Stupid DM mistakes

[Frog Dragon]

So what mistakes have you made behind the screen that just make you facepalm afterwards? I have two

I looked up the sorcerer spells from the wrong spot on the table and didn't realize it until earlier. The player had been playing with a level higher casting

The party fought a ghoul rogue who fell a bit too quick. Reason? I FORGOT THAT THE UNDEAD HAVE CRIT AND SNEAK ATTACK IMMUNITY. Seriously. And the ghoul one was recently and I'm supposed to be able to handle this system pretty well:smallsigh:

[t_catt11]

Meh, missing something in the rules, allowing an extra crit, whatever. Those happen all the time.

The only really stupid ones are the ones you refuse to admit, or do anything about.

[Rhiannon87]

I keep track of initiative via index cards. I also use index cards to tally monster hit points. It is depressing how often I will look at a card, intending to read off a character's name, and then announce how many hit points the monster has left instead. :: sigh ::

[Choco]

I feel you about forgetting undead are immune to crits... My campaign is rather light on the undead, so the players got through their first and only undead dungeon dealing crits to the various undead, and only at the boss did one of em go "hey wait a minute..." Yeah, I was wondering why they were getting through that dungeon so easily!

Any time I have to use a Deus Ex Machina or fudge enemy dice rolls to give the players a chance I view that as a failure, even in the situations where one or more of the players roll 1's over 50% of the time in the session (it has happened twice so far).

Allowing a Chaotic Stupid character to exist for more than 3 acts of utter stupidity, hoping they would get better.

Creating a sandbox game for players who actually WANT to play through a storyline, video game style.

[Piedmon_Sama]

I once described a round stone tower as "ninety feet tall" and "thirty feet wide" before realizing this made it a three-story tall dome and not the tower I was imagining. V_V

More recently I let my players crit a plant-creature, thinking it would make the encounter easier but still take them a few rounds. They took out a 136 HP gargantuan centipede topiary guardian (they only go up to huge in the book) in one round.

[Telonius]

Not me, but a previous DM...

Allowed Order of the Bow Initiate's ranged precision to apply to all attacks gained by Manyshot.

... and didn't fix it through 20 levels of adventuring.

[valadil]

I let a newish player I didn't know very well be the bad guy spying on the party. It didn't ruin the campaign, but it did make me hide under the table for a few sessions.

[Boci]

Not me, but a previous DM...

Allowed Order of the Bow Initiate's ranged precision to apply to all attacks gained by Manyshot.

... and didn't fix it through 20 levels of adventuring.

In moderate-high powered campeigns that wouldn't be a problem. Maybe the DM saw it recomended and didn't realize the assumed power level of his game was below average.

On a similar thread one poster claimed to have had a DM who thought the amount of attacks you get on a full attack is based off your dex modifier.

[Hyooz]

Started my first campaign at level 1.

[graymachine]

I assumed that a party of 6 12th level PCs could handle 2 greater wraiths (equal CR). Ended in a TPK.

[Glass Mouse]

Let's see...

* Didn't give any treasure after a two-session dungeon crawl (granted, in a low-treasure campaign, but still...)

* Ragged on a player OoC for IC jerkiness (oops...)

* Dropped a waaay too heavy hint of something that was supposed to be subtle. Now they know too much.

* Forgot that Explosive Runes deal damage to more than one person.

* Gave plot crucial items to the "is never there and doesn't even try when he is" guy.

* [Deleted for the sake of my self-esteem]

I don't think you'll have trouble finding possible mistakes to make :smalltongue:

[Tyndmyr]

I let them use diplomancy.

[Akisa]

I didn't let them use diplomacy.

[Xzeno]

I forgot about a golem's immunity to magic. Sort of worked out though, because the players told me they would be playing rouges and fighters and rangers and stuff, so my dungeon was built for non-magical classes. They instead played a sorrcoror, wizard, druid, barbarian and ranger. Of course, the golems' DR worked on arrows and they mad short work of the animal companions with a lucky crit.

[TheCountAlucard]

My party's sailed through rather a lot of encounters; one factor for why is that the Warlock in the party laughs at most creatures' pitiful touch AC and proceeds to go, "pew pew pew." As a result, I made a note to myself specifically to use some Demodands in a fight, since they have Spell Resistance (and it also made sense in the plot).

Then, during the fight, I forgot about the Farastu's Spell Resistance, and the fight ended pretty quickly. :smalleek:

[Tyrmatt]

Totally misgauged the power of some guns I let the party pick as starting weapons and simultaeneously forgot to give the badguys bullet resistant armour.. You should not be forced to look up a table to determine the size of the pile of shredded meat left of the guard on the gate, 20 minutes into the first session.

[Talanic]

See, if I had forgotten that undead were immune to crits and realized it later in the same dungeon - and if those undead were sentient - I'd have it be that they were feigning true death after taking hits that would have killed living people. I'd start rolling bluff rolls for future 'defeated' undead.

Me? I fall into the "Okay, so what's his name?"

"....."

Waaaay too often.

I make other mistakes too, of course, but that's what came to mind first.

[DragoonWraith]

What do you mean by the "OK what's his name?"?

[Sir_Elderberry]

4e, the party is fighting a ghost Solo who's pretty badass, and the barbarian walks up and hits for like 60. I'm like "crap, I was going to have fun with this fight, too". That's when one of the PCs (poor, foolish PCs) saved the mistake my drawing attention to the word "insubstantial". They still lived, but they had to work for it. :smallamused:

[Katana_Geldar]

What do you mean by the "OK what's his name?"?

Forgetting the names of various NPCs as well as PCs, I don't make that mistake as a GM, but often do as a player.

[Starbuck_II]

I forgot about LA:
A girl played a Pxie.
The guy played a greatsword wielding Sorceror.

Yes, he used true strike to offset -4 non-proficiency.

The pixie was way stronger due to the invisibility, flying , etc.

[stenver]

Allowing a first time player play a druid.

Seriously, it takes more then an hour and a half to set up and explain his character and he STILL wont fully understand what he is capable of. For example, instead of turning into animal and charging with his animal companion, he shoots with a bow(non metallic, 1d8-2 damage) and forgets all about his animal companion

Letting a first time players play tier 1 classes(not because, they wanted power, but they all CHOSE them.. we didnt even have time to play)

[Katana_Geldar]

^ This is why I don't let new players play Jedi, despite the arguments. You don't need another layer of learning on top of learning to play.

[Volos]

I allowed a player to stack the improved critical range from the improved critical feat (PHB), a keen weapon, and a certian class feature. Not to mention I let him play with his 'lucky' dice. I test rolled them afterwards, his d20 never rolled lower then 15. It also had a huge bubble in the middle.

Microwaved dice are fun.

So I started making sunder monkey monsters who would destroy every rapier he attempted to wield untill he got one made of adamantite.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Allowing a first time player play a druid.

Seriously, it takes more then an hour and a half to set up and explain his character and he STILL wont fully understand what he is capable of. For example, instead of turning into animal and charging with his animal companion, he shoots with a bow(non metallic, 1d8-2 damage) and forgets all about his animal companion

Oh yeah, I've done this too. Two times, I've let two different first-time players start with a Druid and both times they were frustrated because they didn't know what they could do and neither did we. :/

If I ever have another player who's new to 3.x I'm just going to say "I recommend not doing a Druid, it's an advanced class and frankly none of us are very familiar with it."

OTOH, I've found clerics are an extremely forgiving class and good for first-timers. Probably because it's so tough to kill the bastards.

[Berserk Monk]

Started my first campaign at level 1.

And?:smallconfused:

[Inhuman Bot]

And?:smallconfused:

1st level is boring, I suppose.

[evil-frosty]

I would think high mortality rate might also be an issue, and i dont find first level boring it can be interesting depending on the campaign style.

[Katana_Geldar]

1st level is boring, I suppose.

A lot of people start there, though.

[DragoonWraith]

I'd say the problem with starting at 1st level is that PCs are ridiculously fragile. It may be very difficult for a newbie DM to avoid an accidental TPK. Starting at 3rd or even 2nd alleviates that a lot.

[arguskos]

A lot of people start there, though.
And it's really fun. :smallsmile:

[Sliver]

I did the same mistake about a few days ago.. Darn it.. The game didn't start yet, its the char building step..

This player is new to D&D, only playing freeform before.. So he wants to play a wizard, so I say, "Yeah, sure" guessing that I will go through the basic stuff with him, build him a character pretty quick with notes about what each thing can do... Something easy.. Like batman.. Ya know..

Well.. NO.

He wanted to do it himself and for me to watch. Sounds fine right? Yeah, it shouldn't have been a problem.. If only... He doesn't really know English.. (I still feel wierd when I find out about that someone doesn't know english.. most of them are about my age, or about 2-3 years younger.. but that one..)
There is no online access to hebrew books (it was an online game), so only way I could show him stuff was linking him to the SRD or just to copy from there... He didn't even try really.. I had to translate all the skills and then he asked me about them.. "So bluff is...?" "lying" "So intimidate?" "I think you know what that means....".

Fine, I can live with that. He asked me to help and doesn't understand english so I help him.. But giving him the same piece of advice 5 times because he thinks it's good and I need to try and convince him that taking "proffesion, craft, knowledge, bluff, intimidate" (the list went on, and yes, he didn't take specific k. skills) for his 8 charisma wizard is not useful.. "Charisma is important so people won't attack me right?" I.. I... Sure, why not..

In the end, I did manage to convince him to just let me do it and give him it with notes. I'm not against players doing it themselves, but it was a more time consuming and annoying way of doing it..

/rant (Darn I needed that)

[Katana_Geldar]

I hate to do it, but doing a character for a new player is sometimes just the best way to do it. They tell you what sort of things they want and BANG you can have one in ten minutes. It can help to also have a few stock characters that you can just dust off and give to new players.

[Tyndmyr]

I'd say the problem with starting at 1st level is that PCs are ridiculously fragile. It may be very difficult for a newbie DM to avoid an accidental TPK. Starting at 3rd or even 2nd alleviates that a lot.

On the bright side, they're not so attached to their characters yet. It is dangerous, though...throw something a little too hard at them, say, one CR 3-4 fight, and *especially if they are new*, everyone can die. Stick with goblins, kobolds and the very easy stuff in very low numbers if you have newbies starting at level one.

[peacenlove]

Lets see...
My second serious campaign, which started at lvl 1 and ended at lvl 10 had the following mistakes

1) it had 6 newbie players (the time it needed to answer rules questions far exceeded the time we did battle and continued with the story. :smallfrown:

2) dice rolls were almost always on the player's disfavor (a trap critted the first level rogue for 23 damage, a drow skirmisher intended as a push over instant killed the same rogue, also his 3rd death was by 4 dice rolling a natural one (search, disable device, save vs flame strike and save vs massive damage) and his 4th death was while he was trying to help the party's monk (the monk survived though :smallannoyed:). Btw 6 players in a small room made it difficult to fudge rolls.

3) I allowed a frenzied berserker in the party ran by a beginner optimizer. That caused another 4 deaths until he -finally- dies from a fang dragon :smallannoyed:.

4) 2 of said 6 players left and were replaced by 2 people i couldn't bear with their attitude.:smallfurious:

5) Optimizing your creatures vs newbie players is a BAD idea. Especially when there's a monk and a fighter in there.

6) Attempting to add "decision making" and "story elements" apparently makes the players ignore them completely and focus on hack and slash and vice versa :smallamused: It also "helped" dragging the campaign much more than i expected.

7) Having prejudices against psions (linking them with bad experiences from 2nd edition psionics as well as not caring to learn psionics back then) was a bad thing for said psion in the party.

Miraculously that campaign lasted a whole year and, yes only the monk was the sole survivor of the final combat with a far realm entity :smallmad: (Also the rogue but he was possessed by the spirit of a marilith after ANOTHER failed saving throw (a 2 on the dice mind you) and by the actions of the party's cleric. Now he murders people happily in the dalelands :smallbiggrin:)

[TheCountAlucard]

I hate to do it, but doing a character for a new player is sometimes just the best way to do it. They tell you what sort of things they want and BANG you can have one in ten minutes. It can help to also have a few stock characters that you can just dust off and give to new players.Prob'ly should've done that; a friend of mine wanted to build her own character, although she's utterly unfamiliar with 3.5ed.

A Bard dual-wielding sickles is not efficient. Where the dwarven Fighter in the party is dual-wielding oversized dwarven waraxes, his attack bonus is only slightly smaller than if he wields just one, but her fifth-level character somehow managed to have an attack bonus of zero with the things, and she didn't seem to think that was a problem.

[Katana_Geldar]

Get them to know the mechanics first and know why thigns are important, then go and build your own character and you'll have a much better one.

I should have known that when I built a Paladin with Wisdom as a dump stat. :smallsigh:

[Glass Mouse]

Stupid, yet funny story (hopefully, not too much "had to be there" :smallsmile:)
Important detail: English is not my native language, but a lot of words sound alike.

Battered-up party is running around underground. Party encounters a room where party sees a lot of stone statues. Party spots a pair of yellow eyes in the dark.
Experienced player: I roll a knowledge check - do I know what it is?
DM: Yeah. You know it's a basilisk. It petrifies people using gas attacks.
Experienced players: Huh? *assume it's homebrew; looking forward to battle*
Less experienced player: Ooh! Ooh! That magical gas mask we found earlier - peeerfect!
Rest of party: Good thinking!
The party's meatshield puts on the gas mask and starts hacking at monster. All cheer, as the monster is slowly defeated.
DM: *apparently thinks something is off, cause he subtly pokes EP's shoulder and points to his book*
Experienced Player: Yeah, it's the basilisk. It... uses a GAZE attack!
DM: O.o Um... Let's rewind, shall we?
Rest of party: *laughs hard for five minutes*

[Katana_Geldar]

I'm genre savy enough to know what a Basilisk is :smallwink:

[Sliver]

I hate to do it, but doing a character for a new player is sometimes just the best way to do it. They tell you what sort of things they want and BANG you can have one in ten minutes. It can help to also have a few stock characters that you can just dust off and give to new players.

Thing is I wanted to do just that, just make it and give him notes about what is what.. But the player just wanted to do it, keeping me online and translating to him every word..

[oxinabox]

I encouraged a player who i knew very well was could do EVIL to play a chaotic evil character an join a game full of in exprierenced players.

Worse, I trusted him, not to optimises to the nth degree, when he quiered a a rule, "Does it work like this?" i was busy (it wasn't at a game session) and said, "yeah sure, whatever you think. I trust you to read the rules fairly."

... This lead to a Highly Optimised (potentially Munchkin interpretted rules, the wording was weird in the books at placed) chaotic evil character played by an exprerinced player almost do a party whip as his way of saying hello, look what i can offer the party.

It basically came out as "I kill one person per round, no save. I destory 1 anything not harder than admantium.

I did make of point of saying: sure play chatic evil - show them how evil is done*, but two conditions: I diplomancy, charm, diplomacy, intimidate, don't work on PC's. No killing of the other PC's either.

I also had a build rule - no LA greater than 1 (all the raciual HD you like though). (this is actually not to prevent too much power, but to prevent too little. LA is very expensive, putting you behind on Feats, HD, Saves, BaB, casting.
and No templates - outright, no templates.




*(the party wanted to play evil and failed at it, i later found out that they had orignally wanted to be evil, they changed there minds when i said no vampires, no lichs (the LA is too harsh for new player to work with),)

[The White Knight]

The first game I DM'd was one that I adopted from a friend and DM of mine who moved away. That was my biggest DM mistake. It so was full to the brim with balance shattering house rules and allowances that there was just no way I could handle it. Encounters were either too lethal, leading to players feeling like they're being deliberately curb stomped, or too easy, leading to combat feeling largely like a waste of time and effort. I was also too disorganized to adequately regulate rewards, further inflating the power creep. The fact that my plot made absolutely no sense didn't exactly speak well for me, either.

The second biggest DM mistake I ever made was agreeing to try and run the World's Largest Dungeon a few years later. What a logistical nightmare! I am convinced the maps in that place exist solely to frustrate. We never got past region A before I started losing my mind and my players started losing interest.

I frequently find myself committing a number of the lesser offenses: initiative mixups, miscalculation of attack or damage bonuses, forgetting a particular PC or baddie is invisible, etc. I've got a great head for rules, but under the gun it's easy to get flustered.

[Irreverent Fool]

The World's Largest Dungeon is notoriously boring. Don't fault yourself.

One of the worst/best things about it is that there's no real sign to the players that they're going into an area full of monsters much to powerful. My level 3 group ran into shades...

I used to forget who was invisible and who wasn't as well until we started using a blank miniature base for anyone who is invisible. Even if you aren't actively using a battle mat, having little representations of the characters can be quite helpful.

My own stupid DM mistake? I have a tendency to forget which monsters are charm-immune and one of my players is playing a warlock with the invocation that lets her cast charm monster at will.

It's only fair. I (permanently) charmed a succubus with my Mindbender in the last D&D game he DM'd. "Does it look dangerous? Does it have a brain? Rath tries to charm it."

obnoxious
sig

[Sinfire Titan]

Allowing Spell-to-Power Erudite. Ever.

Allowing the party's Crusader to use Strikes on AoOs, because it came back to bite me in the ass when he started DMing 3.5 (not that it killed me, seeing as I was playing my first Totemist). It wasn't that it was overpowered; it's that he never used Counters as a result even after dipping 2 into Swordsage.

Allowing my little brother to play at all. I have a long list of stuff he's ****ed up, long enough to make a thread of its own.

Trying to DM 6 campaigns side-by-side that would eventually have crossed over with each other. It was my greatest failure, but it was decent while it lasted. I have learned much as a result. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?board=42.0) It didn't help that Gleemax was partially responsible for the failure too.

[kieza]

Last night I was halfway through an encounter when I realized that one of my monsters had a 3-square aura of crackling lightning--and that the two melee guys had been beating on it for four rounds by that point.

I did remember what it did when it was destroyed, though; it discharged all of the power left in its capacitors, attacking everyone within 3 squares with it and critting anyone it had grabbed. Lo and behold, the paladin killed it while being held 10 feet off the ground, and he had just enough health that it reduced him to 0.

[FoE]

There is no online access to hebrew books (it was an online game),

What, we're printing up D&D manuals just for the Jewish community now? Why did I not hear about this? Oy.

When I was younger, I was a pretty bad DM. I railroaded the PCs quite a bit and I flip-flopped between giving them too much magic items and not enough loot. But my one glaring flaw was a tendency to make DMPCs Obviously Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ObviouslyEvil), which surprised exactly no one when they turned on the party.

Even though my buddy cribbed virtually all of his adventures from Conan books, they still tended to prefer his games.

[Katana_Geldar]

I would never do this myself, but this is one that I have seen: the GM taking a phone call mid-game and it was only a social call from his girlfriend. I thought this the height of rudeness, a player who has some sort of emergency with travel I can make allowances for, but can't you hold on until we've finished the game or at least declare a short break as it grinds to a halt with you on the blower. :smallfurious:

The only time I use my phone other than to play music is to call expected players who are running late, and always after a break is declared. I usually ask for players to turn their phones off or at least silence them.

[Akal Saris]

Yeah, I had a PC who would do this, and I'd have to pause and ask him to talk to her in another room, because we were fighting hobgoblins in this room, damn it. :smalltongue:

I don't make too many big mistakes these days, but there are always situations that I wish I had handled better, or really cool ideas that I come up with a little too late.