What are your D&D "Darwin Award" Stories? #5
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- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
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I swear that stealth checks are the bane of our parties existence. We still try anyways despite the fact we all wear heavy armor.
A good option is to make sure that each member of your party has no more than breastplate and shield. Add a 14 dexterity and the armor class is 18. Breastplate and shield has no penalty to move silently. Also heavy armor is uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time...
I’m just imagining:
“I sneak in!”
CLANK-CLANK-CLANK-CLANK
use charisma instead. when spotted, intimidate them with "YOU DO NOT SEE GROG"
@@niaford690Ah yes, angry stealth.
@@TrueZero2 breadbarian uses rage against the machine
Probably last session of my pathfinder game where I told a demon she was ugly. Didn't die but I did get backhand slapped straight through a wall.
that is GOLD
I mean, she is...
"Dayum, bitch! You ugly!"
(Falcon Punched through wall)
Our party had just defeated a bbeg. The bbeg was in the process of summoning a demon who was crawling through a portal while we fought. Killed him before the summoning was complete, but there was still this portal.
One player, in spite of everyone telling him "it's a portal to hell" decided that instead of destroying it, he wanted to see where it went. That was the last time we saw that character...
I have a character who's reliant on not just a portal to hell but a portal to a volcano in hell to craft this ridiculously rare magical super glass. Normal forges can't do it, gotta use hell lava. Occasionally he has to break halfway through because some demon found the other end.
Lol, reminds me of that one death in Quest For Glory 3.
8 words:
"I want to lick the Sphere of Annihilation."
Anyone counting on it being Black Hole-chan?
@@lukasz88888888 No, that character has a fixation with licking things because they come from a salt flat island. and that player had to RP the rest of the session as if they had no tongue.
That's fucking legendary.
This has the same energy as soldier repeatedly taking the amulet when playing TF2's dnd in one Halloween comic.
Did they at least find out what a Sphere Of Annihilation tastes like?
My rogue once triggered a knockout gas trap. When he woke up, I had him smash the trapped chest with his axe. Retrigger. Second fail. Back to sleep. Fortunately not fatal.
"Sands of Time" wasn't where I was expecting that last story to go. I assumed the mysterious dust was drugs and/or explosives.
Or some sort of poison...
Time loop shenanigans ensued
I was expecting the chest to be a mimic getting balls-ass-high off of cocaine while chewing someone to death.
The party I was in for one campaign found an artifact that allowed anyone who used it to cast a more powerful version of the Wish spell. For some reason, despite my stern suggestion against doing so, the party gave it to the chaotic evil fighter for safe keeping. What resulted was the destruction of the whole continent.
One of the OG classics.
The DM had cannons in his campaign. The fighter had a flaming sword. They were raiding a military base. The fighter started smashing barrels with him sword to find whats in them. Gunpowder is kept in barrels.
Older than the internet.
lol
Well, Fighter is now pieces at best.
Soft-locking the ax death was brutal. I love that
So this happened a few years ago in a long running evil game. This was a group of old school players, everything had a consequence. We were exploring in the underdark and gotten to a fairly high level. Someone from our friendly local gaming store wanted to join in on the fun. He rolled up a rogue with the help of a few of us. During character creation, we pointed out that this was the underdark and unusual senses were the norm, as the party's other sneaky character, I specifically pointed out a couple of feats he would want to have. He watched us play a couple of sessions, and then was given the opportunity to join the game. He decided to lurk in the shadows until the 'right time.' Fair enough, we had pretty much all proven that we were a bunch of bastard, so best to ease into things. He... did not do that. Instead he waited until we were in combat and tried to pick my pocket. My character was a half black dragon with a particularly bad temper. He had watched this character get angry and solo a hydra. Certainly the best target to try and rob unannounced. He rolled a really high stealth check, got in close... and the DM stopped him. 'Let me see your character sheet' new player hands over the character sheet, DM checks the feats, asks if the new guy is absolutely sure he wants to continue, then turns to me and says 'you detect someone sticking their hands in your pockets with your blind sight.' The specific feat the DM was looking for was Darkstalker. Darkstalker would have forced me to oppose his rolls to hide. Darkstalker is a feat I specifically pointed out to him as being essential in the underdark. Darkstalker is a feat he decided he didn't need because he has such high skills. On my initiative, I made a full attack against the fool with his hand in my pockets. His AC and HP were not up to the task. A half dragon with Shou Disciple and Exotic Weapon Master going to town with a bastard sword reduced him to around -120 hp. Of course since this was an evil campaign, we immediately raised the character... as a zombie. Waste not want not. We used it to set off a few traps in the next session. New guy did not come back. Which was fine, he was a bit of an ass at the best of times.
upon discovering a magical pool of molten silver in the forest one of my players decided to drink it, and died (obviously). the magic of tge silver tried to ressurect her as an undead, but the party, panicked by her revival, immediately cut her head off and threw it in the lake. canonically she's still down there suffering agonising burns for the rest of eternity
So, we were playing a Pokémon homebrew 5e game.
The druid decided (extremely stupidly) to insult a Lucario, who in my campaign, react extremely violently whenever they are insulted.
The Lucario didn't even bother to use his Aura attacks on the druid.
He walked up to him calm as a breeze, gathered all of his strength and proceeded to backhand the druid across the face so hard that he instantly died.
You can imagine what would happen if you were on the receiving end of a backhand slap from a Lucario....
Death by Lucario Backhand.
@@connormeriwether4486 Yep... It has a MASSIVE Piercing damage bonus, due to the spikes...
Did they play as Pokémon or were they trainers?
@@crona3316 They were trainers.
In my campaign, Pokemon are DANGEROUS when angered.
If they're the small and cute ones though, they don't deal huge damage.
Think Jigglypuff from the anime.
@@caolanochearnaigh9804 I see. That sounds cool than. And I always like a slightly more realistic take on Pokémon junk like you did.
There's one campaign I played in that immediately came to mind with this video's prompt. You know how sometimes it seems like there's always one player in the party that is just genuinely stupid? Yeah in this group, Zack was that guy.
Anyway, it was a simple "smash-and-grab" style dungeon-crawl campaign, where we were exploring a sort of "Mines of Moria" knockoff deep under a mountain range. We come upon a very sinister-looking throne room, with a skeleton sitting on the very spiky, evil-looking throne. This skeleton is covered in dust and cobwebs, but the crown, ring and scepter the skeleton still has are all pristine and very fancy and expensive looking. We do a Detect Magic on the skeleton, and oh boy is it just full of uber-powerful magic. We do a Detect Evil on it, and would you believe it? The thing is surrounded by a miasma of pure EVIL. The party immediately decides that this skeleton and/or the jewelry it's wearing are super-duper-mega-cursed, so we agree to move on and look for loot in the next chamber instead.
We go to the next chamber and start looking around. After a minute though we realize "Wait, where's Zack's character?" Zack apparently completely missed the veritable forest of red flags those royal artifacts raised, as well as our whole discussion about how it was obviously cursed. He decided that he wanted his character to have some bling, so he stayed behind to loot the skeleton on the throne. Let me be clear, this was not Zack convincingly RP'ing as a dumb character, this was Zack himself making remarkably dumb choices.
So he puts on the ring from the Skeleton's finger, and feels a strong urge to put on the crown. Will Save. Zack fails, though admits he was going to put it on anyway (we all look at him in disbelief and facepalm). He puts on the crown, and feels an even stronger urge to pick up the royal scepter. Will Save. He fails, and picks it up. Zack grins at the rest of us around the table, obviously thinking he just pulled one over on us by taking the most valuable loot for his own character. Another, much harder Will Save. Zack fails, shrugs and declares that he's going to go catch up with the rest of the party to show off his loot. The DM stops him and says "No, you don't. Your body no longer answers to you, and an ancient, evil presence has taken up residence in your mind, controlling your body. Congratulations, you are now possessed!"
Zack's possessed character went on to murder almost the entire party, only stopped when the last character standing activated an ancient pit-trap that dropped him into a seemingly bottomless abyss, where he fell to his death. Zack was furious with the DM and the player who killed his character and demanded to know why they did that to him. We had to explain where he went wrong about three times before he finally got it. He was still sulky and whiny about it for a while, and didn't play too many more sessions with us after that.
Never died in a DnD game but I heard about this one dude who played a low intelligence ork that tried to self-sacrifice to save the party's lives and die a hero. He rolled a nat 20 and was able to save the party without dying but then decided his character became obsessed with the "die a hero" part. He then spent the rest of the session trying to get himself killed unnecessarily since he felt he messed it up the first time and it didn't count.
Basically his character became suicidal because he thought that self-sacrifice was the thing that made it heroic.
My very first session had indeed a darwin award moment.
We were still low level and had to move to an island. DM makes us meet a pirat who would move us there. (The pirat was an NPC so far). Instead of paying the pirat for the trip one member of our group had the glorius idea: „if we kill the pirat we can take over the ship.“
Well the pirat was ment to be the BBEG at the end of the campain, so us lv.~4 players against a I think it was a lv. 15 boss with a ship full of minions.
If we hadn‘t had a druid who just unlocked transforming into water animals and transformed into a whale to escape with the group in the mouth, we would have died on that ship.
Playing Twin Headed Serpent, Pulp Cthulhu when, we had someone decide to shoot the lock off of a red painted door. Generally this wouldn't be much of a bad thing, till you realize we were in the middle of a strip mine and a metric frick ton of TNT was on the other side of this door. "Killed" half the party with that while the other half were suddenly in a target rich environment as everyone from the mine came pouring out to check what that noise was.
Oh boy oh boy, do I have a story for you. A 2 for 1 actually.
So in my Pathfinder 2e game I was playing Nimir Antonovich, a Barovian who, after the campaign ended, got scattered into my GM’s homebrew world.
Eldritch Trickster rogue with the witch dedication, cursed background, and spec’d as a thrown weapon rogue.
A very mixed bag of too many ideas at once. But god I’ll always love that idiot.
Anyway, I’d already established a pattern of over using Message, with several NPC’s being like, “Uh, whatcha messaging there bud?”
Well, Nimir and Umi (cleric) were having a duo session as I and their player could make it that night.
Umi, being a water elf, decided to check out a small lake on the way to our destination town.
There she saw a Kelpy- think a demon water horse, like the old tales of mermaids- and Nimir saw it too.
Now, as bad as he was with people (+0 to charisma), Nimir was very smart (+4 int and expert in nearly all intelligence based skills).
I ask if I can roll Occultism on that thing to determine if it’s bad and the GM goes, “It looks at you and _says_ neigh.”
“Uh yeah, I want to throw a knife at its kne-“
“I run up and say hi!” -Umi.
It scooped her up and immediately dashed to the bottom of the lake, Nimir unable to react in time.
Now, Umi can breath under water, which the Kelpy didn’t know. So they’re literally just having an awkward post-murder attempt conversation while Nimir is just shouting _shitshitSHITSHIT_ while trying to get to Umi.
He didn’t have a swim speed, but he couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, so he started to try to swim anyway (he had mediocre athletics so he made most of his checks).
That’s when he sees Umi and the Kelpy just casually chatting, and I made my mistake.
“Uh, I guess I cast message and ask if she still needs help?”
“Okay, you open your mouth while 20 feet underwater and immediately start drowning. You’re instantly unconscious. Make a fortitude save- and if you crit fail you’re instantly dead.”
Cue Umi freaking out, me freaking out, and the GM realizing I’d somehow found a way to turn the only safe person in the situation into the most imperiled person in a single action.
After 2 turns of Umi trying to get closer and Nimir making his saves, but the damage going up by 1d6 per turn, things were looking very very bad.
That’s when Umi failed 2 diplomacy checks in a row to convince the Kelpy and decided to Hail Mary for an athletics check to break free.
_Nat20_
Then came Nimir’s turn.
DC 35 check, instantly dead on a 30 or lower.
The GM made me roll publicly and… _28_
I’ve never shouted “HERO POINT” faster in my life (on demand reroll similar to inspiration).
31- barely not-instant-death.
The next turn it took Umi 1 action to reach Nimir, 1 action to pull out a potion of water breathing she’d bought on a whim the session prior, and 1 action to give Nimir the potion.
Then it was a race to land and we kicked the Kelpy’s ass.
But we joked several times about how Nimir made 3 separate saves where _instant death_ was on the table in what was supposed to be a silly side quest.
--
Oh and now for round 2 of “How will Nimir almost die?”
This time, also a “buddy cop episode” with Maxwell the fighter, Nimir checks out a missives board in a tavern.
Among the notes for a missing dog, a jerk insulting local turnips, and an out of date festival, was a wanted poster for Jenta- the Spider- someone Nimir immediately recognized as a fellow Barovian who’d been tossed into Atrea (the homebrew world).
Nimir grabbed a few of the papers and hurriedly got Maxwell’s attention to go get a room.
He then proceeded to _insist_ they go find that missing dog. I said out of character, “Oh, Nimir is entirely not emotionally ready for this and is in full denial mode.”
The GM has Maxwell roll perception and Nimir deception, I rolled terribly and he rolled amazingly, which I was fully down for.
Maxwell just said, “Hey, if you’re determined to help a dog I guess that’s a good thing to do…”
So the GM is scrambling to come up with NPCs, locations, and clues on the spot.
We end up speaking to the dog’s owner and getting a last known location. We roll well on survival and find her chilling in a corn field in a small clearing munching on an ear of corn.
“Uh… I slowly approach and tear off an ear of corn to give her.”
“Okay… roll a reflex save.”
Apparently there’s a vine-blight like creature with organic flash bangs, so Nimir and Maxwell start fighting this thing totally caught off guard.
Now here’s a little fact about Nimir and Maxwell.
Nimir had the highest AC at 22 (24 with Nimble Dodge) and second highest HP (around 50).
Maxwell had the highest HP (around 60) and second highest AC at 21.
We got _rekt_… *hard*
Nimir was getting strangled and was literally down to 5 HP, with Maxwell dropping to well below half, before we finally killed that thing.
Of course, we returned the dog, who ended up being pregnant, and our reward was Nimir was promised a puppy once the litter was had, and the guy gave him a potion of healing to help a little.
So in summary, you dove into a lake and then opened your mouth, then you almost died and got a puppy.
@@kh6853 I think the puppy was before the near drowning but yes.
Nearly died in a corn field while “doing the right thing!” (Avoiding childhood trauma) and a few days later nearly drowned after opening his mouth 10 feet under water.
Nimir did sadly die _in the shadow fell of all places_ a few sessions later. But that wasn’t a Darwin Award situation, he went out like a badass (tanked 3 hits all dealing 20+ damage, meanwhile the rest of the party _combined_ had less than 30HP).
I’m so glad he _nearly_ died in such comical ways but _actually_ died in a very impactful, meaningful, self-sacrificial way.
If you include dark heresy (Warhammer 40k ttrpg) a team managed to requisition an artillery barrage from friendly forces to soften up or eliminate their target. All they needed to do is find it and pass an easy navigation check to leave them with clean up. They critically failed the check and read out their own coordinates.
Played Dragon of Icespire Peak with some friends. When they went to Gnomengard and fought the mimic, the barbarian asked to throw the paladin at it and he accepted. The paladin got stuck. The paladin got one-shot. Luckily didn’t die by a single hit point ( thank the gods for the DM screen )
I've played that as well. If you want to know some stuff about the campaign I played in, I included information in this comment.
My PC was a Dwarf fighter with mimic paranoia, so that part was fun. I think at one point I joked about using the sticky mimic goop to invent sticky notes.
Some other PCs were a Blue Dragonborn paladin that used to be a criminal, a Tiefling fighter, a Gnome (don't remember the class), and a Human wizard. There was a sixth party member, but they left early on.
My party also had a lot of pets. Cashew the squirrel, Bugs the rabbit, Techno the pig, Pumba the boar (not sure how to spell the name), and Bulbo the boar.
One of the party members almost died in session one due to a crit from an ochre slime. I feel a bit bad for reminding the DM that crits exist.
Expanding pole shenanigans were also fun (lifting the gnome, using it as a magic weapon, etc). I don't regret keeping it.
The dragon fight was pretty easy since two party members had Fireball.
In the end, we took the dragon head back to the main town and used it to prank the mayor. Thank goodness we passed our stealth checks.
gold-fish dive? marisha and her druid dive
One of these days my party's Lemming story is going to make it into one of these videos.
11:24 AFAIK Relentless Endurance specifically states it only works “if you’re not killed outright”, so I think it was either a relatively low fall damage roll, an oversight from the GM or a merciful ruling that saved him.
Playing Elfquest. Our characters are up a tree when we hear a call to come home to the Father Tree. Friend has his character jump out of the tree rather than climbing down. Rolls a 1. Broke his neck and died instantly. This was the first roll any of us had ever made in the game. We'd played for 1 minute after making our characters.
My party was traveling through the mountains, sneaking through enemy territory on our way out after having killed one of the BBEG’s main underlings. While crossing a rickety ass bridge, we saw none other than the BBEG himself, flying towards us on his dragon mount. We had a small amount of time to react. While the rest of us scrambled to jump off the mountain with feather fall and hide, the wizard decided to cast fog cloud. Strangely enough, the suddenly appearing cloud of fog on a snowy mountain seemed somewhat out of place to the BBEG and his dragon. Cue breath weapon. Cue wizard dying outright from said breath weapon. Casting fog cloud has been a running gag ever since.
Oh I think I got a good one.
It was my very first DnD game, my friend (who was the DM) invited me to play with a bunch of other people who I've never met before.
we were playing a fantasy version of a Zombie apocalypse (where it was just one city that suddenly became overrun with Zombies) And I learned real quick of what kind of Party I had to deal with. While I play a DM made character Quick-Claw (a female Tabaxi rouge) Everyone else was either a fighter or a barbarian (one of which really like jumping through windows). I was trying to play to my class's strength with stealth and trickery. The rest of the party didn't give me a chance, screaming into battle every chance they got.
When I had to skip a session for real life, the DM was kind enough to let me play a solo session, so I didn't feel left out. Giving the excuse that I was 'scouting ahead' with a guard when I was missing and that is where I started. It was then that I was introduced into one of the top enemies of this campaign, a Wraith. Of course, neither me nor my character knew what that was, but thankfully the NPC guard did knew and saved my stupid ass when he grabbed my hand and made a run for it. A barley missed Fireball brought the lesson home, Don't mess with those things.
In the next session, I was reunited with the party and after meeting the leader of the now refugees of the city, my party decided to go underground to find out more about our enemy. Low and behold, just a few stories underground, was not one, or two, but THREE wraiths!
I tried to tell my party that we can't beat them, but as usual they ran in, axes bared right into danger. I tried to help but all of my shots from my Crossbow simply weaved through the undeads' ribs, and their heroic charge quickly turned into a heroic last stand.
When I saw that our best fighter decided to just simply tackle both himself and a wraith into a shallow pit where no one could help him, I knew that the fight was done, so I did the only thing that my character would do in this situation. Run Like HELL. Those players died calling me a coward, But at least I was still alive.
In our group we were exploring a cave system and saw an underground lake in the area. Suspecting possible treasure or another hidden area my buddy decided to wildshape into a creature that could swim to explore it. The rest of the party refused to go into the water for obvious reasons. Our Druid then wild shaped into a platypus. As you all suspected.. yes, he went into the water and got eaten by a monster. That event created one of our groups signature phrases. whenever someone suggests something stupid.. “never go full platypus”.
We were doing a campaign that started with us getting attacked on a ship in the middle of the sea. We were in the lower decks and the druid casted "call animal help" or something like that. So, some sharks break holes open and start attacking, but being sharks one failed a die and killed one in our party. We were trying to no avail to close the holes so we tried getting out of the ship. With the ship quickly sinking, one of the group said to do a long rest because we were quite battered up. I looked at him and said: "You want to make a long rest in a sinking ship?" He immediately changed his mind for whatever reason. We tried a couple of times but never managed to get past the ship xD
Back in the day in 3.5, I played a Draconic Heritage Sorcerer with fire breath. We must have been 6th level since I had just picked up the Major Image spell. We were raiding a goblin camp that had allied with one or more ogres, making short work of the small fries by herding them together with illusions and frying them with area spells, when I underestimated an ogre's movement speed, found myself at the business end of a heavy club and barely clung to life with a small 1-digit number of HP left. As charisma caster I knew what to do, dropping on the spot and playing dead with a successful bluff. To prevent the ogre from making sure I was dead, the party knight (fighter in full plate) got between us and engaged it in melee, but got flanked by a hobgoblin. As my turn came around, I found I could angle my fire breath to hit the hob and the ogre without hitting the knight, and at 6d6 probably dealing enough damage to finish them off. However, the DM ruled that this was only if I was upright, and options were limited by being prone: there was no way to hit the giant without also frying the knight. I couldn't get up without catching an attack of opportunity from the ogre, so I trusted the knight to keep its attention and cleared his back by frying the hob. Unfortunately a 15 ft cone of fire is not exactly subtle, and even a dumb ogre realizes that the fire spitter who just turned a full health hobgoblin into ashes is a bigger threat than the canned food poking him with a toothpick. Thus my firespitter was turned into hot mush (in 3.5 you die when your HP hit -10, the attack took me to -16 or so). The DM was somewhat anxious, because that was my first character death (also his), but I didn't complain, accepting that it was my own fault for trying to be badass with barely any HP left while within melee range of an ogre. The whole thing turned out better than that one time when I trusted the fighter to make his safe and Color Sprayed a group of low-level bandits surrounding him... He and one bandit were the only ones to fail their saves.
My first campaign ever, I got the party killed by convincing them we could successfully negotiate with the green dragon. Thankfully since it was our first game the friendly neighborhood retcon wizard showed up to save us
Isn't negotiation normally a good strategy against a powerful opponent?
@@Babyrobot444 the problem is that green dragons are the most clever and manipulative variety, all we did was allows ourselves to get ourselves trapped and lined up perfectly for slaughter
In the group I play in, I’m the player with the most Darwin awards. I’ve had a character burned alive by a red dragon (while trying to help another player), had another one squished by a giant boulder, a third character ran into a pit of spikes and another one killed by an invisible beholder. The last one was brought back and I’d evidently learned some lessons because the epilogue of that campaign took us to level 20 and she was the only one from that group who was still alive. Given that she was a level 6 paladin and a level 14 zealot barbarian with a penchant for eating her enemies (she was a Lizardfolk) and an intelligence of 6, I think I deserve some credit for her still being alive despite the opportunities for dumb stuff she found!
I actually have one for this. I was DMing this game, one of my players was playing a homebrew class that I think came from a Final Fantasy module he found but reminds me more of the Kinsect staff from Monster Hunter. It was a very mobile melee class all about jumping around the battle field with a spear. The party took on a quest to accompany a group of dwarves up a nearby mountain to gather some resources. On the way up the group was attacked by wyverns, I described the scene as "you are all on a road winding around the mountain, there's not much room to move and the edge of the road is a drop to certain death." LITERALLY SAID "CERTAIN DEATH!!!" This player got the highest initiative, None of the wyverns had landed or attacked yet and I described as they formed a line flying next to the road waiting for an opportunity to pick off one of players.
Player: I want to vault off the side of the cliff to attack a wyvern.
Me: Are you sure about this? There isn't any ground underneath them
Player: Yeah, I'll be fine
Me, looking at the ability again: This ability clearly says you land *next* to the target of your vault this would mean you'd fall
Player: I know what I'm doing
Me: are you? Trying to land on the wyvern?
Player: uhhh, yeah I guess I can try that...
Me: ok, roll to hit then roll an opposed grapple I guess
the player does hit the wyvern and does a decent amount of damage but rolls a nat 1 to grapple. At this point the entire table (excluding this player) is silently facepalming this very avoidable death. I describe as he heroically leaps from the cliff onto the back of a wyvern, plunging his spear right between the wings of the dangerous creature, to which the wyvern responded by spinning, causing the character to lose hold of the spear plunged into the wyverns back, and fall down a sheer cliff face.
Player: wtf why did you kill me? This character is all about jumping around I should have been able to vault back over
I called for a break shortly there after.
Was playing a session with relatives, and my brother's character, a pretty low level rogue, got drunk as fuck at a tavern. after being highly belligerent to pretty much everyone in the building he got kicked out. The rest of the party figured he'd head back to the inn we were staying at to sleep it off so we didn't follow him. He drunkenly wandered into a nearby forest to take a piss and runs into a huge ass horde of zombies the DM had intended to save for a later occasion. Instead of running, he decided to fight the whole horde by himself. He was so drunk he could barely stand so he got ripped to shreds pretty much immediately.
I ran a homebrew version of the 5e Out of the Abyss module. Group is around level 12 or so and gets to a purple worm nest to get a purple worm egg that was needed for a spell. While the group’s wizard avoids detection and is trying to pry free an egg, the group’s Dragonborn Paladin decides to try to kill the purple worms on egg watch. In addition to the worms I had homebrewed a keeper/protector of them who came in to assist the worms. Party struggles with most spell casters nearly out of spells and most of the group is well below half health and the paladin was knocked unconscious and had failed two death saves before the group’s cleric was able to get in range and was only able to get him to around 15 hp with one of his remaining spells. Of note, Paladin was already out of his Lay On Hands pool and didn’t take any healing spells himself as he focused on damage/buff spells. At this point there is still one purple worm left that hadn’t taken any damage and hadn’t entered the fray as it was too far away to sense the other battle. First thing the paladin does after coming back to consciousness is…rush the other purple worm. Worm proceeds to down the paladin, swallow the groups barbarian who eventually did make it out with 1 HP after the worm was killed, and a third character (sorcerer) also ended up dying. Cleric tried to keep them alive best he could before they went down, but he ran out of spells. Sorcerer and Paladin both end up failing 3 consecutive death saves. And that was how an over confident paladin ended up getting himself and another party member killed and nearly a third party member.
Had a party member grab two other members and jump down a mine shaft into... a nest of ghouls... yeah. my forever DM friend PMed me "WHAT DO I DO!!!" cause he didn't want to kill two players becasue of one idiot. I told him they willingly went, splat them. Mind you one of them was my wife's charecter. None of them were mad about it.
I've had a lot of these over the years. My characters tend to be cocky and confident and I don't mind dying to stay in character
That dragon situation required only one stealth check.
I had a player who took out the entire party while receiving a Darwin award.
His character was a human fighter but his backstory was that he was a Longshore cursed to be a human.
Now the party is trapped on a flotilla of pirate ships, they're low on health, and have just finished making a cease fire between two groups of fighting pirates when our award winner gets brought back to 1hp. He then proceeds to without warning attack the pirates, thus starting the fighting all over and getting the entire party killed
this was both bad luck and darwin award material. One time my party (They were like level 9) were chasing a Warlock through the woods while his 2 Air elementals and 2 Air Myrmidons protected him and ran interference. The party Druid decided to cast Conure Animals to summon a bunch of Giant Owls to pick her up and fly after the Warlock, immediately catching up. She however, neglected to have the owls grab any of the rest of the party (The Paladin, Warlock, Fighter, or Wizard) which meant she was nearly 60 ft ahead of the rest of the party and alone with the boss. She also forgot that she was bloodied.
The boss then turned around and shot her with a Lightning Bolt. She failed the save and he rolled high on damage, so she dropped to 0 hp and then got a failed death save by falling 15ft once all her owls vanished. Now she was down with a failed death save in front of a myrmidon and the party were busy. I can't remember how exactly but the party managed to catch up and push back the myrmidon and the paladin was about to lay on hands her when.....nat 1 death save, three failed saves. Dead.
This was a Cyberpunk 2020 demo we played at a convention this weekend. We got an item we were supposed to bring back to our fixer - a small box. We opened it. Inside was another, more ornate box that read "Property of Arasaka Corporation". Me and the other player immediately said not to open it. We got into our car. On the way, our third player decided to open it - against the wishes of his own coin flip.
We proceeded to blow up in less time than our player could throw it out the window.
Please tell me it was nuclear.
First mistake was trusting anything labeled Arasaka.
This was a Darwin award pre game. Starting Keys to the Golden Vault, Sorcerer using standard array puts 8 in CON... So -1. He had 5HP total and got one shot by the first enemy he encountered.
CON as your dump stat.
Yep, classic Darwin Award.
I had a dwarf wizard give his life to save the party from a golden golem. Threw a lightning bolt at it which allowed it to immediately move into melee with the caster using the spells electrical energy. Poor Morin Bouldershoulder lost his head but his friends were able to escape.
That Sands of Time one at the end was cool! I assume in its original trap form it would reset the character to right before they stepped on it, or something, so they’d keep trying to enter the room, and take a first step, and then a first step, and then a first step, and then a first step..
Tried jumping over a river via stepping on stone. Drowned
"Goldfish Dive" Keyleth's stunt lives on in infamy.
I just had a recent one. For certain reasons, two party members were separated from the rest of the group. One of them was tied up, and the other had to leave and dunk himself in water to prevent himself from dying (diseases are fun.) Anyways, the one party member didn't want to bring the tied up guy with him, but also didn't want to leave him just tied up on the ground, so he decided to stuff him in a nearby crate. The problem is, the crate he opened and promptly overturned to empty contained several volatile and explosive crystals. One chain reaction later, and both characters are dead and hurled off a mile high cliff by the explosion.
Near-miss darwin: our monk decides to jump down a well filled with snakes (for no reason mind you), provoking them and starting combat. Both snakes crit, and our monk is almost dead. Were it not for me (Yuan-Ti), the snakes would have finished her off. To this day we still dont know why she did it.
In a campaign I was our druid was being chased by a dire wolf and decided it was a good idea to escape by jumping into a well and turning into a goldfish mid air, he rolled a nat 1 and the dire wolf rolled high. A goldfish uas 1 hp so he instantly died.
I'm just imagining like, a cartoon scenario with that last story of the barb constantly dying, and getting more frustrated, each time XD
" Oh *shunk* Come *shunk* The *shunk* F@CK *shunk* ON!!"
My friend unknowingly jammed his hand in a bag of devouring and failed every saving throw my DM could think of.
11:13 lol, you've referenced CR before but i think this is my favorite 🙃
I was dming a heavily homebrewed sci-fi campaign, where magical creatures where extinct, but people used them as inspiration for machines of war, (giant death robots). As a way to introduce the equivalent of a dragon, (essentially a walking turbo tank), I had them come across a heavily damaged one stuck in a mostly collapsed building. The idea being that they might try and finish it off but fail due to their weapons not being strong enough. Instead, one of my players tried to walk up to it and talk to it, while it was blaring warhorns and aiming its cannons at him. Needless to say he would have died if I hadn't saved him by describing the cannon miss-firing due to a badly bent barrel, and promptly exploding. He took a lot of damage, and the rest of the group teasingly dubed him "dragon tamer"
I remember playing a T-Fling Bard named Ash. He was a young adventurer who joined a band of misfits for fun. There was a dragon in the land that would randomly find them traveling pretty often and they had to fight it off. One day Ash decided he was done with this Dragon and wanted to slay it. It attacked his party and he jumped in its back… not much he could do after it started to fly. It did a barrel roll and Ash was able to hang on, the earth got further and further away as the dragon took another barrel roll. This time Ash wasn’t so lucky… in fact his luck ran out. His friends watched him plummet hundreds of feet into the earth until Ash was much like his name… just chunkier ;)
What kind of player asks for an adventure to be scaled up 3 levels past their own, without even knowing that spectres are immune to non-magical weapons?
The time our level 8 monk decided to solo a Death Tyrant. Needless to say, he got petrified and turned to ashes. He learned nothing.
Absolutely flabbergasted that this video mentions a campaign I was in ...never tell me the odds
I have one. I was a sea elf druid, and our ship was about to be boarded by pirates. We were hidden hanging off the side of our ship from ropes, ready to swing around and board the pirates when they got close. We swung around, between the two ships, down below out of sight when I realized I could see through a porthole into the enemy ship, and made a quick and brilliant decision. I cast flaming sphere inside the pirate's ship, and then had it move to the general area the powder room would be. The resulting explosion did take out the pirates, but due to our proximity half the party was downed and we took significant damage to our own ship. We had little chance of surviving a direct confrontation anyway, (we were meant to be captured,) but everyone was super surprised and everybody's characters were a bit upset with my character for nearly killing us all.
Playing AD&D, party's knight tries going down a dry well...by diving straight down thirty feet. Because it's AD&D and everyone is so squishy, he died instantly.
A tiny mage riding on a big half-orc's shoulder into combat?
It'll work for a while... but at some point, they'll have to get... *Beyond Thunderdome*
"Goldfish Dive"... Marisha Ray is now immortal.
I got a player in my game, were playing a pirate multiverse traveling themed role master game
My body has used all of his session drives points twice, (this are rerolls on anyones roll) both times hes uses his last reroll on mundane things such as playing his violin, while it is risky hes playing his character the way he wants and i respect. As of this comment hes yet to die from those risks
So i was running this one campaign that was based off of Infinity Train. My players for a few weeks were doing good, each week was a new world that they had to figure out how to escape from. Well finally we get to this one world where the party figured it out way faster than i had planned, so i quickly threw together another world... this one inspired from Rick and Morty. The world was New York, but with all the people replaced with sentient chairs and tables. My players decided that this was their favorite world. They started a race war between the chairs and tables, then wanted to fix the conflict so they could be seen as heroes and recruit these creatures as soldiers. That was their overall plan, the way they tried to execute it? 9/11...... yeah they high jacked an airplane and flew it into the tallest buildings they could find.... then were surprised when i said that they all died in a firey blaze.... I honestly did not expect them to do that.
I have one that a friend of mine told me once. He was DMing for a group that had to find info about some evil governor or something, I don't remember, and no one is willing to talk to them about it. Eventually they find a paranoid beggar that will talk to them, but only if they prove they aren't demons. At this, the party's paladin jumps up shouting heroically that he is no demon, and would do anything to prove it, so the npc takes out an iron dagger and says that he must stub him (the paladin) with that dagger to be convinced. The paladin agrees and opens his arms saying "I'm no demon", the beggar says "you have armor" so the paladin takes his armor off, gets totally naked and stands before the beggar saying "do it, and see that I'm no demon".
Well, with the paladin bare-chested and unwilling to dodge or defend against an attack coming straight to his heart, the DM was left with no choice but to declare the paladin dead with no saving-throws or anything.
Oh hey my time loop story finally got into one of these videos! Nice!
To no ones surprise the guy who always plays an Elf asked "why isn't there a Vampiric Tarrasque?".....
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Here is an idea for a vid: “What music do you listen to during character creation?” Mine is the Song “Prayer” from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, on a 30 minute extension.
We call this "getting Jimmy'd" after the player it happened to first (and most often) Elderscrolls GURPS party has captured a large number of ork bandits, using a balista we had nearby, a group decides to make a break for it, one party member goes after them, and as soon as they are around a corner, and having not yet been disarmed the turn on him, and he got wrecked, with no chance for backup since the rest of us were busy and he was out of view of the balista as well
The best one I have is from the session before I joined the campaign. Also, minor spoilers for Strixhaven.
In the main lobby area of the Strixhaven campus, there is a decorative fountain of magic. Probably had no importance other than a cool decoration for what was essentially DnD Hogwarts. The fountain included a pool of magic at the bottom. One of the players decided that it was a good idea to dive into this pool of pure magic. And that is how Strixhaven had a student casualty on its first day of school.
Our crew once found a barrel full of "black sand with a faint scent of sulphur". I was playing a ranger who used a rifle regularly and recognized gunpowder, the party's dwarven fighter DID NOT. I went back to our wagon to make room for it so I could put it to use. Session ended and I couldn't make it to the next, "went on a long hunt/rest", when I got back the dwarf, our mage and rogue are dead. Dwarfus held a torch over the barrel and wiped out most of the party. Left me and the party's healer all alone, not so bad actually, on the path back to town my ranger fell in love with the tiefling who was self-concious about her failure to save the party. I got to actually say "Don't let it bother you, no one can cure stupidity"
I have so many just from one party.
There was the time the party went into a castle that was perched high above the city without a moat and after stealing a bunch of stuff, the Artificer decided to leap out of the window to get away. They did not realise that when they said the words 'I run and I leap from the window' I would assume they meant that they run and they leap from the window because doing so dropped them 300ft down and instantly killed them.
There was the other time the party had found a legendary enchanted Banner that the BBEG and his minions were looking for. They also had a job to clear an old mansion of zombies. They decided to have the great idea of telling some of the BBEG's minions that they had seen the banner in the possession of the Necromancer's at the mansion and when the Captain of the minions asked 'Well what did it look like?' the Paladin deadass pulled out the banner he still had on him and said 'like this'.
2 stories, both mine. Story 1, playing a ranger, and the party was invading a lair, there was a giant trapdoor ala the one in the James Bond movie where the volcano crater actually covers a hidden base. The rest of the party, due to being faster initiative and movement, were able to cross the floor of the crater door to get into melee on the other side. DM tells me I can either move now, and move next turn to get into combat, or I could attempt to jump over the slowly but inexorably closing door. Failed jump check by 1, beg DM to let me have the "pull yourself up" roll.
Failed that too. Left hanging on the edge, with the giant crater lid slowly closing. DM: You're out of actions, but as a free action, you could let go...
Me: How far down is it? DM: Beyond your vision range. Me: Ummm. DM: You're running out of time, take your free action to drop, or no? Me: I can't decide. DM: Then you're gonna die by being cut in half by a giant closing door. Me: Well then, I guess that's what happens, as my character is too petrified with fear to do anything else but watch his impending doom.
Story 2: Think I was playing a fighter, honestly don't remember. Going through a dungeon, encounter several "Skull Traps" (I think d6 damage per skull... to be fair, I don't truly feel this is a Darwin, but he insisted it was, I think it was a first level spell, only meant to do a bit of damage while being scary, but...) I later encountered a room with a Drow woman in a cage, suspended over a pile of skulls. "I try to talk to her". Neither of you seem to know a language you can use to communicate. She is obviously in distress.
Ah well, Drow or no, I should at least try to let her out of the cage...perhaps If watched closely, she could join me for a bit, and we can at least help each other escape this place, even if we part ways and never see each other again. I will go investigate the cage, see if I can bend the bars or something. DM: It's hanging over a PILE of skulls. Me: What, you want a climb check or something just to go up a little mound?" DM: You're climbing? Me: Yeah. DM: Starts rolling the biggest pile of d6s I've ever seen.
Me: Whoa, wait a minute, wtf you doing? DM: Rolling to see how dead you are. Me: What? DM: Look, I gave you clues, you already encountered Skull Traps, now you just climbed a MOUND of skulls... Me: ... ohhhhh Hey, wait, that's not fair! I mean, to be honest, he did give me clues that skulls were deadly in that dungeon, but I was like 2nd level, NOT expecting an absolute death scenario...there were enough skulls there that even if every single skull was 1 damage, I was dying regardless.
The monk screamed I CAN TAKE IT!... To a fireball....At low health....Twice.
Some of our heroes where taken prisoner by the (then unknown secondary) antagonist.
They escaped their cell and the enemy fortress but where robbed of their entire gear.
The knight, who came from an influential family and had know issues getting new gear (we were near the end of the campaign) wanted his (nonmagical) plate armor back, so he went back in. As a knight, his stealth capabilities where lackluster at best. The group decided not to help him on his suicide trip.
He miracelously made his checks to the armory and put on his armor. THIS send his stealth checks to the bottom of the mariane trench... Because I am a darvinist DM, I had no mercy left and long story short, his head went on a pike.
He literally had to use a npc, because there was only one battle left in the whole campaign.
Happend in 2017 in the "Jahr des Feuers"-Campaign of the german "The Dark Eye"-Game
"Goldfish dive". Love the reference.
You open the thing. Which fills you with more dread?
A: 'Make a Dex save DC23'
2 - 'Roll Iniative!'
Or D... DM sighs, rolls half their dice and pulls out a TI-85
While playing CoS, one of our group decided they wanted to try to sneak up on some vampire spawn, while half the group was outside. When they were inevitably detected by the 3-4 vampire spawn, they then tried to deceive them into thinking they were also a vampire spawn, which failed epically. Then, instead of trying to retreat or anything, they jumped on the body that was actively being eaten to further attempt deceiving them.... needless to say they were subsequently killed and turned into a vampire spawn, and rescuing them and curing their vampirism is now a side quest for the group.... their second character voluntarily contracted lycanthropy to try to save the group and due to the exact circumstances, ended up staying to lead the werewolf pack that had a recent power vacuum... especially since the second character would have been OP with all of the extra immunities and resistances, and that's coming from me, my group's min/maxer, the person whom single handedly caused the aforementioned power vacuum.
Just shy of 30 years ago (god I'm old) I was running an AD&D 2nd edition game (god I'm old!). My wife was playing the closest thing a 2nd edition character could get to a 5th edition Dragonborn, and a wizard too boot. Her and 3 others made up the team of four.
Early in the campaign (luckily for them) they encountered a cave near the road they were traveling down. The ANTI-paladin in the party (yes, you read that right) decided to investigate, so the other three joined him. Deep into the chasm they went until they found a small chamber. It wasn't a dragon in the chamber, but whatever it was (30 years ago, I don't remember) attacked the party, was a bit too much for them, and so they started to leave. My wife was just high enough level to have Delayed Blast Fireball amongst her spells, and decided to cast it as a parting gift for the attacking creature. The fireball filled the room, killing the creature and destroying whatever treasure was there. But tte blas😂radius was bigger than the chamber, and the excess flames and heat exited through the only outlet available: the cave they were all standing in. It was only because they had just started, and my wife invested so much time into her character, that the party was blown out of the cave, a bit brused, a lot charred, but still alive.
Candlekeep mysteries, Joy of Extradimensional Spaces. This happened a couple of months back. The party clears the entire mansion, they have everything they need to escape. Nobody has any spell slots left except sorcerer who has just one, but they decide not to have a long rest. They already had interacted with the (friendly)Faerie Dragons in the gardens, when the sorcerer decided it might be time to get revenge for controlling his movement for a bit, as a joke(as they do). He tries to figure out where they are by ear, and rolls a nat20. Then he casts mage hand to try to push one. He fails, and the rule we're using is on any failed magic, he rolls for wild magic. Long story short, the faerie dragon gets some damage, and attacks him. One of the other party members tries to convince the dragon to let it go, and succeeds. Then the sorcerer says "I take my shortsword and attack the dragon while he's distracted". I ask "are you sure." He says he is.
He is now playing a bard, and understands that if the DM asks if you're sure, he's not asking a question. He's informing you that you are not, in fact, certain of this at all.
"The Goldfish Dive." A classic😂
"we're basically gods" jumps of a cliff.
Classic
When you’re a monk you can do that and easily survive lol
*dies from dragon* *gets revived* *killed dragon* "I'll be far more careful" *falls down stairs* *dies again*
I now am always warry of stairs, they're up to something at all times.
Not fatal, but it should have been if not for quick (and merciful) thinking by the DM.
On a first session of a new campaign, a 1st time player buddy didn't get the memo that, "so you meet in a tavern..." is basically a moment to wrap the group together and get moving. His response to trying to party-up was, "I don't know you people...." and he decided to wander out into the street alone, walking straight into a cloud of fog that people were going missing in. Despite EVERYONE'S warnings, he did it and ended up missing and tortured for 3 sessions before we found him. His punishment was having an arm lopped off by a succubus, but I guess it's better than rerolling a character on your 1st day.
In the original S1 "Tomb of Horrors", there is a fixed Sphere of Annihilation, but it isn't labeled as such because that would make the trap far too obvious. It appears as simply a large black spot inside a carving of a demonic-looking monster. My character stuck a ten foot pole into it. The DM asked me ""How far?" I answered "About a foot." He replied, "You now have a nine foot pole." I stopped there, having established to my satisfaction that something bad happened to things that went into the dark spot.
The other player decided to jump into it. I advised against it. He did it anyway. The DM wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to him. That was it for him. I played solo for the rest of the session, which was a bit socially awkward, as we mostly ignored the other player for several hours, and we were visiting him at his place.
I did finish the module and found the real demi-lich and we killed it, but in retrospect I think that the DM gave me a bit of help at the end. I figured out the traps and secret doors playing solo, which was quite a challenge. The pre-rolled characters from the module, whom he was running as NPCs to make the party viable, actually killed the 'boss'.
I guess he didn't want to do a total party kill, and it would have been a bit anti-climatic to find the demi-lich and then get scragged because I didn't have a character with any of the *very* few abilities that could actually kill the damn thing. There were about a dozen spells that worked, or a hit from a +4 or better weapon from a paladin, or throwing a gem from the pile of loot, and that was about it.
Mine was a small one. In the session we were doing an arena gauntlet and one of the enemies was a minotaur. I was a level one Bard (the group I played with at the time didn't really do full campaigns, more so just series of one-shots), and I was using Vicious Mockery at the Minotaur while its gate was opening and didn't think to duck back behind the nearby pillar. The Minotaur attacked me because I was insulting it, got to use its Charge feature, and dealt 27 damage. I had 9 max HP, so I just died instantly. (The battle mat we were using had a blood smear as part of the design, so we joked that that was what was left of my character.)
Party in a city with warring noble families. Publicly aligned with one so enemies to the other 3. While exploring the harbor theres a suspicious accident where a crane drops a crate on some dockworkers and in the chaos a child runs up to them and says theres one more injured guy down this alley. Players already know its a trap. Perception check reveals to characters someone is trying to hide on a roof above the body. Wizard runs in anyway "because its what my character would do". Gets ganked immediately and then gets mad he didnt get to participate in the fight.
PANR has tuned in.
I actually have one this time. We were playing curse of straad and were going through the one part that has the scarecrows with the relic in them. We were split up. Me and one player got the relic and escaped the undead invasion. The third player walked into the scene. I think the dm was being nice because he had them frozen and unresponsive. The player decided to poke and produce them and even push one over. After no response and many warning to move along from the DM he then decides to "coup de grace" the downed undead boi... at this point 3 things happen: 5e doesn't have coup de grace in its base rules, second all the undead finally move and he is easily dead. Didn't even fight just a "welp I'm dead".
I come in on a Pathfinder RotR campaign with very green players. My husband, which was DMing, told me to help them, but no meta-gaming. We're in Thistletop (think a dungeon) and there is a miniboss next door. I knew she was there since this was the third time I've played this part of the campaign, but the other players did not. We clear out the room, and one of the players says, "I'm out of spells, so we need to rest 8 hours."
Me: But we're in the middle of a dungeon with enemies alive and awake around us!
2nd player: Yeah, but this room is safe.
Me: But you understand how doors work, right?
No matter what genetic reasoning I used, Jack getting his spells back was more important. So, we went to sleep and were immediately captured!
Honestly, the last campaign I played in was one big Darwin check.
I blame myself for the most part, because every time something came up that we, as the rulers of that country, were supposed to take care of one of the other players would immediately chime in that they would handle it and then promptly did nothing about it. At a certain point I stopped caring what their roles were I just went and dealt with everything one by one, right down the list, because all of that inaction was snowballing hard and I know the other players had more or less given up on the campaign, but I still wanted my character to live.
We're talking two years worth of playing on weekends a couple times per month worth of inaction and they wondered why I was doing so much better in my court than they were in theirs. I can tell you it wasn't because they were on the outside and I was mostly on the inside. It helped, but I was spending almost half of my kingdom's income in defending their lands. I would have been doing a lot better if they'd have been better at diplomacy with our neighbors, but here we are. So I didn't feel bad when I swept across their lands and dealt with the problems, then routed half the party from their roles. We were supposed to work as a group to fix the problems of the kingdom, instead half the party just spent their time working on gathering a harem or doing other things that had nothing to do with the reason we were there. Two of them were actively working against the rest of us and another one was working against us but I'm not sure if it was on purpose or if he was just trying to do something cool and another player had more or less given up on the campaign about half-way through and ended up sabotaging the whole thing before he left.
The DM didn't help, either. Anything we said, did, didn't say, or didn't do was used against us. If we went into detail about something to make sure we wouldn't get punished for not being detailed enough he'd complain that we're wasting game time, so we'd be brief for the sake of expediency and we'd get punished for it, then we'd go back to getting detailed about the things we were doing and we'd get punished because he was "bored."
Almost every oneshot my brother does ends with infinite pocket sand destroying the world
got my head ripped off by a ghoul once, then i pointed out my strength of the grave feature from shadow sorcerer and the fact that it works even if your killed outright, i had to roll a 19 or 20 to servive, i rolled a 19 and then casually put my head back on like it was totally normal
One of my players jumped into a bonfire in hell to try and extinguish it. She thought it mighta been powering the nearby attacking skeletons, but it wasnt. I asked if she was sure, which we joked about often meant certain death when the dm says that, and she said yes. Tried having her roll for a save and she failed. She became a crispy briquette almost instantly. The party also had no means of saving her as she was the party healer. They then tried sending her body through a portal out of hell but all of those were blocked at that time and the body ricocheted off the portal onto the ground. They simply (with great laughter and players permission) looted her body and moved on.
I've had a number of descriptive character deaths in games I run, but I don't think I've ever used the word "crispy" in that context.
I had a cleric try to 1v1 one of the main story bosses once, FIVE LEVELS BEFORE HE WAS SUPPOSED TO(yes i warned him). Needless to say he died. After he died, i told him he wasnt supposed to fight the boss until the end of the modual and he went "oh, well that was stupid of me."
The award goes to the warlock who took filght in a Gaint's butcher shop and then was hooked. They went unconscious, so thee butcher ripped her off the hook and, using them like a club to beat a kill the party rouge.
“ I chuck a fire ball at the library “ “ you mean the library that’s done nothing to you, and has nobody in there that we have any reason to suspect is evil, is guarded by at least 4 archmages , while 2 adamantine golems stand a mere 10 ft away from us “ “ yeah, something about this place , idk it’s sus “ “ actually, that’s a fair point * leans over to whisper to me, the dm * “ when he gets Swiss cheesed by magic missiles and then smashed to paste by these golems , i got dibs on his staff of fire “
Futuristic Setting of a TTRPG thats still in a Beta: We (pirates) just looted a bunch of stuff from a cargo ship, including a very special thermos-shaped container. After checking what was up with the container, it was revealed that there was some tech being used to prevent whatever was inside it from ever touching the thermos. Kinda like keeping a metal orb suspended by magnets or something. One GENIUS party member, decided 'im going to drink it!'. Before anyone could react, he had run into an escape pod with the thing raised and ready to unscrew. We, being sensible pirates, blasted his arm off with a laser. The container went flying, and before it could land and break open, a party member activated the pod and had it shot into space. Turns out: It had a sci-fi substance inside called 'strange matter'. Thing about strange matter, anything it comes into contact with also become strange matter until there is nothing else to come into contact with (AKA, the whole planet, ship, etc has been changed), at which point the mass of strange matter 'disappears'. The idiot PC died, and we all yelled at him OOC for his stupidity, because it was VERY OBVIOUSLY a stupid idea, which the character WOULDVE KNOWN it was a stupid idea. Also, we needed it to get a 'true good ending' for the game. Yeah. I'm still angry.
I tell you what, the ranger and sorc in my first campaign were all about this.
Session 1: we have combat with a few default orcs. Sorc forgets he has spells, draws his dagger and runs in to stab in melee with two of them. (we're level 1).
Third session: we've gone to investigate a lighthouse and killed some kind of devotee of Talos inside. A violent thunderstorm blows up. There's a lightning rod on the roof. Sorc: _maybe if I touch it I'll get powers._
Also third session: We're looking for treasure in a sunken ship. My character is a lizardfolk so he's doing the diving. There are sharks. After a few minutes, sorc and ranger decide I'm having all the fun and make a precarious ice raft with Shape Water. Sorc ends up falling overboard with the sharks. Ranger finds a shark 5 feet away and sticks her face in the water to Speak with Animals.
Session 4: we found an elf village overwhelmed by spreading darkness that's engulfing the forest. The elves are fine, but there are lots of shadows moving towards us. Ranger and sorc both announce they'll hold out their hands and see if they're friendly.
The warlock and I spent so much time keeping them from getting Darwin awards...
There was a fight on a rooftop, and the warlock was inside the building in question. He popped his head out of the window, looked up, at the sky, and declared: "I'm gonna cast misty step as far up as I can". I, the DM, gave him the slow headturn and asked: "I'm sorry, what? You know you will appear in mid-air and immediately fall, right?" He said it would be fine, that he would try to grab the building's edge and meet everyone at the rooftop. He failed his check. He was reduced to 2 HP. I still don't understand why he did that.
My roommate was interested in playing D&D 5e, so I ran a game.
Kobolds had attacked a Gnome village from underground, and the party had been hired to deal with them...
Now, this is his first game ever, but he's seen film and read books, so he's not going to do anything stupid...right? Wrong!
I tell the small party of 3 that this particular tunnel looks.. off. He decides to hit the walls, floor, and ceiling with his staff...and was promptly buried under a rock fall trap.
I've never had a game end that quickly before in my 31 years of running games, lol.
I once had a group chasing goblins through a thick forest, one player kept going after the rest gave up, i had chase music going and everything, i had the one remaining player keep making rolls to follow the goblin he was chasing, while in the form of a panther (moon druid) after a very poor roll, i cut the music and tell him he's lost the tracks, he says he keeps running full speed until he catches up with him, after a couple more rounds of just full sprinting through the woods, he goes full speed running off a cliff face, i let him roll for fall damage, and he did so much to himself he knocked himself out of wild shape, and unconscious in canyon, bled out all alone in a hole lol
Background: I was DMing an Eberron game. The players were FULLY informed that this would be an RP-heavy, Immersive, Choices-Matter, The World Exists Around You style of game. I asked them all ahead of time if that's the type of game they would want to play - with all players agreeing, and many being extremely psyched at that sort of structure and setup.
For anyone who doesn't know Eberron, the setting takes place a couple of years after a MASSIVE 100 year long continent-wide war in which no one really lost. So, we have major political and military powers who have literally hundreds if not thousands of seasoned warriors who have nothing to do all of a sudden. And those major powers are all scared out of their minds about triggering another war.
Fast forward (not very far) to session 1. The heroes have just arrived in a capital of one of the aforementioned political and military powers after dealing with the world's unluckiest attempted train robbers (the train they picked to rob just so happened to have the players on it, and oh boy were they not ready for that). Sitting in a tavern, attempting to ascertain their next steps, they've noticed a group of three Gnomes are standing conspicuously with notebooks, watching a specific member of the party (a Kalashtar who somehow had manifested a Mark of Scribing). Another party member attempted to peek at their notebooks and saw that they were basically writing down live-commentary on the actions of the Kalashtar and the party around her. They quickly put together that this was a group from the Dragonmarked House that had the same Mark as the Kalashtar (basically putting them at the level of incredibly important diplomats).
Cue player (who decided to power-build, despite all discussions ahead of time) getting bored. And he decides to ATTACK the massively important Diplomats in a Capital City. Needless to say, I did everything I could as a DM to dissuade this, even to the degree of having one of the aforementioned veteran-turned city guard showing up as the player was wildly swinging an axe around the tavern in front of everyone. The group eventually agreed to write that character off as being jailed in order to avoid a literal international incident that could have started another continental war.
Because, when the player heard "RP-heavy, Immersive, Choices-Matter" he thought "I can do whatever I want to whoever I want with no consequences."