So, last Saturday I ran an adventure centering around rigging the North American Urban Brawl championships. Basically, the players needed to prevent three key players from playing in the game to make sure the Seattle Screamers won the championship, and place a bet on the Screamers, thereby allowing them to make a huge sum of money (this was set up by an employee with the Gates Casino and wound up making them a ton of money as well, so they're not out to break any of the PCs' kneecaps).
My players are all playing mostly good characters (if I were to categorize them in D&D/Pathfinder terms, they'd all be Chaotic Good), so they weren't wanting to do any wetwork, but they figured out nonlethal ways of removing each player from the game in a way that looked accidental. One target's cyberlegs were hacked by the Decker while the Mage ran interference, and the firmware failed catastrophically right before gametime. The second target was on probation for Bliss use and had an implanted bio-monitor to alert the cops if he dosed up; the Face posed as a masseuse and slipped him a slap-patch full of Bliss while giving him a rub-down to take care of him.
The third guy had a reputation for brawling and liked low-class Irish pubs, so the players figured that they'd track him to a pub, goad him into a fight and get him arrested on assault charges. This part was handled by our Street Sam, a troll with four cyberlimbs and more armor than most vehicles, and a Mystic Adept who's more mystic than adept. The pub in question was the Bawdy Lass, which the PCs learned has a pervasive anti-elf bias, so the Mystic Adept, an elf, figured that she'd get the target to throw the first punch, which would get a bar-wide brawl going and they'd slip out in the confusion. The Street Sam would stand by for back-up.
Thing is, this was really a fight I figured the Street Sam would handle, so I gave this brawler enough 'ware to make it an interesting fight. He wasn't very well armored (only a pool of 15), but I gave the guy (an ork) bone lacing, rating 3 synaptic boosters and muscle replacement. I figured it would be an interesting match-up; stonewall versus quicker-than-a-hiccup, that kind of thing. The problem is, after the Mystic Adept got the fight started, she didn't back out. And again, she's geared more for spellcasting than melee; she's got Killing Hands and a few levels of Mystic Armor, but she doesn't have any points in Improved Reflexes and she only has a Strength of 3, so this fight was way out of her league.
Suffice to say after three initiative passes, the brawler had smashed her in the face for 12 points of physical damage after the soak rolls, and she was into overflow and bleeding out. The Street Sam stepped in and pulled her out, but she was about to die in 3 minutes, and he had no medical training whatsoever. I threw them both a bone and decided that there was a medkit behind the bar, which the Street Sam was able to use to stabilize her after bull-rushing his way through the crowd to the bar.
This whole turn of events was really shocking to me, since the Mystic Adept's player is usually very level-headed. Later, she explained that the decision to stay in the fight was character-driven, and she posted a pretty good piece of writing detailing what was going on in her character's head while she lay dying, so I have to give her props for roleplaying, but it's still the most stunningly suicidal move I've seen a player make in one of my games.
How about the rest of you? Any good stories about things your players have done that left you gaping in disbelief?
