D&D Players, What are your D&D "Darwin Award" Stories? #2  

Rogue: "I'm not going to spend time checking every door for traps. I have Improved Evasion, so I can dodge anything that's there." Cue a trap that requires a Constitution save rather than a Dexterity save.

Putting an orb of destruction into a portable hole and watching things go boom. Flying down into a cravase as a bird while rocks are falling in. 5th edition and they were almost Darwin award-winning events but we survived our stupidity.

My friends fighter in full plate thought it would be a good idea to jump off the raft into the river to fight the crocodiles in melee combat. He had 2 crossbows but no he needed to “show them who’s the boss “. The paladin pulled him out and revived him but technically he did die for a bit.

In D&D 5e, one player that I will call 'Leroy' seemed to be operating on a different wavelength than everyone around him. He was unpredictable in battle, running into combat then turning to run the other way when you dived in to support him. Oddly, this saved the day early on in the game and tended to progress the story as we often over thought things. The novelty soon wore thin however as it kept getting worse. One night we camped by a lake and I took my turn on watch only to hear something quietly disturb the water. I moved to silently as I could wake my companions starting with Leroy (my mistake), whispering to him that something disturbed the water and we should wake the others and move away. Instead, with utter disregard to my mental wellbeing, Leroy immediately charged into the lake with all the grace of a cannon ball. Mind you, it is night, he has no ability nor tool on his person that would allow him to see in the pitch black night in the middle of a lake. Needless to say he made some friends, some small mobs seemed displeased and also the giant lake monster the small mobs where making offerings too. Well, sadly the lake monster mistakenly figured Leroy to be one of its many offerings and ate him whole. Leroy is the first and only person I know who literally attacked the darkness and lost.

Our chronurgy wizard made decision to get voluntarily bitten by a werewolf in a short-sighted moment of power hunger. Caused him to flee the party when he transformed, and he had no spell slots and a level of exhaustion by the time he joined us for the most difficult fight of the campaign so far. We lost two valuable characters that day.

Timmy as a bard: "Hey, we both got buckets of chicken. Wanna do it?"

This happened to a friend of mine. The DM created a race of intelligent orcs who no one knew discovered gun powder. One of the PC's picked up a revolver, looked into the barrel of it, and pulled the trigger trying to figure out what it was. The characters brain splattered everyone and the rest of the party had to role if they were hit by ricochet.

Cleric sees Trex crush a frog (a frog that was several stories tall mind you) with a single step. Cleric does a backflip in front of the raging hungry Trex. Cleric becomes Trex dinner.

Looking at a zombie Beholder and getting disintegrated. That happened to my character, Bill the bard. I turned to dust and was not seen again for several sessions.

Appreciate your time, effort, and epic attitude and delivery! Thank you, take care, and give yourself a big hug from all of us!!

YAY! You finally read one of my stories! Mine is the "We're gonna need another Timmy!" story. I would've used a pseudonym for Tim, like most people do on here to preserve their fellow players anonymity, but then I wouldn't have been able to use the punch line. And I really enjoyed teasing him with that line from Dinosaurs.

My sisters first game, she was a re Dragonborn, you know, the ones with fire. They faced the BBEG in a cavern under the main city. It was a homebrew dracolich with a gas weapon that they had seen before, and knew was flammable. The lich of course wanted to hinder the players by spewing this gas in the entire room. “I want to use my fire breath” she said, and so, after some questions I asked her, she still thought it was great to do so. Let’s just say there is no longer a town.

Not sure if this counts, because the guy loved experimenting with new characters, so he kept finding ways to kill or retire his characters. One of them was a true primitive barbarian. After we managed to retrieve a specific item from its hoard (apparently without it noticing), he openly rolled an unprompted intelligence check. It came up with a 7. "Okay. I'm going to try and eat the dragon."

I have a few fun ones from a campaign I barely remember, one from my first campaign and another from a space themed campaign we did, enjoy! I downed a pint of celestial blood, turned into a homicidal plant and got shot by another party member due to being a homicidal plant In my first game another player had a 3 in charisma so as we entered the bar he cast friend on the barkeep of the bar called *The Golden Fiddle* Turned out they were the devil and wasn't impressed. Thankfully instead of killing us they sent us on a mission to get the fiddle back which ended with us having a musical competition with a vampire lord at the top of a skyscraper. Edit: Remembered why I'm banned from travel checks So I'm not allowed to do travel checks or rolls that don't involve my character because of how bad my luck is, how bad is it you ask simple! When I was helping my dm design planets for a space theme campaign we did we ended up with the planet lovingly nicknamed *Mistakes were Made.* Now you may be wondering why and how were mistakes made and it's quite simple, the planet had unstable gravity so each day he'd need to roll to see if we'd have anything from extremely high gravity to no gravity and as a cherry on top the weather for planet was rolled for by me. So this planet has unstable gravity and wild magic storms. Yeah after that he straight up said I'm not allowed to do travel checks Edit 2 Electric Boogaloo: I just remembered how Valakas died (character before the homicidal plant incident). So we were exploring ruins and found a celestial that we patched up and we all got stuck in a room filling with water. The celestial peaced out with a teleport and our party gets a collective Darwin award as we had the bright idea of jumping through the dimension door. We ended up outside of reality and thanks to backstory stuff I failed the save to get through successfully. So Val is currently trapped outside of reality and is completely insane!

I once DM'd a completely 'made up on the spot' one shot with a few friends to attack a kobold village but first they had to cross a bridge before climbing down the cliff face. Since I had mentioned that the village hidden in the was far below the bridge one (low level) player decided to jump off the bridge, in which case I decided to roll for what they'd land on to see if they'd get lucky but they fall facefirst into solid rock and die. What makes it more of a darwin award is they were playing an aarakocra, a bird race that can literally fly.

I've been on the receiving end of this award before. Stepped into a long skinny room with a magic effect that removed an item randomly upon entering, and removed another item for every 10 feet I moved into the room. So being extremely clever I left the room and put everything I had onto the floor in the hallway with my companions, even my clothes. Then I entered the room. And to no ones surprise I disappeared. DM's response "something disappeared every time you moved forward, you were supposed to bring enough items to get across and back again, it's how I was gonna get the party to waste all their money to balance out the campaign, I didn't think you'd try to cross without even your clothes, something had to disappear." Yeah there were two ways to read that situation and I chose the option that relied on my hypothesis being correct.

I actually have one for once!! My friend had just made a Druid, who was a hermit living in the forest. His first goal (he decided for himself) after leaving his cabin was to find a bear. My DM said “sure.” Roll investigation or nature, which he rolled quite high. Ended up finding a bear and tried to make it his “friend” rolled animal handling, got a nat 1 and the bear attacked and killed him. Still often remind him about this lol

In my second ever game of DnD (it was another oneshot), I was playing a max strength dwarven fighter seeking glory. He spotted a giant alligator and saw a chance for glory! My beginner brain assumed that a plus twelve to athletics would be plenty to wrestle this reptilian beast. The rolls were not in my favor and I was death-rolled for three rounds while insisting this was fine and that “I got this!” I learned then that the stats never guarantee anything, and that the dice are king.

TLDR I was "that guy" because I was new to DnD and the DM set me straight. I have one about myself when I first started playing. Decided to split off from the party and follow them to an event where we had to be blind folded and arrive in blinded carriages. I didn't like that, proceeded to realise that the event was held by a dragon who did not appreciate little dumb me spying on him. Queue my arse being handed to me and the DM having to get creative on why I didn't just get killed. DM did a great job with the whole thing, he also sat me down after with a few drinks to ask "why?" about the whole thing and explain why I need to work with the DM instead of this bs which was more treating the DM as an enemy.

Part 2 is even better than part 1 and i cannot assure that kobold throwing isn't an Olympic discipline in my campaign from now on.

This was way back about 5 years ago in the days of UA Dhampir. Our Dampling (Dhampir Hafling) Wild Magic Sorcerer was known for being insane. And one thing he decided to do was to try and make out with a lesser beholder. He actually managed to deal significant damage to it by surprise bite attacking it. But got bitten multiple times in return. Despite the healing of the UA Dhampir bite attack, I have no idea how he survived.

In a Storm King's Thunder run, one of the players was playing a character that had enough brain cells to count on one hand. The character freed a powerful djinn that, when it awoke, destroyed the mountain we were in, with him at the epicenter. Gotta respect playing the character, but more happy my character got out in time.

Dude decided to ram a capital ship with his jet going Mach 20. Seemed genuinely surprised when he exploded

PANR has tuned in.

A guy standing in front of a dragon's lair bellowing "Come out, little piggy!" The answer was a blast of fire that instantly killed him. Thus ended the short career of Frank Brutalo in the 1980s.

Just found this channel yesterday. Loving it so far, and loving the inclusion Brian gives to us enby folks. 🖤

I was playing a first session with a new group in 5th addition. I was one of two spell casters, I was a LE Mindflayer mage ("The Sage of Kindness" who went around wearing white with a golden "comedy" mask and being cartoonishly nice, with a cursed item that hid his alignment), and a half elf artificer who specialized in magic traps. After the first fight we come to a cave entrance which is clearly trapped. The half elf steps up because this is literally his job, I step up because I'm a wizard and we stick our noises into things,

Our party was a Druid, a Cleric (both of whom their races I cannot remember), A Human Fighter Eldritch Knight (Mr. Darwin award himself) and my Drow Vampire Swords Bard. We were entering into a cavern for some reason or another when we came across a giant ladder, some scaffolding near said ladder that someone could easily climb down, a set of three frost giants playing dice around a campfire, and a set of cages in the back of the room with people inside. I, being the most dexterous party member said I was going to try and sneak around the edge of the room and open the cages to get the people to safety, but since there was no where to really hide in the room, I also asked one of our party members to make a distraction while I do so, maybe throw a rock or something. The Eldritch Knight (who backstory-wise knew my character personally) said, "I can do that for you." I begin to sneak around the room and made my stealth check, and just as the DM was about to make his perception checks, the Eldritch Knight said, and I quote, "I grab the cleric by the collar of his coat and toss him in the middle of the giants." We all get this dumbstruck look on our faces as the DM tells the cleric and the fighter to make contested strength checks. Now a little bit of details, our cleric was really scrawny, but built a powerhouse healer and buffer, while the fighter had insanely high Strength (enough to duel wield tower shields) and Intelligence, but incredibly low wisdom. The cleric rolled an 8 on strength and the fighter rolled a 23. As the cleric landed right next to the fire in the middle of the frost giants, they looked down at him, then up at the fighter, then back down to the cleric before two of them attacked the cleric, and one threw a nearby rock at the fighter. As the fight started, I used my first two turns opening the cages and getting the NPCs to safety. No one died, thankfully, but it is still the dumbest thing that player did at that table and we still joke about it to this day.

Very similar to the Hoard of the Dragon Queen story, the other person put up. (Hoard of the Dragon Queen Spoilers Ahead, Obviously) our party had just returned from the cathedral in Greenest after saving the civilians there, just to see the Blue Dragon attacking the keep. Our party, of mostly squishy Casters, go to the roof of the keep to try to launch ranged attacks to fight off the dragon. Enter our Wizard... The Dragon narrowly misses our Wizard by 5 feet with its breath weapon, in which our Wizard then gets the bright idea to use Hideous Laughter when it comes to his turn. He tells a horrible Dragon pun joke and I don't remember the roll exactly, but the Dragon obviously made the save, so our wizard decides he has to run to cover BY JUMPING OFF THE KEEP. He then proceeded to fall far enough to where the damage instantly killed him because he's a Level 1 Wizard. The entire group thought the events were so funny, our DM let the spell take effect posthumously, which bought the rest of the party enough time to get to cover while also saving an important NPC before the Dragon ultimately got bored and flew away. To further pity the Wizard, our DM made one of us do a multi-stage skill check challenge to see if our Sorcerer could run quick enough down to the rest of the keep to find the town's highest level cleric, and convince them to revive our Wizard, after a Nat 18, two Nat 19's and a Nat 20 on all the Acrobatics, Perception, and Persuasion checks it took to get them there our Wizard was brought back to life.

I maintain that UTHER EISENBART: The flying Dwarf Warlock™ is my favorite character and I keep mentioning him in hopes of one day hearing someone on the internet wax poetic about my boy. He was made for a one-shot and I didn't need to go above and beyond on backstory, but I love my dude. He's insane in the membrane and I love him to death. To that end, he has a prismatic stone that hangs around his neck and allows him to hear the sweet honeyed words of his semi-demonic Archfey patron. Our DM figured we would die in the puzzle heavy tomb we were raiding and only two of us actually died during the campaign. Of course the first and most glorious death was Uther. He had gained a stone that allowed him to make a wish. He knew this because the voice in his head told him so. It wasn't his "rainbow goddess" but he listened none the less. We were about at our wits end and tired of touring this tomb which had robbed one character of his manhood and another of their clothes and ... that included their components bag for casting spells (another caster lent them some components). I knew this wishing stone was some kind of monkey's paw (OoC) and even in character, Uther knew enough about the arcane to know wishes should be considered very carefully. So he Lawyered the shit out of the wish - asking specifics in it that most people don't think to include. I can't remember all of what I said but it was something to the effect of "I want the thing we're after and to be returned to the surface" Now, it did grant the latter part of the wish, but not the first. Our DM turns to everyone at the table and describes the Wishing stone starting to glow a bright orange-white in Uther's hand and asks every last one of us "What do you do?" We were in a large hall with many marble pillars. My friends backed the hell away from Uther and hid behind the furthest pillar they could manage to get behind. I thought very hard what I should do as it became my turn. "What would Uther do?". Uther is unhinged - he hears voices in his head. This is a wish tone, certainly it must be a good thing. The good and logical thing is to put the stone down. But his Patron's stone makes him hear voices and it's good. This is good too, right? This is how it works? Oh Sweet Honey Ice Tea. I look the DM in the eyes and say with perfect certainty "Uther is used to hearing voices in his head. He isn't alarmed at all at the glowing rock and just looks at it, wondering how it will grant his wish" The gem **explodes** and causes a huge amount of damage including a bit of a crater and some chunks taken out of nearby columns. Well, that was the end of Uther - Kind of. Our adventuring party was returned before the goddess who sent us on the quest, and since Uther had died, his soul was transferred into a new body. Our DM graciously had "backups" for us (3 levels lower than where we started, with varying skills and abilities), and thus Uther Eisenbart: The Pyroclastic Half Dragon Barbarian was born!! This was absolutely wonderful to roleplay, because it had severed his contact with his patron and let's just say it was not the same man who returned to the tomb that day.

"And as you turn around, you see-" "I CHAAAARGE!!!!" *"A pit."*

So that thieves guild was actually the dark brotherhood?😆😆😆

Funny moment for me, I am playing as a draconian wizard at level 3 when chaos erupts in the kitchen of the place me and my other teammate were staying at. We rush over to help, and find that there are 3 steam spirits terrorizing all the kitchen workers. Me not knowing anything about them (including the fact that they were made of steam) proceeds to land burning hands on them, blasting all three of them with a cone of fire. They completely absorb said attack due to them being made of steam. Then, something even dumber happens. They roll a Nat 1 for their initiative, basically thinking me for giving them such a refreshing boost of energy. Incredible gameplay!

IEDs gave a dwarf PTSD so bad he has a micro panic attack before entry a new area and can physically smell explosive making materials.

When my friend stupidly tied his PC to a rock to dive down into a canyon and stupidly forgot to tie the other end to a rock all to retrieve some eggs on in a bird's nest below

8:15 It's like that fucking meme edit of the Watchmen with Dr. Manhattan reducing Rorschach into a fine goo in the snow.

5:23 Wait, what? Wisdom is a must have for cleric. Good luck casting spells.

In the span of 1/3 a campaign, I fell for: ~7 sentient objects, 3-4 mimics, and I walked over the same poison trap twice... survived it all though ^.^ (Edit) OH! I also nearly stuffed a mirror to another plane into a bag of holding.. cos I wanted it but it was big.... (deus ex machina, cos we killed an orcus worshipper n freed a few trapped souls)

During my first ever campaign, we found an abandoned old fort with a magical door beyond the first hall. While everyone was setting up camp for the night, our ranger toyed around with the door which had some sort of riddle to open it. Got it wrong, was shot by a poisoned dart. Got it wrong again, was shot once more. At this point he was at 2 hp. Instead of walking out to look for our cleric to get healed, he tried the door again. We walked in on his corpse half an hour later.

Mirrors + Radiant Light: You don't have to be undead for that to turn you into bacon.

One of my buddies played a cleric who despised necromancy and undead. Another party member discretely came into possession of 13 skeletons under his control that he concealed in a portable hole. We had a tough fight where we had to use them though the cleric failed a perception check to notice where they came from. My character and another tried to distract the cleric while the other guy put the skeletons back in the portable hole. The cleric saw it and charged them. He rolled a natural 20 3 times in a row to evade me blocking him, another party member blocking him and to dive headfirst into the hole before it was closed. All 13 skeletons then got to make an attack against him with advantage since he was flanked on all sides. We ended up calling it the "Death blender" hahaha good times.

Was dming a zombie apocalyptic game where quick and quiet was key. So it makes a bit more sense, here are the deats in short: every human for themself, co-op is an option but not required. One of the players was playing a chaotic evil character with a vendetta to take out another players character. The map was a underground abandoned bunker with a lot of halls making it a maze. Zombies had strong senses and would be making their way to the players at a fast pace. The player with a vendetta was so set on trying to kill the other player character, that he ended up overtaken by zombies. Yep.

Working a rather lengthy escape Adventure from a Drow establishment, so Underdark... AND the Ranger (of all PC's) boldly steps forward while we're cringing back for cover... "This is OBVIOUSLY an illusion!" He scoffed. "There's NO CONCEIVABLE WAY the Drow have a Shadow Dragon lurking in their catacombs!" For you novices and lesser experienced Players out there, understand that even outside of your Character's "natural domain", certain classes are going to get SOME insight to "the order of things" just about anywhere... A Ranger might not have "true expertise" if he's a "Forest type" and he's standing in the middle of nowhere-squared, Underdark... BUT Nature has a funny way of having similar rules at the simplest levels... ALWAYS ask the GM/DM to confirm your chances to know something before you bet your life or your party's' lives on a decision... Might come with a mighty difficulty adjustment and even at disadvantage or something... BUT ASK FIRST... None the less... Those were some HILARIOUSLY unforgettable Last Words... ;o)

I've never played DnD, and I barely understand the mechanics, but man, I could totally see myself doing some of these...or maybe inventing new, creative ways to paint the ground with my entrails.

My first D&D character was a cattle rancher who lived beside a dark evil forest. One day the cattle went missing, so he led a group into the woods to find them, getting ambushed and everyone killed but him. Queue him fleeing the village in disgrace, becoming a fighter, and joining a mercenary crew. Many many moons later, he met up with a band of adventurers and begun his new life among them. On our... 3rd adventure I think it was, we descended into an ancient crypt, wherein we found statues of men with the heads of cows. PTSD kicked in as he had blamed the stupid cows for the deaths of all his friends back home, and the reason of why he wasn't living a simple life anymore. He decides to destroy these statues, striking one with his glaive... and it animates, as do the dozens more jewel encrusted bovine statues wielding gem forged axes. He died backed into a corner screaming incoherently something akin to "Murder the beef! Cull the herd!" That was my favourite character death to date.

I don't have any of my own. But I gave some from my players. All from my current campaign. Most from the same guy. First one was our half elf warlock. At level three, he used shatter on some ghouls' in doors, in the attic of a decrepit mansion. He didn't cave the ceiling in, but he did get knocked out and killed over the next round of combat. Then there was our Yuan-ti wizard. He made a book where every page was a glyph of warding set to explode. All were set to the same word. Well he used it in the fight with a kraken. On his first attack in combat. Did well over 200 damage. But the Kraken was still very much alive. And proceeded to focus him. He was dead two rounds later. Same player as the wizard also made a half elf bard who brought a vampiric dragon back to life in exchange for vampirism. It killed him, then raised him as a spawn at night. He also made a half orc paladin who got the wish card from the deck of many things. He asked to be reborn anew. He is now a demon. Then there was his minotaur that kept antogonizing wizards. Very power, allied wizards. He threatened a random necromancer, and got min controlled. Not learning his lesson, he kept it up and eventually got sent to the abyss. Now he is a demon. Then our human assassin (a different player from the other two), threw a rock down a pit he couldn't see the bottom of. He had 60 ft. of dark vision, and saw it go down 60 ft. He didn't hear it land, and decided it was safe. He had monk levels, and thought 60ft. of slowfall would be safe. He was only saved by the bard reading levitate. The pit was 1000 ft. deep.

As to Darwin Awards, I was playing a 1982 Barbarian class as presented in Dragon Mag # 63. It was a one shot with just myself and my dm's wife as players. I had modeled my barbarian on a Turkic / Mongol nomad. We got into someplace where my bow was knocked away, and my dm's wife was pinned to the ground by a rather angry tiger. We were 1st level. Taking a dagger in each hand I leaped on the tiger's back like it was a horse. It let loose of the ranger, my dm's wife, raked me, and began to concentrate its attacks on me. The ranger survived, and, thanks I believe to our dm's mercy, so did I, although I was unconscious for about 2 days. Soon thereafter we were joined by an npc cleric, and we continued our adventures until I left Ft Campbell in a pcs move.

I ran a Final Fantasy tabletop game with some homebrew rules taken from other systems. I based the game several classic JRPGs. I had the party encounter this obvious spike trap that shot 5ft spears out of the ground as seen in Wild Arms, Xenogears, etc. The spike do a massive amount of damage as it is intended to bar a path. One of the group had an extra hat they throw on the trap to try to trigger it which it didn't. Will one player, the Darwin award nominee, thought it was a great idea to try to cartwheel over the trap to grab the hat. I was perfectly clear about how the trap worked and he was very clear about how he wanted to go about this task. The term 'human-lollipop' accurately described what happened, or would have happened if I didn't have that one trap have a malfunction. He only walked away with some damage about 60% of his current HP. If I was going with the base damage his character would have died outright because it would have been a crit directed as his face which is bad. This was the first, and last, session of that game. The local game store literally closed overnight and could not find a place for me to run.

Tieflings Arificer in Curse of Stahd campaign, found an abandoned carriage that both the wild magic barbarian and the celestial patron warlock used magic sensing abilities and told the Artificer that the carriage was magic and that barovia has been out to kill us since day 1. It’s probably trapped don’t touch it. Artificer opens the window to the carriage and sets off a massive explosion downing multiple party members. A non magical explosion to all of our surprise, but still a trap that nearly TPKed the party because the bitch didn’t listen to the advice of the party.

In probably my second dnd session ever, one of the players was doing all kinds of things to piss off our DM, and after we had cleared an abandoned castle out, the DM decided to reward us with a magical tree with a hole in it. I was the first player to decide anything relating to it, and put my scimitar into the hole. It came back with a +2 slashing enchantment on it. Then our Lawful Good Paladin (aforementioned player who pissed off the DM) thought it’d be funny to stick a certain male appendage into the tree. Cut to five seconds later, and this Paladin can no longer reproduce for lack of having anything to reproduce with. Fun times.

My first D&D group had an idiot who thought he was a genius. He was constantly doing stupid stuff, then eventually abandoning that character and making a new one to escape the consequences of his actions. One of the more memorable ones involved a bag of beans (magic item that would cause a random effect to happen ranging from really good, good and bad, to really bad). He'd already nearly killed the party with the bag of beans during the dungeon crawl when he planted one and it turned the floor to lava. They were just outside of town after that dungeon when he decided to go off on his own and plant a bean (so he wouldn't have to share if it was a good result). He got one of the good/bad results. Out of the ground popped a powerful manticore (but several of it's tail spikes were +3 javelins you could keep if you killed it). Realizing he couldn't fight this, he ran toward town and ducked into a building to hide. The manticore lost sight of him so swooped down on the town. It killed several civilians before the guards arrived, and killed about half the guards before going down. As soon as it died, he ran out of hiding, demanding the magic tail spikes from "his" manticore...

One of my players tends to go through a character per level (various reasons). The party had made napalm to "clean" the sewers of storm reach of all were rats and rat folks in a single quick move. The party hear a rather loud growl roar and were able to determine that it is a crocodile, and from the noise it makes, sounds like a large one at that. This player, decides on her own, to go into the sewers by herself, to investigate the noise, the first time (good stealth roll) sees the snot of said croc, sees that it is indeed a large snot, and is unable to see anything else of said croc. Decides to go and pick up a flask of alchemist fire, return back to the sewers, again solo, rolls a poor stealth check, tries to through the flask, as the croc immediately sprints towards her, as the rest of the party is above getting ready to pour the napalm into the sewers. I give this player a couple of chances to escape the dire crocodile, first, it hit her once, she makes it back to the ladder to start climbing, but the croc has bitten onto her, the party throw a flask of alchemist fire into the crocs mouth (Genius IMO) but ends up throwing her straight up, a round of poor rolls later, and she falls back to the ground (30ft) as the croc starts doing death rolls trying to put out the fire that is burning it, crushing her in the process. I allowed the party to retro the full encounter, but listen when the DM says "Are you sure?" and never separate the party

In the campaign I run, I had a player who should have won the Darwin Award on several separate occasions, but I decided to finally give it to them since they ran out of all of their chances. In the character's and player's last session in this campaign, they decided to just... Stand in the middle of the tomb and lay claim to the living cursed sword. The same sword that scared every sentient magic item and the contained demon they wielded. When the rest of the party and NPCs left due to the sheer danger of a pair of undead angels, they just stood there. Insulting their god. The angels deliver a single warning attack that drained constitution in a similar manner to a Shadow and lost 10 points. They didn't run, so I just told them that their character was dead. Annoying for everyone involved.

Back in high-school, one of my friends played a lizardfolk druid and had tamed a owlbear. We used the owlbear to fight a wight at the top of the mountain. Afterwards, the player thought it was a good idea to go owl bear sledding down the mountain ... which was previously described as lots of steep cliffs that only a few paths led up safely, others only mountain goats or skyrim horses could travel. Even with a "are you sure" and the rest of us telling him that was dumb he decided to ride the owlbear off a cliff and land at the bottom. It was a mess. But he also had a bottle of petrification on him, which also broke upon impact and splashed over his and the owlbear's corpses, creating a strange dog the Thing styled statue of lizardfolk and owlbear. We then sold said statue in the nearby city as abstract art. In a second campaign 10000 years have passed, and the DM admitted he wasn't sure if he should have the "statue" pop up, or if someone depetrified it and used revivify, as his body was pretty much frozen in time and acted as though it was only dead for a few seconds, and now a random lizardfolk druid is wandering around.

Our barbarian tried to catch a hippogryph with a rope. He got carried away into the air, where he managed to kill the hippogryph, but fell. He died of fall-damage and couldn't be ressurected

Nobody in our group died but playing an Eberron Campaign, our group was tasked with clearing out a Cultist hideout inside a sort of reactor type facility that generates electricity down in the cogs. I'm playing an Artificer Fighter Warforged named Onyx, and our group consists of a Lycanthrope Artificer, a Druid Paladin Calistar, a human Artificer, a Bard, and two other characters who are less important in this instance. Upon getting inside the place, our Bard and our Human Artificer decide to scout ahead, with the human going invisible. Without informing anyone of what he would be doing. The bard spots two guards, and everyone presses up to get a jump on the two. Little do we know, the human is right there, having alerted the two Cultists with a really bad Stealth roll but being invisible avoided detection. We set up the ambush, and kill one while severely Wounding the other. Luckily when I peaked with my Shotgun, I just barely missed our invisible friend, but what happened next was unacceptable. The human Artificer slips into the control room for the whole reactor, with nobody's knowledge. This would have been inconsequential as the plan with the control room was to reroute power and get everything up to get a map. The Human Art however seemingly missed that crucial detail, as while we send our Bard and our Lycanthrope Art disguised as Cultists into the room full of these guys, the MIA party member turns ON the reactor and begins the "cleansing of biological matter". With two party members in there. I imagine you can see where this is going. In an instant, the reactor room locks down as everything turns back on, and across the facility all you can hear is "Decontamination Process Beginning..." Upon the rest of us hearing this be said, everyone realizes in horror that whatever is about to happen is also going to happen to two of our party members, and everyone scrambles to find a way to free our comrades. After a minute of running, Onyx eventually busts up into the control room, only to see the Human Artificer casually standing by as he watches on the cameras. Onyx briefly explains the situation, and even gets on to the human for acting so brazen before shoving him aside to try and save our friends locked in with the Cultists. It came close, and we thought it was hopeless as the process couldn't be stopped, but in a final desperation Onyx searched for a map of the vents and finds an escape route for our frantic allies, making it out last second as Onyx locks the vent behind them to keep all the Cultists in. As the countdown finishes, a sort of liquid is sprayed into the room; acid. The Cultists are all disintegrated with little left to show of the absolute massacre that took place. Needless to say, our party had a stern talking to the human that caused this fiasco since he had not communicated any of what he was doing, and basically split away from the party with no real excuse for why he would. TL;DR Human Artificer splits from the party, presses a few buttons, and nearly gets two other party members killed in the process.

I used to game with one of those people who could always find some way to die. The most memorable was a low-powered superhero campaign. We got jumped by some ninjas in a hotel hallway. Our hero said,"if they want to get to the rest of the party they'll have to cut through me to do it!" And then transformed into a elephant to block the hallway. From our point of view he was protecting the ninjas from us, not vice versa. The first attack from a ninja got a stun result and then...well let's just say that they took him up on his offer.

Our dwarven barbarian was mining to get out of a dungeon, decided to set his pickaxe on fire, rolled a nat 1 on doing so, caught on fire and took 4 damage of suffocation damage while being at 4 health

One time when my group was in a dungeon under a volcano, we got to a room with a lot of magma/lava, and in the middle of the lava pool there was a pedestal with a diamond on it. You could get to it by jumping on some rocks in the pool, i think it was 3 jumps each way. Clearly something you should not try, but our greedy ranger decided to try anyway, even if he knew that if he fell in, we had no way to get him up. It went well, untill the last jump, the dm allowed me to use Prestidigitation as a reaction to chill the lava, reducing the damage by 1, just ad a reward for the quick thinking. The ranger got out with 1hp, if not for the chilling he would be dead.

3:31 so that's why I keep getting bad nails 😀😃😃😄.

Me and a simulacrum of the sorlock were scouting ahead. We find a chest in the clutches of a dead captain. I make sure the chest isn't trapped but have the expendable simulacrum open it just to be safe. The simulacrum becomes drawn to a ring that doesn't register as magical. We banish it to keep it from grabbing the ring. A corpse reappears. The sorlock decides to take the ring then toss it away, the second it leaves his possession he dies. After a casting of revivify he eats the ring. Still waiting on him to randomly drop dead again. This was the same sorlock that got turned into an orc via reincarnate because he tried to tank the hallway of sickening radiance TWICE. (detailed in another story)

One of my D&D characters existence is an Darrin award

My husband played a thief in 2nd ed. D&D. He was brought in to help a group kill a red dragon. They even had an arrow of red dragon slaying...and no bow or even archer in the party. They decided he could climb the walls and across the ceiling above the sleeping dragon with the arrow in his teeth. He made it up to right above the dragon..."make one more climbing roll." Failed the roll... Landed flatback on the dragon...waking it. It looks down at the thief on his back, then sees the arrow in his hands. Woosh...one little breath later - dead thief - then he got up to kill the others waiting outside his lair.

Temple of elemental evil - meatgrinder addition. 8-10 players with a GM with an inch thick folder full of dead characters from the campaign so far. I lost two paladins over the course of 3 game days - one traversing a crevice with ropes, pinions etc as part of the group everyone helping each other as best we gould. Fell to his death failed rope use, failed climb check and failed two dex checks to catch a ledge. Created a new character, joined back up and continued on. Two game sessions later now playing another paladin coming back to the crevice from the opposite direction. Failed rope use, climb check and three dex checks to catch a ledge or at least land on my former character's corpse. After this campaign i didnt care if a character of mine died at all. No flinch, no grimace, just grab paper and dice and try something new.

This is more regarding the player than the character. One player I had the misfortune to play with for a (in this case fortunately) very short period of time, like 3 sessions in a Pathfinder module. Literally didn't grasp turn based gameplay at first, and even when he did he didn't understand that clues to a puzzle are generally given beforehand to solve something...saying 'Open Sesame' when an automaton face in a wall asks you for a password will always be wrong, and yes that did happen and send us into a pit of spikes that hurt us quite a bit. At the very least, it was only once. The finale however was when we were fighting a tribe of kobolds, and this guy at the very least had his character down a problematic spider, but not long after was at 0 hp and unconscious, but not dead. He literally (and we could hear it on his end) let out a stretch and a groan as he went to his bed and laid down, eventually a kobold came up and killed his character. The player through some mild hissy fit, and he both left/got kicked out by the GM. I've hated him ever since.

Warhammer fantasy roleplay: So my party and I had just escaped a fortress where we reduced an elven princess who was badly injured. We escaped by jumping into the river and getting washed downstream. I had 2 wounds left after the fight and from taking damage in the river. We wash ashore by a trader camp site and our demonic cloud character who specializes in demonic pistols decides we need food and tries to shoot a large bird in the tree next to where I was passed out. Now here's the best part of this character. Despite being a ranged class, he loved rolling bad rolls so his ballistic skill was only 50/100 as opposed to my 94/100. His excuse was 50% roll bad vs good can and some funny story moments. Except this was the one time he WANTED to roll good. He rolls, misses, shoots me while I'm passed out and triggers my passive defense. I played a skaven and had the ability to transform into a verminlord temporarily either on command or if my wounds his 0. So idiot demon cloud rolled bad when he wanted to roll good, kills me, turns me into a Verminlord where I proceed to 1 shot him. Boom, write a new character sheet.

Once, my lvl 2 halfling barbarian went straight into goblin sleeping place, without rage, with a glowing club, yeeeeeee, 6 hobgoblins weren't that happy about it

Old school 2nd edition. Party trapped in a "Cube" like structure with portals that randomized your destination to another location. Following clues in each room would eventually lead the party to the exit. We had one fighter who was more intent on killing anything that moved upon entry and ruining some magical puzzles before rushing into another room that the rest of the party decided he was too much of a liability. The next time he charged into a portal, we decided not to back him up and follow and instead try to figure out the way out. We managed to reach the final room which lead us out of the dungeon when to our surprise, the fighter managed by random dumb luck to appear through one of the portals. While we were a bit suspicious of DM shenanigans of how he got there, we shrugged our shoulders and invited him to escape with us. The fighter was so insulted we "abandoned" him, that he turned to another random portal back into the dungeon rather than escape with us. The DM ruled that he perished and his body was lost and irretrievable.

3:18 The only deathclaws you should go around hugging are Goris and Xarn from Fallout 2

Not D&D but my own vehicle-based RPG. During a solo adventure, a player destroyed a pursuing security car. When the car crashed, He stopped to salvage its laser turret while leaving the driver to bleed. The player ignored the sirens from reinforcements. He ignored the flashing lights. He stood outside his own armed vehicle trying to remove the laser weapons when a half-dozen security vehicles came around the corner. Upon seeing his activities, they torched him with vehicle-mounted laser weapon before providing medical attention to their comrade.

Fighter sheds his weapons and armor to appear like a sort of traffic cop, halting a military convoy. As he's reasoning with the driver, the two dozen soldiers in the back of the wagon come out and start attacking him; rest of the party is too far away to help. Fighter ends up bleeding out in a ditch, having been effectively Julius Caesar'd

One of my favorite Darwin award was one of my players thinking a gas mask would save him from an acidic wyvern spewing corrosive acid breath. I clarified he could see the armor on the floor sizzle and corrode in the miasma. Still walked in it and was shocked when it melted his filters and killed him.

I'm not proud of it... But the tl;dr was that we were fighting a goblin swarm and instead of shooting them my rogue went melee My mistake was the primary reason for the TPK that followed

I'm sorry, but your Timmy is beyond rescue by the great Leeroy Jenkins himself, with accompanying panicked parties of both yours and himself! Might I be so bold as to suggest he make a Divine Pact for bubble wrap insurance?

Fun little one my friends (barbarian,druid) and I (fighter) were tracking down a white dragon in mountain caves. My fighter and barbarian jumped easily enough over a large gap as a deep frozen ravine below split the path. Druid exclaims they can't make the jump. To which I having packed rope and pitons threw one end to him, and tied the other half to me while anchoring it into the wall. Druid fails the jump shenanigans occur trying to pull ourselves back onto the ledge. Then he recalls he's an air genasi and could have floated over.

Not DND but Start Wars. Our dim friend played an Ewok. She had the genius idea to pee on the force field blocking us from entering. She survived at the cost of all of her force points and I don't think her fur ever grew back. Ever heard of Don't Whiz On The Electric Fence? This applies to force fields, too.

I have a tale of Darwin Awards. So it was in my first campaign. My party of 3 was level 2. A dwarf fighter named Gimli. An aasimar Cleric named Something i cant remember. And a half elf wizard named Dale. They were sneaking into the house of a prominent nobleman for suspicious behavior and met servants in the kitchen. The wizard gave a serving girl 1 gold coin to keep her quiet which would have worked but he then tried to pick pocket it back and rolled a nat 1. She told them to leave or she would call the guards. But the party ignored her and went to raid the pantry as i slowly moved the serving girl to the door leading deeper into the manor. And then que 8 guards rushing in to defend the manor. Cleric and fighter go down almost instantly while the wizard who caused all this managed to escape with 1 hp. He should have died but instead his friends did.

My party was in a manor house of a mad alchemist. While in there they encountered giant spider-snakes. They defeated the snakes and while the party recovered from the fight the rogue/barbarian decided he was going to harvest the venom sacks, he's a rogue barbarian....so low Int. He kept failing the check by more then 5 getting poisoned and taking damage because "we're taking a long rest it'll heal up." On the last roll (not the last one to harvest) I rolled max damage. He then critically failed his death saves (he failed 1, made 2, the rolled a nat 1 on the last save).

Party was escaping from a particularly nasty monstrosity and got chased to the top of the lighthouse. Already cornered, party was determined to not let the monster up through the wooden hatch in the floor - by placing all the heaviest stuff they could find. One not particularly smart party member decided to simply sit on this hatch to add his considerable weight to it. No to long after that, poor fella had a spear stuck up his butt, as the monster tried to pierce the hatch.

Had a barbarian in my group. They were in a mine and there was an old explosive strapped to a pillar designed to bring the pillar down and collapse the cave as a last ditch trap. The players had killed off the baddies and the artificer wanted the explosive. It was a dual liquid that when mixed exploded. They were told it was in old and unstable container. You can guess what the barb did. He walked in and grabbed the explosive and yank it off the pillar. It blew two fingers off his hand.

7:31 that happened to me once. I was playing a noble (social class) fighter who saw himself as a heroic do gooder hero. Befitting this ideals of the character the character stepped up to a junior blue dragon. not to defeat it in single combat, just to heroically tank it. Problem: the class was Soulblade. The dragons breath cut through my psionic shield with it's breath attack like it wasn't there and one shot my character. Only survived thanks to some DM nonsense. Stopping the fight to have the dragon negotiate over my corps and allowing the party to get a sneak attack round to defeat it.

Monk stood in front of a flying chunk of rubble the size of a boulder, he's a halfling. He had multiple rounds to get out of the way. His plan? Deflect arrows to block the boulder. He didnt die, but we had to scrape him off the dirt with a spatula.

The guy who dared a killer robot to blast him in the head with a shotgun only for him to instantly die Or the one from the same campaign who thought he could tank a purple worm (he could not)

I have a darwin award. Tried to drink from a gelatinous cube's corpse. Died right there.

campaign where the party had a Destiny-esque macguffin that allowed the party to self rez after combat in safe locations, but i am absolutely counting this moment as a darwin award since for a brief bit, the character did die: Barbarian decided at one point the local spiders were hungry while in a side RP attempting to tame a couple, and since we were hot off the first PC death where we found out exactly what the plot macguffin did, decided the best way to feed them was with herself. mind you, the reason i am saying this is because normally, despite the lack of the soft spellcasting/social/mental stats, the barbarian in question is often the most straightforward and least prone to overthink things and often takes the role of leader despite her character thinking she isn't leader material. said barbarian would later singlehandedly (with help from an NPC in a side RP) knock out (but not kill) an entire camp of dragonborn under the wrong leader and would get her (as of yet, that i remember) first and second kill at the time, breaking the party's vow of going for non-lethal whenever possible for one of the very few rare times by taking down said leader and promptly ending the misery of a collection of souls who were brought back from the dead to make some sort of dragon-lich thing iirc. i don't remember the full details of that but i just wanted to put that there as an idea of how otherwise competent the barbarian was.

Most memorable Darwin award I remember was from a friend and his vanara rogue in pathfinder. We were checking out oriental adventures on a quest by the pheonix clan on a corrupted location. On the way there we found a small bandit camp that thought they could take us. We agreed on that since low level but they had bows on a tower. We engaged fighting and vanara wanted to do ninja running jump to get up the wall to the tower in one acrobatics move. The party and dm pointed out he had a climb speed. He tried anyways and fell on the ground as a nat 1. then got stabbed by Spearman with aoo he got up for secondary move action, dying. He requested one of our three yearly mulligans for the campaign and he bribed us with pizza for next session since it had to be unanimous. Then he did the exact same sequence and died asking for another mulligan. We declined and just said we will find a vanara rogue in a cage nearby so he didn't have to reroll.

One time my party was fighting a dragon in the middle of a city when one of the party members managed to get in and essentially staple its foot to the ground with an immovable rod. Then the warlock's turn comes up. "I'm gonna cripple it more! I fire an eldritch blast at the leg!" "Uhh... which leg?" "The one being held down by the rod!" One eldritch amputation later, the dragon repaid us in kind by downing 4 characters (including both healers) with a wingbeat, with the two that weren't healers dying because we weren't conscious to save them Oh and there was that one time where one of the players rolled over a hundred times before the session to clip into the backrooms, which he did successfully after some time, and he promptly died

I DMed a game in which everyone's characters were to meet up at different times. The paladin and Ninja met up first. Things were going well as they were both humans and just trying to get out of this strange dimension they ended up in. Fast forward a bit and the two are exploring a half-sunken swamp temple when they come across a room full of dead lizardmen and a massive ogrekin at the end of the hall nomming on some fresh legs. Ninja goes stealth while paladin tries diplomacy. Ogrekin is played by new barbarian player. When ninja fails his stealth vs. perception save the ogrekin freaks out, rages, and smacks him with one of the lizardman legs he was holding knocking the ninja out in one hit xD. He didn't die but it was very close as his non lethal damage hit him for 17 of his 12 health (-5 and with a CON of 12 7 more HP would kill him anyway) this was in Pathfinder btw.

We were in a castle on a cliff (important) that was haunted or something like that, intel wasn’t sure. Searching for a McGuffin artifact of some kind somewhere in the castle. When we got in we found suits of armor scattered around the castle everywhere, I think we counted around 120 of them. By their positions we figured they were animated armors. We were lvl8 so that wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t been hundreds of them. So we find the artifact in the very back of the castle, as far away from the entrance as possible. We figure once we touch it the armors will activate and attack so we try to plan ahead for that. The rogue stays with me, the sorcerer, and the cleric goes to scout around for another exit. Well I decide to use shatter to break open the back wall to escape from. That accidentally sets off the armors and they all start rattling to life. At this point the cleric comes sprinting back in the room. He grabs the artifact and jumps out the hole I made. Except we were on a cliff. And the hole was in the back of the castle. So he dropped two hundred feet and died. Didn’t even calculate damage cuz he was in plate. We tried to save him, DM let us use reactions to try and grab him, but we both failed by one or two on the roll. Had a good laugh and it became one of the best deaths we’ve ever had. I later bought the castle too

We were all wanted outcasts watching what was essentially the Wyldhunt's army pass through a city like a parade from the crowd. Most of us moved on, my friend did not. He attempted to... Transform into one of the 20-30 feet tall mechanized robots and blend into the marching troop. But his max transformation size was 12 feet tall. He did alright with the roles, but an incredibly powerful general passed his perception check. He saw a 12 foot tall miniature mech appear into his fully planned out marching troop. Then he went over to my friend and demanded the pilot leave his vehicle to talk with him. My friend did not comply and eventually tried fighting. In his last moments he said, "I leave the cockpit!". Which isn't possible since he is the entire vehicle. But our dm said, "fine" "A grotesque human seemingly fused to the machinery belches out the top of the mech before collapsing in a horrific heap." My friend thought it was unfair,

I got a tpk Darwin award story. My Dm at the time offered penalties for boons like if you were paranoid you get advantage on insight and perseption checks. Well I have played D&D since 3.5 and wanted to spice it up. I made a paranoid klepto rouge getting bonuses to my prescription, insight and stealth related attributes; stealth, slight of hand and the like, how ever the draw backs of being paranoid and the best note taker my PC got to carry the bag of holding. It wasn't my PC's idea I want to point that out and the party had tried to borrow things from my PC before and was always met with the paranoia and accusations of theft. However this time we are fighting and healer goes down during a surprise round and the rest of the party leaving everything but their main weapons and armor with me didn't realize they had 0 healing potions. It was a fun tpk simply because they were obviously trying to steal my stuff that they had given me. TL:DR party dies because they trusted a paranoid rough

Fighting Ares in his Dream State, which is a space built by his subconscious but loosely follows the Real with regards to physics and magic. Queue sorcerer casting Meteor Shower, which says "Meteors fall from the sky at the intended target." Which would have been fine except the sky in the Dream State is everywhere. Lots of players casting Eyebrows of Horrified Realization for that one, lol.

I was apart of a 3.5e game where another player, who was playing a Monk, demanded a Ring of Featherfall at character creation because he wanted his character to be immune to falling damage. DM said no, but he could find one later. Fast forward a few sessions and the Monk finds a silver ring that the DM describes as "being made of interlocking feathers." Without thinking twice, Monk puts it on. "Aren't you going to get it identified," to which the player said "No, I already know what it is." A session later, the Monk picks a fight with a group of city guard who were attacking some citizens. The Monk downs a few, but quickly gets overwhelmed and runs away, into a nearby tower with the guards in pursuit. The guards corner him at the top of the tower and Monk says "I jump off the tower and activate my Ring of Featherfall." The DM says "OK, you sprout feathers from everywhere on your body and are still falling." Monk was in shock. DM said that since he didn't get the ring identified, he didn't know that it was a cursed Ring of Featherball. Monk goes on to describe how his character tries to flap his arms like wings and flies away. The DM said "nope, you take 10d6 falling damage, which totals to 37 damage. How much HP do you have left." Player said 12. The player learned the lesson of never using a magic item until it's identified

We had a bard/rogue in my very first campaign that was growing bored of his character since he had built him mostly for out of combat stuff (which he excelled at). On purpose, he walked into the middle of about 5 boss fights and declared: “I AM YOUR GOD!!!” This at first drew confusion, but then the ire of the yuan-ti demigods. After he survived the initial attack, he then said, “This PROVES I am your god!!” And then, uh… staying true to my character’s disregard for his own safety… he charged in. My pc was kidnapped and re-indoctrinated into Orcus’ army and our Tabaxi monk was sacrificed by the yuan-ti. Our bard survived, ironically… But, I DID get my original pc back after we fought him as the midgame boss 😅

Doing a campaign on a D&D alternative, we had a shaman (tribal cleric) who had low charisma and minimum intelligence for that role. Not to mention minimum dexterity, to the point that his character could not walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time. Going through a corridor, the shaman decides to be brave and tosses a spell at an enemy. Enemy resists, shouts - and alerts a large group of human temple guards. The shaman fails a dexterity roll and trips as he runs from the guards, after which mutters "Goddess, take me now." The DM immediately decides that qualifies as a prayer and check-rolls to see whether the goddess heard him. BUT every other player reaches for their dice amid cries of "We'll help" as we attempt to HELP him get to his goddess quicker. Needless to say, the game had to pause for a couple of minutes as we regained our composure. The worst part was that he survived this because one of us got off an area spell that illusion-blinded the guards long enough for us to escape, with our strongest warrior dragging the shaman by the scruff of the neck.

Just had this happen last session: my goblin teammate and I were being carried off a cliff by gryphons and he decided to stab the one holding him 1000 feet above the ground (the DM was not using the limit for fall damage). He thought he would survive by dropping into the lake at the very bottom of the thousand foot drop, despite the fact that he doesn't know how to swim and is afraid of the water. The lake was only 30 ft deep. For the record, I just put myself in a bag of holding and let myself be dropped that way.

DM created a beast: cow that shoots fire out its butt (very important) We enter a room with only one other way out, a set of swinging double doors with an obvious lock and chain on them. The cow was in the center of the room generally unbothered and eating grass. After a nature check from the Druid we learned the beast could shoot fire from its butt. And now I present me, the fighter. I immediately stated we had all we needed to takedown the door. I stood in front of the door and banged my shield. The cow turned around and did it’s thing. I rolled a 4 acrobatics to dodge it. Killed outright. The door burned down though. The rogue then stated the lock would have easily been picked but was too amused to tell me.

Intentionally set off a trap. Summoned 4 fire drakes. Avalanche ensued, buried me. Party member managed to get within inches of digging me out before my last death save.

Lvl 10 ish party fighting a young blue dragon. The dragon was in his fathers lair after a member of the previous campaign killed him. So a young dragon has lair actions every other turn. I also built it around this, with crystals jutting everywhere that lightning could connect between. Well when he met the party in the desert on the way in the bard made the mistake of threatening him and then insulting him accidentally. When we got to the fight in his lair the bard struck up a conversation again and embarrassed the dragon, again, knocking him off his perch (on one of the crystals) in front of his kobold minions (all four of em). Well when he got up the dragon was pissed and used lightning breath on him. He failed and went down. The paladin said he’d heal cuz he was 20ft away and had the next turn. Except he didn’t have the next turn, the kobolds did. They’d been lurking around waiting for this very thing to happen, not attacking so the party would leave them alone. One of them was actually a lvl1 draconic sorcerer who knew magic missile, sleep and shield. Well when the bard went down he used magic missile, which is three attacks in one and thus three failed saves. The bard died because he insulted a prideful dragon (I specified that a few times) and ignored the kobolds. Lvl10 character died to a lvl1 kobold lol. I don’t even know if they killed that kobold, me might still be around lol.

I once ran a dungeon and at the start of the dungeon, I made the most fun trap I could come up with. Purple worm at the bottom of a well. If you make too much noise, it comes up and kills the party, lots of very obvious signs it was a deadly trap. Anyway, that week, a new player wanted to join the campaign, so I had him searching the long dead bodies in the trap room being very quiet about it. Anyway, he encountered the party and everything was going great, he told them all to be really quiet cause something was at the bottom of the well and you don't want to alert it. Anyway, while the party was distrustful and talking to him, the very curious mage just walked over to the well and tried looking down, saw nothing, so he threw a flare down there. Needless to say, I was so astonished and on top of that I didn't want to have a TPK while the group was literally not paying attention so I gave them 2 turns to figure out what to do before the worm emerged, unfortunately, only the mage knew it was coming and he was more interested in seeing it so I had to give further description to alert everybody and then they managed to get away but my rolls were so bad that they managed to escape with relative ease. Still, it split the group, half ran for the entrance, the other half went deeper. What could have been worse is that the next room was a big fight and only half the group was at the door, so close to having a TPK a second time. Not a Darwin Award but an almost twice. :)