The Super Darwin Awards

[AdamLeisemann]

It occurred to me.

 

Having Superpowers would probably not result in any increased intelligence to the Gene Pool. In fact, some supers might be tempted to do some REALLY stupid things, only to overestimate their capabilities.

 

So, in cosideration of this, I figured on a thread for some of the stupid, but still hilarious, ways you lost or nearly lost a character.

 

This could be a Darwin Award (the character is dead because of his/her stupidity) or an Honorable Mention (The character survived, either because of a really good dice roll or the sweet, sweet mercy of the GM whom your sister is probably dating.)

 

The criteria involved are basically as follows: It has to be the character's own fault. A bad die roll is not enough, nor is some arbitrary something pulled out of the GM's keister. However, If the GM gave you every out he could, and the character was still a moron, then it counts perfectly.

 

So, any outrageous character losses or near-losses you remember? They don't have to be your own character.

 

EDIT: Here's a more thorough set of rules.

 

1: Metagame doesn't count. If it was a poor die roll or bad character design, it does not count, although mechanics can play a role in the character's death/near-death.

 

2: Keep it Stupid, Simple: The character must have done something astonishingly stupid, the sort of thing that demonstrates a poor implementation of the brain.

 

3: At least you must find it funny: If it doesn't amuse you, don't expect it to amuse anyone else.

 

Nice and simple, really.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

You mean like the character with the x2 BODY vs Find Weakness attacks? The one that Pantera ate?

[AdamLeisemann]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

You mean like the character with the x2 BODY vs Find Weakness attacks? The one that Pantera ate?

 

I was thinking more in terms of the Character himself making a really poor choice, like for instance some of the stuff you see in the Darwin Awards website.

 

EDIT: My brother has an excellent example of such.

[nexus]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

You mean like deciding to follow a supervillian known for booby traps, stumbling on his conveniently easy to find "escepe vehicle" climbing inside only to discover it was empty and instead of immediately jumping out when it started up on it's own thniking that "It must be automated to return to his base!"

 

Of course, once it reached an altitude of thousands of feet it exploded. My character surivived the blast only to plummet to the earth. The gm being kind, allow a radiation accident so the character was reborn with massive cybernetic replacement (basically a brain a robotic body).

 

Not my best moment.

[FenrisUlf]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Of course, once it reached an altitude of thousands of feet it exploded. My character surivived the blast only to plummet to the earth. The gm being kind, allow a radiation accident so the character was reborn with massive cybernetic replacement (basically a brain a robotic body).

 

Why let him keep his least-used organ?

[AdamLeisemann]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

You mean like deciding to follow a supervillian known for booby traps, stumbling on his conveniently easy to find "escepe vehicle" climbing inside only to discover it was empty and instead of immediately jumping out when it started up on it's own thniking that "It must be automated to return to his base!"

 

Of course, once it reached an altitude of thousands of feet it exploded. My character surivived the blast only to plummet to the earth. The gm being kind, allow a radiation accident so the character was reborn with massive cybernetic replacement (basically a brain a robotic body).

 

Not my best moment.

 

That's what I was looking for thank you.

[RJB]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

From a 'young mutants' campaign, where the players have to discover their powers, the following quote:

 

"Nobody stop me! I'm gonna find out if I'm bullet proof or not!"

 

Nobody did, and he wasn't.

 

And I wasn't feeling the least bit merciful, inasmuch as it was the cops he was attacking.

[Stone]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Lets see. This phrase has survived for quite some time in our group.

 

Setup - The group is going after a powerful Archvillian (Despare) who has an extreme vulnerability for cold attacks (x3 stun). The group pools some XP and creates a one shot "ice gernade" (8d6 area effect radius). One PC is a shrinking/flying EP w/a nasty attack who goes by the name Tinkerbelle (Tink for short). When the group arrives where the villian is located and sees the villian.

 

Dragon (PC team leader) - "Go get her Tink"

 

Tink swoops in for a shot.

 

GM - Ok, Tink is almost there. Now what?

 

Dragon OOC - I throw the gernade

 

Result - Villian was stunned. Tinkerbelle suffered 20 inches of knockback (+15 knockback from shrinking) and had 2 body left. OWIE!

[jkwleisemann]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

So... I assume that Dragon qualifies for a Darwin because after this, Tink shrunk, snuck into his room, and blasted his ****s off?

 

Here's a thought though. Would the revolving door death policies in most comics universes mean that death doesn't necessarily score a Darwin? *ponders*

[Stone]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Werewolf game.

 

Me, I'm wolfed out holding a bad guy guard up off the ground by the neck.

 

GM - What does everyone else do?

 

PC2 (wereshark) - I bite the guards head off (yes, the one I was holding).

 

Result - guard's head is gone....along w/almost half my character's arm.

[Metaphysician]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

A prior campaign run by my GM, variant Aberrant ( bronze age, with the PCs being from the, roughly speaking, 'villain' faction ). . .

 

First character by a given player, Fenris Wolf. . .

 

1. Pissed in a public fountain while on a diplomatic mission. . .

 

2. . . to a hostile nation, in a city wherein what amounts to Superman is in residence. . .

 

3. . . and when the guards showed up and sort of warily tried to arrest him for public indecency, he ran. . .

 

4. . . through the blocks of houses between him and the city walls

 

Did I forget to mention he was basically a class 80 brick, with the Juggernaut style "I don't stop for barriers", and there's lots of people in these buildings?

 

Long story short: 'Superman' showed up, kicked his ass, and took him into custody for mass murder. During his trial he took every opportunity to anger those judging him, and despite receiving a merciful sentence of life imprisonment, used his final chance to speak to *further* offend and insult on a massive scale. Thus, he got stuck in a metal orb, and thrown into deep space.

 

And if you think this is a bad case of Darwin Candidacy, you should hear about his *second* character.

[Flames]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Years ago, back in the 80s, I was running a solo Champions game for my friend, George.

 

He insisted on writing up his own character without my help. I urged him to let me help him but he wanted to do it on his own.

 

He created a brick with a 60 STR and a whopping 50 PD.

 

But he didn't know about Resistant Defenses. He thought a 50 PD by itself made him bulletproof.

 

I started the scenario as a textbook bank robbery.

 

The villain stepped out of the bank dressed in a homemade costume and holding bags of money.

 

"Ha, ha, ha!" yelled the villain, "No-one can stop me! Nothing can penetrate my super-tough skin! I am invincible!"

 

"Not so fast, villain," George exclaimed. He performed a Grab maneuver followed immediately by a Throw maneuver, and the villain went SPLAT against a nearby brick wall. Blood everywhere.

 

Just then the SWAT team arrived. They pointed their guns at him in horror and ordered him to surrender.

 

"No, I'm not the bank robber, this guy... it was this guy..." George stammered, "Wait, I'll go get the bank manager, he'll tell you..."

 

As George was heading for the doors of the bank, the SWAT team leader yelled, "He's going back into take hostages! Fire at will!"

 

"Good thing I have a 50 PD," George breezed, "Those bullets ought to bounce right off."

 

"No, George, they don't," I informed him, "You didn't buy resistant defenses. You can't bounce bullets. If they were shooting Volkswagons at you, you'd be fine, but these are bullets, Killing Attacks. You have no defenses against them."

 

I rolled, I rolled, and I rolled, and George was pulverized into a pink mist.

 

Then he and I worked together to write up his next character.

[Enforcer84]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

He was talked out of it; but my brother once tried to teleport outside a starship going lightspeed....

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

My Star Hero game.

 

In a very urban spaceport city, the players were hunting down a cell of enemy Spec-ops troops who were operating sub rosa to help topple the Con-fed aligned government.

 

The leader of this team was part of the Enhanced Solider project one of the players, essentially a prototype 40K style space marine, had escaped from.

 

The bad guy, in his armed and armored grav-limo/APC, had managed to get into the substructure/ underground parking garage of one of the main towers at the perimeter of the spaceport, because his escorts managed to delay our heroes.

 

Super solider, in full powered battle-dress, goes after him, toting a 40mike semi auto RPG launcher loaded with fusion-bomb warheads. AOE Anti-tank stuff, because thus far the Limo had proved proof against most small arms.

 

He also has an experimental portable defense field generator backpack, very high tech for our game. He blissfully forgets that it can overload if it tries to stop too much energy in too short a time period.

 

He catches the limo at a sublevel. Next to a tanker truck full of liquid hydrogen fuel.

 

He shoots.

The fusion bomb makes the limo go boom.

It also makes the fuel truck go boom.

The ensuing explosion overloads the field generator, which goes boom, adding the overload to the rest of the damage.

 

Whereupon the building collapsed on him.

 

Leaving one gene enhanced perfect killing machine slumbering nicely in his powered armor buried in several hundred tons of concrete and steel, having taken minimal Body but at around -300 GM's option land for Stun.

[Lucius]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

We can do examples that aren't supers?

 

Then I nominate a friend whose character took on a giant in armor with a huge sword.

 

That is, the giant was in armor and had a huge sword.

 

The hero was unarmored and unarmed. True, he was the kingdom's champion boxer.....

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary notes that they put that on his tombstone

[gmurie]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I've always been a little too fond of Move Throughs for my own good. Helpful hint, when you've got a 60 STR and 20" of movement, but no knockback resistance and a PD in the twenties doing that 19d6 move through against the bad guy with an RKA Damage Shield is NOT a good idea.

 

It is entirely possible to send your character into -50 STUN in the very first phase of combat without the bad guy having to lift a finger.

[Edsel]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

In a Horror game many years ago. We (the player characters) were investigating a cave that we suspected to be the source of whatever had been mutilating cattle in the area. One we get into the cavern we are attacked by a ungodly flying horror of some sort. We finally wing the creature which crashed on to the hard stone floor. We gather in a circle and start blasting away with our guns.

 

We killed the creature. One PC died from a ricochet and my character took a nasty thigh wound from another ricochet.

[Comic]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

In an AD&D campaign.. we discover a city .. a city named Lankmar.

 

And our mage scouts it out. Our invisible, flying mage who carries most of the party's hard won loot in her bag of holding. See, the mage -- who flew over the city walls, and began poking around the tall towers of the palace with various Detect spells and was fireballed into little better than a charred husk -- wasn't the Darwin-award-winner.

 

My character, the fighter who charged the length of the city to the palace gates, and challenged the Captain of Lankmar's city guard to a duel in the profanest possible terms.. he ought to have been the winner at that moment. But his distraction worked, allowing the rest of the party to recover the mage's remains, and her Ring of Regeneration, and she lived. And my character ran away, leading the city guard a merrily chaotic chase, so _he_ lived.

 

Until the party decided that his notoriety (being the only member of the party seen) was not good for them.. and killed him while he was tanking in their next battle.

 

Which is to say, sometimes people decide for you when you shouldn't pass on your genes.

[Steve]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Here's a thought though. Would the revolving door death policies in most comics universes mean that death doesn't necessarily score a Darwin? *ponders*

 

I would imagine that would mean a character could earn more than one Darwin. You just have to die to earn one is my understanding. Coming back just gives the character more opportunities for extreme stupidity.

 

There are also the Anti-Darwin characters. Those too tough to die.

[Doc Samson]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I came late to the game session, just in time to rescue the team from a deathtrap. My character was Tesseract; a Superskrull, Mimic, Count Nefaria (I have the powers of a whole team) type. With a 50% Damage Reduction and Regen with Resurrection, he was nigh unkillable. I exclaimed this with glee as I charged into the room (despite the warnings of the other players) to free the team. Well, it turns out that I was up to my knees in nigh. Due to the powers and vulnerabilities I inherited from Nighsthade (a plant based heroine), my regen only worked in light and I had a x2 BODY and STUN Vulnerability to Cold Attacks. You guessed it, the room I charged into was in Darkness and the three minions guarding the trap had cold-based BODY Drains as their primary attacks. One volley of attacks later and I was dead as a as doorknob.

[gmurie]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I came late to the game session' date=' just in time to rescue the team from a deathtrap. My character was Tesseract; a Superskrull, Mimic, Count Nefaria (I have the powers of a whole team) type. With a 50% Damage Reduction and Regen with Resurrection, he was [i']nigh[/i] unkillable. I exclaimed this with glee as I charged into the room (despite the warnings of the other players) to free the team. Well, it turns out that I was up to my knees in nigh. Due to the powers and vulnerabilities I inherited from Nighsthade (a plant based heroine), my regen only worked in light and I had a x2 BODY and STUN Vulnerability to Cold Attacks. You guessed it, the room I charged into was in Darkness and the three minions guarding the trap had cold-based BODY Drains as their primary attacks. One volley of attacks later and I was dead as a as doorknob.

 

"Don't worry! I'm invulnerable!"

 

Those are so often the last words of so many characters....

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

Not certain this qualifies as there were no real 'choices' involved, but ...

 

the character in question had Berserk after taking Body Damage 14- to lose it, 8- to recover. Hence, the no real choices.

 

At any rate, he attacks a villain with a penetrating RKA damage shield with his claws. He craps out on the StunX, and deals no damage to the villain, but he takes a point or two of Body from the damage shield.

 

Goes berserk, attacks nearest thing: the villain with the damage shield.

 

Continually, and I do mean CONTINUALLY, craps out on HKA stun Multiplier. Eventually, he kills himself by repeatedly throwing himself at the villain.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I nominate myself for a GM Darwin award, for the death of a major NPC. Playing a Fantasy Hero game many years ago, I had a fairly nasty henchman to the Big Bad posturing on the deck of his enchanted warship while holding the Maguffin. A group of players fought their way over to him. The object had some impressive offensive capabilities , but they took a while to warn up, and it didn't provide any defenses.

 

One of the guys was playing a barbarian named Wulf. He had a 23 STR and a huge war axe. The group realized that they needed to disarm the bad guy before he started handing out red hot mystic death--can you see where this is going? Yes, Wulf's player targets the guys arms and cuts them both off. He then neatly snags the the object and dives overboard. At which point, all the other minions (and the GM) are sort of left with mouths agape.

 

I did not intend this to be a comical moment. In fact, I had spent several sessions trying to put the fear of God into the players about this guy.

[casualplayer]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I had a player who:

 

Teleported into a moving jetplane without equalizing speeds first (long before Relative Velocity adders and such.)

 

Was buried alive, which is bad for a claustrophobic. He was initially "killed" in a cave-in, transferred to a body bag then to a morgue and then to the casket causing real problems with his Regeneration Only in Sunlight. When his teammate, acting on a hunch, opened the casket during the ceremony Lightbearer burst free in full Berserk mode and severed his teammate's leg in passing as his own way of saying "Thank you."

 

Used his magical powers to put a clown nose on Dr. Destroyer. I kid you not. Even after I, and everyone else in the game, asked him "Are you sure?" Dr. Destroyer casually seared the insult away, whispered into a communicator in his gauntlet "Lightbearer, annihilate," and launched a tracking missile after the character that stalked him for hundreds of miles before blowing him into a fine, red mist when it caught him.

[Stone]

Re: The Super Darwin Awards

 

I nominate myself for a GM Darwin award, for the death of a major NPC. Playing a Fantasy Hero game many years ago, I had a fairly nasty henchman to the Big Bad posturing on the deck of his enchanted warship while holding the Maguffin. A group of players fought their way over to him. The object had some impressive offensive capabilities , but they took a while to warn up, and it didn't provide any defenses.

 

One of the guys was playing a barbarian named Wulf. He had a 23 STR and a huge war axe. The group realized that they needed to disarm the bad guy before he started handing out red hot mystic death--can you see where this is going? Yes, Wulf's player targets the guys arms and cuts them both off. He then neatly snags the the object and dives overboard. At which point, all the other minions (and the GM) are sort of left with mouths agape.

 

I did not intend this to be a comical moment. In fact, I had spent several sessions trying to put the fear of God into the players about this guy.

 

 

I feel your pain. I ran a Rolemaster game a few years back. For some reason it seemde whenever I ever I put the group up against a tough villian (a Lich, a War Troll Shaman, high level mages), one of the group would score a critical on the villian very early in the combat & would get the dreaded "stunned and unable to parry". So my big bad villian would go down with a whimper. There is something just not right about a hobbit w/a short bow taking down a war troll in less than 30 seconds.

 

On the flipside whenever I sent low level flunkies after them, the PC's always got hurt. I used to threaten to send a 1st level orc armed w/a touch after them.