One of the best things about being a DM is seeing what choices your players make in-character that adds to the game. I'm always interested in hearing about some of the weird or odd or gross things your players have decided to do.

For instance, I have a female friend who is playing a male halfling rogue that has an affinity for urinating on his dead foes. I'm not sure where she suddenly got this idea, but from the second battle on, she has made him pee on the corpses of his group's dead enemies. I allowed it because I thought it was funny and weird, which I encourage.

What sort of weird things have your players come up with that made you cringe, laugh, or otherwise question their sanity?

had a druid  that took the eyes of all the enemies he killed in the belief that they couldn't see in the afterlife and kept the eyes in a pouch

In one campaign I was in, we had an encounter with humanoid monsters that kept getting back up until we cut out their hearts. The rest of the campaign we tore out every enemies heart just to be sure.

I have personally played a whole range of characters with bizarre quirks, have played with others who had characters who had their own, and as DM presided of some pretty interesting behaviors.

In a game I played, we had a half-orc barbarian.  His player really wanted to play up the fact that his character had a particularly low INT score, and at first just wanted to make it clear that he had no intention of participating in anything other than combat.  He accomplished this by flat out stating his character was too dumb to realize when a wall ended and a door began.  So... he knocked.  On everything.  Everywhere.  Despite the fact that this started off as a way for him to be obstinate and refuse to participate in role play or puzzles, the party worked around it.  As the barbarian wound his way around a noble NPC's house, our ambiguous cleric (more on her later) convinced the lord that the barbarian was a very thorough body guard checking the premises for spies and interloper.

The barbarian became a legendary figure "He/The One Who Knocks", after his continual knocking both set off and disabled a variety of traps, found hidden doors, opened chests, found a mimic, convinced captives to yield up information in exchange for him to stop knocking on their heads... etc.

The ambiguous cleric was my character.  She was a sociopath; emotionally impaired.  Despite not experiencing emotions at the same fundamental level as other creatures, or possibly because of it, she was a master manipulator.  She only technically qualified as lawful good because of a series or particular rules that had been hammered into her (sometime literally) during her upbringing (she was raised to be a valkyrie or Eir, lawful-good norse goddess of life, protection, and mercy, and for obvious reasons, as a sociopath, she didn't quite make the cut for the team, but still serves as a cleric of the deity).  The reason for her sociopathy is explained in her lineage.  She was an aasimar, born from the union of a valkyrie and a half-elf.  Genetics played it game of chance, and she winded up with a strong connection to the fey ancestry of her father.  Fey + celestial resulted in a mind that didn't quite function like a mortal one ought.

She followed her code strictly though, which is how despite everything she maintained a technically lawful-good alignment.  1.) Bring mercy to those who suffer.  2.)  Act as chooser of the slain, and determine the worthy.  3.) Protect those under your charge.  As a sociopath character, these rules gave me leeway enough to act in nontraditional fashions for lawful-good without ever actually breaking that alignment, though some of her action were certainly debatable, but "debatably good" is not "clearly evil".

Also: I play my fey weird.  Saturday morning cartoon weird.  Tim Burton weird.

Another side effect of the fey in her lineage was that every session, without fail, started with her waking up before the rest of the party (which meant me logging into roll20 about 15-20 minutes before we were due to play and doing all this in the chat logs for people to read when they logged in) and having an "episode".

When I play fey anything, I bend the 4th wall a bit.  The wyrd explanation for her episodes was that where you get valkyries, you get vikings.  Where you get vikings, you get Swedes.  Where you get Swedes, you get all manner of Swedish professions.

The cleric would begin a sleep-walk-esque trance.  She would then bang pots and pans together, and begin to cook, and narrate her actions as she prepared the dish.  Here is an example of such a narration:

"On tudey's ipisude-a ve-a vill be-a mekeeng chuculete-a muose-a. Yuou vill need a lerge-a buol ouff melted chuculete-a, a bruosh, und oune-a muose-a... Bork Bork Bork!"

She spoke like the Swedish Chef, and often violently handled her ingredients (which mysteriously appeared out of nowhere) like Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time (including sometimes hacking a random onion to bits in the most destructive way possible, even if onion was not even on the ingredients list, while screaming "Hacka löken!")

When she was done making whatever it was she was cooking that day, she would snap out of the trance, look around at whatever she'd been making, and dispose of any evidence of her sleep-walking episode.  If the thing she was making was a living thing (like the chocolate "moose" in Swedish Chef above), she'd give it a slap on the rump to drive it off into whatever environment they were in.  Everything else, she set on fire.  So, by the time she was done, the party had no extra food, and the whole thing, from the mechanical point of view of the campaign, never happened.

From a roleplay aspect though, it was always fun for party members to mention what they found her doing that morning, and for her to adamantly assert she had no recollection of such an event, deny it happened, or demand they not talk about it.

I had a group of level 4 adventurers, my current group, running around the sewers of Narthen, they were on the hunt for the cause of the diseased rats that were plaguing the city and figure out who/what was painting the Hand of Malar on all the major buildings in the town.

While down there they saw this man/creature running through the sewers just outside where the local thieve's guild was supposed to be and gave chase. After a few harrowing experiences, including a rat swarm tsunami, they caught sight of this person again. They followed him into a slightly larger room and attempted to parlay, however this creature seemed bent on destroying the town to make it his own after the populace had shunned him for what he was...a Wererat.

Fight ensues, the party has found that their attacks are dealing little to no damage to this thing and it's toying with them. A few critical hits later this creature decides it's time to run so that he may continue his plan, turns into his rat form and tries to scurry away...and this is when I had one of the most memorable exchanges with my players:

Mhurren: I pick it up and try to bite it's head off.
DM(me): Alright, roll a grapple to see if you can Ozzy this rodent... (I rolled and lost)
--You grab the rat and with all your might you chomp down on this thing...your teeth meeting a resistance you couldn't have expected, it's almost as if you're trying to bite down on cement.
Karrana: I still have all those herbs and stuff from when I worked  with the apothecary right?
DM: Yea....?
Karrana: I want to pull out the sleeping powder and mix it into a paste.
DM: That'll take your turn, but go ahead. (I roll to escape the grapple and fail miserably, instead I have the rat bite down on Mhurren's tongue)
Mhurren: I'm going to hold the rat like this until we can figure out what to do with it. (I have him roll a con save to struggle through the bite, he's raging...it works because his dice love him)
Karrana: I want to shove the sleeping salve into the rat's mouth!
Party: What? How? You'll put Mhurren to sleep! You can't reach it's mouth....
Karrana: Oh, yea, um....*long pause*....*evil giggle*....I'm going to give it a suppository!!

I have dealt with a LOT of things in D&D in 30 some years of playing/DMing...and now this...

DM: (Rolls con to resist the sleeping agent....fails miserably) The rodent starts to go limp in Mhurren's hands, the head of the creature seems to be growing while you still have it clamped in your teeth.
Mhurren: I spit the creature out and try to break it's neck before it grows any bigger.
Vlad: Just drop it on the ground, we can unload all our spells on it and make sure it's dead.
Aloxyis: I ready my eldritch blast for when it hits the ground.
Vistra: I ready dissonant whispers.
DM: Do you drop the rat Mhurren?
Mhurren: Sure...

And so, our intrepid heroes have slain a wererat by putting it to sleep with a suppository and blasting the ever loving stuffing out of it as it rested peacefully.

Quote from Sam_Hain >>

I have personally played a whole range of characters with bizarre quirks, have played with others who had characters who had their own, and as DM presided of some pretty interesting behaviors.

In a game I played, we had a half-orc barbarian.  His player really wanted to play up the fact that his character had a particularly low INT score, and at first just wanted to make it clear that he had no intention of participating in anything other than combat.  He accomplished this by flat out stating his character was too dumb to realize when a wall ended and a door began.  So... he knocked.  On everything.  Everywhere.  Despite the fact that this started off as a way for him to be obstinate and refuse to participate in role play or puzzles, the party worked around it.  As the barbarian wound his way around a noble NPC's house, our ambiguous cleric (more on her later) convinced the lord that the barbarian was a very thorough body guard checking the premises for spies and interloper.

The barbarian became a legendary figure "He/The One Who Knocks", after his continual knocking both set off and disabled a variety of traps, found hidden doors, opened chests, found a mimic, convinced captives to yield up information in exchange for him to stop knocking on their heads... etc.

 

The ambiguous cleric was my character.  She was a sociopath; emotionally impaired.  Despite not experiencing emotions at the same fundamental level as other creatures, or possibly because of it, she was a master manipulator.  She only technically qualified as lawful good because of a series or particular rules that had been hammered into her (sometime literally) during her upbringing (she was raised to be a valkyrie or Eir, lawful-good norse goddess of life, protection, and mercy, and for obvious reasons, as a sociopath, she didn't quite make the cut for the team, but still serves as a cleric of the deity).  The reason for her sociopathy is explained in her lineage.  She was an aasimar, born from the union of a valkyrie and a half-elf.  Genetics played it game of chance, and she winded up with a strong connection to the fey ancestry of her father.  Fey + celestial resulted in a mind that didn't quite function like a mortal one ought.

She followed her code strictly though, which is how despite everything she maintained a technically lawful-good alignment.  1.) Bring mercy to those who suffer.  2.)  Act as chooser of the slain, and determine the worthy.  3.) Protect those under your charge.  As a sociopath character, these rules gave me leeway enough to act in nontraditional fashions for lawful-good without ever actually breaking that alignment, though some of her action were certainly debatable, but "debatably good" is not "clearly evil".

Also: I play my fey weird.  Saturday morning cartoon weird.  Tim Burton weird.

Another side effect of the fey in her lineage was that every session, without fail, started with her waking up before the rest of the party (which meant me logging into roll20 about 15-20 minutes before we were due to play and doing all this in the chat logs for people to read when they logged in) and having an "episode".

When I play fey anything, I bend the 4th wall a bit.  The wyrd explanation for her episodes was that where you get valkyries, you get vikings.  Where you get vikings, you get Swedes.  Where you get Swedes, you get all manner of Swedish professions.

The cleric would begin a sleep-walk-esque trance.  She would then bang pots and pans together, and begin to cook, and narrate her actions as she prepared the dish.  Here is an example of such a narration:

"On tudey's ipisude-a ve-a vill be-a mekeeng chuculete-a muose-a. Yuou vill need a lerge-a buol ouff melted chuculete-a, a bruosh, und oune-a muose-a... Bork Bork Bork!"

She spoke like the Swedish Chef, and often violently handled her ingredients (which mysteriously appeared out of nowhere) like Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time (including sometimes hacking a random onion to bits in the most destructive way possible, even if onion was not even on the ingredients list, while screaming "Hacka löken!")

When she was done making whatever it was she was cooking that day, she would snap out of the trance, look around at whatever she'd been making, and dispose of any evidence of her sleep-walking episode.  If the thing she was making was a living thing (like the chocolate "moose" in Swedish Chef above), she'd give it a slap on the rump to drive it off into whatever environment they were in.  Everything else, she set on fire.  So, by the time she was done, the party had no extra food, and the whole thing, from the mechanical point of view of the campaign, never happened.

From a roleplay aspect though, it was always fun for party members to mention what they found her doing that morning, and for her to adamantly assert she had no recollection of such an event, deny it happened, or demand they not talk about it.

 This. Was. A journey. Thank you for posting!

Quote from DMThac0 >>

I had a group of level 4 adventurers, my current group, running around the sewers of Narthen, they were on the hunt for the cause of the diseased rats that were plaguing the city and figure out who/what was painting the Hand of Malar on all the major buildings in the town.

While down there they saw this man/creature running through the sewers just outside where the local thieve's guild was supposed to be and gave chase. After a few harrowing experiences, including a rat swarm tsunami, they caught sight of this person again. They followed him into a slightly larger room and attempted to parlay, however this creature seemed bent on destroying the town to make it his own after the populace had shunned him for what he was...a Wererat.

Fight ensues, the party has found that their attacks are dealing little to no damage to this thing and it's toying with them. A few critical hits later this creature decides it's time to run so that he may continue his plan, turns into his rat form and tries to scurry away...and this is when I had one of the most memorable exchanges with my players:

Mhurren: I pick it up and try to bite it's head off.
DM(me): Alright, roll a grapple to see if you can Ozzy this rodent... (I rolled and lost)
--You grab the rat and with all your might you chomp down on this thing...your teeth meeting a resistance you couldn't have expected, it's almost as if you're trying to bite down on cement.
Karrana: I still have all those herbs and stuff from when I worked  with the apothecary right?
DM: Yea....?
Karrana: I want to pull out the sleeping powder and mix it into a paste.
DM: That'll take your turn, but go ahead. (I roll to escape the grapple and fail miserably, instead I have the rat bite down on Mhurren's tongue)
Mhurren: I'm going to hold the rat like this until we can figure out what to do with it. (I have him roll a con save to struggle through the bite, he's raging...it works because his dice love him)
Karrana: I want to shove the sleeping salve into the rat's mouth!
Party: What? How? You'll put Mhurren to sleep! You can't reach it's mouth....
Karrana: Oh, yea, um....*long pause*....*evil giggle*....I'm going to give it a suppository!!

I have dealt with a LOT of things in D&D in 30 some years of playing/DMing...and now this...

DM: (Rolls con to resist the sleeping agent....fails miserably) The rodent starts to go limp in Mhurren's hands, the head of the creature seems to be growing while you still have it clamped in your teeth.
Mhurren: I spit the creature out and try to break it's neck before it grows any bigger.
Vlad: Just drop it on the ground, we can unload all our spells on it and make sure it's dead.
Aloxyis: I ready my eldritch blast for when it hits the ground.
Vistra: I ready dissonant whispers.
DM: Do you drop the rat Mhurren?
Mhurren: Sure...

And so, our intrepid heroes have slain a wererat by putting it to sleep with a suppository and blasting the ever loving stuffing out of it as it rested peacefully.

 

 I guess this is the opposite of "pulling a solution out of their ass?"

This story is a bit risque, but I think it's pretty damn funny. I'll spoiler it in case someone isn't into a story that has a sexually explicit element.

 In case you're wondering, here's the rainbow-colored troll from the story. It's painted by Irontusk, the same guy who later ended up painting all the character minis for Critical Role's Wildemount campaign.

And in case the story of the puzzle with the fountain and the illusion intrigued you, here's the Soundcloud link of the party figuring things out. It's about 18 minutes long and it contains some explicit language, so listen at your own risk.

Quote from TexasDevin >>

This story is a bit risque, but I think it's pretty damn funny. I'll spoiler it in case someone isn't into a story that has a sexually explicit element.

My wife approves and I applaud! Well played👍

Anytime a phallic object has made its way into a party in a game I'm in, inevitably, we get someone with a crossbow that wants to launch it at someone....

Anytime a phallic object has made its way into a party in a game I'm in, inevitably, we get someone with a crossbow that wants to launch it at someone....

I once played a character who never left behind a corpse. he was a necromancer.

I have a player who has a lizardfolk barbarian who always eats the party's foes after they've been killed (unless they are undead.)   He's also generally obsessed with food.  Most of the rest of his party finds this a bit disturbing.

I've started letting players in that game run 2 characters, because work and school schedules have seriously impacted our numbers this year.  This particular player is almost never able to come to our regular time now due to work, but recently we held a Saturday session so he could join us; his second character is a Kenku Warlock who is smug and a bit fastidious.  He's disgusted by the barbarian's cannibalism and mannerisms, too, which I find hillarious since they share a player!