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

Ive been listening the last two days to your channel. Pretty funny stuff. Ive been chortling for a few hours now. the dick arrow story and the DM dad describing farts were the points I was in stiches. TNT at the bottom of a lake of pudding. F*****CK lol.

It's "cockatrice" cock-a-trice (like rice or thrice), not "cockertise".

A player in my campaign (sorcerer) was at 4 hp and when they all entered a room, the door turned into a brick wall behind them.
The sorcerer decided to act like the barbarian and punch the wall really hard for 4 hit points...
He fainted from the pain and cince there were no healers in the party at that point they just stared at him for a few seconds then started looting the room.🤣🤣

I am also from Ohio

I got really drunk in the session and i kicked a boulder at a banshee....... I did manage to startle it, problem it shrieked..... TOTAL PARTY WIPE!

After we lifted e curse from a zombiefied Bartender, our bard decided to go back to the room where the ritual was held by the wife of the tender. The skelleton of her was still lying next to the pot the bard wantet to take with him. So he grabed the pot and out of curiosity he threw the contained potion over the skelleton.... Well it was a potion of create greater undead and so he created nothing less than a Banshee. One cry and a few bad rolls later and the bard was no more.

Evil campaign, we travel to an island to "negotiate" with a pirate captain and aquired quiet a bit of loot including a very ornate box with a poison trap which we disarm. The rogue takes the box.

On the journey back said rogue retires to his cabin and locks the door as there had been a few pranks involving various animals and hallucinogenic mushrooms.

In his locked room he starts to disassemble the box as the poison is very rate, rolls a 1 and trap goes off injecting him with the poison, poison causes paralysis and con damage over time. He slowly dies over the next full day.

We did the right thing, looted his corpse and dumped him into the ocean.

In a campaign I’m currently in we were level 4 and in a city where we unleashed a demon which possessed the higher ups. We are pretty new and have successfully gotten rid of the demon after his death. So we tried to see what was happening and that was when our rogue decided to burn down a church for some reason. He failed to make a new identity and was sentenced to death. Our Paladin executed him and now he doesn’t like dungeons and dragons anymore.

Stupid deaths are always the best, always good for a laugh

So there was this one campaign that I was in and I was a half-orc ranger where in I was apart of a rebellion and was caught by the empire but with it being my first ever encounter of the truth spell I was caught and was to be executed publicly and they asked me what my last words were and I said f the empire when I should have said death to the empire.

The party, traversing a cave system, came to a cliff that overlooked a vast underground grotto. With the faint light from glowing crystal stalagtites, they could see an underground river running through the grotto far below. Quoth the archer: "I toss a rope to the gunsmith and jump off the edge."
"You...jump off!?"
"Yeah." "But...why?!?"
"Becaaaauuuuse I want to get to the bottom, duh."
"The cavern floor is a hundred feet down! You're jumping to your death!"
"That's what the ROPE is for, DUH!"
"The rope you just threw away?!?"
"I threw it TO THE GUNSMITH."
It took several minutes of interrogation like this to figure out that his plan was to tie the rope around himself (which he never declared he was doing), and have the gunsmith hold it while he rapelled down the cliff face. But he never changed his mind about just...jumping off the cliff and tossing the rope to someone who had no idea he was about to do that, and was also nearly dead from a cave-in earlier (which he caused himself but that's another tale). Rope was not caught nor held.
Luckily that underwater river was right below the cliff they were on. Goofball managed to swim well enough to get out of it but it cost him his favourite bow.

Lvl 1 problem player constantly robbed the party, got arrested for beating up an innocent old man, tried to beat up the prison guards, got stabbed to death with a spear, rolled a Nat 20 on his death save, got stabbed to death again

bro you're alive in Ohio? how do you survive?

Death saves are not plot armor enough apparently. The DM had to homebrew extra chances to live and the wizard still fucked it up!

I was supposed to be a p c for a single one shot Guiding these players into the fortress and teaching them how to be stealthy and skillful. They decided to go whole hog. So I decided to do the same and show them, If if you are going to go whole hog, this is how you do it correctly. It was a fun game. And I think the other players learned a lot about scouting things Before you engage in the door busting Swat team style Rushing in and beating everyone down. They did quite remarkable work. I was actually very proud of those little rookies. The whole thing was a scenario of Assassination masters and i taught them well and they learned well. Made me feel like a proud teacher.

How did the wizard in the fist story fall down the shaft? he was an aarakocra, you know the things with wings?

Not sure if this counts cause no one died from this (somehow) but my best friend who was playing both a bard and a cleric (we both had 2 characters cause we were the only 2 players at the start of this campaign) had her bard speed run us into the final boss fight by deciding “f this dungeon our dm made to get us from 17 to 20 imma cast teleport to get us straight to the end and get the last maguffin for the main plot!” Did I mention said final boss was an evil god who happened to be a great wyrm class dragon?!

I had a party of 4 in a custom home brew campaign. A bronze Dragon Born (player is the brother irl of the next character) a Goliath Cleric, and two others whose class and race names I can’t recall at the moment.
The cleric had 4 hp at lvl 1. He declined my offer to let him refill his constitution. On their first quest the cleric is hit by a longbow shot dealing 8 piercing damage. His irl brother after being told about a massively severe drought that covers the world and decided to use his breath attack and set over 1 million acres on fire to cover the parties retreat after recovering the cleric’s unconscious body

Last week I had one of my party members commit the most massive Darwin Award. We were playing a pathfinder home brew campaign I enjoy very much, and we essentially stumble upon an undead spellcaster who is trying to revive a powerful demigod. This spellcasters name is, “The scarlet mask” and wears a spooky scarlet mask. Through a lot of trouble and some luck we barely manage to kill the titanic born dragon it summoned and killed the scarlet mask on literally the exact last turn in the turn order before the scarlet mask was about to use a blade with one charge of the wish spell imbued in it to destroy us. Our party member who got the last hit was awarded the blade with the wish spell, and used it to become an arch fey, gaining immense power. We then had a mysterious entity walk in threateningly and take a piece of loot from the scarlet masks offering pile. We were all out of everything and injured after barely beating the scarlet mask, so we didn’t want to fight. In the infinite wisdom of our new arch fey, they put on THE SCARLET MASK that dropped from the now dead scarlet mask. Surprise surprise the scarlet mask possessed his body, and now was a spellcaster capable of using finger of death and summoning bone dragons with ARCH FEY POWERS. My character was instantly killed by the newly resurrected and empowered scarlet mask. The stranger turned out to be an extremely powerful champion of a god and after orders from said god, (One of our party members worshiped this god and this was able to ask them for help.) helped us to defeat this newly empowered scarlet mask. After multiple turns of the possessed arch fey pc failing saving throws to remove the mask, the champion minced the scarlet mask into hundred of pieces and then summoned a giant laser to incarnate it. I was a bit annoyed I got killed from this, but it’s even worse for him. This home brew world has little ways to resurrect people, so he managed to gain essentially Demi-god powers and didn’t get to enjoy them for less than 5 minutes before getting himself possessed then killed.

TLDR: Pc uses wish spell to become a demigod, puts on an obviously cursed mask and gets possessed, then fails all his saving throws and gets killed.

In the first story the aarakocra wizard could have flown out. Aarakocra have a fly speed.

Not the DM. 1st session of our current campaign, day 2 in spelljammer setting. Our Bloodhunter decides that he wanted to break into the crew quarters to break into the weapons locker to sharpen his scythe. The guy playing our BBEG is unlocking doors for him from the bridge. (Hes only in the sessions until we are done with the cruise we are on.) I fail a perception check to notice this guy sneak into the crew quarters. He gets in there and somehow succeeds on a stealth check to not wake the Giff Captain. Bbeg unlocks the hatch to engineering and he proceeds down to the engine room. Curiousity almost got the better of him but our party (who at this time hadnt been formed yet) begged him to just sleep there as he was locked in engineering. He decided to sleep there and was promptly thrown in the brig and interogated by my character.

Note im one of the mercenary security guards and the 2nd in command of all security on the ship and our DM was being very gracious rolling a D4 to our Blood Hunters D20. Only reason our blood huntet wanted to kill us all was so he could get his way and do cult of vecna. DM was having none of it.

TLDR: Bloodhunter almost blows up the ship in 1st session so he could do Cult of Vecna.

I remember the darn word. Almost total party kill where my party tried to dig a tunnel under a a shield spelled to get to the BBG he cast fireball into the tunnel

... how the fuck did an Aarakocra wizard die by falling? They're literally bird-people. They can fucking FLY.

Best one I got so far is during my first campaign, I decided it would be a good idea as a squishy level one wizard, to use the spell shocking grasp, a spell that requires physical touch, on a bugbear. I rolled well and did a decent amount of damage, but I also then took a mace to the back and was knocked unconscious.

Not me but a level one wizard in one of my campaigns tried to take a priest’s holy necklace, got obliterated immediately.

The wizard & pit... That's the issue when the player intelligence is way lower than that of his character. Same goes for the wisdom...

One of my players was playing a Thri-Kreen warrior. Those giant insects with upper arms ending in sword like appendages. The whole party have been made aware that some creatures must NEVER be attacked bare handed or with any weapon that is an integral part of oneself. They had some hints that those cockatrices can petrify you. Also, that experienced player had prior knowledge of that monster. Proceed to attack one with his sword-arms. Get petrified. Fail his survival roll when returned to his fleshy self.

Jump INTO A WHIRLPOOL ? EVEN knowing how to swim, that's such a BAD move ! That should be a DC 30+ swimming test.

My 1st ever time playing DnD and my 1st rool in combat i was a fairy bard and our 1st apponer was an Owlbear. 1st fight of the campane and i decided on my 1st turn to f^ck the Owlbeair... i was taken down to 1 hp. never again

*cocktease

I was the DM and my brother who is usually very smart was the lucky recipient of a Darwin Award. I had been running this game for the past 2 years and the players were in an ancient grassland that was corrupted by evil and turned into a swamp by the bbeg and was now inhabited by a young black dragon which the party was told to kill. Even though my brother is usually very smart he did have one weird weak point. He thought it was funny when his character would pee in the most random areas. Keep this in mind. The players had finally found an old church that they were looking for that had magical weapons and loot inside. I began to describe the scene much of the masonry was destroyed it was sinking into the swamp etc. I then describe the rose garden ''plant like tendrils wrap around the stonework working itself into the crevices of the building''. My brother then thought it would be funny to pee in the rose garden. In DND there is a monster known as a shambling mound which is plant matter animated by evil (I think) however I had decided to give this stabling mound some poison damage due to it being a rose bush. I describe that as he begins to relive himself he feels a sharp pain as a thorny tendril grabs him by the nuts and sinks in its venom. My brother NEVER peed on anything other than a toilet ever again.

Important omission on the Darwin award lore: The removal of yourself from the gene pool cannot be your intention. If your intention was to do so to get the award, you are disqualified.

So, I have a chaotic neutral rogue in my party in this game I’m running, and the real life player’s alignment is just Chaotic. No neutral, no good, just chaotic. So the party sits in a room below the boss room, and are preparing to head in. The rogue, however is now bored of the not fighting going on, and decides to use his frankly stupid stealth score to go up the stairs and fuck with the boss. He rolls like a 27 or something and sneaks his way up there, to find the boss is a creepy swordsman with his blade sheathed on his hip. The rouge sees a shiny thing and goes to steal it. He rolls pretty low on his sleight of hand check, and ends up drawing the aforementioned blade really loudly from its scabbard. Cut to downstairs, were the party hears the sounds of the absolute beatdown that left the rogue clipping into the floor. Thankfully he respawned shortly after

There's the infamous goldfish incident.

I died on my second attack in a pathfinder game as a gunslinger as rolling 1s caused a misfire and a secodn misfire had the gun detonate in your hands i rolled 2 1s in a row

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.

Early on in my game career, on a sci-fi game we had a guy plant a grenade on a door.
And then stand there.
'Are you sure?'
'Yup.'
Boom. It was the biggest explosive device they had yet found. it did massive damage.
And they were on a space station.
It was an airlock door.
Clearly labelled as such.
so he was shredded [as you'd expect when a grenade detonates within 1m] and then sucked out into space.
Without a space suit.
Very dead.

He was upset that i let him do that.
New table rules were set up after that.

TASTY CHIKKIN!

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

I had a player who from session 1 accusing everyone of cheating. He was 10yrs older than the rest of us and wanted to be 10 Lvls above everyone. So first I gave hime a snake oil salesman named something like McShady; I forget it's been a decade. He almost died from rapid aging after a failed con save. When he drank lvl up potions. Then they get to the door of the dungeon. There's a crack in the wall. He says there's treasure in there that I'm hiding from him because I hate him or something. He shoves his arm in and the wall gives way to a tsunami of creepy crawlies. This takes the party down to 1hp each. Everyone wants a long rest. But not this guy. He sees a skeleton holding a bag of holding filled to the max with gold and a silver sword. Decides to pass it and go for the obviously cursed ever burning torches as the party screamed don't do it. Set of an explosion that leveled the mountain. Years later we found our old character sheets and my notes. We decided that a gold dragon rescued everyone but him at the last second because he was an [@$$]. We decided to not talk to the guy after that session because he was bad news.

Warlock player, level 4, hit a monologing LICH with an eldrich blast. He gets hit by a level 6 blight and had to cash in his one revival from his patron after the party argued if they should save him...while he was rolling death saves.

I had one imagine a barbarian with a belt of grenade (each greande dealt a LOT of damage they were hight level ok it did like 4d12 each) and another player had a flametrower the barbarian jump in the fight and the other use his flametroweer problem they both forgot the grenade belt I had the best time of my life putting a nuclear explosion on the video projector trully a pure moment of joy for all of us

The party arrived in town and can't get a job from the adventurer's guild because the guild leader is missing. One of the players is a dragonborn, who was just a mess TBH. He threw up in the tavern, and the acid dissolved the table and through the floor. On his first combat roll, he nat 1d a breath weapon check and caused a tree to fall, hitting another party member. But the Darwin award bit: we found the remains of the missing guild master in a cave (we weren't sure if was him), dismembered and skinned. The dragonborn took the man's face, and when we got back to town, he ran up to the city guards holding the face skin and yelling "excuse me do you know who this was"
The guards' response was to immediately behead him (IMO a bit of capriciousness on the part of the DM) and it was only my (elven cleric) persuasion ability that kept the survivors out of combat. We were still arrested, stripped of our belongings, and kicked out of town, and the dragonborn's player had to make a new character who we met later.

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.

In Russia, chicken choke you.

Naestra Whisperwind.
Half elf ranger, bratty personality.

We were just done after being nearly TPK-ed by a bunch of goblins inside a cave.

I don't remember the details, but there was a wooden bridge. My high elf warlock and Naestra had to cross it for some reason.

DM had us roll Athletics I think or Dex, I don't remember. Evelyne (my warlock) passed easily and found a healing potion as soon as she passed. Evelyne wanted to throw it to Naestra for the latter to heal.

(Side note : Evelyne was the best support character ever, she basically always succeeds in all of her rolls except for combat rolls. I had to watch as Evelyne got thrashed by a goblin after she was unable to hit a SINGLE of her Eldritch Blasts and yet she managed to tame chained wolves in the same cave. Naestra had bad luck on rolls involving anything except combat. You know where this is going.)

The player running Naestra was afraid that Naestra won't be able to catch the potion that Evelyne would throw, so he got Naestra to cross the wooden bridge. DM had him roll for Athletics/Dex... failed roll. The bridge collapsed under Naestra and she died.

As far as Darwin Awards go this would be an honorable mention, but I went to use fireball on an enchanted book we were fighting and it ate the fireball, then spat it back out at our paladin.

First campaign I DMed lost mines in the redbrand hide out halting rogue got tossed into a room by the paladin as a distraction, 4 baddies. Proceeded to run from that room to the next 4 more baddies. Confusion a rope arrow and several opportunity attacks later he ran from that room as well got blasted by scorching ray and was the first PC death

Wow u make me hate being in Ohio even more with your voice.

If ita stupid bit works its not stupid and most times is a dm who makes or brakes it seen dm let some get away with a lot and other then cant do much

Soo were in conflict 1 death rest almost death and are sorc makes a deal with the devil yes it that one so we all alive full health the said entity wipes out the cave of enemies oh and the bloke we were there to save. Sooo as entity is about to leave I made a deal (irl shit so I did it quickly bad idea) I want control of all fire including hell fire now dm is like roll save to see how you handle the new power fucking nat 1 only one all day so yes I died inside out to fire then comeback with infernal engine in my guy (earlier story 2 conflict s back I try to tame a wolf rogue gos to stun it rolls to high skull crashed so next opportunity I try to tame different wolf sooo I use mold earth to sink it's feet in to ground now sorc who has heals comes over befor I torture err I mean tame him gose to heal the wolf so it does die like the first one that's another story but anyway sorc reaches out to heal him wolf rolls 19 bites sorc nearly killing him so I work on meds saveing my 1 potions for in combat use sorc trys to treat his hand makes it worse 1 hp soo ya im bad at tameing and deals

My party once blew ourselves up by panic looting a Lich's room. We snuck into his room to look for his phylactery when we heard the guards coming. We all panicked and got the bright idea to just start grabbing everything and stuffing it into our bag of holding. Including a chest. With another bag of holding in it....