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View Full Version : Stupidest move your DM has ever had to bail the party out of?



TuggyNE
2012-10-30, 05:24 AM
So, in one of the first sessions of D&D I played, we were level 2 and going through a sewer system that had gotten infested with undead, giant insects, and (intelligent) spiders, and also stopped working for whatever reason (:smalltongue:). We came upon some clues to the identity and goals of the necromancers responsible, and managed to plow our way past various traps into a chamber in which they were conducting a ritual. We see a couple of black-robed dudes with e.g. scythes, skull-topped staffs, that kind of thing, a few zombie minions, and ... a skeletal creature with a lot of eyestalks.

"Charge!"

At this point, the DM is probably facepalming inside, but he managed to hold it together; the doomsphere hit us with, I dunno, hold person or something similarly innocuous, and basically started floating away to let its underlings take care of us. I, playing a halfling ranger, was not satisfied with this, and fired a couple more shots at it. It hit me with inflict serious wounds or something, gloated a bit, and kept moving away. (At which point we had a more or less difficult fight with the remaining foes, since we couldn't catch the doomsphere any more at all, no matter how suicidally overconfident we might be.)

Anybody have awesome stories of the crazy stuff your DM has had to deal with?

kardar233
2012-10-30, 05:46 AM
So, in one of the first sessions of D&D I played, we were level 2 and going through a sewer system that had gotten infested with undead, giant insects, and (intelligent) spiders, and also stopped working for whatever reason (:smalltongue:). We came upon some clues to the identity and goals of the necromancers responsible, and managed to plow our way past various traps into a chamber in which they were conducting a ritual. We see a couple of black-robed dudes with e.g. scythes, skull-topped staffs, that kind of thing, a few zombie minions, and ... a skeletal creature with a lot of eyestalks.

"Charge!"

At this point, the DM is probably facepalming inside, but he managed to hold it together; the doomsphere hit us with, I dunno, hold person or something similarly innocuous, and basically started floating away to let its underlings take care of us. I, playing a halfling ranger, was not satisfied with this, and fired a couple more shots at it. It hit me with inflict serious wounds or something, gloated a bit, and kept moving away. (At which point we had a more or less difficult fight with the remaining foes, since we couldn't catch the doomsphere any more at all, no matter how suicidally overconfident we might be.)

Anybody have awesome stories of the crazy stuff your DM has had to deal with?

My DM had to bail my friend's character (a noble who's a skilled swordsman and a decent earth mage) out of a fight against an ancient nearly unkillable swordmaster who was wielding the sword of a god. The same player tried the same fight again later, trying to gas the guy with chemical weapons. He wasn't really saveable that time; hoist by his own petard.

Jane_Smith
2012-10-30, 05:47 AM
Level 3 group of four players that had wasted most of there abilities fighting group of armored goblins and a shaman, a barbarian in our party had the idea to make the party wizard cast enlarge person (his last spell) on him while he went into a rage, and turned around to flying kick a IRON GOLEM off the bridge they were on to slow it down while they tried to escape. The fun thing is, he rolled a nat 20 on the bullrush check and managed to pull it off.

Badgerish
2012-10-30, 05:51 AM
well, my 4ed party (including a lawful good paladin) did join an evil (masquerading as neutral) cult once...

They shocked me by agreeing to join the cult and agreeing to do whatever the higher-ranking members ordered them to; so I brought out my secret weapon, something that no adventurers would ever do: asked them to remove their weapons, armour and equipment and put it in a chest (guarded by a giant).

... they agreed.

So I took a 5 min break, drew the inner-sanctum and ad-hoced a suitable speech about the cult's goals. When the group realised that the cult leaders where two Medusa and an Oni (and they where unarmed and dressed in robes) that's when they realised the extent of their situation.

DigoDragon
2012-10-30, 07:19 AM
Anybody have awesome stories of the crazy stuff your DM has had to deal with?

Awesome? No.

Bone-headed? Yes. :smallbiggrin:


The PCs were exploring an abandoned palace built by dragons. They found one chamber that was a long hallway that ended in a 30-foot pit into nothingness. True Nothingness, as I even strongly hinted that it was as if there was a "black hole" at the bottom. Four of the six players jumped in thinking it was the way to the treasure vault.

It was a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom.

2/3rds of the party essentially jumped into a dragon toilet and vaporized themselves. :smalltongue: I bailed them, letting the party redo their last action so they could stop themselves from falling all the way and wouldn't die in a move that would make Gygax laugh in his grave.
Charged the four PCs 50% of their earned EXP for that specific dungeon though.

Squark
2012-10-30, 11:29 AM
Awesome? No.

Bone-headed? Yes. :smallbiggrin:


The PCs were exploring an abandoned palace built by dragons. They found one chamber that was a long hallway that ended in a 30-foot pit into nothingness. True Nothingness, as I even strongly hinted that it was as if there was a "black hole" at the bottom. Four of the six players jumped in thinking it was the way to the treasure vault.

It was a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom.

2/3rds of the party essentially jumped into a dragon toilet and vaporized themselves. :smalltongue: I bailed them, letting the party redo their last action so they could stop themselves from falling all the way and wouldn't die in a move that would make Gygax laugh in his grave.
Charged the four PCs 50% of their earned EXP for that specific dungeon though.

You know, Tomb Of Horrors really ought to be required reading for players.

Erik Vale
2012-10-30, 05:10 PM
The PCs were exploring an abandoned palace built by dragons. They found one chamber that was a long hallway that ended in a 30-foot pit into nothingness. True Nothingness, as I even strongly hinted that it was as if there was a "black hole" at the bottom. Four of the six players jumped in thinking it was the way to the treasure vault.

It was a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom.

2/3rds of the party essentially jumped into a dragon toilet and vaporized themselves. :smalltongue:

Good thing they removed themselves from the genepool I would say.

I play Heroes myself and with a couple of the worse players he has enforced certain disadvantages and stat limits based on actions such as this (On a marginally lesser scale though).

Acanous
2012-10-30, 05:45 PM
Recently?
Well, my lv 12 party was running through Rappan Athuk, and decided to split up. 3 players went down to layer 10, to try and steal the golden bridge, while two went to layer 9-b to see what was there for the taking. Upon finding the hanging door, (and the rogue being unable to open it), the monk uses Greater Teleport to "The other side of that door" to try opening it from the other side.

So the monk's stranded in the Etherial plane, the Rogue's by himself in an area nobody else in the party knows how to reach, and fighting nothing but undead, while the melee is off taking fire damage/minute. Oh, and then they fought the efreets.

The Rogue eventually triggered the Temporal Stasis trap (Which was a little unfair, that "DC: Impossible" when he's so trap-focused) (So I made it only last a week) but yeah. I'm pulling all KINDS of things out of my bottom trying to save them from TPKs.

DontEatRawHagis
2012-10-30, 09:39 PM
Our DM allowed us to blow up kegs to kill 250 gang members in a 50 square floor bar. Yes it defies the law of physics and geometry.

It was an extraction mission, the NPC didn't know who we were so we dressed up as police officers to try and have some face, not realizing the bar was filled with gangmembers.

Also our charismatic Faceman decided to guard the front door, for some reason. In fact the three least charismatic players were talking with the NPC. After a dozen failed diplomacy and bluff checks, the gunman decided to take the NPC hostage. Everyone in the bar targeted them.

If it wasn't for two of us being in the basement with crap ton of kegs(and DM fudging physics), we would have TPK'd. The Bar was on fire by the end.

Alleran
2012-10-31, 02:25 AM
The party was foolish enough to, in the middle of the king's throne room, in front of a hundred others (some armed, some not), and a couple dozen royal guards, accuse the queen of being a vampire and attempt to stake her. In front of everybody, mind you. They assumed (and I have no idea why to this day - they admit themselves that it was a stupid idea at the time and they don't know why they thought it was a good idea) that the queen would die and everybody would be happy.

As it turned out, the king was the vampire (his royal signet was a "daylight ring" that allowed him to walk around in the sunlight), his wife simply suffered from a disease that made her unable to tolerate sunlight, and the party was executed where they stood for attempted regicide.

Stepping in, I had the "court druid" (the nobility and royal family didn't trust mages and had laws against them) later reincarnate them and toss them through a portal to the other side of the world, telling them to never come back if they valued their lives (they had died once as punishment and were trapped in new bodies... hilariously, the dwarf became an elf, one of the elves became a dwarf, one of the elves became a drow, and the two humans became a goblin and a half-orc). It was something of a deus ex machina, but I figured giving them a fresh start on the other side of the campaign world would be easier than rolling up new characters.

shadow_archmagi
2012-10-31, 10:31 AM
The thing about a lot of these stories is that it's kinda unfair to call them stupid moves- A lot of them are just uninformed. If the party has hereto only encountered skeletons that were extremely weak, there's no reason for them to assume that a doomsphere is eight orders of magnitude more powerful than they are.

A lot of these are just "Ha! We had no way of realizing that our choices wouldn't yield good results."

Lentrax
2012-10-31, 10:45 AM
The thing about a lot of these stories is that it's kinda unfair to call them stupid moves- A lot of them are just uninformed. If the party has hereto only encountered skeletons that were extremely weak, there's no reason for them to assume that a doomsphere is eight orders of magnitude more powerful than they are.

A lot of these are just "Ha! We had no way of realizing that our choices wouldn't yield good results."

You want a really dumb move? Try this out...

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. We are five minutes into the first session. The rogue decides, "I wanna kill that guy right there."

That guy, as it turns out was the Captain of the guard.

Cue an hour of running through city streets, hide checks, and a bottle of air in the river.

Squark
2012-10-31, 12:17 PM
So, there's

a) Overconfidence/Misinformation, where the party (most likely because the DM did not succeed in communicating that the intent was for the party not to engage in a fight),
b) Suicidal Overconfidance, a variant of a) in which the DM was quite clear that starting a fight would end in death, and
c) Genuinely stupid actions (The sphere of annihilation garbage dump jump, for instance, or Stupid Evil random killings)

Sipex
2012-10-31, 01:34 PM
In my 4e avatar game the party just about blew themselves up when the party mechanic severely failed his disarm roll.

It wouldn't have been so bad if it was only one bomb but the PCs had managed to drag three bombs into the same area, within blasting distance of one another.

They only lived because the mechanic had a re-roll at his disposal.

scurv
2012-10-31, 04:53 PM
Slightly of topic, But so in the spirit.
I told the party that I was running a human-centric world. Not one human in the group. For that matter not even any halflings or elfs. But it makes it fun at least.

The bail out. The party is not kill on sight.

Acanous
2012-10-31, 04:58 PM
So, there's

a) Overconfidence/Misinformation, where the party (most likely because the DM did not succeed in communicating that the intent was for the party not to engage in a fight),
b) Suicidal Overconfidance, a variant of a) in which the DM was quite clear that starting a fight would end in death, and
c) Genuinely stupid actions (The sphere of annihilation garbage dump jump, for instance, or Stupid Evil random killings)

Hey now, *My* party split up, in a dungeon full of traps and environmental hazards, with no way to contact eachother. On level 9 of said dungeon, so it's not like they didn't know there'd be bad stuff around.

TuggyNE
2012-10-31, 06:19 PM
So, there's

a) Overconfidence/Misinformation, where the party (most likely because the DM did not succeed in communicating that the intent was for the party not to engage in a fight),
b) Suicidal Overconfidance, a variant of a) in which the DM was quite clear that starting a fight would end in death, and
c) Genuinely stupid actions (The sphere of annihilation garbage dump jump, for instance, or Stupid Evil random killings)

Heh, pretty much, yeah.

In my DM's defense, all of us were pretty new to the game, and I don't think any of us knew, in or out of character, what a beholder really was....

Trinoya
2012-10-31, 10:35 PM
I had a case years ago when I was DMing. Had the entire party waltzing about through time and space as it were. There had been hints of this 'big bad horrible thing' that could 'kill them without trying' roaming around the world. It was described to them as something that couldn't outright attack them at any point or any location.. as if there were rules.

They were then told, very specifically, very clearly, in the most well laid out way I could possibly manage, that if they "Stay at this Inn, they will DIE HORRIBLY."

Not ten minutes later the ENTIRETY of the party up and forgets that whole, "DON'T GO HERE AND STAY AT THE INN OR YOU WILL DIE!" that I had taken great pains to tell them. I mean ten minutes literally... 15 tops.

So I sit back and go over all the items in the party, and use one of my ideas as a way to save them from their death... essentially creating a ground hog day effect until such time as someone makes the right decision (using a magic device to basically travel back in time and stop this from happening in the first place).

After nearly 3 hours of the party dying over and over and over again (save for one PC and one NPC who are trying to figure it out basically) I FINALLY get the player to put two and two together, solve the puzzle, and save the day. All the players are absurdly angry with me, as in 'ready to quit the game' levels of angry. They felt that they had been 'placed' in a situation they couldn't escape. The glares were piercing and deep and no effort was made by any of them to hide their discontent and displeasure.

Since negativity was at an all time high AND I had to leave I called session and took a guest who had been watching the session home (she had been waiting during this time, enjoying the spectacle). As we got into the car and pulled away she looked at me and said, "You're far too nice a DM, I would have TPK'D them and they deserved it." My response was, "I know... but I'd like them to finish the stories they started and not just die to something that stupid."

She looked at me and said, "You know they are basically figuring out how to crucify you right?"

"Yeah. Imagine what would have happened if I let them die!" And we proceeded to have a good laugh.

Over the next weekend, through means unknown, all the players were 'politely' reminded that I had warned them of impending horrible death in the location they went... and the apologies and "thank you for not killing all of us" calls slowly came in.

Convinced I made the right decision after that.

Archmage1
2012-10-31, 11:07 PM
So, the setup
First, the DM has so far had every major enemy in the epic levels. So, we go to a lake to get the macguffin from a Glisteg.
After a bit of conversation, she tries to charm the spellthief(me). I make the save, and basically say I will kill her if she casts another spell at me.
So I(the Spellthief) Cast Glibness(DM allowed) to try to persuade her to give us the item, as she has been rather reluctant. I fail the sleight of hand check to hide the spell, but pass the bluff check to convince her it was harmless. She then casts dispel, at which point I use my ring of blinking, and move adjacent.
So, the DM, trying to be nice, has her run away. I take the AAO offered, and then cast alter self to chase her underwater. She tries to teleport, so I grab her, and convince the DM that I get to come along(it actually sort of works, as the spell's Targets are self and creatures touched). So epic fight ensues, with the DM rolling horribly to overcome Blink. Eventually, I fail, so I need to make a dc 33 will save, at level 12. Predictably, I fail. So, the DM says she cast dominate monster(from mindbender) takes my daggers(+2), and my ring of blinking, and sends me back to the party(a save)

Now, my character is a bit gung-ho, so he decides to go back into the water to kill her, figuring she was almost dead. After a bit of sneaking around, I manage to fail my hide check vs a pair of Lake leviathans(cr 11). Since I have lost my best evasion method, and my damage dealing method, I am more or less screwed. So the DM has the local goddess save me.

Effectively, 2 dm saves for the price of one.
The Glisteg was, as later deduced, at least a Glisteg 6/Sorc 12/Mindbender 8.
I did manage to deal 377 damage to it though.

Ozfer
2012-11-01, 01:55 PM
I was DMing three players-

An Orc (<-- Boneheaded move in the first place)
A Demonborn (<-- Made the orc look cute and cuddly)
A Human (<-- With abilities that literally tear apart an enemies soul)

These players have the special snowflake syndrome. The orc was actually rather tame, being neutral.

Anyway, these players go adventuring, kill bandits, and take loot, and return to the main city, hiding their identities, since they are each rather ugly and evil looking.

Long story short- They are framed for homicide (They weren't against murder, they just hadn't had a chance to commit it yet). They are jailed, and miraculously manage to escape without killing a single guard (Not for lack of trying though).

Then, they jump to the conclusion that the real murderers were the bandits they killed a month ago (in game), miles and miles away.

They proceed to drag the rotten corpses back to the main city over the course of another month, and are arrested for being sadistic morons. They attempted to escape, but they ended up flooding their own jail cell, and giving a guard really bad acid burns.

They were executed the next day.

Hmm... I guess I didn't bail them out. I guess that was kind of off topic.

awa
2012-11-01, 02:07 PM
it was second eddtion i was using a premade random encounter chart heavy on dragons (really heavy) so the 2 man low level party stumbles through the back entrance of a ancient green dragon lair. one of the pcs upon see the green dragon grabs an egg and runs. The other player goes im not with him. in retrospect i should have come up with a way to save the player who had not stolen an egg. apperently becuase the bronze dragon helped them and the topaz dragon ignored them it did not occure to him the green would indiscrimenet in it's revenge.

DontEatRawHagis
2012-11-01, 08:58 PM
c) Genuinely stupid actions (The sphere of annihilation garbage dump jump, for instance, or Stupid Evil random killings)

Yeah, we had situations where our DM would have actually allowed the genuinely stupid actions to happen. In one case much to the displeasure of the other players. One example:

The husband of our DM suggested to kill the Psychic Sarlac pits in front of us that we should empty our septic tank on the ship(whatever you call the place crap goes in a spaceship) into it's mouth. Note, he wanted us to fly over it with the ship and hope we could aim it down their gullets and drown them.

Instead we took the sensible approach and threw thermal detonators into the pits, via a flying dragon. :smallamused:

Sadly our DM seemed to be more in favor of her husband's idea, because she had the explosions cause a chain reaction that caused an earthquake. And subsequently leveled the BBEG's mansion after the fight.

SowZ
2012-11-02, 01:07 AM
Awesome? No.

Bone-headed? Yes. :smallbiggrin:


The PCs were exploring an abandoned palace built by dragons. They found one chamber that was a long hallway that ended in a 30-foot pit into nothingness. True Nothingness, as I even strongly hinted that it was as if there was a "black hole" at the bottom. Four of the six players jumped in thinking it was the way to the treasure vault.

It was a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom.

2/3rds of the party essentially jumped into a dragon toilet and vaporized themselves. :smalltongue: I bailed them, letting the party redo their last action so they could stop themselves from falling all the way and wouldn't die in a move that would make Gygax laugh in his grave.
Charged the four PCs 50% of their earned EXP for that specific dungeon though.

Had pretty much the same thing happen. Difference? I didn't bail my player out. The party has invaded the tower of a necromancer and has got into all kinds of shenanigans. They are on the second or third floor. Anyway. The rogue spots a plaster covered hole in the wall and breaks it with her dagger. She sees an odd safe thing and decides to jar it open best she can. Eventually, she succeeds. Unfortunately, this causes the chest to be sucked in to the black orb in front of her face.

The wall it is touching is then sucked in, creating a big ol' void. She screams for help. The party troll walks in, sees this, and screams, "Shabladoo!" And jumps in...

He re-rolled as an imp, since the necromancer's traps managed to plane shift the party to hell.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-02, 01:32 AM
So, there's

a) Overconfidence/Misinformation, where the party (most likely because the DM did not succeed in communicating that the intent was for the party not to engage in a fight),
b) Suicidal Overconfidance, a variant of a) in which the DM was quite clear that starting a fight would end in death, and
c) Genuinely stupid actions (The sphere of annihilation garbage dump jump, for instance, or Stupid Evil random killings)

Stupidity, like ice-cream, comes in many flavors. Also like ice-cream, most flavors of stupidity are quite enjoyable, as long as you're not the one who's making it.

(I'm of the opinion that, while delicious, homemade ice-cream is more effort than it's worth.)

Alaris
2012-11-02, 02:06 AM
Ah Trinoya... such fun times! And hey, I called and apologized not 2 days later... just had to mull it over.

Nonetheless, onto My Story. My players were not exactly bright during this incident...

So... I'm DMing in a homebrew world, not much needed to be known about that to understand, it's a fairly standard fantasy world.

There are 4 players, around level 6, an Elf Duskblade, a Dwarf Gish (Rogue/Barbarian/Paladin), an Aasimar Bard, and an Aasimar Monk/Favored Soul.

They were traveling with a fairly large caravan, numbering around 30-40 additional people, of varying power levels (but none higher than the PCs). The ball initially drops when a Staff of Evocation is broken, and a Wild Magic Event ensues. At the time, I was really bad with such events, so a TON of effects occured, crippling the majority of the caravan, but leaving the PCs mostly intact (oddly enough).

It gets better though... one of the effects summoned an Ice Devil (Gelugon, SRD), which I know is WELL out of the PCs range of power, and capability to defeat. So... after all of these effects occurred, I called session, so I could give myself a week to prepare, and figure out how NOT to just kill the party.

Next Week:

So, cue next week, the party is now trapped inside a barrier with the Ice Devil. Paladin ensures that it is evil (EXTREMELY so, being an Evil Outsider), but the party stops to listen.

The Ice Devil offers them a deal; he will help them 'escape' the barrier, but the ritual to do so requires them to do two things. Drink something he gives them, and think of the person they love most.

So... >.> I figured they'd be calling bull**** by this point. EVIL DEVIL offers absurd deal, using a ritual unheard of... but no. They prove me wrong. The party drinks the paralytic poison (and chooses to fail the saves), leaving them completely paralyzed. They continue to go along with it, failing the Detect Thoughts save, and thinking of their most loved one. >.> I can't make this up.

So, like I said, I had made preparations for something of this, well, I won't say. Nonetheless, the "Deus Ex Machina" as it were, is that the party is bound to a Prophecy in regards to stopping this Ice Devil, and is freed from their paralysis (after torture, scarification, and the like), and given "McGuffin Weapons."

So they engage in combat with him briefly, and he decides he doesn't want to deal with them, making a hasty exit, now with the knowledge of all of their most loved ones.

Notably, he became a recurring villain (BBEG-ish), so it all worked out. But I honestly didn't expect them to go along with working with the Devil. In retrospect, the Paladin probably should have fallen for associating with such an evil creature. Meh...

SowZ
2012-11-02, 02:27 AM
My favorite example and all of my players have heard this story.

So we are on a quest to find a demi-godess and have to scale this mountain. Third level adventurers with a Cleric, a Psionic Warrior, a Rogue, a Sorcerer, (me,) and a Barbarian. Some perils along the way, of course, but we reach the top. It is a deserty plateau of sorts with a steep cliff on one side. There is 'nothing' on top of this cliff. We are a bit disappointed but this is standard. We have to prove our patience or find the secret magic or do some riddle or somesuch, right?

Apparently, our Barbarian didn't think so. The player gets this bright look in his eye, smiling, like he has come up with something ingenious. (Which was intriguing to us, because ingenious he was not.) "Guys, I know what we have to do!" "Hmm?" "We have to JUMP OFF THE CLIFF."

Now, I don't know what kind of test of faith he thought this was, were you have to do something so blatantly suicidal with no prompting to prove oneself but anyways... Everyone, GM included, says, "What?" Response, "I jump off the cliff."

DM: ... Are you sure?
Mr. Barbarian: Yep.
DM: Really?
Mr. Barbarian: Yes, I jump!

Needless to say, it was not a test of any kind. If it was, he failed...

Osmophile
2012-11-02, 03:09 AM
P:Let's web the room and shoot arrows at it
--------------------------------------------
Party in the habitation quarters of a lair have just finished a noisy piece of combat. One member takes it on themselves to do a bit of exploring.
Me (GM): You open the door and a green dragon breathes on you
P: I attack
Me: By yourself?
P: Yes, while everyone else gets here
Me:Okay
(Roll initiative, green dragon goes first, Bite, Claw, player is down)
Me: So it still has another another attack, hmmm, what targets are available?
---------------------------------------------
P: We charge
(seriously, your home game party should never utter these words beyond first level)
---------------------------------------------
Actually, come to think of it. Nearly every combat involving a dragon I've had to work hard to avoid a TPK. 5 attacks? Well let me share them amongst all of you then because you're all too thick to prepare for a fight with a dragon in the first place.

Trinoya
2012-11-02, 08:27 AM
Ah Trinoya... such fun times! And hey, I called and apologized not 2 days later... just had to mull it over.

Bah Humbug! >=(


^__^




The Ice Devil offers them a deal; he will help them 'escape' the barrier, but the ritual to do so requires them to do two things. Drink something he gives them, and think of the person they love most.


I had so much fun killing your players characters. Thanks for the invite to play an NPC in your game! The look on their faces when their party leader dropped. Mmm.. such sweet tasty tears.

Sweet sweet tears.

^__^

Dr.Epic
2012-11-02, 10:09 AM
Literal divine intervention...from Gruumsh. But the party did get to enjoy several owl-bear-burgers afterwards.

Sith_Happens
2012-11-02, 02:53 PM
The Ice Devil offers them a deal; he will help them 'escape' the barrier, but the ritual to do so requires them to do two things. Drink something he gives them, and think of the person they love most.

Am I bad person for thinking it should have been a potion of Love's Pain (BoVD, 98-99)?

Lord Tyger
2012-11-02, 02:56 PM
My favorite example and all of my players have heard this story.

So we are on a quest to find a demi-godess and have to scale this mountain. Third level adventurers with a Cleric, a Psionic Warrior, a Rogue, a Sorcerer, (me,) and a Barbarian. Some perils along the way, of course, but we reach the top. It is a deserty plateau of sorts with a steep cliff on one side. There is 'nothing' on top of this cliff. We are a bit disappointed but this is standard. We have to prove our patience or find the secret magic or do some riddle or somesuch, right?

Apparently, our Barbarian didn't think so. The player gets this bright look in his eye, smiling, like he has come up with something ingenious. (Which was intriguing to us, because ingenious he was not.) "Guys, I know what we have to do!" "Hmm?" "We have to JUMP OFF THE CLIFF."

Now, I don't know what kind of test of faith he thought this was, were you have to do something so blatantly suicidal with no prompting to prove oneself but anyways... Everyone, GM included, says, "What?" Response, "I jump off the cliff."

DM: ... Are you sure?
Mr. Barbarian: Yep.
DM: Really?
Mr. Barbarian: Yes, I jump!

Needless to say, it was not a test of any kind. If it was, he failed...

Someone had watched The Last Crusade recently...

TuggyNE
2012-11-02, 04:32 PM
Am I bad person for thinking it should have been a potion of Love's Pain (BoVD)?

That is amazing. Your journey towards the dark side is complete. :smalltongue:

EtherianBlade
2012-11-04, 03:12 PM
Awesome? No.

Bone-headed? Yes. :smallbiggrin:


The PCs were exploring an abandoned palace built by dragons. They found one chamber that was a long hallway that ended in a 30-foot pit into nothingness. True Nothingness, as I even strongly hinted that it was as if there was a "black hole" at the bottom. Four of the six players jumped in thinking it was the way to the treasure vault.

It was a Sphere of Annihilation at the bottom.

2/3rds of the party essentially jumped into a dragon toilet and vaporized themselves. :smalltongue: I bailed them, letting the party redo their last action so they could stop themselves from falling all the way and wouldn't die in a move that would make Gygax laugh in his grave.
Charged the four PCs 50% of their earned EXP for that specific dungeon though.

I had a DM pull almost this exact same scenario on us once, and after the first idiot in our group jumped in, we decided to attach a rope and scale down to both look for him and to confirm it was what we thought it was.

The DM then decided that an invisible assassin was also in the room above -- after we had searched the entire place carefully -- and gleefully told us that the rope was suddenly cut and we plunged into the Sphere of Annihilation.

He liked doing that sort of thing. We didn't play his campaigns often.

As for player "moron-ness," in the campaign I am currently running the players have found their way into an ancient subterranean citadel. To gain access to the real heart of the citadel, the heroes have to activate a portal in a room which consists of five stone chairs and a glowing circle on the floor.

They already figured out that four of the five heroes have to sit on the chairs and the fifth stands in the center. I placed all sorts of clues as to what awaits the fifth person when the portal is activated. I even included a journal that the players found from a previous (unsuccessful) party which detailed what happened to their paladin when they activated the portal and he was the one in the middle.

That's called foreshadowing, since the heroes included a paladin in their ranks. I had hoped they got the hint.

They didn't. The rogue, the wizard, the ranger and the monk all sat in the chairs, leaving the Paladin to activate the portal.

Portal was activated, those in the chairs were frozen by hold person spells, and a twelve-foot iron golem comes marching out to meet the paladin.

"Do you swear an oath of fealty to the glory of the Enclave?" the golem asks. The heroes already deduced, by this time, that the Enclave was an organization of evil wizards and priests.

So, of course, the paladin says, "No! And I will destroy you!"

Now, all they had to do was put the rogue or the wizard in the middle, characters whom I knew would be willing to lie to make their way into the citadel.

But the paladin was too stubborn and they didn't catch the hints.

Paladin died.

Oh, well. I brought him back, and he learned his lesson. He plays a bit more cautiously now.

Squirrel_Dude
2012-11-05, 01:47 AM
A recent event in my game:

A Druid, bored with a fight against an ooze, and already weakened from a previous fight, decides to wander off from the rest of the party. He starts opening doors and finds a chest. I tell him that the chest has potions of fire immunity in it (which in a previous session with another DM, who was a jackass, was a mimic), and that it would be odd for this chest to be sitting in the middle of a poor person's house, with all these potions.

He goes up and tries to open the chest, and is quickly bitten, grappled, and stuck to the mimic by its natural super-glue covering. The Druid, when I prompt to scream for help, opts to not do that. I flub some perception checks so the party actually knows that the Druid is in danger, and the rush over to find him with 3 health left, and still stuck to the mimic and it's adhesive.

I BS something about the wizard's hydraulic push separating the two, while the gunslinger and the fighter start trying to fight it, and the rogue (who uses claws) stays the **** away from it.

By the time the fight is over, the mimic has knocked the druid and the wizard (who had to try and heal him) to negative health, not killing the druid by 2 hitpoints.

Sith_Happens
2012-11-05, 09:43 PM
Lucky for the paladin that you apparently aren't a Fullmetal Alchemist fan, because when I read this--

five stone chairs and a glowing circle on the floor.
--I immediately thought "traps his soul to create a major artifact."

Cisturn
2012-11-05, 10:54 PM
I was running a horror game when one of my PCs shouted out this gem "I grapple Slenderman!"

I was trying to bail them out, but it still ended up a TPK. We ended up just making it a dream sequence. We're playing again next week.

Blue1005
2012-11-08, 06:15 AM
The good old dream sequence, used by people everywhere to get out of a stupid idea :smallbiggrin:

Lucianus
2012-11-08, 07:20 PM
I was DMing a party of 6 experienced players in a homebrew 3.5 game, level 5 characters, all L or N Good. A fighter, ranger, druid, sorcerer, rogue and a gnome hoplite wannabe. They are on their way to a new continent to assist in the establishment of a colony when the Admiral of the fleet orders them search an island for food/water/etc. They find an scary old cave with undead trickling out and decide to go into it to kill them, as expected. What I did not expect, was for them to try and take the undead baddies BACK TO THE SHIPS! they figured they could use them as slaves or guards or something in the new world and stowed them away on board, the rogue making every damn hide and move silently check I forced on her while she moved them, bound and gagged, into the hold.

I intended this to be a get your feet wet mini adventure so they could get a sense of my DMing style, but instead I handed the Good party a hold full of undead! I had a crew member stumble upon them one night and the Admiral (who was the commander of this ship) ordered the evil things slain and cast overboard. I assumed the players would be smart enough to keep a low profile during this whole ordeal, silly DM, intelligence scores are for NPC's.

They proclaim that is was them who brought the undead on board and threatened to attack any who would try to destroy them. I should also mention that this ship had 100 marines, with more levels than the party, as well as high level officers on it, the Admiral himself was level 17. A VERY one sided fight ensued, the PC's were getting their derrières handed to them on a silver platter. Suddenly, the hold grate just "happened" to give way causing the PC's to fall to the lower deck where the life boats just happened to be, what luck! *sigh*

They escaped, rowed back to the island and just happened to be rescued by a passing fishing vessel (never mind the fact that they were seven months sailing away from their nations coasts). Thus ends the tale of how six morons derailed my whole campaign!

Dr Bwaa
2012-11-08, 08:08 PM
Oh gods yeah I've got one; I was the DM for this little beauty.

The game is D&D 3.5. The party's around level 11--they've just gotten and subsequently started abusing Teleport to nearly get themselves killed. Doing stupid things with it like trying to use it in a thick forest as though it's Dimension Door, that kind of stuff. In retrospect this should have been a warning sign of future stupidity, but I digress.

The whole campaign up until this point has taken place on one half of the continent; there's a huge, bottomless chasm in the middle almost a hundred miles wide that cuts the continent in half, with a desert on each side. It was created thousands of years ago when an unreasonably epic mage with too much time on his hands decided to try to take on the Gods (he lost, but he took most of the pantheon down with him). People don't really go there.

Over the course of the campaign (since about level 4 or so when they found the main quest), the party has been learning that eventually they're going to have to cross to the other side of the continent. They'd done research and so on, found witnesses who had seen various attemps to cross over. They talked to a guy who watched a wizard teleport to the other side thirty years ago, except the wizard had never arrived, or if he had, he'd never sent word back, and he certainly wasn't visible at that distance. Someone who had tried to Overland Flight across the gap had suddenly lost control and plummeted into the abyss. The party wizard had found tomes speculating on the nature of the gap in an old lab pockmarked with void magic areas, which the Wizard started to be able to sense. He, in fact, experimented with the void magic areas and found that they actually interfered with some spells even outside their boundaries, especially those that are transplanar in nature. The party even figured out a workable (if long) sea route to get there, assuming they could handle the various issues with the sea (if it were easy, everyone would do it), which was my intended plan for them.

They got to the coast, thought about getting on the boat after some lizardy encounters/negotiation, and then the Wizard says "everyone grab on" and then tells me "We teleport across."

The wizard isn't the crazy guy in the party. His player is definitely the most serious of them all. He is not joking with me.

There is a fifty-mile band of void magic that splits the entire plane nearly in two; there's no jumping over it without Plane Shifting somewhere else, then Plane Shifting back and praying you land on the other side. Officially, if you try to straight up jump across the void under magical power, what happens is that the magical energy holding your pattern together falls into the space between planes (not the Astral--the Space Between) and is lost. You have a transporter malfunction. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TeleporterAccident)

My six-person party has just, despite the overwhelming evidence, decided to TPK themselves on a whim, no save. :facepalm: Because I didn't want to kill the campaign, I bailed them out by plane-shifting them to a random plane (Plane of Fire), and applying some cascading residual effects (they bounced around to other random planes at increasing speeds for the next few weeks and the Wizard now has a very small chance, based on spell level, to Plane Shift every time he casts a spell). They eventually got back and managed to continue the campaign, but JEEZ.

Doug Lampert
2012-11-08, 10:03 PM
Party is investigating a series of murders in a town.

I have a list of characters of possible interest, one of which is a deformed dwarf with a cheap brass ring which he keeps calling "his precious" and he's occasionally making "Gollum gollum" noises. Note that this guy has nothing to do with the actual mystery, he's a fairly minor red herring.

The party steals the ring. Then they hold onto it for a prolonged period while the wizard examines it to try to determine what it does. Then the wizard pockets the ring (everyone sees him do so), the rest of the party NOW tries to insist that the wizard give the ring back....

One dead wizard later the survivors begin debating what to do with the ring. The rogue puts it in a box and carries the box for several days....


Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
Thirteen for the Adventurers too stupid to live.


Mind, I didn't bail them out, eventually the survivors did get rid of the ring.

DougL

TuggyNE
2012-11-08, 10:24 PM
They proclaim that is was them who brought the undead on board and threatened to attack any who would try to destroy them. I should also mention that this ship had 100 marines, with more levels than the party, as well as high level officers on it, the Admiral himself was level 17. A VERY one sided fight ensued, the PC's were getting their derrières handed to them on a silver platter. Suddenly, the hold grate just "happened" to give way causing the PC's to fall to the lower deck where the life boats just happened to be, what luck! *sigh*

Impressive, and fast thinking on your part. (No thinking at all was involved on the PC end obviously. :smalltongue:)


My six-person party has just, despite the overwhelming evidence, decided to TPK themselves on a whim, no save. :facepalm: Because I didn't want to kill the campaign, I bailed them out by plane-shifting them to a random plane (Plane of Fire), and applying some cascading residual effects (they bounced around to other random planes at increasing speeds for the next few weeks and the Wizard now has a very small chance, based on spell level, to Plane Shift every time he casts a spell).

That's awesome. By which I mean facepalm-worthy. :smalltongue:

Did you ever tell them what should have happened?


Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
Thirteen for the Adventurers too stupid to live.

Good times, good times. :smallcool:

Dr Bwaa
2012-11-09, 11:31 AM
That's awesome. By which I mean facepalm-worthy. :smalltongue:

Did you ever tell them what should have happened?

After the campaign ended I told them what specifically they'd done, yes :smallbiggrin: Although they probably knew they weren't supposed to try that right after they did it, when I asked "Are you sure?" they said "yes", and I stared at them slack-jawed for a few seconds before saying "fine" :smallcool:

CardCaptor
2012-11-11, 08:16 AM
I was the Dungeon Master when this happened.

The party (3rd level, we had just started) was exploring the lair of a wizard who was obsessed by abberations of all kinds. They found his alchemy laboratory, and the barbarian of the party started looking at all the vials on the table. He couldn't read their labels, since he's illiterate, and he'd be unable to understand them otherwise anyway due to the fact he's got 6 intelligence. So, of course, while the party tries to elaborate a plan of sorts to ambush the wizard, the barbarian opens a vial, asks the Cleric if it's poisonous. The Cleric had miraculously prepared Detect Poison that day (honestly never seen a PC prepare that spell, but hey, it may be a good idea to do such when you enter an alchemists' lair), and says that no, indeed, the vial wasn't poisoned, before turning back and plotting with his friends. The barbarian doesn't smell the bottle or anything: what counts for him is that it isn't poisoned, and he chugs it down, thinking it was just a normal drink or something. I honestly can't see the logic behind this. Neither could the player, afterward. Who drinks a vial that just lays around in an alchemist's lab?

I had determined in advance that these vials were all filled with diminutive sized oozes that the alchemist wizard was basically breeding. I give a fortification roll for the guy to vomit it out, DC 15. It's a Barbarian with 20 con and a cape of +1 to all saving throws, mind you. I figured we'd all laugh it out, "Oh you, silly dumb Barbarian!" and pat him on the back or something, and we'd proceed, expecting this to become a running gag of sorts. Yet, he manages to fail the save. Now, he has an ooze that basically starts eating him from the inside. The Cleric turns around and notices the barbarian on the ground, wailing in pain. He starts dishing out the Cure Light Wounds on the guy, and every turn, I make the Barbarian make a Fort save to vomit the thing out. Somehow, he always fails. He had also used his rages of the day, too, so he couldn't just raise his con like that, and the cleric didn't have Bull's Endurance prepared.

This goes on like this for, I kid you not, maybe 10 turns. And by then, everyone was trying to do Heal checks to induce him into vomiting. Issue is, everyone but the Cleric in this party has, for some reason, 8 wisdom, while the Cleric has 18 wisdom, but no ranks in healing, so he can't just take 10 and succeed the DC 15 of the Heal check. Whoops.

The barbarian is at -7 HP now, unconcious, but I still let him do fort saves. And this time, I just tell him: "That's enough: use 3d6 to roll your fortitude save, it's getting ridiculous".

He rolled 3 natural 1s on those dices.

I could only look up to the sky, feeling like Gygax himself had decided to doom this character. So yeah, he died. And he used everyone's d20 around the table, and we averaged them afterward, most of them had 9 or 12 average after 100 rolls, all of which would've been sufficient for the Barbarian to make his fort save. We all agreed on the fact this guy had an identical twin brother (stat wise, feat wise and skill wise), and they keep the old one's decaying, eaten corpse around as a reminder for every time he tries to do anything stupid.

I wish I had recorded these dice rolls. I swear that what happened was mathematically improbable in the billions and billions of zeroes. I should've bought a lottery ticket.

Autolykos
2012-11-11, 01:06 PM
All from Shadowrun:

Our Hacker and our Cat Shaman (both small guys with no combat skills worth mentioning) go in a bar, get drunk and decide to pick a fight with five Ork gangers. The Hacker went down in the first round, the Cat Shaman tried to Shapechange into a rhinoceros (ridiculous TN from the Con difference, plus he was drunk), failed, and followed suit. The GM was nice and had them just dumped in some back alley and their stuff stolen.

Our Streetsam has the trunk of his car filled to the brim with home-brewed explosives (about 50kg, God only knows what for), parks next to a donut shop, notices the police car next to him and goes in anyway. One of the cops sees his (pretty obvious) cyberware and asks to see his permit. He goes "Oh, I must have left it in my car!", and the cops follow. He does not have one (not even fake) and pretends he must have left it at home. Cops start to get pissed and demand to look in the trunk of his car. Sammy demonstratively drops the keys into the next sewer manhole, and the cops decide to shoot the lock.

Oh, and then our Rigger tried to shoot Harlekin. With the assault cannon on top of his van.

Alaris
2012-11-13, 05:04 AM
Am I bad person for thinking it should have been a potion of Love's Pain (BoVD, 98-99)?

>.> Why didn't I think of that? That would've been AWESOME! And it would've shown how terribly evil he was...

Snowfire
2012-11-13, 09:48 PM
Whew, this is bringing back memories....

So, this is a rather old story for me.

Party is: Minotaur Barbarian, Natural-Born Elven Werewolf Monk (I houseruled it), Drow Rogue (who was evil and did it well), Human Sorcerer, Human Cleric.

Everyone in the party other than the Sorcerer were varying degrees of evil - done surprisingly well for a party new to D&D. The Sorcerer, if I remember correctly, was Chaotic Neutral.

So, somehow, I get these guys to work together for a rather length campaign arc, building up into a fight against a level 15ish gish - which I forget the exact build of - in a fortress on an island in the middle of an inland sea (none of which existed a century ago). By this point they know that the guy is working for a rather powerful guild that runs on the intra-planar level. So they burst into the fortress, murder the guy, and then start looting.

At which point the problem starts. When the Minotaur decides that the lever over there, that the guy they just killed died trying to get to when he realised he was losing, obviously is the release mechanism for the secret door to the treasure vault. I am currently looking over the loot list and sort of fearing what exactly they're going to do with it - the party had a penchant for doing rather crazy things with their wealth - and don't realise that this is happening until the party draws my attention to the fact that the Minotaur has pulled the lever.

I literally sit there for about ten seconds, knowing what I had rigged to that, and desperately attempting to work out a way to let them live when:

a) Neither the Cleric nor the Sorcerer have Teleport prepped or in their known lists.

b) They have no scrolls of Teleport - or other such things.

c) Even if they did, the Sorc is fresh out of slots for Dispel Magic. As is the Cleric (somewhat my fault, but they could have trusted the rogue to disarm those traps).

d) The island was raised by Epic magic, and then subsequently trapped by the people who raised it - who linked all the traps to the lever. One of these traps was a Dimensional Lock covering just about the entire island.

I finally work something out at about the same point the players realise that they just did something extremely stupid. So, via a few desperate Knowledge checks - and some extreme luck on Spot - they manage to find the one room in the entire base that isn't Locked. Because it has a controllable Teleportation circle. I even describe the fact that it has something similar to a control panel.

The players immediately crowd in and trigger it. Without even looking at the coordinates.

There is another ten second silence on my part, then I roll some dice.

I eventually manage to have them snagged by a small group of extraplanar agents working for the Paragon Force Dragon who they'd run into before and managed to impress on occasion with their competence.

I'm pretty sure that was a DM fiat on my part...

Oh, and that isn't even it. The island - that they blew up - was a verdant paradise, absolutely full of life. None of which survived the massive explosion. The coast of the inland sea got pretty much devastated by the Tsunami that the explosion triggered.

So they get healed up by the people who saved them, dropped back off with some leads, kudos, and the loot they managed to grab before the entire place exploded, and wander into the nearest town. Where they get confronted by a rather pissed Avatar of the Lesser Goddess of Nature who had been the patron of the aforementioned inland sea.

At which point I called the session. They actually managed to work out a deal with her in the end - which they even delivered on - whereby they eventually managed to re-raise the island, repopulate it, and use a great deal of their Leadership to help rebuild the utterly savaged coastline.

And then they hit the hard stuff...

Sometimes I wonder if I'm occasionally too cruel to my players....

mishka_shaw
2012-11-14, 09:50 AM
All from Shadowrun:

Our Streetsam has the trunk of his car filled to the brim with home-brewed explosives (about 50kg, God only knows what for), parks next to a donut shop, notices the police car next to him and goes in anyway. One of the cops sees his (pretty obvious) cyberware and asks to see his permit. He goes "Oh, I must have left it in my car!", and the cops follow. He does not have one (not even fake) and pretends he must have left it at home. Cops start to get pissed and demand to look in the trunk of his car. Sammy demonstratively drops the keys into the next sewer manhole, and the cops decide to shoot the lock.


Would love to know what he had planned with all that ordanance.

Autolykos
2012-11-14, 12:57 PM
Seriously, I have no idea. The run didn't even require blowing anything up, let alone leveling an entire city block. He was quite fond of using explosives as backup maglock passkey or as a distraction, though. So maybe he just wanted to have plenty in reserve...

Oh, and somewhat offtopic, but I remember a particularly stupid move by our DM:
Harlekin Campaign, Dr. What tries to torture our Decker. Decker smiles, tells him to go f*** himself, kicks in his RAS-Override (which removes all sensory input) and continues to write some utilities on his implanted Cyberdeck. Not to be outdone, Dr. What tries to hack our Decker's brain (with a measly Computer skill and some old off-the-shelf deck). To add injury to insult, the Decker just completed a new-and-improved version of a Black Hammer utility, leaving the doctor's brain slightly fried.

North_Ranger
2012-11-14, 06:45 PM
Group of Level 1 Pathfinder players, all pretty new to tabletop gaming save for one discontinued WoD campaign, start their quest in a tavern. After meeting the questgiver - a merchant who needs them to retrieve some lost goods from a clan of pesky kobolds - I give them a chance to talk to the guy who refused the deal, on account that the kobolds' lair is somewhere within the druid-controlled woods. I used every descriptive method available to make the characters understand that this is a grizzled veteran warrior, with a big-ass axe and plenty of scars.

Unfortunately the druid's player in the team is of the mentality that every NPC is there to be killed, slept with or slept with and then killed - and picks up a fight with what was intended as a chance for some easy tips on finding the kobolds and world-building. I had to prevent a total party-kill by getting the tavern owner - a retired, mid-teens adventurer - to break up the fight and tell the characters they are banned from the tavern.

The players are getting better. Now they just magic missile passing birds for fun...

The Random NPC
2012-11-14, 07:16 PM
Would love to know what he had planned with all that ordanance.

If you have never found yourself wanting a trunk full of explosives in any given situation, you have failed to think hard enough about the situation.

Sith_Happens
2012-11-15, 12:38 AM
If you have never found yourself wanting a trunk full of explosives in any given situation, you have failed to think hard enough about the situation.

:vaarsuvius:: As an Evocator of much talent, I can confirm the truth of this statement.

miz redavni
2012-11-16, 04:19 PM
My D&D group, well, we call ourselves team samsung, why? Don't ask.

Here's partway through a campaign we were doing, can't remember too much, but our party dug ourselves a deep hole and our DM decided to give us several chances to stop, get out or die, but check after check after check and a huge case of ******* around, we went further.

Anyway, team samsung was given a blimp, more like took a blimp, after quite a few successful checks.

There was a pilot and several hundred passengers.

We decided that the forest nearby was too much of a forest.

So we knocked out the pilot and aimed the blimp at the overly forest forest.

We slow falled or flue out.

Our NPC guide wasn't too happy about this but our DM was a retard and allowed all of this.

As the fires tore through the forest at retarded speeds, we walked away only to find some random dungeon about 30ft from the wreckage.

We decided to go through it.

Our clueless DM threw mob after mob after mob at us. We jokingly destroyed all of them with our nearly TOed characters.

After clearing the 3 story dungeon we decided we were going to ditch our dwarf NPC guide and collapsed the dungeon around him and left.

Now where's what happened once we got out. The DM was probably tired of our douche baggedness and was going to kill us with quite a few(alot) armed guards to teach us a lesson.

DM: You see guard from the nearby village, he obviously saw the explosion from the blimp. "What's going on here, everything ok?"

Me: bluff check

DM: Ok, on what?

Me: It was horrid! We were the only survivors! The Pilot went insane and decided to kill us all!

Other member of samsung: It was madness!

Other other member: MADNESS!!!!

DM: fine roll

me: nat 20

DM: FINE!

So yea, our DM tried to teach us real good, but let too much stuff slide.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-17, 06:50 AM
@miz redavni

A) that's kind of the opposite of the vein of this particular thread.

B) It's not nice to call your DM "retarded" since that person was not only willing to be a DM, a difficult and all too often thankless task*, but they chose not to kill your characters via unexplained and unavoidable meteor from heaven turning you into a smear on the side of a mountain when the nearest mountain is half a continent away.

Your DM certainly made some mistakes there, but I'd bet that's more the result of being a new DM or forming a new group more than persisting incompetence. I don't know you or your DM personally, so I could be wrong about that, but those seem to be the more common causes of DM blunders, though we all make the occasional misstep. This thread has a few tales that prove that point.


*In spite of this, DM'ing can be a very rewarding endeavor, and I encourage anyone who enjoys their game to give it a try once in a while.

Btw, is there a thread for players to complain about incompetent DM's? Catharsis is nice and it'd help to avoid bogging down the forum if all that venting was done in a single thread rather than have a new one pop up every so often.

Dimers
2012-11-17, 10:28 AM
the team is of the mentality that every NPC is there to be killed, slept with or slept with and then killed ...

I suppose that's better than "killed and then slept with". :smalleek:

Gavinfoxx
2012-11-17, 11:55 AM
The players are getting better. Now they just magic missile passing birds for fun...

The next bird should be a Wild Shaped Druid who summons a bunch of Storm Elementals and a huuuuge windstorm and call lightning and such on their asses...

Cloudburst, Obscuring Snow, Briar Web, Arctic Haze, Call Lightning, Boreal Wind, Control Winds, Blizzard, Avalanche, etc. etc.

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=54924

Use whatever won't kill them, but will definitely teach them a lesson!

The Random NPC
2012-11-17, 01:24 PM
Btw, is there a thread for players to complain about incompetent DM's? Catharsis is nice and it'd help to avoid bogging down the forum if all that venting was done in a single thread rather than have a new one pop up every so often.

These forums have a rule about reviving old threads, and so we have to create new ones every so often. If there isn't one currently, feel free to create one.

Kelb_Panthera
2012-11-17, 08:45 PM
These forums have a rule about reviving old threads, and so we have to create new ones every so often. If there isn't one currently, feel free to create one.

I would, but I'm between groups atm, so I don't have any current complaints to vent about.

TuggyNE
2012-11-17, 09:06 PM
I would, but I'm between groups atm, so I don't have any current complaints to vent about.

Then just create one as a favor to other players? :smallwink:

The Grue
2012-11-17, 11:15 PM
longpost, ice devil etc

I have to ask...if you didn't expect the party to go along with the ice devil's deal, and it was way over their heads for a survivable combat encounter...

...what exactly was your original plan to let them avoid getting killed?

On-topic, this one didn't happen to me, but to the previous part of someone I played with in highschool.

Party wizard gets himself a Staff of Power and uses it to great effect for a couple of encounters. At one point he uses it and it fizzles - whether due to spell resistance or antimagic field or being out of charges, I don't remember, and I don't think he bothered to stop and consider why. Regardless his immediate reaction was, "Bah, stupid staff. I break it on my knee."

The DM had a strict "no takebacks" policy, so...actually I guess that's not really on-topic after all.

EtherianBlade
2012-11-17, 11:40 PM
Lucky for the paladin that you apparently aren't a Fullmetal Alchemist fan, because when I read this--

--I immediately thought "traps his soul to create a major artifact."

I considered changing it to something like that, but it would not have made sense in the context of the game. Besides, as it turned out, it was a fairly helpful in-game lesson. He was raised -- at enormous expense to the party -- and has since been a bit more careful.

EtherianBlade
2012-11-17, 11:42 PM
Party wizard gets himself a Staff of Power and uses it to great effect for a couple of encounters. At one point he uses it and it fizzles - whether due to spell resistance or antimagic field or being out of charges, I don't remember, and I don't think he bothered to stop and consider why. Regardless his immediate reaction was, "Bah, stupid staff. I break it on my knee."

The DM had a strict "no takebacks" policy, so...actually I guess that's not really on-topic after all.

That is classic. :smallyuk:

dungeonnerd
2012-11-18, 01:18 AM
The last game I ran, had the following players:

Knight (LG, became LN about halfway through)
Wild Mage (and kender to boot)
Gully Dwarf Scout
warforged psion
undead warlock (i forget which kind)
and two clerics.

After a series of bailing them out - including allowing an older-than-old gold dragon to "forgive" them for destroying half his castle - they accept a mission from this obviously pissed off dragon to go fight his mortal enemy.

Note: They'd seen this gold dragon in battle. So did they stop to think "We're 12th level, maybe we shouldn't go straight to this Red Dragon's lair"? Not at all. I gave them hint after hint, diversion after diversion. Hell, at one point I straight said to them "Don't Do This." These are all seasoned players, I have to add. What was their response? "You wouldn't give us something we couldn't fight." The warlock, who is the other DM in our group and has a reputation for being sadistic, looked at me and went "Besides, this will be fun!" This dragon, of course, is the BBEG.

Long story short, they got past everything I set against them, managed by some extremely lucky rolls to find the entrance to the dragon's lair, work their way past the entire retinue of gaurds, and walked straight into the dragon's lair, where he was asleep.

Who promptly ate the wild mage and the clerics (who had attacked in a surprise round the sleeping dragon).

The knight looked at him and said "So, had enough yet or should we go easy on you?"

At which point I decided to try to let the rest of them talk their way out of the situation - they hadn't attacked yet, and I really didn't want to TPK them all halfway through the game. Instead, the knight agreed to work as the dragon's "collection agent", partnered with the warlock, and killed the rest of the party.

Aside, in the game we're playing now (the warlock is the DM, I'm playing B.O.B. the uber-cube) I just got a bit of visceral satisfaction by beating the stuffing out of the knight's current character (a cleric) because he was trying to pick a fight with about 20 gaurds who could obviously easily kill us. Vengance is sweet, after all.

Sith_Happens
2012-11-18, 07:00 AM
What was their response? "You wouldn't give us something we couldn't fight."

Famous last words.

On the bright side, if they ever pull that line in your campaign again, you're now entitled to respond as follows:

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m708a3sgXs1ro07er.gif

North_Ranger
2012-11-18, 10:04 AM
The next bird should be a Wild Shaped Druid who summons a bunch of Storm Elementals and a huuuuge windstorm and call lightning and such on their asses...

Cloudburst, Obscuring Snow, Briar Web, Arctic Haze, Call Lightning, Boreal Wind, Control Winds, Blizzard, Avalanche, etc. etc.

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/profiler/view_char.php?cid=54924

Use whatever won't kill them, but will definitely teach them a lesson!

I think I just might do that. Thanks.

DigoDragon
2012-11-18, 11:47 AM
Amazing, one of these came up last night.

The Setup: The PCs (all 10th level) volunteered to protect an uncovered artifact at a iron mine. The opposition was a small military force of elves arriving by airship (Final Fantasy 6 style). The airships couldn't land because of the rocky terrain so the idea the party had was to take out whatever soldiers came down from the airships until they run out of troops and have to leave.
Simple and effective.

The weather was very cloudy with a light snow, so the enemy elves used a combo of fog spells and Feather Fall to drop their troops at the mine entrance. The PCs set to work and a large combat begins. Good fast paced fight, everyone's having fun.


The Stupids: The party Warforged Warlock decided to turn invisible and fly up to the airship. He believed he could single-handedly take out everyone on board and steal the ship. I did stat out the airship crew, which comprised of:
11 deck hands
4 engineers (below deck)
3 flying wizards (one with see invisibility)
And the captain.


While invisible, the Warlock crits one mage with Hideous Blow, killing him instantly. Now the PC is visible and the other two mages alert the captain before flinging spells at the Warlock.
The Warlock goes invisible again and flies to the deck of the airship. The mage with See Invisibility casts that spell and locates the Warlock (Who didn't bother to hide while floating on deck). The Warlock blasts that mage with Eldritch Blast, but doesn't kill him.

Visible Warlock is visible. :smallannoyed:

The captain gives the orders to attack and the crew pulls out their bows and opens fire. About a third of the attacks hit the Warlock, bringing him down to just 9 HP.

The Bail: The airship helmsman turns the airship to move away from the flying warlock. I figure if the airship puts distance, it'll give the Warlock a chance to fly away and get healed. But the PC tried to grab onto some rigging so he can stay and keep fighting.

The other players told the Warlock outright that if he got killed they won't resurrect him.

...the Warlock lets go of the rigging and grumbles his way back to get healed.

Doug Lampert
2012-11-19, 10:59 AM
Famous last words.

On the bright side, if they ever pull that line in your campaign again, you're now entitled to respond as follows:

But they WEREN'T last words. The DM (foolishly in my arrogant opinion) let some of them live. Which just reinforces the idea that they can charge in and attack anything.

There are some DMing problems where TPK is in fact the correct solution. And players who don't think you'll kill all the characters are one of the biggies.

"We can't lose because we're the PCs" is bad for storytelling, it's catastrophic for immersion, it destroys any game elements. It's one of the worst things that can happen to a game (far worse than the players treating your serious horror game as a joke, that at least can be FUN). And the only solution is to show them they are dead wrong by killing them all, ending the campaign, and restarting with different characters.

My Players KNOW I'm not going to try to kill them, that most of the PC deaths in game can reasonably be classed as suicide or PC on PC violence, and that I'm willing to RetCon things to avoid a TPK. I doubt it would occur to any of them that I wouldn't TPK them if they were stupid enough to attack something seriously beyond them. Most of them have been gaming with me long enough to KNOW from experience that I'm willing to end a session with, "Alright, you're all dead, what do we play next? I've got some ideas for another campaign."

If you really like you can restart with the situation AFTER the big-bad of the previous campaign has won because the destined heroes who were SUPPOSED to beat him got vaporized by some random Red Dragon they thought they could fight.

Linkavitch
2012-11-20, 10:54 AM
So, at the college I go to, we have a rather large group, like ten of us. So, my DM only plays four at a time, and we generally are able to keep a coherent plot going, although he pretty much lets us do whatever we want, but we're all level 1 or 2 at this point. Currently, the main party is trying to start a revolution against the corrupt capital city of this continent that the game is taking place on. Two of our party, (and two more characters whose first time playing it was. Woah, Yodaspeak.) had gotten themselves thrown into a gladiatorial arena the last time they played. One of them, a CE Human Rogue, had tried to pickpocket a guard, and the other, a CN Dwarven Barbarian, had volunteered. They meet the two new characters, a Half-Elf ranger and a half-orc fighter with a +7 (+7!) Strength modifier. So, what does the Rogue do? He starts a prison riot. Those four against four armored, armed, angry guards. And they actually win. but, the Rogue and the Ranger die. So, the DM, who hadn't planned on doing this for a while, introduces a god (we think) known as the Wolf, who sends them back in exchange for doing whatever he wants.

Sneaky Weasel
2012-11-22, 01:37 AM
So, the DM, who hadn't planned on doing this for a while, introduces a god (we think) known as the Wolf, who sends them back in exchange for doing whatever he wants.

I somehow get the feeling that your DM is a Brent Weeks fan.