Watershed moments from mediocre players

Thought I'd share this from my old 3.5 group.

We had a player in the group, I'll call him WC. He was one of those less attentive, shy and unimaginative players that sometimes end up in gaming groups simply because we gamers are pretty accepting of oddballs. He was never super reliable or a super good player at the table but as he was not disruptive and we needed an extra warm body, we let him play.

One game he decided to play a bard. You could probably hear the eyes rolling in their sockets at this point since the bard (unlike say a fighter) is a high involvement character requiring a lot of skill to play.

However bard it was.

As the adventure progressed our low level, I think our usual L2 starting level, party ran into a Harpy. This was not good at all.

However a round or so into it, WC looked up and asked "Hey I have this counter song ability, can I use it."

DM said yep, dice were rolled and much bacon was saved with much congratulations and backslapping.

Now this wasn't really an epiphany in any sense, he didn't suddenly become a great player but he did have a good time and over time improved more than a bit. He was never an asset but he was more welcome and thats good enough.

So how about your stories ?