Best Idiot PC Moments

[Eviltedzies]

So some background information: In an activate game I play a homebrew demon race created by the DM called Negarians. (Physically think Nergle from the Billy and Mandy cartoon show). Now Negarian's all without exception have an odd personality quirk about them that define who they are as a person. This quirk is amplified to the umpteenth degree to where no matter what quirk it is the Negarian in question will come off as very odd. It is different for each Negarian. Now my negarian's name was Gary and the DM asked me to pick his quirk. Me being a cheeky fellow decided I would make him a nihilist because I had decided to play the parties healer and the idea of playing a healer who thought life was pointless and that we are all going to die anyway struck me as interest. The DM agreed, but added the caveat that I make Gary a happy nihilist. I decided to take this one step further and made Gary's personality and mannerism a fusion of Mr. Rodgers, Ned Flanders, and Bob Ross just for utter sngs. Now Gary is happy that life doesn't matter and that everyone will die at some point. He makes no qualms about telling other people this regularly. Ironically I began using this rhetoric as a sort of inspiration to assist other party members by basically telling them all the horrible things that were happening to them didn't mean anything and that they should do whatever they wanted because life did not mean anything and they were all going to die. Thus we have set the stage......

The scene: The party has entered into a dungeon room with a very large female demon guarding it. She poses us a riddle saying that if we answer incorrectly that she will kill us all. Naturally we as the players suck at riddles and a fight breaks out. This demon happens to be able to manipulate darkness and quickly envelopes the room in a freezing darkness making everyone in the party blind and slowly taking cold damage. Now Gary this whole time is calmly and happily healing his team mates where he can. He is also immune to the darkness effects thanks to his race making him literally the only one on his team who can really do anything. The demon female notices this and naturally Gary engages her in friendly dialogue despite her repeatedly failed attempts to slay his allies. (She quickly notices Gary is the healer and zeros in on him.) The demoness swears that she would kill Gary first and Gary happily responds "That's the spirit!" So the fight continues and after several tense rounds another of the player's character fall unconscious due to dropping below 0 HP. At this point everyone else in the party with the exception of Gary is seriously wounded. Upon seeing the PC drop unconscious, the demons dismisses her darkness and tells Gary that she failed to keep her promise to him since she has killed someone else before him. She declares that she will let the remaining PC's pass safely. Now out of game I knew the PC wasn't dead yet and I suspected our DM was being lenient to us for trying to fight something we shouldn't have. But in game Gary also knew the PC was not dead and I couldn't help myself. Demon - "You can leave. I killed another before I killed you." Gary - "Oh no no no. You can't give up so easily. She isn't dead I assure you. She is just unconscious. Now come on and try to kill me again!" DM - Looks at me as the player with a stupified look of "Did you really just do that?" Other Players - Sending me equal parts death glares and resisting the urge to bust out laughing

[Gamemaster0007]

OOC oh my. I'm not beating that one

[NyxNightmare]

Just scrolling through these forums, thought I'd like to add something to them. And boy do I have some stupidity to add lol

My worst/best idiot moment was on my very first ever character, in my very first ever D&D game. We were in a cave/dungeon area, and I had just found a dragon egg that some Orcs had been keeping. And since I personally love dragons, I thought I had a new pet that I could raise and basically become Eragon. Yeah... No. I kept the egg while we cleared out the cave/dungeon, and at the end we stumbled across.... a black dragon. An ancient black dragon. Seeing as how I personally know 99% of all black dragons are evil, but my character did not... I thought it would be a great idea to convince this dragon to let me basically adopt its unhatched child. Nope. The dragon told me I was stupid, then told us to leave and don't come back, because if we do come back it would murder us. So we left, but as we were leaving we noticed a rather large group of militia men, and we asked what they were doing. They said they were coming to kill the dragon, and that they had some weird special dagger that could do it. So, me being me and being obsessed with dragons, I rushed back into the cave/dungeon and quickly told the dragon that it was in danger and it should leave.

Remember how it had said it would kill us if we came back? Yeah.....
I got oneshot with ancient black dragon acid breath.

I'm not mad though. I got to see an ancient black dragon. Totally worth the death.

[Speijker]

Not so much an idiot PC as a DM going along with it, but I still giggle when I think about it. Hope it's not too long a read for a minor laugh...

The Story To warm up and get to know each other at the start of our campaign, we had to travel through a cold mountain range from our starter town to some forgotten country and go and generally do good, and were forewarned that there might be vicious, horrible owl-bears eating adventurers at night. So we asked our ranger/scout how best to avoid such creatures while traveling: perhaps he knew of a repellent of some sort? So, proceeding to fail horribly at his knowledge: nature check, he rummages through his starter equipment pack, and comes up with the ancient and well-known tidbit of lore that compound butter (for lack of a better translation: butter with garlic and herbs in) is a quite efficient repellent for owl-bears (though it might attract other creatures), and most effective when rubbed/spread all over one's body. Anyway, being our scout who had rolled an abhorringly average intelligence and wisdom score but was pretty good charisma-wise (turned out, he was actually a rogue, and managed to convince us he was an experienced scout of the tundra-lands), he managed to convince the entire party to cover themselves in garliccy butter for the rest of the trip. Come nightfall, the DM rolls for the random chance of an encounter, with extra chances for owlbears. Naturally, as these things go, no monsters showed up. Anxious to have a laugh at our "scout" getting found out, he has us roll every watch, every night, for the rest of the journey. We did come across a party of goblins, but admittedly "at least they were not owlbears; this stuff definitely works. Trust me, as a scout I know what I'm talking about". So, sticky and smelling of weeks-old rancid butter and garlic, we arrive at our destination and set to our good works. And, as doing good generally goes, after a while we hightail it out of there, and set back out the way we came, through the mountains: - The party: "Before we move through the rest of the mountain range, we all cover ourselves, and our pack-pony, again in compound butter to keep the owl-bears away." - DM: "You check your bagage, but since none of you remembered to stock a new supply of butter, and your starter's equipment didn't contain that much butter in the first place (you even had to succeed a luck roll to see if you had any at all), it seems you ran out on the way over here." - The party: "Well, we'll just have to continue and hope we'll be fine. We were doubtfull about the whole butter-thing from the start anyway". And thus, as clichés go, the first night we roll again for encounters: lo and behold, we roll straight up for an owl-bear to come blundering through our camp. Naturally, our scouts reputation after this ordeal was rock-solid, and for the rest of the campaign the party has travelled through anything resembling mountains covered in compound butter, with the first order of business when coming to a town or city being to buy more butter. Some merchants did ask what we needed so much for, and after some explanation saw the merit, spreading this vital new knowledge through the lands and making compound butter much harder to come by. Eventually they even stopped looking at us strangely, and just said "That smell... you must be adventurers travelling to the mountains." We never did encounter an owl-bear ever again.

[Warlocked]

So this happened during my first ever serious outage into DMing a game...

Party sitting in drinking happily in a tavern, when a fight erupts between a gang of goblins and some shady human types. The party is sat square in the middle of the groups and manages to extract themselves without getting involved. So there they are pressed up against a wall with nowhere to escape watching the brawl unfold. In my planning, I had envisaged eventually forcing them to choose a side in order to lead the campaign into a gang warfare direction. Unbeknownst to me, the wizard would have other ideas. Out comes a flaming sphere spell, tearing across the tavern, setting things on fire and burninating a bunch from both sides.

Both groups make a hasty exit whilst casting glares at the party. Ok, initial plot derailed. It's ok. I will save it!

I tell the party they hear the bells of the approaching guard. So surrounded by burning tavern, they quite rightly go to escape. They head outside, to remember that the setting is Sharn.... The tavern is also placed on a lone spire, and there isnt exactly a route to escape to, especially since they werent toting their full adventuring gear. So, rather than stay and explain the situation to the guard and maybe try and sweet talk their way out of it with the 'Good intentions' routine. No. They think, "well ****, in for a penny, in for a pound" and proceed to fight the guard.

So they have an inferno behind them, a plummet to their deaths to either side, and a fight against the city guard ahead of them. I think i shut down at this point, because i don't remember how i let them get away with it (first campaign i ever started, i wasn't eager to end on our FIRST SESSION), but i did. It was the death of the campaign though, because it essentially derailed into all kinds of tom foolery and i gave up a few sessions later. It took me some serious willpower to get back up on that horse and try again, but i am glad i did because i discovered that i also love DMing ..... from the later experiences... not that one...

[Eviltedzies]

Setting the Scene: After having activated an ancient dwarven mechanism which we had no clue what it would actually do, we discovered the "sewers" beneath the massive trade city above us were actually one giant machine design to allow the city to fly. (Think Borderlands) Very quickly we learned that someone else had already gained control of the main "bridge" of the ship and that it was too well guarded for us to assault. Golems were currently wandering the "sewers" slaughtering any living creature not wearing a specific magical crest. Barricading ourselves in the main engineering room we had used earlier to activate the flying city, we debated our best course of action. While doing so, one of our player's is holding on to the big lever labeled "Purge" thinking that if enemies arrived he could threaten to pull it in order to stall for time. (Again, we have no idea what would actually happen if we pulled it. In character we thought it might wipe out living things on the floor we were on) We decided that we should escape as this is way above our pay grade but that we would try to hide out in the room until things died down. There were only two ways in or out of the room. The first was a large pressured vault door and the second was a thick glass viewing pane. We decide that if worst comes to worst we would jump out the window and feather fall our way down. In comes the most amusing and destructive "accident" I've seen in a game in a long while........

 

Monk - "Ok guys, we'll hunker down here and see if we can sneak out later." (Still holding the "Purge" lever)
Me - "Sounds good. Caster, use your magic to break the window so we can jump out if need be."
Caster - "Ok." *casts a spell to break the glass*
DM - Looks at us like he is absolutely amused by something and then says "Each of you roll a Reflex save."
Party - *rolls reflexes nervously awaiting the result*
DM - "As the pressurized glass shatters all the air in the room is violently sucked outside. Monk, you failed your reflex and get sucked out of the room."
Monk - "But wait! I was holding on to the Purge level."
Everyone - *Has a deep look of oh s*** only exceeded by the DM's look of utter horror.* As the monk is sucked out of the room he pulls the lever on accident, the caster and myself are holding on to other objects in the room at which point my character responds.
Me - "Oh that's right! Pressurized air DOES do that!"
Caster - *angrily yelling* "WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT "DOES THAT?"
Me - "Well..... we might as well jump now too." *proceeds to let go and get sucked out followed shortly by the caster"

 

The party very quickly learned the purpose of the "Purge" lever as two thirds of the metropolis sized city were suddenly detached from the main vessel and plummeted back down to earth. The first section crashed into a surrounding village of infected sick people and causing a massive shock wave and tremors throughout the area. The second portion of the city landed on the edge of the crater where the city once was..... before flipping over upside down and sliding down to the bottom of the crater that was now filling with ocean water. As if that wasn't bad enough, apparently the crater was deep enough to hit a lava flow causing a massive steam cloud to form. Those poor townsfolk were simultaneously crushed, drowned, and burnt to death. Meanwhile the other surrounding village's were being pummeled by huge chunks of rock and debris utterly decimating any villagers caught in its path.

In the aftermath, the instability caused by the "improper" timing/use of the Purge function caused the remaining 3rd of the floating city to basically implode in upon itself. Leaving no witnesses to our actions. As if that wasn't bad enough, we learned after the fact that our actions had broken a blood pact between the last royal bloodline member of the city and an ancient Verdant Prince. In doing so, the Verdant Prince was now going to wage war and slaughter any townsfolk who had "settled" outside of the city meaning that even if they were lucky enough to survive all that hell, they would now be hunted by the guardians of the nearby forests as intruders. Meanwhile, mages were going to be blamed for the mass murders and multiple church orders were mobilizing to not only hunt down any remnant mages but to also defend what remaining civilian's there were from the Verdant Prince.

And after all of it...... each of the PC's managed to make it out safe with not a single soul having any idea of their involvement in the mass murder of a small kingdom....... on accident...... at level 5.

Good times.......

[Telcontar]

Last Sunday, my Werewolf the Apocalypse players murdered a Mage NPC that was investigating the same shady genetics lab they were. They assumed - with absolutely zero evidence - that he was the mastermind behind the experiments. They didn't even investigate his body afterwards, to look for clues as to his identity.

That's going to get interesting, later, when that mage's superiors find out what happened. Hooo boy. Werewolves are tough, but against a pissed-off Technocracy?!?! Ahahahahaha.

Gotta be some punishment for murder hobo-ing your way through an investigation scenario, right?

[Eviltedzies]

Originally Posted by telcontar

Last Sunday, my Werewolf the Apocalypse players murdered a Mage NPC that was investigating the same shady genetics lab they were. They assumed - with absolutely zero evidence - that he was the mastermind behind the experiments. They didn't even investigate his body afterwards, to look for clues as to his identity.

That's going to get interesting, later, when that mage's superiors find out what happened. Hooo boy. Werewolves are tough, but against a pissed-off Technocracy?!?! Ahahahahaha.

Gotta be some punishment for murder hobo-ing your way through an investigation scenario, right?

Surprise mage assassin's anyone?

[Pseudonymous]

The following story is true. No names have been changed to protect identities, because we were all idiots and deserved exactly what happened.

Behold, dear listeners, the story of how the rogue and the cleric let a murderous enchanted weapon fall into the hands of the Cult of Bane because we hid it under a bed and left the kingdom for a weekend.

To preface, it should be said that my game has two DMs, which occasionally leads to miscommunications between the two of them. It's largely why this story ended up the way it did.

Our party consists of a paladin/barbarian, a bard/warlock, a wizard, a cleric and me, an assasin rogue. It had been something of a running gag in our game that our paladin/barbarian kept accidentally coming into possession of the legendary weapon Blackrazor, a sentient sword that devours the souls of its victims and can potentially contol its wielder. Our paladin, however, had really good luck with his dice rolls and consistently avoided this fate, and we eventually left Blackrazor in the safekeeping of a friendly lich NPC named Archie who has a collection of artifacts he owns.

Leaving a soul-hungry sword in the hands of a lich who only reluctantly tolerates us is surprisingly NOT the point where things went wrong.

A few months later, we need to split the party to accomplish some time-sensitive goals. The paladin, wizard and bard-lock need to meet with some drow matrons from the paladin's past, and the cleric and I head over to Archie's castle. Bane and his cultists have infected the other gods with a terrible plague which spreads to their followers, and we have discovered that our cleric's son has been infected beyond help. The plan is to leave his son with Archie, who lives in an area with a strange sort of temporal stasis field which we hope will keep the infection in check.

"Man," our paladin says before we split up, "I need a better weapon. All I have is this +1 spear I got like a year ago."

He should not have told us this.

Our two dms split up to run the two different encounters. Cleric and I successfully negotiate with Archie to protect the cleric's son. Before we leave, we consider Paladin's lament about not having good weaponry. Cleric and I turn to each other and have a terrible, terrible idea.

"You know what would be funny?" we say. "If we took Blackrazor again and just, like, leave it somewhere for Paladin to find. We'll keep it a secret and it will be like it's followed him again! He'll never know it was us!"

DM #1 thinks this is hilarious and allows us to take Blackrazor back from Archie.

DM #1 promptly forgets about this and subsequently never tells DM #2 that the rogue and cleric smuggled Blackrazor back into our castle. I can't wield Blackrazor so I hide it under my bed for a few real-time months as Paladin got himself a nice new sword from DM #2 during the party split. Cleric and I keep Blackrazor a secret, deciding to wait until an appropriately hilarious moment to leave it where Paladin can run into it.

Then we both forget about it.

Cut to a while later, when we leave the castle for two days and come back to our entire kingdom in flames. Someone, likely either the Cult of Bane or the vengeful alhoun we've spent the last year ignoring, attacked our kingdom. None of our NPC army can accurately tell us who was there or where exactly they had hit, though the army that attacked us seems to be moving towards Archie's house now. Presumably in pursuit of Cleric's son.

"Oh no," I say, suddenly remembering I had left an evil sentient soul-eating blade under my bed for four months. I turn to the NPC guard captain. "Did any of the attackers get into the castle? This is VERY IMPORTANT! I really need to know!"

"Why?" asks the Cleric suspiciously. "What are you hiding in the castle?" To be fair, my rogue is the kingdom's spymaster and I do in fact have hidden rooms and such all over the place. That's not what concerns me right now, though.

"YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE HIDDEN IN THE CASTLE!" I yell. "YOU WERE THERE WHEN I HID IT!"

There is a moment of silence as Cleric suddenly remembers that fateful day with Archie and Blackrazor. His face melts into an expression of horror. The other players are confused.

Cleric and I yell in terror for a few minutes and rush up to my room.

Blackrazor is gone.

"Yeah," DM #2 says smugly. "DM #1 finally told me about Blackrazor."

"What?" asks Paladin, confused, and then Cleric and I have to break the news to him.

"To be fair," I say placatingly, "We did it for you. You wanted better weapons, and it was hilarious at the time."

"I mean, I appreciate the attempt," Paladin says. "Though you reeeeally should've told me this before I sent my drow strike team out to intercept the army that attacked us. Y'know, the strike team on loan to me from the drow matrons. The drow matrons who are only very reluctantly working with me. The drow matrons who are directly related to me by blood. Those drow. The ones I've just sent to attack someone who potentially is wielding Blackrazor, the soul-eating sword."

"...oh." we say.

EDIT: Update: Welp, we found Blackrazor. It's now in the hands of a death knight who promptly killed one of his own halfdragon followers and a handful of our infantry to boost its own HP. The drow strike team took out half his army and left, not wanting to deal with it.

On the plus side: Our bard-lock learned polymorph and turned our paladin into a T-Rex, who promptly went Jurassic Park on the death knight.

On the minus side: The death knight eventually dropped the paladin out of T-Rex form, got away from us with Blackrazor still in tow, and called in a second death knight as backup.

[Anael]

This one is going way back in the time machine to my second venture into playing DnD. I was the idiot but the others in my group didn't do much better. I think it was first edition...when thieves had a % point base success and you got more as you leveled up. I was a halfling thief.

Our group ended up in a new city. We were investigating a missing persons case. The person missing was the daughter of an aristocrat of some type. The area or world I forget was experiencing a steel shortage. I managed to find a large steel sword on the way there but couldn't use it. So I brought it to someone who could turn it into a short sword for me. I split up from the group to meet the guy for the sword. It was done in an alley to keep from prying eyes. The guy hands me a dagger and says this is what he made. Then I can see a short sword hanging from his waist. I paid good money so I was ticked but played nice. When the guy turned around I stabbed him with a nat 20 and max damage basically putting my hand clear through him took the sword and my money back.

Fast forward I went back to the bar where the others were , after cleaning up of course. Still annoyed at being played I decided to have some fun and pick some pockets. There was a lot of low hanging fruit and I had a really HIGH pick pocket percentage. I failed... a fight ensues and our fighter ends up getting hauled off and accused of murder because I gave him something I stole from the dead guy.

Next day we got word he was to be executed because they were going to make an example of him. But there was more behind the rush to execute him though. I felt bad and went to go try and save him so I set off with our human Cleric. We manage to get in and see him tied to a table. We get him free but are ambushed. In the chaos I escape with the fighter but now said Cleric is captured. As we are chased I get separated and end up in large empty corridor. At the end of it is a big door with a lock. Curious I ask to if I can pick but was told I'd need a natural 20. Guess what I rolled a nat 20. The lock falls and out comes a wyvern.

It gives chase but the fighter emerges at the wrong time. Seeing a bigger meal the fighter gets the attention and at that point I'm still running. The Wyvern manages to get outside and the rest of the group arrives on the scene. Our wizard decides to try something that fails miserably and ends up getting half eaten. The Wyvern goes on to cause massive damage to the city and only two of the group was left alive. Me and our other fighter who said let's just cut our losses and go. That's how I practically destroyed a whole city...

[TADHG]

My signature? Oh! That goes back to an in joke we had in a game 30 years ago. There was this shaft into a cavern, and nowhere to tie off. Being the strongest character, i volunteered to stay behind and hold the rope while the others climbed down. So they get the adventure. It was an all night game and having nothing to really do, I fell asleep. Some time later, I woke up. Upon seeing this, the DM asked me, "What are you doing?" I replied, "I'm holding the rope. " we would go on to use the phrase any time someone wasn't paying attention. So despite being initially at my expense, it became one of my fondest memories.

[Pseudonymous]

The game: Pathfinder 2e. The character: My gnome swashbuckler, Lynnette, Baroness-in-exile, a former-rich-kid who has very little common sense, a slight Napoleon complex, and a heart of gold.

I had to miss a session of our game night due to real life stuff. My DM said that was fine-- He'd have the party continue on their sidequest without me and then have "something for your character to do when you get back." Cool, I think. He must be having my character research one of the mysteries our party has discovered.

See, our current campaign is in a darker fantasy world. We're in a small town that has an inordinate amount of problems ranging from a zombie plague to a violent cult to a werecreature murdering people in the night. We also discovered that the inn we're staying in has a murder basement: The innkeeper is being blackmailed by the local shopkeeper to drug and kill visitors so the shopkeeper can then sell their gear.

So I come back to the next week's game, ready to rejoin the party. The DM, however, describes something different: Lynnette wakes up completely alone (uh oh), tied to a chair in a basement (uh oh), staring into the grinning face of the shopkeeper and an assistant (UH OH), who are eyeing her expensive-looking armor (UH OH) while the rest of the party is out of town fighting zombies somewhere (UH OH).

Lynnette fails her strength saves to break free of the ropes. Then, when it seems like things couldn't get any worse, the shopkeeper lights a lamp and reveals the basement is furnished with things crafted of very suspiciously people-like leather. The shopkeeper then reveals that he is actually a parasitic creature currently inhabiting the corpse of the shopkeeper and masquerading as a citizen. He plans to leave town and start somewhere new in a new body, and what better host than Lynnette, who by her own admission comes from a wealthy background and has no living relatives to seek her out. Lynnette, meanwhile, fails another strength check to escape.

Just before the worst can happen, Lynnette is saved by none other than the innkeeper who the shopkeeper was blackmailing into helping his dark deeds. The innkeeper knocks out the shopkeep and his assistant and unties Lynnette.

"OK," the DM says, "You're free, the shopkeeper and his assistant are unconscious, and the innkeeper doesn't seem to want to hurt anyone. He was basically an unwilling accomplice in this whole thing anyway. What do you want to do now? Call the guards? Kill the shopkeeper?"

I think about this. I don't really want to get the guards involved because they're connected to the evil cult who would immediately kill us and everyone we're associated with if they get suspicious of us. But this evil parasite thing is a Serious Problem and now it knows my name and face. The shopkeeper himself is a corpse so there's no point in stabbing him, I reason. The parasite thing has to go, and I wanna make sure I actually get it. So I tie up his assistant to interrogate later (I don't know anything about the assistant so I don't know if he's a willing participant or if he's being coerced or blackmailed like the innkeeper was.) I ask if the basement is stone or wood (it's stone), and then I decide the best option is to set the shopkeeper's corpse on fire to make sure the parasite dies. I dump lamp oil on the body and set it alight.

This is when things turned... unfortunate.

The parasite escapes the body and dives into a mouse hole in the wall. I dump lamp oil down the hole and light that too, but I'm not sure if the thing lived or died. The fire starts to spread to the furniture, so the innkeeper and I cut our losses and leave as quickly as possible.

As we exit and reach the street, the DM describes the house as being in the middle of a tightly-packed neighborhood with no real space between the houses.

"It's fine," I say. "The fire's in the basement and it's all stone walls down there. It probably won't spread."

Guards started arriving as smoke rose through the city, so the innkeeper and I "causally" powerwalk out of there.

"It's probably fine," I say. "Nobody saw us leave the building."

The DM raises an eyebrow at me.

"It's just you and the innkeeper now, right?" he asks.

I nod.

"What about the shopkeeper's assistant?" he asks pointedly, and the whole table goes silent.

....Oh riiiiight, the shopkeeper had an assistant. The assistant who I had tied up while he was unconscious and then forgot about when I left the burning basement. The assistant who I wasn't even sure if he was guilty or a victim. That assistant.

"Oh no." I say.

So. To recap thus far:

-My character set a basement on fire in the middle of town.
-That basement may or may not have an innocent man trapped inside.
-The whole reason she set the fire was to stop an evil parasite, which probably escaped anyway.
-My character has to keep a low profile because an evil cult that runs the town needs only the barest excuse to kill her and the entire party. Arson is a pretty darn good excuse.
-All of the evidence that the shopkeeper is evil, including the murder implements and the furniture made of people-leather, are in that basement which I've just destroyed.
-The parasite that probably escaped A) knows my character's name, face and current residence, B) wants vengeance, and C) could literally kill and disguise itself as any single individual in the entire campaign without our knowledge.

"I feel awful about this, but at least it wasn't worse," I say, and quickly leave town to find the rest of the party.

When we return to town the next day, we find out that the fire had spread to two other houses and killed several people. The guard are looking into figuring out if it was an accident or intentional, and the basement (and all its evidence) was destroyed beyond recognition.

Then that evening, we see something glowing in the wheat fields outside the inn. Strange creatures, wreathed in glowing embers, are approaching the town.

"Oh hey, some sort of fire elementals!" I say. "Maybe the spread of the fire wasn't actually my fault!"

Nnnnope. The glowing creatures are zombies of the people killed in the fire. The zombies are also on fire.

"Oh no," I say.

[Pseudonymous]

When the DM says "I'm so glad you guys aren't murder-hobos!", you know you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

In a Pathfinder 2e game, our party had come across a town under siege by a deadly half-gnoll-half-dragon pirate named Black Fang. His ship was badly damaged in the assault and was floating just off-shore, just out of reach of the town's cannons, but he had townfolk held hostage on board. We knew we had to rescue the hostages, but we also knew that Black Fang was incredibly dangerous (and like 3 levels higher than us), so we made the risky decision to try and negotiate.

Surprisingly, the negotiations went well. Black Fang agreed to trade his hostages with us in exchange for supplies to fix his ship, as well as one of three options:

1) We agree to serve aboard his ship for three years. (Nobody was too keen on this. We have stuff to do that doesn't involve being forced into piracy for three years.)

2) We give him a magical item hidden deep under the town's monastery, which would supposedly make him invincible. (Not a great option-- we don't want an INVINCIBLE half-gnoll half-dragon stalking us forever and continuing his rampage across the seas).

or 3) We surrender one of our PC characters, a Witch who has a large bounty on his head, to Black Fang. (Honestly, this particular PC is of the "I do something dumb without any thought to consequences and without consulting anyone else in the party because lols" variety, so this was... incredibly tempting.)

Black Fang gives us three days to decide and bring us the chosen prize. We agree and peacefully go back to shore.

"Wow, you guys completely avoided that combat encounter." our DM says. "I'm so glad you guys aren't murder hobos."

We agree! Yes, we're great at problem solving and not being murder hobos! It's easy!

So our first thought is to see what treasure lies in the basement of the monastery. After successfully avoiding a combat encounter by negotiation (and also narrowly avoiding another combat encounter almost caused by said Witch PC), we discover that the magical item is actually a vampirism curse, being guarded by an ancient gnome. The gnome has been down there for so long that he's completely bleached and is barely holding on to his sanity. Well THAT'S not good-- we don't want Black Fang becoming a vampire on top of being half-dragon. We once again avoid combat by promising not to disturb the talisman and providing the gnome with books and an onyx dog so he won't be bored or alone for his eternal guard. Hooray for not being horrible murder-hobos!

So now we have no talisman to give Black Fang. Witch PC meanwhile does something dumb that almost backfires again, and trading him in to Black Fang is looking more and more appealing.

"Oh, wait!" says our Paladin. "I just remembered-- Witch PC has a familiar! He can change its appearance to look like him! Then we can trade the FAKE Witch to Black Fang in exchange for the town hostages!"

"That's a clever idea!" says the DM.

"And in Pathfinder, familiars can self-destruct and do AOE damage!" says the Paladin, flipping through the PHB. "Witch PC can't telepathically communicate with him for more than 150' or so, but he can sense his EMOTIONS for up to a mile away! Witch doesn't even have to come with us to deliver the fake hostage! He can be safe and trigger the AOE from back in town!"

"Uh," the DM says. "I mean, it's not a lot of damage, it's not going to kill Black Fang--"

"Oh! We can send him to the powder magazine on the ship and destroy it from within along with everyone on the ship, without needing any of us to actually be on the ship!"

At this point you can see the DM realizing that the giant pirate ship mini he ordered probably won't be making an appearance.

"I mean, I guess you could try," he says. "Assuming Black Fang doesn't look too close at the familiar. Familiars will keep some features of their original form when disguised, and Witch's familiar is a giant 3-headed cockroach so..."

Aaaaaand then Black Fang got a Nat 1 to see if we were lying when we gave him the Fake Witch. We successfully get the hostages, he successfully takes Fake Witch, and our NPC contact on the inside successfully gets Fake Witch to the powder storage area.

As Black Fang's deadly pirate ship went up in flames, with the rest of us safely back on shore without ever having to set foot on this elaborate ship that I'm sure had lots of deadly encounters and challenges planned, we all congratulate ourselves on our creative problem solving.

I'm so glad you guys aren't murder hobos.

Black Fang survived-- apparently he had wings due to the whole "half-dragon" thing and was immune to fire (again, dragon thing), and flew away, probably to get another ship that's familiar-proof and come destroy us later. But that's a problem for Future Us.

Our NPC contact who bravely directed Fake Witch to the gunpowder storage survived as well! He was floating on a bit of debris, so we went out to go get him.

"You notice sharks are swarming the area," the DM says. "This could be a problem for poor Winston the NPC."

Naaaah, we're going to keep Winston alive whether he likes it or not. We are determined that this NPC man, who was originally just a throwaway character designed to give us information two towns ago, is going to be the secret hero of the entire campaign and we're gonna get keep him alive, gosh-darnit.

"Are there other survivors?" asked one of our players.

The DM nods.

"Yeah, you can see a few pirates still clinging to debris. Black Fang and about two longboats made it out unscathed, but there are some unfortunate pirates who didn't make it to the boats. Some are still alive and--"

"I shoot one with a crossbow bolt." the player interrupts.

"What?" the DM asks.

"Gonna distract the sharks away from Winston. Get some blood in the water so they go eat that pirate instead."

I'm so glad you guys aren't murder hobos.

"Ok? Paladin, isn't that against your oaths?" DM asks.

Paladin's player shrugs.

"I mean, kinda. But I'm rowing the boat so I can't see what he's doing."

I'm so glad you guys aren't murder hobos.

[10Doc]

I've definitely told some of these stories elsewhere on the site, I've got three good ones:

When I was first getting in to D&D (right about when 5th Edition came out) I conned a couple High school buddies into letting me DM for them. We were playing through the box set adventure and the Sorcerer found a scroll of Lightning Bolt in one of the middle dungeons. Later on the party got roped into a disastrous boss fight; the Paladin and Sorcerer had just put down a Doppelganger but were badly wounded and low on spells, and the Barbarian had backed a buffed-up bugbear into the corner and the two were just whaling on each other. Each of them was hitting hard, but it looked like the Barbarian was going to fall first, which would leave his team mates in serious danger. In a desperation, the Sorcerer unfurls the scroll and makes the Arcana check needed to fire it off. That's when I look at the spell description and realize that Lightning Bolt hits every creature in a 50 ft. line. Meaning in order to hit the Bugbear the Sorcerer will have to fire through the Barbarian. I give the Sorcerer the chance to rethink his move. He looks at the Paladin, then at the Barbarian, and rolls 8d6. The shot cooked the Bugbear, but absolutely Raditzed the Barbarian. As it happens, however, the Barbarian was a half-orc, and hadn't yet used his one get-out-of-death free card for the day, so he just wheels on the Sorcerer with 1 HP and a massive hole in his chest and says "what the heck?! I had him!"

Next story involves spoilers for Curse of Strahd:

 

At one point I was putting some friends through Curse of Strahd and they were doing a side quest to find some kind of holy relic that the Strahd had commissioned a villager to steal in order to despoil the hallowed ground of the local church. One of the players was playing as a wereraven with DM approval (huge mistake on my part) and while the rest of the party was interrogating their suspect he transformed in to a bird and flew in through an upper window to search for the relic. He found a bunch of crates and assumed he'd hit the jackpot. Instead of being full of holy relics, however, they turned out to be full of Vampire Spawn. Hilarity ensued.

Lastly, I was playing a token evil fighter in a friend's campaign. Despite being an Eldritch Knight and having a decent INT score, I had him grab TWO very obviously cursed and trapped magical artifacts with no hesitation whatsoever. In-character, I played him as extremely greedy for arcane power and wrathfully reckless. OOC, out DM had obviously gone to so much trouble to come up with cool traps and curses and it seemed like such a shame to let them go to waste. >:)

[Gravel]

In one of my earlier games on Pathfinder 1e, our adventuring party had arrived to a smallish frontier city only to find the place mysteriously abandoned. We searched the place, and while there certainly had been a necromancer hiding in there, their experiments were securely locked up and too few in number to be at fault. Having exhausted that lead and not knowing what to do, we set out to loot anything left behind. Not like the mysteriously disappeared locals needed them/could tell it was us if they ever returned. We were running low on potions, so we decided to start with the local apothecary and the shop did have a big armored door to a storage area where the strong stuff was kept. Our rogue however fumbled her rolls and was put to sleep by a trap, prompting the fighter to just bust through the door. And there was our prize, shelves full of magical potions.

The problem was, they were labelled with the local language none of us spoke. The group wrote it off as too big of a risk as an unknown potion could just as well be poison and were about to leave, until they remembered the sleeping rogue. She wouldn't wake, so we decided to split the party. Me (the cleric) and the monk volunteered to stay in the fortified storage area while she slept it through while the others went on looting. After they were gone, we had great idea and started sorting the potions according to similar labels. After all, even if we couldn't read the writing we could match the letters on different bottles. Then, I cast Detect Poison, and put those registered in our bags clearly labeled. Not like we would need to know anything besides that it was poison to use it, right? And what was left, well I had almost all my healing spells still left and the monk was a hardy type.

So he started chugging. I paired results with labels and we deciphered a hefty chunk of the storage's contents before the GM had us roll a constitution save, a failure of which send the monk to the lavatory for the rest of the day. That was the moment I realized that I was a lone cleric with two incapacitated teammates in a mysteriously abandoned city and the night was coming. In a bit of an anti-climax nothing happened to my group. It was the other group that ran into a competing group of looters and had a climatic battle (where they really could have used a healer). The haul was eventually lost with about 3/4ths unused as we had to jump off a cliff into a river to escape a barbarian horde.