Fun tricks that really piss your players off

[Emperor Tippy]

Pretty much what the title says; what tricks have you pulled as a DM that really pissed your players off?

My latest was yesterday when the PC's were facing a Sorcerer BBEG and in the middle of the fight he triggered his Craft Contingent Limited Wish Psychic Reformation and re-selected all of his chosen feats and spells known as an (effectively) free action.

Nothing like the party thinking that they know all of the BBEG's tricks and then finding that the BBEG is instantly speced to exactly fight the party.

So what have you done to your players?

[Koury]

Sanctified One. A class in Comp. Champ. One of the abilities (available at class level 1) is called Sanctified Fall.


Sanctified Fall (Su): If you are reduced to —1 or fewer hit points, or even killed outright by a death effect, you can use an immediate action to either cast a spell or make a single attack. For this action only, you can increase your either your effective caster level or your bonus on attack rolls (your decision) by an amount equal to your sanctified one level.

So the BBEG is a Cleric. Party has fought him before and he's always bailed (Plane Shift) when things looked bad. But now he's cornered, and the party knows it (he can't fail his god again). They open with all their big attacks, and cut him down swiftly, or so they think. Little do they know, every one of his 6th level spell slots (except his domain) is... Heal.

Every time he was dropped to -1 or lower, he got a free Heal. It drove them crazy.

[Story]

Well it happened before I joined the group, but apparently the party was complaining about a lack of treasure so the DM gave everyone a cursed item. Unfortunately, one of them ended up turning into a Hill Giant, which has massively unbalanced the campaign ever since (ECL20 characters in a 4th level party tend to do that). And it pissed him off IC too since he can't ride his beloved horse anymore.




Every time he was dropped to -1 or lower, he got a free Heal. It drove them crazy.

If that happened to me, I'd probably be annoyed enough to pull out Shivering Touch and just paralyze him.

[TopCheese]

I just saw another thread about getting hosed by your DM... At first I thought it would be the same thread as this one :p

I love using Final Fantasy type bosses that have different forms and abilities (psychic reformation + other ways).

Of course using tricks that the players use is always fun! When the player says something like "but the rules say..." and then I say "well I know, but I let the rules slide for YOU so why not for these goblins?".....

That is a good way to keep some PCs in check haha.

[Koury]

If that happened to me, I'd probably be annoyed enough to pull out Shivering Touch and just paralyze him.

Wizard didn't have Shivering Touch. Nor did the Sorc. Rest of the group was a Bard, Swordsage, Warblade and Psion.

But yes, ability damage would be a good route.

[meto30]

I once gave them a Miyazaki Miko NPC to work with and they were all driven crazy by her. I even named the NPC "Miyazaki Miko" to drive the point home. ...Yes, my party consists of avid OOTS readers.

I guess "everyone's least favorite paladin" really does the job at breaking the party :P Although she did serve another purpose, that of showing the players that the Harpers are turning into something they were not.

[Uhtred]

They were really hungry for gold there when they were low level, and sorta put me on the spot, asking in a tavern if anyone had work for adventurers when I had expected them to follow the main story. So I rolled on an encounter table and they got a job from a group of Orcs that desperately wanted to sack a town; the PC's job was to get them in past the guards and walls, and were told that the town was filled with gold that the PC's could then share. So the party illusionist puts them in an Invisibility Sphere and gets them into the town that is then revealed to be a corn depository for the tyrannical dictatorship they were running around in. As in, it was a group of silos surrounded by walls and guards to which local farmers would bring their crops so the government could redistribute them to the extensive armies being fielded by the queen. And the Orcs were so surprised that they were actually in the town that they sort of lost cohesion and momentum and instead of doing what Orc barbarians do and sacking/pillaging/looting/killing/raping their black Orcish guts out, they schooled around for a bit looking at things and trying to contain their wonder at having successfully gotten inside. The guards just kinda prodded them with halberds and shooed them out of the town, leaving the PC's inside. So naturally they wandered around looking for the gold. Which they then realized that the Orcs had confused the corn for. The look on the party Ranger's face when it dawned on her, "OH MY GOD THEY THINK THE CORN IS GOLD," was priceless. "Corn is Gold" has served as a cautionary tale ever since, about considering the source of tasks found in taverns.

[Ganorenas]

Party has a Wizard ally, they know she is high level, has a blue dragon companion, and they recruit her for a big battle that they have spent a month of ingame time preparing for.

She is not well liked by the other npcs they recruited, so she joins them with the same hair color but a human body (via Polymorph, not alter self) and also has her dragon polymorphed into a "familiar" blue lizard, winks at each of the party members, assuming they would get the ruse. (hint. Hint.)

The player with the most intelligent character asks about her to the other party members, she makes herself noticeable when she hears her name. No reaction...
He flips when he thinks she isn't there, she speaks again, keeping her identity secret.

*at this point, I think 3/4 of the party had gotten it, but not this guy*
He gets upset with me OOG, not comprehending what I was telling him for hints.

I tell him that it is her, though by this point I was worked up at him needing it spelled out, and he has to take a breather to recover himself from being upset over nothing and missing the hints that everyone else (least... They said they understood it was her once the hints started coming out, 2 when the blue lizard was on her shoulder)

Was interesting. Polymorph a known npc into something similar with hints. I bet it'll happen again.