What is the worst thing a PCs has done that you are aware of or that happen in a game in which you participated? I’m not talking about games with evil PCs, where they are expected to do things like eat kittens. But what about in a game where they are ostensibly the good guys yet do egregious things on the thinnest pretext?
1) I've been reading Superman comics for ages. One of the things that I've always liked from there is the bottled city of Kandor. BBEG shinks a Kryptonian city down, sticks it in a bottle like container & Superman eventually frees them.....
So some years back I swiped the idea & included the city as part of a dragons treasure hoard. I'd intended it to be the lead in for another story arc.
I did NOT expect one of the players to peer inside, then stick his finger in down the neck & cast "hail of stone". Completely anihilating the city & it's tiny population.
So much for THAT story arc.
2) More recently;
The party arrived in an area being raided by orcs. It was a pretty straight up adventure. PCs come to the aid of a town, backtrack the orcs, wipe out the lair.....
These characters were incompetent. They backtracked the orcs alright. And due to zero planning got thier **** kicked. So they crawled back to town for some healing & set out again. Repeat the asskicking & retreat. Though this time they really riled the orcs though. So the orcs decided to just raze the town the next night.
The idea: The PCs get one last shot to end this before it goes really bad for the town.
Well, the PCs screw around & don't manage to leave town until way way late. Now they won't reach the orc lair until well after dark.
Idea #2: OK, the bulk of the orcs will sack the town. Meanwhile the PCs can sack the lightly guarded lair, can catch the surviving orcs by surprise as they return, & free any captured townsfolk.
Didn't work at all.
One of the characters, now being catious, went actively scouting the area. He spotted the orc forces (20some + 2 ogres) coming their way. He reports back to the party. The party lays low where they can observe the orcs.
I'm thinking "Good, now they'll have some idea of what to expect later".
The party: "Oh . " title="mailto:Cr@#%. ">Cr@#%. That towns screwed. Let's just keep going, Waterdeeps only a few days ride from here".
And so the heroes simply slunk away in the night leaving the town to the mercy of the orcs.
The monk began to CUT OFF THE BARON'S FACE, which he proceeded to WEAR to greet the guards when then finally broke down the door. Yeah. I instantly busted him down to LE for that one.
In a 3.5 game I was running, the party found themselves locked in a tower storeroom with the corpse of the local baron (they hadn't killed him), and guards coming up the stairs to discover the corpse of their lord and arrest the perpetrators. One of my players, a LN monk, borrowed a dagger from another player. I thought he was about to concoct a brilliant escape plan...but I was wrong. It was anti-brilliant.
The monk began to CUT OFF THE BARON'S FACE, which he proceeded to WEAR to greet the guards when then finally broke down the door. Yeah. I instantly busted him down to LE for that one.
The baron was already dead. I wouldn't call that lawful evil. More like lawful creepy. I don't know what would make that player think the idea would work...
In a 3.5 game I was running, the party found themselves locked in a tower storeroom with the corpse of the local baron (they hadn't killed him), and guards coming up the stairs to discover the corpse of their lord and arrest the perpetrators. One of my players, a LN monk, borrowed a dagger from another player. I thought he was about to concoct a brilliant escape plan...but I was wrong. It was anti-brilliant.
The monk began to CUT OFF THE BARON'S FACE, which he proceeded to WEAR to greet the guards when then finally broke down the door. Yeah. I instantly busted him down to LE for that one.
holy hannibal lector! desercration of a corpse, and a rudimentary form of identity theft. lol. not even lawful, certainly evil tho.
...cast "hail of stone"...
Did he give a reason for this action? Or was it just random asshattery?
grump celt: LMAO!!!
I was in a game where a player left a child in the hand of an (NPC) cultist/assassin, and he did this more or less out of spite because he was the only one in a position to do something about it and was angry when the other players were saying "Do something about it."
The most ghastly and arguably evil things were done by our party's fighter, a Dragonborn named Balthazar Stonescale. In Keep on the Shadowfell he forced the captive Splug into servitude turning a spit on which the corpse of Balgron the Fat had been mounted. By the time Kalarel fell, Balthazar had a delicious snack waiting for him in the torture chamber.
One we still laugh about to this day was when the party was in Stormreach trying to gather information about some mysterious goings-on. They'd convinced a homeless orphan to talk to them by tempting him with a gold coin. When he proved rather tight-lipped, I expected them to try diplomacy. Nope. Party Rogue says he's rolling intimidate and threatens to take the child's bones if he doesn't tell us everything he knows. The child peed his pants and told him everything.
- In a Planescape game, his LN character had a flask that he could store souls he. He routinely drank those souls. He argued it was LN because he drank the souls of the most wicked along with the souls of the most righteous. He defiled the souls of the good and evil alike.
- His snakeoil salesman character one time sold poison to a random guy on the streets, OCD about collecting and organizing. The guy tasted the poison and died. Character then looted the corpse and hid the body.
- Same character robbed his childhood friend (a fellow PC, my character), and when said friend discovered he'd been robbed, his character loans the friend back his own money. And yes, this was a loan with interest. Gamer argues that he does care about his childhood friend, because he intentionally left 5 gp behind.
- When they were stuck in a sinking submarine with mutant, acidic needlefangs breaking in, he was just about ready to cut his childhood friend open and crawl inside, using the corpse as a second skin to protect himself from the needlefangs. To his friend, "This is going to hurt a lot, and it's only going to get worse. Please try to control your screaming. I don't want this to haunt me." Yes, he wasn't even going to kill his friend first. He was going to let the disembowling process eventually do the job.
MrCelsiu, the second event sounds evil - xenophagy, as it would only be cannibalism if he were eating a dragonborn, but he’s still eating a sentient creature when he doesn’t actually have to do so to survive - but the third is just intimidation, which isn't actually evil.
Omnirahk_half-Rahkshi, that dude is not someone I would call a "friend."
MrCelsiu, the second event sounds evil - xenophagy, as it would only be cannibalism if he were eating a dragonborn, but he’s still eating a sentient creature when he doesn’t actually have to do so to survive
Arguably, sure. It's a cultural difference in my book; some regard eating the dead as a deeply respectful honor. He didn't kill the guy just to eat him, either. It doesn't matter to me, though; it was thoroughly refreshing to watch a PC intimidate, torture, and eat his foes without having to give a single fig about where he fell on the alignment axis. If the PCs or NPCs have a problem with it, that's its own affair, but as the DM I don't care in the least if the party Paladin has a six-child-a-day strangling habit.
The monk began to CUT OFF THE BARON'S FACE, which he proceeded to WEAR to greet the guards when then finally broke down the door. Yeah. I instantly busted him down to LE for that one.
Lol. Off-topic that reminds me of a buddy that suggested wearing a suicide bomber's face for Halloween. We still laugh about that.
Back on topic, I had a group of players running through their first quest. The BBEG was an ogre who had just taken over the castle. They came across a bunch of peasants who had been captured and were being forced to work for the ogre. They killed the goblin overseers, and were supposed to free them. Instead, they gave them shovels, pitchforks, tongs, whatever was lying around, and herded them towards the ogre and telling them they would die if they didn't fight him. The PCs hung out in the back until all the peasants were dead (but had landed a couple hits on the ogre), before closing in to finish him off. Clever, and successful, but not heroic.
Another group started off in debt to a lord. To help repay the debt, he had mentioned that his caravans were being raided and so he couldn't get the supplies needed to build up his army for an upcoming war. The PCs decided to tag along with the caravan and hide so that they could launch their own ambush on the bandits. They fought off the bandits and captured two of them. Now the bandits were loyal and also partly insane due to some terrible things they had seen, and wouldn't break easily, but a pursuasive individual could convince them to take them to meet their leader. Instead of working their way up to it or trying any alternatives, the PCs immediately began torturing the bandits. One PC began biting off the fingers of his prisoner one at a time. When the prisoner mocked his god (the PC was an invoker), the PC killed him. Then they wanted to kill the remaining merchants, drive the caravan to town themselves, and sell all the goods. There was only one sane player in the bunch who managed to talk them out of it.
I don't care in the least if the party Paladin has a six-child-a-day strangling habit.
That's a nasty habit - my paladin had to quit the cub scouts because of it. He was up to two packs a day...
And speaking of paladins...
Back in 3.5 I briefly ran a few sessions where the majority of the party was of the "violence isn't the only answer, just usually the most efficient" mindset, reigned in to the "hey, paladin, go take a leak for a minute, okay?" level by the party pally and a chaotic good wizard. They were all perfectly happy to play hero, but not above pulling a few morally questionable stunts if the situation warranted it.
Nothing in the pally's previous actions had indicated anything even close to what happened this one particular night - he'd been playing the character as a bit wrathful and judgemental, but definitely with both feet firmly welded to the ground on the right side of the line.
So...
They're fighting a badguy who's mind-controlling the women and children of the town and sending them after the party zombiepocalyse-style. Which means they're all taking penalties to attack in order to knock them out instead of kill them. The pally wasn't rolling well, and we could see him getting frustrated. The party was forced to retreat.
Then as they're running through the town I tell them that they see the innkeeper laying on the ground, with his leg pinned - a cart's broken an axle and the wheel's on his leg. His wife is trying to free him. But then, some of the possessed townsfolk start to advance on them, and the wife turns and flees... (The party was supposed to hold off the horde long enough to rescue him...)
And the paladin suddenly snaps.
Right in the middle of my scene description, he just calmly says...
"Kill them. We're going to kill all of them."
(WTF?!?)
"I'm tired of this. Those ungrateful ^*%**^^(*... "
And he goes off on a big speech about how the townies don't deserve to live because they're attacking their loved ones, and the BBEG doesn't deserve to live because he manipulated the people, and the cows don't deserve to live because they let the people use them, and the little blue bird on the windowsill doesn't deserve to live, etc.
And wades into the crowd, hacking and slashing.
The wizard, the pally's usual wingman, just kinda goes, "B-b-but... B-but...", then just looks at the party who all just shrug their shoulders, looks around at the battle going against them, sighs, and says, "Eh... whatever." Then tosses a 4th level spell at some kindergarteners.
And the party proceeds to raze the entire town and everyone in it, including the BBEG. Scorched Earth. Completely. Fireballing crowds of children, people getting tripped by the rogue so the barbarian could crush their skulls on the cobblestones with his hammer, the whole nine yards.
The players were all whooping it up, and having a grand old time acting like psychopathic four-year-olds.
When it was over, I was like, "Well, that was interesting... < ahem > ...uh..."
And the party's just kinda looking at themselves like, "Um..wow. Where the **** did that come from? Did we really just do that?"
" So, ah, let's just divide up the experience points and treasure, and ah... forget that ever happened, huh? :-)"
(Afterward we discovered the pally player's girlfriend had left him that night, and seeing the innkeeper's wife running away had set him off...)
He was up to two packs a day...
(Rimshot)
Did it cost the paladin his paladin status?
Fueling your character with your own emotions can (not will, but can) make for really interesting stories, to some extent. Especially if you continue after you've cooled down and can play the game again.
In a 3.5 game I was running, the party found themselves locked in a tower storeroom with the corpse of the local baron (they hadn't killed him), and guards coming up the stairs to discover the corpse of their lord and arrest the perpetrators. One of my players, a LN monk, borrowed a dagger from another player. I thought he was about to concoct a brilliant escape plan...but I was wrong. It was anti-brilliant.
The monk began to CUT OFF THE BARON'S FACE, which he proceeded to WEAR to greet the guards when then finally broke down the door. Yeah. I instantly busted him down to LE for that one.
"Though it's not halloween I've concocted a plan,
I'll escape from this prison by wearing a man!
This man is already dead you see!
I'm wearing his face on my head
It's me!"
-Hannibal Lector
That aside...to actually be on topic:
My players have done all sorts of non-sense over the years. I've had a couple of players that would do heinous and egregious things that were supported by extremely flimsy logic. One player in particular would always find a way to have his character screw over the party for his own gain, and after doing so would voluntarily shift is alignment closer to evil (e.g. intentionally allowing another party member to die in order to gain a magickal artifact, or betraying the party to foes in order to enter their good graces, etc.)
It took me a while to figure out how to avoid these kinds of pitfalls. Mainly, it consisted of not inviting that player to new games.
Mainly, it consisted of not inviting that player to new games.
Good plan.
One day, we come across a "wounded traveller" in the middle of the road.
DM: *as female* "Help! Help! I've been attacked and robbed!"
Rogue: I'm going to go ahead and draw my rapier now, just to save some time.
Wizard: Roll for perception/insight (I don't remember which he used, but the result was quite low).
DM: You think something else might be going on, but you can't put your finger on it.
Wizard: Corellon's Eye, I can't! Spectral Ram!
DM: ...
The lady, staggering to her feet, is caught squarely in the torso with a tremendous force. She flies backwards, crashes sickeningly into her wagon, and crumples to the ground, where she lies motionless.Wizard: Do I see anyone else? Any movement in the trees?
DM: Nope. Just you, a dead noblewoman, and a suspiciously dented carriage.
Rogue: ...I'm, umm...going to go ahead and...put...my...sword...away...now...
Wizard: ...Oh bother.
We all had a good laugh, and debated whether or not to play that straight as a noblewoman, or have her be a Doppleganger. I think we went the "Noble and innocent, but kind of a tosser, so it's okay."
We were in a town mostly behaving ourselves, and our bard owns a magic instrument shop there. After not doing business with a customer who wanted a powerful item the bard didn't realize he had, he left his shop for a while to take care of some things, leaving his astral badger in charge. He heads for the slums, and proceeds to perform his latest symphony: "Ethnic Clensing". By the final crescendo, the slums were ablaze and the city no longer had any problems concerning the homeless or impoverished.
One we still laugh about to this day was when the party was in Stormreach trying to gather information about some mysterious goings-on. They'd convinced a homeless orphan to talk to them by tempting him with a gold coin. When he proved rather tight-lipped, I expected them to try diplomacy. Nope. Party Rogue says he's rolling intimidate and threatens to take the child's bones if he doesn't tell us everything he knows. The child peed his pants and told him everything.
I'm going to have to remember this one if Torlok Astropios, the Most Frightening Halfling Ever, ever sees the light of day.
So I'm DMing a 3.5 FR campaign and the party was off trying to investigate the origins of a riot within Waterdeep. There was large well planned riot that kept many city guards busy while a number of thieves went on a looting rampage. So they track a couple of elves to this bar in Waterdeep frequented. They finally spot the two and they run out the back door. The party follows and catches them in a back alley. The rogue (who didn't even tell me what his alignment was) asked me a meta-gaming question "would they both possess the same knowledge in regards to the riot?"
I stare blankly at him not sure where he was going with the question and slowly I answer yes. The rogue takes out a dagger and slits one of the elves throats from ear to ear. The entire party facepalms and the cleric of Lathander who's also secretly a harper blows up. It was frigging hilarious
The other story was during a ravenloft campaign. Unfortunately the paladin of the party was more interested in power gaming and being epic than playing a lower powered campaign. So he gets bored one day while we're in the middle of a session and he pulls out his laptop. Finally we all realize that he's playing WoW, and he's sitting at the auction house trying to find out whether he won the bid on a set of gloves. We were dumbfounded, completely and utterly dumbfounded.
Keep on the Shadowfell. Irontooth fight.
My evil-aligned hobgoblin bard was having a rough time trying to keep the party alive, and by the second half of the encounter, all hope was lost. The defender, after having been knocked unconscious twice in the encounter, finally failed his third death saving throw and was gone for good.
I figured my character would have been particularly frustrated at practically every other member of the party having abandoned the fight to make heal checks on the dying defender, so he muttered "The weak deserve to die," and spit on the corpse.
...oh, but it gets better. The guy whose character died decided to make the exact same dude with one letter of the name spelt differently, and who just so happened to be the dead one's twin brother. After having been told of the predicament, him and the party's paladin decided to exile my character from the group.
Being the honourable warrior my character was, he challenged the paladin to a duel to the death... and knocked him unconscious in two rounds. Immediately after that, the dead guy's twin brother jumped in and challenged my character in his weakened state. My character put his weapon away and said, "If you are so dishonourable as to attack an unarmed opponent, then strike me down now."
..."I strike."
So, yeah. That session was pretty much a prime example of everything you shouldn't do in Dungeons & Dragons.
Because I totally did that.
Does an Unaligned character Hanging a prisoner-and making it look like Suicide to get around the Paladin's sensibilities- because "what else are we going to do with this idiot? We can't let him go. Are we just going to drag him around the rest of the campaign?"count?
Because I totally did that.
Haha! That reminds me. The party just found out that Merrix d'Cannith has been perpetrating an elaborate deception upon them. They realize this over the course of a conversation which they have in front of one of his more distant cousins, Toven d'Cannith. Toven is present because he's been bound and gagged after the party had to beat the hell out of him for cheating them out of a whole bunch of money. As they finish spelling out the fraud which has been perpetrated upon them and their awareness thereof, they realize that Toven has been listening to the entire conversation.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, the "what else are we going to do with this idiot? We can't let him go. Are we just going to drag him around the rest of the campaign?" statement is made almost verbatim. The Warlord gives Toven a solemn apology, KO's him with her bounty hunter gloves, and they drop him, chained, into the harbor to drown.
I then immediately declared their characters 'evil', confiscated their sheets for use as NPC villains, and-- oh, no wait. We continued with the game, business as usual. The grim matter of Toven's needless death was left to weigh upon the consciences of the characters, who each dealt with and were changed by the event in their own way.
The kender made his way to a local film studio and told a group of actors there that he was filming an on-site action movie and he needed a cast. He told the actors that the movie would feature the latest special effects, realistic enough to make people appear convincingly dead, and just to keep the show going if someone "looked dead." With his highly successful Bluff, he convinced twelve actors to accompany the party. He equipped the actors with guns and instructed them to shoot whatever he and his friends shot.
In the temple, the party faced a number of guardians before reaching the top level, and several of the actors died. A few more of them fled, but in the last encounter, at least four remained. On the rooftop, a lone black-robed man stood on the edge. The kender and the minotaur thought it would be hilarious to push him off, which they did. However, the man was actually a polymorphed red dragon, the guardian of the temple, and he flew back up and breathed fire on the party as they walked away, killing two of the actors. The party defeated the dragon, but he managed to kill the rest of the actors and knock the kender off the temple before going down. (The kender deserved it.)
Does an Unaligned character Hanging a prisoner-and making it look like Suicide to get around the Paladin's sensibilities- because "what else are we going to do with this idiot? We can't let him go. Are we just going to drag him around the rest of the campaign?"count?
Because I totally did that.
Haha! That reminds me. The party just found out that Merrix d'Cannith has been perpetrating an elaborate deception upon them. They realize this over the course of a conversation which they have in front of one of his more distant cousins, Toven d'Cannith. Toven is present because he's been bound and gagged after the party had to beat the hell out of him for cheating them out of a whole bunch of money. As they finish spelling out the fraud which has been perpetrated upon them and their awareness thereof, they realize that Toven has been listening to the entire conversation.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, the "what else are we going to do with this idiot? We can't let him go. Are we just going to drag him around the rest of the campaign?" statement is made almost verbatim. The Warlord gives Toven a solemn apology, KO's him with her bounty hunter gloves, and they drop him, chained, into the harbor to drown.
I then immediately declared their characters 'evil', confiscated their sheets for use as NPC villains, and-- oh, no wait. We continued with the game, business as usual. The grim matter of Toven's needless death was left to weigh upon the consciences of the characters, who each dealt with and were changed by the event in their own way.
The sad thing is, I was actually successful in deluding the Paladin until about three months later IC.
It was the Goblin Rogue's fault. His player forgot that the Paladin didn't know that I actually killed the guy.
As to how my PC's delt with it, he doesn't. It was necessary, and that was that. (He's a grizzled War Veteran(Red Hand War) and a tactician. Also slightly insane.)
EDIT: Also, it was the Goblin's fault we were saddled with the guy in the first place. If he had just stayed quiet and let the Adults (Paladin and I) do the talking, we would have solved the solution peacefully.
I was playing a wizard specialized in necromancy, but a fairly good guy, abit of a dark streak, but generally a nice guy. Well at one point we were going up against a bad guy who had been his teacher, a vampire aiming to become a lich (some ritual to make that possible was designed...) and then take over the world, pretty ordinary evil bad guy stuff. Well the party bursts in just as the bad guys is preforming his ritual, thanks to energy immunity they're completly immune to cold spells. (The BBEG's favored type of spelsl after necromancy..) so they are completly unaffected by the AoE spell he casts, which pisses him off. Anyway they manage to mess up his ritual, making the guy temporarily count as a living beeing again. (Used earth reaver to blow up the floor, along with the casting circle, doing massinve damage to the BBEG at the same time) Well after some stuff going back and forth my character finally gets pissed off an impatient and kills him off with Flesh Shiver... right infront of two paladins.
Yhea so they're not talking to my character anymore. Thats probably the worst any of my characters has done, expect for my evil one thats in an evil campaign but thats kind of expected.
But yhea, thats more "use of overly creepy, messed up, painfull spell" than something that goes utterly against character and such, I mean no matter how nice a necro is, none of them are fluffy do-gooders all the time. XD