Horribly Wrong PC Plans gone Horribly Right

[Preaplanes]

Let's swap horror stories, shall we?



The most insane PC plan I've ever seen involved a Tarrasque fight. The Cleric (the only main caster in the party) had just gotten grappled.

Well, at this point I thought the party was toast. We didn't have any Scrolls of Wish or Miracle on them, so the party Rogue wasn't able to help the situation. However, then this exchange happened.





Party Cleric: Does the Tarrasque eat me?

DM: Hmm.... yes.

Player: Sweet.

DM: Huh?

Party Cleric: As I get swallowed, I tell the party to run for it.

Party Rogue: Okay then, I've got a Scroll of Teleport. I'll hold my action.

Other party members move to the rogue on their turns.

Party Rogue: *rolls* Success. I teleport us back to *MAIN CITY*

DM: *rolls* Your teleport was accurate. But now you've left the Cleric to die. He didn't prepare any form of escape.

Party Cleric is grinning.

Party Cleric: "Remember that useless epic item I got two encounters ago?"

DM: The Ring of Acid Immunity? ... oh god, you're not-

Party Cleric: I let it eat me, replace my Ring of Protection with it, and then just wait it out.

DM: *stunned silence* ....... 'Wait it out'?

Party Cleric: Yup. Just wait it out.

DM: You mean you're going to pray in the Tarrasque's gut?

Party Cleric: Nope, but as long as I'm in here it can't hurt me, so I think I'll just let things take their natural course.

DM: ... you realize your plan is full of-

Party Cleric: Yeah.

[Squark]

Heh. Depending on the version of the Tarsque you use, that wouldn't work, though. Dragon Magazine goes into more detail about it's digestive system. The first stomach is spined* and designed to break down objects, even to the point of actually seeming to attack those inside. Then the second stomach, in addition to a lovely acid bath... Also has a Disjunction effect... The final stomach is a pressure cooker. And this whole process takes all of a few seconds :smalleek:

*This part is actually in the typical description, as you're taking ~2d8 crushing damage around (The stat block I'm going off of at the moment is for a CR 30 advanced Tarrasque from the aforementioned Dragon Magazine article).

[crayzz]

Would that plan work? Acid just breaks down the food into smaller chunks and mush; bacteria are really what do the digesting. Plus, I'd imagine a creature as big as a tarrasque would be full of some weird diseases.

[Preaplanes]

Heh. Depending on the version of the Tarsque you use, that wouldn't work (Dragon Magazine goes into more detail about it's digestive system. The first stomach is spined* and designed to break down objects, even to the point of actually seeming to attack those inside. Then the second stomach, in addition to a lovely acid bath... Also has a Disjunction effect... The final stomach is a pressure cooker. And this whole process takes all of a few seconds :smalleek: )

*This part is actually in the typical description, as you're taking ~2d8 crushing damage around (The stat block I'm going off of at the moment is for a CR 30 advanced Tarrasque from the aforementioned Dragon Magazine article).

It was going off the CR20. The DM did mention the crushing damage, but the party rogue played rules lawyer with it. The stickler is the punctuation and use of the word "plus" here.


Once inside, the opponent takes 2d8+8 points of crushing damage plus 2d8+6 points of acid damage per round from the tarrasque’s digestive juices.

It doesn't say "Crushing damage per round". The argument laid on the poorly worded antecedent. In the end the Cleric took 18 crushing from the ordeal and came out of it with his life intact. His dignity, however...

[Malak'ai]

That's a load of cr.... Actually... Ewwwwww!
Hope the Cleric took a damn good bath afterwards :smallyuk:.

[jedipilot24]

Word of Recall would have solved that problem.

My party was once in a city on a mission that involved breaking into an important building. Some background info about the party:
a dwarf fighter who talks with a bad Scottish accent and has a magic talking donkey (don't ask) and a pouch full of strange white powder (i.e. the D&D equivalent of cocaine, don't ask)
an elf ranger
a Halfling rogue
a human cleric (me, also The Only Sane Man)

So the dwarf and I are in a bar and tasked with creating a diversion while the elf and the rogue are going to sneak into the building (some kind of noble residence). The dwarf decides to start a bar fight and throws a mug at a cloaked stranger who turns out to be...a sheriff and a much higher level. The fight moved out into the street though I more or less stayed out of it and let the dwarf get pummeled (his character and mine don't get along well); I was also playing lookout.
The dwarf, in desperation, flung his pouch of white powder into the air in the direction of the donkey. The donkey snorted up all the powder and then grew to gargantuan size, picked up the two of us, and flew outside the city where he promptly exploded.
By this point the game broke down for about five minutes as we were all laughing.
That was probably the most insane moment in our entire campaign; while there was some kind of overall story, most of the time we were just winging it.

[supermonkeyjoe]

How did the cleric avoid suffocating in there?

[Olfgar]

I'll set the stage. This will be a story of wizards, rope, accidental murder and legal murder.

Delving into ancient tomb, and our party (which consisted of me as a fighter, a NG Cleric, a CN sorcerer and a CG rogue) has an NPC fallen paladin with us, who wanted to come because he saw it as an opprotunity to work at redemption, so we get in and he says we should split up, with us going one way and him going the other. Naturally we oblige the featless fighters wish. We kill a couple skeletons and zombies, and start workin on some cult members and knock one into the negatives and decide to stabilize her to question her, when evil wizard guy leading them shows up on a raised alter area with broke stairs, cackles and what not and start using some ritual orb to summon lots of zombies and other fleshbags in some pits below where we were, and had stairs on each side leading up.

Rogue: you know, you could probably make the climb check and get up there to wreck his day to stop the ritual.

Sorcerer and cleric: *busy fighting the first few undead*

Me: Yeah I probably could...*looks at character sheet and pause*

DM: What are you thinking...

Me: I pull out my grappling hook.

DM: Why? You would just need to beat like a 12 or something...its easy.

Me: Oh hohohoho, my good sir you misunderstand, im not going up there, he is coming down.

Everyone else: wait what?

DM: Well...ok um...I guess you will need to roll a uh...Attack roll, grapple check, and strength check.

Me: Ok so I got a *roll, roll, roll* 19, 19, 20!

Everyone laughs at the sight of a burly dwarf grappling hooking some wizard like he is batman, and draggs him down a flight of stairs.

So after taking some falling damage, the wizard teleports away and combat ends.

Me and Cleric: Lets wake up that cultist woman and learn some stuff.

Turns out after some interrogation she was basically she was a new low ranking recruit and she just joined for the money for her family and crap, or so our roll of a base 18 + bonuses and ranks for sense motive told us.
So we let her go.

Sorcerer: I magic missile her in the back.

Everyone: Wut....

Sorcerer: No seriously, I magic missile her in the back.

*rolls* shes dying again.

We all start arguing over why he would do that and what not.

Cleric: I want to smack him with my mace, just to teach him a lesson in repentance.

*rolls* *rolls*

Cleric: I crit.

*rolls damage*

Cleric: *with a blank face* I do X damage.

Sorcerer:I onl have X health...im past -10 now.

Rogue, DM and I stare with mouths agape.

Now at this point, is where the paladin had completed his little solo NPC stuff and walk into this room, which the DM was saying as the cleric shouted out about hitting the sorcerer and rolled.

Paladin: You just murdered that man infront of me...You know I have to arrest you right?

Cleric: Yes I know, I trust Pelor that justice shall see its self true, and that It will be seen as a simple mistake.

Paladin: As do I.

So we get back to the town we set off from and the paladin handed him over to the town guard, makes a few rolls for a random result.

Cleric: I submit m self to what ever our judgement may be, what is my fate?

DM: They execute you.

So now that is 2/4 four dead that had any connection to the original plot.

Next session, the rogue took a couple unlucky crits in a row and died. 3/4 dead, and my fighter was the only original party member left. We ended up doing a different campaign shortly after, ironically it was a Ravenloft campaign, and it went much better than this one lol.

[Chen]

We were fighting a drake in a Dark Sun campaign that was WAY over our CR. However, it was partially burried, so it couldn't move and could only attack with one claw and its bite. It swallowed one of our fighters and our cleric decided to jump into its mouth the next time so she could heal the fighter and have them not die. That was the terrible plan part since neither of them could beat the check to get back out of the drake. However our psion then just kept trying to dominate the drake to get him to spit them out. Last round before they would have died Natural 20 on the SR roll (needed a 19 to beat SR) and the drake rolls a natural 1 on its save. So everyone survived due to the crazy cleric and our lucky rolls.

[Vaz]

@Olfgar; how exactly does that become a horrible play, "gone right"?

[Olfgar]

@Olfgar; how exactly does that become a horrible play, "gone right"?
Because while the grappling hook awesome idea, it was one that shouldnt have worked, as the only reason it did was from rolling 19's and 20.

And then the bad part was when the Sorc killed the unarmed NPC we agreed to let go free and the cleric thought he would just do a d8 or what ever it was to make the sorc know not to just murder people and ended up killing him in one hit infront of the paladin.

[Preaplanes]

Because while the grappling hook awesome idea, it was one that shouldnt have worked, as the only reason it did was from rolling 19's and 20.

And then the bad part was when the Sorc killed the unarmed NPC we agreed to let go free and the cleric thought he would just do a d8 or what ever it was to make the sorc know not to just murder people and ended up killing him in one hit infront of the paladin.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you take -4 to your attack to make your damage nonlethal.

[Barsoom]

How did the cleric avoid suffocating in there?

I would guess, by rules lawyering. "It doesn't say there's no air in the tarrasque's stomach, therefore ..."

[Preaplanes]

I would guess, by rules lawyering. "It doesn't say there's no air in the tarrasque's stomach, therefore ..."

Exactly... though I'll admit I helped in that one once he said

DM: Fine, but the air would get stale, there's only so much in there and you'd still suffocate.

Party Paladin: Okay, so there's room for 128 of the Party Cleric in there. An average time to suffocate in a box about your size is about a half an hour, judging by the Discovery Channel (before it went downhill) saying it takes half an hour to suffocate after being buried alive. A day is only 48 half-hours, he can survive for over two days in there.



The DM looked at me with an expression that read "Et tu, Only Sane Man?"


The only argument the poor DM had left was the amount of time it would take... and he decided it was best not to go there because A: it would be nothing but assumptions and B: for decency's sake.

[Vknight]

Ever scene that image of the Tarrasque strapped to a balloon?
Ok got that in your head?

Now keep that image going with instead a Whale and several balloons(6 to be exact)
Which was my parties plan.
Ride on a whale balloon blimp using the various balloons they had recovered from a group of racing balloons.

Why did they do this?
Because somehow the Tarrasque had been effected by the spell Awaken[I don't know I lost my notes]
And knew the party were the people destined to slay it permanently.

So they are riding in there Whale Blimp.

And I describe the following

You see over the distance a figure rising above the clouds it seems to be another blimp.
As the lower parts break the cloud cover you see a great beast attached to the Balloon floating towards you...

So it became a race between a group of PC's riding on a flying whale from the Tarrasque connected to a balloon.

Wait for there great plan?
Cut the ropes and descend into the sea below.
Yes they were riding the whale across the sea. And one of them could have just awakened it or something

So they cut a rope and start falling the Tarraque float overhead, seems it's having troubles turning/getting the balloon off and then it fell 10,000ft straight into the water.
Entangled in the balloon cords over the deepest trench in the setting.
So for those wondering
That was not there plan
But they trapped the Tarraque so deep underwater and entangled, etc that it is trapped down there forever.

Yes they beat the campaign by drowning the Tarraque as I like to say

[Blaknic]

I was running a campaign in which the PC's were hired into doing recon work into some enemy territory. The party bard, for reasons unknown to everybody, takes an elixir of fire breathing and runs into the enemy camp, breathing fire everywhere and killing three soldiers and two noncombatant women who were trapped in their tents. He was promptly captured by the remaining lawful troops and hauled back toward the nearest enemy city for trial and execution. The party (and a random fighter that joined them until the player could get his bard back) went after the caravan in a rescue mission. A rescue mission that ended with the LG cleric learning of the bard's actions and Sound Burst stun/Cause moderate wounds combo-ing the bard into submission, turning him over to be executed, and leaving peacefully. The "gone horribly right" part? The (remember, LE) captain of the outpost thanked the cleric and offered a reward. The cleric asked for the intelligence the party had been sent to acquire, and successfully completed the mission.

[Rakoa]

A PC was playing a Necromancer-type Halfling character, not overly optimized. He had a Zombie Griffon, and decided he needed to deal some huge damage to an enemy he was fighting.

His plan? Have the Giffon fly him up in the sky and then dive bomb. Midway through the dive, the Griffon would throw the Halfling with full force, straight into the bad guy for a shoulder check. The squishy caster halfling. Against the big, armoured Orc.

Then he asked me if he gets a +1 Halfling bonus for "throwing" himself.

And then it went horribly right. I ruled that he would roll fall damage as normal and take full, then roll the same amount of dice as damage because I'm nice. He took incredibly little, then rolled nearly all 6s on the bad guy.

[Barsoom]

Exactly... though I'll admit I helped in that one once he said

DM: Fine, but the air would get stale, there's only so much in there and you'd still suffocate.

Party Paladin: Okay, so there's room for 128 of the Party Cleric in there. An average time to suffocate in a box about your size is about a half an hour, judging by the Discovery Channel (before it went downhill) saying it takes half an hour to suffocate after being buried alive. A day is only 48 half-hours, he can survive for over two days in there.



The DM looked at me with an expression that read "Et tu, Only Sane Man?"


The only argument the poor DM had left was the amount of time it would take... and he decided it was best not to go there because A: it would be nothing but assumptions and B: for decency's sake.
That argument makes no sense, however. For example, you could probably chug about 1/2-gallon of water, if you really wanted to. Does that mean there's 1/2-gallon of breathable air inside your stomach right now?

[Blaknic]

That argument makes no sense, however. For example, you could probably chug about 1/2-gallon of water, if you really wanted to. Does that mean there's 1/2-gallon of breathable air inside your stomach right now?

Hmmm.....You could probably burp now if you wanted to, as well. Remember that this is a Cleric of high enough level to be facing a Terrasque- Wind Wall might be allowable, especially if you can pray for a variation of purify food/drink that applies to air.

[Kaustic]

One party I was in had a horrible practice of getting attacked by cats as soon as we left a city. The worst thing about it, the cats always pounced on the Cleric. The best part about it, if we got lost(fairly often) then we'd know we are near a city when a cat pounced our Cleric.

[Bonzai]

I was DM'ing a Forgotten Realms campaign with several different arcs. The party had just saved Impultur from a massive invasion, and were now well known heroes.It consisted of an elf beguiler, spellscale warmage, and a human Psion/wizard/Theurge. Following the plot trail, they began travelling to the next leg of the adventure. Upon hearing of the famous heroes entering his domain, a local lord decides to hold a lavish banquet in their honor. The party attends, a good time is had by all, and a famous bard even entertains at the banquet. The party is kept up to the wee hours of the night, and then hear the news that their host had been murdered in his bed chamber by one of his guards.

The party is asked to help, and they do a perfunctory investigation. The guard had obviously been charmed by some one, but the culprit's description didn't match anyone in the manor. So the party decided to have the beguiler cast detect thoughts, and have each guest provide a verifiable alibi before they are allowed to leave. They even bring the bard in on the plan to help, but he is unable to cast detect thoughts to speed things along. Unfortunately they were unable to find the culprit, and assumed he left via magical means. They were able to find evidence that the Zhents were probably behind it, however. In the end, they really weren't interested in pursuing this further as they had their own goals to accomplish.

Here is what really happened: The Bard was a Zhentaram spy and assassin. He seduced the Lord's niece and was taken to her chambers for a "private performance", so to speak. After she fell asleep, he cast a sleep spell on her, used his ring of the chameleon to appear as a guard, and was able to charm/bluff a guard into killing his lord. He then snuck back into the lady's room with none the wiser. He might have been discovered by the party's detect thoughts spell, but they approached him and told him about their plan first. So when it came time for his mind to be read, he knew to keep his thoughts solely on the wild romp he had the night before. His alibi checked out, and he was free to leave.

So once he was in the clear, he picked up his payment, changed his appearance, and went to go to the next job. Meanwhile, the party had continued on with their journey. After what happened, they had a big role play discussion and decided that they needed to keep a low profile. They brought a lot of attention to themselves now that they were famous, and they didn't need to be drug into anything else. So they spent a lot of time coming up with a plan. They made a big to do in town about going one direction, and then leaving under stealth in another. The beguiler covered the party in illusions, and then headed out. When it came time to camp for the night, the Beguiler decided that she would go a short distance away from the road and cast a fog cloud to trance in. The spell scale was still disguised by an illusion to appear as a commoner. The Theurge decided to polymorph into a chest.

So the disguised bard just so happens to use the same road they did. He comes across an odd scene on the side of the road. A peasant sitting beside a camp fire with a large chest, in a camp with no wagons or carts to haul it, and a stationary and extraordinarily thick cloud of fog a short distance away, on a night with no other fog in sight. Obviously, something very strange is afoot, so he slows his horse, and approaches cautiously. The Theurge transforms from the chest into a Fairy Dragon and flys up to greet the traveler. They invite him to sit with them, and introduce themselves with their actual names. :smalleek: Obviously, the bard is not an idiot, and knows that this is the party he met the day before. He inquires as to their destination, which they tell him. He politely excuses himself, and runs on ahead. The Bard believes that the party is still investigating the Zhents and rushes ahead to provide a reception for them.

So... lets recap shall we? After a literal hour of planning and debate about keeping a low profile and taking elaborate precautions to avoid announcing their presence to anyone, they introduce themselves and announce their destination to the first person they meet, who happens to be a Zhent assassin. The Beguiler, who would have been able to see through the Zhents disguise in an instant, was trancing in a solid fog spell, (and out smoking too I might add), the entire time and was completely unaware of what happened. :smallamused:

So they walk into the next small town, go into the inn, and order a meal. As the night progresses more and more tough looking thugs filter in, and then the disguised bard reveals himself and signals the attack. It's cramped quarters, and the Bard starts things off with a silence spell that screws up the party some what. The Beguiler has a work around, and the Theurge relies on his psionics until the silence is dispelled. At one point the Beguiler dominates the Bard, and orders him to attack his allies. So he sound bursts the room, which hits both friend and foe a like. The Warmage is stunned, as are the thugs attacking him, but his ring of blades spell killed them off as they stood there drooling. There were close calls, but the party came out ahead, and kept the Bard alive. With him dominated, they were able to get some better info as to what was going on. Now they were able to uncover the zhent smuggling ring they missed in the last town, and put a crimp in zhent operations in the area before they moved on to the next leg of the campaign.

I still laugh about that night to this day.

[Marxism]

Right now I'm running a group of three level 15 evil characters one druid one bard/sublime chord, honestly he was pretty much a sorcerer, and one rogue. The encounter I had planned for them was them attacking a church of Pelor and killing the inhabitants and discovering this really special book. Previously they had been a stealth focused party, the druid was usually a cat or eagle, the other two had good dex scores.

They get to the church at 2 am. It is a two story building, middle of nowhere self sufficent about 60 odd people 30 5-9th level paladins monks and clerics 27 non combatants 1 high level monk one high level cleric and a favored soul who looks like an angel (because of the wings) running the show.

I expected them to sneak in cut some throats kill two of the biggies and then be discovered and have the fight the third one and any remaining smallies. Instead the bard hatched a plan: the druid would stone shape the wall. That was literally the plan. They would collapse the building hopefully killing everyone inside. The building was in no way structurally sound, held up by magic because I wanted it to be pretty and had not expected this.

Anyway I let it happen the building collapses killing the noncombatants and a good chunk of the low levels. The three high levels escape unharmed regroup with 7 8th level paladins and start coming for my party. Right off the bat the rogue sneak attacks the paladins in melee killing four of them. That pissed me off a bit but now he was screwed because the others were almost certainly going to kill him. My cleric and favored soul open up with flame strikes on the rogue knocking him unconscious I did not want to kill him so I have the monk attack the druid. The druid turns into a bear and because she had been optimizing her build exclusively for a situation like this pins him with one hand and heals the rogue with the other. The bard kills the other smallies with some spell and a quickened fireball.

Now I realize that they are winning so I decide to get mean. I have the cleric and favored soul buff up and engage in melee. The bard and the rogue are squishy beyond belief so I figure I'll kill them and the druid will run away. The monk uses abundant step to escape the grapple and get some space and time to heal. One on one the druid and the favored soul square off and blow away each others hit points. Because of improved grab the druid ends the round with 6 hit points but pinning the favored soul who has 15 left. I have the cleric move in and beat the bard to a pulp. He survives but just barely. The rogue then pulls what I still am a bit sad about. He shoots the cleric and favored soul each with an arrow that takes away their buffs and then a poison that does strength damage. The two of them are now crippled by their heavy armor and get killed the next round. The monk jumps on the druid but I rolled 3 1's in a row...Seriously. The rogue gets flanking and kills him with a full sneak attack.

I put off them recovering the book which went great because It gave me some really nice opportunities. But yeah Pc's are never to be trusted in their ability to survive or die at the right time.

[Bonzai]

But yeah Pc's are never to be trusted in their ability to survive or die at the right time.

That reminds me of another story earlier on in the campaign I mentioned earlier. The party is 4th level, and consists of a Cleric/wizard, Duskblade, Factotum, and a cleric. They are investigating some raids into Northern Impiltur, and uncover a small fort near the Giantspire mountains. As a DM, I anticipated that the party would use stealth and reconnoiter, and gain some insight as to who was behind these raids. The party began arguing about a plan, and I think some of the players outside issues crept up in game as two of the characters started debating fairly heatedly. Finally the Factotum decided to take matters into his own hands and walked into the clearing around the fort and began yelling and waving his arms to get their attention. :smalleek:

I cringe, but decide to give them what they ask for. 20 hobgoblins, 2 ogres, and a human (who was a 7th level npc from the organization they were fighting), spill out of the fort entrance and pursue the party. What followed next was an amazingly done fighting retreat. The factotum sniped with his bow, while the Duskblade killed those that got to close, and the clerics kept him healed. They used the wooded terrain to their advantage to stagger the attacks, and their damage output was enough that they could take on a few hobgoblins at a time. Their resources were rapidly diminishing though. By the time the Ogres fell, the party was on it's last legs. One of the party clerics kept delaying his actions, much to the annoyance of the rest of the party. The cleric/wizard was tapped out of spells, the factotum and duskblade were heavily wounded, and the cleric wasn't doing anything to help other than a heal or two.

Once the fodder was gone, the human made his move. He was designed to be an encounter by himself, and was a 7th lvl totem rager that was centered on a leap attack build. I knew that he was going to kill some one, and potentially wipe the party in their current condition, but was not going to pull my punches further at this point. So he charges the duskblade, swinging his great axe as he leaps in the air. Then the cleric says, I take my turn now and cast Charm person (he got it as a domain spell). I roll his save and he fails! :smallamused:

With their new charmed friend they get the information they were after, rested up, and killed him. Needless to say, the party leveled. LOL.