Something a lot of newbie GMs get tripped up by is that player “stupidity” is often a power move on the part of a disruptive player. Basically, they’ll deliberately do something that ought to get them killed off five minutes into the session, and as a GM you’re faced with two bad choices: if you back off and contrive an excuse to let them survive, you’ve demonstrated that you can be pushed around, while if you stick to your guns, you look like the bad guy.
The trick is, you don’t actually have to solve it in-character. The real solution is to do an end-run around the manufactured dilemma by addressing the player directly and telling them to stop being a dick.
(And as always, “I was just playing my character“ is never an excuse. Even if your character legitimately is the sort of gormless dipshit who wouldn’t last five minutes on an adventure without constant GM babysitting, you chose to define them that way in the first place. Still a dick move!)
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