Your best worse PC moment in game

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

Llew ap Hywel

Lord of Misrule
Joined
Aug 13, 2017
Messages
1,010
Reaction score
1,431
So we all have moments our characters just suck at doing what they're meant to be good at but what's that one time you were so bad you loved it!

Mine was playing a Dragonborn Battlemaster in 5e. I'd been walking death for nine levels, even had a couple of minor dragon kills (party may have assisted a little :p) but then I faced Orca a little human tribal champion of no account and 4-5 levels lower than me with armour and weapons so inferior I consider taking him on naked with a dagger...I don't.

We entered the challenge ground, I roar my defiance at this little pissant and for the next 20 ish rounds roll more ones on a d20 than you'd account for in a year. When I hit it would be barely and for almost minimum damage...he absolutely cleans my clock. Hit after hit after hit whittling down this warrior God till I hit the sand like the polished turd I feel.

IT WAS EPIC!

It's the one fight my character couldn't forget, it doesn't matter that I can rightly claim the title Dragonslayer, giant killer, vampire bane and so many other titles I was royally creamed by an opponent so inferior the gods themselves MUST have intervened.

What are your best worse tales?
 
In Dark Heresy, my high-ranked Psyker (Telepath) was terrorising the bridge crew of an Imperial vessel (Astral Projection, possessing NPCs, making them sabotage the ship, fire their handguns at the consoles, ejecting troops into space etc...). I was doing really well then got royally unlucky with my Warp Corruption roll. I accidentally summoned a Daemon... who appeared on the ship, wreaking havoc on an already terrorised crew (crewman NPC: "well at least this can't get any WORSE... OH NO AAAAAACK---*").

Besides a pile of corruption, my Psyker became a hero of the team for shifting all blame onto the random demonic appearance.
 
Even after playing RuneQuest for many years, it never ceases to amaze me how stupid some characters (and players) can be. Here is a selection of the stupid things which my players have done over the years. A special mention has to be made of Andy Edgell, who played Masher and Broze Demonslayer, whose escapades, both as part of Roleplaying games and in the real world, had to be seen to be believed.

Whilst camping out on a beach in the South of Prax, the party were all asleep with the exception of Broze Demonslayer. A group of Gorps bubbled out of the sand (I had just watched Blood Beach and thought that gorps were probably funnier) and moved towards the sleeping party. Broze, who was always on single figure POW, decided to try for a POW gain roll and disrupted the gorps for a couple of rounds, allowing them to reach and engulf the party, destroying that nice iron armour. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Zak was on a scenario where the party found a pyramid and had to climb it to reach the top. Zak, being a paranoid character, decided to Spot Traps and criticaled the roll, even though it was at -100%. (He was an excellent Trap Spotter, second only to Derak "Who has the best Spot Traps? Oh, he's dead - he fell down a pit" The Dark Troll and Masher, who spotted traps by setting them off with alarming regularity, anyway I digress.) Zak saw something coating the pyramid. With a great flourish and pantomime, Ady, Zak's player, proceeded to mime himself wiping the substance off with his finger, putting it to his lips and trying a Taste Analysis - another critical roll determined the substance to be POT 20 contact poison which killed Zak. Now, Ady was a Rules Merchant par excellence and drew attention to the rule whereby Taste Analysis prevented the effects of the poison, only for the GM to elaborately pantomime the tasting of the poison with the addition of staring in surprise at the finger coated with contact poison. Ah well, you had to be there, I suppose. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

In Dorastor, the party travelled through the day and reached a great pool of Darkness which had not been there when they last passed by. Unwilling to enter the darkness at night, the party decided to camp about a mile away and investigate in the morning. They put out watches and went to sleep. When Broze Demonslayer was on watch, he became bored and decided to investigate the Pool of Darkness on his own. Off he goes for an hour or so, until he finds 20 or so Scorpion men, including a couple of Rune Lords and a Queen. Having seen them, he runs back to the camp, leading all the prepared scorpion men after him. When he arrived back, did he warn the others? No, he sat down and pretended that nothing had happened until the scorpion men charged in on a "surprise attack" and caught the party sleeping. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

After that little escapade, the party did not trust Broze to be on watch and made him wake them up at the slightest sound. I had many a happy hour as a GM having owls hooting and making him wake people up. Of course, the one time he did not wake people up the "owls" were a party of hunters signalling to each other. It's fun to be a GM sometimes. We had a scenario soon afterwards with a magic item of a bracelet with a button on it - when the button was pressed the person weraing the bracelet was awakened regardless of how deeply he was asleep. My character had first pick on the Treasure Table and I took this above all the good items, crystals and matrices available. I had a magical statue, 6 inches high, which could follow basic instructions. I ordered it to stand beside me and if anything not part of the Party came into the camp at night it was to press the button. Thus, I was protected from Broze when I was not running the scenario. Ha! Ha! It came in handy a few times, too.

The party had encountered a group of dwarfs in Balazar and stopped to talk to them. After a minute or so, the dwarfs suddenly attacked the party, for no apparent reason. What had actually happened was that one character at the back had decided to cast Disrupts at the dwarfs because "Dwarfs are always loaded". Fortunately, he was on horseback and rode off as soon as the dwarfs attacked, so he was OK. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The party was doing an investigation scenario, where they were trying desperately to find certain clues, but were getting nowhere. Finally, they retired to the local inn to sleep and settled down in their rooms. The GM, relenting slightly, caused two NPCs to stop beneath the windows and began to talk, telling important details about the plot. Broze Demonslayer, true to form, leaned out of the window and shouted "Shut up, will you, we are trying to get some sleep". Stupid, stupid, stupid.

After I ran a scenario in Dorastor which figured a Vampire Tigerson who, when transformed into a Tiger, had STR 105 and a 7D6 damage bonus (not bad for RQ2 and fully within the rules), one of the other GMs in our campaign looked through the bestiaries and found that Were Sharks trebled their STR when they transformed, so a Vampire Were Shark would have 126 STR, or thereabouts. His next scenario was a watery one, with the Pcs on a boat in the River of Cradles. One night, there was a splash as this Vampire Were Shark swam towards the boat. Only then did the GM remember that being immersed in flowing water destroyed Vampires. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The PCs were attacking the Tower of Lead in Dorastor, which was a Vivamort Temple in my campaign. Bolgar, Brother of the Bull, was walking with the party when he was hit by a spell effect which seemed to come from a nearby wall. He took a look and saw a small hole which he immediately Teleported through, meeting a Basilisk which he hit with his sword, cutting it down. He then peered through the holes in the basilisk's cell, looking to see what he could see. In the meantime, the basilisk had been healed (it was a sorcerer's familiar) and took a good hard look at Bolgar. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

During the same scenario, Bolgar, once again, came to a huge iron-bound door with a small grill set into it. He carefully took out a mirror and raised it near to the grill, in case there were basilisks in the room, and looked into the room through the mirror. All he saw was a room with a raised dais on which sat three empty thrones. "It's OK, the room is empty" he said and proceeded to pick the lock on the door. It was only after I had collapsed into a fit of giggles that the other PCs decided to look through the grill to see the thrones occupied by the Queen of the Tower and her two most powerful Vampires, surrounded by ten or so Vampire guards. If only I hadn't succumbed to the giggles. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Zak was on a scenario where he met a Lunar HeroQuestor who had a Moon Sword. Zak, hating all Lunars and wanting a Moonsword attacked and killed him, grabbing the Monnsword as he fell. The Lunar failed his Di, as did his allied spirit, so Zak gained a functional MoonSword (at the time they were not owner only items, this soon changed but not for this sword). He went away crowing, as only Zak could, and met up with an NPC who was someone's prisoner. I can't remember the details but the party freed him and he challenged the Wind Lords to a duel as a test of bravery and honour. Zak agreed, being the only Wind Lord, and gave him the Moon Sword to fight with (it was not attuned, was a 2 handed scimitar and the NPC would only have a 20% attack chance). "Gee, Thanks" said the NPC who rolled under his POW of 10 to bug out with the Sword. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

Masher was on a scenario where there was a simple trap in a room - step in a certain place and a slab of stone fell down and blocked the way out. Masher, true to form, found the trap by setting it off. As the slab of stone came down, he threw himself towards it shouting "Don't worry, I'll stop it" and put both his hands under the slab. Have you ever tried to catch a slab of granite 6 inches thick, 15 feet high and 10 feet long? What happens is that the granite proceeds to hit the ground with a satisfying thump, leaving behind a Great Troll with two bloody stumps. We laughed and laughed. Then, Masher tried to pick the slab up by gluing his stumps to the stone. We couldn't play for about ten minutes afterwards. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
Last edited:
On a related note, our best fumbles ...

Having played RuneQuest for many years, I have seen most of the things the rules can throw at you. One ever-present part of the rules is the occurrence of fumbles. Normally, these pass without comment, but occasionally, one happens which is talked about for years afterwards. Here is a list of the best fumbles I have seen or heard about - most of them are silly things, but at the time they made us laugh and some still do ten years on.

At the climax of a scenario, the party faced a dozen or so Thed and Thanatari Rune Lords/Priests headed by a Lamia with 30 point skin and a 200% shimmer Defence and her personal bodyguard. My character was hit simultaneously by the Lamia's Love Trance and a POW 30 Reverse Chaos which converted him to the enemy side. I teleported over to the Lamia, cast my Shield, Truesword, Bladepower and other damage spells and stood ready to slaughter the rest of the party. They came in, expecting to have to come through me, when my Bastard sword attack fumbled and hit my nearest friend in the head doing critical damage doing some 40 points of damage or so. As I was next to the Lamia, off came her head. Very satisfying. However, I was hit by four Multispell Shatters from the broos 5 SR later and immediately died.

When confronted by a huge Dream Dragon, Derak the Dark Troll took out an amulet gained from the Dragonewts for services rendered and, in his best draconic, said "Look, I have gained this by being a friend of the Dragonewts and am your friend too." However, after a spectacular fumble, what he actually said was "Look, I got this by killing loads of Dragonewts and am going to kill you too". Things went badly after that. Incidentally, the Dream Dragon returned to attack us again and again, but Derak never, ever met the thing afterwards, the swine.

Derak the Dark Troll was engaged in melee with a berserk Great Troll with four arms and two Crushed Mauls when Derak fumbled his attack, hitting himself in the abdomen and taking himself down. The Great Troll now had two attacks at 500% or so and laughed as he swung his maul, fumbled and hit himself in the abdomen, falling beside Derak. Who says life is fair.

Derak the Dark Troll (again) was on point walking through a tunnel with two companions. one either side, when a horde of bats erupted around them. These bats did no damage, they were there to disorient the party and to scare them a little. Derak swung his maul, fumbled badly - two rolls and hit nearest friend in the head doing critical damage - one went down, dead - and hit nearest friend doing maximum damage in the chest, killing the other one. The bats cleared, leaving Derak standing there with two very dead, very angry characters.

Broze Demonslayer was taking part in a carnival/competition scenario and decided to enter the Oratory contest, since he was a master of Oratory. The contestants stood there while a wheel was turned - the language chosen was Seaspeech. Broze could not speak this, so stood there and drooled. Next, Mostali - Broze drooled. Next, Adryami - Broze drooled. Finally Sartarite - "I can speak this" thinks Broze and fumbles - drooling from the wrong side of his mouth. Perhaps you had to be there, but it killed us.

Derak, Zak, Rilldick and Masher (a SIZ 40 Great Troll) were climbing a cliff, roped together when Masher, true to form, fumbled his Climb and fell. "What are you doing?" asked the GM, Zak braced himself and tried to help Masher, Derak and Rilldick had seen Masher fall before and cut their ropes. Zak was pulled off the cliff and fell with Masher. There was an almighty argument over who would go for DI as Masher was a Rune Lord on 6 POW and Zak a Rune Lord-Priest on 18 POW. Zak cast Telekinesis, but Masher grabbed hold of him (it was a long drop) and was too big for the spell. Finally, Zak used Orlanthi DI to take them to the top of the cliff, but was not a happy chappy. The next scenario, the party had to hitch a ride on Griffins across a gorge for which they were charged some exorbitant rate. Half way across, Masher decided that he would not pay, so decided to use Torture to force the Griffin onwards. Unfortunately, he fumbled, snapping its neck and sending both of them plummeting to the ground. Zak was using Telekinesis to fly across the gorge, so Masher used Jumping 4 to jump to Zak and catch hold of his leg, overloading the Telekinesis spell once more. This time, Zak pulled out his sword, chopped off his leg, waited for Masher to hit the ground, flew down, stuck his leg back on and flew away laughing his head off.

Two rival Wind Lords were riding into battle when one of them swung his Bastard Sword and chopped off his mount's head. After a good half hour of mickey taking from the player of the other Wind Lord, play resumed and the other Wind Lord duly fumbled and chopped off his horse's head. Revenge is sweet.

Derak the Dark Troll (master fumbler) was performing a Clan HeroQuest when he had to summon up his Clan Founders to persuade them to agree to something so that his Clan could take a different direction in life. He had the ritual set up and summoned his clan founder, a Mistress Race Troll from the Dawning. He rolled a 10% chance of something greater coming and instead summoned up the founder of Her Clan instead. He managed to exact the agreement from her and then summoned the Male Founder, a Dehori (in his clan, a Dehori helped to found the clan). Once again, he rolled the 10% and summoned instead the founder of the Dehori's Clan and gained its agreement for the course of action. Happy, Derak went off and completed the quest, telling his clan that the founders had agreed. When the priests of Xiola Umbar found out that the Clan had broken age-old agreements with her, they sent the UzUz priests to punish the tribe. Derak summoned his clan founders to show that they had authorised the changes and managed to summon both of them first time. "Agreements, what agreements?" was their reply. This resulted in Derak deafening the priestesses and Xiola Umbar herself as he called upon the Moonsinger cult to fight the Priestesses' Song of Vengeance. (OK, so it's not strictly a fumble story, but it's close enough.)

Solarus Skywatch, Light Son and soon to be hero, was at Snakepipe Hollow in the Chaos Caves when the party had to cross the bridge over the Turtle's Pool. As the bridge was slippery, everyone was asked if they wanted to take precautions. The rest of the party (DEX 21) decided to walk across and made it. Solarus (DEX 13) decided to crawl across on hands and knees, giving him a 95% chance of succeeding. Whoops a daisy - Turtle Fodder! (He now claims never to have been in Snakepipe Hollow - Heroes have that privilege of rewriting history.) There is an addition to this tale, recalled by Ken McCarron who was running at the time, the Turtle was very friendly and swam up to Solarus to try to push him to shore, that is until the spell barrage and flurry of spear attacks came from the terrified Solarus.

Derak the Dark Troll and Zak were about to attack a nest of Krarshti and decided to sneak up on the Rune Lords in their sleeping quarters. As both of them had cast silence and had 200% + Move Silently, this posed no challenge. However, when they reached the Krarshti quarters, they were met by a host of armed and armoured Rune Lords. "Not fair" they cried, only to be asked to make a Listen roll to hear the light tread of Masher the SIZ 40 Great Troll with 30% Move Silently trying his best to sneak up along the corridor he had just found - a fumbling Great Troll makes a hell of a lot of noise.

Derak, the Illuminated and Unbeatable PC Death Lord, is summoned to the presence of the Lord General of Death who has obtained a Detect Law and a Detect Chaos matrix which he intends to use to check his Death Lords for Illumination or the taint of Chaos. As he goes down the line, he casts the spell once, and only once, for each Death Lord. He reaches Derak, who is now bricking it, and points the Detect Chaos matrix at him and rolls a fumble, causing the matrix to obviously malfunction. He then points the Detect Law matrix at Derak only for Derak's immense Luck Field to kick in and cause another fumble and another malfunction. Having had two malfunctions of his matrices, The Lord General of Death throws them away, decides that Derak is clean, after all he was one of the premier slayers of Chaos at that time, and appoints him head of a group of Death Lords tasked to hunt down suspected Illuminates within the cult of Zorak Zoran. Surprisingly enough, once Head of the Inquisition, Derak managed to find out that most of his political rivals were, in fact, Illuminates and servants of various Chaos Cults whom he quickly killed and destroyed every last trace. Hmmmm ........

Zak was on a HeroQuest to Hell and was on the border of the Styx. He had just gained a Shield with pemanent Great Parry (I know, I hadn't expected him to defeat the foe but he did) and was crowing as only Zak could. He met an NPC encounter who challenged him to a discus contest. Zak, being so full of himself decided to throw the new Shield as it was a small, conveniently shaped shield. The fumble meant that the shield went in a random direction for 1D6 metres - splash! Ha, ha, ha.

The party had decided to go against Ralzakark and to finish him off. Unfortunately, the Broo Demigod had a pet Hydra which had a Chaos Feature that it could spit its venom up to its STR in metres with a skill of POWx5%. This alone had previously killed party members. Add that to the fact that it regenerated all damage done to it while in water and lived in a pond and you get the picture of how tough it was. (It had something like 50 point acid/venom and a chaos feature that made it twice as strong - I don't mess about with these things). So, the party had gained a Black Stone to Kill Chaos and threw it at the Hydra with Sureshot and a 200% Throw skill which duly fumbled and went towards a PC. Fortunately, he had Telekinesis and, after Teleporting away, sped the stone to its rightful target. (I was feeling generous that day!)

During the Dorastor Campaign, I had a favourite NPC - the Giant King of NeverDead who I played as an arch-enemy, constantly trying to defeat the party and generaly failing through bad luck, party prowess or plain NPC incompetance. Once such occasion arose when the party went into HellWood to do the elves a favour. The Giant King followed them and quickly overtook them, going to their destination and disguising himself as a tree (Look, it was a good plan, he had an excellent disguise skill and was tree height, all he needed was a few branches to hold on to and a good roll and he was laughing.) Unfortunately, he fumbled his disguise and stood there on the edge of the clearing holding two branches in his hands. Bolgar, Brother of the Bull, appraoched the clearing and took a quick look around. On a Scan roll he would have seen the Giant King. Unfortunately, all he saw was a load of trees, including one which would have looked Giant-shaped had he not rolled a 100. Boy was I surprised as a GM.

The dagger was a Sever Spirit matrix which cast an infinite POW sever spirit at the target on contact. The target was a hideous and incredibly powerful hydra. The unfortunate victim was a brave duck who unfortunately counted as the thrower's friend, but not for long......

On being grabbed by a crocodile on the left arm, a sword attack went horribly wrong, causing a "Hit self doing maximum damage" result. Luckily, the sword cut off the left arm leaving a bemused crocodile and a PC floating happily to the surface.

The PC was a minotaur who had previously nearly wiped out the party when is specialed its attack and went into Battle Rage as the broos ran off screaming. The situation was crossing a river. The minotaur was in a rope chain, everyone went across one at a time for safety reaons - all the PCs could pull a character out if he got into trouble. The minotaur went across and fumbled his Swimming roll, going under water. The PCs grabbed hold of the rope only to realise "He's just taken damage". As they saw an angry load of bubbles rise up to the surface, the PCs just stood there for a while until the bubbles stopped, then pulled the corpse out to loot it. Party Spirit is a wonderful thing.

The first fumble I witnessed - a fanatical Humakti wielding a greatsword fumbled and neatly removed his own head. We laughed and laughed. For some reason, Martyn did not.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top