an apparent white dragon, fairly young but old enough to crush us. All seems lost and we've taken cover when my Gnome Wizard decided to arm one the grenades throw it in the bag with the rest and charge headlong at the dragon.
One AoO would take me out but then all the explosives would go off at the dragon's feet and hopefully with its vulnerability to fire kill it.(yeah monsters had vulnerabilities in earlier editions).
I said goodbye to the party, that it had been an honor to fight by their side and charged head long at death its self. Then the dragon critically missed. My gnome went from the calm certainty of death to the absolute panic of "Oh **** I could survive this." So I dropped the bag and kept running.
The bombs exploded and... nothing happened. The dragon was a hologram and all of our wounds were imaginary.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

How did they manage to ge through that? A Death Knight with a couple Gorgons sounds like a death sentence to 7th level PCs!

I can't remember the exact chain of events, but I do remember everyone won initiative but the Moon Druid, which turned out to be good, as all the martials were able to surround the Death Knight and go nova in round 1. Also when the Hellfire Orb went off the Moon Druid hadn't cast his spell yet, so couldn't lose concentration. It was a pretty tight space anyway (Too tight for a Gorgon charge) and the Moon Druid was able to cast his summon spell to really lock down everything after that (and give everyone bonus XP).
The characters had some resistances to Fire and Necrotic through race and magic items (including one very strong one in the published mod). On top of that they had a Paladin with 18 Chr, so were taking 1/4 damage from a lot of the AOE.
The DK did manage to get 3 rounds of attacks off, including 2 Destructive Waves and dropped one of them, but the party finished him on round 4.

So, a bit of luck with rolls, some degree of optimization (including a Moon Druid and a Paladin), a tight dungeon design that didn't help the baddies (possibly because the party wasn't really supposed to fight the DK), and a party with experienced players who were smart enough to throw the kitchen sink quickly.

[Oramac]

1) 5e is set on easy
2) The CR system is pretty useless (particularly in your example where it is a lone opponent). Bosses need allies.
3) As a DM it really is necessary to provide the 6-8 (resource and xp sapping) encounters per day to remotely make 5e challenging with monsters in the ballpark of what players should be facing

Number 2 I agree with, but definitely not numbers 1 and 3. I almost never force my parties into the 6-8 fight thing. Hell, most of the time I let them long rest between every fight. Of course, I also customize damn near every monster I throw at them.

So back in 3.5 we were what about 5th level(give or take) and exploring this weird dungeon that was in fact a crashed alien ship. So it had some alien tech inside. Including this pack of firebomb grenades. It was a DM conversion of the AD&D adventure of Expedition to Barrier peaks.
One of the specimens we encounter is an apparent white dragon, fairly young but old enough to crush us. All seems lost and we've taken cover when my Gnome Wizard decided to arm one the grenades throw it in the bag with the rest and charge headlong at the dragon.
One AoO would take me out but then all the explosives would go off at the dragon's feet and hopefully with its vulnerability to fire kill it.(yeah monsters had vulnerabilities in earlier editions).
I said goodbye to the party, that it had been an honor to fight by their side and charged head long at death its self. Then the dragon critically missed. My gnome went from the calm certainty of death to the absolute panic of "Oh **** I could survive this." So I dropped the bag and kept running.
The bombs exploded and... nothing happened. The dragon was a hologram and all of our wounds were imaginary.

This is amazing! I am so stealing this idea.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

[QUOTE=Oramac;25134476]Number 2 I agree with, but definitely not numbers 1 and 3. I almost never force my parties into the 6-8 fight thing. Hell, most of the time I let them long rest between every fight. Of course, I also customize damn near every monster I throw at them.

Just to clarify I said 6-8 resource sapping encounters, not fights. Some of those could be social or exploration events. Regardless, we play largely published material and if I didn't adjust somewhat my group could go through roughly 2 levels lower than where it's suggested (and that's with limiting rests). You can disagree that 5e is set on easy, and I suppose if you had an inexperienced group or one that didn't optimize at all and deliberately took weak options then you could come to that belief. I don't think many on this forum would agree with you though.
TBH I wasn't that surprised that my 7th level group could take out two 5 CR monsters and a 17 CR monster; the nova potential of many tier 2 characters is enough that chewing through 180hp of Death Knight isn't that tough. If your party includes a Moon Druid, who is worth roughly 2 mediocre characters, and a Paladin with a +4 save aura and you have enough meat shields and tankiness to stand there for long enough to do it.

[MrStabby]

One of my groups had an escort quest. Typical thing - protect the waggons with a few NPC guards as well.

They found out that the caravan was to be ambushed.

They came up with the genius plan of clearing the ambush by walking straight into it with some dummy wagons.

Now this encounter was rated to be tough by my calculations. A bunch of Medusas with some class levels/features added (and trust me, medusae with plate armour and shields and AC 20 are no push over when you can't look at them) and some invisible stalkers. Rogues with sneak attack hitting enemies averting their eyes etc..

As an ambush, they had laid traps and glyphs. Anyway, the ambush opened with a confusion spell on the party. One PC passed, three others moved in random directions, managing to avoid all of the traps (which had been cunning placed assuming that the party would be looking to move to cover or to close with the enemy.

The party then withstood a barrage of fire, so many missed arrows and low damage rolls. Conquest palading closed in and dropped a fear spell, not only hitting a couple of Medusae but also some invisible stalkers that they didn't even know were in the area of effect.

Samurai archer racked up a lot of sharpshooter hits with action surge and was really putting the hurt on the party.

Things nearly went south for the party a couple of rounds in when most of the party was taken down by a 4th level hold person spell but next in initiative was the arcana cleric who broke concentration with a max level magic missile on the caster.

After this point the party was really mopping up. It wasn't easy, but pretty much in hand.

I had considered this to be pretty much a way-beyond-deadly encounter if they used scouting, divination and their NPC support to dodge the traps, approach from cover and flank the enemy with pre-cast buffs. Using themselves as bad and walking in the front door of the ambush was something I had thought to be suicidal... but it worked for them.

[Eldariel]

Well, my party ran into some thugs on the street. They were from a gang that had been asked to deal with them and the party knew they were trouble. The thugs told the party to follow 'em, as their leader wanted to have a word with them. Instead of just engaging the thugs, the party just followed them in. So...they were in the bad guys' hideout. Surrounded by 15-odd bad guys including the syndicate leader (a high level Wizard). In the syndicate hideout in a smallish room, with the enemy knowing all the secret doors and such. Did I mention that the party was level 3, four of them. Of course, the party had managed to sneak off a familiar as a messenger to a friendly knight who owed them a favour (his life, in fact).

They did parley. Obviously they fell through - the enemy basically demanded that the party never show their face in the town again (though they were offered 2000gp, but with a sort of a hostage arrangement to ensure they'd have to keep their end of the bargain). So the syndicate leader decided to cut the bull****, snapped his fingers and suddenly the Wizard and 20-odd thugs were on them. Only, somehow, in spite of being outnumbered 4-1 and faced with impossibly powerful enemies they managed to force the syndicate leader to escape and managed to cut down almost all of the thugs - the dice were absurd that session (I don't think the party got crit once over the whole of ~100 attacks they took). The whole party did all go down just the turn the Knight managed to show up (I had put it at 1 minute or 10 round mark), and he used action surge and two potions to raise two of them. The fight had decimated the syndicate ranks...which eventually lead to them coming out alive. I had planned for that to be a certain death but sometimes the dice can surprise you.

[Danielqueue1]

I was a player in a campaign where the whole party were criminals of some kind or another. And all the normal ways of adventuring went out the window. We ended up going to a city ruled by a council of vampires. Not in secret either, the citizens litterally paid a blood-tax. But also, regular taxes were rock bottom so it was one of the bigger cities on the continent. The city proper was full of vampires, thralls, enforcers, cults, plague doctors (keep the cattle healthy with regular checkups), desperate people, and secret factions trying to bring down the vampires. In addition recent assassinations have given the inquisition broad powers to look into anything even remotely suspicious.

Our target was an artifact hidden in the vault of a casino with only one (official) way in or out. Persons found unable to pay their debts, accused of sedition, found in possession of holy water, or found guilty of blood-tax evasion were drained. Permanently.

Seeing as registering for the blood-tax and having a vile of our blood available to the ruling class who we knew had access to casters with the scrying spell wasn't an option for us criminals, normal logic dictated that we should stick together and evade, bluff or overpower anyone that would draw attention to us.

NOPE!

We pulled a "lets split up gang!" And rarely ever had more than 3 of our party of 5 in the same place at a time. The rest of the party rarely knew where the wizard was, the Kenku in their plague doctor disguise was able to "I'm supposed to be here," Into places the rest weren't able to follow without arousing suspicion. We had the whole party together for all of entering the city, meeting our contact, one fight in the slums, and after the heist was over outside the city again.

But what a heist it was. Between the lizardfolk getting the patronage of a vampire and getting a legitimate job at the arena (blood sport is rather big in a vampire ruled town) or bounty hunter following leads on the before mentioned assassination and the slow poisoning of an entire region of the city. Our kenku playing inside man and teaming up with an almost-assassinated vampire lord. And our wizard-charlatan making a "business proposition" that gave us the layout of the inner workings of the casino, and then convincing the security chief that their new boss hired the assassin in the first place, we had a lot of angles going at the same time.

The DM had expected us to persue one or maybe two of the angles. We lined them all up to come together at the same time. All in 1 hour, the head of the inquisition got a tip, the casino's blood supply was poisoned, the security did a walk-out, the monsters in the arena got released and the almost-assassinated vampire lord returned with an accusation. The actual stealing of the artifact wouldn't have been noticed at that point if we had announced it. There were a few complications thrown in just to make it worth rolling dice. But we were out of the city with our artifact and only had to wait for our kenku who was so wrapped up in the plague doctor disguise that they actually stopped to deliver a report on the poisonings.