D&D Players, What are your D&D "Darwin Award" Stories? Part 4

[@kylethomas9130]

The DM with the Bag of Devouring story was awfully merciful to his players.

[@christopherrogers532]

lol upside druid has a new toy to sick on enemies. :P

[@luzllytohi]

Lmao, I was the player of the druid :p I tend to be very oblivious and what we call "canonically stupid". It was our first campaign with this dm, and he knew of my... lack of intelligence from other experiences with me. I am very grateful for his merciful nature

[@luzllytohi]

​@@christopherrogers532We actually went on to use the bag of devouring to save the water plane in our final session. There was a black hole sorta thing that was about to explode, but my druid (who after having done no damage to the bbeg we just fought) wanted to have done something meaningful. So he charged at the orb with the bag open and sent it away. Probably my favourite moment in a dnd session so far, because an item we got so early in the campaign saved our asses in our very final session.

[@kylethomas9130]

@@luzllytohi Bag of Devouring in has a DC 15 Strength check to not get pulled inside. When someone is inside it takes a DC 20 to try and pull them out. If someone starts their turn inside a Bag of Devouring, their body is destroyed. And 5e is relatively kind to PCs.

[@luzllytohi]

@@kylethomas9130 yeah, I made a mistake. It wasn't a dex save, it was a strength save. It happened almost 2 years ago now, so the details were a bit out of my mind

[@monkeybusiness673]

Had a character in my party whose entire concept just yelled "DARWIN!" A wildelf barbarian with a battering ram....So naturally, instead of scouting the location, listening at the gate or considering literally ANY other strategy, he buckled up and charged the front door. Managed to break it on the first go, only to stumble right into the guardhouse FULL to the brim with Orcs who happily chopped him up and then came charging out of the bastion to raid and pillage everything in their path. Great stuff!

[@zeriul09]

Just now , this very night, two of my players jumped into a portal that MURDER COMETs were spewing out of, they were totally aware that this was the case and still jumped in, 2 suicides in one night is a new record

[@pbtenchi]

So we had a player who frequently got himself killed. The first time, the level 1 party signed up to go boar hunting. Since the boars were more active at night, we decided to sleep until nightfall. The level 1 spellcaster for some reason decided instead of resting they would go complete the quest alone. So they went, found a boar, attacked it, got attacked, had like 8hp and died. We never found the body. GM joked the boar leveled up and became a boarbarian. Other notable deaths include: Picking a fight with the head inquisitor. Killing so many fish that a sentient swarm of fish decided tore him apart. And flying into the sun.

[@mercedeswalt6621]

A boarbarian, how cool!

[@jacobtate4099]

Our Goliath Fighter has proficiency in disguise kits. The party tried to open a partially submerged sarcophagus and was attacked by a water elemental. The fighter decides that disguise himself as a water elemental in front of the water elemental and walks into the pool.

[@blakeetter280]

i got in at 9:36 and at 12:40! thats a record for me, never gotten two in one video before. glad u guys liked em

[@brianvance1178]

OP: “So I woke up as a vampire. I got to keep my character and at least his mother didn’t have to bury him.” MrRipper: “Yea, but you now have to sleep in a coffin and drink blood.” Me to MrRipper: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

[@Kualinar]

Are you sure... That was NOT a bag of holding, but a Bag of Devouring. I KNEW that the moment the missing object was mentioned.

[@MitchellTF]

So, one of my ex-friend's characters literally ran into an encounter, alone, that the party was bypassing, while yelling "LEROY JENKINS"... After he died, he turned to me and went "I wanted a new character" ...His last character PUT IN THE EYE OF VECNA while the lawful good party was looking at him. That ended badly.

[@MusicoftheDamned]

I hope of Eye of Vecna guy at least *tried* to hide it initially and/or persuade the party they could use it for good. Otherwise that's literally too dumb to live (again).

[@MrGreensweightHist]

Darwin Award to the Barbarian in a game I was running who's last words were, "It's only a white dragon"

[@7thsealord888]

Loved the 'Caltrop In Bed' story,, particularly how the group chose to deal with it.

[@cplmajbox7629]

I’m the person who posted the 2nd story “the cauldron” slight correction. The player who wanted to throw the entire cabinet into the cauldron was the paladin and the experienced shenanigans player was immediately onboard with the idea. Don’t worry though she did indeed learn from session 0 and proceeded to become group mom.

[@bocconom]

The D&D "Darwin Awards" is my favorite genre' as the creativity of player' self-demolition is almost infinite in means and ways.

[@blakeetter280]

always glad to be chosen for 9:36 and yes, it did suck. friend said it was hilarious though

[@Sleeping_Insomiac]

My group was crawling through a dungeon, when they made a perception roll and noticed footsteps. They quickly decided to douse their lights, since all of them had elven sight and could see thermal vision... So they waited in pitch black darkness to ambush the foes... Which turned out to be skeletons. 😅

[@thetwojohns6236]

Not exactly a Darwin moment, but damn hilarious. The party is in a tomb, and just set off a blades trap that is a wall of swirling blades slowly moving to the end of the hallway. Two doors at the end of the hallway, one is safe, and one leads to a bottomless pit. The cleric in a panic opens a door and jumps through, I check his action, are you sure? Yup, leap to safety. Unfortunately he chose the bottomless pit. It became a running gag, what is the cleric doing now while he's falling? It was argued and eventually concluded that he was gaining XP with each spell cast, and while it would take a long time, he would eventually find a way out. Later when a later campaign was of an appropriate level, I let the cleric out to join the new party. He was a little off, good role play for a character that had been isolated and lived off his magic for decades.

[@nicks4802]

My players: “Oh god, im pretty sure thats a banshee…. We’re all screwed…..” Me, DM: “So what are you guys gonna do?! Who’s doing what” The fighter: “Well I don’t see any of us being able to make her leave, so i run up and hit her with my hammer” Me, DM “…..sorry guys, roll constitution saves….. the dragonborn paladin hits the floor like a vegetable!” The players collectively: 🫣

[@crowsenpai5625]

Once countered a Banahee’s scream with a Silence spell, but we were still all kinda low level and under geared so she just tore us up the old fashioned way.

[@PleaseElaborate]

Honorable mention: So I had a party going through a corridor and describe how a thick oil-like substance is coating the walls of the corridor. They immediately decide to take a match to it to see if it's flammable. I rolled the dice and checked the stats for the ooze monsters it came from. Turns out it's flame retardant, so I describe how the flames are quickly snuffed out on contact with the slime. Could've gone VERY differently for that level 2 party XD

[@masonsmith3452]

Thank god it wasn't oil.

[@carbonatedgravy1522]

i was playing tomb of annihilation with a friend and a group of strangers, and there was this one character. he was a halfling wizard, with an endless curiosity for the history of chult. well, we get to camp righteous and everything’s going (relatively) fine. we make it past the traps in the temple, and we send monty, the wizard, up to the spire in the center (bad idea) because he has pretty good stealth and passive perception. he gets to the top, and he’s confronted with a jug. he was going to put something of equal weight down in case there was a pressure plate, but upon further investigation, he realized that it was an alchemy jug. monty threw all caution to the wind at this point and snatched the jug off the podium. this triggered a trap that made the room start collapsing. with the party inside. everyone was knocked unconscious by the rocks falling and death saves weren’t going well, but i used my inspiration from a cool one liner on a death save and managed to save and dragged everyone out. monty very nearly caused a tpk

[@NotCreativeNickname]

About first one. Vampires rarely sleep in a coffin. Some just lived long enough to not give a heck where they sleep and chose coffin for emotional damage on anyone coming to assasinate it in its sleep.

[@Lordmewtwo151]

Wait, I thought Vampires mechanically *had* to sleep in a coffin. Or was that something removed from 5e?

[@christopherrogers532]

@@Lordmewtwo151 The only reason to sleep in a coffin for them would be the same reason as anyone else allergic to light or prone to frequent assassination issues. A fortified box keep light and idiots out. :P

[@samus20018]

Taunted an arcanoloth with my first character a dragonborn sorcerer. Not just any arcanoloth this was the one in the amber temple in Curse of Strahd. Went just as well as you expect with a finger of death up the rear (was basically mooning this guy).

[@stefanjentoft8107]

The last story is an example of players reacting to overestimating enemy strength. Last time I did that, it ended with the party stranding the BBEG Sith of a Star Wars campaign on a completely arid planet to die

[@Eliza-hb1nc]

what does that first sentence mean? is it the players overestimating or the DM?

[@stefanjentoft8107]

@@Eliza-hb1nc DM underestimating the players’s perception of the enemies

[@theboulder027]

In the very first game of dnd I ever played, it was just me (playing a gnome wizard), one other player (playing a half orc barbarian) and the dm. My gnome was 2 feet tall and had a habit of riding on the barbarians shoulder, and since we didn't have a rogue to pick locks, my half orc friend usually just smashed open anything with a lock, especially treasure chests. At one point, during a long hard Dungeon crawl, we came across this strange white dust which I figured out was magical but couldn't identify. We decided to bag it up to identify it later, and promptly forgot about it. The dm, however, did not forget about it. A few sessions later, while trying to rescue some missing children from an evil cult, we found the cults treasure stash, and of course there was a big old treasure chest. Up to this point, we hadn't encountered a single trap (because we didn't have the ability to check for or disarm them), but when the barbarian smashed open the chest, he was told to roll a dex save, failed, and took a spring-loaded axe directly between the eyes. This caused my wizard to fall off his shoulder and spill the bag of unidentified dust... Turns our that dust was the sands of time. So now we're stuck in an infinite loop of him getting axe murdered and me spilling the bag until I roll a high enough dex save to keep the bag from spilling. Took about six tries, and we all had a good laugh. After that the dm let us use the sands for a free do over if we died for a while, but eventually he made us return it to his homebrew time god.

[@nargileh1]

"I don't believe you can kill me" shrödinger's plot armor =)

[@johnniefinney3266]

I'd like to activate my Giants might and rock the 5 x 5 x 5 chest to see if it's full of alchemist fire

[@jonathanmarks3112]

0:24 OK, comments section: is "It's what my character would do" a good thing, a bad thing, or situational? Because this story radiates it. Looking for opinions; I have my own, as a player with a few years of play under his belt. Still consider myself new-ish, though. 0:48 Oh dear. 1:07 Ugh... 1:34 I expected him to be the vampire's son! 3:11 TPK Alarms going off!!! 3:30 The Mola Ram treatment (Temple of Doom). 4:21 You brought it on yourself! 6:12 Still sounds like a chem experiment gone wrong. 7:25 Cool! 7:32 Not cool! 8:00 Think before you yell! 8:30 Oh crud... bag of devouring. 8:43 Evidence of sentience or at least instinct! 9:00 He gets devoured. 9:07 Oh no. 10:03 What appeared to be? 10:23 OH CRAP!! 10:36 Ow. Perfect move for a lech, though. (Just to be clear, I DIDN'T misspell "lich.") 11:03 Ok, typical rogue trickery. 11:57 At least it could be fixed! 14:04 Dumb.

[@dax4638]

A bit of quick context: DM'ing my first custom adventure and trying out some new things, like puzzles and unique boss fights. The party has to escape a litch's lab/dungeon, with strong guards patrolling the hallways. In it we have a Blood Hunter (BH for short), Sorcerer, Bard (New player), and a Multi class, mute Warlock (Returning/ Relearning Character). In order to get rid of the guards, the lads access a boiler room that, when given a sleep potion, should spread it to most of the lab and allow an easy exit. I described the machine as "Growning and whistling, you can hear the machine struggle to keep itself together". There was a guard operating the machine, he mostly ignores the party, stating to a disguised player something along the lines: "This thing needs constant surveillance or else it will explode". Now the intended way to solve this was to first figure out how to operate the machine, get rid/trick the guard, use potion, profit. Unfortunately the Blood Hunter had other plans. He just strait up knocks the guard out, no asking how it works or how to stop it from blowing up, just "Bonk him". The Guard goes down after a quick roll and now the BH has to try and operate the machine blind... Needless to say, one Nat 1 later and the machine explodes. Originally this is meant to be an instant dead, "Thanks for playing cya later" situation. Seeing as that 2 of the 4 players where in the room, this would have left 2 players still alive, the bard and mute warlock. I decided to be merciful this time around and just had them roll to avoid death instead. Next session, same adventure, sans Warlock, who could not make it. Party reaches Big Bad, who offers party knowledge, power etc if they side with him. In order to join him however, party has to don special masks (Obviously cursed, I mean, why wouldn't it be?). Blood Hunter was tempted and takes the mask, and is now under BB's control. Boss fight begins, the BB commands the Blood Hunter to attack Sorcerer, nearly one hitting the Sorcerer. Fast forward a bit, the party frees the BH, they defeat the BB, so gg right? Unfortunately, the Socerer in a choice that confuses me, states "I don't trust BH, he is a traitor" and attacks him. The same dude who was nearly one shotted by the BH is now attacking the BH. After a boss fight. Out of Spell slots. Low HP. In Melee range of a BH who specializes in 2 handed. Like... I get the idea of rp'ing your character, i like the idea of there being some dynamic/interaction between player characters. But like... Why?! Not even a "I move here then attack" just "I attack". Take a wild guess how that ended.

[@Squall598]

I told my players that they are right next to a high level area where they'd die if they entered there. They decided to enter the area looking for a missing person. No hints led there, I warned them that the missing person wasn't there, there was no reason to go there. They went there and promptly TPK'ed on a random encounter.

[@Wanderinpaladin]

I have another one from PF1e, not a PFS story but my home game. The party was mid level and were going after a "Mad Scientist" (meaning an alchemist/chuirgeon) The arcane trickster wizard/rogue sneaks into his lab, and while he's in there the party gets into a fight. The Alchemist starts to head out when the arcane trickster (not assassin) decides he's going to melee sneak attack the alchemist to "take him out." Yeah, unless you're an assassin you don't oneshot the bbeg the alchemist backs up and unleashes every bomb attack, and he used frost bombs so the rogue ended up like Ivan at the end of Goldeneye. The rogue even joked, "But I didn't say 'I am invincible!'" After he got Rezzed he realized that the power of an arcane trickster in pf1e was getting sneak attacks with spells, and he became the scariest/deadliest rogue he's made yet.

[@edvingjervaldsaeter3659]

So, I was running the Phandelver module for our group, we all were super new. After my players had dispatched the first encounter of goblins, the party found Klarg's cave and it went pretty well, until the party's druid which was level 2 I think, waltsed alone into Klarg's room, seeing all the loot on the other side. I described how, as he walked up on the boxes and chests, a MASSIVE shadow began looming over him and... well... he got hit with twice his Max HP, but him being new, I decided to instead of killing him, just letting him roll death saves. He survived, but during the attack on Cragmaw Castle, he again, walked alone into a room and he was torn to shreds by Gricks. But thankfuly he kept playing and with his wizard, he had learned his lession, no hard feelings

[@PieaterProducts]

Instead of ambushing the dragon, let's try convincing him to join politics. There's a traitor in our midst? Better fireball everybody, just to be safe.

[@nicolasv6031]

I'm also gonna have to out my character, lol. This happened pretty recently too! I was playing a Dhampir (human mom, vampire dad, fell in love but both were killed) Barbarian by the bame of Exhalk, following the Path of the Beast (DM and I worked on a little homebrew for the bite attack when enraged/growing out his canines, so it was more fun/useful to play). My character had recently met the other two PCs in a smaller town before taking bodyguard work to a larger one, and after going on a bit of a shopping spree, we booked passage on a ship to solve a mystery for a hag one of the other players had bought stuff from, to avoid being roped into her MLM scheme. That night, the party woke to the sounds of screaming and yelling, so we got out of the ships beds, went above deck, and say a massive, thick red mist covering almost the entire city. We decided to follow the crowd, and ended up getting pushed/shoved into the city plaza. Where once was a cobled square surrounding a large fountain, there was now a giant crater with a gateway in the center. Then, a massive red, flaming figure walked out from this gateway, wielding a large bronze sword covered in flames (we found out later from an NPC that it was likely an Efreeti). It then proceeded to double in size, before destroying a nearby building with a single swipe of its sword. By now, all of the citizens had (wisely) fled, leaving the three of us standing there like a bunch of lemons. My character, Exhalk, then proceeded to verbally taunt the giant creature, something along the lines of, "why don't you shrink back down and fight someone your own size?" I failed the intimidation role (shocker), so the thing just chuckled and proceeded on its path of fiery destruction and mayhem, heading towards the mayor's castle. Exhalk then decided, in his infinite flat-zero Wisdom, to throw his last two javelins at the creature (he had sold the other two for better armor). The fiery giant, with a lazy swipe of his blade, created a giant wall of fire, before going on his merry way. And as if things weren't bad enough, a *second* flaming monster stepped out from the gateway, albeit the original size of the first, and began lobbing giant flaming spheres at the moored ships. It was only now, at this point, that Exhalk decided to say, "Fuck it, this place is screwed," and the party proceeded to book it back to the ship and sail off before becoming ash. Now, you might be wondering: why did Exhalk try to pick a fight with a giant, fiery monster that crushed buildings with ease? Simple: he wanted its flaming sword 😂 TLDR: My lvl 3 Dhampir Barbarian tried to pick a fight with an enlarged Efreeti wielding a flaming sword, and only stopped when it put up Wall of Flames, and a second one appeared. P.S.: with those two javelins, he dealt around 10 points of damage. At the end of the session, my DM informed me that I had dealt less than 1/20th of its health, despite my good rolls.

[@victorvaldez8869]

My full party had a Darwin moment in a session where we visited an island & studied finches. (drum rimshot) Terrible joke I know, I'll see myself out. At least the algorithm has been appeased by interaction.

[@phobiawitch835]

I had one a couple weeks ago, lol. My character had spider climb on him via our warlock and had climbed to the roof of a 60-80ft tall tower to watch for a guy we were gonna ambush. We had a short rest and we realized “oh, he can’t get down now”. But at the same time we finally saw the guy. Coming up some scaffolding that went around the tower to about 20ish feet below me. I saw him, warned the party via the chimney (they were in the main entrance, waiting). And I had an idea, both to get down and to get an early attack on the guy. My orc fighter (dex based with a whip and recently a magic rapier, who is multiclassing rogue next level) jumped, assassin’s creed style. I will deal half my fall damage to the guy if I hit. So I roll at disadvantage. Nat 1. Dex save. Another nat 1. I slam, face first, into the scaffolding, just 10ft in front of the guy, sending it crashing down, and go prone. I took a fair bit of damage, which WOULD have taken me to 0 if we had literally not just finished a short rest. I somehow finished that fight with more HP thanks to Second Wind than I had started the fight with, lol.

[@Brutus0417]

Made my first character (monk) the other day, can’t wait to play ‘em, gonna be hilarious.

[@ericosborne4122]

Nice, you have a plan for the subclass yet?

[@BlackRainRising]

I still say my player's Duskblade jumping back into the temple doorway after losing the fight and the party retreating and I, the Dm, clearing saying "you do not appear to be getting chased in any way" literally giving them a free escape, she jumps back into the doorway charging and firing a spell... now... it was a spell that can be charged for up to 3 rounds for more damage before release, those same 3 rounds that she opted to take, the enemy reloaded bows, readied spells and were waiting for the party to make a second go... so she jumps back into the door (after the obligatory "are you sure") and throws her spell doing 30-ish damage in a 20' radius, pretty good... she goes from 30-ish hp to -20something... I hand-of-god waved her to -8 (3.5 -10 rules) with some number fudging and the party pulled her to safety and managed to stabilize her... she tried to say the encounter was too hard, everyone else was like "we all told you not to do it and run away, he even said we were safe"

[@brickpuncher1429]

Me and a friend of mine are running a oneshot campaign for Curse of Strahd (the Oneshot being Death House). I have a feeling this is going to end up being a Darwin Award for me. In the room is a bunch of moldy skeletons, and my character (A Fighter/Blood Hunter) decides to (carefully) tap a cloudy orb to see what it does. It caused 5 shadows to phase out from the walls. My next move will be to say come kind of incantation to try to get rid of the shadows.

[@olofolsson4703]

I our first or second session of GoSM our level 2 paladin found a corpse with plate armor on it, as it was a corpse it had maggots which attacked him when he triied to take the armor. The thing about maggots in d&d is that once you fail the save against them you need to somehow get them out of your body (or kill them while inside), because when you drop to 0 hp you instantly die from disease. Had the paladin been level 3 he would have been immune to disease, but our DM ruled it as 2 instantly failed death saves and we played it out from there. The paladin should have been the first and only PC death of the campaign that we just finished a few months ago.

[@shanecollett819]

Ish, (minor hoard of the dragon queen spoilers) We played hoard + rise (still on going). Back during hoard the 3 party members had managed to secure sky reach and an alliance with the giants. On multiple occasions, they were aware of the tallest tower but never ventured into there. Fast forward over a year IRL time, two of the three still had their original characters and the third had rolled up a new one. They were travelling on skyreach and the new PC (elf) decided to explore all of skyreach before starting their long rest. As he only had to do it for 4 hours against the other two needing 8. So lo and behold he goes up to the tower and walks right into the vampires next. Takes a bucket load of damage and just manages to escape. Runs direct to where the other two are fast asleep bringing the nest on his tail. Well needless to say the new PC got off skyreach by flying, while the barbarian got charmed and the pally re-enacted a walking dead scene of vampires chowing down on him. Needless to say they both had to roll up new characters. The new PC got the award, but the other two are the ones who suffered. That was a year ago and hes still in the bad books for it.

[@Wanderinpaladin]

I was running a Pathfinder 1 game for the Pathfinder Society (PFS) I was running an adventure that had a spread from levels 1-7. The party wanted to "play Up" as if they played against the higher challenges they got better gold and access to better items on their certificate, with the loudest player wanting this being a level 4 fighter. They get to the end of the adventure and face an undead on a boat tied to a dock. Now if they were playing the mid level I think the undead was a ghast. But since they were playing the level 7 version, it was a spectre. In pathfinder spectres drain 2 levels per hit. If you run out of levels, well time to roll up a new character. So, the level 4 fighter runs up to the spectre swings his non-magic sword and does no damage due to damage immunity. The spectre goes and drains two levels. The party was telling the level 4 (now 2) fighter to flee, hop off the ship and run down the dock (edit: this is because I said it was bound to the ship). It gets to his turn and he runs into the hold of the ship taking a double move. On the spectres turn it sank through the deck and "ate" him. The party eventually killed the spectre, and the spawn created from the now dead player. Being low level and a PFS game it was a permadeath, and that's how I got a reputation of a killer GM in my area.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@yungo1rst]

near darwin award. player opened a door in a crypt. found out the tunnel was full of captured large vermin for exoskeletal creatures. still wanted to fight them. one of them as exoskeleton nearly one shot the tank in a earlier session. there was four of them and the party was out of healing for the day. was kinda glad the night was too late for more combat as that would have been a party wipe. the live ones have wings to use in wide spaces.

[@Ariaofeffect]

We had a close few in our starfinder campaign… no (permanent) deaths yet tho 1) our ysoki operative (think rogue ratfolk) was hiding from a guard thrice his size with a nat20, instead of sneaking away he dropped the stealth and tried to intimidate the guard… and failed… this was a STEALTH mission where we had to steal info… This was his 2nd fail that mission, his first was him literally being thrown out whilst disguised towards everyone, including the party (technically we only knew him as that disguise), so during that section he was basically a rando to us… 2) this one was the ysoki again, as well as me a cyberborne lashunta (basically guardians of the galaxy’s mantis with augments), this was 2 separate visits to a black market surgeon, same guy for both of us… first visit since I joined the ysoki player asked for iron lungs whilst out of disguise again (so yeah, in-game I didn’t recognise him as a partymember, but as a recurring character during this)… he damn fucking died had dm not deus ex machina’d a plot-relevant npc into there to save him… important, I basically witnessed that… I decided to get respiratory compounders from the same fucking surgeon… I had to signal to him something was wrong cause I had internal bleeding… (essentially I chose to get lung augmentation from a surgeon that nearly killed a partymember with a similar surgery, which I basically witnessed, like an in-game week apart)… 3) this time a social darwin award: me, talking about the ysoki… referring to him as “the rat”, whilst in front of an ysoki police officer guiding us during a mission… 😅 that’s sadly not the only time my character accidentally came across as racist because I fumbled my words during RP… the 2nd time was when were looking for unregistered undead, and I fumbled and said “undocumented” instead of “unregistered”, in front of store clerks who our dm then decided to reveal were 1st generation immigrants… yeah… Also bonus: not exactly a darwin award, but also every time I used a “detect” spell/ability I got hurt from overload… I got ‘detect thoughts’; ‘detect magic’; ‘detect tech’ and ‘detect affliction’…

[@edenryseofficial]

TLDR: this is a story about a dm who tried to make some new players game feel more impactful. I started running a campaign a few weeks back for three new players and one returning player. Needless to say we didn’t get to proper gameplay til last week. I had one half-orc bard one kobold rogue one Dragonborn ranger(returning pc) and one owlin sorcerer. Our rogue had a decent backstory where he and the ranger had been slaves but had escaped. Other than that the rogue had no TRUE reason to be out adventuring other than the ranger was doing it. so I talked to our ranger player and we decided that to get our newest rogue player more involved in the story, the bbeg would probably have to end up killing the ranger. Then the day of the game arrived where he was impaled by a piece of shrapnel from a building collapsed by none other than the bbeg and proceeded to have one of the most heart wrenching conversations with his kobold friend. Ending it with “fly high my little dragon. Soar beyond even the heavens…” and with a sad passing of a good man our kobold rogue has sworn revenge on the bbeg and is now much more invested in the story.

[@josephgallo7683]

Here's one from the dm Players enter a dungeon, 4 stories underneath a massive castle. 5 players, 3 npc's acting as a guide. 1 player doesn't trust the npc's because of his characters backstory. One of the npc's is a wizard that could cast meteor. Battle starts and the giant fighter turns on the npc's and in a heated battle kills 2 of the 3, leaving the wizard. Wizard realizing he's facing certain death casts meteor (which the party knows he can) wizard's dying words "I know I'm dead, I'll rest easy knowing I took you with me." I gave the players 1 hour of in game to clear the dungeon, along with the boss, and escape. Long story short, they failed.

[@Legendi-chan]

Oh i got two on the same character 1) i went in to a shouting match against an guy who was manning a ballista that i almost broke with shatter, the machine spirit shot me twice in a rapid succession 2) i picked up a sword from an altar that was glowing green i caused the cave roof to fall on me crushing me under it, but i got the magical soul sucker sword that is an important maguffin. Also i almost wandered alone in to an cultists hideout i was one corner away from em

[@michaelleader633]

Dropping a pouch of accessibility into a bag of holding. Best death ever! Almost as good as retributive strike using a staff of the magi while having a belt full of wands. 😆 MY personal best was rolling a 1 on hide in shadows, but still sneaking by the guards. The DM was so damn amused he said "Holding a branch over your face, you start skulking past the fountain in the middle of the town square, the guards wave at you smiling just before they whistle loudly and eight mastiffs come charging around the corner," 😆

[@basvandiepen2772]

3:15 sounds like "Hellsing Ultimate"

[@rustmonster1e]

The first story alone was worth alike

[@samhershey4644]

Pathfinders Game: Homebrew Dragon uses their breath weapon to send us back in time before the town we were in had been founded 3 of four man party decides to go on a hunting trip, the fourth decides EVEN AFTER HEARING the rest of us are going on the hunting trip that HE is going to investigate a cave we knew about, because again we were in the location of the town just in the past before it was founded and this cave was near where I lived before we were sent in to the time warp. Anyhow, we find enough to feed the people with us for a week or two, he finds a drake, after about 10 minutes (mostly because BOTH sides rolled badly on to hit rolls) The drake kills him, I mean technically the drake knocked him out, but with no allies in the area it was pretty much a given the drake would eat him. Want things to be worse? The GM confesses ONE MORE HIT would have killed the drake.

[@chancelorhiggins-gloor6999]

Tldr: Fighter throws a boulder into the mausoleum where the village founder's are buried. Their ghosts slaughter the party. So I was playing a one shot as a Bard but really thank's not important as this is about our Fighter. The party was investigating a village that had been destroyed by goblins and a large number of giant boulders (many of which were littered throughout the village) at one point we make our way to the graveyard. Coming up to a Mausoleum we discover that it is locked. Our fighter decides the way to open the door (keep in mind half the party was fine with just leaving it alone) is to grab one of the boulders and throw it at the door. He succeeds and bashes the door open followed by the boulder crashing down the stairs for about ten seconds before it reaches the bottom. There's silence before a pair of wails come from the entrance and a pair of Ghosts appear rightly ticked off. As it happens these two ghosts are husband and wife, and the two who founded this village many years before. Now keep in mind all of us are level 1 and none of us are Paladins or Clerics. The ghosts proceed to murder the entire party for disturbing their slumber. The kicker was the DM told us afterwards the graveyard had nothing to do with the campaign so the Fighter went and picked a fight just because he wanted to.

[@scorpioperk1137]

Wizard: "I want to cast bestow curse on the frost troll!" DM: "You're going first in initiative, are you holding action till the paladin or warlock draws aggro since its a touch spell?" Wizard: "Nope, I'm on a broom of flying, I'll be fine." DM: "Ok, well its 25 ft-" Wizard: "Thats enough" DM: "... (rolls dice) The troll succeeds its save." Wiz: "Ok, I fly away, I'm fine risking the attack of opportunity!" DM: "he rolled a 2, so he misses. You get 5 ft away since the broom of flying only has 30 ft. It's now the trolls turn, he has reach, and he's going to multi-attack the fresh meat that just poked it. (rolls dice) 17 on the swing and nat 20 on the second. how much hp do you have?" Wiz: "35..." DM: "Cool, you aren't instantly killed. But you are now rolling death saves." TLDR: Squishy wizard pokes angry frost troll and expects to not be smacked.

[@samdyer-payne4719]

My favourite moment: The Sorcerer/warlock upon seeing a nice rug in an evil wizard's office: That's probably an animated rug that's gonna try and kill us... (he proceeds to kick the rug and is shocked when it gets up and tries to smother him) S/W: AHH! Why did I do that?!

[@curtisgagnon2871]

My players (Barbarian, cleric and wizard) had to solve 3 riddles given by a magical construct standing guard at a mountain pass. The construct was an enchanted snowman that I homebrewed stats for. His name was Eugene the Abdominal Snowman. Yes... Abdominal. My party actually solved the 3 riddles in 3 tries. They could pass freely. The chaotic neutral kenku death domain cleric decided he wanted to take the snowman with them and started to try picking it up and breaking it. They found out why he was called Abdominal as he proceeded to grow massive snow arms and legs and a chiseled midsection. Absolutely decked my party as none of them had any fire spells.

[@theenigmascribe]

That first story was literally no braincells

[@extraintelligence]

I've got one: I was running for some friends, and they encountered an adult Red Dragon. The dragon claimed he was a warden for the new Queen of the area and that everyone entering the nation needed to pay a toll. The party decided to attack him instead: after a fearsome battle, the dragon was almost dead and decided to flee. This infuriated the party, and they decided to chase him (I intended this). After several days of chasing, they found his lair: a cave set high in a cliff face. One of the characters could fly, and decided to scout it out ahead of the party. After entering the cave, the conversation went like this: Me: "you pass your stealth check and enter the cave. After a short while of walking the cave's cavernous and winding entrance, you find a crevasse tucked into the wall. Make a survival check." *Player rolls and passes* Me: "you feel cool air blowing through the crevasse. It is obvious that there is probably another entrance to this cave somewhere. Would you like to return to your friends and tell them what you learned?" Player: "no, I want to explore deeper to make sure the dragon is really here." Me: "okay . . . Make another stealth check" *Player rolls and passes* Me: "as you advance, you can hear a deep and ominous noise: the sound of something gigantic breathing. There's little doubt that you have found the dragon's resting place." Player: "no, I need to see it." Me: (sigh) "okay, give me another stealth check." *Player rolls and passes* Me: "you advance and sure enough, you can see the sleeping form of the dragon. Even though it has been healing for several days, you can even make out some of the wounds it received from your fight." Player: "It's sleeping? I wanna deliver a Coup de Grace." Me: ". . . Roll stealth." *Player rolls and fails* Me: "your advance disturbs a hidden nest of sparrows, who chirp angrily as you pass, awakening the dragon. However, it seems that its deep slumber has left it bleary-eyed; you have a few seconds to escape before it sees you." Player: "no, I'm going to charge it." Me: "Are you really sure you want to do that? It's been healing for several days now." Player: "yeah, I do enough damage that it shouldn't matter." To her credit, she did do enough damage that the rest of the party was able to kill it with a single arrow. Still a full attack from an adult Red Dragon was more than enough to completely obliterate her, and while I usually allow PCs a final word, I couldn't really justify it when I had just described her being ripped to bloody shreds only moments before.

[@dracolegend8523]

We were in a cave with ooze slowly filling it up. My friend casted invisible person or smth I don’t remember to name, but we basically jumped on top of it and used it as a boat. Turns out no it can’t carry a Dragonborn and an elf but even then. We proceeded to play draconic chess on top of it just outside of the boss room. I needed a diamond to cast chromatic orb and my friend offered to play me in chess for it. We played about 8 games of chess while the cave was filling with ooze and I finally won the diamond. Turns out invisible person only lasted for an hour so if we read the rules we would’ve drowned before even finishing the first game.

[@robertbaker7610]

Wasn't D&D but Rifts combined with Palladium and Robotech. We got into a battle with the big baddie as we were attempting to flee, boarded a cargo plane basically and the baddie followed us onto the plane. We were fighting in the cargo area with the rear door wide open, the mage of my group cast Turn to stone and critically failed the hit while the baddie nat 20'd the dodge, DM rolled and my character ended up getting hit with the spell. I then naturally totally bombed my saving throw and get turned to stone. An enemy aircraft makes an attack run on our plane and our pilot successfully dodges the attack, by climbing straight up. Unable to hold onto anything by petrified to stone character slides towards the open rear of the plane. The one player between me and the exit attempts to catch and hold onto my statue, and fails. My statue character now is plummeting to the ground and shatters on impact. And that was how I lost a character I had managed to play without dying for over a year.

[@Evoker23-lx8mb]

I underestimated the fireball radius, nearly causing a TPK (I was included, I’m guessing that’s why the party didn’t lose it at me seeing as I still suffered consequences). Luckily we’re at level 8 and we have a monk who kept succeeding his dex saves for evasion (I’m a bard so I kept inspiring him).

[@Kaldortangerine]

Sadly my favorite non traditional pc I made was killed in a tragic yet stupid way. The species was a trox so not very smart, and he was trying to dig a tunnel to get to the rest of his party in the underground cave but he was to big to follow them initially. He had a 20ftburrow speed I think but I debated with my dm that the burrow speed should let me dig through, so it did at disadvantage but I did it! Problem is that what he heard the party run into was a soul forge and he didn’t know they ran back to where he would’ve been had he stayed put… so as they exit the area he breaks through the wall and get his soul forged, being permanently killed having his soul destroyed, never to reach the astral plane and only echoes left in the world where he left impactful marks with people

[@bryceio]

Monk and my sorcerer decided to run into the place all the attacking demons were coming from to try and retrieve an ally without telling anyone else. Sorcerer dies a horrific death and his corpse gets thrown into the Astral Sea by wild magic and doesn't come back (rolled the "travel to astral sea" twice in a row).

[@Blandy8521]

I love the Darwin award videos

[@JThal87]

My characters Darwin award. Back story he was a "srg" in the flame fist and annoying as all hell. So his general sent him far away to get rid of him. In his adventures he came across a beholder, Johan's instincts were attack first talk later, he charged to beholder ahead of the team. He now is dust in the wind.

[@VespoLiveGaming]

Back in the 80s I was that guy who stuck his head in the sphere of annihilation at the entrance to the Tomb of Horrors. Worst part is the rest of the party, including the guy who cheated and read the module beforehand let me do it.

[@somegodforsakenprospero]

I once was at five HP and jumped through window into this tavern, my 7ft character fell onto a gnome, and killed him, instantly, and my character was dead for two rounds because our cleric was in the middle of pickpocketing civilians

[@kitemaywilder1792]

can we do a "failed perception" stories?

[@billbishop6109]

My Darwin award almost cost our party its bard. We had found what I thought was a potion of greater healing in a sketchy chest, so my barbarian took it. Several sessions later we were in an underground lair when the bard saw this large well in this room, and looked down it. Unfortunately this well was the home of some large worm , which leapt up and bit her, knocking her unconscious, and pulling her down into the well to be digested. My barbarian leapt into the well and fed the bard the potion, which instead of healing her, poisoned her instead, so now she had disadvantage on her death saves. We did manage to get her out and healed before she completely bought it, but it was very close.

[@drago89uk]

I have to add to this as its too hilarious not to. It wasnt my character but another players. Backstory my birthday was coming up on same day as our dnd night, so my DM had created a homebrew item that could only be used by my character alone. Moving on we were in the middle of a quest to prevent a storm from destroying the continent and while one of our players was off doing research 2 others had went off on a side mission for the thieves guild. during their mission they infiltrated a house and one player had slaughtered everyone living there and the other had investigated the house for valuable goods. While searching they came across an unknown vial that only had "Happy Birthday" written on the label, this player was feeling depressed because their partner decided to kill everyone instead of just finding the goods they were asked to retrieve so he decides to just drink the contents of said vial. This caused him to instantly take 1000 lightning damage, destroying his body and turning him into a massive 5mile wide storm that dissipated after an hour. there was no way for him to be revived as there was no trace left of his body.

[@zacksparrow1073]

Not my Darwin moment. But happened in a campaign I played. My character got possessed/charmed by an evil God trapped in a cursed gauntlet I equipped. When the barbarian of the group realized it was the guantlet.. He yanked it off me, and IMMEDIATELY failed his saving throw, becoming charmed by it as well. The two of us proceeded to beat each other senseless back and forth, claiming the gauntlet as our own until the party knocked us out, locked us in a carriage, and took us to a high level wizard npc who lived in a massive tower in hopes of removing the curse/charm on us. The DM had informed us that the Wizard was a VERY high level npc who couldn't fail the saving throw upon inspecting the guantlet unless he rolled a.... Fuck... A 1. Charmed level 20 wizard npc vs us level 8s, 2 of which are charmed and "fighting for themselves" instead of with the party... Barb rages, I attack. Back and forth for 2 rounds, not going well. On round 3 the barb doesn't attack, just grapples and yanks the gauntlet away, flips us all off and proceeds to throw himself off the balcony, saying "rage will help me survive the fall". Note: this campaign did NOT have capped fall damage, the higher you fell from, the more damage you took. That's when it dawned on me, the barb didn't attack last round, nor did he take any damage... So his rage... Gone. He fell 500+ feet without rage. I mention it, the players face goes pale. "nonononono" SPLAT Now he was a half-orc, so he came back life with 1hp, no Darwin award, YET. He then tries to steal a horse that was hooked up to the carriage we rode in on, forgetting our trusty carriage driver "traps" the horse with runes to prevent theft (it was pointed out numerous times during the campaign) KA-boom. Dead half-orc. No coming back this time, and he's 500+ feet away from the party so we ain't getting to him any time soon. No time for revivify

[@torch1028]

The paladin ratted out the group to the local cops My uthgardt bear totem barbarian didnt take kindly (it was sanctioned)

[@dax4638]

Another, shorter one: Playing monk. Been having shitty rolls. Snake enemy attempts to restrict me. Druid casts moonbeam close by. Now what would be the logical move? Try to break free and yeet danger noodle into moonbeam? Just be patient and try to free myself? No no. I big brain, me throw self in death lazor. Me kill snake, me win. Snake succeeds con save, takes no damage. I don't, go downed and automatically get a fail because I am still in the moonbeam. Snake just leaves the beam, unharmed. I am a tactical genius.

[@sebastianevans5636]

Player tpk'd by detonating 2 tons of alchemist fire on their ship, killing them all

[@hansethetooly5421]

"see ill prove disintegrate will fail if the user casts it targeting themselves" and boom pile of ashes

[@Nick-Bel]

My Character Is an Asylum escapee Imagine. Being an orc Archer and you see a guy wearing a force shirt, just star running at you and keep running even when you have shot 2 arrows The guy only survived because i went into doing death saves (managed to survive myself) but i fell to the floor right infront of him He stole a cursed amulet i had and became just as Mád as me, but commited suicide because he couldnt handle the visiones the amulet have him (couldnt get my amulet back It melted away when the Archer died in a fire)

[@chubbyanimalenthusiast70]

Dm “you meet a man covered head to toe in plants and he gives off a very strong aura” Even (fake name) “what’s his name” Dm (as smilier) “my name is smilier” Even “what’s his name” Dm “smilier” Even “what’s his name” Dm “smiler” Me “I ask him *plot related question” Even “WHATS HIS NAME” Dm “smilier” Even “I punch him” I counted even asked his name 11 times before punching him and even was playing a very frail wizard he got his butt kicked (we did make sure he didn’t die tho)

[@theworldsgreatestjidiot9667]

I thought that the acid was lemonade and drank it

[@jukesdtj656]

I once had a DM whose Darwin Award got me killed as a player. In a very nasty beginning fight, the entire party was getting pretty beat up. Multiple had went down, and I got both my weapons disarmed by a custom statblock Skeleton Warrior. Obviously the only choice weapon I had left was my fists, so I started punching the skeletons. Late in the fight I finally went down, and was finished off brutally by the last skeleton (that also pissed me off because the DM didn't even have the skeleton roll to hit simply because I was unconscious) but what made it really bad was that the skeleton who finished me was on like 3 hp. Now, what exactly is bad about that you may ask? Well, the DM had thought skeletons had Resistance to Bludgeoning damage and not vulnerability, meaning my punches should have killed it and I should have lived.

[@xRedivivus]

I hope the DM retconned that

[@MitchT97]

First two was the same guy in our current campaign. Getting cursed and trying to attack a lich alone. Telling the BBEG to go sex his own body (alone) and getting charmed to attack the party. These next two were. Well me. Forgetting turn 1 while rushing a group of cultists that as a barbarian you should’ve raged (It was my second time ever playing D&D and it completely slipped my mind.) and finally also in our current campaign my AC and saves got pretty high due to being a bladesinger with great magic items and a blessing. I didn’t often get hit and when I did it wasn’t much. I’m not saying I think this character is invincible but I maybe subconsciously started to think nothing bad could happen to him. Until we came across a undead that tried to possess me. Having an very good wisdom save I was confident it would fail until it tried a second time and I failed with flying colors. In my momentary arrogance I’d let my character get possessed. Luckily it didn’t try to hurt the party or warn the BBEG. But it did try to get me to throw myself off a cliff. It took my party four rounds of combat to get a grapple or paralyze me with a spell (I can’t remember which stopped me) before someone was able to exercise the ghost from me. My character didn’t die sure but without good allies I would have been in about two turns.

[@dragonriderabens9761]

I’ve had a number of close calls with my exalted character, most of which were the result of me jumping in blindly into combat without realizing what I was up against For better or worse, I haven’t had a death by unga bunga brain yet I’m gonna build my next character to be less like that

[@marydarkheart13]

I thought it was a mimic for a bit

[@davidaward82]

... ... that first one... every single time I hear 'i always RP what my character would do regardless of how it affects (insert party members/npcs)' ... i can't help but see giant waving red flags

[@lexsamreeth8724]

Not one of my games, but my first ever GM told me the story of what has to be the DUMBEST player ever. The party was crawling through a dungeon, as parties do, in search of a powerful magic weapon. They came across a black dragon, lying down on his horde and fast asleep. The monk succeeded on his Arcane roll, and noted that the dragon was not likely to attack if he was not provoked, so it would be a good idea to just quietly walk AROUND the dragon and his horde and continue onwards. Quoth the rogue: "I PUNCH THE DRAGON IN THE NOSE!" After the inevitable TPK, the party angrily asked the rogue why he did that - especially when he didn't have improved unarmed attack to justify punching it. The rogue's explanation? "I wanted the XP". After that story, "don't punch the dragon" became our code word for warning a player that they were about to do something collossally stupid.

[@rondaleamcleod5263]

ratting myself out here didn't kill the party member but was close we were doing curse of strahd and we're in the basement of the murder house i'm a lizardfolk artificer while the other guy important to the story is a kobold bard so the story starts with my artificer splitting off with the bard to go check out a side hallway in the basement while everyone else stays to check out the main rooms well we woke up a ghost after the bard managed to cross the break away floor without falling unfortunately as that happened the rest of the party was fighting the thing in the main room and the bard is face to face with the ghost practically on his own and it comes to my turn so i had the brilliant idea of using catapult on a lit torch in my artificers hand the problem? the bard was between me and the ghost i made the mistake of trusting the bard to make the dex save to avoid the torch ....... HE DID NOT i not only did enough damage to knock the bard unconscious but i was 3 damage away from killing the bard outright, thankfully we had 10 people at the table so we had a spare healer able to break away from the main fight and come heal the bard but ya i am know known as the bard bonker among the people who were there that day

[@averycheesypotato]

Yamcha’d.

[@btd5ninja64]

i once nuked a entire town by using spark i mean who puts gaslines in a medievil town

[@otakubancho6655]

Sad trombone noises.😏😏😏

[@AncientRylanor69]

Ü

[@chriskimball4893]

Um, that story about someone dying to a sphere of annihilation isn't a darwin award. Sphere of Annihilation is one of the cheapest, most BS ways to die in D&D, since there's no real way around it. There's no saving throw, no defense for it, you just die. Frankly, while the idea of a runed door being a ruse and the true passage being hidden by darkness is a cool idea, turning that into an instant kill is not cool, especially since the rogue player only did what he was supposed to do. He investigated, found a side passage, and got punished for it. Moreover, even if the plan was always to have a Sphere there (I'd like to note the Sphere is also an epic level death trap, so I'd LOVE to know the level of this party), the fact the ENTIRE PARTY walks into it, the DM should have either warned the players this is a bad idea or given them a moment to rethink things. A saving throw, some sort of bad feeling, etc. Because it's implied this isn't just one death, but a TPK to a BS trap. That isn't a darwin award. That's a terrible DM being terrible.