the DM didn't expect you to do THAT

[pseudodragon]

this is a thread of things your DM did not expect, such as things you use to kill an enemy, or a surprise attack that he did not see coming. i will give 2 examples:
we were fighting this undead wolf thing. i used cantrip to weaken a bookshelf in the room ( i was a bard). the paladin threw his club at the book shelve, and it crumbled, and killed the enemy.
the fighter and i were in a room, and i went to "test out" the lock on the front door, too see if it locked.( they did not have the key). wonce i was done, the fighter and i attacked ( they had a hunting party out, so they could not get in.) the DM was surprised by the sudden attack.

[gallagher]

ok, so you know how mansions often have an open staircase so that people on the second floor can see down into the main antechamber?

and you know how the antechamber/atrium often has a nice large chandelier?

and you know how swordsages have access to setting sun?

if you mix those three together, an assassin who failed a disguise check and got pointed out to me by the party bard got thrown into the chandelier outside of the door that would lead to some royal person whom i didnt care about.

rule of cool: lots of piercing damage from the shards of crystal plus regular damage plus falling damage = dead assassin

[Croverus]

My Druid had Craft (Fur Clothes). On one adventure into an ice dragon's cave my Druid made some Fur coats for everyone to help resist the temperature drop and even gave a small cold resist bonus. Everyone had forgotten I had the skill until just then and we might not have survived without it.

[Snake-Aes]

My psychic warrior in a pirate assault against the port we were in. We boarded one of the five ships and after getting a +8 to str via SomE, I pimped my str bonus and size some more and told the dm "I tear off the main mast and throw it at another ship".
After the "you tear the what again?" I made the rolls and succeeded, hurling a colossal improvised javeling at another ship, nearly sinking it. The others gave up and fled.

[Totally Guy]

There was this one time an NPC told us about the stupidest plan ever to travel away from the sci-fi setting entirely in a spaceship to find hot 60's looking girls on an abandoned frost planet.

What was unexpected was that that became the campaign.

The planet turned out to be earth... Whoa! Dude. Didn't see that one coming. The sixties girls was archive footage all along.

[Scarey Nerd]

Spoilered for length:

We were staying in the house of a young woman, who demanded that the males and females of our party sleep in different rooms, the females in her room. After many exclamations from the male characters players of "IT'S A TRAP!" in true Admiral Ackbar style, we decided to investigate, though the hostess specifically said not to leave the room.

Our DM expected us to bust down the door and fight the woman...

Instead, we asked our sorcerer to use Ghost Sound outside of her door, tempting her out, then he escaped via the window and used Ghost Sound again in the forest outside the house. She went to investigate, and we heard the sound of battle as she was attacked by an awakened wolf that was waiting in the forest for her. We then barricaded the doors, and prepared ourselves in the basement of the house (Which our DM had to come up with on the spot, not thinking we would take this course of action:smallamused:). She came down, revealed herself as a succubus and attacked my barbarian, missing, at which point I rolled a 12 with my greataxe on damage after critting, and removed her from space and time with the amount of damage she took.

Fun times :smallbiggrin:

[jiriku]

I seem to suffer from Chronic Surprised DM Syndrome. Notables include:


Magic jar-ing a colossal spider from three dungeon rooms away, then sending the spider on a killing rampage through the dungeon clearing out every other monster on the level.
Compelling an enemy priestess (via necrotic tumor) of a particularly nasty opposing army to get all of the enemy generals together for a pre-battle blessing/sacrifice/general orgy, and then dropping the entire party on them via scry-n-die and butchering the whole lot while they were, ah, not wearing their armor and distracted with the, ahem, ritual.
Converting a platoon of enemy soldiers with a rod of rulership, then wiring them up with magical suicide vests, infiltrating an enemy camp of 2,000 with my new zealots, and single-handedly wiping out the entire camp to a man using my suicide squad and a few well-placed AoE spells.
The true-striking flying shadow sheep of doom incident. The less said the better.
After we captured an enemy base, rewiring the "illusionary mountain" disguise on its exterior to be an "illusionary colossal copy of my character's smiling face".
Hiring the defeated BBEG's goblin lieutenant to be our doorman, naming him Jeeves, and crafting a goblin-sized tweed suit for him to wear.
Foiling an ambush by 12 arrow demons on an open plain by using wall of stone to conjure up a small redoubt with arrow slits and crenellated battlements.
Actually having 10 sets of silken pajamas in my inventory when we unexpectedly found ourselves lost in Hell and needing to bargain with a villain's erinyes harem for directions.

[Gan The Grey]

I only played with this DM twice, but I surprised him (unpleasantly) both times. He was the type of DM that only DMed so he could power trip on the players, always had some high level NPC in the group that would dictate our actions, decide our quests, and steal our cool. Knowing this, I did everything in my power to make his life trouble.

I'd made a druid. The campaign was already up and running, so he'd have to introduce me mid-stride, and I suspected he would try to do so in a way that made me look stupid/or flat out kill me. I was correct.

His plan was to attack me with something beyond my ability to handle alone, and then, once I was near to death or dead, have the other players show up. So he threw an Owlbear at me. Mind you, I'm a fresh level 3 druid. That thing could tear me to pieces in 2 rounds.

Luckily, I had planned ahead.

Taking the first blow in stride, I took a step back from the Owlbear and cast my 'I bet you never thought I'd memorize THIS' spell, Treeshape. Goodbye druid, hello inanimate tree.

The DM just looked at me, blinking incredulously. With a hint of annoyance.

Everyone else just laughed. They knew he couldn't just keep attacking me without it looking like he was deliberately trying to kill my character at that point. I think they were just happy that, for once, someone had trumped him.

[Dracons]

I'm normally a DM. But sometimes I play. A few things I've done.


One game another player and I helped a group of people out to the desert. They were acting kinda strange, but not a big deal. As we were walking away, the DM had us roll listen checks. We both rolled high, and heard the group whispering to each other "Ok, so we get these hidden weapons, and go kill the city, then we go to the other town and kill those people, and inpregent all the little girls and boys with our demon seed to raise an army of evil creatures to take over this country".

Yep. We uh, the CG barbarian and LG Paladin looked at each other, rolled sense motives, yep. Dm flat out said that is what they said and were telling the truth. We rushed them, rolled several criticals and killed the leader of the group and the heavy injured the other two in the negatives. The DM slammed his notebook and shouted ****, and stormed outside screaming. We followed him and he started screaming we just ruined the entire campagin we just started, becasue we killed the final bad guy before he reached his uberdemon status. He knew he should have made the NPCs higher level, but he finally got sick of us bitching that his uber DMPCS are always ten levels higher then the party members and tried to give us a chance, and then we did what all the other people do that made him decide to make DMPCS much higher level since the party always killed them. We asked what he expected us to do after they stated they were going to kill these people. His response? Be scared and try to warn the town.

Yeah....

[potatocubed]

Things my players have done that I wasn't expecting:


Build a mile-high adamantium citadel.
Subject themselves to a plot-strength mind-control effect that causes them to think they're the reincarnation of an evil wizard. (Even after an OOC warning!)
Attack a spellcasting skeleton with a bowling ball in a sack - and win.
Attack a gelugon with nothing more than a pair of fish - and win.
Crash a noble party, invent the conga line, and kick the host in the nuts.
Crash a lightning rail.
Crash an airship - in mid-air.
Free the demon lord.
Free the other demon lord.
Free the third demon lord.
Recruit the chef.
Recruit the naga.
Recruit the population of the goblin city and lead it on an exodus to another plane.
Steal all the rations in the dungeon.
Steal all the furniture in the dungeon.
Steal the friezes off the dungeon walls.
Steal one of the rooms of the dungeon.
Strip-mine the dungeon and sell it for stone. (Also to make sure they didn't miss any secret rooms.)


It's a good job I'm a flexible sort of GM. :smalltongue:

EDIT: And that's just D&D. One of my 7th Sea groups started a nude theatre company.

[Coplantor]

Mimic Holding My Friend: Haha! I'm holding your friend! Attack me and he is dead!
Me: *stab*

[Exil3dbyrd]

He didn't expect this...

I believe we were 8th level at that time, we were invading an enemy tower to try to get a foothold on an enemy nation. We get to the middle of the tower and see the stairs getting knocked down so we have no way to get up. As we finish up the dwarves that knocked down the stairs I look up just in time to see 8 mages point wands at us and fire 8 12th level fireballs into the party. As i was the only one looking up, I was the only one who even got to make a reflex save, (I succeeded on 5 and still took 3 times my health in damage). When asked what he was doing, he said "I didn't expect you guys to die."

[Ormagoden]

This story spawned a now immortal comment among the gamers in my group.


Once while playing Shadowrun my Street samurai (read warforged warblade) was with a group that entered a long corridor big enough for a box truck (which is what we were in). After driving for a few minutes underground we come to a really huge submarine style door and proceed to open it.

Behind said door is basically a dracolich. It's slick back head and yellow bulbous eyes turn to the mortals disturbing its slumber with a horrible grin.

My character, having opened the door, shouts "Shut the door! Shut the door!" and quickly slams the huge door shut again before the dragon reaches it. We high tail it back into the truck and burn reverse rubber back the way we came.

My GM was not ready for that.

Now the phrase "Shut the door!" is synonymous with impossible encounters.

[SolkaTruesilver]

1st game of a new adventuring serie.

We are attacked by wandering dogs in the middle of the night. I had my crossbow ready to fire, but I was in point-blank range, so I tell the GM "I let the crossbow fall to the ground, and I move to draw my dagger"

The GM made a check to see if the Crossbow was damage/accidently shoots, it shoot.

The GM made a roll to see if the Crossbow bolt would hit something, it did.
The GM made a roll to see who the Crossbow bolt would hit: the alpha wandering dog.
The GM made me roll an attack roll: Critical
I killed the dog. We were all stupefied.

And then, the GM asked me: "what do you do? It's still your turn, and you haven't acted!"

[The Glyphstone]

I remember a time when my group was exploring a 'haunted house' and met a vampire. He was dominating the Fighter, crawling on the ceiling, and generally making the party's lives miserable, when the Rogue tells me "remember the silver forks I looted from the dining room? I want to tie one to the end of a crossbow bolt and shoot it at him."
:smallconfused:
:smallconfused:
"-4 penalty for an improvised weapon."
Hit. Crit. Impromptu ruling that the critical representing the fork striking him in the heart, bypassing undead crit immunity, and bringing it to 0 HP. They later found the coffin and filled it with about 30 flasks of acid, but that was expected.


-----------------------

Another time, they were on a somewhat goofy side-adventure in a 'demiplane' that was basically Super Mario Bros. World, complete with improbabl jumping skills, Goombas, and Hammer Bro's. They had already found a Warp Pipe leading to a hidden cave filled with gold coins, and giving them a safe place to rest up and regain HP/spells, but that had been a while ago in-game and they were getting low again.

They come to another green pipe - the fighter and the rogue start arguing over who should go down and check the cave first, in case there was an enemy lurking inside. They come to (unarmed) blows, the fighter grapples the rogue. "I pick him up and throw him into the pipe".
:smallconfused:
:smallconfused:
*rolls*
:smalleek:
"The Pirahna Plant just scored a critical hit."
Cue dice being thrown at the fighter.

[Kesnit]

Playing Vampire: the Requiem...

The group knew I was moving several states away and the ST wanted to wrap up the campaign we were in before I left. So he gave us about 150 free XP (on top of what we had been earning while playing for several months) and told us to level up our PCs.

My PC had been learning a series of powers that used fear effects to debuff enemies, and with the XP boost, I was able to greatly increase the dice pool for these powers. One ability allows the character to "scare" an enemy enough that they lose every action for the next round. However, if the player rolls very well, the power actually knocks the enemy unconscious.

The party was facing the first mini-boss - the Prince of the city and two powerful enforcers. The ST thought it would be a challenging encounter, and under normal circumstances, he would probably be right. My PC was not built for combat, and was better used to buff and debuff. I decided my best bet was try to hit the Prince with the "lose all actions" power every round so the rest of the party could focus on the goons. In the first round, I rolled well enough to knock the Prince unconscious. Right at the feet of one of our melee specialists. Who happened to be next in initiative.

The player made a big production of coupe de grase-ing the Prince. The ST looked like I had just kicked a puppy.

[fryplink]

my party's ship was boarded by pirates (whom they thought were the BBEG, but weren't, but were outmatched by at the time) instead of negotiating or talking (or attacking and getting captured) the simply used water walk shoes (i had given them for flavor purposes) and sank the ship, thus killing the pirates (who were wearing heavy armor)

The pirates were supposed to last another 5 levels

[Totally Guy]

In games I run the players have, on several occasions, said "We get on a boat and leave this place forever".

That usually surprises me.

[Mongoose87]

We came across two guards, with a halfling in custody. After staling them for a while, the halfling said "Either free me, kill me, or-" and my vampire bit out his throat. The guards weren't too pleased, but they'll be dead, soon.

[EvilJoe15]

I was playing a 1st level wizard in a Pathfinder game. The party was clearing out a tomb, and we fought a skeleton. Well after that we found a room filled with stone coffins. While looting them, my character had the thought that these dead bodies would get up after us. He did unspeakable things to them, "Just to be safe." Everyone there was like :smallconfused::smalleek:

Turns out that they where going to get up, and come after us, but it's hard to do that when you've been dissolved by at will 0 level acid.

[Malificus]

I was playing Battletech, and the party had just figured out our next target, a Lao planet with mech building facilities.

When we get there, we find that most of the Lao forces are in one spot, with smaller groups spread around. We also found out that they stole our troop formations. Well this got Mortis, our current leader, pretty angry. He decided he was going to make the strike they'd never suspect: a full force attack on their main fleet. He asked the rest of us for strategic advice.

So I said "Why don't we just orbitally bombard them?" Mortis paused for a second, and asked his adviser what repercussions this could cause. Well, Lao had already been spreading rumors and faked videos of us orbitally striking civilians. This would just be us attacking an actual legitimate target. All we would lose is salvage, but with the battle ending preemptively, that's not a problem.

So we hit them from space, and land to mop up the smaller forces.

Yeah... turns out the GM spent all weekend on that encounter.

[Panigg]

Once we had to breakthrough a siege on a town. It was surrounded by weird cat/dragon things and the only way to get through was to attack one camp.

The camp had several wizards and about 30-40 kobold warriors.

We were about level 10 or something. So 4 casters + 40 melees is not something easily done.

My cleric and the druid teleport in, gater the masses, our warlock waiting invisibly about 150 feet over the camp. Once the mobs are gathered, we move out and the lock drops a feater token: Boat.

35 dead kobolds and only one wizard left. ;)

[Shpadoinkle]

We were playing the third module of the old Against the Giants campaign, facing some fire giants. One of the other players was doing some scouting and stuff to get an idea of the place's layout. This was taking a while, so out of boredom I was going over my character sheet and the sheets of his henchmen, trying to come up with some trick or combination or something, when I noticed my Hedge Wizard hernchman knew the Reduce spell.

Now, in the previous module, when we were fighting frost giants, we'd found a Ring of Thee Wishes. My ranger had used his wish to be able to cast 5d6 worth of Lightning Bolts (as the spell) per level each day. I also had a magic item (a magic sphere made of pure force) that let me fly as long as I was touching it, as well as a Ring of Invisibility.

I instantly got a devious idea. The average party level was about 9 at the time, and Fire Giants in 2e had pretty good saving throws, so we couldn't go toe-to-toe with them, most spells either did half damage or nothing, and they had ranged weapons with better range than ours, so we'd been going through this campaign with LOTS of guile and trickery.

I had my henchman cast reduce on me like five or six times, so I was roughly half an inch tall. Then I used my Ring of Invisibility and flew into the fire giant's main hall, where the king was. I proceeded to fly up his nose and vaporize his head from the inside with a 45d6 lightning bolt.

The DM gave me an additional 500 XP for the plan and declared that he would never allow that to work again.

[Umael]

One of my most memorable experiences in one of my best games I ran happened to be d20 Rokugan. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the cultural setting is heavy in honor and duty, so it was fairly easy to get the PCs where I wanted them to be. My method of gaming involved taking where they were (in the plot) and figuring out where I wanted them to be when the game session was over (which some people on this board interpreted as me railroading the players, but yeah, whatever). Since I didn't know what path they would take, I had no clue what the next session would be like, only the beginning and the end.

So the PCs were recruited to help out in a small war between the Crab Clan (half the party were members of it, the rest allied to them) and the Unicorn Clan. I figured that by the end of the game session I'd have them take some command roles and get involved in the fighting and all that.

Just before game, one of the players came up to me and said that he didn't want to play his ronin character anymore and if it was okay if he had him killed off.

Cue surprise one.

Okay, I can work with this. The group as a whole could still be given command, wasn't really planning on having everyone get a command position, especially since the guy was ronin.

Then I suggested that maybe he could get in a duel with the Unicorn when the two sides met before battle under parley. He agreed, and I thought everything was accounted once again.

Yeah, right.

So there, under parley, the Unicorn general and staff met the PCs and the Crab general to discuss conditions of the battle... and the ronin drew his katana and killed the Unicorn general right there and then.

Cue surprise two.

There was a quick improvised change to the scene as the Unicorn delegation left, screaming about Crab treachery and dishonor, the ronin was slaughtered by the Crab in return, and the Crab general had to commit seppuku. Command DID fall on one of the PCs, as I planned... just... not HOW I planned.

Since that day, the motto of my group was that no ronins were allowed. Not my decision at all, all theirs.

[Mikeavelli]

I was DM'ing this last night;

The Players were trying to stop a dark Demi-god the size of a mountain from coming into this world. The BBEG actually succeeds because the plan was for him to succeed all along and they would go out and have to stop it now that it had been awakened. Bad times all around, plenty of fodder for an epic campaign.

The Climax of this session happened in the heart of the mountain that became its body, where the unholy altered turned literally into its heart once the spell to summon it reached critical mass. The Heart was immune to most anything the players could throw at it and I intended for them to run, but they were in possession of a tremendously evil minor artifact called Frehorn's Blade, which I stole liberally from the Chzo mythos.

For those unfamiliar, anyone killed by Frehorns blade comes back as a ghost bound to serve the weilder of the blade. I statted it out as a +5 dagger that causes anything killed by it to return with the ghost template, and included a great deal of artifact possession to discourage the characters from actually using the damn thing.

One of the characters had the Assassin Prestige class.

Assassin: "I take out Frehorn's blade, and start studying the heart for a death attack."

Party: "WTF?"

Me: "... Alright. At the rate everything is changing into a body, you're going to have one shot at this before you're trapped and consumed in the body of a dark god."

Assassin: "I'm okay with that."

Me: "Alright. Rest of you?"

Rest of the Party: "We're going to watch."

Me: "Three rounds pass, you've got your chance, roll me a D100. Get a 100."

He rolls.

He does.

didn't see that one coming, I called the session right there until I could figure out what the hell just happened.

[Lord Loss]

I was DM'ing this last night;

The Players were trying to stop a dark Demi-god the size of a mountain from coming into this world. The BBEG actually succeeds because the plan was for him to succeed all along and they would go out and have to stop it now that it had been awakened. Bad times all around, plenty of fodder for an epic campaign.

The Climax of this session happened in the heart of the mountain that became its body, where the unholy altered turned literally into its heart once the spell to summon it reached critical mass. The Heart was immune to most anything the players could throw at it and I intended for them to run, but they were in possession of a tremendously evil minor artifact called Frehorn's Blade, which I stole liberally from the Chzo mythos.

For those unfamiliar, anyone killed by Frehorns blade comes back as a ghost bound to serve the weilder of the blade. I statted it out as a +5 dagger that causes anything killed by it to return with the ghost template, and included a great deal of artifact possession to discourage the characters from actually using the damn thing.

One of the characters had the Assassin Prestige class.

Assassin: "I take out Frehorn's blade, and start studying the heart for a death attack."

Party: "WTF?"

Me: "... Alright. At the rate everything is changing into a body, you're going to have one shot at this before you're trapped and consumed in the body of a dark god."

Assassin: "I'm okay with that."

Me: "Alright. Rest of you?"

Rest of the Party: "We're going to watch."

Me: "Three rounds pass, you've got your chance, roll me a D100. Get a 100."

He rolls.

He does.

didn't see that one coming, I called the session right there until I could figure out what the hell just happened.

See! The dice gods get angry when you railroad.

[9mm]

I was playing Battletech, and the party had just figured out our next target, a Lao planet with mech building facilities.

When we get there, we find that most of the Lao forces are in one spot, with smaller groups spread around. We also found out that they stole our troop formations. Well this got Mortis, our current leader, pretty angry. He decided he was going to make the strike they'd never suspect: a full force attack on their main fleet. He asked the rest of us for strategic advice.

So I said "Why don't we just orbitally bombard them?" Mortis paused for a second, and asked his adviser what repercussions this could cause. Well, Lao had already been spreading rumors and faked videos of us orbitally striking civilians. This would just be us attacking an actual legitimate target. All we would lose is salvage, but with the battle ending preemptively, that's not a problem.

So we hit them from space, and land to mop up the smaller forces.

Yeah... turns out the GM spent all weekend on that encounter.

>_< this is almost as bad as that. enemy was holing up inside a spaceport where our objective was, so I send in a lannce of plainsman as scouts who end up busting out by blowing dropship refueling vechicals and aparrently 2 angel carts... which managed to take out HALF of the defence contingent. cue easy mop-up.

also

D20 Modern: DM gave my character a "mechanical sheringen" (basicly I could look at any mechanical device and see how it worked in exacting detail) and then later threw a safe door as an obstical, expecting us to use the c-4 to just blow the hinges off.. instead I just used my eye to see the combination and opened it. and we used the c-4 on the gun nest behind the door. he was not amused.

[Mikeavelli]

See! The dice gods get angry when you railroad.

Bah, I loved it as much as they did!

Just didn't for the life of my consider it could happen.

[Kyuu Himura]

This happened in an Anima: Beyond Fantasy game we were playing.
The game was something like a martial arts tournament, my Samurai had to fight this obscenely powerfull aikido master (think Koetsuji from Kenichi), the thing is, I got initiative on the guy, so I attacked first, he threw me like a football. After that, I fought smart.
GM: what do you do??
Me: he's waiting for my attack, right??
GM: yep.
Me: I throw him a sandal
GM: ...come again...?

End result: the uber-NPC had only 2 HP remaining, and I was half naked and unconscious from throwing my clothes at him to get him to drop his guard.
Yeah, I still lost, but I totally got him off-guard

[nyarlathotep]

During an initiation into an evil cult my mad surgeon character, along with a few of the other characters, began experiencing piercing pains in his stomach. My character immediately started slicing everyone open to find out what was inside causing the distress.

[Stompy]

The DM didn't except me to become a half-dragon, then a 3/4ths dragon, then a large 7/8 abyssal dragon in his campaign.

Mind you, those templates were free and ALL his fault. :smallbiggrin:

[Dairun Cates]

I usually GM, and let's just put it this way. There's entire STRATEGIC plans named in my group around this kind of stuff.

-Want to use a jet booster and gravity to add extra damage to that melee attack? KA-74 (Kata) Maneuver.

-Tell an opponent you have one question and shooting them for a surprise round? Pulling a Priori.

-Defeating an opponent with Bureaucracy? Either a Casanova or Unlimited Paper Works.


The list goes on. Needless to say, my players are a bit too creative for their own good. One of the more recent ones is the tendency one of the Pirates vs. Ninjas beta-testers has to wait calmly for his turn, find the strongest opponent possible, walk up, and scream, "Welcome to my World!" as loud as he can before sucking them into an alternate dimension fight that happens in the blink of an eye.

[Glimbur]

The party is in this vampire lord's castle. We're wandering around and generally looting the place. This particular room is accessed by crossing a windy chasm. Then we went up some stairs and found a room. There were three doors.

The first door had a mosaic of a king and other regal stuff around it.

The second had a peasant and agriculture and such around it.

The third... I don't remember.

There was also a hint on the floor, "Choose wisely" or some such. So we went up to a door and opened it.

Brick wall. The DM starts going in rounds and around the table. Most of the party goes to open the next door. The druid turns into an owl and leaves the room. I leave via the stairs... which have turned into a chute. I want to leave the room as soon as I can, so I dive down the chute.

My mental map had the bottom of the chute being well away from the windy chasm. It turns out that that is not the case. I failed the ref save and fell for 20d6. On the way down I cast grease and tried to climb into my handy haversack. I needed about a 16, I got a 14ish. Splat.

Then the ceiling fell in the room with the mosaics. I would have survived that damage. Turns out all three doors were fakes, it was all a trap.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Although I am not directly responsible for the course of action detailed below, it did occur during a game with a fellow board member, who shall remain nameless to protect his or her innocence.

Spoiled for obvious reasons.

"Obvious reasons" relates to the Image Board Which Shall Not Be Named, for the uninitiated.
http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af355/Thrice_Dead_Cat/Sadbutsafe.jpg?t=1278531565

[FelixG]

Well, my GM decided he wanted to run a fifth element style D20 modern game using the wound/vitality system from SW d20.

the story is spoiler for length

[SPOILER]
The story is this: We go to this mega-mall (a mall the size of a small city) and there is a terrorist attack under way, my group are special forces and im their leader, we go in and the terrorists want to negotiate, they have a single celebrity hostage, their leader has his head over her shoulder and is yelling out his demands, i walk in to talk to him about them, pull my pistol to try to cap him in the face before the others can react.

I roll a natural 1 and GM decides my shot goes wide, and has me roll a second attack, i roll a natural 20, which he has auto confirm as the hostage is a helpless target. Not to be out cooled i accidentaly murder the hostage, look at the leader who is stunned and tell him evenly "You dont have any hostages any more" and wave my hand, the other two players mow the terrorists down and the swat teams are looking at me like im insane at this point, i dont say another word as i walk off and they decide they dont want to mess with a team who shot a hostage then took care of the situation :P

[Ravens_cry]

Tried to pull a Corbin Dallas and did something far more awesome by accident?
The Dice God smiles upon you.

[Khellendross]

Was playing in a pirate game and was playing a archer build and the lined up cannons up on our boat on the shore and since I had a swim speed I stayed behind and I lined up on the side of the 20 cannons cause we messed up and it was our fault we were gonna get sunk and I rolled a nat 20, 3 rounds in a row shooting out their wicks all in a line giving us time to get out of their range. The dm was so shocked. I asked him if they are lined up perfectly and he said they are set in groves so yes. Then boom first round nat 20....then again and then again then they saw me so it was running time lol

[Earthwalker]

Not me but in one Runequest game one PC was turned into a gargoyle. Not all that bad but it did have problems.

Later on a heroquest he found a crown. Putting it on a voice said I can give you the power to transform into any three creatures.

Ooooh goody goody thinks the PC.

So he names much to the GMs surprise, a vulture, a trout and a human.

Now the trap is sprung, the PC has to fight these creatures before he can gain the power to become them.

Of course the GM assumed that the player would choose tuff creatures, in the end he just killed the monsters and moved on. A rare time the GM underestimated a players grab for power.

[Amphetryon]

Does anybody remember the movie 'The Untouchables', with Sean Connery? :smallwink:

The town's mayor had been jerking us around on Fetch missions while we tried to unravel a mystery to which he held the key. We'd just managed to surprise and kill a would-be assassin outside the mayor's office, who was dressed in the official town robes. We went in to confront the mayor about this. He was surrounded by 5 of his goons, all dressed in the same official robes.

After about 15 minutes of real time stalling, my Bard looked at the mayor and told him I was stepping outside, and asked if he wanted one of his goons to keep an eye on me. He did. As soon as we were out the door, I cast sleep on the goon, who failed his save. I grabbed the corpse of the failed assassin and propped him up with his back against the window by the mayor's window. Then I used Perform [Act] to make it appear that he'd thrown a punch, and slugged him several times in the stomach. I proceeded to gag him, cast ghost sound so they'd hear whimpering, and poured Alchemist's Fire over the corpse's head.

I came back in and smiled at our team leader. "That's taken care of, boss. How's the negotiations?"

We got what we needed from the mayor. :smallbiggrin:

[Pechvarry]

Monster: Fiend Worm thing. Has a portal to the Abyss in his stomach. Sucks all of his food in and deposits in random places in the Abyss, so he's always hungry. However, the radiation of the portal sustains the poor critter, whilst mutating it into a super-monster.
Monster ability: Swallow Whole (where you face falling into the portal).

My Character: Planar Champion.
My Class Feature: Sunder Portal.

My DM was kind, and ruled that being a destabilized portal already, I caused it to explode or something. Was pretty awesome, getting swallowed on purpose. DM couldn't figure out why 'til I was next to it.

[Yukitsu]

My DM says I'm predictable in that I'll always do anything other than the expected, so I'm not sure if that means I'm predictable or not.

He's usually surprised when I kill something though. I tend to spend more time on the de-buff/skill money/defense end of the spectrum, the only kills that I tend to get are when I take the kiddy gloves off, or when I have a really complex ploy set up, because I don't often make brawlers.

[Cealocanth]

So there we were. Running from a horde of angry goblins in the storming rain. Sweat poured down my neck, both from the stress of the rain and the goblins, and the fact that I stupidly wore long (shakespeare) sleeves and gloves that day. We ran to the chasm where we spent 3 hours filling out some useless paperwork before and found that the bridge that we paid to build was gone, and the platforms for said bridge had dissapeared. The chasm as deep and unjumpable for a squishy caster like me, so I sugggested that the young Knight go down first. I cast Rhino Hide on him and he jumped, taking only 3 points of damage from the fall. Then, the other knight on our team tossed us all down using Knight's Strength. When the GM was about to slap down the big damage on us from the fall and the extra strength from the throw, I suggested that the first Knight use his strength to catch. The GM was baffled as no one took any damage from jumping off a 30 foot cliff.

And that's how I survived a 30 foot fall without a parachute.

(Mind you, this was a LARP. No PCs were harmed during the progress of the game.)

[John Campbell]

My shadowrunning team had been hired to support someone else's run by taking the cellular node covering a corporate site offline at a specific time, and keeping it offline for a minimum of fifteen minutes.

I'm fairly sure the GM expected us to have our sneaky and/or shooty guys disable or circumvent the physical security around the cell tower, get our decker in where he could access the maintenance system, protect him while he decked it, suppressed the node, and kept it suppressed while the run we were supporting went on, and then to high-tail it back out just ahead of the corporate response teams.

The way it actually went down was: I climbed up on top of a building some distance away but with line of sight to the top of the tower, and, at the appointed time, hit the cell antenna with a high-Force Deadly-strength lightning bolt. Twice. Decker checked to make sure it was down, then we said, "Yep, that'll take them more than fifteen minutes to fix," and went home. It was a dark and stormy night; I'm not sure they ever even figured out that it wasn't natural lightning.


More recently, in our Pathfinder game, the DM has decided to subject us to a tour of his current favorite pretentious fantasy novels, and so plotted our PCs into the books' world. A patrol of the obvious good guys found us wandering around in the wilderness killing undead and the orc knockoffs that aren't technically orcs so I don't get my favored enemy bonus against them, and escorted us back to the city and their obviously-a-paladin (and the DM is That Guy Who Always Plays Paladins) patrol leader's manor, where we were placed under guard and warned we were going to have to stay until the city authorities figured out what to do with us, but given free rein of the manor otherwise.

Well, the city was under the control of magical/religious factions, and so the appearance of a bunch of D&D characters of D&D races wielding D&D magic in the middle of a pretentious fantasy novel world with pretentious fantasy novel races ("They're not 'cliché', because the elves don't have any hair and the orcs are beautiful! And we called them something different! Also, everyone's a jerk. This is a deep and meaningful study of human nature. Ha ha, Tolkien sucks. Pardon me while I file the serial numbers off some more of his stuff.") and pretentious fantasy novel magic and pretentious fantasy novel religious disputes dropped us right into the middle of a pretentious fantasy novel religio-political power struggle. We found this out from the leader of the obviously sympathetic faction, who showed up to interview us and warn us about the other, obviously antagonistic, faction and infodump a whole mess of useless pretentious fantasy novel backstory at us.

Shortly thereafter, the spirit or something of the recently (and thankfully) deceased DMPC appeared to the two female PCs, who were rooming together, in the middle of the night, and warned them that the leader of the obviously antagonistic faction was obviously antagonistic.

This is where it gets fun. There was a language barrier between the PCs (including the DMPC) and everyone else. We spoke various Forgotten Realms languages, with Chondathan in common; they spoke pretentious fantasy novel world language. We had two wizards who could cast comprehend languages, and a rogue who gets more skill points each level than my barbarian does hit points and could spare one to sink into Linguistics to pick up pretentious fantasy novel language. The NPCs had a magic-user who could also do something like comprehend languages. This left the dwarven warrior-priestess and my half-orc barbarian out in the cold, with no way to understand what the NPCs were saying or make ourselves understood to them. (I could spare the skill point, but it wouldn't be in character to do so... if the NPCs want to talk to me, they can learn Orcish. Or at least Chondathan.) And the characters who did understand were spotty about saying they were translating for us, and occasionally (the rogue in particular) mistranslated things (mostly in an attempt to add some diplomacy to things that I, with my -2 Diplomacy skill and contempt for city-dwellers in general and our host in particular (after the fight in which my horse killed more of the enemy orc knockoffs than he and his men together did), was saying).

Then there's the second half of the problem. The players for the female wizard and the dwarf don't really pay good attention to the plot. They had not figured out that there were two factions in the city, with two leaders, and so when the DM took them aside to give them the DMPC apparition's message, they immediately leaped to the conclusion that the person they were being warned about was the guy we'd talked to earlier, the leader of the sympathetic faction, and proceeded to wake everyone else up and warn us about it in those terms rather than repeating the actual message. The other two players didn't catch the slight terminology difference that should have tipped them off, and while I caught it OOC, in-character I didn't know because no one had ever translated that bit for me. Also, I didn't really care, in or out of character.

So I sat there and snickered to myself and cooperated enthusiastically - because my barbarian horse nomad really hadn't appreciated being told that he had to stay under effective house arrest in some stick-up-the-butt weakling short-tooth filth-dweller's city house - when the other players hastily came up with and immediately implemented a plan to kill our way out of the manor - through Obvious Good Guy's household guards - and then out of the city, back out into the wilderness and away from the plot - and all the annoying people who infodump pretentious fantasy backstory at us - entirely.

(This plan also lead to me leaping out a second-story window with a wolf under my arm, and then raging and throwing the wolf at one of the guards, which I'm pretty sure the DM didn't expect, either, though that was more of a, "... You're doing what?" than a complete game-breaker.)

We're now meeting people in the wilderness - the abandoned, zombie- and bad-orc-knockoff-infested wilderness - who infodump pretentious fantasy backstory at us, so we haven't really managed to improve anything. But we did stop our DM dead in his tracks and make him call an early end to a session so he could figure out what to do after we killed a bunch of the good guys unprovoked and rode happily away from the plot.

[Ingus]

Some time ago, my party was trying to stop an evil spellcaster to use an ancient artifact to shatter the seal for the forces of darkness.
The ritual involved put the artifact in a disjuncting rock, to be annihilated, and then use the power to break the seal.
My bard and his fellow cleric managed to get to the sacrifice point a couple of rounds before the rest of the party. But the BBEG was just about to sacrifice the sword, bearing it with his defiying hand.
A 5 level bard against a 11 level sorcerer. What to do? There was only one thing in which the bard was better: disarming attempt with his only-one-ever-used-before whip.
Turned out that the sorcerer even had negatives in Str.
... the look at DM's face when the sword swung away was fantastic

[Kaje]

In my friend's homemade action movie rpg, we the players were playing ourselves, with our own knowledge and abilities, trying to escape our college campus while battling zombies. GM had made it so there was only one way off-campus - hordes of zombies by the union, the footbridge blown up by the air force to contain the situation, the river too strong to swim, etc. So we're all set to make the long trek across campus to where we could get out, when suddenly it occurs to me: "Hey, do they still keep those canoes over by the cafeteria?"

GM: (stunned silence) I hadn't thought of that.

Totally derailed everything he had planned for the next session.

[Cedrass]

It's not me, but a friend who does not come to those forums that did this, and I have to say it.

It was a war campaign, our country versus some country to the north that wanted to expand it's territory without much care for the rest of the world. The "Ice Queen" (can't remember her official title) came at us a bit earlier and had a crush of some kind on one of us, a Psychic Warrior. So, she said that she'd stop her advance for 3 months if we gave her the Psychic Warrior, a stupid move on her part, but what can you do against love? :smalltongue:

We of course denied, it's not the kind of sacrifice we were ready to make. Well, soon we had to go somewhere, so our army's wizard teleports us to some distant country, then the Psychic Warrior (who happens to be an Elan) declares "I resist the Teleport, I'll use all my PPs to augment my Will Save, so I've got a +78 (or something) on my rolls." We were all amazed... He decided to wait until no one could stop him, to surrender and join the Ice Queen. It gave us time to recruit allies and win the war.

Comming from this guy, this is something big. He normally refuses to do anything that would impair or weaken him, much less make him lose his character! The DM never planned for that, he asked us to stop the session to think over the repercutions!

[Umael]

More recently, in our Pathfinder game, the DM has decided to subject us to a tour of his current favorite pretentious fantasy novels,

...and so the appearance of a bunch of D&D characters of D&D races wielding D&D magic in the middle of a pretentious fantasy novel world with pretentious fantasy novel races ("They're not 'cliché', because the elves don't have any hair and the orcs are beautiful! And we called them something different! Also, everyone's a jerk. This is a deep and meaningful study of human nature. Ha ha, Tolkien sucks. Pardon me while I file the serial numbers off some more of his stuff.") and pretentious fantasy novel magic and pretentious fantasy novel religious disputes dropped us right into the middle of a pretentious fantasy novel religio-political power struggle.

...and warn us about the other, obviously antagonistic, faction and infodump a whole mess of useless pretentious fantasy novel backstory at us.

...back out into the wilderness and away from the plot - and all the annoying people who infodump pretentious fantasy backstory at us - entirely.

We're now meeting people in the wilderness - the abandoned, zombie- and bad-orc-knockoff-infested wilderness - who infodump pretentious fantasy backstory at us, so we haven't really managed to improve anything.

Please. I beg of you. (http://thesaurus.com/browse/pretentious)


Main Entry: pretentious
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: snobbish, conceited
Synonyms: affected, arty, assuming, aureate, big*, bombastic, chichi*, conspicuous, euphuistic, exaggerated, extravagant, feigned, flamboyant, flashy, flaunting, flowery, gaudy, grandiloquent, grandiose, high-flown, high-sounding, highfaluting, hollow, imposing, inflated, jazzy, la-di-da, lofty, magniloquent, mincing, ornate, ostentatious, overambitious, overblown, pompous, puffed up, put-on, rhetorical, showy, specious, splashy, stilted, swank, too-too, tumid, turgid, utopian, vainglorious
Antonyms: humble, modest, unconceited

[John Campbell]

The repeated use of "pretentious fantasy [novel]" as an adjectivial phrase was deliberate and done for effect.

[aivanther]

Please. I beg of you. (http://thesaurus.com/browse/pretentious)

Pretty sure that was a "title" meant to hide the real name, not a redundant use of the same adjective.

A guy I knew on another board told me a story once about a campaign he DMed. The PCs had just broken into a dungeon, done some damage, and stolen some artifact. It pretty well screwed over the BBEG's plans, so they high tailed it out. Well, they were camping out by a lake, secure in their escape when about a number of portals open and a small army shows up. The guy who had the artifact panics, knowing if the BBEG gets it back he'll just start using it rather than procrastinate like he did before.

I think the dialogue went something like this.
DudeWithArtifact(DWA): Man, give me your bag of holding?
CluessFriend(CF): What, why?
DWA: Just give it to me.
CF: Uh, okay *hands it to him*
DWA: I open my portable hole and shove it in the bag of holding.
CF: Good idea! We can get them and keep the artifact away.

DM:...seriously?

Said artifact could have whiped the whole army out...

[Ramza1987]

I made all spoilers because is a little long

I made a VoP Druid/lion of talissid (i think the PRC´s name is correct), for a campaign a friend of mine was DM-ing, and i made him summoner so i took Green-bound summoning. Rashemi elemental summoning, and other feats i don´t remember now.

In the first (or second) session, we were going through the end of it, when the DM start the description of the session´s final boss (some kind of giant Werewolf); and took like a minute or two with it, when he finished, i rolled initiative for my summoned tigers (or grass tigers as my party called them :smallbiggrin: ), and rolled 20, so they go first, and i start the attacking process, claw, claw, bite, rakes; 2nd tiger same thing, and the 3erd tiger did claw, claw, and there was nothing to bite anymore; and everyone was shocked by all the damage i did (my party and DM knew too little about D6D at the time).

And later on the same campaign, my party and i, were fighting a Black Dragon (the one with CR 18-20) on a cave; we were lvl 14-15and one of us was lvl 6 (don´t ask... it is too stupid and embarasing to tell), so our chances weren´t big; so as i always have some; i send my (Dire now) grass tigers, to attack the dragon, but even though they hit it every time, the damage reduction absorbed all the damage, so we were starting to get scared of ending with a TPK; and the DM started to laugh (the way an evil DM does).
A few rounds later, after i was almost tired of rolling damage for nothing, one of my summons rolls a natural 20, i rolled again, and it was another 20, so i rolled a third time (we had a house rule that if i got two 20, and confirmed or got another, the creature is dead), and i got a 18, so everyone looked at me really shocked (i have a little fame for being a way too unlucky, and even my unluck was contagious sometimes); the DM said with a sad look, -you killed it!

Some time later (we had dinner after that battle), we all agreed to finish the battle and take my critical hit as a normal critical but with the beest damage posible (just like rolling the highest numbers), and kept hitting the dragon until it dropped dead a few round later by the party´s archer(he had a transformation similar to that of Jin, from tekken, that the DM gave him as part of the story).

In another campaign, i was playing a Grey Elf Rogue/Assassin (just because it seemed like a cool idea), and i was in a cave, with a monk and another one i dont remember, so being the "good" rogue i was (:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:) i did a little scouting, to "check for monsters" (i really was looking for loot to keep to my self), and i got to really dark part of the cave, so
DM: - what do you do?
Me: -I keep going... (i had dark vision from a item i think)
DM: -Ok, roll a listen check (i got a good score) so he says
-You hear snores, they seem to come from a big creature.
Me: -I go to straight to the source of the noises.
DM: -Are you sure??
Me: -Yes, pretty damn sure. i roll hide and move silently (got very nice numbers)
DM: - you se a dragon-like creature, sleeping, what do you do?
Me: -I look at him for 3 complete rounds
DM -What? are you trying to death attack him? He´s a freaking Dragon!!!
Me -Iíl do it anyways. I roll attack, and landed a Natural 20, and another one, and a 16 i think.
DM: -Critical hit! As i roll the fortitude save, start rolling damage.

(i rolled a prety good damage between the critical hit and sneak attack)

The DM rolls the dragon´s save... and got a natural 1, he double checks the bonus, and tells me, don´t bother, he´s dead... :smalleek:

:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbi ggrin::smallbiggrin:

[Umael]

The repeated use of "pretentious fantasy [novel]" as an adjectivial phrase was deliberate and done for effect.

I figured.

It was painful - which I also figure was ALSO deliberate.

You know, when people post stories like this, the first question that other people here always seem to ask is - why do you play with people like that?

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

the DM had thought up a particularly unpleasant encounter involving a mindflayer and 4 thralls. . . . i was one level ahead of the rest of the party (the result of not having died. . . ) and we had just leveled. . .

The DM did not realize that Holy Word had just become an option for me to cast. . . I won initiative. . .i cast holy word. . . everything but the mindflayer died. . . it was suddenly a much easier combat. . . mindflayers are squishy and our paladin killed him in like one round.

[NM020110]

Ramza1987:
Out of curiosity, was the level six character from XP loss, item crafting, level drain, something else, or taking on stupid high amounts of level adjustment?

Fun item trick that may be used:
If you are one of my DMs, do not read this.
If you become my DM, retroactively do not read this.

1.) Become a creature with respawn capabilities (or astral projection).
2.) Walk up to enemy, and tell them to say hello to Azazoth for me.
3.) Combine portable hole and bag of holding.
4.) Enemy shows up in the far realm. If they survive that, then there are some other problems laying around...
5.) I get killed too quickly to lose my sanity, and respawn as per my precautions taken in step one.
6.) Go on with the threat (hopefully) removed. If the enemy survived having that happen to them it's time to start boosting caster levels, learning gate, and grabbing the Immortal's Handbook.

[Starscream]

One of the first 3.5 campaigns I joined was back when I didn't understand that Monks suck. So I wanted to play one.

The DM (who was well aware that monks suck), decided to throw me a curveball. The setup was that the rest of the party was between adventures, chilling at a local festival, and engaging in some fun contests to earn cash.

There was an archery tournament for the ranger, jousting for the paladin, etc. Because I had joined as a monk, the DM decided that the group would meet me when they saw me competing in an unarmed combat tourney.

Unbeknownst to me (but knownst to the other players), the DM had a bad habit of recasting his old characters as Mary-Sueish NPCs, to show how awesome they were. And the guy I was fighting was just such a character. Also, he was a werewolf.

The idea was that I'd get trounced, lose all my money (which I had bet on myself), and the PCs would offer me a spot on their team to I could reclaim my honor as a warrior, and regain my wealth.

Instead, the Random Number Gods smiled upon me that day. Call it beginners luck, but all my rolls were excellent during that fight, and my opponent's were lousy. I landed stunning fist after stunning fist, and the werewolf found himself unable to transform (which was going to be the big surprise, I had no idea he was a werewolf) for several rounds. No transformation meant no DR, and by the time he finally was able to fight back the battle was almost over.

I won, and instead of starting the game flat broke and getting a spot on the team out of pity, I was filthy rich and got the slot because they were so impressed. And of course, the other players were dying of laughter the whole time, enjoying watching the DM's pet character (who they couldn't stand) get trounced.

[HunterOfJello]

I normally DM, but one of my players asked if he could DM a new campaign on our off weeks. I thought it was a great idea and was eager to play as a player for a change.

In the very first game, the two PCs awaken in a strange room with a black orb in it. The room had 2 adult human males, 1 old human woman and 1 young human boy. My gnome cloistered cleric of The Traveler convinced each of the humans in the room to lick the black orb. (This should have been the DM's first sign to be more careful.) The black orb soon started to glow and gave the group a mission to kill a specific elven warrior and told us we would meet him soon after being teleported. So, the orb teleports everyone to the forest and 2 elven warriors soon come up to the group. My character and the halfling bard PC hide behind some trees and watch the 2 human males and the 2 elves fight eachother.

Being a cleric of The Traveler, I decide that doing what I'm told by a mysterious black orb is stupid, so I pull out my crossbow and kill the 2 human males (who were being ***** to us in the first place).

The halfling bard PC and I then come out of hiding and begin to negotiate with the 2 elves. We find out we're trespassing inside of the King's Forest and must leave immediately. Through effective diplomacy and bluff tactics by my Cleric and the Bard we befriend the 2 elves and sell the old human woman and young boy into slavery.

After about 2 hours, the other player and I had completely dismantled all planning that the DM had set up for the campaign's future continuation and taken actions so far out of his expectations that he gave up and let the bard player DM for the rest of the session.

~

Later on I used the Travel Devotion Feat to outrun and take down an elf messenger who was going to unveil our treachery to the leaders of the elves in the area. Unfortunately, the new DM underestimated how far a player can actually run when using that feat (even though I had activated it for use in a fight several rounds before.)

[Jergmo]

In my friend's campaign, I was playing a Neutral Evil Necromancer that somehow ended up being involved in a prophecy to save the world. Some hero, right? At the time I think I was 14th level. It was my job to rally every other sap that was involved in the prophecy, and bend over backwards to convince them that they should help to save the friggin' world, which they live in.

In my quest that led to my character nearly breaking down entirely and developing a seething rage for all that lives, I had to deal with a Mature Adult Green Dragon who was guarding a Druid that was one of these so-called heroes. It was demanded that he hand over his Robe of the Archmagi in order for the dragon to let him see her and not eat him. :smallfurious:

Oh, no, I said. This is not going to fly.

I attacked the dragon. No, that's not the right word. I crippled the dragon, rather badly, thanks to taking it by surprise and said spells offering no saves. After the surprise round + my round of plastering it with no-save debuffs, the dragon took flight and tried to flee. So I hunted it down and forced it to surrender. One of its hatchlings was threatened in the process as well.

The DM and my companion were taken quite by surprise. I made it clear that he wasn't to be messed with anymore.

[Superglucose]

Call his bluff.

[Ingus]

In the very first game, the two PCs awaken in a strange room with a black orb in it. The room had 2 adult human males, 1 old human woman and 1 young human boy. My gnome cloistered cleric of The Traveler convinced each of the humans in the room to lick the black orb. (This should have been the DM's first sign to be more careful.) The black orb soon started to glow and gave the group a mission to kill a specific elven warrior and told us we would meet him soon after being teleported. So, the orb teleports everyone to the forest and 2 elven warriors soon come up to the group.


Your DM should have been a big fan of Gantz


I remembered one more. Not mine, but widely known by my usual group of players as a legendary move.


A party of PCs fighting a BBEG was controlled by a demon spy after them for almost the entire campaign being completely unnoticed.
At some point, the party camped near a river and their cleric needed to reorganize his spells. He, so, had an idea: "Instead of just dismiss the spells, I'll rather use them."
So he (obviously) cured all the party to full HP and then...
"Uh, I will really don't need Control Water and, frankly, I even don't know why I memorized it in the first place. So I go near the river and lower water level".
It happened that the deon spy was under water level (with no need to breathe, a very good place to hide) and the lowering of the river level completely exposed him.
So, the poor demon looked up and "Hello there, pretty mornin' isn't it?"

[panaikhan]

One of the times I remember surprising the GM.

It was a 'Heroes Unlimited' game; the party (a suitable band of misfits posing as their normal alter-ego's) were on a plane back to our home city, when a small group of terrorists decide to hijack it. Now, as the 'good guys' the party decided it was time to get involved.
With the numbers fairly evenly matched between the party and the hijackers, both sides figured a stand-up fight would get messy - and possibly dangerous at 40,000ft. One of the hijackers decided to grab a passenger, threatening to kill them if we (the party) didn't sit down and shut up.
My character had powers over kinetic energy, being able to absorb and redirect it. She was also of Aberrant alignment (D&D: LE-ish). My response? I plant a kinetically charged throwing knife squarely between the passenger's eyes (much to the universal shock of both the GM and the other players) killing them outright. With the passenger dead and bleeding profusely, I then responded "Now what?"

The GM called for a pizza recess, while he figured out how to continue the encounter without wiping out the entire party in a plane crash...

[Choco]

Your DM should have been a big fan of Gantz

Yeah, which is why I was surprised that their heads didn't explode when they didn't perform their mission...

One time in D&D, our DM had our group of PC's (about level 8-9 I think) come up on an entire enemy army (over 2000 soldiers) while they were all gathered close together (except for a few guards) witnessing some speech or something from their leader. We were sent to fix some problem the army was causing, and he was expecting us to negotiate. He did not realize that my sorcerer had just learned fly last levelup, and already had fireball (unoptimized, definitely, but I always take fireball, what a fun spell...). So I make myself invisible and fly up into the air well outside of the range of all the army's low-level archers and casters, and proceeded to fireball their closely-gathered arses into oblivion. DM had to cut off the session mid-slaughter to determine where to go from there.

Another time we came across a village that had some huge problem that they were unwilling to believe they had. DM expected us to follow the typical cliche of our heroes showing up to the village to help, villagers getting mad/impatient and possibly running us out of town or even attacking us, us sticking around to save them at the last second anyway, and them apologizing for being so blind and thanking us. What really happened was we showed up to the village to help, the villagers got mad/impatient and told us to leave, I pointed out we were not paid in advance for this anyway, so we left. Turns out the DM had planned the next few sessions around us helping the town :smalltongue:.

[Werekat]

Not one of mine, but a favorite.

Vampire: the Masquerade game. Our Brujah - classic young Brujah biker look - was running towards his haven over the Brooklyn bridge with half an hour to sunrise. However, surprise - the bridge is blocked off by the police due to a warning about gang fights.
Brujah: "Man, I gotta get through! Lemme go!"
Cop: "Swim if you want, you ain't passing here."
The Brujah had fairly respectable Humanity for a Brujah, so he says, "Ok!"
And jumps off the bridge. The last thing he sees is the cop dropping his gun in amazement.
So he falls, him being lucky, hits his head on a brdge support, swims somewhere deep, attaches himself to the bridge support, and falls asleep.
Next evening, our deep sleeper awakens late and somewhere in a thick bag, and hears a muffled conversation between our party ghouls and someone else.
"We're taking him."
"But he's dead, he'd drowned, we barely found him, we need an autopsy done!"
"We are taking him."
The Brujah... Rips open the morgue bag. Two out of four of the morgue team faint. The head doctor stares. The Brujah climbs out of the bag lazily, comes up to the remaining doctors, and says, "How many times do I have to tell you people? Do NOT disturb a yoga student in deep trance!"
The other two doctors stand stunned, and the Brujah walks out with the ghouls.

The DM ruled this became "just one of those city rumors".

[hamishspence]

"How many times do I have to tell you people? Do NOT disturb a yoga student in deep trance!"

:smallbiggrin:

I like this phrase.

[The Vorpal Tribble]

Oreg, Divine Proxie of Kord vs. Karribi, 5th level darfellan bard



At the mead tent, various angelic creatures are taking up perches to watch the upcoming competitions from a safe distance. Giants roll immense tubs of spirits to the tent, while dwarves hammer in taps and set up tables. Various vættir and several bariaurs lounge around or place bets on the competitors.

Oreg, proxie of Kord, turns as you approach. "Ah, one of the faithful! Welcome to this fine exhibition, Mithredath and company. I do not think this is the best of contests for yourself, small one, but perhaps one of your companions might join us in sport! Be welcome to the feast in any event."


Karribi eyes widen slightly at the halfling's word and he opens his mouth to speak when he seems to relax. His lips twitch upwards and he holds out a hand to forestall Ammon.

"Greeeeaaat Stooonehammer. My hooome is much as this realm. There weeee have many contests as well, feeeeats of a different strength. I would liiiike to challenge yoouuu yourself tooo aaaa boooout of endurance." he says invitingly, but with a toothy smile to show it is in sport. "Will yoooou heeeear mieeeey challenge?"




Oreg looks at Karribi'dingi with an amused expression. "I would be more than happy to accept your challenge. How shall we test our might? One of these challenges, perhaps? Or all three? Or something more cordial, such as grappling or arm-wrestling? I would offer to challenge you as a pugilist, but it would be unfair."


"Then aaa new faaaace on the saaame challenge. Dooo youuuu sing, lord?" Karribi ventures. "The length of tuuune measures the blow, and toooo lift the voice reeequiiiires aaaair, breath or noooo."


Karribi'dingi
Oreg smiles and the two raise their voices, holding strong on a single note each. The wonderful baritone harmony ends as Oreg's wind dies out first.

"A unique challenge, bold one, and not one I was prepared for. I have been Kord's proxy for so long now that I've forgotten all about breathing properly."

He leads your party into the mead tent, last of all a slightly wistful Banzzag, and seats you at the head table.

"Now then, you've bested me at your contest, though perhaps not quite the physical challenge I was expecting. What is your petition?"


Well, damn. I got the short end of that stick. Guess the contest's over.

500 bonus quest experience for outsmarting the DM.

[Marriclay]

One of my favorite characters, a half-dragon named Rast, was a simple fighter. With a wisdom score of 4 (Don't judge - I'd rolled two 18s, a 17, and two 15s for my other scores. I decided taking the 4 was worth it to keep my other scores.) he was simultaneously the most awesome and most oblivious party member. He would act chummy with angry kings, King someone in the face no matter what his position in society was, mainly because he didn't really think about the consequences of his actions.

The Cleric in this, Toneril, had a way of presenting plans that nobody had thought about before because he had slightly sideways thinking - instead of building on what the other players talked about, he'd always go off on his own tangents, and it had been the Catalyst in many DM breaking plans. Last session he got an item called the Orb of Cesysian Thunder. You had to roll randomly on a table to see what exactly it did, with a few good effects and mostly mediocre ones

At one point, we had to cross the Royal Sea. It's called such because it's actually just a very large salt water lake, with the royal capital of the country (Which we were trying to get to) on the other side.

There are apparently three passenger boats that make the trip across twice a month; one trip to the royal city, the second away. We got on one of the ships since we'd had the luck to be there in time for it to leave to the royal city. Of course, this is the time when the DM decides to introduce something that would be an enemy later on in the game - A 12 headed pyro-hydra that wa clearly more intelligent than normal. It ripped apart one of the boats, then, as it began moving to the next one, the cleric pulled out the orb and said, "Is it in range?" The DM nodded, thinking that nothing was going to happen.

Toneril used the orb, and rolled a 100 on the percentile. The DM checked his notes. The Hydra was rendered blind, deaf, stunned, and dazed for 1d8 rounds, which he rolled a 4 on.

So Rast, suddenly excited that they could win, took a running jump and flew off the back of the boat towards it. Dragon Wings for a +10 jump bonus and a glide speed and a +8 strength score help when you want to make a jump to something that's fifty feet away. Rast lands easily, and then attacks the now sinking behemoth, stabbing it in the back. Three natural twenties later, I have Rast swimming back to the boat with twelve hydra heads in his hands as trophies.

The DM jut shook his head and said, "Your not making low wisdom characters from now on."

[Jergmo]

With a wisdom score of 4

:smalleek: Forget about just being oblivious, we're talking extreme case of a variety of mental disability that I can't figure out. I'd say severe autism if it weren't for the high Cha.

[Jack_Simth]

:smalleek: Forget about just being oblivious, we're talking extreme case of a variety of mental disability that I can't figure out. I'd say severe autism if it weren't for the high Cha.

Believes anything anyone tells him, can't figure out logical consequences, and misses highly obvious things. That's... actually something you'd get with certain types of Alzheimer or stroke victims. To the point where the hospital has at least one specific test for it.

Edit:
Oh, and in a slightly more meaningful vein, at relatively low-levels, I had my animal companion grapple the BBEG. Who had no defense against grappling, and nothing she could do about it.

So while the DM was sitting there for three minutes trying to decide on the BBEG's action, I started taking advantage of out-of-turn talking, and teasing the BBEG. Into a bit of a treaty. Basically a non-agression pact with the living. Of course, on the way out of town, I couldn't resist laughing. See, the treaty basically amounted to a reminder that people fight back. But with enough push to the reminder that the BBEG was going to stay non-aggressive for quite some time.

[Starscream]

I'd treat such a low wisdom score as essentially meaning the character is insane. Madness themed mechanics (such as Taint and the Alienist prestige class), often apply penalties to wisdom. Since the stat represents your common sense, it also defines your grip on reality.

I'd play a character with wisdom of 4 as being basically unable to tell what is real and what isn't, prone to delusions, hallucinations, and being constantly off in their own little world. Sort of like Delirium from the Sandman (only hopefully less omnipotent...otherwise the entire campaign world is in trouble:smallwink:).

[doliest]

My DM introduced us to the main villain early; my psion was level 6 or 7. My psion pushed every power point into a single beam attack that rolled well. The main villain was dead and my psion stole his god-killing sword and used it as a gift for his wedding. Held on the villain's grave. To said Villain's sister. That was a funny session.

[Jack_Simth]

My DM introduced us to the main villain early; my psion was level 6 or 7. My psion pushed every power point into a single beam attack that rolled well. The main villain was dead and my psion stole his god-killing sword and used it as a gift for his wedding. Held on the villain's grave. To said Villain's sister. That was a funny session.
You do realize that's not actually a legal choice, at least in 3.5, right? You're limited on how many power points you can put into a single manifestation by your manifester level.

[Lord Loss]

Happened to me this afternoon:

The PCs managed to one-shot a powerful warden to an enemy prison from which they had escaped and take the keys (hence building up a small army by freeing the other nonevil prisoners). Then they entered a room where they inadvertedly freed a somewhat powerful demon. The demon, seeing he was outmatched by the PCs and their army, took the squishiest of the PCs hostage, who he could kill in one blow. The demon was rather tough, so this was supposed to be a negotiation. The barbarian (to me):

Barbarian: I won initiative.
Me: Mmmhmmm...
Barbarian: I charge the Demon.
Me: Okay...
Him: Nat twenty. Now what?
Me: He's, he's uh, dead.

Later in the session, I pit them against a minor boss who would have been quite a challenge to their abilities. (A CR 6 Quaggoth)_

Said Barbarian:

Him:I charge him!
Me: Okay. Roll your attack!
Him: Nat Twenty
Me: Okay... Confirmation?
Him Twenty. And another twenty. So, Autokill?
Me: ARRRGHHH!!!

I swear, half his rolls were twenty today. :smallannoyed:.

[Lorn]

All from LARP.

First one could be considered to be vaguely FOIP-y. Any DUTT people out there who don't know what's going on with Gadd and don't want to, don't look.
My character decided to sell every single one of his memories to a ludicrously powerful demon in return for being resurrected and sent back at the city he was in (where demonology is really, really illegal and everyone knew exactly what he had done) with the singular intent of protecting the community due to a massive fear of dying. See the notes on the vampire later.

He remembers nothing. Not his parents, his age, anyone he knew. He does not remember his younger sister who was previous possessed by a demon whose mark now appears on the back of his neck - and the reasoning for this (even what I know OC) is incredibly FOIP-y, but suffice to say if I survive another interactive (in which said demon may make an appearance) I'll be incredibly surprised.

He's also not totally in posession of his soul; not explicitly saying "my soul is NOT for sale" to a demon is, apparently, tantamount to saying "yeah, take it, it's yours." There's basically an IOU attached. If he dies, he goes to hell for something he doesn't remember - the character is already essentially dead and now a new person, due to no memories, but yeah. It's complicated. I don't even know if other demons can tell the IOU is there, so trying to pull a John Constantine may be tricky :p Also, he doesn't know this little detail, which... yeah. If he finds out, I have no idea how he'll react.

He's had two interactives so far. Somehow, he has survived and is kind of vaguely free despite the two melee-ers left in the player base wanting him either dead or arrested.

Last interactive he was at:
"Ok, so there's a really powerful, really nasty demon put its mark in the back of my neck, and because of that you want to arrest me?"
"Yes."
"..."
"Get up and come with me, NOW."
"**** off. Actually..."
[I grab a knife lying on the table.]
"I'll cut the damn symbol out. Let's find out what happens!"
"NO, you won't."
With the knife resting on the back of my neck: "Try and stop me." [To someone else] Is it in the right place?"
... and so on and so forth. Eventually persuaded the Doktor to do it, while all the melee-ers (and others) stood around with drawn weapons while one of the refs stood nearby with a manic grin on his face. Sadly, trying to remove the symbol didn't get too far. Nor, sadly, did it make the demon materialise and possibly try to force me to kill most of the bar...


Also, assaulting a massive crystal pyramid full of powerful crystal-monster-things based on the Jaffa (Stargate) after most of our gear was stolen after fulfilling the adventure objective. (To put things in perspective: I had a bastard sword and nothing else. The other melee-er had my shield and a shortsword. The scout had two knifes and the mage was unarmed. These things were, essentially, dual-wielding bastard swords and were incredibly hard because of this. I could kill one in six strikes, while they'd put me down with four headshots.) We didn't win. We, to quote the scout, "ran like ****ing hell." After one of our number almost died and the mage completely ran out of mana.

Not me, but: Seneschal of the city decided, spontaneously, to use Geomancy to turn herself into a vampire and sunder a pantheon of 7 gods. Sadly, she's still at large because we didn't realise she could walk through walls and thus vanished when we tried to take her down the week after.

[Marriclay]

:smalleek: Forget about just being oblivious, we're talking extreme case of a variety of mental disability that I can't figure out. I'd say severe autism if it weren't for the high Cha.

Believe it or not, his father was exactly the same way. we don't know how, and we don't know why, but through sheer dumb luck every one of his family line for ten generations was considered insane or at least mentally challenged, yet each one rose to prominence, then a little before he or she was forty years old said, "Screw this" and went to become a hermit in the country. Rast's forebears include his father, who was the world's greatest blacksmith, his grandmother, who had tamed the dragon her son later seduced, his great grandfather who was considered one of the most influential people in the history of making magical items (having been an epic artificer), and his great great grandfather was one of the leading generals in the Empire's rise to power. The best part was that none of them had the forethought to tell their children what they'd done with their life and pass on their skills, so every time the new child in the line was different and very strange in relation to the last one. Or people in general.

The best part is, I always like playing the children of one of my other characters...

[Corporal Flint]

I've got a couple of stories, both mostly related.

So my group (This is when I was a player) is hired by a wealthy noble and businessman to clean out a tribe of orcs that has infested one of his more profitable mines. We move in and kill off most of the orcs before finding an adult red dragon sleeping in the final chamber. Orcs flood in and attack, and during the fight the dragon wakes up and starts eating orcs like candy (A welcome ight). After the fight is over, (And this is when I was playing Flint, the guy in my signature, mind you) the dragon starts to eye us hungrily, so for some ****-eyed reason the party wizard elbows my barbarian and murmurs for him to do something to keep the dragon from devouring us. I'm sure he was thinking of a Diplomacy or Bluff check, neither of which I was trained in but had good bonuses for thanks to my Charisma...but I thought "No. You know what? You ask for the barbarian to negotiate, you get what comes next."

I roll a 27 to Intimidate the red dragon. I roar in his face, and in response he almost blows out my eardrums with his response. And for some incomprehensible, unknown, most likely stupid reason, the entire party starts getting on my case for pissing off the dragon.

We ended up working for the dragon (Despite my epic diplomacy fail) to clean out the rest of the mine so that he could use it as his lair, with the understanding that we would not inform the noble what had really happened. When we returned to the noble's house, he was furious at us because his spies had just informed him of what had happened in the mines and refused to pay us. Guards surrounded us and lowered polearms as he considered whether to enslave us or just kill us.

My response? "I charge the noble."

DM: "Okay, that's four opportunity attacks." he then proceeded to spectacularly fail all four rolls, giving me a clear shot at the noble. I use my encounter power, Daring Charge, and get a +8 on the attack and damage roll.

I roll a crit. 2d10+10 is max damage, plus 1d12 bonus damage for my +1 viscious broadsword.

I bloody him in one hit, thus initiating a surprise round. The party gets the drop on the guards, and we overwhelm the entire mansion in a matter of minutes before tying up the businessman, looting his estate from top to bottom, and promptly selling all of his possessions (Earning about 4000gp).

[CubeB]

Mutants and Masterminds- Final Encounter of the Adventure.

We've all been teleported into a massive arena, and forced to fight NPCs with similar powers to us.

My character, Mind's Eye, was Psychic Private Investigator who typically fought with a Psionic Weapon. (Which would be great if the GM would stop throwing creatures immune to Will Effects at us. Seriously. I hate feral vampires with a passion now.)

Anyway, I was set to battle a powerful Psychic known as NoDoze, who (like myself) had a massive will save.

My action went something like this.

Assistant DM: Okay, what's your action?
Me: I spend a Hero Point to replace Psychic Blast with Strike.
ADM: (After checking with the main DM) Okay, you can do that.
Me: Good. Now I kick him in the face.

The NPC had almost no physical defense, and we were running low on time anyway, and I was shrugging off all of his attacks with Mind Shield, so the DMs eventually decided I won by default.

Boot to the head!

[TheCountAlucard]

Sort of a double-whammy, from our Exalted game:

Back when we had nary an experience point to our names, our circle of Solars went to the South to investigate something for the Gold Faction (i.e., one of the few organizations in the world that don't want us dead), and came across an Infernal slaver named Molag. He was massive (the fact that he was packed into three suits of armor might've been a factor); rather than risk a straight fight with him, we had our magically-masked Eclipse caste try and buddy up with him for a double-cross later. However, our Eclipse got a little too... "in-character." Molag takes him to meet with a Fiend Caste Infernal, who wants him to sanctify an oath that the Eclipse caste will work for them for a year and a day, in exchange for ten percent of the magical gear they find (for those of you who don't play Exalted, if an Eclipse sanctifies an oath, whoever breaks it will suffer a terrible curse). Our Eclipse surprised everyone, especially the ST, by taking that deal.

So of course, it's up to us to rescue him from his servitude. We confront the big nasties in their lair, a massive cathedral buried in the sands. BBEG starts doing his monologuing, and then tells us he's willing to make a deal with us for our friend back. He calls for the Fiend caste to bring our Eclipse in, continues with the monologuing, and then our Zenith caste stabs the Eclipse.

So, yeah, double surprise there.

[Lioness]

We have to get from the mainland to an island about 3 miles away, and we have no boat. We find a local canoe, and start rowing that there. Half way along, monster comes, breaks our boat, almost kills our party. We can't swim back, and we can't swim forward (well, some of us can...but the tank has a -5 or so to swim). We think for a long time about what to do. Eventually the wizard (me) is searching her spell list..."Uh, DM...Tenser's Floating Disk would hold all of us, right?"

Him: *speechless*...I...suppose.
Me: *casts Fly on self* *Casts TFD*. Right...all of you - get on the disk.

[super dark33]

we were watching an ''epic'' fight beteween 2 too-powerfull-npc (yet again)
it was between two big fighters (dark and light).althrogh that i like the dark side,we HAD to fight for the good ones. so i decided to stuck a nail in the bad guy's neck. our DM decided that it was only 1d6.so in the end of the battle which the light (how surprizeing) won, i ressuracted the bad guy as a skeleton in order to kill the good guy.

[Agent_0042]

In a 3.5 game I'm in, we're a party of six: gnoll warblade with a green dragon bloodline, human swordsage with a fire elemental bloodline, elven fey favored soul, gnome fey scout, kobold black dragon shaman, and myself as an air genasi conjurer focusing on summons.

This session, we were all around level 8. After adventuring through old ruins, we found ourselves in a room containing an abyssal greater basilisk. Immediately, the scout flees; she had been petrified by a regular basilisk near the start of the campaign, and she wasn't about to have that happen again. It was a few months back, so I don't remember precisely what happened. I do know that the warblade had managed to get in a hit, the dragon shaman as well, and the swordsage and favored soul were incapacitated, either from damage or petrification. Then it's my turn, me being last in the initiative order.

Now, I had two trump cards. One was the Rashemi Elemental Summoning feat, which let me empower my air and earth elemental summons with the orglash and thomil templates, respectively. (For those who aren't familiar with the thomil template, it basically grants a move-action engulf, earth glide, and a resistant-but-immobile boulder form.) The other was the first level in the original version of my planar thaumaturge (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158694), letting me add the air or earth creature templates to my summons instead of fiendish or celestial. I really didn't want to spring this on the DM yet, but we were already down half a party, and I knew that thing was above our CR (both from knowledge checks and from the fact that our DM always does that). Pull out the stops.

DM: What do you do?
Me: Summon Monster IV, *rolls* 3 earth elemental huge monstrous centipedes. *places them opposite the basilisk from the party* Now, since I have rapid summoning, they get a move action before the end of my turn.
DM: Alright.
Me: Centipede 1 moves to engulf. The basilisk either gets a reflex save to move out the way, or can make an AoO but is automatically hit.
DM: *rolls* He makes the save.
Me: Centipede 1 continues moving, getting between us and the basilisk. Centipede 2 moves to engulf.
DM: *rolls* He fails.

The party stands back. The basilisk manages to break out, but with the centipedes in the way he can't do anything but attack them. On my next turn, a centipede manages to engulf on the first try.

Me: So, what's underneath us?
DM: ...The stone floor?
Me: No, I mean are there any patches of metal, rooms, or hollow spaces directly beneath us?
DM: Why do you need to know?
Me: Because after engulfing, the centipede moves straight down, and is going to run 160ft downwards each turn until it expires, leaving the basilisk to suffocate. Unless there's anything to stop it.
DM: Ah. Fight over.

[Saintheart]

Red Hand of Doom. At Rhest.

First they ambush the black dragon in its lair. Then the party Duskblade hits it with two tanglefoot bags of which one roll is a natural 20, and which the dragon fails. This kicks the dragon down the initiative table, at which point the party swashbuckler/rogue leaps into battle, takes a five foot step next to the dragon, and then rolls above 14 THREE TIMES. (Keen rapiers and Telling Blow, how I hate thee sometimes...) :D He carved 172 hitpoints off the damn thing in one pass.

Still, they were clever how they ambushed a dragon, so it was okay. :smallcool:

[kestrel404]

For games I played in:
Spoiler for length.

- The whole party jumped into a stasis box we found at the bottom of a dungeon (we ended up 10,000 years in the future, because our GM was cool enough to role with it)
- I figured out the meta-plot to a game about an hour before the game should have ended, and bypassed the finale. TThe only clues to this were that: The universe started with a bang (mentioned by the GM once in the introduction to the year-long campaign), and that the spiral of entropy was in its final curling loop (mentioned by the BBEG in his vilian's soliloquy). The answer, which was obvious to no one but me and the GM, was that the entire story had played out in the mind of a man who had just been shot. And I was playing a superpowered teleporter/telepath - who teleported the party OUT OF THE MAN'S MIND JUST BEFORE WE FOUGHT THE BBEG!
- After being sent to assassinate a specific mage, who is hiding at the top of his wizard's tower, I find out that he's a) the same class as me and b) a somatic caster (needs intricate hand motions to cast spells). When we finally meet up with him, I immediately offer to betray the party and join him as his apprentice. I move towards him, away from the party, and since I'm a spellcaster with no obvious weapons, he lets me get close enough to make a physical attack. As my first action I slap a set of handcuffs on him, and roll high enough to succeed.
- In one game where my PC had just sacrificed herself to save the party (resurrection would have been anti-climatic), I was writing up a new character - an illusionist. However, I didn't want it to be obvious to my enemies that he was an illusionist, so I had him take a war-horse as his (advanced) familiar, he wore crystaline chainmail armor (it was actually his spellbook, with the spells engraved on the rings of the crystal armor - I bought it as elven chain and took the armored mage(light armor) ability, so my spell failure chance was 0%). And I wielded a lance and (light) shield, and claimed to be a paladin. I didn't have a lot of magic items in truth, but I did have a spell that made items LOOK enchanted under detect magic. So everything I owned glowed faintly of some type of magic or other. Every morning I spent an hour 'polishing my chainmail'. I had also concocted an NPC beguiler/cleric of trickery/mystic theurge who helped me learn to make my spell's somatic components look like those from divine spells rather than arcane spells, or hide them behind my shield, etc. so long as I made a sleight of hand check (DC based on spell level, but reasonably low). This particular NPC filled so many holes in the DM's current plotline that he accused me of reading the campaign notes he never wrote down. The surprise? I didn't tell the party. Whenever I used a spell and someone noticed, I claimed I had a 'custom magic item' - which was more than confirmed when the party sorceror cast detect magic and I lit up like a christmas tree. By the end of the sessions the entire group was baying for the GM's head on a pike for 'giving me way too many overpowered magic items'.


From games I ran:

- In a post apocalyptic/zombie filled NYC, the party of adventurers went on a dungeon crawl of a sky-scraper. They were basically doing a hack-and-slash up zombie filled stairwells and through zombie infested corporate offices in search of coffee (it was a slightly silly game). I though I'd had the party cornered when they reached the top of the sky-scraper and they noticed that the sound of their guns had attracted a huge army of zombies to the tower they were in, and that the stairwells were once again crawling with the nasties. But it turned out that they had planned ahead - every one of them had packed a parachute.
- One of my players doesn't pay quite enough attention to what's going on in the game. All of the othe PCs are shopping in the great bazarre of a major town. He wanders off to the outskirts of town. Because the shopping trip had gone on for a while, I threw a plot hook to him - a bedraggled looking boy ran up the road, screaming that his village (a couple hours travel from the town) was under attack by raiders. Well, the player, thinking that the rest of the party was there with him, stated that he 'immediately heads for the village that is under attack'. We try to explain to him that the other PCs won't be there if he doesn't go look for them, but he decides that his character has made up his mind, and thinks he can do this by himself. So he goes off, alone, without telling anyone, to an entirely different town in order to stop an invading foreign army. He was a level 3 scout.

[Caliphbubba]

Back in 2nd Ed I had a friend that was fond of the spell Dimensional Folding. The best thing I ever witnessed him use it for was to set one end of the fold directly in front of the BBEG and the other end of it directly behind him... and then watch the BBEG procede to kill himself with a mega-cone of cold type deal.

Other winners were Dimensional Folding enemies into a volcano. lol

[Sarquion]

Spoilered for length:

We were staying in the house of a young woman, who demanded that the males and females of our party sleep in different rooms, the females in her room. After many exclamations from the male characters players of "IT'S A TRAP!" in true Admiral Ackbar style, we decided to investigate, though the hostess specifically said not to leave the room.

Our DM expected us to bust down the door and fight the woman...

Instead, we asked our sorcerer to use Ghost Sound outside of her door, tempting her out, then he escaped via the window and used Ghost Sound again in the forest outside the house. She went to investigate, and we heard the sound of battle as she was attacked by an awakened wolf that was waiting in the forest for her. We then barricaded the doors, and prepared ourselves in the basement of the house (Which our DM had to come up with on the spot, not thinking we would take this course of action:smallamused:). She came down, revealed herself as a succubus and attacked my barbarian, missing, at which point I rolled a 12 with my greataxe on damage after critting, and removed her from space and time with the amount of damage she took.

Fun times :smallbiggrin:

That was SO fun when he just looked at me when i did it :D:D I partly did it to annoy him but also to actually be able to use the illusions spells i had learnt it was annoying not being able to use them. Also when you (the barbarian) and the paladin who was barricading the door thought ... what kind of a house doesn't have a back door?

[Garian]

Whenl I was DMing I had a 10ft long seemingly endless pit in the dungeon path. The party rogue happily pulls out his 10ft pole and (being a halfling) crosses safely. Leaving the rest of the party still on the other side wonder what to do. Finally the part wizard casts summon monster. Wondering where he was going with this I continued as he explains the plan. Summoning a fiendish octopus and commanding it to extend over the pit. The rest of the party then walks over the octopus to the other side.
I was impressed enough not to try and figure out if the octopus could actually do that ;)

[Yukitsu]

"Wait, we need to fall asleep to pass this puzzle?"
"Yeah?"
"That's horrible!"
"What? Why? You haven't even tried the puzzle yet."
"We're a party of elves dude."
"...Crap."

[Lioness]

^^
Hah

We were playing with the World Serpent Inn once, and accidentally opened a door that led to the middle of a tornado, quite a long way above ground. The paladin failed the balance check, and fell out of the door, managing only to grab the doorframe. I then failed my balance check as well, but managed to grab the paladin's foot. There was no way to get up, really, apart from risking climbing up the paladin. I cast dimension door directly below myself, set to open back in the corridor. Then I let go of the paladin and fell through the door. Success.

Of course, then I had to convince the paladin that letting go would make him perfectly safe, and that it would all be fine.

[AustontheGreat1]

After taking a grenade to the face, using the bulletproof door that was blown off its hinges as a shield as protection from a hail of bullets from 3 tommy gun wielding mooks; then using that same door to beat the enemies to death.

I really wanted to keep the door, but unfortunately I was forced to abandon it when the building exploded.

[Scarey Nerd]

That was SO fun when he just looked at me when i did it :D:D I partly did it to annoy him but also to actually be able to use the illusions spells i had learnt it was annoying not being able to use them. Also when you (the barbarian) and the paladin who was barricading the door thought ... what kind of a house doesn't have a back door?

Ah yes, I forgot about that...

DM: OK, there are tables and chairs near you, you can use them to barricade the door I guess...
Me: *Starts barricading the door, and gets the Paladin to lean on it* OK, I don't think she's gonna get through tha-
Party: What's wrong?
Me: ...What kind of house doesn't have a back door? :smalleek:
Party: :smalleek::smalleek::smalleek::smalleek:
Me: I RUN TO THE BACK DOOR AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!

[Ormur]

Not making a third attempt at killing the demon, ending it peacefully instead, claiming it was all just a big misunderstanding. Teleport is nice but at some point it just seems a bit awkward to pop by again to kill the plot-irrelevant level appropriate encounter.

[Psyborg]

Playing a level...3 or 4 Halfling Bard, with pimped Inspire Courage (all the usual except Dragonfire Inspiration). I was getting tired of throwing daggers for piddly damage, so just before going through a door in a dungeon,

"I put one flask of alchemist's fire and-"
*checks character sheet*
"fourteen flasks of oil [all I had on hand] into an empty sack."

I then proceeded to throw said sack at the next monster I saw (after starting bardic music). Being a halfling with excellent Dex, thrown weapon bonus, and size bonus, the nonproficiency/improvised penalty didn't faze me at all, especially while singing. The monster in question was instantaneously reduced to ash (15d6 Fire, reflex half, at level 4.)

Only later did I find out that that was supposed to be the boss for that dungeon area. We fought a similar one a couple rooms later- after the DM checked to make sure I was out of combustibles- and this one actually had the MacGuffin on him.

[Ricky S]

I was a halfling cleric of pelor who had focussed entirely on healing. I was level 5 and had a mace and no combat feats and -1 str.
We were in a room with the BBEG and had 10 rounds to kill him or we and everyone in the city would be sucked into the hell dimension. So we are fighting and I was last in the iniative order.

The last round goes like this:
Fellow party members attack
BBEG attacks nearly killing fellow party member.
Dm is like "Summoning the last of his strength Keza-"
Me "Wait I havent had my turn"
DM "Fine go its not like you can do anything"
Me "I charge" I need a 20 to hit him and I rolled a 20 which I confirmed rolling a 6 on the d6 and killed him.

Everyone was shocked. It was the first time I had killed anything other than by using turn undead.