What are your D&D "Darwin Award" Stories? #1 

"Strong as a mountain, half as smart" is very possibly one of the funniest descriptions of a person I've ever heard lol

My 1 Intelligence Fallout RPG character named “Meno Havename” tried to hug a deathclaw on a Nat 1 perception check thinking it was a “scaly puppy.” This guy was such a smooth brain he thought half the nails in a box were broken because they were upside down

Drow warlock: *touches artifact* *takes a shit load of raident damage and drops from max to 0 barely ovioding an insta death due to a successful save* Bard: *heals warlock to 1/2 hp* Drow warlock: *touches artifact again*

"Had a player choke to death trying to swallow a chicken while it was still alive." I sure hope they mean a character.

Fully respect the half-ogre PC. That is just perfect roleplay with stats.

The collective noun for a group of cockatrices is a cabal rather than a murder, but that's something few people would know off the top of their heads.

In my old 2nd Edition AD&D campaign, back when I was in my teens, we had one player who died so often that whenever he did something monumentally stupid we would quote Jim Henson’s Dinosaurs and say, “We’re gonna need another Timmy!” (The player’s name was Tim). One time we came across a basilisk. Everyone at the table said “I avert my eyes!” Everyone except for Tim. He said, “I look right at it!” He failed his saving throw and we had to drag his petrified ass out of that particular dungeon crawl. “We’re gonna need another Timmy!” Another time the party was placed in a trapped room. Tim decided to test the trap by placing his foot on the trigger. The sealing collapsed, tons upon tons of stone, landing right on his foot. He didn’t die, but he had to wear a hastily improvised prosthetic foot for the rest of the adventure. “We’re gonna need another Timmy!” One time Tim was playing a bard (specifically the Gallant kit from the Bard’s Handbook) and he was trying to seduce every woman he meets. The problem was that he wasn’t trying to role play it. He was just saying “I walk up to the most beautiful woman I can find and ask her to go to bed with me.” The DM has the women slapping him, throwing drinks in his face, kneeing him in the crotch, etc. We all told him, “Dude! That’s not how you play the Gallant!” But he kept insisting, “But that’s what the book says!” What the book ACTUALLY says is that the Gallant loved ROMANCE, but can never settle down with just one person. They always believe that there’s a better love, a more attractive person, or a better romance in the next town, the next kingdom, the next continent, etc. And when trying to court a woman they are FAR more eloquent than “Hey babe! I think you’re kinda cute! Wanna fuck?” Which is essentially what his character was basically saying since he refused to actually do any role playing with one of the most role playing centric character classes in the game. Anyway, the DM got sick of his crap and had an NPC woman fall for his “line”. She drugged him and robbed him blind. She took everything, even his clothes. When he finally caught up with her, it turned out that she was a high ranking member of the local thieves guild. She told him in no uncertain terms that if he ever tried to pull something like that again, he wouldn’t wake up at all. He didn’t die that time, but we were damn close to having to say, “We’re gonna need another Timmy!”

It is actually a miracle nobody in the party died from this, although we would probably have deserved it. In the game is a drink called dragon blood wine, which causes a roll on a random table when drunk. When drinking it, the Monk did get 38 damage, we started at level 3 and automatically failed her first death save. Barbarian used her starting magic item, a potion of healing, to save monk... and then drank some herself, also received 38 damage, which was slightly less than required to knock her out. Later, after levelling up, the monk rolled 58 damage, which was slightly less required to kill her instantly and automatically made her fail 2 death saves. Barbarian had a healer's kit now, which we joked had a stomach pump in it, considering how often we needed to use it for alcohol poisoning. I should point out that there was a constitution save involved, but we never found out what the DC was, because the Barbarian rolled 24, and it was not enough to prevent her from going deaf for 6 hours. Why did we keep drinking it you may ask? We thought there have to be some good results on the table. And yes, the Barbarian did actually get 1 point of inspiration from the drink. But was not allowed to use it during a hard battle. We gave up after that.

Was playing a one-shot introductory session for my friend's birthday. He had never played, so we were doing prerolled characters. So we had a party of me, a goliath necromancer (because why not), my friend, a tortle barbarian (we didn't want to risk him dying during his first game), and my sister, a kobold cleric with low wisdom (never ask the DM to make your character 30 minutes before the session). We came across a tower in a field, and after kicking the door down we saw it was pitch black. I noted that the kobold had dark vision, to which my friend had the wonderful idea "then she goes in first". He picked her up, and threw her, our cleric and only source of healing, inside with a critical success (his first ingame roll btw). The entire floor was covered in webs, and that was the only thing she could communicate to us before all we heard were screams. Long story short, the cleric got REALLY lucky with her rolls, but my friend quickly learned that it's not a good idea to aggro an entire nest of giant spiders. 1 lucky bite and a failed con save later, he was downed. He didn't die at the end thanks to our very generous DM, but he got close. This did not stop him from throwing the cleric into any dark rooms we found.

I had a really silly Darwin Award moment in the Baldur's Gate game. There was a witch, well, the whole party(technically the AI of it) engaged in a fight with her. For whatever reason, the party decided that fighting in a straight line behind one-another was the best course of action. After the witch somehow effortlessly dodged about 20 attacks that we somehow committed from this straight line, she then cast lightning bolt and killed the entire party in one blow XD

The man played only low int fighters and barbarians. It was the assault on Greenest from hoard of the Dragon Queen, and the Blue Dragon was attacking the keep. Everyone else got to cover after the Dragon hit them with a frightening presence (One failed and ran, the others followed her since she was de-facto leader). This man decided to walk out and scream An insult, challenging the Dragon. "Why don't you come down here and fight like a man!?" Obviously his intent was to goad the Dragon to land and fight them in Melee range, so that he could... actually hit it, since all he had were javelins and a greataxe IIRC. To his credit, I gave it a roll, his persuasion vs its insight. One horrible failure later, the dragon quirked an Eyebrow, said "No.", and hit that poor level 1 PC with a full breath of lightning. I asked him if he wanted me to roll it or go with average, he said roll. I told him the damage, he told me he was outright dead. "Sorry man, but you *did* try to goad a Dragon." "That's fair. I'll just make a new character real quick." What suprised me was how accepting he was of his award. He just said he knew what he was doing, so I guess it was a rare moment of someone accepting the full concequences of 'it's what my character would do.'

Most of my characters 1: Throwing myself into a group of difficult monsters my party was running from to save an npc 2: Becoming president knowing many people didn't want me or wanted to take down the country and getting assassinated 3: Replacing my organs with one's from what was basically a god and imploding. 4: Crawling is the sewers with broken legs and finding a brain parasite. 5: Angering a group of monsters when I didn't have any good combat spells. 6: Asking to be bitten by a vampire after being told there was a high chance of death. 7: Trying to fight a dragon by myself.

I've seen multiple near darwin awards as a DM, this is the best one I liked: In lost mines of phandalver I had a Ratfolk (homebrew) rogue player. When they where at cragmaw caste, he decided to just break open the door to the owlbear while hearing the noises... the owlbear got a critical hit in and he only survived cause someone instantly went to stabilise him. The player incorporated it into his backstory and became afraid of being near any doors he doesn't know what is on the other side of and a severe hatred for owlbears

This reminds me of my first campaign. We had two dwarves one being Happy, the guy this story is about. We were in this clearing after all of us wandering around the forest. As we are introducing ourselves we find this large door which we were trying to open. One thing I should note is that we all could see decently well. As we are standing in the clearing Happy decides to head through the mountain pass first. Of course he fails his perception check miserably (got to love Nat 1's). The DM then asks him to make a perception check once again getting a Nat 1. All of a sudden we see him get hit by a giant swinging log. It wouldn't be a stupid death if that log didn't hit for max damage. That log smashed him against the side of the mountain before falling to the ground. It was so stupid that the DM had mercy and revived him to a single hit point. This happened less than an hour into the first day of our campaign. If another one comes around I will have to share more stories about this guy if you find this interesting.

The irony of seeing this today. Today one of my players split from the party (something he has done a few times) and ended up dead. To his credit he very nearly escaped and in the past he escaped worse situations. But I guess poor Toox finally ran out of luck.

10:18 this feels like something that would actually happen if magic was real

First story, the whole table gets a Darwin award for apparently forgetting the wizard is a bird man, and can *fly*.

In one of the games I played, our party went deep inside a catacomb that was sacred ground for a deranged cult. We had information that the cultist were not present at the time of our infiltration, and so we didn't have to fight much, but the corridors leading to the deepest part of the catacombs were filled to the brim with traps of all shapes and sizes. Thankfully our Rogue managed to prevent them from killing any of us (even though it came pretty close), and we finally reached the last room. In that room, there was an Altar, a rectangular-shaped hole and a Spirit that was guarding the Altar. After defeating the Spirit, most of the group gather around the Altar to identify it's use and to see if it was something we could use against the cultists, all of us except the Fighter. The fighter got interested in the hole. The hole, as our DM described: "It is a hole the size of a coffin, blood seems to be covering the ground all around it and flows on its walls. When you look inside it you see no end to it, like a dark and endless void is before you." Out of character, i asked the DM for precision on whether the blood flowing seemed to be coming in the hole from somewhere or if it was coming out, he answered that the blood was flowing upwards from the hole into the room, which then evacuated the room through the cracks on the floor. The fighter then suddenly said: "I jump in". We were all shocked for a second and then asked why he would do such a thing. He answered that since it looked like a bad idea, it was surely the cultist trying to deceive people away from their true artefacts. He rolled higher than those who tried to stop him, and went into the hole. Turns out that was their sacrificial hole where they turned people into spirits to protect the Altars. Oops. TL;DR Fighter sees a hole of endless void from which blood flows out and decides to jump in it thinking that it's where the real treasure is, becomes a spirit bound to the location.

Tis was one of my first characters, a dwarf fighter. He crossed a bridge on top a snowy mountain above the lair of a dragon, tried to show off. Jumped from the bridge down the ravine on the back of the sleeping dragon, to firmly plant his 2H sword into the dragons back with the force of the fall. He slipped, didn't manage to position himself properly for the fall or break it in any way (rolled a 1 for the save). Made noise, the dragon just looked up, opened his maw and swallowed him whole. Instant death.

It's highly ironic that I mentioned a Darwin Award on the last video of times where "THAT player" got shut down. Kinda have to wonder if someone got the idea for this question from that comment, lol. That story with Zull, and your commentary in it, also absolutely killed me! XD

My first full melee character Uther came INCREDIBLY close. He was a fighter, defense or protection I think. He mostly used his shield (I've since remodeled him using shieldmaster feat) and amazing AC to tank for the party as well as being both smart and stupid, by thinking outside the box. We find a hallway lined with pressure plates that would cause multiple bolts to fire at us from the end of the hall. We were Level 1s with no rogue, and only discovered this when Uther stepped on the trap and sprung it. Due to his stupidly high AC he didn't take much damage, but instead of trying to use logic or trial and error to navigate, he decided to simply raise his shield and step on EVERY TILE while someone else noted whether the tile activated or not. This is how it went in-character: *thwip* *clang* "Ouch. This one is trap." "Noted." ...*thwip* *clang* "Ouch. Also trap." "Gotcha." ...*thwip* *squelch* "BIG OUCH. that one hurt much." "You good?" "Of course. Am not dead." After the hallway was a door, which Uther kicked in, killing a goblin of the tribe we were meant to make an alliance with. Then he released a spirit from a bottle but was so friendly and nice that the spirit couldn't bring itself to kill him. I miss that campaign.

Managed to get one of my stories in a MrRipper video, feels good.(I'm the DM of the story at the beginning)

My "Darwin Award" story is actually from my first character's backstory that I had to improvise on the spot for my first session because nobody warned me that the campaign they do every year is a campaign where the first thing we have to explain is how our character died. I based my half-elf's philosophy on Aaron Burr from Hamilton, and I had learned that apparently, he one tried to light a gun on fire (the only reason it is known today is because for some reason, he wrote about it in a journal) so I had my character drunkenly do the same, while literally covered in alcohol. I had such an interesting backstory in mind for the character and put a lot of work into making them. That's the last time I did that. My second character, a CE golden dragonborn rogue has a name that I used a Draconic translator site to translate "Reptile thief chaos child" and used that to form their name.

That half-ogre is a great story but also bothers me because Cockatrice's normally only petrify you for up to 24 hours

The first time I ever had a character go to death saves was during Death House in Curse of Strahd. We were fleeing from a poison fog and my squishy sorcerer/hexblade was at the top of the main staircase leading back to the entrance, and I was close enough to the fog that I would only barely be able to outrun it this round. What did my brain decide to do? Jump over the banister and fall 3 storeys to the first floor. Fortunately, I landed literally in the square beside our druid, who had Cure Wounds prepared and a spell slot left to save me. The closest I came to a Darwin Award.

Came up against the God of death, there to collect another character. I was role-playing Baron Munchausen and immediately claimed that the God was after me, as The good Baron had gotten into many near death experiences, and tried to duel the giant phantom skeleton wielding a scythe.

My moment was at the very beginning of my very first session (pathfinder). I was a Nephalim wizard (custom race that combos teifling and asamar ancestry) who was wandering around in a giant maze that acts as the path to the different dimensions we would be travelling. We had just finished with my buddies intro, where he (frog swashbuckler) was absolutely dominating this poor Minotaur. My turn comes, and everything seems to be going smoothly, when 'oh no!' A swarm of low tier undead appears, attacking my wizard. After my character (to the gm's shock as he assumed that i had fireball) casts phantasmal killer, it pretty much accomplishes nothing of use, and then the real fun begins. After attempting to use my racial spell to distract the zombies (and failing) i have a genius idea. I proclaim to the rest of the table 'I cast Tiny Hut!' With the intention of hiding away from the undead with it. (Darwin moment) What i didn't realize is that they could also enter it, and with the glowing walls of my tiny hut, i could no longer see them. And this comment's darwin award goes too! - - - CONCIO! For not realizing you can't effectively hide from enemies with Tiny Hut. The character never officially died during the campaign, outside of a hunger games simulation where everyone respawned, but oh boy should he have. Frog swashbuckler girl ended up shooting me with a cannon on accident, was absolutely useless in all but two fights, only really useful as a knowledge skill monkey outside the final session we played, where i almost solo killed THE GODDESS GLUTTONY (dont worry, my poor wizard probably ended up suffering more then she did in that fight due to... events that shall not be named).

I don't know why the way you said "Zull, our *half ogre Barbarian, blurgughhh*" made me laugh more than it should have, but here we are!

This was my very first session of my first game of DnD, I picked a fight with a magic cleaning broom as a dragonborn sorcerer... And got downed and failed 2 saving throws.

This one started at character creation. I played a homebrew race that was a flower pixie. I found it on dnd beyond and balancing is... delicate. Her race had a -4 to strength scores. I rolled an 8, making her stat be a 4. Half the party had a higher mod than her actual score. We played the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which *spoilers* has shadows with the strength drain ability. She was the first one hit, and my brother the DM rolled a 4 on the die, killing her instantly. He felt so bad he gave the party a wand of resurrection specifically keyed to my pixie. Which came in handy later when we fought animated swords because she also has a vulnerability to all iron weapons.

My favorite character idea is a dragonborn warlock with 2hp permanently that is resurrected after 1 round and will can never be convinced that he dies no matter how much evidence you have. Any magic item that would increase or decrease his health would affect his ac instead.

I still think "the goldfish moment" in Critical Role is the funniest Darwin award winning moment ever (even if she did get revived).

Oh my god I definitely need more of these!!!!! I only have had one character actually die, and it was a glorious death. But I can’t wait to hear more of these

Sometimes the Darwin death is more epic than the heroic one...

I remember how i decided to speak in an uber dusty room. It was my fatal mistake, as i got unlucky and bit the dust. Pun *fully* intended!

From a campaign I dmed. The party went on a shopping trip in the “slum city”. One of the characters knew the area and found a gang owned pawn shop (I’m still not certain why they wanted to go to a pawn shop). One of the players called Armos was a pyromaniac. The slum city is all made of wood and it hadn’t rained recently. This is important. Armos tries to talk to the shop owner about the gangs. Some background stuff here, this gang is pretty big and is also a cult. The shop owner asked him to repeat it (I had also asked him if he was sure quite a few times). The shop owner attacks and almost killed him in one hit. On Armos’ turn he casts… burning hands. In the wooden shop. During dry season. The shop owner proceeds to slaughter this player (hitting every attack, rolling above average on all of them with a shortsword). Don’t worry, it some how gets worse. There was a trail because burning hands on dry wood causes lots of fire and part of the city was burned. His corpse was brought back and speak with dead on it. This guy just answered 2 questions, otherwise just laughed at everyone. His body was also almost given to the barbarian by the fighter. The barbarian basically said “fuck this shit I’m out” and ran.

Before my late husband died, he played DM & ran me thru a couple dungeons. I would love to continue to learn how to play to keep his memory alive. ~broken in Arizona ~ 🖤🌻🌻🖤🌵🖤

Had one such incident in my first session ever (I was DMing). Was starting off a homebrew campaign that began the PCs in a town that was in the middle of an amateur arena tournament celebration. First player signs up for a javelin-throwing competition and, very first thing he does when it's his turn to compete...he has his character blindfold himself, and then proceeds to throw all 5 javelins into the dirt because he obviously can't see the targets he's attacking. My other "Darwin award" would definitely go to another player who decided, in the same campaign, to break out of a maximum security prison by running up to the first guard they saw, and punching them in the face. The PCs were unarmored, and unarmed (didn't even have spell materials), and multiple NPCs had made it clear to them that they would have to sneak out of the prison. Opting to go for the "brute force" approach, they ended up having to battle an entire prison full of guards, and then flee the city itself. Worst part was the party had access to ways to scout ahead and plan out the perfect stealth route.

Me: Upon closer inspection, it's magic... raw magic condensed into a liquid form by unknown means. Player: I'm going to drink it.

Me and my friends are starting our first dnd campaign soon, your videos are really helping keep me excited for what's to come!

Our most recent game one player kept failing all his rolls, I had stopped him from dying and healed a bit, but alas after the fight he wanted to pull from the book of random things, Crit failed and died.

had a DM that in between campaigns he would run this minor adventure thing, it was a hellscape prison plane of 5 levels that we had to traverse through fight the BBEG at the end and get out. Very simple thing that he would do while planning the next major campaign. So I had a halfling rogue that had a special coin that he had to flip to make decisions, (basically the same OCD thing Two-Face has). So we are doing this run and its a zombie apocolypse zone for the first level. We are in the one safe spot where the enemies are not able to go unless invited in by a member of the party. Paladin gets tired of the fact that I keep flipping this coin to make important decisions so he grabs it out of the air and throws it out into the middle of this zombie infested hellhole. So what do I do? Run straight out into the zombie infested hellscape to find where my damn lucky coin landed.

Playing in a star wars campaign with 6 playere at the time myself as a droid barbarian with flight and capper strength often carried party members around on my back, in a cave on dathomir undergoing a trial we encountered a large camp and a witch doing something to a rancor. 3 of us decide we were going to go stir things up and free the rancor and leave from there. The plan was a small sized character and a medium were to ride me over there and 2 of us would proved distraction and cover fire once in place while the 3rd would free the rancor and book it as he had essentially monk speed and teleports and could slow his fall which was 200ft. He jumps and starts the plan all good, then the small sized player decided to jump off of me as well and grappling hook the witch on the way down taking 20d6. He was still conscious as we were lv 11 and he was part barbarian but went down immediately to the witch. It got worse from there and both of them died and I self destructed with all my explosives in inventory but was essentially rebuilt by the party later.

So, halfway into the campaign a dwarf joins our party. While he’s new, he knows what happened in the story/adventure so far, including how much our DM loves his traps. As we come across an abandoned mansion on our way to the city, we decide to check it out. Our dwarf interpreted this as rushing in the front door, smashing it in…and got immediately blown up by an explosive device. It would have been an instant death in the first ten minutes of the game, so our DM allowed me to try and heal him. Thankfully I rolled well enough and I patched up the dwarf. He was badly scarred, but from then onward had the ability to smell out explosives. And he never forgot to check for traps ever again.

My first session, I didnt really do any research into anything, I only learned the basics about the char I would play. As soon as it was my turn to do something, I attacked a town guard, because- well town gaurds have equipment. *thanks elder scrolls* /s Well, long story short, for some reason, and I have no idea why, now that I am reliving this memory in text form, our party included a level 10, or maybe 20, Lawfull good paladin. I was sliced in half by him almost as soon as I attacked the gaurd. End of my first session. I learned a lot by not learning enough.

The quickest character death ever: We're starting the campaign in a world that was taken over by drow and armies of their demonic allies. Drow secret police basically is everywhere and bullies everybody, all the time. One of our players decided to make his character concept - a hunter of drow. VERY obviously displayed via a cloak made from skin of multiple drow he personally murdered. The player knew we were going to meet in a public inn, in the capital city of the surface drow, in broad daylight... And OF COURSE he prominently wore it. Needless to say, the character didn't arrive at the meeting.

We were in the lost mine of Phandelver campaign and I was Dming a group of players who were playing for the first time. One of them was already damaged from the ambush encounter at the start of the campaign and they got netted up by a rope and net trap. Now one of my players decided it was a good idea to throw their GREAT SWORD up there to cut the rope. The sword missed, hit the player (lv1 on low health already) who took 2D6 damage, was on death saves and then the net gave out dropping the PC, doing another 2d6 damage and killing them instantly...

here's a short story from my first ever campaign that me and my friends finished i was playing a triton paladin, my other friend was playing a rogue, then we found a npc druid that trained us to kill the bbeg, we trained for some time, the druid got some reinforcements, we got there and killed the lich, pretty cool, then the DM was narrating the ending and all, asking what our characters was going to do and i just thought "my character is a triton, so, logically, i'm going in a lake and just gonna swim naked, since i don't need any equipment, back to my home." so i did, turns out not so surprisingly, the river just ended in a random spot, with a fucking water elemental shaped like a serpent that i forgot the name, i tried to fight it with my hands but i was interrupted when a mage came to help me, the owner of the elemental. In the end he didn't die, and sadly but i never got to know what he did after this, since we stopped playing any subsequent campaigns in that universe. (Oh and sorry for any spelling mistakes, i'm brazilian.)

We had a Barbarian with the lowest Int score allowed in the game and it's the entrance to the Tomb of Horrors. The corridor starts with a series of pit traps that he effortlessly steps around (because Barbarian Trap Sense), and then he gets to the end with the green devil face with a Sphere of Annihilation in its mouth. So of course he has to reach inside...

Party was exploring an ancient temple deep in the jungle. Most of the chambers were empty and unassuming, but they were still carefully taking their time and having the rogue check every room for traps before anyone else went in. So far, so good, that is until they reach a room with a very obvious looking vault door on the other side. The party's warlock excited at the prospect of finally finding some treasure, and probably a bit overconfident at the lack of traps found in any of the previous rooms, immediately bolts across the room, without waiting for the rogue. To reiterate, very obvious vault door, so if anything in the temple was gonna be trapped, this was probably it. Needless to say, it was, and a trapdoor opened under the Warlock. Long story short, after a few failed saves, he ended up tumbling down a steeply slopped shaft lined in razor sharp spikes that emptied out the side of the temple over a deep ravine. As a result, he was quite dead, although this might not count as a Darwin since the campaign was using Ghostwalk setting rules, and so he finished out the rest of the adventure in spirit form.

I shall keep this short and sweet. As sweet as the creature encounter that wound up killing the alchemist. Alchemist uses digging potion, runs out, Gingerbread Dragon covers entry hole with elemental candy, alchemist uses bomb to try and break out, takes out more then half his own health just cracking the candy, uses growth potion to break out, breaks elemental candy into shards that cut into him and take the rest of his HP. Suicide by bomb, candy dragon, and a string of poor decisions on his part. Edit: This is still my favorite story to tell to this day.

Will fictional Darwin Awards be as guiltily entertaining as real-life ones? Yes, yes it is!

Level 6 party in a 3.5 game decided to attack a well manned enemy fort with over 200 troops, at least 25 of which could be seen from a distance. My monk noped the hell out of there as soon as the rest of the party charged, they completely wiped, as my monk fled to live for another day.

AD&D 2nd Edition days, RPGA Living City campaign. This guy I know play a high-Wis low-Int fighter, LN with a Brooklyn accent (loads of interesting RP from this guy). There was a high level scenario at a con that culminated in a non-combat encounter with Tenebrous, the "undead god" form of Orcus. After the demon prince finishes condescending to the mere mortals, he drops his Wand and walks off. This fighter grabs the Wand and starts after the enormous fiend saying "Hey, you dropped this!" Guy was cursed with carrying the literally damned artifact in his right hand until the campaign ended in 2003.

I was the DM for a group of the following: a Harefolk Paladin, a High Elf Bladesinger wizard, a Woodelf rogue, human warlock, tiefling sorcerer, a Goliath barbarian and the winner of the Darwin award, dwarf fighter. The party just finished dispatching a pack of kobolds on their way to town when they decided to make camp next to a river nearby. I described the scene where the players on watch saw ripples in the water and the occasional small looking creatures popping only the top of their heads above the surface. Suddenly a lot of crocodiles attacked, but not every croc at once. Some would swim a little bit away to assess their prey. While most of the party focused on the Crocs within melee range, the dwarf fighter, who is named Dorn, would separate himself from the fight with a readied action against the crocodiles swimming just out of melee. There were four crocs and on their turn decided the lone dwarf was easy prey. They attacked, and the dwarf's readied action failed to hit. Since the party was level one at the time, the crocodiles did enough damage to make Dorn go unconscious. He failed his death save, the party was fighting the other crocs and couldn't save him. Suffice it to say, anytime a situation comes up where a party member is separated from the group in combat, they say, "Don't get Dorn'ed."

Ooh boy. I just had one today. I'm in a ratyer chaotic campaign with a large group, and we have two dragonborn twins who are also twins IRL. They had previously sold their souls and more money than they actually had to gain the alliance or some dragons so we could invade a Hell like dimension. Once we got there they very vocally tried to lead us to all of the worst places and all of the worst fights. They even tried to get my character, a homebrew harpy rouge/bard to kill them. Eventually, we came across a paladin who offered us some crystals that hide us from the lost souls that inhabit the dimension. They destroyed these rare magic items, endangering the whole party. this was the last straw. The paladin snapped one's neck but I asked him to leave the other. I then cast my new spell from my first bard level. Vicious Mockery. Again and again until he died and we brought them back.

Asking the barbarian to pull down a tree down and then attempting to catch it - Gnome Wizard with 7 strength trying to intimidate the bandits

My first ever character got a Darwin Award but it was intentional and in character. He was a dwarf that had tasked himself with writing a book called "What Stuff Tastes Like", so every time he found something he didn't know the taste of, he bit a chunk out of it. He had done this for so long that he had developed resistance to most toxins and even immunity to some. He died trying to discern what a dragon's fire breath tastes like.

I think we can all agree with the honorably mention: Keyleth's "Goldfish Incident"

"Tasty chimpkin" is the worst set of last words I've ever heard.

This has been hilarious to read/listen to. I hope to see more like this! Thank you

11:23 “is it cold in here, or is it just me?” -Stallone and Snipes in “Demolition Man”

I got one. In my game, my party had just finished off the BBEG for the campaign and they had advanced to the treasure room. Among the treasures, I mentioned there was a sword with a red blade that seemed to radiate with darkness. Our group's sorcerer, not picking up on the warning signs in that description, just walks over and picks it up. The sword, upon touch, instantly floods his body with necrotic energy, dealing 144 necrotic damage and killing him instantly. Of course, this knowledge helped the party when I then attacked them with a purple worm that was warped chaotically by magic, as they severely injured it by using a mage hand spell to take said sword and throw it into the chaos worm's throat.

There was a door. There is always a door. This door had silence permanently around it, and a really really big boom trap. Rogue rolls terrible, unknowingly walks out of silence zone to privately say, "Well guys, looks like there is not traps. I will check if locked." Ranger shakes his head, "Hold on, our DM doesn't just make regular doors, let me check for traps." Proceeds to find really really big boom traps and yells back (with no sound) that there are traps. Fighter proceeds to crit fail his perception check to see if he understood the silent Ranger. Excitedly kicks the door in.

Best one I have happened years ago while playing 2nd Ed D&D. Party was level 3 and the fighter found a nice large lance as part of the loot from a battle. He decided he was going to get the proficiency in it next level. Before that happened the party had a random encounter with some bandits I think. The player decided to charge them on his riding horse and attack with the lance. He rolled a 1 to hit. The DM had him roll a Dex save, which he also failed. As a result instead of hitting the bandit the lance jammed into the ground, catapulting the fighter full speed into a tree. Splat

We played Pathfinder 1e. Homebrew campaign at level 5. We were exploring the maze when we found a secret door secured with Adamantite spikes. Our greedy artificer began to figure out how to disassemble the trap to sell the spikes. It turned out that the trap was secured by a second trap, a spell of greater mythical disintegration that activates when someone does something with the spikes. The team dodged the first few shots, so the artificer fired the dispel magic. The trap reacted unexpectedly and fired 20 (!) Rays of greater mythical disintegration. Miraculously, most of the team avoided disintegration. But not an artificer that literally evaporated along with expensive gear and loot. But it doesn't stop there. The team decided to revive him, but we couldn't afford it. The blood sacrifice trick was no longer an option because we pissed off Hades by flooding the afterlife with chickens. So we came up with a brilliant idea of ​​earning money and attacked the obviously powerful aberration living in the dungeon vault. The fight went worse than expected. The aberration had a CR of around 25 and had a group of minions in the form of mimics with rogue levels, so sneak attack. Only our Soulknife, who teleported from the massacre, with 4 HP survived. Then he rightly spent a few months in-game treating his trauma by enjoying life without a bunch of idiots.

Back in the 70's, our party was entering a cave with some odd and dangerous looking stalagmite (monsters) on the cave roof. We decided to enter the cave with our shields held over our heads. TPK. Shields just don't work that way. Lol.

It was the Dungeons and Dragons boardgame, (showing my age here), and I was playing the Wizard, a role I play often even in 5e. The castle was area we were suppose to enter had one guard in the keep. I asked politely if we could go inside, and he smirked and said "sure". Que me 3 seconds later being perforated by spears in the trapped hallway leading to the main entrance.

Playing my first DND campaign ever. We were a few sessions in and had a few magic items. One of said magic items was a bag of holding. We were in a town looking for information. Our gnome was bold and barged into a supposedly empty house. It wasn’t empty. The poor woman with her toddler was terrified to see us. A couple failed checks later she started screaming for guards. My character was outside. When I heard the screaming I ran into the house and found the rouge. We decided it was a good idea to his him in the bag of holding while I got out of dodge. Since I was seen outside we expected that I wouldn’t be held since I “protected” the lady and drove out the intruder. Another failed check later the guards arrested me. Hours later my character was let go. When I got the bag of holding back and opened it up we discovered that the bag of holding has limited air and the poor rouge had been dead for hours.

Running a game of Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords (the first adventure path published) My party has an Orc Magus that is practically a walking armory. She has two greatswords, one enchanted with flaming, one with frost, which she dual wields as her primary weapons, two longswords one made of cold iron (for fighting fey and demons) and one made of adamantine, a shortsword as a backup, as well as pretty much every other magical weapon in the AP since the rest of the party primarily uses spells or natural attacks. Well, they fight a Skrag that had an adamantine trident that had the 'Vicious' enchantment (the weapon deals extra damage but also harms the wielder every time it lands a hit). They kill it, she takes the trident. Nothing wrong so far. But! The very next room had a creature called a Skull Ripper in it, which is to say A GIANT MECHANICAL SCORPION MADE OUT OF HUMAN SKULLS! This thing had damage reduction so it took 5 less damage from all physical attacks unless you used an adamantine weapon. When she found out about this, she takes her new trident, and rushes head first at the monster with it. To her credit, she did approximately all the damage that round... but remember how that trident also hurts its wielder? Yeah she got bodied on it's next turn, leading to the party's cleric going berserk from grief (the two were sisters) and the party's wizard was forced to use a homebrewed trump card spell he could only ever use ONCE in his lifetime that left the whole dungeon in a zone of wild magic. But the reason this could be considered a Darwin award? She already had an adamantine weapon. One that didn't try to turn her organs into coleslaw when she used it.

Okay okay, strap in friends! This story comes from my brother, the DM of a home brew 5e world, that had SEVERAL campaigns going on. He had this epic boss fight for two parties to collaborate in- I was supposed to be there (Human Artificer), but I got invited to a wedding. There was a Changeling Necromancer, Tabaxi Rogue, Leonin Barbarian, Kobold Monk, Tiefling Bard and a Human Scribe wizard. The fight took place in the Void, a strange unexplored plane where the source of all arcane magic comes from. The fight was against a terrifying creature called a Void Speaker, and a strange field of rock with pools of black liquid all around. The party was victorious- I wish I could give the details but I wasn’t there- and they got some cool loot from the body. My character was keeping a portal stable for everyone. As everyone on is leaving, the Tabaxi looks at one of the black pools. Now, a rational being would probably think, “Hmm, I don’t know what this is, and I just barely survived that fight, let’s not mess with that.” And go home. Not this Tabaxi. “I’m jumping DM!” “Are you sure you want to do that?” “Yeah, why not? YOLO!” Oh the irony. My brother was in disbelief. He described how the player yeets herself into the pool of liquid and promptly dies. “Wait, what?” “What did you think was going to happen dude?” Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Story 1: we just gonna forget the bird man with a flying speed fell to his death?

"i hear you want to be a farmer" "heres a couple of acres"

Paladin decided to charge up to the door where members of a thieves guild were held up. The thing is paladin never got the party to agree to charge the fortified position. So the paladin got downed and killed while the party were still where he’d left them when he decided to charge.

This was in a FFG Star Wars campaign. The group was on Nar Shaddaa, a smuggler's moon that orbits the capital of Hutt space - probably the most unsavory place in the whole galaxy. One particularly troublesome player decided they wanted to go to the "shadiest bar, in the shadiest part of town" they could find. And so they did. They insulted the barkeep right to his face, failed to notice EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. in that bar drawing all the blasters on them (including the deadly disruptor weapons that can vaporize people hit by them, think the Mandalorian's long gun). They threatened and attacked a patron who was trying to tell them to get lost, and were subsequently left with more holes than body. 20 Patrons, and every single one fired. It's actually kind of difficult to die in the system RAW, but I was impressed that they managed to achieve the death via crit. It was the player's first ttrpg, and they definitely treated it more like a solo video game than a collaborative storytelling experience. They claimed they weren't going to play if they couldn't keep playing that character, so the group decided they were okay with them surviving, but at a cost. They never got better in that campaign, but in other ttrpgs they got MUCH better as a player.

Whole party award for this one. Level two party, passing by the edges of an area known for troll attacks. My ranger had advised against it, being the only person who had ever encountered trolls before. Sadly I was outvoted. Couple nights later we get attacked in camp by a troll and despite on character nearly being eaten alive, manage to drive it off. The rest of the party actually seemed pleased withe the way that fight had gone and insisted on tracking the troll to its lair to finish the job. I tried so hard to convince them how stupid this idea was, but they refused to do anything other than go after the troll and insisted that I track it down. So I start tracking it, reckoning that I'll lose the trail when we get to the swamp and then they'll have to give up. Sadly I did not lose the trail and we found the troll's lair. Where it lived with two or three relatives. After the inevitable tpk, my DM asked why I hadn't just lied to the party and claim to have lost the trail anyway.

Cases like the wizard going down a shaft is why I will ask the "stupid" questions. I learned long ago in life that looking dumb for getting clarification is a lot better than having someone ask latet why I didn't get clarification.

This happened on a oneshot: Centaur and Kender are on the way to a little village. They meet a huge black knight on a black horse with glowing red eyes. Kender says: Hey, where did you get this glowing red eyes? Can I have them? And he proceeds to jump onto the back of the black horse. He lifts the black helmet and tries to get the eyes. He somehow survived the trampling attack of the horse with 1hp, when Black Knight threw him to the ground. On the same day, he tried to keep the still animated hand of a skeleton as a pet. It stangled him in his sleep.

Not D&D, but a Call of Cthulhu session I ran a few years ago. Things went wrong as soon as a player said “Hey, this cultist spent his dying breaths trying to crawl over to that horrible statue he was going to sacrifice us to. Seems like it was important to him, so I’ll drag his corpse over to the statue.”

So this actually pretty much JUST happened. The party is down in the final dungeon for the section of the campaign. The bloodrager (who only speaks gnoll) is going on an interior decorating rampage because I made up on the spot that the dungeon doors were different wood types. (mahogany, white oak, and red cedar). Anyway, they get down to the next subfloor. After the first room that's just scratched to hell because of a hellcat trapped in there for centuries, they get to a small corridor with two doors on the other side, kinda like a T. The description of the hallway included a very specific mention of two glaive wielding statues in alcoves on either side of the middle of the hallway. And in the 5 feet between them is a dust free, clean plate. All of this is in the description. Bloodrager marches forward, not caring at all, steps directly on the pressure plate, and proceeds to get sliced to death by the two glaive statue mechanisms. I guess interior decoration raging in place of caution and perception is taken out of the gene pool.

this reminded me of "the obelisk encounter" by Puffin forest: PC: "let's knock this obelisk DOWN!" a big demon appears. PC: "oooh...we probably shouldn't have done that, should we?" DM: "nope! let's boogie!" after two attacks... PC: "wait, this guy is resistant to physical damage AND magical damage? that doesn't seem fair." GM: "you, right, it's NOT!" BUT, no one actually died, they had enough healing abilities to hold out until the demon got bored and left.

I was DMing a homebrew campaign in which the party was trying to cross a natural stone bridge (no railings) over a VERY deep ravine. It was made clear that it was high enough to instantly kill anyone who fell. The bridge had enchanted stones hovering above it that would crash down intermittently. Think D&D version of Thwomps. Our lizardfolk barbarian decided he wasn't agile enough to dodge the rocks so he was going to hang off the edge and inch his way along the side, dangling from the bridge. He took rope with him.... but not to secure himself to the ground. He *tied himself to the minotaur NPC traveling with them* who was going to attempt this with him. They made it surprisingly far along, rolling very well for their Str checks, until the final check to make it across. Nat 1. He lost his grip, fell, and the minotaur did not roll high enough to hang on so he got dragged down with him The player later told me he was getting a bit bored with his character so he didn't mind trying something ridiculous and risky, esp since it was a very funny sight to imagine/ narrate. (Dw, we all had a laugh about it and everyone was fine with his decision) But it was definitely in line with his character not being the brightest creature around lol

Not one... but two of us died trying to jump over the garbage disposal of an abbadonian Walmart.

AD&D, first-time players, and three of us were in elementary school. The OLDEST of these three was a rogue who never seemed to grasp that he couldn't swim and that he was a rogue. One time we were walking through a cave and he fell down a random pool while wearing a heavy battle-ax. Sister (1st DM and only a year or two older than him) made this a good chance to get him to use a weapon he was proficient at so he lost the ax in order to live. When we switched DMs, we had to get from a ship to a beach with mermen in the way. The idiot decided to take his tiny dagger and boomerang and dive into the water to kill them. Drown, got rescued by me, the younger sister and Druid (that basically was played like a nature cleric cuz elementary student first-timer), got pulled to shore and healed up, and then immediately after dived back into the water to try to kill some more. Saved the idiot again and he tried to do it a third time! We forced him to stop and move on but I think he was desperate for XP or something. Ended up giving me loads of it instead by healing him all the time. He wouldn't have looked so dumb though if both of his younger siblings weren't playing smarter than him. I kept healing, keeping the door we came through open, and listening to others, and our baby brother was a freakin' machine gun as the elven archer. DM ended up docking his intelligence and wisdom points for all of his dumb actions.

"Are you sure you want to light the bottle of raw gunpowder, and then throw it like a bomb...? Okay, roll XdY damage.... YOU DIED."

I have a good one. We were playing Tomb of Annihilation so potential spoilers. He was playing a Gnoll Bard who had just picked up a level in Warlock after making a deal with some snake dude in his dream. We had been on a little side quest to discover the origins of an adamantine bar we found a while back and tracked its origin to a mine over run with fire newts. We went down into the mine to find lava and fire newts everywhere. To keep things short, my Way of Astrel Self Monk tried to pretend to be the God of the mountain by speaking in Primordial and using his Astral Mask ability to project his voice loud enough for all nearby creatures to hear. It didn't work so combat happened. After killing a few dozen of them by funneling them through a Moonbeam and baiting them into fighting a smoke monster combat ended. It has a long, grueling combat, but incredibly satifying as we all worked together and played really tacticfully to beat the overhelming odds. Immediately after that the Bard tried to jump across a 20 foot gap over lava, fell in, and with no one around to potentially rescue him, he died. We ended the campaign after that session for unrelated reasons but have recently restarted Tomb of Annihilation with new characters.

Lying to an already annoyed Ancient Black Dragon. At level three. Picking a fight with Vecna. To be fair, that was entirely in character and a desperate move to let the rest of the party get away.

I'm a bit new to D&D but I'm a DM for a party of two players and one NPC, and well the NPC was a homebrew of mine which was basically a humanoid ooze filled with bones from dissolved creatures. My two players are: a dragonborn named Demo, the fierce and loyal one of the party and a water genesi named Tyla who was the shy nerdy one of the party. Demo was the one who found the NPC (which I named bleb =P) and brought him to Tyla and well, she made a roll to see if she would throw up at the sight of him and she rolled a two. Demo tried to cover for her by saying: "Oh don't worry she's just socially awkward." 10/10 best moment of my campaign so far. Please use this in a video.

I recently played as a Goliath Paladin, and the party’s designated BBB(Big Beefy Boy). My character was, let’s just say, not the brightest individual. After we faced a grueling battle with a particularly nasty wizard, I wanted to celebrate our victory. I picked up the wizard’s extremely powerful wand, raised it high above my head, and before I could complete the celebration, the rest of my party fled in terror. Sure enough, I brought the wand down on my knee, snapped it in two, and proceeded to explode as all of the power left the wand in one brief, devastating moment. Thankfully the party survived, but I had to bring in a new character after that one.

“That is SO metal” Bruh that’s just Froslass’s description. XD

First campaign I’ve ever played in. I played a Teifling bard and was the only healer. The Storm Sorcerer decided to pick a fight with non-aggressive Orcs, lightning lured the chieftain towards his low level self, and got upset when it absolutely bodied him.

Many years ago while play AD&D, one of our players had a Gnome Fighter/Illusionist. This Gnome accompanied my character (A female Paladin) to a meeting with an NPC. Before we reached the meeting the other player left the table to get a Drink. When the player returned I was in Conversation with a Goblin (the NPC). On being told whom my character was talking to the Gnome promptly drew his sword and attacked the Goblin (because Gnomes Hate Goblins). The Goblin then proceeded to hand the Gnome his backside with a 2 handed Sword. The Goblins was actually a High Level Elf Fighter/Mage that had been Reincarnated with 90% of his abilities from his previous life.

Killed Bard over petty reason and rushed boss solo on less than half hp with every single resource expended

I nearly got myself into a Darwin award in my first one-off with a friend in middle school. I believe I was a drunken dwarf cleric. The party walks up to a door with a bunch of holes in it, and I roll to inspect it because I'm resistant to poison. Well.. it was a poison-trapped door and I fumbled the roll on escaping, tripping on my own foot trying to get away from the poison.

My play group has been going through Rime of the Frost Maiden recently, and our Human Barbarian (Roleplaying as Ryuko Matoi from Kill-A-Kill) with 8 Int had left camp to scavenge fire wood while we set up and hunted a meal. Our hunt went off without a hitch and we soon returned. The firewood scavenging however... while out she had stumbled into a moose's territory. For context, we had been hunting a White Moose while we were traveling, to no avail. Upon making contact with a moose, instead of backing off and leaving it to it's own devices, Ryuko decides to yell a battlecry and charge the normal animal, thinking it was the mythical White Moose. We rushed to her aid, hearing her cries. Only to walk upon the scene of her being gored to death by this territorial animal. My character, Lyzandar (White Dragonborn Forge Cleric), walks up and bludgeons the moose to death before any more damage can be inflicted. We ate good that night, a silver lining that hopefully made our party member's wounds sting a little less.

A new player who had joined the IRL group I was part of when we were starting a Tomb of Horrors campaign decided to have his character lick a black, slimy substance that had been covering the walls, which ended up killing his first character pretty quick.

Lone wolf murder hobo steals zeppelin. Party wants to reign in his theft. This group has a strict no-PVP house rule. With one glorious exception: The accidental friendly fire from a crit fail. Fighter goes to shoot down zeppelin with an arrow, rolls that glorious accident and the murder-hobo party member is knocked unconscious, now in the basket of the zeppelin as it floats away. Sorcerer with no working knowledge of the IRL Hindenburg points his palm at the zeppelin and gives it three nice scorching rays.

From my AD&D Darksun campaign: Zophar. Players... He was a half giant gladiator whose most memorable moment came when he challenged a medusa to show it's face. I quote "Si eres hombre, sal y muestra la cara." (If you're a man, come out and show your face.) This came after I set the scene. They were outside a Parthenon amidst the columns. The darkened entrance didn't allow them to see their assailant, but the entire walkway leading up to the temple was littered with statues of people in various poses of terror trying to hide their eyes. So as the party approaches they are attacked by arrows. Everyone gets to cover including Zophar. But he doesn't even wait one turn for the other party members to strategize. He gets out from behind a column and challenges the medusa to one on one combat. I remember the faces of the other players going from shock to incredulity to laughter. He didn't care. He wanted to fight one on one. I told him to roll his save and no surprise he failed even though his level and bonuses gave him a better than fair chance to succeed. And that my friends is Zophar. Winner of the Darwin award.

Pretty new to d&d, but had a friend who nearly got his Dragonborn barbarian nearly killed a good few times, we came to a goblin cave we knew had quite a few, and while trying to plan a way in safely, he decided to slam his great axe on the wall and call for the cowards to come out and fight, he immediately got shot hard twice by some goblins through some little slits at the end of the cave and went straight down. Later tried to jump across a trapdoor trap that we knew about, and could easily go around, and dropped down a big ways, got slapped by some skeletons, and luckily we had some things to bring them back up and keep them from dying. Finally there was a big pit of caltrops, and he wanted to chuck a javelin into the stone wall, and swing on it to get across, but due to some complications we had to quickly cut the session, and he also then left, so we agreed that he went through with the plan, got shot by some goblins who were around the corner, and got spiked all over by caltrops and died instantly. Also had someone else who tried to jump down a ravine after his gods willingness to save him was called into question by another party member who was warning him to not jump. He actually got caught by an exposed tree root on the way down.

In the mid 1990's my brother was playing a 'high intelligence" lv 1 rogue. Our DM was the old school DM vs playet type. The party encountered a living wall. Brother had his character cover their eyes and with an out reached hand walked into the wall.