Dirty DM Tricks

[killianh]

I always see good build advice or tricks for players on the site, but I don't see too many good trick ideas that DM's can use. I'm just wondering what some the more awesome encounters you've used or dirtier tricks you've pulled are?

Some of my favourite to use are:
Giving Shambling Mounds cursed rings that constantly deal electric damage but appear as healing rings.

Beholders in a hall of mirrors

two tiered traps (i.e disable part one and part two goes off)

Mirror of opposition in a realm where illusions and summons gain +4 on saves, BAB, and AC.

(Against LG, NG, CG) Brainwashed child army with Paragon template

What are some of yours? (Note I'm Not looking for something that auto kills the party, but rather some good challenges or tricks to shut down some tried and true methods of overcoming challenges)

[Spuddles]

Adding one or two martial adept levels on creatures with lots of HD and low CR.

Gestalting monsters with spellcaster levels.

[docnessuno]

Beholder with a template giving him a good DR, placed in a narrow halway so the characters can hardly get past the antimagic zone.

[Golden Ladybug]

Self Resetting Trap of Reverse Gravity + Spikes on the Ceiling + Spikes on the Floor

Throw some Gelatinous Cubes in their for good measure.

[Morph Bark]

I made the central room of a dungeon into a scale once. The party had to put enough weight on the other side to get to the rooms that were high up, or go stand all on one side to go down to rooms below (which weren't visible until they went all the way down). This made it so that they took a whole lot more time to get to each room than they would have if there had simply been stairs.

[killianh]

Another trick I've used is trapping the players in a giant hamster ball and make them fight phase spiders to get out.

Another good question would be good enemy\trap combos or traps you've homebrewed?

[Malachei]

Nastiness mostly comes from combining monsters / effects. An example would be the room with Cloudkill and undead hidden within.

[mattie_p]

Umm... Tucker's Kobolds, anyone?

Also, use terrain features to your advantage, set up ambushes uphill with cover, generally play monsters smarter to use their best attacks to the best advantage.

Imagine that the PCs are the enemy, how would your group of monsters attack them best? Use tactics like targeting spellcasters first, dividing and conquering, use battlefield control techniques against them to make them easier to defeat. The monsters might have used divination magic to find out about the party that is coming and prepared their spells specifically against them.

[DigoDragon]

My most popular trick is switching out some of the feats that are listed with the monster entires. They tend to be given poor choices, and a little rearranging of their featsfor better choices can make for a better challenge.

Also: Skill Tricks!
An effective build was a kobold Spell Thief with the Hidden Blade skill trick.


On traps, I like building traps with effects that are outside the immediate area. For example, one room had a trapped treasure chest. The two rogues in the party attempted to disable the trap while the rest of the party was outside in the hall watching.
The trap got triggered and the effect was a "Burning Hands" effect out in the hall that caught two PCs. No one paid attention to the burn marks I had described on that outer wall earlier and now they know. :smallbiggrin:

[joca4christ]

I once had players who would use most of their resources on one or two encounters, and then run back up to town for rest and healing. In one case, they knocked a weaker vampire down to where he had to go gaseous, gave chase til he led them through a trap. They decided to head back to town, with one PC dominated, neglected to tell the town guards that there was more there than goblins, and headed back to the temple guarded by an overzealous paladin.

Next morning, the sentries were dead, one lived long enough to tell a horrible tale. The paladin detected evil when the vampire took control of dominated PC, so he got put into "house arrest" in the magic circle of good, and the town guard and temple priest refused them any more help until the threat was taken care of.

[Malachei]

Oh, and implementing Grimtooth's Traps, of course.

Even mentioning the name can make players go pale.

[The Glyphstone]

Beholders in concealed pit traps with iron grates above, or just beneath a metal bar crosswalk.

[Malachei]

Beholders are wondeful surprise monsters, indeed.

Especially nice when the players are relying on magical flight, for instance to cross the chasm, while the beholder is hiding above.

[Ranting Fool]

Also, use terrain features to your advantage, set up ambushes uphill with cover, generally play monsters smarter to use their best attacks to the best advantage.

The best ambushes tend to be nice and simple but effective. Vs low level party had a bunch of bandits hiding along a road. They had cast Silent Image on the road making the big ditches to the side look like flat earth. They start shooting at our heroes and laugh as they charge headlong into a rather big ditch :smallbiggrin:

I have a bad habbit of picking on people who are meta-gaming so just because someone is wearing magic looking robes doesn't mean he's a squishy mage.

One of my best tricks was our heroes finding a Well Spoken Goblin in a prision


Help help you may not believe this good sirs but I am really a pally that has been transformed by foul magic into the form of a Goblin!

*heroes try and sense motive* "Seems like the Goblin is telling the truth!"

Goblin - "Muahahahahahh" *Stab stab stab run*

[Xynphos]

One of the more infamous ones being Mordenkainen's Disjunction

[Urpriest]

High-HD Lycanthropes. No matter what, Lycanthropy only gives CR +6 at most. Use some high-HD animal like a Battletitan and your players will be hurling books at you in no time.

[Zubrowka74]

Not a trick I invented (it's from the 2e FR box I think) but one I reuse when I can :

Large room with an Iron Golem. Each round the construct reachs down an opening on the wall, takes a tiny, shiny red globe and drops it in a second opening a dozen feet up. The globes, of course, are delayed blast fireballs. If left unattended they go off in 2 our 3 rounds.

When the party enters the room without caution, the golem will take notice and stop picking up the orbs to deal with the intruders...

[Musco]

A friend of mine once described to his group the image of a woman, dressed in robes, with living snakes in place of her hair, hissing anc clicking. Everyoe instantly announced that they'd avert looking at her... so she cast a Fireball at us. It was just a Wizard in disguise. Nice beating on metagaming.

[Sr.medusa]

100' corridor with pit snares every 5' and a painted door at the end. Or, a pit snare with spikes and a wall of force blocking de corridor (they fell, climb, take space, jump... and fall again, priceless).

EDIT: Oh, and add to this the machine whit 20 interruptors and 3 lights of colours. Every time you pull an interruptor the three lights change and the puller takes 5 hp, and that's it. Sit and watch how kill themseleves.

[Ranting Fool]

. Everyoe instantly announced that they'd avert looking at her... so she cast a Fireball at us. It was just a Wizard in disguise. Nice beating on metagaming.

:smallbiggrin: Also works if you ever name any NPC Something Von Something :smallbiggrin:

[Righteous Doggy]

Anytime you have a creature with the ability to disguise itself or have an alternate form, its fun to give them a crazy template and class levels. Sorry guys, that wasn't really a sorcerer, it was a balor... with sorcerer levels! Have fun.

[Techsmart]

I once had a trap that forced a will save, but did not take effect until about 2 hours later. It was funny the first time my players experienced it...
Me: Player 1, make an attack roll.
P1: Okay, who am I attacking?
Me: Player 2, what's your AC?
P2: ... 15?
Took my players a while to realize that the trap involved a compulsion effect.

Had another trap (Based it off of another person's idea, so I can't take full credit) which looked like a hallway with large, spiked pits on the bottom of either side. If the player rolled a good spot check (My players conveniently forgot to put ranks in spot), they would notice everything was nailed down. about 30 ft. into the 100 ft. hallway, there is a trap door leading to where you need to go. Just past the trapdoor, gravity switches by 90 degrees, so anyone entering it takes a 70ft. drop.

Earth elementals always make for good, dirty fun. Tremorsense + earthglide = no safety for you from attacks... anywhere, in the city where every structure, road, and wall was made entirely out of earth and stone. My favorite one was with one of our, less wary players.
Me: You enter the cavern. It's approximately a 30ft radius hemisphere. In the center, you see a stone column with a face on it. The remainder of the room seems mostly bare and unkept. On the other side, you see that the cavern continues.
Druid: I walk up to the face and inspect it.
Other players: *groan*
Me: What is your flat-footed AC? :smallbiggrin:
Druid kind of died in that fight.

Another one that beat down on metagamers. The party walked into a large room with three stone statues in it. Detect magic revealed that they were very magical. The metagamer started freaking out (I have a known history of being a little heavy-handed in certain aspects), saying "oh crap, stone golems." They were just plain statues with nystul's magic aura on them. I am willing to push my players, but 3 stone golems on a lvl 7 party? I'm not that evil... usually.


Gestalting monsters with spellcaster levels.
This is awesome, and now I need to run a gestalt campaign where everything is gestalted with some kind of caster. Yay Tarrasque wizard.

[Piggy Knowles]

I once made a mid-level party almost cry because of pair of slightly advanced Ethereal Filchers. They had the cleric's holy symbol, the sorcerer's spell component pouch and scrolls, and most of the halfling master thrower's daggers all stolen and stashed away before the party could even begin mounting an offense... and it took them a ridiculously long time to actually find their lair, which was underground in a room with literally no access points, that the Filchers could get to ethereally.

I haven't had the heart to pull this one myself, but a large chasm over lava/spikes/whatever and a dispel magic trap or antimagic field set somewhere over the middle of it (in mid-air) always seems particularly nasty.

[Karoht]

When low level...

Two words. Guerilla Warfare.

Enemies in prepared positions that are difficult to reach, shoot once or twice, and then flee through prepared means.

Example:
Goblins/orcs with crossbows in trees. They've already got ropes set up to allow them to swing to another tree and escape from there.
Especially at night time, where they swing out of the sight range of the light, or shoot from something like 60ft thanks to Darkvision.

If their goal is harassment, they just attack every 2 hours, even if it's just to get one volley of crossbow bolts and run. Also, while the party is chasing them off, another small group goes in and steals things like tents, packs, rations, water, cooking supplies, and urinates on their bedrolls.

Next day, very tired and grumpy party. They get to take negatives. Oh fun.

[Azoth]

One of my personal favorites is to announce a random color pattern to a room when players enter. On the floor are many many tiles. Each is of the colors described. When you step on one it triggers a magical trap that automatically resets, so if stepped on it goes off again.

I have used this for simple checker boards of cure/inflict spells with a room full of undead, to only the yellow tiles are safe and everything else will cause you pain...oh did you just step on a purple tile? Why yes, yes you did! The floor is collapsing, and the door on the far end of the hall is closing! Yes, if step on a red tile you will still be fire balled in the face!

I am also a fan of stacking traps. Put 3 traps on a door, most rogues will stop after the first or second.

I have also homebrewed a poison that gives any caster divine/arcane a spell chance failure rate that is cumilative with each dose and lasts several hours until it wears off. You have no idea how mortifying it is for a caster to have a 90% spell chance failure while wearing just robes and dealing with nausea...right outside the BBEG's antechamber.

As already said, Grimtooth...that book alone will wrack up your body count like no other.

The endless hallway of a hidden transportation circle halfway down it.

A personal favorite is to take big tough monsters with /decent/ mental scores and make them casters. Most do not expect a stone giant to hurl a spell.

[Kadarai]

Did u know that some conjurations like cloudkill or the infamous orbs of (insert element here) create tangible effects that pass through an antimagic field? having to face a cloudkill without buffs can be nasty. it was used in some early 3.5 adventures from WotC.

And against players that thought that they could take a dragon down with one shot, an augmented Dragon of the Great Game with auras instead of spells or even worst a dragon casting an antimagic field on him (Thanks Rich Burlew for showing the way)

Also what about a simple Nightwalker, summoning greater shadows, while he uses his deadly spell-like abilities to take out or delay the casters of the team. The shadows taking a surprise round (easily achievable for a shadow, especially at night) can leave the fighter at 1 STR before he can draw his blade, and the Nightwalker's spell resistance makes it hardy against anything non-physical.

[Amphetryon]

These aren't mine, but I've used them for hilarity and book-dodging sessions:

1. Elemental Savant + Flesh Golem. Fun times when you're hurling Lightning Bolts that heal your tank.

2. Grimlocks + Flash Pellets. Put the sightless Grimlocks in a dark area, have them open with Flash Pellets, to which they're immune. For added hilarity, have them in Obscuring Mist after the pellets go off.

[Illithilich]

Ive never actually used this, but:

Child+Magic Aura+Smite Happy Paladin/Cleric= Fallen Paladin/Cleric.

[Karoht]

Ive never actually used this, but:

Child+Magic Aura+Smite Happy Paladin/Cleric= Fallen Paladin/Cleric.

Any Cleric/Paladin that falls for that trick deserves it, says I.

[OracleofSilence]

There is the notorious Count Down Room

Just take a room. add a red button, add magic immune walls. Add some doors that are completely covered w/ stone slabs of the same material as the walls. Add a count down timer.

Let Player imagination take shape! (I assume you know what thsi trap does, it is really really old)

Now.

It is time for the DM to metagame. Players will know this trick. Smile and cackle gleefully. Add a simple trapdoor (high search DC). Add hidden magic turret traps (all hidden behind hidden doors). Let the party elf scream in rage as he cannot find the exit (here's a hint, the doors do not open when the counter goes all the way down. Instead, once the counter counts all the way down start is 10 minte count down for the spell turrets (something nasty) to start firing.

[Rift_Wolf]

These were unintentional dirty tricks, but they messed up the party I DM recently.

Orcs with darkness cast on their armour. Against humans who only have magical lights, they may as well have greater invisibility.

Oozes in a melee-centric party. The barbarian just totally shut down after cleaving two oozes, then having to face four oozes, then eight....

Ogre Mage Monk. In Pathfinder, adding monk levels to a monster raises the CR by 1 for every 2 levels of monk. So a 4th level oni monks CR only raises by two, but has a touch AC of over 20, A CMB/CMD that a sorcerer will never escape, and a fly speed of 60ft. Insert Dragon Ball Z imagery here.

One build that will probably flip the table is PF Harpy+Young template+7 levels of Sorcerer. A CR6 creature with a high touch AC, can cast several medium range spells while staying out of most archers range. Add to that Dispel Magic and have them counterspell against every spell thrown at them.

[Dr.Orpheus]

Make a ton of illusionists casting illusions to make themselves look like bricks then stack them together to form a dungeon out of them.

[OracleofSilence]

Make a ton of illusionists casting illusions to make themselves look like bricks then stack them together to form a dungeon out of them.

Uhhhmmm. Not really sure waht to way to that... But that would quite possibly be the best end to a dungeon EVER!

"and as you exit the dungeon, it collapses into a pile of illusionist, all grumbling loudly and cackling madly"

[Dr.Orpheus]

What if when you were half way through the dungeon all of the illusionists cast magic missile at the same time destroying the entire party.

[Karoht]

Illusions + Anything are always grossly underestimated.

Heck, fight 3 Dragons at once and only 1 of them is real. That alone is a right pain in the bottom.

[BoutsofInsanity]

I enjoy simple tricks...
A line of heavy crossbow users with a line of heavy spear men in front, using delayed and prepared actions to attack the party as a unit. Only works at lower levels.

Taking a bronze dragon, having the bad guy change it's scale color to black, and let the party assumptions take its toll.

[OracleofSilence]

What if when you were half way through the dungeon all of the illusionists cast magic missile at the same time destroying the entire party.

Absolutely true. However, the shear whimsy of the trick imply's a more subtle attack. Perhaps the party will simply find that ALL OF THEIR LOOT is not real at all. Or perhaps made of Shadowstuff (percentile damage anyone?).

Also, i have always found it more fun to get those delicious screams of frustration then a TPK.

[Particle_Man]

Lacedons (sea ghouls) scuttling a ship that the pcs happen to be on.

Phrenic animals (my pcs got surprised when a bear's eyes turned green and psychic crushed a pc).

[Jack Zander]

1st level barbarian/1st level druid makes for a very deadly CR 2 creature that doesn't drop any useful loot :smallbiggrin:

Wield a club or a quarterstaff, cast Shillelagh on it, and then enter rage. Make them fight in hordes. Your party will never overestimate themselves against large numbers of "weak" creatures again.

[Karoht]

The McGuffin of World Saving that has been talked about in Legend for centuries that the party has been questing for...


Never existed. It was all a clever ruse by some guy way back when.

Oh sure, the party will find another way to save the world, probably by finding out how the guy really did it back then.

But the look on their faces. :smallcool:

[nedz]

Only works at first level:
Goblin on a bridge with high bluff, tell the party he is a Troll and demands payment to cross. This works because it lampshades a cliche.

One for higher levels:
Evil Lich circulates 'ancient prophesy' to recruit Heros for some task.
Bonus points if they track him down and he successfully bluffs them.

[MrLemon]

Don't trap the door...
...Trap the floor/wall directly behind it :smallamused:

[VGLordR2]

My absolute favorite trick is to use Hallucinatory Terrain. It will take players a long time to realize that the gaping chasm in front of them is just a dirt path. Or, if you're feeling really evil, you can make the gaping chasm look like the dirt path instead. This spell is so open to creative uses.

[Water_Bear]

Mess with Characters' perceptions and don't tell their players. Obvious this works best if you use an online dice-roller for secret rolls (I suggest keeping a cheat-sheet of each Character's Saves + Spot, Listen, Search and Sense Motive).

The character fails a Will Save against Modify Memory? Don't tell them the next five minutes (in game) of solo role-playing never happened.

Someone has replaced a party member with a duplicate? Conspire with the party member's player to have them temporarily role-play the impostor.

It's basic advice, but it really works. The trick is that players have to trust that reality is constant, and that you won't change things retroactively.

My other favorite thing is the "fake conversation." Use Magic Mouth or Programmed Image to talk to a character and make them think its actually a live person. Its actually pretty easy to write half of a conversation in advance if you're committed to staying vague and know the other person well.

[DogbertLinc]

My absolute favorite trick is to use Hallucinatory Terrain. It will take players a long time to realize that the gaping chasm in front of them is just a dirt path. Or, if you're feeling really evil, you can make the gaping chasm look like the dirt path instead. This spell is so open to creative uses.

Have a big hole covered by an illusion of the floor.
Inside, the floor is covered in mimics.

If the PCs make the Will Save, they fall face first glued into an army of mimics. The PCs above ground will also be confused as their friend just goes through the floor.

[Righteous Doggy]

It's basic advice, but it really works. The trick is that players have to trust that reality is constant, and that you won't change things retroactively.

Yeah... I'd hate you for that though personally. Its like the power going off on a video game, its not fun. Its just frustrating, and the last thing you want to do is frustrate a player.

[Karoht]

Illusion floors are awesome. Incredibly useful. Incredibly deadly if used/abused properly.

[Jack Zander]

Try a Shadow Conjuration of a stone floor over a pit trap. PCs who succeed their saves fall in.

[Chronos]

Water Bear is the only one who's close to how I'm thinking. I see a title like this, I don't think of specific monsters or Challenge Ratings or the like at all. I think of things like the DM occasionally rolling a die behind his screen, consulting his notes, saying "Hm, interesting", and then just smiling. Or, at random intervals, asking one of the players what their Spot modifier, or Will save, is. Or the ever-classic, when the party rogue is searching a door or treasure chest, "You don't find any traps".

[Knight13]

From a thread awhile back about how dragons could actually intelligently guard their lairs:

A 10' by 10' pit with a Gelatinous Cube in it, covered by a Shadow Evocation Wall of Force, which is hidden by an illusion of the floor. The scout and meatshield fail their Will saves and just walk right over it, none the wiser. the wizard, tucked safely in the back, makes his save, falls in and lands on the Cube. Plus the dragon can use the Cube for garbage disposal.

Alternatively, have a Ghoul Glyph and a foot of water in there. So the wizard gets paralyzed and then drowns in a puddle.

[Ranting Fool]

Mess with Characters' perceptions and don't tell their players. Obvious this works best if you use an online dice-roller for secret rolls (I suggest keeping a cheat-sheet of each Character's Saves + Spot, Listen, Search and Sense Motive).


I've started doing this, so much better then going "errr whats your spot bonus again?"

Though one of my all time fave things to do to make players tense.... tell them to roll. Check something. then just carry on :smallbiggrin: Don't over use this but it really makes them start freaking out and double checking everything "While he checks the door I want to do an active spot and listen check!!!!" I always let players roll a spot/search/listen even if there is nothing there. And always take time to check my DM notes as well as roll behind a screen. Granted this does add extra random rolling to the game but then it avoids the "Ah the DM just rolled for something be ready now/I must be on the right track because he rolled after I said lets check out X" meta gaming.


Also my players have learnt that seeing a helpless young woman fleeing from a big bad monster and crying for help isn't always what it seems! :smallbiggrin:

Remember having an NPC with good bluff skill doesn't work unless you can keep a straight face :smallbiggrin::smallredface:

[elonin]

There was a dungeon adventure which turned the tables on the players. They fought goblins who lived in a mostly goblin sized complex. In particular the entrance to the dungeon made adventurers squeeze through a hallway if they were larger than size small. On either side of the hallway were murder holes and arrow slits.

Basically it is only an example of goblins fortifying in a smart way. For higher level players I'd use magic to scale up.

I like the classic of a pressure plate on the floor that opens a door or doors in the ceiling that drops slimes, molds, or jellies on the hapless adventurers.

In the Witchking of Angmar for rolemaster is a trap in which the floor dropped. The citadel is on the top of a mountain. And this room was on an outcrop (long way down). I'd add an anti magic to that to make that equivalent. Our party 1/2 ling caught the edge and survived, which caused our party to tie a rope to him just in case. The next trap was a ceiling that dropped on him. All we pulled back was a bloody rope.

[TypoNinja]

My absolute favorite trick is to use Hallucinatory Terrain. It will take players a long time to realize that the gaping chasm in front of them is just a dirt path. Or, if you're feeling really evil, you can make the gaping chasm look like the dirt path instead. This spell is so open to creative uses.

Subtle is best. Don't hide the chasm, they know there's a chasm there. Move the chasm. Just a foot or two, and CLOSER to the players not away. Everybody checks the bridge to make sure its real before the step on. nobody checks the last 5 feet of bridge when they think they are nearly home free.

[Toy Killer]

I had a trap room where 8 tapestries hung from the ceiling and the exit was locked on the opposite side. The circular room was divided into 8 sections and each had a rune. When the rogue tried to unlock the door, the tapestries came to life and behaved as pseudo-cloaker like monsters that attacked the party.

when the party killed the one of the cloakers, that's where the fun starts. randomly each round, I rolled a D8 per cloaker that died. If you were in that section, reflex save against 4d6 damage. But the rogue needed to be defended against the cloakers to unlock the door. Ever try to attack, but not kill a construct?

We had a guy roll a healer who felt he never had anything to do in combat, so it was nice to give him a real time to shine...

[Darth Stabber]

Ogre hulking hurler with fling ally on a hill with several spiked chain armed gobin trippers, and the leader of the gang, a goblin swordsage in a chainshirt with armorspikes enchanted with throwing and returning. Cover the field in trippers, and then throw the Swordsage (who readies an action to use a manuever before returning) every turn. I call these the dodgeball of prone and the yo-yo of pain. Add some tanglefoot bags, maybe even caltrops, and watch the hilarity ensue.

[Righteous Doggy]

Ogre hulking hurler with fling ally on a hill with several spiked chain armed gobin trippers, and the leader of the gang, a goblin swordsage in a chainshirt with armorspikes enchanted with throwing and returning. Cover the field in trippers, and then throw the Swordsage (who readies an action to use a manuever before returning) every turn. I call these the dodgeball of prone and the yo-yo of pain. Add some tanglefoot bags, maybe even caltrops, and watch the hilarity ensue.

How is that an ingenius trick? It looks like someone just decided to murder or kill his pcs day with a bunch of optimized npcs.

[Khosan]

I think Spellthieves and Gestalt in general, though not always together.

Spellthieves can be the most annoying things in the world, especially at low levels. At higher levels, they'll peter out a bit, but at lower levels one successful sneak attack on the party caster is all it takes. Just pick the one spell you don't want them casting and steal it.

Gestalt's just a good way to crank up the difficulty without having to push the enemy into higher level territory and can be thematically pretty cool.

[Morithias]

Probably my two best tricks of all time were the "drugs in the brothel", and the "warrior harem".

In the first, the PCs have just finished the last of a quest to cure a plague and the only building currently standing in the diseased area is a brothel....run by vampires.

So they naturally offer them some wine, the PC's think that these vampires are friendly since my campaign setting undead are not naturally evil, and they had just killed off their "master" setting them free.

The wine was drugged with asprodesiacs. The sad part? The vampires told them this ahead of time (the wizard though the DC would be lower than 20).

So the vampire half-nymph takes him to the bedroom. Strips him nude, and then pins him after sex, draining his life. She then comes downstairs and mind controls the barbarian.....the dragon shaman jumps out the window at that point. Then the nymph drains the barbarian...after revealing that in fact SHE is the head vampire here, and that the "master" was just a mook she wanted to get rid off. (It doesn't help they found the nymph vampire in a cage faking blood hunger)

As for the warrior harem? Well let's just say when you overthrow a tyrant who has read the evil overlord list and filled his harem with loyal and well-treated battle dancers, sorcerers, and favored souls....don't go there to try and pick up women.

I'm not kidding, they killed the overlord, but didn't heal before going to "Free" the harem, and they ended up killed by a bunch of unarmed naked chicks.

...who then proceeded to raise the overlord from the dead.

[TypoNinja]

Well my biggest dirty trick (if we count PC's missing the clues, as a 'trick') would have to be getting my PC's to break the multi-verse.

Custom Campaign setting, with a Pantheon based on the Riftwar series of novels.

The world starts not so much low magic as hidden. There is a social bias against magic users. This was clue one. Why would kings and princes shun something so useful?

Eventually one of the PC's, a wizard finally advances far enough to discover something interesting. He cannot plane shift. As near as he can tell his spell functioned perfectly, it didn't fizzle, wasn't countered, it just didn't actually do anything.

Clue two.

The party has been off the prime material plane exactly twice. Both times required divine intervention, the first time they became famous (Expedition to the Demonweb Pits Module) in the outer planes. The second time, they ran across a solar in an infernal prison who upon seeing them freaked out, Miracle'd his ass back to his home plane with the dire pronouncement "No, you can not be here!" in what was clearly him fleeing in terror.

Clue Three.

Back home, and the threat from the abyss solved (great module! :P) the Wizard decides to get down to some serious study on just why it is he can't seem to plane shift. He's pretty much the premiere spellcaster on the prime material plane at this point so not really anybody he can turn to for help.

Enter an old piece of throwaway loot. (yea right.)

Waaaaaaay back at 5th level the party found 4 small gold spheres in some loot. They registered as magical, when all 4 of them were held together, if separated they stopped reading as magical. Various groupings show'd magic or not. The party never actually figured out the pattern but it was this; together = magic. 3 and 1 separated the 3 are magic the loner is not, 2 and 2, 50/50 one set is magic the other isn't.

They were a mystery and put aside for later study.

During his experimentation it was discovered that if you feed the orbs a spell level they start levitating on their own and gently rotating around a central point (vertically). 30 spells levels later they are spinning at a good speed, and the deposited energy is gathering in the middle in a flickering vortex about the size of a mans fist, while the orbs are providing an orbit perhaps 3 feet across.

Leaving it alone the energy slowly leached out and the orbs became inert again.

The next day the party gathers in the court yard of their fortress, the wizard empties out his magical academy and has all his apprentices feed spell levels into the orbs. Over one thousand spell levels later the orbs are spinning so fast as to be a blur that looks like a solid gold ring, and the energy in the center is a solid mass.

Unbeknownst to the party those 4 orbs are actually artifacts left behind by ... It's a surprise, and the game is still ongoing and I know at least one of my players reads these boards :D.

Well 1000 freaking spells levels is the kind of power that gets noticed, even across planar barriers, even those mysteriously strengthened.

This brings us to the first breakout into the planes done by the PC rather than divine intervention. This is significant. The Deities know what they are doing, the PC's did not.

Their means of escape was relatively straight forward, the PC's had an artifact capable of generating a Gate that would pierce the shield around their prime material plane preventing planar transit. They threw 1000 spell levels into it, which attracted the attention of the Mages manning the Gate in Union City, so they pointed their steerable Gate at the one the PC's had set up and insta link!

Here comes clue four.

The second the Gate was established the party cleric gets a feeling of unease, moving slowly up to dread as the party probes the Gate, sends somebody through to check it out, and confirms its safe.

As long as the Gate is open the feeling of dread gets stronger and stronger. But the party manages to write it off.

First thing the party does when they enter out onto the planes is shopping, followed by some research. They want to know what the deal with their Prime Material plane is. They manage to track down their plane in the Planar Cartographic Society archives only to find out the entry has been removed. All that's left is the name of the original guild member who charted the place. Nothing else.

Party decides to head off in search of this mystery woman who as near as they can tell is the only non-native of their plane who knows anything about it. They find out she's in a prison in the abyss and decide to stage a jail break (that's where they met previously mentioned Solar, so I guess my clue numbering is a bit off.) They escape the prison just in time to watch a massive army of something stretching from horizon to horizon overwhelm the horde's of the abyss as they plane shift back to their home.

I've condensed this a lot, but try to remember this represents nearly a year of weekly games.

So here comes the 'trick' reveal. When they get back they find out their island kingdom has been drastically altered. Where once a modest fort and magic school stood now is a massive fortress with a courtyard several hundred feet across. One modest mage tower has been replaced by nine massive towers reaching up to the skies, skies filled with dragons. ALL of the dragons.

The place is now a cross section of mythology. The wizard had comissioned a forge of legend before he left, now its 10 times larger than he expected and Hephaestus is working at it busy out fitting an army. The Maddest army ever conceived. All manner of outsiders, creatures, beasts, and races are working together. All the old wars have halted, Orc's and elves, demons and devils and angels, all work together.

Walking across the courtyard to a central tower on the second floor there exists the most unlikely war council ever conceived, all the Major Deities, Devils and Demon Lords. From multiple settings.

It's explained to the PC's that the magical barrier set up around their plane wasn't to lock them out of the planes so much as it was to lock something else in. Something they have now let out. A god of evil, and insane god of evil.

Now lets get something straight, first off when I say god I don't mean 20HD outsider with class levels, I mean Unstated Lords of Creation. Second when I say God of Evil, I don't mean he's a mean Deity, I mean the manifestation of an evil so pure as to stain your soul irredeemably just by thinking his name. Finally we get to the insane part. When you are delusional, your delusions are typically a private problem. When you are Omnipotent (or near enough as nobody has noticed) your nightmares and delusions aren't just your problem anymore.

So now there is an army of creatures not of this reality invading, and they were numerous enough to overrun The Abyss, and powerful enough to - force the evacuation of the outer planes - Each of the outer 8 towers corresponds to an alignment and an outer plane. Everything left of the Outer Planes was moved there. All of the Dragon Flights have also moved in, as per alignment and roost at the top of the towers. They are collectively powering a magical shield holding the enemy at bay. The PC's are currently on a quest to recover the Orb's of Dragonkind to be used as a powersource for the barrier so as to free up the Dragonflights to possibly mount an offensive.

So recap. PC's didn't pick up on the clues. Broke the universe.

Current standing is;

Outer Planes evacuated.

Inner planes under siege.

Prime Material Plane a war zone. Several other prime material planes have fallen already. The Realms are still holding out because, well they are just littered with Epic NPC's but are losing.

Party desperately trying to find a way to fix everything.

[Doorhandle]

Probably my two best tricks of all time were the "drugs in the brothel", and the "warrior harem".

As for the warrior harem? Well let's just say when you overthrow a tyrant who has read the evil overlord list and filled his harem with loyal and well-treated battle dancers, sorcerers, and favored souls....don't go there to try and pick up women.

I'm not kidding, they killed the overlord, but didn't heal before going to "Free" the harem, and they ended up killed by a bunch of unarmed naked chicks.

...who then proceeded to raise the overlord from the dead.

No offence, but for those players I'm not really sure how much of that counts as a trick when they sound like they would fall for a "CAKE HERE!" sign. :smalltongue:

Also @ TypoNinja: Cool story, but wasn't that what you were planning all along?

[Crazysaneman]

One of my favorites a DM pulled on our group:
100'ish hallway, 5' across and unlit. At the end of the hallway was a permanent silent image (i think) door, and behind that door was a ballista. The ballista had a magical self resetting and arming mechanism. The floor had pressure plate mechanisms spaced at random intervals to fire the ballista, and some of those mechanisms would unlock doors around the dungeon. Lots of fun :smallsmile: Click, oh crap reflex save. Click, oh crap reflex save. Took us a bit to figure out the dungeon, but it was the best puzzle I'd ever faced.

[Thiyr]

Try a Shadow Conjuration of a stone floor over a pit trap. PCs who succeed their saves fall in.

This is only the start. Maze comprised of walls of stone, illusionary walls of stone, shadow-conjured walls of stone. Apply invisible spell to these as well. Same goes for the floor. Not only do you get the "make the save fall through the floor", you get "fail the save fall through the floor", "make the save there's still a wall there", "see invis and true seeing will both give very different information, and may make your path far, far harder". Make the final exit require falling down one of those false floors as well.


In a similar vein, make a maze comprised entirely of walls of force. These are invisible. This is a pain for the party. It isn't nearly so much a pain for the minotaurs you throw in there to spice things up, as they don't need to see to know how to navigate the maze.

In fact, a minotaur in the first bit would be bad too.



And if we're willing to start having some fun, a box of brown molt + rings of torches every 5 feet around it = a suddenly very hostile environment. Or, if you want to move slightly outside of RAW (though I've done this before, and it elicited a wonderful look of being doomed from the players), toss the box into a very large pool of lava. That mold should spread miiiiiiiiighty far off of that, making for a good alternative to the dungeon collapsing around them. Instead it's just trying to eat them as mold bursts through the lava-filled piping all around them, trying to eat their delicious body heat.

[Rhaegar14]

Teleportation traps are a classic way of forcing the party to split.

Also, one of the most fun sessions I ever DMed was when the players went to a city for the first time (the campaign had started in the wilderness). I had asked them ahead of time the kinds of things they'd want to do, and all of them jokingly suggested a brothel.

So I gave them a brothel, and put three succubi in it. Didn't even have any plans, other than that they were going to screw with the party. The PCs were level 7 or 8, so the Druid was really the only one who could routinely make the Will saves required. What started as "I'm gonna screw with them" ended with all of them being kidnapped by a demon cult as sacrifices and having to escape. XD

So far as NPC design goes, especially on low-ish level casters, I love the Sudden Metamagic feats. They're not great for PCs, but your players will not forget it when the cultist leader opens combat from Invisibility with an Empowered, Maximized Lightning Bolt he should be far too low-level to cast and one-shots somebody.

[elonin]

It bugs me that there is a lack of consistency. How would someone who set the trap get through it? Most traps I have seen are just a random collection of bits.

[Lord_Gareth]

I once had a dungeon set up as the tomb of an NG bard. It had gigantic warning signs on the outside not to enter, wrath of the dead, etc. Part gets all the way to the bottom as a paranoid wreck because of all the traps (but no monsters yet!) and finds the bard in question at the bottom of the hole, dead as dust, clutching a note. They pry it out of his hands and read it, and the note says, "This was a fake. Gotcha!". They stormed out in disgust.

The loot was just a room away. The dungeon was real.

[jguy]

I had just come up with one that would only work once or twice. You have a long, stone corridor in a dungeon or palace that has shown to be trapped. The rogue checks for traps and despite a great roll, he hears a click and 6 crossbow bolts shoot out of the wall. As a secret note, he doesn't get his trap bonus to ac against this. Make it seem odd that he didn't feel anything move on the floor or detect a trigger mechanism.

Despite further attempts, no matter what they do to disable the trap, always make a click sound and have the crossbow bolts shoot out. If they are smart and try to cover the holes, they find out what has been attacking them. 6 alcoves in the corridor with Illusionary Wall covering them. Inside are Warforges with crossbow bolts that will make that Click sound and attack when someone goes by that isn't authorized. When discovered, they can either attack with swords or trigger trap doors below them and escape.

[mattsdelf]

One thing i did with players that everybody lobbed books at me for is a teleport maze. I am very good at making over-complicated and confusing mazes. The teleport maze was modular, with 11 separate rooms, each with at least 4 teleporters. If the pick right, they move on to the next room. If they go through the wrong portal, they to the beginning of the maze, with additional monsters summoned in every room. This can get exponentially worse if the players try to test the teleporters with coins, thinking it won't set off the trap. By the end, there can be dozens and dozens of Stone Golems and homebrew undead in every room. Add to this a couple of Dread Wraiths that can walk through the walls between rooms and you could very well end up with TPK.

[Chronos]

All the crazy maze talk has reminded me of another one: If you put your maze in an extradimensional space or demiplane or the like, there's no reason you need to make it Euclidean. It looks like it's laid out on a standard grid of 10x10 rooms, with doors between some of the rooms and solid walls between others... But instead of there being four squares arranged around each vertex, there are five. Have fun mapping!

[nedz]

I've run a couple of non-euclidean mazes.


All corridors appear to be straight and of the same length.
All junctions feature corridors which meet at right angles, even if there are 3 or 5 corridors.


I once set up one where most of the time making 7 right hand turns would bring you back to where you started, making 7 left hand turns would bring you back to where you started, and if you went straight on 7 times you would end up back where you started too.

There were four doors in the maze. After opening three doors the party had achived all of their ojectives. Of course someone opened the fourth door - this opened into a room which had a breach into the abyss. The party were then hit with several mass fears which caused them to run off in random directions. The maze had been unoccupied: now there were lots of demons running around, the party was split up and lost. Oh the Hilarity !

Best of all was when someone cast wall of force behind them to escape a demon, only to meet three coming the other way.:smallbiggrin:

[Sr.medusa]

I design once a dungeon created by god of thiefs (and god of trolls) wich is nearly imposible to pass with hundreds of traps. If you try to crush a door or cast any mobility spell (there are a list) the dungeon teleport you at the gate and you have to start again.

There are, also, a legend wich tell that in the dungeon there are the biggest tresure of the god, the hardest to steal and the most valuable for him. In the last room, the PCs only find some letters in a wall that says:

"MY BIGGEST LOOT, YOUR STUPIDS FACES... TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO"

It was funny.

[Deox]

I once had the party enter into a large circular room (the door closes and bars behind them via pressure plates). The party is wary at this moment because of a wild magic zone in the area, so casting spells right away (to them) isn't an option.

The trap was an adaptation of a Beholder Dome I read years ago. The room had 12 doors (including the one they just came through at 7 o'clock) spaced evenly around like a clock. Each door was magically trapped with a spell similar to the eye stalks of a beholder (disintegrate, finger of death, etc.), and the floor itself was weighted in the sense that as people moved around, the floor would pivot up or down causing balance checks or slip and slide down a pit into vast darkness.

The party figured out the floor weighting quickly, but after the dominate trap was sprung, the warblade went on a mad axe murdering rampage. It was great watching them try to space themselves out evenly as to not fall down the pit while still trying to find a way to break the warblade's domination.

[Particle_Man]

So I gave them a brothel, and put three succubi in it. Didn't even have any plans, other than that they were going to screw with the party.

I see what you did there. :smallbiggrin:

[Particle_Man]

I once had a King Arthur campaign where the party ran into a miniature castle and they did not know what to do with it. Turns out it was a green dragon under a Silent Image shell of a "castle" and the party was perfectly set up for the breath weapon. :smallbiggrin:

Similarly a black dragon's head and neck appear out of a swampy lake, but it is accomanied by others, a la mirror image.

[DarkHarlequinn7]

I have always found it fun to stack illusions on top of one another. Once the PC rolls to succeed the save of the first 2 or 3 he thinks it's over, but there is still several more layers to go. This tactic is especially nasty if you are REALLY good at describing horrific images.

My campaigns always tend to be a bit on the morbid and creepy side, and its always fun to make the players feel the same fear and unease that their characters are feeling. Makes it much easier to role-play their characters in that situation without metagaming.

[killianh]

Two members of my party recently were followers of Olidammara. They had to go to the abyss and take down a powerful Rage mage that had been assembling an army.

They ran through everything and ended up reaching the boss...Just as Olidammara pulled them out and said the whole thing was an illusion to see if they were powerful enough to make it through without dying (because he didn't want to lose some of his best men) thus leading to them running through a similar (yet completely screwed up version) of the same encounters again. On top of sucking, this also gave the Rage Mage the time he needed to do the proper divination to prepare for the party.

I owed them a case of beer for the trouble :smalltongue:

A great FU to the party can be sanctified creatures under compulsion. You'll have an "obviously" evil creature attacking the party, only to be followed up with a good organization declaring them villains for killing one of their own. This works great with a few sanctified Death Knights with Grey guard levels and hidden alignments

[BoutsofInsanity]

Don't trap the door...
...Trap the floor/wall directly behind it :smallamused:

Reminds me of Grimtooth, put a door over a wall, so it opens to no where, and set it to explode when lock picked.

Finally for those players who like to slam doors open...
Have the door open inward, put the hostage or innocent bystander behind the door and put a spike on the inside of the door. BAM, Squelch, oh sorry, did you just kill that poor defenseless NPC. Too Bad.

[Chronos]

I once had a King Arthur campaign where the party ran into a miniature castle and they did not know what to do with it. Camelot: Well it's only a model.

[Invader]

Cursed immovable rods!

Think the disappearing blocks from all the megaman games.

[RndmNumGen]

Ogre Mage Monk. In Pathfinder, adding monk levels to a monster raises the CR by 1 for every 2 levels of monk. So a 4th level oni monks CR only raises by two, but has a touch AC of over 20, A CMB/CMD that a sorcerer will never escape, and a fly speed of 60ft. Insert Dragon Ball Z imagery here.


No, not exactly. The 2 levels = 1 CR rule (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-advancement) only applies if the class is not 'keyed' to that creature's combat role. An Ogre Magi is a Combat creature (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-roles), and Monk is a Combat class, so Monk is a 'keyed' class for the Magi - as such, the partial CR rule doesn't apply, so every Monk level raises the Magi's CR by 1.

[panaikhan]

Not sure how it flies by RAW (or even RAI), but in the WLD there is a nasty trap that only goes off if the Rogue finds it...

'Tricks' of my own:
Items with offensive spells, with common trigger words.. like "What" or "Yes" etc.

Race and Alignment keyed treasure. "Oh, you're not a NE Drow? Too bad"

Talkative intelligent items. Really talkative. In loud voices.

[Finarfin]

Well my biggest dirty trick (if we count PC's missing the clues, as a 'trick') would have to be getting my PC's to break the multi-verse.

Custom Campaign setting, with a Pantheon based on the Riftwar series of novels.

The world starts not so much low magic as hidden. There is a social bias against magic users. This was clue one. Why would kings and princes shun something so useful?

Eventually one of the PC's, a wizard finally advances far enough to discover something interesting. He cannot plane shift. As near as he can tell his spell functioned perfectly, it didn't fizzle, wasn't countered, it just didn't actually do anything.

Clue two.

The party has been off the prime material plane exactly twice. Both times required divine intervention, the first time they became famous (Expedition to the Demonweb Pits Module) in the outer planes. The second time, they ran across a solar in an infernal prison who upon seeing them freaked out, Miracle'd his ass back to his home plane with the dire pronouncement "No, you can not be here!" in what was clearly him fleeing in terror.

Clue Three.

Back home, and the threat from the abyss solved (great module! :P) the Wizard decides to get down to some serious study on just why it is he can't seem to plane shift. He's pretty much the premiere spellcaster on the prime material plane at this point so not really anybody he can turn to for help.

Enter an old piece of throwaway loot. (yea right.)

Waaaaaaay back at 5th level the party found 4 small gold spheres in some loot. They registered as magical, when all 4 of them were held together, if separated they stopped reading as magical. Various groupings show'd magic or not. The party never actually figured out the pattern but it was this; together = magic. 3 and 1 separated the 3 are magic the loner is not, 2 and 2, 50/50 one set is magic the other isn't.

They were a mystery and put aside for later study.

During his experimentation it was discovered that if you feed the orbs a spell level they start levitating on their own and gently rotating around a central point (vertically). 30 spells levels later they are spinning at a good speed, and the deposited energy is gathering in the middle in a flickering vortex about the size of a mans fist, while the orbs are providing an orbit perhaps 3 feet across.

Leaving it alone the energy slowly leached out and the orbs became inert again.

The next day the party gathers in the court yard of their fortress, the wizard empties out his magical academy and has all his apprentices feed spell levels into the orbs. Over one thousand spell levels later the orbs are spinning so fast as to be a blur that looks like a solid gold ring, and the energy in the center is a solid mass.

Unbeknownst to the party those 4 orbs are actually artifacts left behind by ... It's a surprise, and the game is still ongoing and I know at least one of my players reads these boards :D.

Well 1000 freaking spells levels is the kind of power that gets noticed, even across planar barriers, even those mysteriously strengthened.

This brings us to the first breakout into the planes done by the PC rather than divine intervention. This is significant. The Deities know what they are doing, the PC's did not.

Their means of escape was relatively straight forward, the PC's had an artifact capable of generating a Gate that would pierce the shield around their prime material plane preventing planar transit. They threw 1000 spell levels into it, which attracted the attention of the Mages manning the Gate in Union City, so they pointed their steerable Gate at the one the PC's had set up and insta link!

Here comes clue four.

The second the Gate was established the party cleric gets a feeling of unease, moving slowly up to dread as the party probes the Gate, sends somebody through to check it out, and confirms its safe.

As long as the Gate is open the feeling of dread gets stronger and stronger. But the party manages to write it off.

First thing the party does when they enter out onto the planes is shopping, followed by some research. They want to know what the deal with their Prime Material plane is. They manage to track down their plane in the Planar Cartographic Society archives only to find out the entry has been removed. All that's left is the name of the original guild member who charted the place. Nothing else.

Party decides to head off in search of this mystery woman who as near as they can tell is the only non-native of their plane who knows anything about it. They find out she's in a prison in the abyss and decide to stage a jail break (that's where they met previously mentioned Solar, so I guess my clue numbering is a bit off.) They escape the prison just in time to watch a massive army of something stretching from horizon to horizon overwhelm the horde's of the abyss as they plane shift back to their home.

I've condensed this a lot, but try to remember this represents nearly a year of weekly games.

So here comes the 'trick' reveal. When they get back they find out their island kingdom has been drastically altered. Where once a modest fort and magic school stood now is a massive fortress with a courtyard several hundred feet across. One modest mage tower has been replaced by nine massive towers reaching up to the skies, skies filled with dragons. ALL of the dragons.

The place is now a cross section of mythology. The wizard had comissioned a forge of legend before he left, now its 10 times larger than he expected and Hephaestus is working at it busy out fitting an army. The Maddest army ever conceived. All manner of outsiders, creatures, beasts, and races are working together. All the old wars have halted, Orc's and elves, demons and devils and angels, all work together.

Walking across the courtyard to a central tower on the second floor there exists the most unlikely war council ever conceived, all the Major Deities, Devils and Demon Lords. From multiple settings.

It's explained to the PC's that the magical barrier set up around their plane wasn't to lock them out of the planes so much as it was to lock something else in. Something they have now let out. A god of evil, and insane god of evil.

Now lets get something straight, first off when I say god I don't mean 20HD outsider with class levels, I mean Unstated Lords of Creation. Second when I say God of Evil, I don't mean he's a mean Deity, I mean the manifestation of an evil so pure as to stain your soul irredeemably just by thinking his name. Finally we get to the insane part. When you are delusional, your delusions are typically a private problem. When you are Omnipotent (or near enough as nobody has noticed) your nightmares and delusions aren't just your problem anymore.

So now there is an army of creatures not of this reality invading, and they were numerous enough to overrun The Abyss, and powerful enough to - force the evacuation of the outer planes - Each of the outer 8 towers corresponds to an alignment and an outer plane. Everything left of the Outer Planes was moved there. All of the Dragon Flights have also moved in, as per alignment and roost at the top of the towers. They are collectively powering a magical shield holding the enemy at bay. The PC's are currently on a quest to recover the Orb's of Dragonkind to be used as a powersource for the barrier so as to free up the Dragonflights to possibly mount an offensive.

So recap. PC's didn't pick up on the clues. Broke the universe.

Current standing is;

Outer Planes evacuated.

Inner planes under siege.

Prime Material Plane a war zone. Several other prime material planes have fallen already. The Realms are still holding out because, well they are just littered with Epic NPC's but are losing.

Party desperately trying to find a way to fix everything.

It looks cool dude :D But I dont see the problem with the "clues". I probably would derp the universe too. You can´t put a red button in a room and expect the players dont push it :P

[Finarfin]

Good story

It looks cool dude :D But I dont see the problem with the "clues". I probably would derp the universe too. You can´t put a red button in a room and expect the players dont push it :P

[Roguenewb]

The favorite thing I ever did to my party was a standard Keep full of monsters type challenge, but they never received any experience points. My players became convinced (how do these things happen?) that were all hallucinating under powerful magic. One went so far as to suggest they go buy a scroll of Disjunction and pop the magic off them (sounds kind of like inception huh? This was 2008), and gets really obsessed with looking up different spells that would allow them to be controlled this way. When they started killing monsters who didn't melt when killed, they all started freaking out over no experience points. Things were starting to go really, really crazy among my players. Tons of crazy suggestions, one party member honestly stopping believing in another and so on. And then I see it, my monk-player has stopped talking and he has a sly smile. He lets the players screw around for like another half hour, then he turns to the Wizard "Summon a celestial Raven". He OHKOs the Raven, then he turns to me and asks "How much EXP do I get?" with the biggest s$%#-eating grin you've ever seen. Suddenly it dawns on the players you don't get EXP for defeating class features!

Best thing that ever happened *to* me is a little different. Level 20 two-shot adventure. We wander into a town and find out that they have a dragon problem from the nearby swamp. The dragon is believed to be all powerful and almost impossible to harm or destroy. It's black, and we suit up with acid resistance, flight restrictions, fly speeds of our own and so on. We leave the Druid's T. Rex in town, because we know it ain't gonna help, and might just get dominated. We decide it's better to kill all flight than to try to keep up with the dragon, so we control winds and every thing and get ready to turn flying off. We get into the swamp, and send the rogue-type into the underwater entrance of the lair to see what he can find. While he does so, the druid turns off flying and we all buff our Anti-acid and such. Then, the rogue comes up from the water and heads off running. We ask him what he's doing, and he screams "NOT A DRAGON!" and suddenly, the Tarrasque bursts out from behind the swamp cavern wall and attacks. Now, we didn't know it at the time, that even with our middling CharOP at the time, the Tarrasque isn't really a CR 20 foe, and we fought it with fear, but it went down eventually. We weren't the ChainGate/Demiplane/Shapechange crowd, but we knew what we were about. So, like 25 rounds later, the wizard uses his one and only wish to perma-kill the tarrasque and we get ready to head out, when...FWOOSH, something smashes into the muck spraying water and everything around. It bobs to the surface, and it's the T.Rex's head. We look up....and down comes a Great Wurm Black dragon. The tarrasque is scary, but a well prepped Dragon knows what he's about. The scariest boss fight I ever had, half resources against smart dragon. Amazing DM trick.

[Welknair]

Oh, and implementing Grimtooth's Traps, of course.

Even mentioning the name can make players go pale.

I cannot thank you enough for this. My players wil absolutely hate these. *Maniacal laugh*

[Duke of URL]

I have always found it fun to stack illusions on top of one another. Once the PC rolls to succeed the save of the first 2 or 3 he thinks it's over, but there is still several more layers to go. This tactic is especially nasty if you are REALLY good at describing horrific images.

Layers of illusions... sounds like a good way to toy with metagamers. That is, layer two identical illusions on the same thing. The player rolls his disbelieve will save and knows his result is high enough to see through an illusion, but sees exactly the same thing as before. How many are going to be paranoid enough to double-check that result?

Well, the first time, at least.

[Karoht]

Layered Illusion + Prismatic Wall.

AKA
WHY THE HELL AM I DYING?

Illusion a Wall in a corridor. Party breaks the illusion or sees through it, thinking they've found a secret room.
Slightly behind the illusion is the Prismatic Wall. Covered by an illusion of a passageway.

Broken by True Seeing though. Possibly not.

[Morph Bark]

I cannot thank you enough for this. My players wil absolutely hate these. *Maniacal laugh*

Every DM should at least read through Grimtooth's Traps, and Too, and Fore and Ate. And that other one.

[Particle_Man]

Every DM should at least read through Grimtooth's Traps, and Too, and Fore and Ate. And that other one.

Traps Lite?

[Welknair]

Every DM should at least read through Grimtooth's Traps, and Too, and Fore and Ate. And that other one.

Mind elaborating? You've got my attention. If there's more like Grimtooth's, I certainly would like to see them!

Edit: Huh. Actual names. Nevermind, I found them! *More hysterical laughter*

I have the sudden urge to run a dungeon-crawl..

[Fluffy_1.0]

Clear colorless gelatinous cube at the bottom of a pit trap with what looks like treasure at the bottom.

[Venger]

Clear colorless gelatinous cube at the bottom of a pit trap with what looks like treasure at the bottom.

invisible acidborn shark paladin inside the cube optional

[molten_dragon]

One relatively nasty trick that's been pulled repeatedly by both DMs and players in my group is the aptly named Death in the Dark combo.

Take any spell that stops vision over a large area (darkness, obscuring mist, any of the fog spells, etc.) and add to it enemies with senses not affected by lack of sight (blindsight, tremorsense, scent, blind-fight feat, etc.). It can get nasty for whoever is on the receiving end pretty fast. To make it even nastier, combine it with an effect that prevents movement and enemies who are immune to that.

This one started when I was playing a shadowcraft mage who had created a stone golem as a bodyguard, and frequently combined shadow illusion'd freezing fog spells with the golem to great effect.

[NichG]

At some point I want to use the following trick:

BBEG/etc kills a bunch of his henchmen and uses Reincarnate (permanent duration) to bring them back to life. Maybe as part of an expensive empowerment process, or to evoke a religious experience and loyalty, or whatever.

His select guard are placed in a room around the MacGuffin, the entrance to his lair, etc. This room contains something that pretty much requires magic to get use out of - a teleporter to the BBEG's lair, a Bag of Holding-type portal with the MacGuffin built into the architecture, etc. It also has a permanent antimagic field on it. The guard are mocked up to be the bodies of everyone who has died trying to get the item, perhaps with some cosmetic tricks used to make it look like a trap. They are placed (inert) in the AMF. When the PCs destroy or turn off the AMF to solve the puzzle/get at the item/etc, the dead 'awaken'. Some good descriptions could lead to a couple anti-undead spells being wasted on the situation until the PCs find that these guys just had their life temporarily suspended (but the spell continues once the AMF is turned off). Plus they will likely have moved into the room by that point, so they're surrounded.

Similar tricks can be pulled with a Polymorph-any-Object'd bit of matter in an AMF. These can be very dangerous - that pebble turns into 300 tons of rock, etc.

[Rift_Wolf]

No, not exactly. The 2 levels = 1 CR rule (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-advancement) only applies if the class is not 'keyed' to that creature's combat role. An Ogre Magi is a Combat creature (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-roles), and Monk is a Combat class, so Monk is a 'keyed' class for the Magi - as such, the partial CR rule doesn't apply, so every Monk level raises the Magi's CR by 1.

According to the Bestiary, Monk and Paladin are never key classes (Until their level equals their HD). Barbarian, Ranger and Fighter are listed as combat roles. I couldn't see anything on that link that contradicts this interpretation. However, that link did show me that I've been working out HP wrong for all my NPCs, you've just made life more difficult for my party, thanks =)

[mattie_p]

At some point I want to use the following trick:

BBEG/etc kills a bunch of his henchmen and uses Reincarnate (permanent duration) to bring them back to life.

Unfortunately, reincarnate has an instantaneous duration - meaning that once performed, the effects are permanent. AMF will not cause the reincarnated creatures to unanimate. Perhaps you are looking for flesh golems?

[Bahamut Omega]

I haven't tried this, but I'm inclined to. I like using lots of difficult terrain in my encounters, so I'm thinking for a CR 6 or 7 encounter to have a the PCs encounter a foe in an area with multiple skull piles. While some of the piles are real, the other half are mimics. Maybe make some permanent illusions as well. It's fun to confuse people.

[Knightofvictory]

I think I saw a few mentions of the ol' gelatinous cube under a trap door. I've actually used it, and it really is funny. Especially when the rest of the party has to try to decide how to get the people who fell into the cube out, without hurting them. (And repeatedly shushing the players who are in the cube since you can't take advice from someone who can't breath :smallamused: ) As a variant, have the cube fall from the ceiling onto someone while they go down a narrow passage.

Best trick I know of is this: killing the monster is half the encounter- getting the loot is the other half. They killed a black dragon? his horde is deep beneath a stagnant scummy pond infested with watery abberations. Found a magic sword in an ancient tomb? Certainly cursed, how could it possibly not be? Killed the great lich after an epic struggle and now looting his castle? I hope you like magic traps, because there is one on every piece of furniture he owned. The more valuable stuff a monster has, the more they do to protect it. And if they have a lot of valuable stuff, they can buy a lot of protection...

[Torben Raibeart]

The favorite thing I ever did to my party was a standard Keep full of monsters type challenge, but they never received any experience points. My players became convinced (how do these things happen?) that were all hallucinating under powerful magic. One went so far as to suggest they go buy a scroll of Disjunction and pop the magic off them (sounds kind of like inception huh? This was 2008), and gets really obsessed with looking up different spells that would allow them to be controlled this way. When they started killing monsters who didn't melt when killed, they all started freaking out over no experience points. Things were starting to go really, really crazy among my players. Tons of crazy suggestions, one party member honestly stopping believing in another and so on. And then I see it, my monk-player has stopped talking and he has a sly smile. He lets the players screw around for like another half hour, then he turns to the Wizard "Summon a celestial Raven". He OHKOs the Raven, then he turns to me and asks "How much EXP do I get?" with the biggest s$%#-eating grin you've ever seen. Suddenly it dawns on the players you don't get EXP for defeating class features!

Perhaps not, but one could argue that the players should get xp for defeating an encounter with whoever summoned the creatures. After all, if a wizard ambush a party from hiding by summoning critters then flees when his summons get killed, the party have defeated him in the encounter. After all, you don't need to kill a monster to win, there are all kind of things that could count as a victory on the players part. To put it this way: If a T-rex attacked a village and th PCs drove it of without killing it, I would still give them xp for defeating it.

[panaikhan]

I'm sure I saw an advert for a hardbound collection of all of Grimtooth over in the Paizo site...

[JonRG]

Clear colorless gelatinous cube at the bottom of a pit trap with what looks like treasure at the bottom.

You call it a Dirty DM trick, my friend calls it Free Loot for Warforged. :smallbiggrin: (Though that cube was just underwater.)

[Venger]

You call it a Dirty DM trick, my friend calls it Free Loot for Warforged. :smallbiggrin: (Though that cube was just underwater.)

he's stil gotta deal with acid damage though, doesn't he?

[JonRG]

he's stil gotta deal with acid damage though, doesn't he?

It doesn't harm metal, so I guess while his wood bits would have sizzled a bit, the damage would be pretty negligible. (He also had some kind of DR, I think)

[NichG]

Unfortunately, reincarnate has an instantaneous duration - meaning that once performed, the effects are permanent. AMF will not cause the reincarnated creatures to unanimate. Perhaps you are looking for flesh golems?

Huh, you're right. I wonder why I thought it was Duration: Permanent. Oh well, nevermind on that then.

The PaO trick still works though.

[bokodasu]

I think I saw a few mentions of the ol' gelatinous cube under a trap door. I've actually used it, and it really is funny.
...
Best trick I know of is this: killing the monster is half the encounter- getting the loot is the other half.


Truly a classic - I've used it, or a close variation, in almost every campaign I've run. Never gets old. (Hey, did you know GC's get bigger once you give them enough HD? Also, they are legit targets for the half-dragon template, but try not to think too hard about that one.)

My players just missed out on a bunch of treasure because they didn't want to go swimming in an ooze-filled pool of acid. Sillies!

[Fitz10019]

I remember an encounter with an Earth Elemental and an Air Elemental (both huge, at least). When the AE went into whirlwind mode and picked up PCs, making them circle around the room, the EE took AoO's against the PC's as they flew by each round.

[Morph Bark]

Mind elaborating? You've got my attention. If there's more like Grimtooth's, I certainly would like to see them!

Edit: Huh. Actual names. Nevermind, I found them! *More hysterical laughter*

I have the sudden urge to run a dungeon-crawl..

Yep. The Grimtooth series likes to have fun with words sometimes, but certainly not as much fun as with traps. One of my players gets incredibly paranoid about traps whenever I DM. :smallbiggrin:

Also: always remember that it takes a DC 15 Spot check to notice a gelatinous cube. If you have a party with few to no ranks in Spot, let them walk right into one! (I actually once made a dungeon where one of the walls was actually a gelatinous cube. When the party first entered that room, it was frozen and opaque like ice, but when they flipped a switch in another room and heated the place up, it thawed and became transparent so they could see there was a treasure chest beyond it, but didn't see the cube itself. :smallamused:)