Stupid D&D tricks

The Game Room
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Dusting off the tome it looks like. A friend linked me here and I couldn’t resist. It’s been about a year now since I started playing D&D (3.5 edition) and I already have 6 stories about my party’s stupidity.

The first two happen regrettably on my very first day. The party had just arrived from some island where the DM had done a warm up (I had joined about 3 sessions in) and they had arrived on the main continent via boat. The party had discovered that the captain of the vessel was attempting to smuggle in contraband into the country, and half the party attempted to blackmail the captain. The other two members, compelled by their alignment, went to the port authority and had the entire party arrested, where they were to meet me in jail. However our fighter decided that his honor was slighted and decided to fight the burly captain in single combat, whom I might point out was wielding two bastard swords. After a quick initiative the captain wins and in one round reduces our brave fighter to 3 health. The fighter quickly negotiates his way to safety by handing over his weapon. Then, placing all of his money (or, at least, he tells the captain he does) in one sack, and a bunch of meat chunks in another, our fighter tries to buy his axe back by saying he’ll trade one of the sacks for the weapon. Not amused the captain takes both sacks as well and starts to walk ashore. The fighter then calls to the captain and asks if he’ll give his axe back for the rest of his (the fighter’s) gold, after just saying he gave all of it to the captain. The DM, having cautioned the fighter several times throughout this, decided that both he and the captain had had enough and had the captain completely strip our fighter of everything he owned. Yeah, he got the point after that.

And then what occurred is referred to by our party only as the “court scene”. I guess because they thought they’d get a good laugh, the port authorities decided to give the rest of the party excluding me (because I wasn’t implicated in the blackmail) their day in court. Our party in another lack of wisdom decided to have our insane (literally) sorceress take the stand. She then goes on several rants including accusing the judge of assisting the captain in the smuggling (I should point out at this point the captain was actually smuggling. The party was just so bad at rolenplaying at this point no one believed them). Needless to say after about an hour of this the DM finally realized this was going nowhere and headed it off sending the party to a work camp, which he was supposed to do at the start of the session (a whole 3 hours ago) but the party interfered.

The next one happens to the fighter from the first story. Apparently he formed a grudge against goblins at some point and decides in the dead of night to completely burn down the goblin neighborhoods in the town we were currently in. Because we slept two to an inn room, and because our rogue was a light sleeper, we managed to stop him before he killed himself and were forced to chain him to a wall because at this point the player was getting ridiculous :mad: . So even after both the captain scenario and this recent development, the fighter breaks out of his chains while we are away at another mission (yes, we shouldn’t of left him, but he was getting really annoying at this point). He breaks into a supply store (armed only with his underclothes), manages to steal a flint and steel, and attempts to again burn down the goblin neighborhoods. With no one to stop him this time, he get messily devoured by the goblins as retribution for his attempted arson. We walk back into town with this news.

The last three should be shorter, hopefully.

This should be a short one. So our local meta-gamer, the monk, decided to annoy the DM by trying to argue about the result he gave me for checking the weather (I was a ranger). The DM, annoyed by his constant meta-gaming (at one point he increased the CR of a fight by 3 because the monk had peeked has his screen) attacked him personally with the surrounding forest. I know that doesn’t make sense, it was meant to be a sign to the monk. The monk however for some reason (I forgot) got a reflex save to dodge it, and because he passed and had evasion he took no damage. The DM of course eventually killed him off then reversed time after teaching his lesson, but we’ll always remember the day our monk dodged the forest.

So for the next story our party was heading to a fort to accomplish some goal. Unfortunately we had to head across goblin territory, and low and behold a band of warg riding goblins greets us. They seemed initially hostile, questioning or business (the nerve of some people), so our monk (Yes, THAT monk), completely against the wishes of the party, decides to charge the mounted opponents. What follows is a short fight scene with what was supposed to be our escort, and the mounted opponents easily defeat us. Thankfully the DM was feeling kind and after killing the monk decides the wargs take the opportunity to nom on his body, allowing the rest of us to escape.

The last one involves the same insane sorceress. So for a while now we had acquired a vial of what our DM referred to as “Spider excrement” which we had never checked out because we forgot about it. After being forced into the military for plot reasons our dear sorceress decides now is the time to figure exactly what the vial contains, and takes a swig. It’s spider venom, which the sorceress finds out exactly a third of her way into the bottle. Not to be discouraged the sorceress finishes the bottle, leaving her at 2 strength on the eve of a ship battle.

Gee, those were long. Ah well, hope you enjoyed them. We’ve managed to straighten ourselves out and have only encountered two deaths thus far(both by being devoured, interestingly).

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Well… the fighter was certainly staying in character as all brawn no brains. :stuck_out_tongue:

Every campaign should start out with a few warm-up sessions which have plenty of opportunities for stupid people to get themselves killed. Saves time in the long run. Example:

GM: “You look down into a steep ravine. The ravine is crawling with spiders the size of dogs; fortunately they don’t seem to be able to climb out. At the bottom of the ravine, sparkling in the sunlight, you see a fabulous jeweled sword”.

More Brawn Than Brains: “I climb down into the ravine to retrieve the sword”.

GM: “Roll Saves” <rolls> “The spiders completely envelope you.” <rolls saves> “You’re dead”.

In fact, you should not begin the regular campaign until you can go three sessions without any character deaths. A Pons Asinorum as it were. Maybe you could set it up in story as a series of trials to see if someone can join the party.

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A big red lever set into the wall, with the words “Do Not Pull” clearly inscribed.

They pull it every single time.

The ceiling collapses every single time. They still pull it.

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Speaking of that … I mentioned in my post a couple years ago that my DM, intentionally or unintentionally, made things difficult for casters. So, in the last session in which I participated, I decided to act truly “in character”. Granted, this required inventing some character details on the spot (non-mechanical details, though — these were backstory/personal history details).

It was the “final battle” of the adventure. The party was helping to defend a small town from the bad guy’s army. Throughout this particular adventure, we’d been repeatedly frustrated by the way the bad guy and his army always seemed to know what we were going to do before we did it. This included something I mentioned in the linked post: somehow always knowing who the wizard (me) was and attacking him first, even in seemingly random encounters. This bad buy had a pretty big army, so we were constantly stumbling across small groups of scouts or “commandos”. And these enemy agents always knew which of us was the wizard, and seemed to be aware of all the PC’s special abilities and any special magic items we’d picked up, and had ways to counter them.

When we players complained about this, the DM simply said, “It’s an army. They have spies to learn all this.” Apparently this army had some way to mass-produce portraits of the PCs, since no matter where or when we bumped into random enemies from this army, they always immediately recognized my not-dressed-like-a-wizard wizard whom they had not seen cast any spells. Now, I’m not sure if the published adventure the DM was using actually said the army had all these spies, or if the DM was simply assuming they did.

In any case, the final battle rolled around. We were in the walled town, and the enemy army was arrayed before the walls. My wizard had not learned much in the way of AoE spells — I’d conceived him as more of a “utility” spellcaster than a “combat” caster. So, the day before the battle, he had obtained a Wand of Fireballs. I’ll note here that he obtained the wand and immediately tucked it into his clothing, and never used it before the big battle. Nor had he ever used any kind of fire spell in any encounter leading up to this battle.

And yet, the first time he used the wand to hurl a fireball at the row of boulder-throwing giants at the rear of the enemy army, he learned to his dismay that all those giants had been warded against fire damage. Yes, it was those mysterious spies again. He used the wand over and over on the giants, hoping to eventually overcome the warding, but after several rounds and no dead giants, he gave up. That was when I invented some new backstory for him.

He had originally joined the party a few sessions into this particular adventure, and only agreed to accompany them because of the promise of financial gain. This was already established. The new information: he was a married man with a wife and children back home. So, given his ineffectiveness in the battle he decided, “This is not worth leaving my wife a widow and leaving my children without their father!” He cast Invisibility on himself, found his way out of the town in the opposite direction from the attacking army, and ran away.

After that, I bowed out of the game entirely.

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Did you remember to turn nameplates & titles “off”?

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My current roleplay group contains a guy who’s kind of a jerk in real life, so after spending several sessions being endlessly trolled by him (I’d made the mistake of playing a traditional hippie-type druid in a campaign where most of the random encounters were animals, so his character would taunt mine at every opportunity over my rampant hypocrisy), I’d always make sure to play character types that would be in minimal conflict with his.

Cue current campaign, where our first adventuring party (foreshadowing!) had a cleric channeling negative energy, the flavor text being that the character worshipped a god of death, and death comes to all equally. So of course This Asshole decides to run the joke into the ground, including one session where the cleric’s player wasn’t available in person and so was “botted” by said asshole.

To nobody’s surprise, we total party wipe on the dungeon boss because This Asshole refused to stop for rest on account the cleric having been appointed team captain (because we had three spellcasters and a paladin and thus had to full rest a lot to get our spell slots back), and since the captain’s philosophy is “death comes to all equally” that means we should all be stupidly suicidal, right?

I’m not too mad about this wipe, since our party was kind of suboptimally built and our DM has been very forgiving about letting us pick up where we left off with new characters, but I’m getting to the point where I may have to quit the group.

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Plenty of Tales from the Gaming Table over here. The most recent one features nearly an entire party trying to escape trouble by having their Rouge carry them in a Bag of Holding. They weren’t successful.

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You should never let your makeup carry you anywhere.

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My paladin had the worst luck.

She kept missing, so she wasn’t doing much damage. She kept getting hit, so she wasn’t able to stay in the fights. And she would never get a shot at treasure…

So, at just a few HP (actually having been revived from 0), and having lost out on loot again, she picks up a rock near the treasure pile and chucks it as hard as she could (with an 18 strength) down the hall.

She didn’t notice that the rock was attempting to cling to her…

My DM was fairly sadistic… it was a cursed stone of weight. In addition the usual treatment of the cursed stone returning to the posessor when that PC tries to dispose of it, he ruled 3d6 damage for my character’s attempt. He very humorously described it as the stone returning like a boomerang and catching my (now unhelmed) paladin full in the forehead.

There lies Sylvia, dead of self-inflicted stoning.

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Besides, the description clearly states:

So food would be the least of their problems.

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One of my players was really bad at puzzles. I remember having him find a small cylindrical stone object and then later on finding a circular hole in the wall that “looks about the size of the cylindrical stone object that you found earlier.”

Did he put the key in the keyhole? No, that puzzle was clearly too advanced for him and he blithely moved on. :smack:

I decided to stop with the difficult puzzles for him!

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Your DM is a dick. Spontaneously creating cursed items just to screw you over is bad enough, without making up rules to make it kill you.

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I’m not too sure about the other players, too - who cuts a party member out of the loot just because they’re unconscious after the encounter?

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A well rounded but fairly green group of 5 players levels 2-3 captures a thieves guild enforcer that had been menacing them since beginning of campaign. 2 of the players are less than good and want to torture him for information after previous attempts fail.

The Paladin and Cleric refuse to allow torture, but the other two talk them into going to get the guards; all of it played very strict and legit by the rules. So the two evil characters (mage and rogue I think) are alone with this level 5 assassin in a secluded warehouse.

Did I mention they forgot to tie him up or disarm him? They would have both died quickly but I rolled terribly, I mean they got soo lucky…

Another Group: Group is like level 6 also pretty well played group, except for 1 guy- the rogue. Deep in a custom undead dungeon I designed they are short on time to complete a main part of the quest but low on hit points and spells- they don’t want to rest but want to go back in knowing there is a small portion of the dungeon they didn’t explore.

They were right and there were only 2 medium difficulty monsters they could easily deal with (gelatinous cube, and a ghost several rooms away). They find the gelatinous cube around some prison cells. As the group engages it the casters move to a small guards quarters next to the cells- the thief notices an anwar (dresser) in the room.

In the middle of combat he wants to open it, and critical fails his search check. So he sets off the poison gas trap killing him and 2 of the casters. The paladin and ranger are over run by gelatinous cube. Cleric lives all by himself… Pretty much TPK since the cleric is alone deep in a undead complex in the middle of a wilderness.

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Armoire?

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I had a campaign where I was a dragonborn that breathed lightning. My team eventually reached a dungeon with an iron door that we thought had no possible way of opening. I used my breath weapon to destroy it. The DM didn’t even think it would work, but then I explained to him that it wasn’t much different from how arc welding in real life works. He let me try it, and I rolled a nat 20! I blasted the door open, and he had to scramble to think of what was on the other side.

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I know it’s a zombie, and I know I’ve already told stories, but hey, stories have happened since then!

Two favorite moments with my favorite character, a cleric of a trickster god, a god he probably invented himself in a moment of crisis:

  1. We knew that a nasty band of orcs and trolls were atop a dam, smashing it to pieces. The approach to the dam was through 600’ of open space, giving them plenty of time to attack us as we came near. So I disguised us as a flock of ravens, and we flew down and settled among the unsuspecting ogres before turning into our regular grinning bloody selves. It was a lovely ambush, both scenic and effective.
  2. Another PC had an intelligent sword that was constantly prodding him toward mayhem and violence, and that PC was chaotic insane anyway, and midway through the adventure we got hints that maybe the Big Bad of the campaign had forged that intelligent sword aeons ago. A devil, pleading for its life, offered to tell him the sword’s history. “The sword’s history?” my trickster cleric/party walking library scoffed. “Shit, I can tell you that.” We killed the devil.

Between sessions, I wrote up an historical document about the Ash Leaf Sword, telling about the freedom fighter whose soul had been trapped in the sword by the Big Bad, and how she’d been enslaved lo these many millennia not knowing her true history. In-game, my character hired an expert forger to scribe the story and age the paper as though it were a scroll from the Big Bad’s ancient empire, and at the next session I gave the player the write-up: “So, I made some knowledge history checks, and John (our GM) gave me this.” He read it, asked John if it was a part of the published module, and when John said no, complimented him on his excellent backstory for the sword. From then on, he called his sword Ashleaf and worked with it as a freedom-fighter.

The entire thing was, of course, my character’s fabrication. When the character finally found out, my trickster cleric kind of pointed at his holy symbol and said, “dude.”

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A few that happened to me since this thread was last active:

1: My character was a young gnome warlock, who knew that his mother had been seduced by a wandering stranger, and that stranger being a fey, that was obviously the source of his mysterious powers (he was right on two of the three of those points). He could thus never figure out why his magic always manifested as dark and creepy, when all he wanted was to summon rainbows and unicorns. So he’s adventuring to try to learn how to control his magic better, and to protect the wildlands the fey call home, because he’s a total fey fanboy.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine, completely independently, created his character: A young female gnome beguiler, with a very outdoorsy backstory. Who thus, of course, really did fight using rainbows.

The result is probably predictable. Man, I wish that game hadn’t fallen apart, so I could have found out how both that character, and that relationship, would have developed.

2: My current character (in a different group) is a scholarly rogue, who’s motivated to adventure by all of those ancient secrets lying around undiscovered in musty dungeons. If he were alive in our world, he’d be an ideological copyright pirate: Information wants to be free, and so on.

Well, we had encountered this really gross-looking abomination that’s talking to the paladin (the closest we have to a “party face” character) in his head, but it’s not actively hostile yet, and we figure, why fight something if we don’t need to. It tells the paladin, who relates to the rest of us, that it’ll let us past… for a price. It wants one secret from each of us.

Of course, my character regards that as no problem. And it so happened that in the backstory I had already written and given to the DM, I said that he learned to pick locks by sneaking into the library of the House of Knowledge at night, to avoid all those pesky questions about what he wanted. He even had a book of ritual spells (the 5e Ritual Caster feat) that he had picked up there.

So I figured, this guy likes secrets, how about a secret that leads to other secrets? “Hey, paladin, ask him if he knows about the back entrance to the library at the House of Knowledge? It comes out right next to the restricted section.” And he then steps right into the room, thinking very loudly about said back entrance.

Well, the creature really liked that, so much that he let the entire party past without payment from anyone else. The DM then asks if anyone recognizes the creature. I might, I say, if it’s something related to Arcana or History. One good Arcana roll later, and the DM starts reading directly from the creature’s monster entry: “Nothics are obsessed with magical knowledge, and with sneaking into magical libraries.” Huh, go figure.

And yes, we did eventually have to deal with the fact that there was now a nothic prowling around in the library at the House of Knowledge (it so happens that the House of Knowledge is a temple of Oghma, whom the paladin worships). And yes, we resolved that (well, mostly resolved it, at least) peacefully, too.

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And since LHoD just rogued me there: Speaking of his forged backstory for the sword, my current character mentioned there had, as his proximate cause for adventure, found a fragment of a treasure map, and wanted to find the other piece of it. And I actually made up a real map fragment, carefully contrived to give as much information as possible while still being completely useless, and artificially aged and weathered it (tea stains, dogeared corners, singe marks, etc.). I had of course warned the DM about this, and had no idea what he would decide it eventually led to. Meanwhile, I showed it to the other players, and while I didn’t exactly tell them that the DM had given it to me, I also didn’t exactly tell them that he didn’t. Most of them were convinced for about five sessions that the map was a crucial clue, rather than just the wild-goose chase I intended it to be.

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A neat one-two punch during our last adventure :

So we’re in this dungeon, dungeoneering to find some McGuffin or other and wind upon this very obviously evil guy who, nevertheless, isn’t immediately aggressive. While my group starts pondering what kind of info we might get from him, I boldly announce : “I cast Lightning Bolt at him”. “Wait, what ?”, says the DM, “without even saying hello ?”. The rest of the party is similarly miffed that I didn’t wait for their attempts at passing through without fighting. “Look, we all know how this was going to go”, says I in character (a vaguely goth-y teenager-y Witch). “Blah blah blah, my godly powerful master blood blood murder kill you, blah blah surrender no **you **surrender blah blah swords and/or trap. I cut to the swords !”.
So we kill him, rather easily, and a quick ramsacking of the room leads us to believe that that guy actually could have had some helpful info. The group death glares at me.

Same session, about two hours of real time later, we wind up against another very obviously evil guy in league with the Big Bad, who beckons at us. I open my mouth, the rest of the group immediately shout “NO” in unison. I grin and shrug, and we walk and talk to the guy.
Guess what ? No info whatsoever, blah blah blah my godly master blah blah surrender no you surrender blah blah trap from the ceiling THEN swords !

The most painful part was that I couldn’t even say “I told you so !”, having been killed but good by the swords part.