Is this the worst idiot-ball?
The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan:
There is a school where people become badasses by training 18 hours a day for up 20 years, then pay by being indentured servants for 30 years. There are two known people from this school: the main bad-guy, and the servant of a union boss; who only completed 10 years.
This servant works with a private detective, the hypercompetent second-in-command of a crime boss, a wizard, and a bunch of thugs. They capture the main bad-guy, take his obvious weapons, cuff him and throw him in a cell. He immediately assembles a garotte from parts hidden in his clothes, kills the guards and leaves. There are at least three people present who should know better; the reader actually learned he's from this school from a conversation between two of them, and one has actually been restrained more effectively in the past (tied to a chair). The guy is horrible and they only need him to talk at most, so strip him and shave him, break at least one finger/toe on each appendage, then cuff him to a pole by both his wrists and ankles.
This kind of stuff is why a non-first game I want to make is a hybrid roguelike/visual novel with low randomness after generation, npc personality stats and memories, localized damage, hierarchy- and policy-behavior, and advanced mechanics that don't immediately pertain to combat. Lapses of judgement this great should only even be rolled for if everyone is either stupid, uninformed, or improvising. These characters are neither.
Which is part of why AI school.