Dumbest thing you've ever had a character do?, That probably led to an early demise... Options

[Vegetaman]

From two years ago, I was doing a tabletop session with a few people, and one of them has a female mage with a BOD of 1. And they're in the Redmond Barrens, up against two orks with ratty looking pistols. I can't remember what pistols they were exactly, but think Fichetti Security 500a light pistols and worn out stripped down Ares Predators.

Anyway, his character was, and I quote: "Only wearing a leather G string because I have no need for all these frivolous armors and weapons thanks to the power of my almighty magic."

Not two rounds later, she gets shot. Never bothered to cast an armor spell or anything. The ork rolls amazing. Like, disgustingly amazing. She botches her roll and eats lead.

This was the second session in, and I'm going "there's no way this just happened". It worked out to just be a fatal shot. What an extreme waste of hand of god. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Whipstitch]

My mage took on a gorgon in astral combat once. Turns out Frank's gorgons aren't really all that much weaker than dragons, at least physically.


My character lived though, thanks to a stupidly high astral combat score and the rest of the team using corporate resources. More than a round of combat would have rendered my character extremely dead.

[Pendaric]

I have a PC that has flashes of genius or calamity by turns. Inspired by Dune, he tried to climb onto the back of a Juggernaut that was attacking the party.

Now that rules kinda go out the window on this one but I went with a grapple versus melee with a Jugger. He lossed and I described it as he reached the top and the jugger rolled on its back.

By a miracle he did stage down the damage so only ha a full set of broken ribs, "woaw that ground was soft."

[Cain]

Well, here's my famous one from the SR3 days:

I'm GMing again, and the mission is to take out a heavily-secured facility. Now, they're getting paid to cause heavy damage and carnage, so they go in packing heavy, knowing the opposition will be just as well-armed. Since they need to raze the place, they even brought satchel charges; research has revealed the walls are all heavily reinforced, so extras are packed.

Things are rough, but they're still going well, up until this point, when the oppostion barricaded a hallway.

Let me skip ahead to the punchline:

Me: (to mage) Let me get this straight. You're in a two-meter wide, ten-meter long hallway. The barricade is about 7 meters in front of you. You're sustaining a Levitate Self and Improved Invisibility spell, you have a moderate Physical and a Serious Stun wound, lighting is bad and you have no vision enhancements, and you want to fly over the barricade, and throw a grenade?

And it only gets better from there:

Mage: That's right. I got a frag left, it'll mess them up.

Me: *pause* Ohhhhkay. You're only dropping it, so I'll go against base TN of 2....(calculated modifiers) Target number 17. You do have Thrown Weapon, don't you?

Mage: Yup. Lessee... I got it at one.

Everyone: *pause*

Me: Are you really sure about this?

Mage: Yup. I'll drop it, and fly right past. I can spare one from my combat pool.

Me: Ohhhhkay.

Mage (rolls): oh.

Sammie: What??

Mage: I rolled all ones.

Sammie: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) Spend some karma pool, doofus!

Mage: I'm out of Karma pool. I spent it to resist drain.

Me: Well then. (I start pantomiming) You grasp the grenade in your left hand, pull the pin, and throw. An object goes flying. Then you look down at your left hand, and have a second to yelp. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

Surprisingly enough, the mage managed to survive this; the sammie, some distance away, did so as well.

[ludomastro]

Stupidest thing ever was my first run (SR2) back in college. We were sent to Japan to investigate the owner of some magic doo-dad. Brain is a little fuzzy on the 10+ year old details. Found that the doo-dad belonged to a Young Eastern Dragon. After confronting him in his own house, my phsad troll decided that said dragon was being disrespectful ... so he told the dragon what it could do. The GM just sat there for a minute and then asked, "You sure about that?" When I said yes, all hell broke loose. The character died with his middle section eaten out. The rest of the team escaped but only barely. From then on I was required to take Common Sense as quality to play in that GMs games.

[pbangarth]

Grenades seem to be the instrument of choice.

In a narrow alley, opponents on the rooftops above shooting at us, my PC threw a grenade up at them. He missed. It fell back among us.... in a narrow alley.

[Tarantula]

SR2 days back in high school. We had a very large beefy troll tank, and a bod 1 elf sammy who relied on his stupidly big combat pool to dodge. Troll goes charging up a narrow staircase, elf stays at the bottom. Troll reaches door at the top, and opens it only to take a shotgun to the chest, with enough knockback to throw him back the length of the staircase. GM rules troll takes falling damage from height of the staircase, and the elf down below gets to resist it too, since we was landed on. Troll survives with like, 1 stun. Elf dies.

[Zombayz]

The group I GM has a load of these.

After thuroughly deciding amongst themselves that the rival ganger(whos gang they JUST forced out of a warehouse) walking into an alley was an ambush, they all walked in. Within 5 metres of each other. In a 3 metre wide alley. Into an ambush they knew about.

Cue the Face getting taken down to one box of physical left(9P from a shotgun), the Combat Troll getting hit by a rifle for 12P(once again, one box left), and the mage getting nearly knocked out by the flashbang that they expected to be thrown, in addition to everyone else taking around 7S each from said flashbang.

Somehow they manage to survive, and the mage heals everyone up the best he can. Next, they decide to fight some Humanis goons they heard about operating in their territory.

Cue the Face failing to talk down the Humanis goons, and nearly getting quickdrawn by the Lead Goon, who was carrying a Warhawk. And our resident Rigger blasting every single one of the goons with his shotgun in a single round.

Finally, they reach the big challenge of the night: A vampire that's been eating some of the people in thier turf. After doing a little Astral recon, the mage realizes this guy is pretty damn dangerous. So what do they do? Find out where his lair is, walk in, start kicking down doors and searching rooms. By themselves. Split Up.

So after a near incident involving a devil rat, they've narrowed it down to one room in the basement. Where they proceed to stand in a tightly packed group, as the Troll opens the door and... Gets surprised by the Vamp, who he did NOT expect to be standing right behind the door, sword ready.

After an amazingly brutal attack(almost every die rolled led to a hit), the troll is down. Both halves of him. The group attacks all out, and nearly kills him, 2 boxes left until Overflow time... Until our shotgun wielding rigger blasts him, and uses edge.

And gets 18 hits. Against a vamp with one die left to dodge, no armour, and 7 body. Very dead vampire, thanks to amazing rolls.

The thing they're planning on doing next session is launch a direct attack against a 4 storey apartment complex filled with ghouls. Thier entire gang has 17 members at this time. The assault is going to take 8 of them, the 4 players, and 2 sniper teams with normal rifles, and fancy scopes, bought with about half of the gangs money. From the 162s. Can anyone see the problem here?

[crash2029]

My character Car had an odd obsession with being "cool." This would lead him to do rather stupid, definately dangerous things because they looked cool. We were playing Survival of the Fittest and had to escort a crate from Nawlins to Amazonia. At least I think it was Amazonia. We were on a boat headed there when we were attacked by a couple Riverine-style patrol boats. Car got it into his head that he was going to comandeer one of the boats. He initially tried to jump onto the boat when it came near. He missed. So he took his favorite tool, a grapple gun, and managed to tag the boat. He began water skiing behind the boat and managed to pull himself to it, and managed to climb aboard. At this point he discovered that the only way into the cabin was a locked hatch. He then decided to try to toss a gas grenade in through the turret, only to find out the gunport was sealed. He didn't get the chance to try another Wyle E. Coyote plan because the secmage in the boat hit him with a manabolt. H failed hie test and was thrown into the water. Fortunately our shaman was paying attention and managed to levitate him to the runners boat before he could drown.

Car had many ridiculous over-the-top ideas both before and after, but this is the classic one. He survived so long and obtained so many contacts globally, and made so much money, he eventually retired active shadowrunning and became one of our game's premier fixers.

Archetype-wise he was at first a human thief. He ended up being a thief/face/decker/partial samurai.

[Ravor]

Does "crossing the streams" using an experimental dimensional tunneler count?

Granted they really didn't have a choice in the matter since they were getting their butts handed to them by pararel universe's version of proto-horrors and the team's Techno had jammed everything open in order to fullfill her cult's vision of the end days.

Everything in a ten block radius simply ceased to exist and there is an area of complete nothingness where the portal once stood several stories in the air.

[ludomastro]

Does "crossing the streams" using an experimental dimensional tunneler count?

Granted they really didn't have a choice in the matter since they were getting their butts handed to them by pararel universe's version of proto-horrors and the team's Techno had jammed everything open in order to fullfill her cult's vision of the end days.

Everything in a ten block radius simply ceased to exist and there is an area of complete nothingness where the portal once stood several stories in the air.

Ghostbusters inspired?

[sunnyside]

From two years ago, I was doing a tabletop session with a few people, and one of them has a female mage with a BOD of 1. And they're in the Redmond Barrens, up against two orks with ratty looking pistols. I can't remember what pistols they were exactly, but think Fichetti Security 500a light pistols and worn out stripped down Ares Predators.

Anyway, his character was, and I quote: "Only wearing a leather G string because I have no need for all these frivolous armors and weapons thanks to the power of my almighty magic."

Not two rounds later, she gets shot. Never bothered to cast an armor spell or anything. The ork rolls amazing. Like, disgustingly amazing. She botches her roll and eats lead.

This was the second session in, and I'm going "there's no way this just happened". It worked out to just be a fatal shot. What an extreme waste of hand of god. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

This, in a nutshell, is the biggest difference between the basic Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 playstyles.

In SR it is a bad thing for the ladies to wear leather bikinis.

In CP 2020 the gangers would have shot at her last. And probably asked if she'd hang out with them and do some drugs instead fighting. And so on.

It isn't too late to bring a little of the "Living on the Edge" philosphy into your SR games. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[JudgementLoaf]

I had a team that found a backup copy of the DEUS AI. The went around installing it on random stuff.

[ludomastro]

I had a team that found a backup copy of the DEUS AI. The went around installing it on random stuff.

Ok, two questions:

1. Were they aware of the metaplot?
2. Did they know and just not care due to rampant roleplaying?

Either way, that's awesome!

[JudgementLoaf]

A little of both really. The few experienced gamers (about 1/2 the group) at the table knew about the metaplot, but were really into their characters so they didn't act on it. The other half of the group had no idea what they were getting into until WAAAAAAY too late, at which point they were more concerned with their own immediate survival than how to fix the problem.

[kzt]

My mage took on a gorgon in astral combat once. Turns out Frank's gorgons aren't really all that much weaker than dragons, at least physically.

Yeah, that one kind of sucked. When he started summoning his own spirits is when I realized we were REALLY in trouble. Up to that point you had me convinced we could probably take him.

[hobgoblin]

He initially tried to jump onto the boat when it came near.

heh, sounds like a black lagoon moment, only revi managed the jump, more then ones (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Whipstitch]

In my defense, I'm well-versed in breaking Mages six ways from Sunday, at least versus magical threats, anyway. I'm usually pretty sure I can take just about anything short of another magician or a tweaked samurai, (the initial attack from a Samurai can be deadly, after all) actually.

Wait, that's not a defense. Frag.

[hobgoblin]

heh, the lady (err...) in question was pretty much a gun-fu adept, only matched by the local triad leader and a south american maid by the name of roberta (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)