Stupid Deaths, Those Wacky Players Options

[lopus]

A few years ago, I was playing with a bunch of pretty good players ... unfortunately the GM knew how big our egos were.

There were about 8 PCs (Tripplet Sammy/Riggers, a PhysAd, an initiate group of 4 Shamans, and a decker) that were hired to break into an Aztechnology Research Center. We did our homework, figured out the guard shifts, checked the schematics, found out that they used Plasteel 7 for their basement walls (the kind you can turn to bubblegum with a solvent.

So we sneak in through the sewers, go through the wall, and enter the building's drainpipes. The floor is of course full of liquids and other stuff and the GM casually mentions that the large main pipe is made of some sort of metal. We arrive at the end which is sealed by a metal cover. We try for a quiet solution (well at least we thought it would be quiet) of bypassing the maglock ... except there wasn't any.

Then a brilliant alternate plan made by a couple of the mages (without consulting the rest of us) Lightning Bolt the damned COPPER door open.

Can anyone say fried runners???

[Foreigner]

[Nikoli]

Cooked nothing, they were steamed, fried and charred in one fell swoop.

[PBTHHHHT]

Geez, I hope the sewer rats like their runners served up well done.

Hmmm... a small acetylene blow torch and/or small electric saw, for cutting past bars/doors shall be added into my usual character gear now on.

[Nikoli]

Thermite bars also work nicely and underwater

[kevyn668]

[WalkTheDarkness]

I got one for you. I'm a new GM starting out, and it had taken me 3 weeks to get all my PC's set up and ready to go. So the into to the system I used was Food Fight out of the First Run Source book. Even screwing up a bunch of modifiers and things along those lines, the 7 PC's made short work of the Chiller Thrillers, with their leader unconscious on the floor. The only problem is, 2 of my PC's decided to wake him up and question him before they searched them. Unfortunately, they didnt' see him draw his pistol, and if I wouldn't have added a few modifiers to his rolls, he would have shot them both in the chest for deadly damage after the battle was over. Hopefully, they'll know better next time. Don't turn your back on a guy who just tried to kill you, especially if your new to the shaodws.

[lopus]

Kevyn668 [DNA/DOA?]

Nope, GM home-brew.

Foreigner [You'd think that at least one member of the group would have known that (A) copper is the best conductor of electricity known to man (or at least the best cheap one; gold, silver, and platinum are also good, but are too expensive to use except in very small quantities--for example, the electrical connectors used in automotive airbag circuits are 24-Karat gold plated); or

(B) that a sewer, unless it is very well-ventilated, will likely contain large quantities of highly-flammable (not to mention explosive) methane gas.]

Yeah, we knew that, the GM even specifically stated about the smell + the copper in the tube + the knee high liquid (another very good conductor). The thing was both wizzers totally forgot the description ... or didn't think about it. These are very experienced players (1st Ed AD&D mostly though) so I don't know why they did it. Needless to say, we now always carry hacksaws on a run.

[HMHVV Hunter]

[Taran]

Ok, I've got one. This is from a Technomancer game; urban fantasy but very much unlike Shadowrun in tone.

The PCs are tracking an Atomic Lich (power equivalent to a medium-strong SR dragon). They've clashed with it once, it has far more magic than it should, and now it wants to kill them. They know where its base is, so they divert it with rumors of their presence in a different city and break in.

They get past all the traps and guardians, finally reaching a vast circular chamber with dozens of heads lining the walls, linked up by mana conduits to an evil-altar looking thing in the center of the room. The heads continuously scream with agony. Most of the party is all for destroying it. The Technomage has a different idea.

Technomage: "Don't you get it? The heads are still alive! The lich so strong because he's been doing ritual magic with them. If you put me into it, I can take it over and use it against him!"

The rest of the party talked it over, and concluded that it couldn't hurt. The "us" was left politely unsaid. They decapitated the technomage and used a necromantic ritual they'd found elsewhere in the complex to attach him to one of the unused sections of the wall.

Me: You become magically aware of the other heads in the artifact. Then you feel Zadkiel (the lich) peering into your mind. You feel that he has learned where you are, and is now preparing a necromantic spell of some kind.
Technomage (mouthing the words to his party members): Get...the...fuck...out...

Lots of escaping later, the atomic lich learned some new spells from the desiccated husk that was once the technomage's soul. The rest of the team returned their fee and fled the country.

[Panzergeist]

Oh god, that one takes the cake. "Wait guys, I got a great idea. Cut my head off and glue it to that wall!"

[Jrayjoker]

That reminds me of a Rolemaster character a friend had. We couldn't hit the big baddie, so he said, stab me and I'll swap places with him (magical teleport of some kind). The sword will be in his gut and you can eviscerate him then. I guess he wasn't counting on a critical success from the stabber....one dead psionicist later...

[Spider]

Hi Everyone,

I'm quite new around here, so i'm getting familliar with the forum(I've been playing shadowrun for years).

The stupidest death i dealt in my game was on a character whose street name was Chapel. He was "inspired"(too much) on the character from the Spawn comic book.

Anyway.

That badass character always want to kill every single opponent, he could never back up and make is point in always carrying at lest half a dozen grenades and some guns. He specifically told me(after i suggest him that is belt couldn't carry 6 nades + some pistols and other drek) that 4 grenades found home on his chest. On days he got involved in a serious firefight(he pissed a group of runner off quite well) while he was strapped alone in his car.

You can imagine the scene. One burst just hit one of his nade(yes i was mad at him) and he went boom. Just to make shure i made all 4 nades explode (go ahead pal, soak 10S 4 times) and if you do i'll apply the "explosion in a tight space rule" and you get to roll your stamina all night! He just went boom

That remember me of that moment when my player group decide to use underbarrel grenade laucher without the skill after throwing lot of smoke and other stuff in an alley. The two stupidest players ended up blowing one another across the smoke( the two where standing at a seperate alley end) and the scatter roll did the dirty job for me.

Well...

[Fortune]

[Arethusa]

[iPad]

Harsh man. Not even a hand of god saved him......

[Spider]

[Tarantula]

You know, if you shoot C4, all you get is C4 with either a hole in it, or a bullet in it. It doesn't go off. The same is true for almost any explosive. Grenades in SR are also electronically primed, so shooting them wouldn't make them go off, just not be able to be armed.

[Tanka]

Spider, I just think you didn't handle the character well.

As a GM, you have final say on all characters. So, when you see that he's all about killing stuff, you hand it back to him with a big "X" on it. Then tell him why.

Or, get him caught by Lone Star whilst walking down the street wearing all that ordinance.

[Crimson Jack]

[Arethusa]

Tarantula and tanka pretty much have it: it isn't that the character didn't necessarily need to go one way or another, but that was a ridiculous way to deal with it. If the character's out of line, speak with the player. If that doesn't work, you have bigger problems with your game. But killing the character with an absurd ruling isn't a stupid way to go; it's a stupid way to handle a problem. Worse, it doesn't even make any sense; a grenade that gets shot is at worst a disabled grenade. C4 that gets shot is C4 with a hole through it. Shadowrun's hardly the most realistic representation of small arms and small unit tactics ever devised, but that's no reason to drag in extra insanity for the purpose of vindictively offing a character when far better methods for dealing with the problem were readily available.

[DarkShade]

oh one instance springs to mind.
dark conspiracy campaign, SR2 rules.
the physad is being attacked by 2 droids, humanoid-lookalike skin. in a small dark room.

party mage <in the street outside the room> weighs the odds, decides small room, relies on chunky salsa effect and chucks a STUN grenade in the room..

I still remember the face of the adept as he sees the mage player declare his action.. `you are going to do *WHAT* ? `and the mages reaction.. dont worry it will hurt them more than it hurts you..

the grenade, of course, doesnt harm the droids at all & leaves the physad fighting the same droids, just now he is at 9 boxes stun.. :)
<back then I saw the humor in it all and reminded the physad player that luckily for him the droids didnt do stun damage since they were both using blades.. :)>

DS

[SirKodiak]

[Panzergeist]

Oh, here's one I heard about from a friend but wasn't in on myself. A character in the group had a pain editor, which he kept on constantly. Never took it off, except occasionaly just to check if he was wounded. So during a run he gets shot with an arrow. No biggie, he can see that the wound is a small one, and the mage heals most of it. So after the run, they all disperse and go home. The character doesn't bother to check his wounds by turning off the pain editor. He dies in his sleep from the poison that was coating the arrowhead.

[Starfurie]