You Did What?!! - Most amazing / awful things player-characters have done

[Vidmaster7]

Kileanna wrote:

So we are now telling stories of epic messup? I have one of the best ones.

It happened more than 10 years ago but it's still one of the stories that my gaming group most remembers.

It was in a Vampire: the Masquerade game. We started the story as humans and the GM picked the clan who embraced us.
So I was playing a weird kind of vampire who needed to consume not only blood but also the flesh of her victims to avoid being seriously weakened. I could gain nourishment from a corpse if it was a very fresh one.
As part of the story, my character was being hunted by justice and I had to leave my hometown to avoid being caught.
So I ended in Las Vegas (which was full of vampire hunters, by the way), trying to keep a low profile. But I had to feed and I didn't want to kill anybody. My character didn't want to be the monster they thought she was.
So she came up with a brilliant plan. She was going to fake her own death in front of an hospital so they declared her dead and took her to the morgue.
Don't you think it was a great idea? If you don't, you're probably more clever than I was at that time. I was not a very experienced player and fast thinking is not my thing.
So my character went to the hospital's door and just let herself drop dead. As she was a vampire, she didn't give any signs of life. Anyway, the emergency services came and started trying to resuscitate her by all means possible. It wasn't a nice experience.
She was finally declared dead and taken to the morgue. Success!!!
The doctors then said they were going to procceed with the autopsy inmediately. They undressed her and put her into an autopsy table. OK, maybe not such a big success...
Fortunately, she was finally left alone so she thought: "It's my oportunity! Let's eat!"
She started looking for a fresh corpse (instead of just realizing she had an awful idea and just running away), but before, she covered herself with a sheet. She suddenly heard steps coming. She didn't want to get caught! She had to run away!
So she found a window and,...

I think that type of vamp was a Nagaraja your ST had an odd choice. but that is hilarious.

[Kileanna]

Yup, a Nagaraja she was.
I made a skeptic Medicine student who had the medium merit and she had self diagnosed herself schizophrenia and kept it as a secret. My storyteller thought that making me a Nagaraja and accusing the poor insane young doctor wannabe of a crime of which she was innocent would be a good way of torturing me. Or something like that. I really enjoyed playing her.

You want to be a surgeon and play with ghosts? So be it! You're now a flesh eating necromancer!

I'ts a flawless logic.

[Scythia]

Nagarajah can be messy in the best of situations, and that sounds pretty far from best.

My worst observed moment is tied between two events involving the same player. In a Mage game we both played in, the player made it a point to use Life magic to change my character's skintone so the character would be Caucasian. Then, renewed the effect whenever it began to fade.

Later, in a crossover WoD game I was running, he randomly decided that he wanted to kill another player's character. So, he ambushes the car that the character is being driven in, tears off the door, and goes full bore at the other character. Sensing the end, the targeted character decides to activate plan B, (which he had shown me when he made the character). The car was essentially a mobile bomb with 30 lbs of TNT in the trunk. Neither the first nor the last game that literally blew up. It was the last game with the problem player though.

[Sissyl]

My eclipse solar, built to bind the heart of everyone who so much as looked at her, once ended up with her circle having defeated an enemy. He was a very... Traditional necromancer. He murdered people, he made them into undead abominations, he added things like plague spreading to them, and so on. His entire life was death, blasphemy and horror.

Even so, partly because she had no idea about the depths of his depravity, she decided to redeem him. So she did. It wasn't terribly difficult. He happily joined her as her servant, and the rolls involved were so extremely successful that he became deeply fanatic in her cause.

But... He didn't really know anything but how to spread death. She forbid him to murder people, so he didn't. Instead he animated the corpses left behind them meticulously. Until she sighed and told him to terminate them. So he created a hugely virulent plague and gave the bottle to her as a present. Which she had a hell of a time trying to dispose of. He created mutated bears for her. He made art from skeletons. He poured his soul into showing his devotion.

Eventually, he got killed due to other story reasons. Everyone breathed out.

[Kileanna]

Scythia wrote:

My worst observed moment is tied between two events involving the same player. In a Mage game we both played in, the player made it a point to use Life magic to change my character's skintone so the character would be Caucasian. Then, renewed the effect whenever it began to fade.

That is so wrong in so many levels that I won't even say what I am thinking of it.

Scythia wrote:

Nagarajah can be messy in the best of situations, and that sounds pretty far from best.

Messy sounds like my character's middle name.

She had a tendency to botch the most important rolls, to always take the wrong decissions and trust the wrong people.
After having to leave Las Vegas because things have gone far too south she landed in Montreal. There she ended being manipulated by a demonic cult and being enslaved by a demon. I swear that I wanted her to end like that, but a mix of bad decissions and a lot of bad luck made her end being a demon's pawn.
So she, with some more unwilling pawns and some greedy demon cultists, started plotting to get rid of the demonic influence.
They were reunited to make a plan to deal with the demon. They all were aware that if they said the demon's name he would be able to spy on them so they'd have to be cautious.
First time I said his name aloud another character punched my character on the face to make her shut up and I didn't say the complete name.
But the second time nobody was quick enough to shut my mouth and I said his name aloud.
Everybody started thinking she was sabotaging them and they were suspicious of her since then.
Fortunately, the demon didn't knew what was going on when he spied on us and we could go on with our plans, even though it was more difficult since then.

---

By the way, at this time I'm writing from a PC in the blood bank of an hospital. I'm glad my workmates don't know a lot of English because I don't know what they would think of me if they knew I'm talking about flesh-eating vampire doctors XD

[Deaths Adorable Apprentice]

So this was in my first pathfinder campaign and it happened because of the alchemist, whom had far to many alchemist fires in his bag of holding just waiting to as he put it 'drop the bomb'. So in a doungeon we came upon a sleeping beholder. I as a noob wanted to have everyone attack it at once. It worked really well for a approaching white dragon earlier. But no the whole group was terrified. Like they just wanted to get far away from it.

The the alchemist said he had an idea. He wanted to drop the bomb. I think he was able to make a whole bunch for this as well. Flying over so that he was above the beholder he unleashed all of the alchemist fire. The total number, and we just took the average and multiplied it, was somewhere between 1000 and 2000. The DM just sat and in a quiet voice said "91 hit points. It only had 91 hit points."

[Todd Stewart]

In RotR I abandoned the other PCs in Runeforge as soon as I learned planeshift, just to go on a week long bender in Galisemni in the Maelstrom. Before leaving, screaming, "So long suckers! Muahahahaha!"

Later same campaign I bailed again and allied with Nualia Tobyn with the notion to wake up Runelord Alaznist because my PC thought she was cute, and also why the hell not because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

A wee bit CN with impulse control issues.

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

Todd Stewart wrote:

In RotR I abandoned the other PCs in Runeforge as soon as I learned planeshift, just to go on a week long bender in Galisemni in the Maelstrom. Before leaving, screaming, "So long suckers! Muahahahaha!"

Later same campaign I bailed again and allied with Nualia Tobyn with the notion to wake up Runelord Alaznist because my PC thought she was cute, and also why the hell not because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

A wee bit CN with impulse control issues.

I could see the sister of that last character I mentioned doing exactly this. And therefore, I'll use this as the onus for telling a story about one of her major f#&#ups.

So, by sister I mean...kind of...time...clone. They are pretty different though. This sister was modeled off the behaviour of a red dragon but way in over her head 24/7 and putting on a show of violent behaviour as a way to make people respect her and make up for her inability to form meaningful relationships. She had a troubled upbringing. That is to say, absolutely 0 and she lived as a homeless orphan.

But one thing kept her alive. Her sorcerous powers of the draconic heritage! Which she used liberally in order to maintain some kind of control over her territory like a homeless dragon.

Now, fast-forward a few years and a cleansing of the poor from an entire district of the capital city later (her fault, that's a different story entirely), our sorceress now has little to do. She joined a group of adventurers to find something exciting to do, and ended up with a bunch of lawful goods (+1 paladin) and chaotic goods who constantly give her the stinkeye if she even thinks about burning something. The only thing she can get away with now is running her mouth.

This unfortunately resulted in a very awkward situation where, while visiting the local wizard's college in the city they were in, my sorceress kept saying how arcane power that one has to learn to do is clearly a sign of weakness compared to the inherited magical might of the dragons, and that you have to wear such stupid outfits the whole time and she kept making fun of the 'stupid wizard hats' as they walked through the halls before one wizard turned and shouted a challenge at her because he was just getting so sick of her b@#!$&*+.

She agreed.

Outside, the roll initiative. She wins and launches some fire. Does like...a mild amount of damage.

The wizard clicks his fingers and lightning bolts her in the stomach. He was a warmage. Knocked straight to 0 and then some. It was a miracle she didn't die. But she does have some sick stomach scars now.

The group were used to this happening by now so they were mostly just shaking their heads with a 'you had two lifetimes to get this right and you still screw it up'.

Good character.

[Dire Elf]

I've told this story before in other threads, but it's so awesome I can't resist telling it again. Curiously, it involves the same player as the two tales in my original post. I guess he has had a lot of impressive moments in the years we've been gaming together.

Some years ago in a fantasy campaign (D&D 3.5, but not any of the standard settings), our party included a gnome, beguiler class. The player liked to have his character cast 'mirror image' any time we got into combat. He was using a halfling mini for his gnome, from the Lord of the Rings line from Games Workshop, and he actually purchased a whole bunch of the same mini so he could put all his mirror images out on the table. The gnome wasn't exactly a good guy; he wasn't evil, but he was more out for personal gain than saving the world. One of the other party members was a paladin, and he managed to keep the gnome in line, mostly.

Our party was searching for an artifact stone, I can't remember exactly why. But it was in the possession of a red dragon, and we needed to get it away from the dragon, either because the dragon might use it to do something terrible or because someone else might be able to gain access to it and do something awful. Previously, we had acquired a necklace of eyeballs, which when thrown at a target had a chance of causing blindness. The gnome was in charge of the necklace.

As we approached the dragon's lair, the gnome gave each member of the party one of the eyeballs. They decided to throw all of the eyeballs at once, hoping that at least one would be successful in blinding the dragon. I don't remember if we had a contingency plan. The GM asked us what we were doing as we entered the lair and saw the dragon lying on its treasure hoard, and we announced that we were all coordinating to throw our eyeballs at the same moment.

Six eyeballs flew at the dragon. The GM rolled the first saving throw - and rolled a 1. Then he rolled the other five saves, and rolled at least one more 1, maybe two. The dragon was completely blind. It wasn't helpless, though. So while the rest of the party combated its blind attacks in our general direction, the gnome cast 'etherealness' on himself, and walked through the dragon's abdominal wall into its stomach. We had previously been able to determine that it had swallowed the artifact we were looking for.

Once inside the dragon's stomach, the gnome began digging the artifact out of where it was embedded in the dragon's stomach. He also took out a 'figurine of wondrous power' that he'd previously acquired, which happened to be a bronze griffon, and had it start clawing its way through the dragon's abdominal wall to the outside. A short time later, the griffon burst out of the dragon's stomach with the gnome on its back, triumphantly holding the artifact above his head. The way the player described it, it was like the most metal album cover ever. One of the other players was going to draw it, but he never got around to it, sadly.

[ULTRAGEEK]

Once, in a 5e campaign, my little halfling was arguing with a shopkeeper about the price of a new crossbow. Now, I barely had any gold coins to spend, and kept trying to lower the price to unreasonable standards, so, of course the shop keeper refused. Being the little murder hobo I am/was, I pinned the shopkeepers hand down on the table, ripped a nail off the wooden counter, and stabbed her hand with the nail, so it went through and pinned her hand to the counter. I then demanded she give me a crossbow for free. Man, I was a little piece of ^&*&&&*

There was another time where I was gm'ing a two person game, where the characters were supposed to rob a sarcophagus from a museum. There was a really tall building (taller than the museum) right next to said museum, so what they did was climb to the top of the building, tie a bunch of rope and a grappling hook together, and throw it onto the museum roof. They then tied the other end to a small pole on the roof they were standing on, grabbed coat hangers, and tried to zipline down the rope. When one of the charactera was halfway there, he failed his dex check and almost fell off, but he managed to grab on with one hand. He was going through the process of inching his way across when the other character came speeding behind him, hit him, and caused him to literally fly all the way to the other building. While this was happening, a guard on the roof was shooting at them with a crossbow, and another was trying to cut the rope.

[Tinalles]

In a homebrew campaign I GM'ed, the soloist PC developed a vigorous rivalry with Lady Dela Morgayne of Gralton, in the River Kingdoms. After being harassed by Lady Morgayne for 4 or 5 levels, the PC finally declared that enough was enough, and decided to go back to Gralton and deal with Morgayne once and for all.

Now, at the time, the PC was a vampire (as a result of a very unfortunate random encounter). I assumed she would sneak into town, get herself invited into Morgayne Manor by a dominated servant, and assassinate the lady. Ah, how very wrong I was.

Instead, she wandered around south of Gralton until she found a small patrol of guards from the city, and slaughtered them. Dressing up in one of their uniforms, she used a Hat of Disguise to imitate the guard she'd whose gear she was wearing. Then she staggered into a guard outpost at the edge of the city covered in gore, calling for the commanding officer. She reported that "We were ambushed ... it's an army. They're coming. Soon! Too many ... too many ..." She got a pretty good roll on her bluff check, and then pretended to die. That part was easy -- being a vampire, all she really had to do was stop pretending to breathe.

The commander sent runners to mobilize the army and summon the council immediately, and had his troops store the PC's apparently dead body in the back room of the guard outpost. Once she was alone, the PC turned to mist, rejoined her cohort, got rid of the disguise, and came charging into the SAME guard outpost shouting "Oh gods, did you know you're being invaded? There are HUNDREDS of them! They look pretty bad-ass!" Once again, a great bluff check.

The commander determined that the PC and her cohort were two eye-witnesses who could describe the army clearly (all made up, of course), and accordingly sent them straight to the council to give a report on the invading army's location and strength.

In the council, the PC told them that she'd actually SPOKEN with the invading army (still imaginary) and that they'd said that all they really wanted was Lady Dela Morgayne, because Lady Morgayne was a servant of a dark god of shadow who had committed terrible crimes against their sovereign nation. (That bit was actually true.)

Lady Morgayne -- who had instantly recognized the PC but was trying to preserve her secrets and position on the Council -- countered that you obviously couldn't believe this woman, and why, what sharp teeth she has! Look, she's a vampire! The PC promptly denied it and claimed merely to be an albino.

The verbal sparring went on for a while until none of the other council members knew what to believe any more. Finally Lady Morgayne gave up and rolled initiative. The rest of the council all died in the fight -- the PC wasn't trying to kill them, but Lady Morgayne included them in area spells because she couldn't afford to let her secret out. At length, however, Lady Morgayne perished.

The PC then cut off her head, ran outside, and informed the military that she had what the invaders wanted, and that she could avert the invasion if she got to them fast. The poor, deluded soldiers rushed her out of the city. They stopped by briefly at the guard outpost, where the PC assured the terrified commander that it would be fine now. He was pathetically grateful, and gave her a fairly hefty sack of gold, thanking her profusely for saving Gralton from these terrible aggressors.

The PC went home and turned Lady Morgayne's head into a Beheaded to float around her dungeon and scream at things.

Naturally the city fell into civil war the next day when they figured out the whole council was dead.

A month later, the PC had a random encounter with an adult green dragon, whom I named Verseelax. He was looking for a new place to settle down and build a lair. The PC persuaded him with some truly ridiculous Diplomacy rolls that Gralton would be a great place to settle down, and that it would be quite easy to take over just now in the absence of any one controlling faction.

And that is how my player's soloist PC single-handedly destroyed the city of Gralton with an imaginary army, got PAID for it by their own military, and turned the place over to a green dragon.

[ryric]

I have one recurring player that is by no means a bad player, but he often makes poor choices that come back to haunt him. Here's a couple examples:

In a Deadlands game, we were fighting the guy on the cover of the rule book. This guy is basically an unkillable revenant. The player decided his PC was going to jump off a moving train in order to duel this guy. (The rest of us were on the train glad to escape) His "fight" lasted until his opponent had one turn.

In a Dragonlance game, this same player was playing a knight wielding an artifact level version of the eponymous weapon. They were facing a dominated silver dragon, and he decided to "soften up" the dragon with some lethal damage before switching to nonlethal. One critical hit later and the mind-controlled dragon was very dead.

[Kileanna]

Poor Silvara! I ran the same Campaign. I loved it.

This happened in a recent RoW campaign. It's not that I messed up. I did it on purpose but it was funny.
My character is a changeling witch who has grown among elves. She's very curious of technologic stuff because it's all new for her.
The group had landed on WWI Russia recently and everything seemed off place.
They were looting the corpses and Kileanna (my character) found some weird bottle-like things on them.
They looked like... potions? She «opened» one of them, but nothing happened. She shaked the thing to see if something popped out from it. Nothing.
And then... Kaboom! The grenade exploded in her hand.
It looks like it was some sort of... huh.. alchemist fire?
OK... Let's be cautious now. We looted similar items and all of them were able to explode, so finally when we looted another mechanic item, Kileanna activated it and swiftly threw it to watch it explode.
Nothing happened. We picked it again. It was a pocket watch.
So she thought she could drink a grenade and make a pocket watch explode. This world is confusing. At least she looted something really powerful and unbalancing... Rasputin's pen!