Is this in bad taste?

[PotatoNinja]

LOOONNGGGGGG time lurker, first time poster. I have an example scenario that i would like to run past you guys to see weather or not such an idea is in bad taste.

I run a Campaign for a group of friends in college (some of them read the forums, but i'm not spoiling anything here, so all is ok!), about 6, and i must admit: I have a fetish. But is my fetish Ok?

I like to put Rings of water walk on Raptors, and then add templates, like half troll, or an elemental template such as negative or fire. I only used it once, but i would like to make it a running gag/enemy within this or other campaigns for when i move after college. I would eventually like to beef these guys up with druids who use them as mounts, who wield wands of cure moderate wounds and use spells to buff them up, and maybe even advance their hit die by a good 10 or so if they have no druid friends.

:redface:

Additionally, does anybody have wonky ideas or monster kinks they use as recurring gags? Or just some what original ideas on how to take old monsters and give them a little life? Looking for stuff people won't mind me yanking for some possible ideas down the road

[MeeposFire]

MY groups running gag is my sister's character dying which we don't do on purpose. Especially death by cloaker.

[yilduz]

The only running gag I can really think of from my group is narcolepsy.

Yep.

[Calanon]

Recurring joke of the game for my group is how overly powerful the BBEG is and how he can easily just annihilate them with just a breath (no he's not a dragon... but that would be cool)

OH and theres a special item that makes the one thing that a player will not like happen xD

theres also the fact that all of the BBEGs minions are incompetent fools xD

[Drelua]

I love this idea! At least, assuming you mean what I hope you mean by fetish. If that's in bad taste, I'll burn off my taste buds.

The only thing I've come up with like that are hybrid animals with funny names, but I've never had opportunity to use them. My favourite 3 are bearigators, platypython and hyenapotamus. sometimes I replace a certain...appendage with a platypython in conversations with my gaming group.

[Flickerdart]

Beware - advancing monsters by HD can get really unfair really fast. Advancing Megaraptors by even one HD immediately makes them Large, which can get painful since it's got Pounce and four natural attacks, so that extra Strength boost goes to good use, as would any extra damage from templates. If you want to make them tougher enemies, consider giving them better feats, which should extend their usefulness by at least one level.

[PotatoNinja]

Well maybe not a sexual fetish, but i guess fetishes are sexual, maybe just a strong obsession would be more proper. I Chose Megaraptors because they had a base land speed of 60, and therefore the party could not out run, or out row the raptor with their current resources, it was amazing, and i could never get the concept of the (party dubbed) jesus raptor out of my head.

Anybody else think adding Grafted Wings to a badger, and then giving it the titanic template from MM2 would just be, freaking amazing?

[PotatoNinja]

Beware - advancing monsters by HD can get really unfair really fast. Advancing Megaraptors by even one HD immediately makes them Large, which can get painful since it's got Pounce and four natural attacks, so that extra Strength boost goes to good use, as would any extra damage from templates. If you want to make them tougher enemies, consider giving them better feats, which should extend their usefulness by at least one level.

Oh yeah, i'm aware of this one :) i gave it multiattack to reduce it's negatives to attacks. Then i gave it improved natural weapon, i think it's claw attack, and had the druid run several buffs on it just to be a pain in the rear. The thing itself nearly tore them apart, but they managed to pull through :smallsmile:Although the gnome ( i think) was nearly dropped, or did drop, to the negs from the opening pounce + rake combo.

Oh dear Kurtalmak, please excuse my horrible grammar for the night, it's far past my bed time.

[Hirax]

Your BBEG should have a deranged wizard henchman who has a penchant for making golems out of the strangest things. Pie golems, hair golems, fleece golems, vinegar golems, shoe golems, flower golems, bacon golems, paint golems, etc.

edit: half the fun is making up weird abilities for them by the way. Paint golems stain their clothes, pie golems pie them in the face, vinegar golems make them smell awful, etc.

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

The one random (immortal) commoner that just shows up at the most inopportune moments. Aka when the party is around.

[Flickerdart]

Oh yeah, i'm aware of this one :) i gave it multiattack to reduce it's negatives to attacks. Then i gave it improved natural weapon, i think it's claw attack, and had the druid run several buffs on it just to be a pain in the rear. The thing itself nearly tore them apart, but they managed to pull through :smallsmile:Although the gnome ( i think) was nearly dropped, or did drop, to the negs from the opening pounce + rake combo.

Oh dear Kurtalmak, please excuse my horrible grammar for the night, it's far past my bed time.
Megaraptors don't have Rake. Are you talking about some other dinosaur?

[Acanous]

My parties? Honest Tom the Travelling Salesman.

He'll buy any item you've got at half book price no questions asked, and carries an inventory of *Ahem* Alchemical products. Like the "Attractiveness Draught(For men!)", guerunteed to make your lady think you're more attractive than she is. It changes your gender to female and raises Charisma by 2 (Alchemical bonus). He makes a lot of money selling antivenoms.
He's also got a veriety of "Magic" items. Like a spoon that always lands with the point towards water. It doesn't specify how FAR the water is, but if you keep walking that direction, you're bound to find water eventually.. Or the Ridiculously Expensive Ring of Immortality, which is actually a cursed item that freezes you in time. So long as you are wearing it, you can't technically die. Of course, if someone cuts your head off, then removes the ring, well, Tom can't be blamed if you lost the ring, now can he?

He also carries around a number of mundane items that you can buy at book price. Rope, torches, other such things. Guy knows his job, and he's 96-100 on the Random Encounter Table.

[Drakevarg]

Running gag in the party? The party rogue's hometown will always be destroyed. I say "party rogue" simply because the player in question is ALWAYS either a Rogue or a Ranger. But every campaign we've had bar two (which were specifically set up in such away that encountering familiar ground was impossible), her hometown has somehow turned into a smoldering ruin at some point.

Another running "gag" in the party is the Chained Man. Whenever he shows up, the party promptly wets themselves and flees. He is rather pointedly never involved in the plot; he's just there, nigh unstoppable, and damn scary. While each time he's appeared so far he's just been a regular, if dramatically introduced, Kyton, but I think for future appearances I'm gonna make him some sort of epic-level monstrosity designed to send the PCs running no matter how far down the line they meet him.

[Daftendirekt]

My parties? Honest Tom the Travelling Salesman.

He'll buy any item you've got at half book price no questions asked, and carries an inventory of *Ahem* Alchemical products. Like the "Attractiveness Draught(For men!)", guerunteed to make your lady think you're more attractive than she is. It changes your gender to female and raises Charisma by 2 (Alchemical bonus). He makes a lot of money selling antivenoms.
He's also got a veriety of "Magic" items. Like a spoon that always lands with the point towards water. It doesn't specify how FAR the water is, but if you keep walking that direction, you're bound to find water eventually.. Or the Ridiculously Expensive Ring of Immortality, which is actually a cursed item that freezes you in time. So long as you are wearing it, you can't technically die. Of course, if someone cuts your head off, then removes the ring, well, Tom can't be blamed if you lost the ring, now can he?

He also carries around a number of mundane items that you can buy at book price. Rope, torches, other such things. Guy knows his job, and he's 96-100 on the Random Encounter Table.


Running gag in the party? The party rogue's hometown will always be destroyed. I say "party rogue" simply because the player in question is ALWAYS either a Rogue or a Ranger. But every campaign we've had bar two (which were specifically set up in such away that encountering familiar ground was impossible), her hometown has somehow turned into a smoldering ruin at some point.

Another running "gag" in the party is the Chained Man. Whenever he shows up, the party promptly wets themselves and flees. He is rather pointedly never involved in the plot; he's just there, nigh unstoppable, and damn scary. While each time he's appeared so far he's just been a regular, if dramatically introduced, Kyton, but I think for future appearances I'm gonna make him some sort of epic-level monstrosity designed to send the PCs running no matter how far down the line they meet him.

These are both awesome. :smallbiggrin:

[Scarey Nerd]

My groups gag? We have 2 main ones.

The first is that if there is a brothel in the town or city, every member of staff has combusted. I was once foolish to jokingly say that there was a brothel in one of my campaigns, the party immediately said that they spend 3 days in there. I got frustrated because they spent about 15 minutes making up their "exploits", and wanted them to leave, so said "Everyone except the party spontaneously combusts." A player pointed out that since that happened due to my frustration it isn't spontaneous, so I yelled "WELL THEN THEY JUST COMBUST!"

The other running gag is Old Man Gilbert, the crazy old man in the city of Redthistle that everyone seemed to know :smalltongue:. We mentioned him to guards on the other side of the city and they instantly knew who he was, the Mayor knew who he was, and that made us chuckle :smalltongue:. Then we insisted that we train him as an NPC fighter for our party, gave him a mace and he embedded it in a wall by accident..

And I don't know if: "If "Scarey Nerd" rolls dice, it'll turn out badly" counts, but it's a recurring theme of our games...

[Feytalist]

My old DM used someone very similar to Honest Tom, only it was a kobold salesman who was a bit... off in the head. He would sell magic items, but would describe it in such a weird way that no-one would ever know what it was. He would pitch up everywhere. No-one ever trusted him, much to the frustration of the DM.

It finally ended when the party barbarian got frustrated with the unhelpful little bugger that he one-shotted him to the face with a greataxe.

[Golden Ladybug]

My group has had a running gag going from the first time we played together; that the Deer are evil and are plotting against us.

You see, in our first campaign together, our DM told us that prior to the adventure (starting in a Gladiatorial Arena), we'd gone hunting Deer and been captured.

In another campaign, a PC was brought into the story after being captured. While hunting Deer.

After this happened a third time, in a different campaign, it became obvious; the Deer were setting up Ambushes against us. They were evil, probably more so than any given BBEG. You can't trust the Deer.

[Scarey Nerd]

My group has had a running gag going from the first time we played together; that the Deer are evil and are plotting against us... You can't trust the Deer.

Oh lord... I forgot one... The Neutral Evil Camels...

[PotatoNinja]

Megaraptors don't have Rake. Are you talking about some other dinosaur?

You are completely right sir, i should have have been posting when tired, and more than slightly inebriated. After talking with the before-mentioned gnome, it was indeed a large cat, i believe a tiger. (I had rolled up the jesus Raptor and apparently decided to not use it on the party :smallfrown:)

[BlueInc]

1). Celestial Moose, capable of calling a "great gathering of the moose" that hasn't bee done "in a THOUSAND YEARS!"

2). Players almost always end up making their own religion and trying to convert NPCs to it. Popular gods include Gullah (a giant goose), Mr. Tibbles (a random dog they were trying to find but couldn't; they decided he's an astral being that was too good for this plane), and the DM.

3). My players don't like the names I give NPCs, so they rename them almost instantly.

4). Geive, a wizard whose magic has brought him power beyond the limits of space and time, but driven him incredibly mad; he can probably give you whatever you want (phrased very, very carefully; he has zero common sense), in exchange for something bizarre. Often lives in a tower whose architecture defies belief (walk up three flights of stairs and end up in the basement; rooms where gravity is reversed/pointed towards a wall; infinite streams of water; multi-tiered chess sets the size of gymnasiums)

[marcielle]

Whenever someone mentions 'Rod of Wonders'. Our whole group must stare hatefully at the person, be it another player or an NPC. This was our sorceror's fault.

Kraken of 'DESTINYYYYYYYYYY'

The blue rhino.

[Drelua]

Whenever someone mentions 'Rod of Wonders'. Our whole group must stare hatefully at the person, be it another player or an NPC. This was our sorceror's fault.

I forgot about that, we get rods of wonder in pretty much any campaign we can afford them! Of course, our parties are almost always chaotic. I remember one time we found a caravan of halflings that we found out were selling cursed items, and when I questioned the leader, he reached into his back pocket for a bead from a necklace of fireballs, but I saw him reaching for it, and before he could use it, I kicked him in the nuts so hard he went flying, landed hard and exploded. Then I walked away, turned and pointed my rod of wonder at him, hoping for a fireball, but expecting something ridiculous. As soon as I saw my d% roll, I knew that it was a fireball.

I think that rod was out to get me, or just evil though. I also accidentally hit a paladin with a fireball.

I probably should have stopped after the first one, but I ended up hitting him with another one, and a lightning bolt. Oh, I also used it to free an ancient, evil god. This angered a massive solar,who took my rod, destroyed it, and gave me the finger of shame. He waved his finger at me and I got 2 temporary negative levels. That same character got shrunk by the sorcerer's rod of wonder, and showed up angry at the mage's tower, demanding someone grow him back to normal size. He was very angry for 6 inches, but as a level 17 fighter he still ended up hurting some people to get whatever spell I needed cast.