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An interesting thing happened on the way through an abandoned dwarven mine. My current group of adventurers; a 9th lvl Dwarven Fighter, a 9th lvl Wood Elven Outrider, and a 7th lvl Gnome Sage (w/o spell casting) encountered a group of 6 4th lvl Greater Orcs and their leader a 10th lvl Orc Barbarian. The party charged the hated orc-kin (background motivation) but the Dwarf and Elf were driven back into a narrow passageway leaving the Gnome Sage high and dry.
The Dwarf stood his ground and cut down all 6 Greater Orcs with the aid of liberal bow-fire from the elven outrider. Since the only way out of the dead-end cavern was past the Dwarf and Elf, the Barbarian Orc Leader was forced to take on the fearsome duo. No one paid any attention to the Sage in the corner, who declared his action as hiding every round since the beginning of battle.
The Dwarf and Orc Barbarian dueled it out for about 10 rnds, trading blow after blow, matching parry for parry. The Elf watched in awe as the Dwarf insisted that this one was his alone. Neither the Orc or the Dwarf could roll above 10 on anything they attempted. After 10 rounds, the Gnome Sage pulled his Iron Dagger (used for whittling and cooking only) snuck up behind the Orc Barbarian and leapt into the air swinging wildly with his dagger...
The Gnome has an OB of 30 with the dagger and 1 rank of Ambush. The Ambush was successful the attack began with an um00. We stopped doing the math after 300. Even better the +/-1 on the critical was not needed as the critical indicated that the gnome had cleared about 2' vertical jump and stuck his dagger through the Orcs ear canal.
The Orc collapsed at the feet of the Dwarf; very dead. The Gnome landed atop the Orc and tempted the fates sorely by offering the Dwarf his dagger. The offer was not the problem but the innocent explanation that; "Obviously, my dagger is far superior to your dwarven axe. Maybe, you should use it since you are our groups main warrior?"
I am pretty sure the arm flexing and "fear me" statements made by the Gnome Sages player did not help much either...
We've all known dumb players. They pick fights they have no hope of winning, decide to play around with the Evil Maguffin ("Just to see how it works") and open any sealed door marked with runes that translate as, "Whatever you do, don't open this door."
But there are times when someone is so dumb it reaches the levels of genius. Which brings me to a player I'll call Claude, because it's his name.
Claude is, quite simply, the most consistent brilliantly-dumb player I've ever known. Most dumb players need an opportunity to be dumb; Claude made his own opportunities. I only played in one campaign with him, back when we were at Uni around 15 years ago. I have no idea what he's doing now -- but I sincerely hope he's still provoking feelings of awed disbelief in a roleplaying group somewhere.
There were four members in the party: my Common Man Ranger, Danny's High Man Ranger, Abir's Dwarf Fighter and Claude's Walking Disaster.
It so happened that we had been hired to protect an elderly noblewoman from the gangster who wanted her property. We'd already figured out Claude's character was pretty dumb, but at this stage didn't realise just HOW dumb. So, in our innocence, we left his character guarding the old lady while we went about the delicate task of scouting out the enemy's lair.
We returned to find the old lady excessively dead, on account of a large number of stab wounds. Claude's character was standing by her bed, covered in gore, holding a bloody dagger.
US (restrained): "What in the blackest pits of the Seven Hells happened here?"
CLAUDE (happily): "I killed her."
There was a moment of stunned silence as this sunk in.
US: "Why?"
CLAUDE: "She's a witch."
US: "A witch. Hoooo-kay. How do you know she's a witch?"
CLAUDE: "That guy we thought was the bad guy told me. He popped over while you were out."
US: "And you believed him?"
CLAUDE: "Of course I did. He's my long-lost brother."
US: "But you don't have a brother. You're an only child. You've never had a brother."
CLAUDE (beaming happily): "I do now."
And there was the business about shields. Claude's character didn't believe in shields. I mean, we assume he believed in the existence of shields, but he didn't believe any right-thinking warrior should ever carry one. As a result, he relied on my character's ever-dwindling supply of herbs to heal him after every combat.
Then came the kind of bizarre situation RoleMaster throws at you every once in a while. In the space of six combat rounds, the other three of us all had our shields shattered. Claude, his character bleeding from half a dozen wounds, smiled. "Now you see why I don't carry a shield," he said.
Some time later we reached the Big City. Despite Claude, we'd somehow managed to amass a respectable amount of gold, so we decided to splash out by staying in as good an inn as would accept adventurers, on the grounds that we were less likely to be robbed. We could tell it was a high-class joint: our rooms had wall-to-wall carpeting. In a paisley pattern.
Claude's character was amazed. He paced the dimensions of the room. He muttered, "Damn strange animal this skin came from -- and HUGE!" Then he dropped to his knees, pulled out his dagger, and cut out a large square of carpet from the middle of the room "to show to the folks back home". We found another inn, one without carpets. We got robbed.
Sadly, all great performances must end (at least, I think Claude was performing, though I didn't know him outside the game, so I'm not sure).
A few nights later, having accepted a commission to investigate and, if possible, destroy the gang of smugglers operating in the city, we were hidden around the wharves. At least, three of us were hidden. Claude's character decided to confuse any wrong-doers by hanging around nonchalantly in plain sight as if he were some love-lorn Lothario seeking solace in solitude.
Sure enough, the smugglers appeared in the moonlight. Rather a lot of them. Too many to handle. Claude's character yelled, "AAARGH! SMUGGLERS!" and began to run. Realising from his cry that this was not some love-lorn Lothario, the smugglers set off in pursuit.
The dice weren't with Claude. He fumbled his MM roll and fell. By the time he recovered, they were 20 feet behind him and closing fast. He decided new tactics were in order.
"I'll hide," he said.
"Where?" said Tony, our GM. "You're in plain sight and they're less than 20 feet behind you."
"In an alley between warehouses."
"They'll see you go in. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"
"Yes."
So he nipped into a handy alley and stopped dead, trusting to the shadows to keep him safe. The smugglers followed and ran straight into him.
We buried his character in style. We splashed out much of our depleted gold on a decent coffin, and in it we placed a few mementos: his sword, a broken shield, the dagger he'd used to kill the old lady, and his piece of carpet. We bought a headstone and hired a stone-mason to carve his epitaph.
It read, "He died as he lived: with utter stupidity."
The Rolemaster group had been playing faithfully every two weeks for a couple of years, so we were well entrenched in the campaign. Our group seemed to have some sense of direction but things were going slow. The nominal party leader, Matt, was a munchkin who only looked as far as the next fight. But Matt was the GM’s best friend and had the GM’s ear, so we tried to help him direct the party. But the dice gods frowned upon Matt and his original character died, so he brought in a new one and much to our surprise thwarted the DM.
The DM, Dave, ran a pretty loose game. He was pretty liberal in letting us design characters that we wanted. There was one sole exception, the Great Man from Rolemaster Companion I. That race was strictly off limits. Matt, in his munchkinhood, decided he wanted to play this race combined with a bashkar (berserker) to make the ultimate fighter. The other players were a bit disgusted by Matt’s choice and flouting Dave. We were more disgusted when Dave let Matt play his new character anyway…or so we thought.
Things started out well enough for the Great Man, his skills in combat were impressive. But he kept getting dog piled with extra combatants and as being a berserker lowers the character’s defense he started accumulating more and more wounds. Keep in mind the best healers in the party were my Dervish and another player’s necromancer. The dervish was a jack of all trades type but not very good at any one thing, the necromancer was a bit better in the healing department. Neither were very skilled or had many spells to help the beleaguered bashkar.
About four or five game sessions in there was a combat that yielded a nasty neck critical on the bashkar. The necromancer managed to save Matt’s now nearly-dead character and we got him back to an inn to try and work out what we wanted to do. We were playing good characters and put our personal reservations on hold and began to use non magical means to bring the bashkar back from the cusp of death.
(Two critical fumbles by the dervish and necromancer later...)
Not only had the bashkar been at death’s door, we threw him through it. Luckily one of the other PC’s saw we were getting in over our heads and ran out to find a local healer. The bashkar managed to hold on by his finger tips and the new healer scolded us for our amateurish efforts. The bashkar was left with limited motion in his neck, minus 5 permanent impairment. There were no magical healers to fix serious problems, so we got his hit points back and pressed on. Matt if nothing else was determined to get to the next fight, which seemed okay with Dave.
A couple game sessions later another combat ensued, against some fairly scary undead assassins (being we were 7th or 8th level, it meant for a tough fight). The bashkar went berserk and we managed to kill off the assassins. The problem was the bashkar fumbled his self discipline roll to get back to normal. So Dave told him he had to keep fighting, and pointed at me as Matt’s next victim. My dervish was a decent martial artist, but nowhere nearly as capable as the great man bearing down on her. I could not run, so I choked back the fear and roll initiative. Luckily I won that, so given I was cornered I decided to make a fight of it until the rest of the party could pin the bashkar.
I rolled two dice and prayed. The result came up a 99! Open ended, woo hoo! I followed up with another roll in the 90’s. More than enough to get past the bashkar’s weak defense (though the staggering amount of hit points is another problem).
The group was very silent, because my dice rolling is legendary for being hot and cold. Sure money was on this critical roll being frozen.
Rolling two more dice…
I could not believe my eyes. A high 90’s E critical on the strikes martial arts table! Then I read the fine print…and I paraphrase:
“Double palm strike drive nose through foe's brain, foes dies instantly.”
So much for the problem of the bashkar. I didn’t exactly want to kill him, but I had little choice but to have my dervish defend herself.
A sad but funny end…or so I thought.
I was a friend of the GM too, and I was curious about the whole issue of Matt’s character. So in private, I asked him about this. Dave said he was cheesed, but decided to teach Matt a lesson rather than directly shoot him down. Matt being the obvious threat always got more attackers on him than anyone else. Dave tilted dice rolls that he would normally modify to eschew many deadly hits for the rest of us as straight up rolls for Matt. I thought this was tremendously funny and I had a bit more respect for Dave, albeit it grudgingly as I had to end the group’s problem with the bashkar. Matt's presence in the group was muted for the next couple of years as his influence in the group was now over. We played for a few more years and after this incident we accomplish a lot more than running from one fight to the next.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, my intrepid travelers in the RM game system decided they needed a break from their regular characters. Dutifully, we wrote up some spur of the moment characters of mid-teen level to go thumping around with, and much to all of our surprise, the band of misanthropes we created turned out to be quite endearing. We kept them, and played them for some time.
This was a flawed group if ever you'd seen them.
I mentioned Arloff the Druid once before, a druid who's sole claim to fame involved turning himself into a fern 3-4 levels down into an underground dungeon in order to escape pursuit. He was joined by Cerzad, a deaf-mute, hemophiliac sorceress (who some time later died in an iron maiden: I don't recall ever having *seen* so much bleeding damage per round done to a character), Skilan Trumbrow, an elven thief who wanted to be a ranger (or was that a ranger who wanted to be a thief? We'll probably never know...), the mage Albert Compton (who's claim to fame involved having one skill rank in every academic skill he could learn and who's original development stretched the bounds of all good gaming taste :-) ), Taegin the Odd, a half elf mentalist with the moxy of a dwarf berserker, Kosef the poor long-suffering Paladin humbly questing to restore sanity to the group and the subject of this writing, Kaf the Warrior Monk.
Kaf was a Warrior Monk only because the DM decided in his wisdom that High Warrior Monks were a bit too nutty for his game concept. So, he suffered the infamy of Warrior Monk double development of all relevant combat skills every level he attained. I'm not sure, but I think he knew a language, too. Given his well rounded development and broad-spectrum upbringing in the basement of a monastery, he came to have a very open, egalitarian, unprejudiced view of the world. All non-humans were made to service the goals of martial artists, in particular the gathering of crit-points to increase in level, and therefore increase in total double development of martial arts skills. Women were... well, since women weren't allowed into the hallowed grounds of the monk's hall, they must somehow be less capable, more fragile and generally not made of as stern a stuff as warriormonks.
Kaf was constant as the northern star in many respects. He could have many adventures with Cerzad and a woman archmaged they occasionally were hired by, but he stayed true to his beliefs. Despite the courage he witnessed several women show, he maintained steadfast in his belief of his own image of the world.
Our fearless adventurers found themselves scouting an island called Tarek Nev (the DM adapted the module 'Demons of the Burning Night' for our entertainment (read that sheer terror)). In a long and protracted battle with many fearsome enemies, they somehow managed to find themselves temporarily transported back in time and into the middle of a tourney of sorts, where they met V'rama Vair, queen of the island.
Now I am not certain if this is something directly from the module, or if our DM just had it in for old Kaf that day, but V'rama appeared, in her chariot, wielding her nasty whip, dressed in an outfit that would have embarrassed Xena, Warrior Princess for it's lack of modesty. I guess she figured that the party was 'lunch' in tourney-speak, because she made short work of Skilan and poor Kosef, who tried to parley with her. Her sorcery stopped Carzad in her tracks and knocked Albert Compton senseless, but Kaf was not confused. He seized upon a plan certain to render her helpless in one fell swoop.
You see, Kaf had recognized what none of his groupmates had not, namely that all he had to do to render this haughty woman helpless, was disrobe her! She would then be so mortified by the public and most indecent display that she would fall to the ground in horror, or at worst flee the field, thus granting him victory.
So, true to his nature, Kaf adrenaled his way between bolts of fire, stinging whips and the breath weapon of that bloody chariot and with a somersault was beside his victim. With both hands he reached and grabbed V'rama's skimpy corset and gave a mighty heave...
What Kaf did not realize was that V'rama did not quite conform to his view of the weak-willed woman. It was quite a surprise when he realized that her clothing was charged, and his contact had grounded a considerable electrical charge through his body. (He failed one heckuva resistance roll here, resulting in an 'E' electricity critical being delivered).
With an evil grin, the DM told Kaf's player that *he* could roll the critical. Cheerfully, my good friend drew out his unluckiest pair of dice and gave a might heave. The ten's dice stopped first, landing on a '0'. Most of us around the table relaxed, figuring it almost certain that Kaf would be fine, and the bra would come off. The one's dice rolled, rolled and yes, you got it, also landed on '0'. Kaf glowed inside a halo of blue electric light, and the last any of his friends saw of him was his bones as they turned to powdered carbon.
I'm not entirely sure how we finished the fight. Most of us were laughing so hard we couldn't see the dice, the table, or after a few moments, much of anything in the room. I think I myself might have hyperventilated. The stunned look on my friend's face as he asks, quite frustratedly, 'How in the heck can I die from a BRA?' will remain etched in my mind as a pinnacle moment of gaming.
One campaign I was in, we had a Paladin that was on a mission for his order, to return a sword to them. On the way to the caverns where it was suspected to be, my Magician took a death crit from some highway robbers. The GM had a house rule that anyone who was dying could make a call for Divine Intervention. You had to roll over 150 to get it. I made it. So, while the rest of the party trashed the robbers, I was having a conversation with someone inside my head. Whoever answered my call for help also had his eye on the sword. All I had to do was speak a spell he put in my brain, and touch sword. He would grab it then. Then, he stopped my bleeding, and fixed me up just enough that it wouldn't be suspicious to the party.
We made our way on from there, eventually coming to a large pit, with some guy holding a sword at the bottom of it. Then proceeded to debate the best course of action for 5 minutes. We later learned our target took that time to cast defensive spells. It turned out to be a vampire wielding the sword, which we found out once three of our party used Landing to get down there. Things did not go well. We had 5 fighter-types down at the bottom, getting sliced, and the thief and I were up at the top, trying to figure out whether we should run or not.
After a brief internal struggle, I told the thief to remember me fondly, threw Levitation, and stepped over the edge. As I floated to the bottom of the pit, I noticed our crew was pretty banged up, and the vampire was smiling. I also started the spell I was given. The vampire recognized what I was doing immediately, and stopped smiling. Screeching incoherently, it leaped for me as soon as I was close to it. He impaled me nicely with the sword, but as soon as it popped out my back, it disappeared. I had gotten enough of the spell out in time. Of course, I now had only about 5 rounds left to live, due to bleeding.
Without the sword, the rest of the group was able to handle the vampire. But the GM ruled that even though I was unconscious, my Levitation was still in effect. So, for the rest of the fight, they had my unconscious form dribbling blood on them. For some reason, the GM thought this was hilarious, and we had to wait several times for him to stop laughing about it. I failed to see the humor.
They managed to finish off the vampire, and the thief managed to get a rope around me, and tug me back up to the top and stop my bleeding (through several jokes about balloons from the GM.) The Paladin was pretty upset with me over that, but when everyone pointed out that if the sword had stayed in the fight, everyone would be dead, he decided to "let me off easy, this time."
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