"Um..." DM Moments

[KnotKnormal]

This is going to require a bit of background explaining so bare with me please.

So I'm running an epic lvl campaign (a.k.a. Death means very little) A group in my campaign has hired the players to kill gods, because the gods have gone bat-**** crazy and are destroying the material plane. This group is associated with a dead god, but a god none the less. needless to say this has the party weary about the groups true intentions, and the people inside the group.

The second in command of the group is a young woman named Vi, who lost her arm in battle and had a construct arm grafted to her in its place. She keeps it covered so the party didn't know she had this. she reached out to shake hands with one of the party members and it was described as this. "she squeezes your hand very tightly, her hand feels cold and hard, as if it were a skeletal. you feel a slight ticking resonate from her hand as she shakes yours." the player (not knowing what it was) freaked out a bit reached out and snapped Vi neck due to 2 Crit successes from the player and 2 Crit fails from Vi (I hate my dice by the way) after they killed her they examined the arm and realized it was a mistake and true ressed her. needless to say Vi is second guessing her decision to trust these people with the fate of the world.

Just wanted to share my story of last night and was wondering if any other DMs had moments where their players had left them wondering what the hell just happened, and how you dealt wit it.

[HaikenEdge]

If they're epic level, couldn't they mindrape or modify memory the experience of her dying out of her head?

[KnotKnormal]

If they're epic level, couldn't they mindrape or modify memory the experience of her dying out of her head?

They pondered doing that but decided against it. they actually like the NPC but got startled so they thought being honest about the "we just killed you" thing was the best course of action.

[Raven777]

I guess a D&D character doesn't survive to epic levels without a few "punching first, asking questions later" accidents along the way.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's gotta be an awkward conversation.

Vi: .....unnnhhh........ what happened?

Party rep: um... yeah... dude there kinda.... paranoid murdered you.

Vi: .............. What?

Party rep: when he felt your metal hand he thought it was bone, so..... he thought you might be...... undead?

Vi: ..... so he murdered me?

PR: yes.

Vi: because he thought I was a lich or something?

PR: yes.

Vi: .......yeah. Just go now please. We'll discuss this further upon your return. (jerks.)

[Heliomance]

Let me guess - the commander of the group has a really big hat, and is a sniper build?

[KnotKnormal]

That's gotta be an awkward conversation.

Vi: .....unnnhhh........ what happened?

Party rep: um... yeah... dude there kinda.... paranoid murdered you.

Vi: .............. What?

Party rep: when he felt your metal hand he thought it was bone, so..... he thought you might be...... undead?

Vi: ..... so he murdered me?

PR: yes.

Vi: because he thought I was a lich or something?

PR: yes.

Vi: .......yeah. Just go now please. We'll discuss this further upon your return. (jerks.)

Pretty much that... yeah.

[KnotKnormal]

Let me guess - the commander of the group has a really big hat, and is a sniper build?

Not t all. for him I was going for more of a Tim the enchanter feel. what reference did you think I was making?

[Zanos]

If she was undead, snapping her neck wouldn't even have killed her. :smallsigh:

I love player logic sometimes. At least they had the decency to resurrect her.

I guess a D&D character doesn't survive to epic levels without a few "punching first, asking questions later" accidents along the way.
Yeah, I guess if you have the money to just throw away on resurrections, killing first and asking questions over their dead body is probably a lot safer.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Not t all. for him I was going for more of a Tim the enchanter feel. what reference did you think I was making?

League of Legends.

[georgie_leech]

League of Legends.

In case OP doesn't play, meet Vi, (http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Vi_0.jpg) the punch-first-ask-questions-later-while-complaining-about-unintelligible-answers-due-to-missing-teeth cop of Piltover, assistant to the aforementioned Sniper With Big Hat sheriff Caitlyn. (http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Caitlyn_0.jpg)

EDIT: Should probably include my own story. In a custom semi-sandbox setting, the PC's had just finished their current set of quests and had to decide where to go next. I was planning on a set of encounters (depending on where they went) to kick off the main plot. What I was not planning on was them deciding to head down to the nearby massive lake, and, after a couple of silly checks (like the less-than-brilliant Dwarf Battering Ram Fighter getting a Natural 20 on a completely unprompted Search check; "Sure why not, he trips and stumbles into a tree, finding that it was hollow and an old rusty magic helmet* is inside")make a boat, improvise sailing skill and set off to see what was in the middle of the featureless body of water. Which, naturally, is where I was planning on sticking a quest-arc-ending dungeon for level 9-ish PC's... and they were level 4. After a brief bit of trying to convince them to go literally anywhere else, and explaining that the trip there was likely to be dangerous, I was upfront and explained that after they get to the middle, we'd have to call an end to the session as I'd need to do some emergency editing to keep them from being horribly murdered the second they get close to the place and snarling the plot beyond repair. Managed to recover it half-decently, if in a bit of a ham-fisted manner ("So there's an oracle there and she gives cryptic plot stuff to an old wizard who needs help with a situation he can't get directly involved with, all happening as you happen to get there"). Keeping the plot coherent has become much easier since I learned to admit when the PC's have done something completely unexpected and I need time to cobble something together.

*Said helm, rolled for on a table, turned out to be a Helm of Water Breathing, which then saved the Dwarf's life when the Lake Sahuagin (which I had already planned to be there for when the plot eventually did direct them to the lake) tried to drag him under water and drown him, because that's what murderous fish people would do and he was the only one to fail the Balance Check to avoid falling in when they attacked. The sheer number of random coincidences like that has got the party wondering if there might not be something to his belief that his left shoe is actually a god of some sort.

[KnotKnormal]

In case OP doesn't play, meet Vi, (http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Vi_0.jpg) the punch-first-ask-questions-later-while-complaining-about-unintelligible-answers-due-to-missing-teeth cop of Piltover, assistant to the aforementioned Sniper With Big Hat sheriff Caitlyn. (http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/img/champion/splash/Caitlyn_0.jpg)

thank you for that, I do not play. but darn it, just when you think you have a fairly cool and original character idea.

[Xerlith]

Well, to be fair, the League Vi's metal fists are only gauntlets...

[jedipotter]

How about the ''UM'' player stuff here.

Ok, Vi losses her arm, somehow, secretly. Then goes and gets a construct arm and for no reason what so ever keeps it secret!

Then Vi, goes to shake the hand of someone and uses her construct arm/hand??!!?? instead of her real one!

And then the DM just gets odd as he says her hand ''is kinda like skeletal'', even though an artificial construct hand would not be ''skeletal'' and would feel more like a hand. (Or did she get the faux skeleton arm/hand?)


And getting killed by neck snapping after (two?) critical hits? Must be some odd house rules. Even more odd that she got killed so fast and easy in Epic play.

I will never understand pointless character secrets......

[Zanos]

How about the ''UM'' player stuff here.

Ok, Vi losses her arm, somehow, secretly. Then goes and gets a construct arm and for no reason what so ever keeps it secret!

Then Vi, goes to shake the hand of someone and uses her construct arm/hand??!!?? instead of her real one!
wat.

She didn't lose her arm in secret. If you have a prosthetic arm, you aren't going to introduce yourself to people by talking about the battle you lost your arm in. Moreover, you aren't going to take off your glove/sleeves and show off your prosthetic, because chances are it's not a great memory.

...Yeah, you probably shouldn't shake people's hands with it, though.

[PotatoNinja]

Then Vi, goes to shake the hand of someone and uses her construct arm/hand??!!?? instead of her real one!

if she lost her right hand, shaking with the left is usually in bad taste and would be a dead give away that something is amiss. She may not have had much of a choice, but probably should have disguised the hand a little better.

[KnotKnormal]

How about the ''UM'' player stuff here.

Ok, Vi losses her arm, somehow, secretly. Then goes and gets a construct arm and for no reason what so ever keeps it secret!

Then Vi, goes to shake the hand of someone and uses her construct arm/hand??!!?? instead of her real one!

And then the DM just gets odd as he says her hand ''is kinda like skeletal'', even though an artificial construct hand would not be ''skeletal'' and would feel more like a hand. (Or did she get the faux skeleton arm/hand?)


And getting killed by neck snapping after (two?) critical hits? Must be some odd house rules. Even more odd that she got killed so fast and easy in Epic play.

I will never understand pointless character secrets......

She doesn't keep it a secret, if the party would have asked she would have old, she doesn't like to display it due being tired of looks from commoners and endless questions.

Her right hand is her dominant hand so yeah she going to shake with her right hand.

Its a hard metal hand with no fleshy bits on it. It's going to feel kind of bony, it's not a fully filled out hand.

it was Dex vs. Ref to grab the head and Str vs. Ref to snap both were Nat 20 vs Nat 1. It wasn't in combat and I really didn't want to erase my battle-mat, so I figured that was a semi legit way of handling that. Also Vi is not an Epic Level character... yet. I plan to reuse her in future campaigns.

[Kol Korran]

I had a few such moments. My party sometimes do the utterly unexpected. But I love it when they do- it always leads to the best stories. Some examples:

1. "We're taking him down!"
The party is in some settlement under siege, that has sort of psionic barriers. The leader of the besieging army is a bone knight that far surpasses them. They even fought it once, and got their ass kicked before escaping. At one point in the siege this boneknight comes again, and my general thought was- They will run away and regroup, the siege will progress a little, and they will continue with (Other stuff planned).

But they decide to fight him. The battle is long, and both sides become quite damaged and depleted (Action economy and so on). Now the goes beyong his side of the barrier, and they go behind theirs. And they see him starting to heal up and buff again after all the dispels they've thrown at him. He is quickly getting back up to power. I thought that they would retreat at this point. However:
Party: "we're taking him down!"
Me: "You need to get through the barriers, at your condition that could kill you!"
Party: "So call back to take the barrier down!"
Me:. ... "You know that the barrier can't be easily brought up, once it's taken down, the city is left defenseless."
Party: "Doesn't matter, we're taking him down!"
Me: "If you fail the citty is doomed"
Party: "We know. Take down the barrier!"

They won! and that battle turned the entire campaign upside down, which led to a much better campaign than I envisioend in the first place! And a sweet sweet awesome victory for the group!

2. We're making a different choice.
Same campaign, the party at some point gone aboard "the blood ship"- a mystical ship that can get everywhere, in a very short time, due to mystical means. It is piloted just by the captain, and travels through the astral. However, there is a catch- you need to pay some price. The party were told that it would be the life of another, so they prepared for a fight. But then they were given 3 choices- the lives of 3 NPCs dear to the party, who hold a great significance.

The idea was to make the difficult choice, and be able to pay the terrible price in order to "save the world" and such. But the party's leader (The same guy who said "we're taking him out!" did not accept the choices, and instead the entire party turned and killed the captain... who was the only one who could sail the mystical ship... who was now stuck floating in the astral...

Still, led to some fun moments.

3. Could it have been more obvious?
In a pirate campaign the party got stuck in this little island, and a small fleet of The Empire (TM) came by. Their admiral, an inquisitive guy wanted to seek some info from the party of pirates, but to make things more interesting, I set the initial randevouz in a shore dedicated to parley rules.

The idea was for an intense negotiation and trying to trick the other to glean secrets (as both the party and the admiral had plenty), and get to know their new enemy. I started with the admiral trying a very simple and obvious trick of offering them parley, a ship and treasure, seekign to lure them to his ship, and the party surprised me by... accepting?!? :smalleek:

Once on his ship, with his soldiers, mages and mroe there, they quickly moved to capture the party, and nearly had them all if it weren't for quick thinking of 2 of them. So they just captured 3/5ths of the party. Now that needed accommodating to...

4. "Yes, we'll do all that, and more!"
A direct continuation of the previosu example, the 3 captured members were brough to another island, and were to be executed by dawn.

The two remainign party members got to shore jsut barely, and collapsed. "now what?" Asked one of them. The other (Same guy who can't seem to back down in any example) Simply replied: "We're goign to find out where they are held, get weapons, equipment, and some crew, free them from their holding place, and capture one of the Empire's ships and run away with it." The other stared at him as if he was utterly insane. The Emprie soldiers were much more powerful, well equipped, well organized, and superior in nearly every way. He told this to the leading guy. "Right, they will never see it coming!"

And as often happens with this group- they succeeded. @ PCs died, and some NPCs, and there ship suffered some damage, but they managed to do it! :smallbiggrin: This guy became the obvious captain, and the doubting guy his loyal crew master.

5. As low as we can go.
Shadowrun seems to bring out the worst in people. we got entangled with some dead body we had to get rid off, but didn't want ANY remains to be left, and using the forensics of the Shadowrun world, that meant something drastic. So one of the players used his connection to... have her devoured by a group of intelligent ghouls.

That was disturbing.

[KnotKnormal]

I had a few such moments. My party sometimes do the utterly unexpected. But I love it when they do- it always leads to the best stories. Some examples:

1. "We're taking him down!"
The party is in some settlement under siege, that has sort of psionic barriers. The leader of the besieging army is a bone knight that far surpasses them. They even fought it once, and got their ass kicked before escaping. At one point in the siege this boneknight comes again, and my general thought was- They will run away and regroup, the siege will progress a little, and they will continue with (Other stuff planned).

But they decide to fight him. The battle is long, and both sides become quite damaged and depleted (Action economy and so on). Now the goes beyong his side of the barrier, and they go behind theirs. And they see him starting to heal up and buff again after all the dispels they've thrown at him. He is quickly getting back up to power. I thought that they would retreat at this point. However:
Party: "we're taking him down!"
Me: "You need to get through the barriers, at your condition that could kill you!"
Party: "So call back to take the barrier down!"
Me:. ... "You know that the barrier can't be easily brought up, once it's taken down, the city is left defenseless."
Party: "Doesn't matter, we're taking him down!"
Me: "If you fail the citty is doomed"
Party: "We know. Take down the barrier!"

They won! and that battle turned the entire campaign upside down, which led to a much better campaign than I envisioend in the first place! And a sweet sweet awesome victory for the group!

2. We're making a different choice.
Same campaign, the party at some point gone aboard "the blood ship"- a mystical ship that can get everywhere, in a very short time, due to mystical means. It is piloted just by the captain, and travels through the astral. However, there is a catch- you need to pay some price. The party were told that it would be the life of another, so they prepared for a fight. But then they were given 3 choices- the lives of 3 NPCs dear to the party, who hold a great significance.

The idea was to make the difficult choice, and be able to pay the terrible price in order to "save the world" and such. But the party's leader (The same guy who said "we're taking him out!" did not accept the choices, and instead the entire party turned and killed the captain... who was the only one who could sail the mystical ship... who was now stuck floating in the astral...

Still, led to some fun moments.

3. Could it have been more obvious?
In a pirate campaign the party got stuck in this little island, and a small fleet of The Empire (TM) came by. Their admiral, an inquisitive guy wanted to seek some info from the party of pirates, but to make things more interesting, I set the initial randevouz in a shore dedicated to parley rules.

The idea was for an intense negotiation and trying to trick the other to glean secrets (as both the party and the admiral had plenty), and get to know their new enemy. I started with the admiral trying a very simple and obvious trick of offering them parley, a ship and treasure, seekign to lure them to his ship, and the party surprised me by... accepting?!? :smalleek:

Once on his ship, with his soldiers, mages and mroe there, they quickly moved to capture the party, and nearly had them all if it weren't for quick thinking of 2 of them. So they just captured 3/5ths of the party. Now that needed accommodating to...

4. "Yes, we'll do all that, and more!"
A direct continuation of the previosu example, the 3 captured members were brough to another island, and were to be executed by dawn.

The two remainign party members got to shore jsut barely, and collapsed. "now what?" Asked one of them. The other (Same guy who can't seem to back down in any example) Simply replied: "We're goign to find out where they are held, get weapons, equipment, and some crew, free them from their holding place, and capture one of the Empire's ships and run away with it." The other stared at him as if he was utterly insane. The Emprie soldiers were much more powerful, well equipped, well organized, and superior in nearly every way. He told this to the leading guy. "Right, they will never see it coming!"

And as often happens with this group- they succeeded. @ PCs died, and some NPCs, and there ship suffered some damage, but they managed to do it! :smallbiggrin: This guy became the obvious captain, and the doubting guy his loyal crew master.

5. As low as we can go.
Shadowrun seems to bring out the worst in people. we got entangled with some dead body we had to get rid off, but didn't want ANY remains to be left, and using the forensics of the Shadowrun world, that meant something drastic. So one of the players used his connection to... have her devoured by a group of intelligent ghouls.

That was disturbing.

I have a person in my gaming group that is like your party leader he literally said this in one campaign.

"So you know that horrifyingly impossible task that we have no hope of actually succeeding at? You know the one that will likely cause the planet to implode if we attempt I and fail? We should go try it." -- Rogar Kinwood.

[Story]

I'm not the DM, but I'm sure that my request to add armor spikes to a Gnome Twist Cloth led to some confusion. (In case you were wondering, I managed to convince him that it's allowed, but I never got around to actually doing it).

[souridealist]

I was a player at the time, but once we straight-up beheaded our quest giver.

The DM thought fast - he was good - but I'm pretty sure we wrecked his planned pacing for the overarching plot.

[Sith_Happens]

Its a hard metal hand with no fleshy bits on it. It's going to feel kind of bony, it's not a fully filled out hand.

Last I checked metal does not feel bony. Maybe if she was wearing a glove, which I suppose she probably was, but in that case she needs to get it filled with something if she's going to be shaking hands with it on.


2. We're making a different choice.

Of all the characters I've ever made, zero would willingly make that choice except to save their own hide, only two would consider it even then, one of those would probably attack the captain out of spite, and the character I'm playing currently would show him no mercy the moment he implied that he ever has or would try to force that same choice on others.

So yeah, I think for most DMs this one is one of the most expected things possible.


3. Could it have been more obvious?

[Egregious breach of parley]

It was extremely not obvious, as a matter of fact. Parley is a Big Frakking Deal and anyone, especially a mariner, who violates it is basically the Worst Person Ever What Will Rot in Hell for All Eternity.


If she was undead, snapping her neck wouldn't even have killed her. :smallsigh:

I love player logic sometimes. At least they had the decency to resurrect her.

This, though? Classic player logic.:smallwink:

Which is somewhat similar to my example, though I was a player for this one:

We're getting ready to start the session, and two of my party members announce that they've devised a scheme to make some extra cash working as psychics/fortune tellers... The IRL kind. When at least two of their teammates (myself playing one of them) can actually read minds, predict the future, and/or correctly answer arbitrary questions. As could one of the would-be con artists herself is she picked the right spells, being a sorceress.:smallsigh:

To their credit, they were planning on using the spells they did know to make a show of things and convince their customers/audience... In a game with a trivially optimizable skill the express purpose of which is to discern whether you're actually casting the spell you say you are.:smallsigh::smallsigh:

And to top it all off? We were all 9th level and freshly-titled nobles at the time, a.k.a. already swimming in money.

It took me nearly five whole minutes to convince them why this was a horrible idea.:smallsigh::smallsigh::smallsigh:

[KnotKnormal]

Last I checked metal does not feel bony. Maybe if she was wearing a glove, which I suppose she probably was, but in that case she needs to get it filled with something if she's going to be shaking hands with it on.

you are correct, in thinking that they feel about the same through a glove, I know this because I work with both on a weakly if not monthly basis, which is why i described it as such. and she never thought to do so before because the only attention she was trying to divert by keeping it covered were the scared looks she would receive by walking down the street being part metal. she is in no way ashamed of the wound but she to avoid the public opinion about it, so she covers it.

[KnotKnormal]

I believe we are getting too caught up in the details of the stories here. instead of dissembling the actions of the DM, can we just tell and enjoy each others tails of folly? I started the thread to create conversation, not to be criticized about how i wanted to run my game, as I'm sure the posters did as well. Different DMs are pressurized by different actions of their different players. I for one am commonly tripped up by brutal honesty of my player to my NPCs. It's something I'm working on.

"Did you kill this man in cold blood?"
"...yes"
"...umm, ok then, I uh... I guess I arrest you now... You're under arrest"

Some DMs may be surprised that their players didn't smack the easy button that resulted in beloved NPC death. Or that the Player Decaped the plot NPC. (well done by the way, I wish I could have done that in a campaign I played once. the guy made attempts on my characters life but I couldn't prove it)

It's all a matter of opinion and personal style. So instead of trying to Rules layer the stories with the books, understand that the books are more like a guidance counselor then a dean. They'll point you in the right direction and they are really hand but they are not actually needed.

[ChaoticDitz]

I've GIVEN my DMs a few "um" moments in the past. I'll list my most prominent examples I can remember off the top of my head...

1: A Grapple Full of Innuendo
I was playing a grapple-focused Monk, and my party and I were fighting a giant tentacles monster-thing that I never actually found out the identity of. So what happened was the wizard got grappled by three of the tentacles at once, and I was thinking "crap, gotta get the wizard out of there". So I formulated a great plan and just hoped my DM would let it work instead of asking beforehand... Okay, okay, I know, not my greatest tactical move for this type of game. I decided to try grappling the last open spot on her so I could pull her out of the tentacles' reach (it seemed fairly sensible to me; the tentacles were at their maximum range grappling her, so I figured if I could pull her away, I'd either pull the monster with me or it would have to let go). However, upon saying I was entering a grapple with the wizard instead of the tentacles which were grappling her, my DM incredulously asked, "she's being held in place by tentacles and now what the hell do you think you're doing!?"

Naturally, I didn't get the implicit appearance of what I was doing fast enough, so I answered in the worst way possible: "I'm just taking advantage of the placement in this situation."

Cue the DM being disgusted, me suddenly getting what was up, and five minutes of laughter by the whole group. Good times.

2: Actually, That Was Plan A
Later in the same campaign (admittedly fourteen levels later), my character had died permanently under extenuating circumstances and I was now playing a Sorcerer necromancer. While my minion mooks did battle with the minion mooks of the current BEG, the entire party (minus the Psychic Warrior, who was leading the charge against the opposing mooks) fought against said BEG (an Erinyes with levels in Warlock and Hellfire Warlock) and his human Cleric ally who honestly served as little more than a bot to stave off the negative effects of the Hellfire abilities. It was an interesting magic battle at first, since my side had a wizard and cleric as well as me, so we were basically using magic ability after magic ability trying to exploit potential holes in the defensive buffs imployed by either side; this was the time at which the enemy cleric was most active, as he was actually actively opposing us and helping his boss, who was spamming invocations rather annoyingly well.

Nonetheless, with this being a powerful BEG and our group being complete non-optimizers, we realized we were going to lose the skill game eventually, so we devised a plan of offense to try to smash through the things we couldn't overcome otherwise... Or at least, that's what my friends thought the plan was. They used some more complicated spell tactics while my idea was a little more direct... I Quickened Magic Missile'd the guy before summoning an undead. The Cleric managed to Turn (plot twist, he wasn't evil) my undead so hard it was destroyed, and the BEG struck me with a fully powered Hellfire-boosted blast, and my character fell in the water, seemingly from getting KO'ed or killed. The DM assumed I was taking the opportunity to run away when I passed him a note saying I was swimming towards the shore... But he failed to remember his BEG was that way, too.

The others tried their fancy combos to disrupt his magic and managed to stave off quick defeats, but realized that they were delaying the inevitable. The wizard said aloud, "Okay, time for Plan B... Let's just say we're putting a very large amount of distance between us and that devil in the shortest amount of time possible!"

Then I burst out of the water behind the BEG (my flying spell was still active) and said, "Oh, actually, that was already part of the plan." I cast Trobriand's Baleful Teleport, beat his Will save, and sent said BEG to the extremely large Dead Magic zone we had passed through earlier in the campaign, which I had studied extensively during the time we were there (which, on an unrelated note, is actually how my character got introduced in the first place; my monk died saving all the puny casters while we were passing through the area, so I rolled up a Sorcerer who was studying the phenomenon of Dead Magic and had an entourage of raised minions to protect him and, eventually, the party).

The DM had a dumbfounded look on his face, but we never saw that guy again. I figure that without his buffs functional he got murdered by the many dangerous creatures in that area. As for the Cleric... Well, we had some fun with him :belkar:

[CIDE]

with a lot of our d20 games with rotating dm's use some house rules for insta-kill rolls. Which usually isn't an issue until dragons are on scene and only dragons (not even limited to true dragons). There's been several quest based encuonters we weren't supposed to fight in, defeat, etc. We were supposed to talk, sometimes avoid it and go a different direction, whatever. The problem is when dragons are the issue we have one player who constantly insta-kills dragons.

The worst time I think was a low level PC (6 or lower in level) against a Red Great wyrm and he took him out by throwing a pebble.

[TheMonocleRogue]

There's a DM in our gaming group that always comes up with the coolest homebrewed monsters for us to fight. He's a very consistent part of our group and we always have good laughs whenever we play his campaigns.

So we come to the BBEG, a lich who had an obsession with exotic wildlife from the past ten thousand years. Little did we know our DM created the most perverted lich ever. He would always greater scry on us and whisper reeeeally pervy stuff through the sensor. Things like "I'll give you my rod of wonders" *wink wink* though he would deny he was a pervert any time we called him out for it.

When we get to the treasury of the tomb where the lich kept all his goodies and find some great loot within trapped coffins. Further down the hall was a single area with a statue of each of our PC's lined up in a row on pedestals. Later on we found out they were all living people that he had kidnapped, shape-shifted, and turned to stone.

When we finally find him he says "You're all my pets now" and casts baleful polymorph on the most powerful member of our party (the cleric). She fails her save, becoming a tortoise. His minions included a variety of homebewed undead animals, including an undead auroch, an undead giraffe that could grapple people with its long neck, and a undead cassowary that dealt bleed damage with its kicks. There were also some undead cheetahs and apes he threw into the mix.

We were able to finish off all of the animals and kill the lich. His phylactery was an ancient shark tooth he kept attached to his headband of intellect. The cleric from that day forward was referred to as an honorary member of the turtle club.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Which is somewhat similar to my example, though I was a player for this one:

We're getting ready to start the session, and two of my party members announce that they've devised a scheme to make some extra cash working as psychics/fortune tellers... The IRL kind. When at least two of their teammates (myself playing one of them) can actually read minds, predict the future, and/or correctly answer arbitrary questions. As could one of the would-be con artists herself is she picked the right spells, being a sorceress.:smallsigh:

To their credit, they were planning on using the spells they did know to make a show of things and convince their customers/audience... In a game with a trivially optimizable skill the express purpose of which is to discern whether you're actually casting the spell you say you are.:smallsigh::smallsigh:

And to top it all off? We were all 9th level and freshly-titled nobles at the time, a.k.a. already swimming in money.

It took me nearly five whole minutes to convince them why this was a horrible idea.:smallsigh::smallsigh::smallsigh:
This reminds me of the friend of mine who wanted to make a bard that specialized in performing stage magic. Entirely as a joke, mind you. Still, I think it would be pretty amusing for the bard to whip out a deck of cards and ask people to pick one of them while the party is busy fighting monsters, then making the cards appear on the bodies of the creatures that are being fought. Granted, that's 'street magic', but I always pictured that character concept as doing bardic performances along those lines in combat, in addition to the more theatrical stage magic.

I was not the DM for this, but I was in a game once where the player party was trying to retrieve an artifact from an ancient stone structure that was very high in the sky. The dungeon was, I believe, towers arranged like this, with a sky bridge in the middle. +---+ Each point of the plus not connected to the sky bridge was a tower. Each tower was a different room and in varying stages of collapse.

There was a new weird goblin PC that lived in the area around the base of this dungeon, who was intended to join the player party. When the party showed up, one player exploded a keg of gunpowder found in a cannon/ammo room and damaged the stone work, which made the new PC angry.

He proceeded to 'save' his home from the menace of the invading party by trying to explode and collapse one tower with the party in it, trying to trap an unrelated, single PC in an unsafe room (I almost fell a thousand feet to my death as the floor collapsed), deliberately knocking pieces of the skybridge out to try to make people fall, and so forth. By the end, he was flying around like a lunatic, trying to fight the party head on once his various tricky attacks failed.

He did way more damage to the dungeon than the original PC did to cause him to go crazy. Towards the end of the session, most of the dungeon was destroyed and the new PC was dead. (This is not the only time that player ended up being killed by the party in their introductory session.) I think for the DM, this whole session was an "Um..." moment for him.

[grarrrg]

The worst time I think was a low level PC (6 or lower in level) against a Red Great wyrm and he took him out by throwing a pebble.

This (http://friendshipisdragons.com/comics/338) comes to mind...

[KnotKnormal]

This (http://friendshipisdragons.com/comics/338) comes to mind...

Our group calls those "Duct-Tape and Bubble-Gum Plans" DBPs if you will. I also love it when a player stands up and sais "I'm about to do something profoundly stupid!"