Dumbest thing you've ever done in a game?

[Tainted_Scholar]

Story time! What is the stupidest thing you've ever done in a game?

For me it was when I had my level 3-ish Bard charge a Wyrm Black Dragon. Fortunately the Black Dragon didn't even consider me worth killing so he just left. Looking back though it was an amazingly idiotic move on my part.

[Krobar]

Old 2nd edition days. I was playing a wizard, at about 3rd level. We were at the top of a high cliff, and needed to get to the bottom. So I jumped, planning to cast Featherfall shortly before I hit the ground.

I forgot that I'd already cast that.

It did not work out well for me.

To this day, 25ish years later, my friends still like to occasionally say "I just jump off the cliff."

[flappeercraft]

Back around 8 months ago when I was noobish on actual gameplay (due to practicing more theoretical play) with 2 4th levels under my control and 2 3rd levels under a friends control, we started to fight 4 zombies, the stupid thing was that one of my characters was the party cleric and I forgot I could Rebuke Undead

[Wristlet Eater]

The party walked in on a bunch of bat-headed creatures performing some kind of ritual sacrifice. They didn't notice us at first. We could maybe have sneak attacked them.

My sorcerer then screamed "****, demons!"

[JBPuffin]

Spent a 5e encounter as a high-Str Life Cleric grappling and attempting to hog-tie a harpy.

Tried to burn through a hedge maze as a 4e bard and ended up setting an entangled friend on fire.

Attempted to be reasonable during a Saga game with a...less than functioning DM.

[Fizban]

Not all that funny, but there was the time I stopped in full-attack range of a Nycaloth. Not being aware of how ridiculously overpowered they were, I thought my AC (about as high as a non-specialist would have at that level) would suffice for a turn. I survived because the DM took pity not finishing me off the next round, or so I thought- later I read the module and it did in fact say the fiend would prioritize protecting the cleric, who was being mauled by a bear from a bag of tricks.

The only really "dumb" thing I can think of is in my first game back in middle school. Everyone complained about every single action I tried to take, so when we found a pool of "fairy water" (a la zelda) I peed in it, to give them something to complain about. I think it was perfectly reasonable in-context.

[Ursus Spelaeus]

I blew up a mindflayer nautiloid ship after the DM spent hours rolling up treasure.
I (as a high level psion) teleported into the room where the sequence helm was arranged in a straight line, zapped the whole line with sonic energy beam, and teleported out of there right away.
I was rather proud of my action-economy breaking shenanigans, and pleased with an impeccably-timed nat. 20 on a Concentration check. Then everybody started screaming at me. Evidently I was not supposed to one-shot the nautiloid ship. It didn't help that the nautiloid was a little too close, so that our ship got caught in the blast wave sending our wild-shaped druid flying into space as our pilot went comatose.

I've done dumber things in other games, but this was the dumbest thing I can remember doing in a 3.5 game.

*edit*
Wait... nevermind.

I played as a fighter in a high level campaign. That was dumber.
In fact, I charged at a demon wielding a spiked chain and got stunned for four rounds. That was the dumbest thing I've ever done, but then again that was when I didn't know any better.

[Goaty14]

5 player party, each at 6th level, I am playing a 6th level ranger

We decided to go into an evil king's castle by sneaking in by scaling the walls by having the wizard cast Spider Climb on us. This was my first D&D campaign, and I decided to share spells on my Heavy Horse, DM decides to roll a listen check for the guards and gets an 18.

Worst idea.
I botched the mission for the whole party.

[Bucky]

"[my character] pulls out a pistol as she moves into melee range of the T-Rex."

"Does she have any idea how that thing works?"

"Uh, maybe?"

[johnbragg]

Not D&D, but a Marvel Super Heroes one-shot. I was playing an Armored Warrior, and I was late to the battle for some reason. We were fighting the Abomination (Hulk villain), and not-Jarvis gave me a ray gun "to use in case of emergency."

I get to the battle and the Abomination is swatting my party members through the air. This seems like an emergency to me, so I shoot the ray gun at him. Which turns out to be an EMP gun, not effecting the Abomination much at all but shutting me down, including my flight ability.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Not D&D, but a Marvel Super Heroes one-shot. I was playing an Armored Warrior, and I was late to the battle for some reason. We were fighting the Abomination (Hulk villain), and not-Jarvis gave me a ray gun "to use in case of emergency."

I get to the battle and the Abomination is swatting my party members through the air. This seems like an emergency to me, so I shoot the ray gun at him. Which turns out to be an EMP gun, not effecting the Abomination much at all but shutting me down, including my flight ability.

It sounds to me that your only mistake was trusting Not-Jarvis.

[Tipsy_Pooka]

At the start of a high-level 2E Underdark campaign, during our first fight, we get ambushed by a pack of damn dirty Drow. Thinking quickly, our "wonderful" cleric decides that casting "Earthquake" would be a brilliant idea. A shrug of the DM's shoulders later... and... everyone is immediately killed by the ensuing collapse of the entire cavern. All except the cleric who was "immune" to the effects and slowly suffocated instead.
**roll credits**

[martixy]

At the start of a high-level 2E Underdark campaign, during our first fight, we get ambushed by a pack of damn dirty Drow. Thinking quickly, our "wonderful" cleric decides that casting "Earthquake" would be a brilliant idea. A shrug of the DM's shoulders later... and... everyone is immediately killed by the ensuing collapse of the entire cavern. All except the cleric who was "immune" to the effects and slowly suffocated instead.
**roll credits**

*Rocks fall, everyone dies.*
Except you, you get to sit there and think on what you've just done.


My dumbest thing... was actually a whole-party derp, so I share the blame.

Chasing bad guy through a string of portals.
For whatever reason on the next hop, party decides to jump all at the same time.
Straight into the mouth of an active volcano.

[Zaq]

Does playing a Truenamer count?

What about playing a different Truenamer under a way worse GM (including, but not limited to, in the fact that much harsher book restrictions were in play) just to see if I could?

Being slightly more serious, I feel like I tended to do stupider things as a GM than a player. (Past tense because I can't see myself ever GMing 3.5 again, since it's just plain not worth the effort to me when we have systems like 4e or Legend. Kudos to anyone who still has the fortitude for it, because I do not.) Like once trying to dictate a PC's dialogue during a "cutscene" (literally a rookie mistake in that it was my first GM session ever, but still, phenomenally not cool). Or thinking that a Cranium Rat Swarm is ever an appropriate challenge, ever. Or attempting to homebrew monsters before ever once using printed ones (which would have helped me get my CR sea legs—CR legs?—so to speak). Or thinking that it would be enjoyable to have an entire dungeon full of nothing but oozes. Or saying that the character who got Reincarnated as a kobold was a Kobolds Ate My Baby kobold instead of a D&D kobold. Or deciding that it's somehow fair and fun to just time skip the party straight to a boss fight (with no explanation as to how they got into the arena that said boss had prepared, which had no small amount of home field advantage in play) because I hadn't finished prepping the dungeon.

For the record, all of these incidents were many years ago, and when I GM 4e (my current system of choice), I like to think that the mistakes I tend to make are less boneheaded. But yeah. I don't like GMing 3.5. It brings out my stupid side.

[Remuko]

I had a half chaos dragon that loved trying to solve problems with his RNG breath weapon. Caused my group to come up with the phrase "pray for fire" whenever he would decide to use it (even if thats not what dmg type we actually wanted). I don't remember specifics but I'm sure this caused problems many times.

[Eldan]

First or second session ever. Paraphrased:

"So, you kill the orc sentry. He screams. You hear answering shouts from the orc camp down the hill."

"I turn over the body and search him."

"You see about a hundred orcs looking up at you on the hill."

"Anything in his pockets?"

"You really should leave now. They are turning to charge you."

"So, nothing in his pockets? What about his belt? Any pouches?"

"Are you really doing this?"

"He might have loot!"

"Alright. You find one copper coin, a set of dice and a badly made axe. Then, a hundred orcs charge you and you die."

[Cisturn]

So I'm not sure if this was the dumbest thing, as it was pretty hard for my character to have seen this coming. My level 9 party had finally gotten to the end of a giant dungeon we had spent a couple of months in. The Big Bad was this cool giant Orc Frenzied Berzerker/Eye of Gruumsh. The Battle was tough, and we had already lost a guy, but we had beaten this thing down to like -40. Unfortunately due to deathless frenzy he wouldn't die. Or he'd drop and then jump right back up a round later. I think at one point I has successfully cast calm emotions on him, but it only seemed to work for a round or so. Running low on health and ideas I decide to go for broke and cast Plane Shift on him. It was my intention to send him to my god's realm where he could get stomped on by some Solars. Unfortunately it was revealed that the orc BBEG was a conduit for some evil outer god/cosmic horror. By sending him to another plane my character had accidentally released the cosmic horror, who promptly tore apart the upper planes and killed my character's god, along with almost every other good-aligned god. I think Pelor and Corellon were the only survivors by the time the campaign ended.

On the upside my Cleric may have set a record for most gods killed by accident.

[ColorBlindNinja]

Does playing a Truenamer count?

What about playing a different Truenamer under a way worse GM (including, but not limited to, in the fact that much harsher book restrictions were in play) just to see if I could?

If playing a Truenamer counts, I did that once. I started at level 1, didn't pick up an Item Familiar until level 9 and didn't use custom items either.

[King of Nowhere]

Can we count the stuff one does as DM?

Because once I sent my players to the infernal planes and I filled them with cute fluffy bunnies. For precision, cute fluffy infernal killer bunnies of cuddly death, who could spit fire, acid or lightning at choice and were so cute you needed a succesful will save before you could try to hurt them. THat mission also involved killer watermelons, assassin zucchini, and a malevolent homicidal pineapple that used his pineapple as a bludgeoning weapon that exploded on impact throwing shrapnel that would start growing inside those it wounded and rip them apart.

Not really dumb, but certainly most ridiculous.

[flappeercraft]

Can we count the stuff one does as DM?

Because once I sent my players to the infernal planes and I filled them with cute fluffy bunnies. For precision, cute fluffy infernal killer bunnies of cuddly death, who could spit fire, acid or lightning at choice and were so cute you needed a succesful will save before you could try to hurt them. THat mission also involved killer watermelons, assassin zucchini, and a malevolent homicidal pineapple that used his pineapple as a bludgeoning weapon that exploded on impact throwing shrapnel that would start growing inside those it wounded and rip them apart.

Not really dumb, but certainly most ridiculous.

Do you have the stats for that? I definitely want to use that at some point

[Wraith]

The first was in a game of Savage Worlds under the Rippers setting - think "Van Helsing" or "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"-style PC's, working for the British Government as part of it's secret paranormal investigation and neutralisation department.
One of the players was a Wizard with typical amounts of blow-things-up spells, another was playing as an Action-Exorcist-style Catholic Monk (he used an incense globe as a flail and had a few, but powerful, magic spells like Banishment and Dispel Magic) whereas I was a gunfighter-come-inventor who had spent many hours researching and constructing a pair of revolvers that reloaded themselves automatically so that I'd never run out of ammo. We were sent to Egypt in order to investigate another team of operatives who had gone missing, and the clues led us to the Great Pyramid - apparently they had gone in, but not come out, so we followed in order to find out what had happened.

What had happened, was that they had run into the mummy of High Priest Imhotep, an ungodly-powerful Mage who was none-too-happy about interlopers poking through his stuff looking for treasure.
The Wizard went first. What he thought was going to be a Dragonball Z-style beamwar between magic spells ended quickly and abruptly when Imhotep one-handedly sprayed a swarm of locusts right through him, leaving just a bare skeleton behind. The Action-Exorcist charged in to avenge his companion and was almost bisected by a single swipe of Imhotep's immensely powerful fist. "Almost" being the key, and ultimately crucial word; he lost all his hitpoints and was deep, deep into his grace period, which prompted me to make my stupid mistake; I showed mercy.

The Wizard was the skill-monkey and the Exorcist had the healing magic; even assuming that I could have run in, grabbed the guy and run out again, the best that I could do was to ensure that he died in the sunlight. So instead, with permission from the character's player, I administered a coup-de-gras to the head from the doorway, saving his immortal soul from being cursed and enslaved by the Mummy, then ran for the safety of our train out in the city.
Except that shooting someone - even an ally - is a combat action, and since I was acting last all it meant was that I administered the Emperor's Grace, then we rolled initiative again. I lost badly, and having just attracted Imhotep's attention to myself by firing a pistol inside a closed room, the locusts fed well that day.

The second was in a game of Abherrant - superheroes using the White Wolf d10 system. I was playing as The Overseer - an otherwise unremarkable humanoid with immensely powerful Mind Control abilities (Mega-Manipulation: 5/5 and the Domination power with "Voiceless" and "Numerous Targets" extras). My stats were so lopsided that I didn't really even need to roll against non-Novas; unless they rolled multiple crits, any result short of an outright botch on my part made them my instant puppets, and Novas were barely any better.

So I, alongside my three compatriots (a mixture of strong/tough/fast guys each with one elementally themed skill; a flame thrower, a hurricane-maker and Aquaman-who-didn't-suck-honestly-you-guys) were out scouring the streets looking for supervillains to fight, and we came across a trio breaking into the roof of a bank. One was a cyborg decked out with machine guns for fingers, another that crackled with lightning in his eyes, and the third being what appeared to be a huge dog who left footprints seared into the tarmac wherever it walked.
They were obviously immensely powerful but we had the advantage of numbers, and I thought that I could simply unleash my powers to their full, take control of one of them, and make it a walkover with 2-on-1 odds on our side. I picked the dog, because it was a freaking cool dog and I suspected that they cyborg had a robotic brain and thus might not be susceptible to my powers.
Turns out I picked the exactly 1 out of 3 incorrect target; the reason that the third villain was a dog, was because he'd taken a huge stack of Flaws (such as having no hands, being unable to speak, dumping all of his social and intelligence skills, and so on) in order to afford a HUGE number of inconspicuous powers, including Mind Shield.

Mind Shield, in Aberrant, is a nigh-unique skill in that it simply says "no". There's no requirement to roll dice; the character is simply immune to any and all mental-based powers whether they be good or bad, including mental probing, mind reading, telepathy..... and mind control.

The GM was pretty astounded at my poor decision. He hadn't changed the encounter to screw with my character, and we'd even had a conversation an hour earlier (during character creation!) about how expensive some of the skills were, how many Flaws you'd have to take to afford them, and what that character would probably look like afterwards. He had been expecting me to pick the obviously powerful lightning-based character, use it to wipe the floor with the other two and then interrogate it for the next plot point, assuming that I didn't melt it's brain on the spot; instead I pissed off the one creature in the room that I could not fight as I had no other powers to speak of and it bit several huge chunks out of me before I hid under a garbage truck and tried not to bleed out while my comrades fought the other enemies.

[King of Nowhere]

Do you have the stats for that? I definitely want to use that at some point

Actually I've been thinking several times to open a gallery of homebrewed ridiculous-looking monsters - I even wrote the stats in english, which is not my native language, on the offchance that I may want to post them someday - but never gotten around it. I have two issues:
1) is there some kind of subforum for homebrewing, or any place better suited that this forum anyway?
2) how do I do a good formatting? I tried to post homebrewed stuff many years ago, but the formatting sucked. I have no idea how to make a table or anything like that.
Give me good answers to that, and I will post the stats.

to be exact, the bunnies and the pineapple have stats, and I have a few other dumb monsters I homebrewed. the zucchini and watermelon instead were more of a riddle quest. You would enter into those endless fields of watermelons/zucchini which seemed perfectly normal, but they moved whenever you weren't looking at them, and they kept rearraning the dimensions to keep you trapped. If you cut down a large patch of plants, you turned your back, turned again and you would find the plants still there, as if you never chopped them down. If you walked in a straight line, you moved in a circle. teleportation and other dimensional travel would not work, because the spell could not handle the corckscrewed dimensions. if you used flight, you'd just see an endless field, and if you flew high enough, it would appear that you were inside a hollow sphere completely covered in zucchini/watermelons. If you dig in the ground, you would soon tunnel through... and find zucchini/watermelons again. If you fell asleep, they would capture and kill you. I put a lot of emphasis on giving an atmosphere of impending doom as the party went through them, having them find remains of previous adventurers - giant watermelons with human arms and legs sprouting from them and a full skeleton inside, or broken skeletons surrounding a giant zucchini that had grown up into them and torn them apart.
Getting out could be achieved by walking in a specific curcing trajectory that would follow the outline of the hidden dimensions, which required high checks of knowledge: planes and mathematics. Or, it clould be handled by hiring a recurring npc with a survival in the mid twenties (a kind of homebrewed expert who specializes in a single task and get extra bonuses to it. Something else I considered posting if there was a dedicated homebrewing section).

[arclance]

I cast Reverse Gravity on the thing sucking the party towards it.
The moment I said "I cast Reverse Gravity ..." I realized I had just cast Reverse Gravity on a Black Hole.
I had to Resurrect all the other party members, good thing I stocked up on scrolls for that or everyone in the party but me would get to spin the random race wheel from Reincarnate.

I think they would have been really angry if it had not also ejected the BBEGs not so dead body into Deep Space making it very unlikely he would come back.

[Krazzman]

Using sarcasm on a dense DM... or at least one that tended to ignore sarcasm.

In the first and second to last game of Gurps... I tried to roll a Shield-blader from some game I was playing which was sort of a magical enhanced guy with a sword and shield to focus attention of monsters on him while the rest would deal with it (an inventor, a mage and a "big game hunter" with psychic abilities)... at least that was the plan in effect I played the fighter in a group of alchemist, Wizard and medium. All because when I started buying magic I realised that I had too less points and in the end the DM said that I should hurry up....

[JeenLeen]

I think, for D&D 3.5, it was being in full attack range of a dragon when I didn't realize how bad that was. Another time was fighting a "the wizard is covered in dark robes, with a hood and veil, and dark gloves, so that none of him is seen" and not having my Cleric of Pelor try Turn Undead. Didn't even think it was undead until I was disintegrated. (I had feats and whatever PrC boosts turn undead, since we just had a few splatbooks at the time.)

In general, though, it was a Mage game. My character left his car to go on a mission, and left an enchanted shotgun in it. Car got towed, and we weren't sure if nobody noticed the shotgun or if the Technocracy knew and left it as a trap.
Well, I got the car, said I did a scan with a Matter-sight on to check for bombs and such. The DM asked, "Do you just look quickly or really take your time?" Thinking I'd look suspicious if I took my time, I said just a glance to check it over. No bomb found. Drove it back to our heavily-fortified chantry. Supertech bomb went off and destroyed all the wards and killed some chantry-mates. Fortunately, we had enough folk with Correspondence for the survivors to teleport away before the Technocrats showed up, but that lost a powerful node to the Technocracy and destroyed our main support base.

The DM did alleviate my upset by saying that eventually we'd lose the base anyhow. If none of the PCs did something stupid to screw it up, another NPC mage would or the Technocracy would finally invest resources to find it. (They knew for a while a chantry was hidden somewhere in town, but Mind wards on it made it impossible for anyone who didn't live there to notice it.)

[johnbragg]

Actually I've been thinking several times to open a gallery of homebrewed ridiculous-looking monsters - I even wrote the stats in english, which is not my native language, on the offchance that I may want to post them someday - but never gotten around it. I have two issues:
1) is there some kind of subforum for homebrewing, or any place better suited that this forum anyway?
2) how do I do a good formatting? I tried to post homebrewed stuff many years ago, but the formatting sucked. I have no idea how to make a table or anything like that.
Give me good answers to that, and I will post the stats.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forum...omebrew-Design

As for the formatting, there are folks on the Homebrew forum who might help out. Especially with tables.

[Florian]

Campaign was going up against a doomsday cult.

Party entered the village that was a front for that cult, we knew they were xenophobic and anti arcane magic, so we tried to keep a low profile until we had time to make our move.

Night at the inn, some invisible thing stole an important item from my characters room. Notices that, also noticed it went outside, cast fly, outside put up some walls of fire and blanked bombed the area with fireballs, because I couldn't pinpoint the creature.... smack in the middle of a moonless night.

Cover? Blown! Village? Antagonized! Cult? Warned!.... and I didn't even blow up the critter....

[King of Nowhere]

Do you have the stats for that? I definitely want to use that at some point

Ok, I opened a thread in the homebrewed section

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ulous-monsters

[The Viscount]

I was playing in a game where we ran expedition to castle ravenloft, which at the time I knew very little about. When we were buying gear I decided to go with a fun little item, ring of the evil eye, which boosts spot and initiative for a pretty reasonable price, because it makes you fail your saves against scrying. I didn't think scrying featured in the module. I later discovered Strahd was scrying on us for some time, with no failure.

[Triskavanski]

Erected a 15 foot tall statue of the queen, mooning her city with the statue of an underground army leader with the capture "The True Ravencrest people 'salute' the Queen"