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Mattarias, King.
2007-01-21, 02:17 AM
has anybody here found out something in or about your game that just made you go "oh.. -insert word of your choice here-"? i just recently have. :smalleek:

-note: long read-

to give the full impact of this story, i have to start from the beginning; I, the cleric, and the barbarian of my party get taken by this gnome.. elf.. thing, girl that wants us to save her town from the vampiric snowman she accidentally made and animated that's been terrorizing the snowy area. (this was an x-mas campaign, by the way, so.. yeah. the 'snowman' was apparently animated by a magic HAT.) after a bit of searching, we find a bunch of frozen elf-gnomes and a frozen-in burrow/cave... thing. now, we didn't take too much heed of this and thought that the vampire did it itself. now, after more searching, we then proceeded to dispatch frostbite (after our cleric going down to like, 4 CON..) and save 'santa', the town's mayor, who the vampire had captured. everything's happy, and stuff, yay, celebration. we get on the sleigh and start going back to where we were, then suddenly -SQUAROOWAK!- white dragon. wyrmling, i think. we dispatched THAT with a few well-placed (houseruled, kinda) burning hands from yours truly. after we landed, i noted that the snowman wasn't all lumpy as the cleric described snowmen- it was, i'm guessing, a simulacrum.

now, our party is currenly level three, note. 1) dragons can polymorph. 2) white dragons eat frozen things as snacks. 3) that vampire couldn't freeze things. 4) a dragon is the only thing we know of that can potentially cast a 7th level spell.

you fill in the blanks. :smalleek: disturbing, much. i shudder to imagine the outcome of us breaking through the ice on that cave..

er, soo, anyone else here have any crazy realizations like that before? eh?

Divides
2007-01-21, 03:11 AM
has anybody here found out something in or about your game that just made you go "oh.. -insert word of your choice here-"? i just recently have. :smalleek:

-note: long read-

to give the full impact of this story, i have to start from the beginning; I, the cleric, and the barbarian of my party get taken by this gnome.. elf.. thing, girl that wants us to save her town from the vampiric snowman she accidentally made and animated that's been terrorizing the snowy area. (this was an x-mas campaign, by the way, so.. yeah. the 'snowman' was apparently animated by a magic HAT.) after a bit of searching, we find a bunch of frozen elf-gnomes and a frozen-in burrow/cave... thing. now, we didn't take too much heed of this and thought that the vampire did it itself. now, after more searching, we then proceeded to dispatch frostbite (after our cleric going down to like, 4 CON..) and save 'santa', the town's mayor, who the vampire had captured. everything's happy, and stuff, yay, celebration. we get on the sleigh and start going back to where we were, then suddenly -SQUAROOWAK!- white dragon. wyrmling, i think. we dispatched THAT with a few well-placed (houseruled, kinda) burning hands from yours truly. after we landed, i noted that the snowman wasn't all lumpy as the cleric described snowmen- it was, i'm guessing, a simulacrum.

now, our party is currenly level three, note. 1) dragons can polymorph. 2) white dragons eat frozen things as snacks. 3) that vampire couldn't freeze things. 4) a dragon is the only thing we know of that can potentially cast a 7th level spell.

you fill in the blanks. :smalleek: disturbing, much. i shudder to imagine the outcome of us breaking through the ice on that cave..

er, soo, anyone else here have any crazy realizations like that before? eh?

I'm sorry, I just gotta mark this down as one of the most amusing posts of all time (that's intended as a compliment, BTW).

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't think I've ever noticed that... but then again, I'm usually not as observant as I should be when I'm playing D&D, so neh.

Jade_Tarem
2007-01-21, 03:46 AM
Ok, here's one... I wasn't the one with the realization, but the DM.

One of my players was an insanely powerful (many would say broken) monk/cleric/sacred fist. One of his favorite tactics involved delay death so he could postpone healing and do a lot of damage in combat.

1) We houserule that electricity has a greater effect in water.
2) One of the players possessed a gnomish device that could do 1d100 electricity damage.

As part of thier questing they met one of my "bosses" guarding the bronze dragon orb, which for the purposes of the campaign they are allowed to possess but not use. The dragon was a specially crated shadow/frost dragon with some extra special abilities. Whenever it was reduced by 25% of it's HP it would automatically possess a party member (no save) and summon some baddies or monsters for them to fight, returning only when the baddies had been vanquished. So the fight began and the dragon began it's shinanigans, by taking over the... archer I think... and summoning 4 krackens. (The fight was in a Domed area inside an inactive volcano, on a floating platform on a lake.) The monk/cleric/sf jumped in the water to begin to fight a kracken and the party member in charge of the gnomish device fired at the water. This wouldn't have been too bad, but the "chaining" effect caused it to become 5d100 damage, and the damage roll was quite high. The monk took it all and kept fighting due to delay death. When the fight was finally over, the monk checked the delay death entry in the PHB (he figured he had enough time to rest and get his spells back) and found that he had minutes, not hours, to live... he cooked on multiple gigawatts.

Mattarias, King.
2007-01-21, 01:22 PM
^^; eheh, thanks divides.

and jade tarem: XD i see. yeesh. poor monk guy. i doubt there's much of anything that could survive 5D100 worth of damagge. ouch.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-01-21, 01:54 PM
I'd rather not get into the exact details, but the group's female spellcaster in my campaign had been seducing NPC's with her high charisma for quite some time and getting far too comfortable with doing it when she ran into an evil army with no morales and attempted to seduce them into not being in trouble. Then she got in worse trouble.

The group now knows that attempting to seduce an entire evil army with loose morales is a very poor decision.

ExHunterEmerald
2007-01-21, 02:01 PM
...oh my.
Ouch.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-01-21, 02:03 PM
I believe that calls for an O.o;

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-01-21, 02:19 PM
Does that mean I won the contest?

Hannes
2007-01-21, 02:35 PM
Well... There's this campaign I'm playing a rogue in. Elvish king is dieing, undead hordes march restlessly. They had been noticed coming out and going to a ghost village. On the way we met an undead version of a blackguard in a body of an old NPC who was evacuated with us from a city the undead killed. We killed it in one hit (again). The blackguard's soul is released from his body when killed, and wanders around, searching for a suitable body. Anyhow, this time he was wearing a mask. An iron mask. My rogue is not your ordinary rogue. He does not like things which are shiny. He likes things which are sharp, crude and possibly made out of iron. This item was like an epiphany to him. He kept it. We reach the village, get sucked into a plane created by some powerful necromancer who wanted to preserve his village the way it was. We, being outsiders could do anything but hit anything. We just went through everything. I went insane, started jumping down from rooftops and falling through the ground and reappearing in the sky. We wandered around the village, talked to the necromancer. The necromancer said he wasn't going to let us free. I pulled the mask out of my pack and put it on to scare the villagers. Suddenly, the necromancer's glass gaze goes wild, he looks around scared, says "I will take you away now" and we go out of the plane.

Bit more fluff - there are anchors, which take you back from other planes. The necromancer was showing off his power frequently to us. Draw your lines.

You guessed it. I was walking out at night on the day the session was with other campaign members and then it hit me. I was dumbstruck. I quickly and silently told my party members about it, because the DM was there too. We discussed it after he had gone to sleep.

Mattarias, King.
2007-01-21, 02:51 PM
:eek: i see. wow, some crazy stories being tossed around here. especially viscount's. O.o;; anybody got any more?

YPU
2007-01-21, 04:04 PM
You guessed it. I was walking out at night on the day the session was with other campaign members and then it hit me. I was dumbstruck. I quickly and silently told my party members about it, because the DM was there too. We discussed it after he had gone to sleep.
Despite me getting the coolness shivers from this story, it makes me want to use it.
But my mind isn’t in the state to draw the lines al the way. Elaborate, please?
Viscount, you gave me the shivers.

Jade_Tarem
2007-01-22, 01:54 AM
Here we go, Star Wars campaign.. although one run improperly.

This guy had a bomb on his ship, but he didn't know where. He didn't have time to search either, because the thing was counting down in seconds from one minute, the voice echoing around his ship. "Detonation in 60...59...58..." He got into his e-v suit and blew out of there in an escape pod as the thing continued counting "...20...19...18..."

He got far enough away and the escape pod pressurized. He took of his e-v helmet. That's when he heard "...3...2...1..."

Talanic
2007-01-22, 03:17 PM
Not nearly so disturbing here, and it didn't happen to me. I read it a while ago but it's too funny not to pass on.

The party was hired to investigate a haunted mansion. Through cat-and-mouse games with the ghost and some good investigation, they figure out that it's not really haunted and manage to apprehend the mid level illusionist and rogue who were trying to steal treasure by faking a haunting.

The party's congratulating themselves when one of the villains says, "We would've gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids..."

Meynolds
2007-01-22, 04:02 PM
This particular incident had several such moments, and these mostly had to do with flying bodies, flaming bodies, and similar things.
The disturbing came from the fact that they actually though to do some of this stuff.


I was DM for a group including Druid_lord (a CG Duel wielding Drow Ranger (no, not a Drizz't clone, he used long and short swords) and an CG elven wizard (Blaster)), and two other friends (a LG warforged fighter and an NE elven Barbarian Blackguard). Can the potential for wierdness be seen right off the bat?

Two of my friends are at least partly psychotic (Druid_lord and the Brb/Blk). This was a one off campaign in the Matters of Vengeance WotC adventure. It was interesting.

They met the hirer, and accepted the job. They proceeded out immediately, and were attacked by some shades. This is where things became odd.

They held back and had the Wizard cast Fireball. Then the Ranger and Fighter charged. The Brb/Blk stayed back, and threw the Wizard. His dex modifyer was low and yet he still hit. The Wizard hit (CRUNCH) and I ruled falling object damage would do. 3d6 to both the Wizard and Shade. Ended up as a 10 to each. The Wizard was next on initiative and hit the shade with everything he could (not much apparently) and killed the shade. Mop up form there.

They moved down the path and were ambushed by Mercs! They tried the same tactic again, with a twist. The Wizard hit the mercs with a Fireball in mid air. And succeded. Did 10d6 damage. To each merc. But thats not all! He hit with a critical hit when thrown doing 3d6X2 damage, killing a merc. Not much else special that combat.

Next they approached the mansion. They fought the guards, didn't throw the wizard this time. They had the Brb/Blk and Rng sneak behind the enemy while the Wiz and Fgt distracted them. They attacked, and the wizard Fireballed. The first went down! The Brb/Blk grabbed the dead body and flung it at an enemy. CRITICAL HIT! Good range too, something like 4d6X2... Totaled to over 30, and the guy had to make a morale save, and failed thanks to the modifier of being hit by a commrades dead body. The enemy wizard died to the Warforged doing 1d8+10 without a power attack.

Next they entered the mansion and pulled the trick again, but failed for two rounds and were forced to fight close range. They slaughtered Shade and Merc alike. I made all of the chars so I shouldn't be surprised.

They moved on and slaughtered many foes and stole body parts, especially ribs...

They also entered the Trophy room and stole some body parts. One discoved the secret of the painting and the Warforged tried to touch it. The Rng dragged him out (opposed grapple checks all the way) and the Brb/Blk "locked" the door with a flaming corpse and some ribs.

They reached the stables eventually and killed the fiendish warhorse in one round. They took his body to the ceremonial chamber which they had found earlier and not entered. They fought the BBEG and threw his horse at him, and did some serious damage. At most they took 30 dmg, and that was from an ally's Fireball (yes he is a pyromaniac). They won and brought the Hirer to the main room (They left him in the stable). The Brb/Blk tried to kill him and was stopped by a grapple by the Rng.

The Rng got an attack, a Coup de Grace actually. Auto critical, 9 dmg, DC 28 Fort save, failed, instant death. The adventure ended there.

purepolarpanzer
2007-01-22, 04:37 PM
DMing a game, I had an elven arcane archer with good ranks in craft alchemy spend some time and make some blasting powder, which she tied to her arrows and used to do some major area damage. Move forward a couple of sessions and a bunch of levels and she's doing quite well with the magical arrows of boomstick. While defending a castle, a group of huge slaughterstone behemoths are charging the castle. She pulls out the arrows, thinks for a second, then smirks at me, thinking she has the perfect plan. "Maximized fireball imbued into my arrows, with the blasting powder, aiming for the joints on the behemoth." Realizing this is ALOT of damage, the party cleric buffs the weapon further, making it quite lethal. Sighting down the arrow, she takes aim and fires- a natural one. The entire party sighs, then she rolls on the ciritcal fail fumble chart we were using. Surprizingly, it didn't seem that bad- 1d6 damage from weapon breaking in hand, and another roll of the attack dice to see if the arrow hits. Another natural 1. Another fumble roll critical hit the cleric, bringing it to 1/4 health. "Oh that sucks, sorry." she said, then realized how much magical bull s*it was on the arrow. The fireball and the blasting powder exploded at the same time, killing the party rogue, cleric, and ranger. The barbarian and aracane archer managed to make good saves and were only severely weakend. I rolled a d100, and the blasting powder blew up the wall, sending both flying. Miraculously, they both survived the fall and the debris. Only to be stepped on by a slaughterstone behemoth, crushing both. And this is how one arrow killed the entire party (I had to do a bring-em-back-from-the-dead-plane mission to keep everyone from leaving that day in disgust)

Mewtarthio
2007-01-22, 04:52 PM
That's why you shouldn't use fumbles...

Matthew
2007-01-22, 04:56 PM
Nah, it's why you shouldn't use crazy fumble charts.

NEO|Phyte
2007-01-22, 04:58 PM
And this is how one arrow killed the entire party
and people say that the Arcane Archer sucks. :smallbiggrin:

NullAshton
2007-01-22, 05:04 PM
I think one of my disturbing realizations is learning that the local king's idea of vacation is going to the abyss.

ExHunterEmerald
2007-01-22, 06:42 PM
and people say that the Arcane Archer sucks. :smallbiggrin:

"Boom! Meshot!"

NullAshton
2007-01-22, 06:47 PM
Hehe, that story is funny.

"Oh, sorry, that sucks." *BOOM!*

Soniku
2007-01-22, 06:50 PM
Ooh yes, I have had a couple of those.

1: Ever had one of those moments where the entire party figures it out at the same time? We did, and we collectively smacked our heads against the table. Turns out the conducter of the demon summoning ritual I shot in the head with a critical arrow was in fact conducting a blood ritual! Whoopsie, looks like I just finished the ritual by spilling his blood and just killed the person who would have a chance of keeping it under control! :smallbiggrin:

2: This one was more a party I was GMing, but it showed on their faces :smallsmile:
After mysterious lines of light started appearing in the sky due to a series of events, they had a good peer over the map of the known world and drawing in the lines. I beleve the exact moment the players realised I had been planning this world way too long was when one of them stated (exact words) "*bleep*...... The entire worlds a giant frickin' magic circle"

Oh yes, and I decided to throw in that blood ritual trick when they were attempting to protect the final point of the symbol :smallbiggrin:

That was... one of my less evil moments

Mattarias, King.
2007-01-22, 07:30 PM
XD wow, all these stories rock so far. love the flaming-arrow-of-death bit, espescially. haven't played much recently, but we might be playing more soon, so i'll relate some more stories if anything crazy happens yet.

.. and the magic-circle-world is awesome. XD how'd that campaign turn out?

heroe_de_leyenda
2007-01-22, 09:06 PM
Here's one.

I was DMing a party of adventurers consisting of: elf ranger, half elf rogue, female human bard hooker, and a human monk

1) In andventure "A" thay had to scort a noble man to see his sick father who lived across the river, but the bridge-town was dominatedby a barbarian tribe. The bard hooker managed "talk" their way through (really hardcore) to avoid paying the 100gp toll per person (really expensive for 1rst level) but they had to kill some of the barbarians anyway.
2) In adventure "B, C and D" they find the sick wizard, and had ot find a paladin to remove his desease.
3)IN adventure "E" they arrive at a town known for it's devotion to Pelor, but was overtaken by an expansionist nation allied with clerics of Hextor. They learn that they had to obtain some kind of gem that activates an artifact that's hidden in the temple's altar, and as they leave teh town to go find it a large band of (evil) soldiers arrive to reinforce the newly conquered city, and was standing in the main square. In adventure B teh party got two "bombs" from evil gnome tinkers. So, they climbed to the roof of a house by the main square and threw the bomb right in the middle of the soldiers. Most of the died right away, ahd the party killed the survivors quickly, and then start running out of town, as some other guards and evil clerics came out of the church and town hall. The party scaped mounted shouting "ERITHNULL!!! ERITHNULL"

4)The site where the gem was hidden was located across the river, so they had to go through the barbarians bridge-town again. They (now a 4th level party) were in a hurry so they just paid the toll, and continued to adventure "F" to the ruined site to find the gem, and they found it.

5)As they were returning to the city to place the gem in the artifact they had to go through the barbarians town again to cross the river, and guess what? the town was empty, the houses were smoking and all around the town there were wooden posts with the heads of all the dead barbarians. The ranger discovered a large set of footprints that he recognized as the women and children of town being taken as slaves by an heavy armored army (amazinly high survival check!) and they found in the town square a burned, dirty flag with Erithnull's symbol on the floor, and a huge Flag with Hextor's Symbol in place. And there was a sign too, that reads "A LESSON TO THOSE WHO OPPOSE LAW".
Seems that their little prank went a little too far...O_O

Mattarias, King.
2007-01-22, 09:15 PM
o_o; thaat's.. ouch.. that's gonna be some bad karma right there..

jjpickar
2007-01-22, 10:30 PM
This is me totally throwing my DM into conniptions:

My party and I were standard adventurers working for the fighters guild. I was a chaotic (soon to be evil) warlock (the level doesn't matter as you'll soon see). The fighters guild had two characteristics that my player hated, it was permanently guarded by epic wizards and anti-magic fields (which didn't work on the fighter's guild wizards for some reason) and it's paymaster ALWAYS shortchanged me.

But because of the magic field I was powerless to do anything. Or so the DM thought.:smallbiggrin:

After a particularly humiliating encounter, I stormed over to the unscrupulous market (there were two, scrupulous and unscrupulous) and ordered 4 huge barrels of they're highest proof beverage (Dwarven Something that makes you pass out if you are within 10 feet or so of it). Then I went to the unscrupulous alchemists shop and had them build a non-magical detonator out of alchemists fire. After which, as a last touch, I scratched the words elven wine on it and then presented it as an anonymous gift to the fighters guild.

Suffice to say, there wasn't much left of the fighters guild after a few minutes. Oddly enough, the assassin's guild was pretty quick to hire me afterwards.

:smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

Jade_Tarem
2007-01-23, 02:18 AM
I thought alchemist's fire was an inherant ingredient in dwarven alcoholic beverages. :P

Ninja Chocobo
2007-01-23, 03:19 AM
I thought alchemist's fire was an inherant ingredient in dwarven alcoholic beverages. :P
It is. But, he still needed a detonator.

jjpickar
2007-01-23, 10:38 AM
And tinder twigs would have been to small.

storybookknight
2007-01-23, 10:51 AM
Well, there was this time when I was running a game - a ghost had been bothering this one guy's girlfriend, and for plot-related reasons it was important to go help her out. Turns out she was a singer, that had newly become pretty talented and famous.

It wasn't until after a bunch of incoporeal move-and-hide, charm spells, and ability damage that the party realized I had made them fight an Opera Ghost... I.E. the Phantom of the Opera.

Kiroho
2007-01-23, 11:36 AM
I've posted this before, but it applies here very well. I was DM'ing a one-shot at a Convention where I had the party investigating an ancient abandoned city. The party wanders into one of the buildings (Town Hall if I recall correctly) and I tell them that as they walk through the door, all the lights come on and a deep humming noise coming from deep below them. They work their way to a room with a desk with a couple boxes on it. The party spent the better part of an hour checking out the boxes. I described, in detail, a standard PC to them in terms like, "strange multicolored vines inside". They were completely fascinated by these boxes and just couldn't get enough information about them. At the end of the session, one of the players looked at me with sudden realization that these were computers. He asked if that was what they were, and I confirmed it. None of the other characters even had an inkling.

Mattarias, King.
2007-01-23, 09:33 PM
XD heheh. that's an awesome way of describing modern-day things to olden-day PCs. love it.

-and what's this about dwarven alchoholic beverages containing alchemist's fire? O.o; that'd be scary if it was true.. no wonder alchohol counts as a poison..

-on that note, does anybody else see a continuing fire motif in these posts? that's a little odd..

Aust_Arrowsplitter
2007-01-23, 09:53 PM
We're all pyros and you know it. *grins*