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JoshuaZ
2013-09-08, 01:40 PM
I'm wondering what stories DMs have about their PCs finding surprising ways to handle situations.

The reason I'm thinking about this is that In the 3.5/PF campaign I'm running, two sessions ago, the PCs captured a sorcerer who was working with the bad guys organization, the Telnathi, a nasty set of mages who have been implanting undead cysts into things to control them (with the mechanics using the necrotic cysts from Libris Mortis). They wanted info from the guy but were pretty certain that he wasn't going to be very cooperative. So, last session, they arranged a situation where they pretended to be a rescue group from the Telnathi who woke the guy up and asked him about the situation and what had been happening. They arranged it to look like he had been unconscious when he had been "rescued" from the PCs and their allies and taken to a safe-house in the city. They managed to get the details close to correct and got a lot of info that I wasn't expecting them to get at all.

Have your PCs surprised you in clever, imaginative or funny ways? And if so, how have you dealt with it?

Tim Proctor
2013-09-08, 02:53 PM
This is one that I did, not another PC but it pissed the DM off. We were in Forgotten Realms and for some reason had to stop 'Undercity' or whatever the city underneath the big city is (where the bay is a mile deep). Anyways I had a Dwarven miner and for some reason we had lots of explosives. So I went down about 3/4 of a mile and dug in a side corridor towards the bay and when about 20ft from breaching when the water pressure could almost do it alone, I planted all the explosives and blew it. Presumably emptying massive amounts of deep ocean into the Underdark (we estimated 200 million cubic miles from the maps and what we have on Earth), ending a campaign into the Underdark (don't remember the reason why we were going there).

The best one I've had where a PC foiled my plans was (and I changed my rules because of this, but I had 3 natural 20s in a row a insta-death), they started level 3 with 10k gold each or something like that and could start with anything they could buy. The premise was that a massive Dragon was attacking a kingdom and torching towns, etc. on an annual basis. One player hired 8,000 Kobold archers for 1g each (each with a sling or bow or something) and had them setup in wait for the Dragon. Well we used a computer program to roll the dice and sticking with odds it worked and he killed the Dragon, looted the mountain treasure, etc. After that I stopped the 3 natural 20s as house-rules and limited what players could start with, etc.

AuraTwilight
2013-09-08, 03:03 PM
Just this week, I had a few players encounter a lava river with no bridge. Their solution for getting across it was to buy a Spelljammer, fly it over the 75-ft wide river, land, and then never use it again.

I. What.

Doorhandle
2013-09-09, 02:17 AM
Just this week, I had a few players encounter a lava river with no bridge. Their solution for getting across it was to buy a Spelljammer, fly it over the 75-ft wide river, land, and then never use it again.

I. What.

Well, it worked. Did they know about anything else that could fly?

Also, they could still use it later. Unless they rented it.

Malimar
2013-09-09, 02:46 AM
Playing Rise of the Runelords adventure path.
We're driving the Kreeg ogres from Fort Rannick.
One of the ogres is a cook.
I, remembering the party fighter has ranks in Profession(chef), challenge him to an Iron Chef competition.
The secret ingredient was horse.
The judges were my monkey familiar, the druid's cougar animal companion, and the ogre's wolf.
Our fighter's dish was disgusting, but the ogre's dish almost poisoned the judges, so victory went to the fighter.
As penalty for his failure, the ogre consented to peacefully join the army of my "minions" gradually amassing at Thistletop.
If he had won, the ogre's reward would have been "You have proven yourself worthy of joining my army of minions as our chef!"

DigoDragon
2013-09-09, 07:48 AM
Shadowrun- The team was hired to deliver a parcel across town to a mafia don. They made a quick stop to a drug store and bought some mailing supplies to build a duplicate parcel in case someone came after them during the trip.

Very clever. Too bad when the Yakuza came up to them and offered to buy the parcel, they reponded with grenades. Tsk tsk, the PCs could have made some extra money selling the fake. :smallbiggrin:

tommhans
2013-09-09, 08:55 AM
One time the PCs were supposed to climb a mountain, instead they built a airballoon ship, i ofcourse said go for it, rolling for how robust the ship was, and then they tried to steer it, they didnt come far until the guy that steered the ship fumbled and the whole party fell out of the balloon that was to explode. (they used a plane of hydrogen to fill up the balloon) so almost ended up dying, they also set off an avalanche which hurt them even more. Amazing session btw, not one encounter but was fun as hell ^^

this other time this dwarf monk made things personal against an enemy npc so he took his rope and tried to hang im , "unfortunately" he fumbled and the npc managed to hang the dwarf instead, he almost died, it was hilarious!

They also decided to have a magic show because the wizard returned to his home city, so they planned what to do and the wizard was brilliant! the dwarf with his infinite beer-plane inside a keg sold really well in his little bar set up for the show! my fav session so far in DnD ^^

I also did something rather unexpected for the DM, we were supposed to rob a bank to get some information, so me as a gnome wizard set up this magic show to get peoples attention while the others robbed the bank ^^

Khosan
2013-09-09, 09:36 AM
I wasn't the DM, but I was the instigating player for this one. I flipped an airship to get out of a boss encounter.

Basically, we were protecting a city from an ongoing siege from a bunch of dragons and an undead horde. As such, we were at the time involved in a fight against the leader of the dragons. We'd just beaten him to within an inch of his life and gotten him to surrender. Turns out he was a wuss and incredibly afraid of death.

Now, some time before that, the party (not me, I missed that session) had defeated a Graveknight (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/graveknight-cr-2) (one of the campaign's big bads). I'm not sure if they failed their knowledge/spellcraft checks or didn't bother to make them (either is an extremely likely scenario), but the party fighter took the graveknight's armor and sword. I don't remember how or why he took the armor off before the battle against the dragon, but I think I had some objection to not sanctifying it first (I didn't know the big bad was a graveknight at the time, much less what a graveknight actually was, but I knew he was a powerful undead and that nothing good could come from not cleansing it).

Anyway, back to the battle. The graveknight's sword disappeared from the fighter's hands. Then guess who shows up from below deck? Yep, the graveknight. Regenerated during the battle. So that's about when we rolled the airship. Everyone got a strength check to hang on to something and everybody failed, including the nearly dead dragon. So we end up falling on to the city wall.

This is where it starts to get weird.

I desperately did not want to fight the graveknight again. We'd fought him a couple times before now and I didn't think we were up to it while weakened from the fight with the dragon. I also didn't want to leave the airship tumbling aimlessly through the air. So after stopping the fighter from coup de gracing the dragon a couple times and getting the party healer to heal the dragon back to consciousness after the graveknight hit him a couple times, I eventually got everyone on to the dragon and got the dragon to fly us back up to the airship.

For extra funsies, killing that dragon was actually the ultimate goal of a couple characters in the campaign. They just weren't there at the time and never showed up again. I formed a partnership with the dragon, gave it a new home at my fortress and a chance to live in exchange for a part of his hoard and permission to use his blood and other stuff for crafting magical items.

AuraTwilight
2013-09-09, 04:32 PM
Well, it worked. Did they know about anything else that could fly?

Also, they could still use it later. Unless they rented it.

They did. They could've gotten a simple boat and just cast fly on it. And given the structure of the dungeon they can't really backtrack and they know this.

They did this purely for the lulz.

Libertad
2013-09-09, 05:50 PM
Shadowrun:

"We can hijack an airplane...and crash it into the dragon!"

TheCountAlucard
2013-09-09, 06:25 PM
Shadowrun- The team was hired to deliver a parcel across town to a mafia don. They made a quick stop to a drug store and bought some mailing supplies to build a duplicate parcel in case someone came after them during the trip.

Very clever. Too bad when the Yakuza came up to them and offered to buy the parcel, they reponded with grenades. Tsk tsk, the PCs could have made some extra money selling the fake. :smallbiggrin:Ahh, the Denver Missions. :smalltongue:

In my run-through of that, the players split into two groups, so that one could act as decoy. The street sam and hacker group hacked the Yakuza's car and rammed it into a brick wall before they could so much as approach the PCs about buying it, while the face rigger mage group convinced An Peng they were just popping out for pizza.

In a run of the same mission with another group, we just tricked the Yaks and Triads to turn on each other while the rigger got our hoops out of there.

Tyndmyr
2013-09-09, 07:17 PM
This one time, they didn't stab everyone.

Ok, that's a lie. *cries softly*

navar100
2013-09-09, 07:50 PM
This is a surprising solution for the players. Last game, the party came upon a 160 ft cliff. We needed to get to the top. We had various means to do it but were trying to figure out how to do it most efficiently using up the least resources as possible. Regular climbing wasn't an option.

I suggested I'd summon an Air Elemental and carry us, allowing other PCs to save their potions of Fly. However, I wanted a look up top first. We had no means of scrying. I decided to send the Air Elemental up first, look around, then report back. I was given a Tongues spell to communicate. That action saved the party. Flying up the elemental was attacked by several incorporeal undead from the cliff face, losing a lot of strength. We still needed to get up top. Knowing undead were there was all we needed. I took out my handy wand of Death Ward and protected us all, including three more Air Elementals the wizard summoned. Up we went to the top, unharmed by the cliffside undead. There were more undead up top, but forewarned to be protected by Death Ward, the combat was a cakewalk. The players were giddy of our good fortune. Even the DM was impressed.

Adoendithas
2013-09-09, 08:49 PM
Two recent exploits by a warlock with ridiculous Stealth bonuses:

In the last session, the warlock was sent on a scouting mission into the Underdark by his patron. He elected to leave the party behind for the first recon, since his stealth was so much higher than the party's and he could disguise himself as a drow much more easily than they could.

What he forgot was that the wizard was the one who spoke Drow.

The end result was a high priestess yelling at him in Drow, while he first pretended he was mute, then deaf, then (when she switched to sign language) blind. Somehow he made the first two Bluff checks, but failed the third.

He escaped alive, but plans to bring the rest of the party with next time.

Then later, as he was trying to escape (having ducked into an alley and changed his disguise to a duergar), he tested the limits of his Stealth skill by singing "With Cat-Like Tread" from the Pirates of Penzance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov4RMQQRRnw) at the top of his lungs and playing the cymbals at the same time. Even with a -10 circumstance penalty nobody noticed.

I really need to give some of the NPCs higher Perception bonuses.

Scow2
2013-09-09, 09:24 PM
Then later, as he was trying to escape (having ducked into an alley and changed his disguise to a duergar), he tested the limits of his Stealth skill by singing "With Cat-Like Tread" from the Pirates of Penzance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov4RMQQRRnw) at the top of his lungs and playing the cymbals at the same time. Even with a -10 circumstance penalty nobody noticed.
Obviously, nobody could hear his approach over the racket he was making :smalltongue: But, seriously. That song should ALWAYS grant a bonus to stealth. Even though the rules say a Bard's "Inspire Competence" shouldn't work for Move Silently, I've always ruled that the aforementioned song and assorted spy themes work anyway.

JoshuaZ
2013-09-09, 09:35 PM
Obviously, nobody could hear his approach over the racket he was making :smalltongue: But, seriously. That song should ALWAYS grant a bonus to stealth. Even though the rules say a Bard's "Inspire Competence" shouldn't work for Move Silently, I've always ruled that the aforementioned song and assorted spy themes work anyway.

Actually, in another campaign, I've been discussing with the DM if my character gets a practice violin (essentially a violin designed to be very quiet so you can't easily hear it more than a few feet away) whether that could be used to grant the relevant stealth bonus. I've almost convinced him that the answer should be yes.

Azreal
2013-09-10, 12:11 AM
In a Pathfinder I was running (carrion crown) the Paladin and the Wizard split from the rest of the party so they could do "research" by which they actually broke into a tomb with intent of robbing it.

So the Pally and Wiz both were exploring the abandoned house of the warden who died in the prison fire along with his wife. As they were exploring I picked a random haunt and caused it to happen. It was basically a cold touch spell. The Paladin detected evil in the room and it lit up, the Wizard used his arcana knowledge and figured out that it was vulnerable to fire. So the paladin lit the whole house on fire..

DigoDragon
2013-09-10, 07:35 AM
Ahh, the Denver Missions. :smalltongue:


Yes, I'm using much of that for my campaign, tailoring it to coincide with another plot I cooked up involving some very angry Technomancers and BTL chips. :smallbiggrin:

I know my players can come up with good ideas, but they just seem to ignore themselves if an idea does come up.

The Oni
2013-09-10, 01:11 PM
I wasn't GMing this one, but rather playing in it. We're all on a small hunk of stone floating in a void (that we can't fly in.) Three of the players decided that the best way to fight a Gibbering Mouther is to grab one of the smaller hunks of stone that are chained to it and pull it towards them (by the chain) and then on top of the Mouther, crushing it flat - their reasoning being that the stone has mass but is unaffected by gravity, so it can easily be pulled.

Long story short, we killed the Mouther before the stone got to it, but the stone tipped the entire thing over and the party dangled off the edge until the spell that transported us there realized we had killed the Guardian Mouther and dropped us back in the dungeon safely.

The GM then explained it probably wouldn't have worked, because a Gibbering Mouther is mostly amorphous and wouldn't take much crush damage. But the fact that he even allowed the attempt (in a PFS game no less) was hilarious and a testament to him being a good sport.

The Fury
2013-09-10, 01:45 PM
I wasn't DMing this, but what the hey?

In Call of Cthulu D20:

Two of the four investigators in the party are captured and being held prisoner by the the cult of Dagon in a church. The solution that the other player and I came up with? Use the "sweaty dynamite" being sold by a backwoods idiot, (implied to be left over from the American Civil War,) to blow up the front door of the church. When the priest of Dagon comes to investigate run him over with a Model A Ford and pin/crush him against the far wall. If he survives, (this is D20 keep in mind,) dynamite the car and make our escape.
This plan was stupid, left plenty to go wrong and probably should have killed the people we were trying to rescue. Somehow it worked though, going off nearly without a hitch.

Adoendithas
2013-09-10, 06:32 PM
One lesson I've learned: NEVER tempt fate by telling a player that an action might work, but it's so improbable it'll take three out of four natural 20s on the attack rolls to work out.

The wizard had the brilliant idea to cast a Fireball into the crack in the ceiling that a monster was hiding in and attacking from. He got the three nat 20s and pulled the ceiling down on the party, killing himself with the crushing damage, but they did technically win the encounter and manage to recover the corpse of a rare monster, which the immediately sold to the Wizards' Guild.

Zach J.
2013-09-10, 06:56 PM
We were playing in a Rifts game. We were all humans and members of whatever the mounties had evolved into at that time. There was some monster terrorizing a city and a mega damage proof shield surrounded city, thus ensuring that our characters had to solve this mystery and save the town. Or so our GM thought. My mad scientist type character had other ideas and with the help of a couple of the other characters built an extremely powerful nuke in order to destroy the shield. It worked. The shield was destroyed...along with the monster and most of the town. Miraculously our characters survived the explosion, thanks in part to our extremely resilient armor...only to be stripped of our ranks and exiled.


To Mexico.

Callin
2013-09-10, 07:30 PM
DnD 3.5

So its game 2 and the group was needing healing and what not so I DM created a pool that would create potions. They would combine an ingredient with the water and it would create the desired potion. Healing and what not since they really needed it. Well they got tossed the odd Resurrection Potion as a just in case back up. I was quite pleased with myself thinking up of this idea. They had already had a few close calls.

So the BBEG is a Shadow Sun Ninja that fell to become a Vampire. What does my wonderful group decide to do... Jam the Resurrection Potion into the things mouth and kick him in the jaw. OF COURSE HIS SOUL WANTS TO BE RAISED! Its being held prisoner in the City of Brass (my choice as to where for plot reasons).

It was their first encounter with him and they released him from his Prison. He was being held in an Aztec type pyrimid with a stake through his heart keeping him in Torpor. The group was charged with going into there and retrieving the "Staff of ????" (I forget what I actually called it). So they get to the center room and there is the staff standing up ontop of a Dias. So they go up to it and go to pull it out. "Ok you pull it up a foot or so and its still inside the Dias. You pull it up a few more feet and there is a stained section about a foot wide. You pull it the rest of the way out totaling about 12 feet and you see its pointed and capped with a gold spear type head." A few rounds go by and a mist starts to come from the hole in the Dias. A few more rounds and then it forms into a shadowy/foggy man shape. Another round and the Vampire is fully formed.

A few knowledge rolls later and some other checks...

Game Over...

It was supposed to be a long campaign that had a Pirates of Darkwater feel to it because the Pendent on top of the staff would lead the group to the Vampires soul attuned pieces to form a key that would release his soul and end the game.

Damn veteran gamers. :smallbiggrin:

Doorhandle
2013-09-11, 12:22 AM
Obviously, nobody could hear his approach over the racket he was making :smalltongue: But, seriously. That song should ALWAYS grant a bonus to stealth. Even though the rules say a Bard's "Inspire Competence" shouldn't work for Move Silently, I've always ruled that the aforementioned song and assorted spy themes work anyway.

I'd rule that it would work so long as the bard's not tyring to stealth WITH them.

Savannah
2013-09-11, 02:27 AM
Situation: Black dragon in an underground lake, popping out of the water just long enough to breathe on the party, then going back underwater until his breath recharged.

Solution: Ready an action to lasso that sucker, take a deep breath, and DON'T LET GO. The ensuing underwater fight was epic, but boy you shoulda seen the look on the DM's face when the rogue announced her plan and everyone went along with it :smallamused:

Adoendithas
2013-09-11, 07:30 AM
I'd rule that it would work so long as the bard's not tyring to stealth WITH them.

:elan: ♪ Sneak, sneak, sneak across the battlefield! ♫