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I just wanted to start a thread where people can share some stories they have about “idiot” problem players.
Lets call them “Snaggletooth Storeis”
Let me describe to you “Snaggletooth” the sorcerer by way of a couple of stories
I was running the Desert of Desolation series (Pharaoh, Oasis of the White Palm, and The Lost Tomb of Martek). I had converted it to 3.5, and I was running it for 15 level characters.
Wile in the dungeon in the whit palm oasis, the PCs found a trapped secret door. The door was “guarded” by a little monkey Idol. You opened up the door by twisting the monkey idol on its pedistal. Every time you touched the monkey idol, a polymorph other spell went off. You had to save vs Petrify Polymorph ( I adjusted it to a Fort Save) or turn into a monkey. The paladin twisted the little monkey idol and made his save and the door was opened.
Then Mr Snaggletooth got a bright idea. He decided he wanted to put the monkey idol in his pack to deter thieves. I admint, I was probably a little exasperated by then, it was towards the end of the session and afternoon, I explained to Mr Snaggletooth, that he would probably have to make several Fortitude saves while handling the monkey idol, before he could put it in his pack. I also explained that the Fort save was his weakest save. Undeterred he picked up the monkey idol. To his credit Mr Snaggletooth made 2 out of 3 Fort saves. The last one he failed. Mr Snaggletooth began to crave bananas, grow fur, scratch himself, and he turned into a recess monkey.
The first thing on the monkeys mind was food, and the nearby toad familiar (who was Mr Snaggletooth’s familiar) looked quite tasty. The Toad hoped away for his life. The monkey scampered after the toad. The party monk asked the party paladin, ok who can take care of this monkey business? Who can break the enchantment? There was silence at the table. They realized Mr Snaggletooth was probably the only one who could. So they chased the monkey and the toad.
They eventually managed to stuff Mr Snaggletooth the monkey into a sack, and brought him back to the Sheik’s tent. Two guards challenged the party with a “who goes there” and crossed Halberds. When the PC monk produced the squirming bag and let the monkey head pop out, he said “ we have dinner for the Sheik” One of the guards said “ oh yes Chilled monky brains is one of the Sheik’s favorite dishes”.
The PCs entered the tent. The player who ran Snaggletooth had a look of horror on his face “ uh guys com on seriously, you arnt going to feed me to the sheik? Guys?”
The PCs brought the Monkey to the Imam instead, who inspected the monkey, hanging it by the tail, pronounced it fit for the Sheik's table, and then cast a break enchantment spell on him. Snaggletooth was saved from Culinary Doom.
Later in the module……The next weekend……
There was one moment where the PCs found a prisoner, who was locked up and chained in a cell. They asked him where they could find the kidnapped princess (the daughter of the desert sheik) He told them. I think the prisoner was one of the mooks who helped kidnap her. Then as the party was leaving the sorcerer Mr Snaggletooth (15 level) cast a magic missile on the guy. We were all irked at this guy. It was fairly senseless.
When asked why he did it the player shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know”
Later when the PCs returned to the Sheik to present their findings, get healed up and go onto the next chapter, the prisoner showed up and wailed “ oh mighty sheik, this man preformed foul sorcerery upon my person and almost killed me I beg for your justice for this wrong done to me”
Mr. Snaggletooth shot back “ you helped kidnap the princess”
Next the sheik was the Imam. He had cast a detect lies spell.
The sheik demanded both parties to give their side of what happened. The Prisoner and Mr Snaggletooth did so.
Then the sheik then asked the prisoner if he had a part in kidnapping his daughter. The prisoner replied miserably “ yes mighty sheik I beg for your mercy”
Then the Sheik pronounced judgment. To the prisoner he pronounced, “ You shall be executed by having your head cut off, for you part in abducting my daughter.”
Then the Sheik turned to Mr Snaggletooth “ for your part in using foul sorcery, to harm and almost kill an imprisoned unarmed and helpless man who was no threat to you, for no apparent reason, 50 lashes. Let no one heal him of his wounds. They must heal naturally, so they can be a lesson to him.”
Mr. Snaggletooth (the PC) smugly announced as he was being lead out to the post for his lashes, that he had a stone skin spell cast on himself, and he was going to cast a fly spell to leave these guys behind. He cast the spell and launched himself in the air.
The Imam dropped Mr. Snaggletooth literally. The Imam hit him with a greater dispel magic spell, which stripped the sorcerer of both, his fly and stone skin spells. After a 60’ fall into the sand, the PC sorcerer was seized, bound to a post, and whipped. The pc sorcerer passed out from the subdual damage.
Afterwards when the PC sorcerer, Mr Snaggletooth, went to the party Paladin (they didn’t have a cleric, hence the Imam NPC) the paladin said, “sorry I can’t heal you, the Sheik forbade it.”
The PC sulked. He didn’t get it. He didn’t think the Sheik was fair to have his character, Mr Snaggletooth, whipped and to have this prisoner executed. Especially since he felt he was “taking out the sheik’s trash”.
As a DM I decided to let the matter lie after that. I felt I had made my point, and the rest of the PCs at the table, seemed both satisfied and amused with that little “role playing” interlude. Mr Snaggletooth wasn’t permanently harmed, although he and his pride got a whipping.
There is a long list of Spectacular deaths the party had to save Mr snaggletooth from almost on a weekly basis. He never seemed to learn from his mistakes.
For his 7th level spell, the player who ran Mr. Snaggletooth picked Mordenakainen’s Magnifict Mansion.
For the first time he got excited about something. He drew floor plans, he took the trouble to decorate it with laval lamps tie die wall hangings, Hookas, all sorts of 70’s paraphanalia.
When Mr Snaggletooth invited the other players to come and sleep in his mansion, all the other PCs quidkly said, “NO” .
One weekend “Snaggletooth”’s player was away. Another player at the table ran the Sorcerer
I was Running the “Mud Sorcerer’s Tomb”. There was a water trap. This other PC had Snaaggletooth cast the mansion spell, so the doorway into the mansion lined up with the pipe that was spewing the water into the room. I thought this was an extremely creative use of the spell, so I allowed all of the water to drain into the extra dimensional mansion.
Then the player had the spell dismissed.
The next weekend, when the Player arrived, he asked everyone, “Ok where is the Tatoo on Snaggletooth? Any new piercings? “ Everyone said “Nope we didn’t do a thing”
Of course Mr. Snaggletooth didn’t believe anyone at the table, and got progressively more paranoid when he couldn’t find that anything had been done to his character. They even left his toad familiar alone. In a huff he said “fine” Snaggletooth then picked up his toad cast his Mordenkainen’s Magnificant Mansion spell and said “ Fine im going in here to chll out. ALONE”.
You can all imagine what happened next. The door formed, and burst open. Out flowed all of this water, which washed over Snaggletooth. Out flowed the sofas, the laval lamps the hookas everything.”
With a hurt expression on his face he turned to us and said “screw you guys”
To mollify him I told him he could simply recast the spell and everything would be put right.
Anyways, I would love to hear some stories about some of your “snaggletooths”
My two additions to this "Stupid Player Tricks" thread.
1) The mid-level wizard, who, knowing that the ancient green draqon was reading the party's mind via an ESP spell as they were trying to negotiate with it, told me that he intended to try and surprise the dragon with a fireball. When I asked him if he realized that the dragon would probably read his intent and react accordingly, he insisted on going through with it anyway, as the rest of the party reacted in horror. That little mishap resulted in 4 party deaths as the dragon breathed on the party just as the ineffectual fireball went off, but ironically the wizard made his save and survived. That particular player did not last long with that group before they jointly decided to move the game elsewhere and not tell him where.
2) The low-level elven thief who after detecting a trapped statue of a dwarf and being told that it operated by its mouth opening to spray something out in front of it, successfully bypassed the trap himself, then immediately hopped up on the statue and decided he had to mock dwarves in general by making the jaws of the statue open and close while saying derisive things about dwarves. Needless to say, the poison sprayed out on the remaining characters who had not successfully bypassed the trap yet. They were, to put it mildly, unhappy with him. This particular thief, however, was chastened by this early mishap and went on to be quite proficient.
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So, despite the fact the GM (and his RL cousin) try to dissuade him from the bad idea a number of times, he decided he wanted to do it anyway. Since the Tavern o' Terror had other things going on at the time (the animal heads on the wall had started singing by this point), thing basically moved on
I'm disappointed that the paladin(and the rest of the party) didn't smite him immediately after all.
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I've got one to add to the thread.
So our group(a paladin[Snaggletooth], a kobold monk, a archer bard[me], a draconic sorcerer, and a dwarven cleric) has heard a rumor about a shack up near the lake that bandits are supposed to be using to hide their loot. Given that they are bandits and we are adventurers, we go off in search of the shack.
On the way, get get attacked by giant frogs. We dealt with them moderately well, and moved on(one escaped though) to find the shack.
When we get there, we see that the windows are boarded over and the shack is old. Our monk sneaks up to the door and returns to tell us he hears humming. After a few moments of discussion, the cleric said he was going to open the door.
The Paladin: "No! I'm going to open it with my warhammer!"
Before we can stop him, he slams his hammer through the rotted door.. only to be covered in a swarm of wasps. A swarm which nearly killed the entire party. Guess whose movement was described as "you running around screaming like a little girl with your arms flailing around."
This was only part of the Snaggletooth. Partway through the fight, he leans over to me.
The Paladin: "I can't run away from them! I'm Lawful!"
Yes, he actually said that to me.
We survived, but only after most of us jumped into the lake to escape the swarm. The paladin was in heavy armor and had a shield...
Guess who almost drowned? Almost everyone, but mostly Paladin. Poor guy had such a big penalty to his Swim check. Guess who had to be pulled out of the lake with a rope? The Cleric.
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The party were surrounded by archers of a humanoid race of type forgotten (probably orc). The most talkative player started to speak when another player decided their character, a paladin, was the best at negotiation.
The other players around the table were alarmed and more than a little worried because the paladin's player was known for his naturaly knack of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
The paladin's player assured the other players that, hey, he had this covered. Mr Cool to the rescue - it's all going to be a-o-k. Chill, it's all good.
..so the paladin steps to the front of the party and raises his hands to get the attention of the archers surrounding him and his friends.
All goes quiet.
The palading looks around at each archer, cooly smiles, and in a decidely 80s style manner of speaking, begins the negotiations by saying:
''Ok, shoot...''
Ages ago I was playing in a game of Top Secret (James Bondish espionage RPG for those born after dinosaurs roamed the earth). We were engaged in a room-to-room search and I opened a door to find myself faced with 3 surprised enemy agents.
I was standing in the doorway with 3 enemies ahead of me and 2 friends behind me when combat started.
Did I mention I was standing in the doorway? I'm sure I did.
Snaggletooth has first action. He moves to line himself up about 10' back so that he can shoot through the doorway that I am standing in.
Wanting to even the odds he immediately shoots...with his shotgun.
All hail body armor. sigh.
We were playing a d20 Modern espionage game, and the PCs found a bomb they had to disarm. I had a martial artist type, and the other guy was a big gun guy, so neither of us had Disable Device or Demolitions. We call HQ for advice, and they say "Cut the red wire, then the blue wire."
So we proceed to cut the blue wire FIRST.....and rolled a natural 1, so we MISSED the blue wire and accidentally cut the red wire, and saved the day through sheer incompetency!!!!
Here is one of my favorites. We have a player who simply sees the logic in a situation FAR different than anyone else involved.
We once found our selves in a tower, not very big, exploring floor by floor. He was playing a CLR, I was a SOR, and we were the only two magic users in the party.
Anyway, we find ourselves on the top floor and peek out of the stairway. At the top is a large circular room with a summoning circle, an open portal and a demon. I happen to have a scroll of dispel magic, but since this was my second character, he was considerably weaker than the others. So our snagglepuss cleric offers to take the scroll and go for the area effect in hopes of getting the demon, the portal and the circle all done in. (And hopefull not the circle without getting the demon.)
So we all prepare ourselves for the worst, let the cleric up to the top of the stairs, and anxiously await the rolls. BUT, before he casts the spell, he takes off running straight at the demon. Needless to say, he didn't make it. That demon ripped him to pieces as we watched on in horror.
When I asked him why he didn't just cast it from the safety of outside the circle, he looked at me and said, "You didn't tell me it had a range." I wanted to cry over that one.
I have a story about a player who was sometimes a Snaggletooth. This story makes people chuckle.
Party is exploring the Underdark. They had seen a deep dragon on the way to their destination, which was a city they wanted to protect. So they went looking for the deep dragon to convince it to move elsewhere.
Eventually they found it's half eaten corpse. There was a wonderful moment of silent thought as they digested this news. They continued on much more cauciously.
Eventually the people in the lead saw something. They saw teeth. Sharp teeth taller than they were. As it came into view in the darkness it turned out to be a size colossal Fang Dragon.
The was an "oh crap" moment, and then they started talking to it. It was quite willing to talk. After a little bit Snaggletooth (a cleric of St. Cuthbert who was LAWFUL) started to lecture the fang dragon on why being chaotic was wrong.
Eventually three seperate players told the dragon "it's okay, he's not with us, you can eat him." So the fang dragon took a bite out of noisy Snaggletooth. A lot of his hit points and most of his con disappeared on the spot.
Roll initiative. Snaggletooth actually wins initiative over everyone. So he casts greater planeshift to run away.
The dwarf in the part looks up at the dragon and goes "Do we really have to do this?"
The dragon's reply is "nah, not if you don't want to."
Some more talking goes on and eventually they trade the dragon their deck of illusion for his deck of many things (he had already drawn).
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Let me start off by making this clear...Snaggletooth is either the most willfully oblivious person ever, or has made it a habit of going full retard when he's at the gaming table.
Feat prerequisites? Didn't exist as far as he was concerned. Saving throw bonuses, attack modifiers, AC? All fluid as far as he was concerned...he "accidentally miscalculated" one or more of these every. single. night.
Early in the campaign, in order to combat his munchkinnery (my best guess anywho), he is marked by a succubus who will bug him from time to time and has a telepathic link with him.
So, enough with the background...we are in an elven village for one reason or another and Snaggletooth (playing a warlord/fighter/cavalier), refuses to give up his weapon when entering the town. Result? He can't enter...he sits outside with the half-orc that wasn't even given the option to give up his weapons to come in. That in itself isn't bad...what happens next, OTOH is.
The BBEG is confronted by the rest of the party, and b/c BBEG knows we can't fight back, he uses some MC on the townsfolk to get us arrested. Half-orc hears some commotion (Snaggletooth still doesn't know what's going on), and uses the ring of invisibility to walk up and scope out the jail. He's about to report back when BBEG "turns off" ring of invisi and half-orc is thrown in jail too.
We are actually doing a great job of breaking out of jail...between maxed escape artist and disable device, the whole party is about jail broke when Snaggletooth decides do wade through the guards to see what's going on (totally against alignment and totally meta). He takes quite a few down before he's about to be killed. So what does he do? Uses the telepathic link with the succubus and makes a deal that gets the whole party transported to hell.
FF and we're required a blood or magic item sacrifice to enter into a temple. Nobody wants to give up their magic items, so we all gank Snaggletooth. He proceeds to roll up a new character whose sole design is to counter the party that killed him. *sigh*
Feat prerequisites? Didn't exist as far as he was concerned.
One of my friends, playing a fighter, once used TWF for a good three sessions before realizing that he didn't have Two-Weapon Fighting at all. He instead had "Weapon Focus" truncated on his character sheet to "WF."
We've never stopped giving him crap about his character having the feat Weapon Fighting.
Not that he's an "idiot snaggletooth," but I thought it's a nice anecdote to share.
Besides that, I can't think of any "snaggletooth" stories. Most bad players in games I've been a part of have just been completely insufferable in non-funny ways.
EDIT: I thought of one.
So, we were playing a zombie apocalypse game with the RIFTS Dead Reign setting.
The party consisted of all good friends from high school... and snaggletooth's character, a homeless guy we'd rescued in a session when I wasn't present. Our doctor, played by my friend, had been bitten by a deadie-- so, after he learned how zombification occured (infectious spread), he amputated his arm. So, he's a one-armed black doctor.
We'd reached a gas station just before a blizzard, and were clearing it to make sure we could have a safe place to stay. We enter the station, clear it, find rotting stuff, get attacked by a raccoon (that did shotgun-equivalent damage to a friend of mine, by the way-- the DM argued with me about my character needing the skill Judo Flip/Throw to remove the raccoon from his head. This is why RIFTS is absurd), you know, whatever. We bunker down.
The homeless guy, snaggletooth, starts... stripping the tin from the walls. And the shelves. He basically tries to loot the entire structure.
After we sleep for a night, we'd been completely snowed in. Six feet of snow around our vehicles. Almost covering the van. For miles. No way to drive out of this.
The homeless guy-- that my character has no clue about, really (I wasn't present for his introduction, so, I was unconcious in the truck) and whom is pretty much an outlier in the group, walks up to me and the one-armed black doctor.
He throws a shovel at us.
"Go dig out the van."
"Excuse me?" we say. "What?"
He gave us a blank look.
"You just told the one-armed doctor and the mechanic to dig a van out of six feet of snow. We can't drive it out. We're not going to dig it out."
At this point, someone else began formulating a plan to take the shovel and dig out just the back window, shatter it, and go inside for our things. But the hobo stared.
Rage formed.
His facial muscles stiffened. He looked away.
He was absolutely and completely enraged that we had dared to defy him. And he fumed for literally hours.
This session ended with another of my friends slipping from a tree and shattering his vertabrae on the ice. Paralyzed from the neck down and dying, his old friends from high school crowded around him trying to comfort him, someone immediately states, "We should eat him. Is he dead yet?"
I got out of that game fast.
We'd reached a gas station just before a blizzard, and were clearing it to make sure we could have a safe place to stay. We enter the station, clear it, find rotting stuff, get attacked by a raccoon (that did shotgun-equivalent damage to a friend of mine, by the way-- the DM argued with me about my character needing the skill Judo Flip/Throw to remove the raccoon from his head. This is why RIFTS is absurd), you know, whatever. We bunker down.
Sorry, while RIFTS can be absurd, this not an example of it. It's an example of your DM being absurd.
Sorry, while RIFTS can be absurd, this not an example of it. It's an example of your DM being absurd.We'd reached a gas station just before a blizzard, and were clearing it to make sure we could have a safe place to stay. We enter the station, clear it, find rotting stuff, get attacked by a raccoon (that did shotgun-equivalent damage to a friend of mine, by the way-- the DM argued with me about my character needing the skill Judo Flip/Throw to remove the raccoon from his head. This is why RIFTS is absurd), you know, whatever. We bunker down.
Agreed - RIFTS/Palladium rules can be absurd - it takes a bit will to simply take them and wring a playable campaign out of them.
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I've had two players who qualify as ST's in games I've played in over the years, one is still a regular player who is usually good but simply won't allow himself to be talked out of an idea once he's got it, and the other guy who was new to roleplaying and left the group after his first character death.
The temp player joined our Rifts game, where we were a band of robot jocks and some other assorted military types. The robots we had were basically the crappiest in the books, and didn't even have ammo for our primary weapons, so we were being really careful and sticking near the cities. At one point ST walks over to a group of police officers (who are armed with laser rifles and grenade launchers) and says "I'm going to pretend to step on them."
The GM simply stares at him for a second and says something along the lines of "really?"
He says "yes" and then his robot is promptly blown apart by the aforementioned grenade launchers. He got upset and demanded to know why they had fired at him, when the GM said it was because of what he did his reaction was "but I was only joking!"
In another campaign we were playing Werewolf and had been charged with bringing some body parts from a vampire back with us as a rite of passage. We found a vampire almost first thing and managed to subdue it without too much trouble, knowing that if vampire's die they turn to dust. ST then runs over and, feeling left out of the combat, dues a full power lethal strike on the already down vampire. Next thing we know we have a pile of dust in front of us and need to find another vampire...
The other ST is usually good, but often has bad ideas and won't be talked out of them. In a Call of Cthulhu game he made a "special mixture" of whiskey and horse tranquilizer in case we needed to take anyone alive. He then proceeded to give it to another PC to calm him down since he was freaking out from seeing a Lovecraftian monstrosity. A bunch of failed First Aid rolls later the poor guy was dead. The ST then later wanted to ally with the brain in a jar that we found and was the main villain of the campaign.
In another Vampire game we came across a sealed door in the ruins of a building. The door was sealed shut with runed chains and was obviously meant not to be opened. ST decides to open it. As he's trying (it was a very stubborn door) I head upstairs and find a sign telling us that a demon is imprisoned below. I run downstairs yelling "don't open that, there's a demon in there."
ST yells "I'm not listening!" And then opens the door, thus releasing the BBEG who had been trapped...
In our first Mutants and Masterminds campaign we were playing a supervillain game and had a run in with an extremely powerful Superman type hero. He punched my character into orbit (1st ed allows such shenanigans) and then grabbed ST and dragged him up after him. He then dropped both of us from orbit. My shapeshifter blacked out from the pain of reentry but his psychic was okay. He mind controlled my unconscious body and then, despite me telling him to change me into something that could glide down and save us both, he had me shapeshift into the most massive thing I could and then tried to use telekinesis to springboard off of me. The end result was that instead of savign both of us I died and his character got a broken spine and was paralyzed from the waist down.