Grit Your Teeth Moments

[Rev666]

Okay just a little question: what's the most grit your teeth, run of things going wrong you've ever encountered in 1 session?

For me it was a game we started some weeks back. We'd successfully retrieved crates of spice for a Halfling merchant guild that had been stolen by goblins (Shattered Gates campaign). As a result the Halflings said they owed us a favor and sent us on our way. We'd just leveled up and wanted to spend our loot and have a weeks downtime. The Chaotic Neutral cleric (who had no specific god) decided to go to the middle of town and give sermons every day for a week. No big right?

Wrong.

First off he decides to preach about the benefits of a different god each day (offering worship to Pelor one day, kord the next). Okay fair enough, he's promoting belief in the gods that help you as you need them.

Except the money he gets from donations he decides to keep and spend on potions for our next adventure. Naturally the Olidammara worshipers hear of this, go to ask for all the money he's made (their share plus compensation) in a dark ally and he decides to attack. When he regains consciousness he's lost his equipment, dignity and the little finger on his left hand.

He shows up and tells us he was mugged but skimps on details. Eventually a guard sees him, asks what happens and we tell him that our friend was mugged. This guard takes him off to be questioned and once again he's vague on details and the guards are suspicious (he said he was a worshiper of Pelor yet mentions giving sermons to different gods). They eventually get the High Priest of Pelor from town who denies knowing him and now he's questioned under divine magics. He admits to offering worship to Olidimamara sometimes (he had the trickery domain) and they arrest him for it as well as lying to the guards and absconding with church donations.

We're told he's got to go through the penal system and the courts which could take weeks. We're a bit concerned as time is of the essence for our next quest (which we received on day 7) when 2 days later an elf wizard walks in with the cleric and says a favor has been called in to speed the trial up and that hes the clerics parole officer (it was a way of getting a new character in).

So the fun ends there right? We use up our favor within 2 hours real time of getting it and that's the end of it right?

Nope.

We go to our next adventure and the cleric get's himself killed in the first encounter we have thanks to 2 crits where the DM rolled max damage for 1 and 1 off max for the other.

So in short the cleric used up our favor, made us look like a thief's associates and then dies before having chance to make it up to us.

[The Grue]

I'm confused. Is the Grit Your Teeth Moment having wasted the favour on a party member who died to random chance, or the fact that polytheism is apparently a criminal offence?

[Beowulf DW]

I think that was multiple Grit Your moments in one story.:smallconfused:

[BrokenChord]

That story was a grit your teeth everything. Also, I think polytheism wasn't the illegal act, it was getting religious donations and misusing them.

Hm, teeth-gritting stories of mine... Aside from the many antics of every Bard player ever, I can't think of any.

[MrUberGr]

Party of optimized PCs (yet not optimized party), vs optimized NPC party. That is:

PC party:
1 Archer Ranger
1 TWF Ranger
1 Wizard that is not entirely controlling things, and
1 Fighter that is more of a striker

NPC:
Barbarian
Warlord
Fighter
Wizard

The setup was

Wiz-War-Fi-Bar
.........vs........
Arch-Wiz-Fi-TWF

So we start 10 squares apart in an arena. The initiative is one of them one of us, up till the last person. So, the enemy fighter goes first, and charges the archer, locking him to place, with marks and stuff. Then it's our fighter who decides to go for the enemy wizard.... The barbarian charges the TWF and knocks him out with the use of his action point and a command from the warlord.

So all in all we started 3v4 with 1 striker pretty much locked down, and an enemy barbarian on the loose.

We managed to survive because the fighter's intelligence suddenly dropped to 2 and he as doing basic attacks against summons, and our "defender" killed the enemy warlord.

Edit: That's from our latest session, we've had plenty such moments in general.
Edit 2: Sorry for bringing 4e content here. Being the archer I was going nuts during at that time and it was very recent, so I thought I'd share.

[justiceforall]

My player is a ranger on another plane, solo adventure accompanied by a weak spirit (NPC companion - story not mechanical). He gets into a fight with a nasty, nasty outsider, and after a savage fight manages to get it within one hit of downing it. Then it drops him to negative hp with another hit...

The spirit continues fighting the outsider whilst the ranger bleeds on the ground. After two rounds, the spirit finally manages to hit the outsider for the last two points of damage, and it vanishes. The player yells with victory... until he realises the spirit can't heal him or stabilise him.

-6
-7
-8
-9...

Passes stabilisation check. Rolls to recover hp... pass. I roll the random monster checks in front of him. No monster. No monster. No monster...

A couple of days later his character regains consciousness and limps off to heal himself.


I've never seen anyone so stressed in DnD. :)

[Rabidmuskrat]

Adventure is on a boat as we are playing a group of pirates. A new player wants to join our merry band as a Swordsage so the DM has his character float up in a barrel. We rescue him and relive him of all equipment and moneys (pirates!), the idea being for him to win our trust slowly or prove himself somehow, eventually.

As our ship gets involved in an encounter involving boarding another ship, he sneaks off from the deck-scrubbing duty we had assigned him to and goes to steal back his stuff while the rest of us are distracted. He finds his weapons and armour, but decides to get greedy and ALSO find his money. Eventually he gets to the only locked door on the ship and opens it by throwing something through it.

It is at this point, as he steps into the rather dark room, that he discovers our guardian: a legendary snake that our druid had managed to CALM on or around level 6 and that we kept happy by feeding our kills every once in a while. As he was level 9, the new player figured he had a decent chance to fight his way past the beastie and threw some fire at it, plinking at its health. The snake promptly bit, grabbed and constricted him for about 90% of his hp, all in 1 round.

None of us were close by to tell the snake to back off, but some of our NPC crew members had found him there by this point. Unfortunately, they were even more scared of the snake than we were and ran to fetch one of us, preferably the druid. It would take numerous rounds for that person to arrive, however, and by that time there would be precious little left to save.

The Swordsage had but a single play left: a stunning attack. However, his DC was 18 and the snake had +18 on its fort save, and the player didn't know this.
"What's the DC?" the DM asked as he readied to roll the save.
"18" the player replied.
The DM rolled and burst out laughing as he saw the results of the dice.
"You do realize the snake has a fort save of 18, right?" the DM asked, still laughing, and I saw the player go very pale. "Guess what I rolled, though. Nat 1."

The player rolled the maximum duration for the paralysis - 4 rounds. When the DM told him that he could now coup-de-grace the snake about 3 times and hope that is enough to kill it, the player responded:
"I'm not taking the chance, I'm out of here!" and ran out the door and up the steps.

Our story is not finished though. You see, the snake had poisoned him with a particularly nasty d8 con poison and its second tick was coming up. If he failed the save (very likely, since his con was already <10 due to failing the first tick) and we rolled 3 or higher on the con damage, he was DEAD. Not unconscious, but well and truly dead.

As he reached the deck, he found me (the captain), our wizard and our beatstick waiting for him, having already been told what had happened by the sailors. The DM kept exact track of rounds passed as we grilled him, lectured him on the pirate's code and bickered amongst ourselves about what to do with him. Eventually, as there was 1 round left before the poison would trigger, I cast lesser restoration on him the only way I could - by stabbing him with my sword. My sword was a legendary weapon and could cast lesser restoration by stabbing someone. Of course, I never bothered to inform the Swordsage. All he saw was the Captain trying to stab him, so he attempted to dodge, much to the player's dismay (who knew). Luckily for the player, I stabbed true and my damage was low enough so as not to kill him regardless.

The poor player had to go take a smoke break after all that, but the rest of us were tearing our sides in laughter during the whole ordeal

[The Grue]

Adventure is on a boat as we are playing a group of pirates. A new player wants to join our merry band as a Swordsage so the DM has his character float up in a barrel. We rescue him and relive him of all equipment and moneys (pirates!), the idea being for him to win our trust slowly or prove himself somehow, eventually.

As our ship gets involved in an encounter involving boarding another ship, he sneaks off from the deck-scrubbing duty we had assigned him to and goes to steal back his stuff while the rest of us are distracted. He finds his weapons and armour, but decides to get greedy and ALSO find his money. Eventually he gets to the only locked door on the ship and opens it by throwing something through it.

It is at this point, as he steps into the rather dark room, that he discovers our guardian: a legendary snake that our druid had managed to CALM on or around level 6 and that we kept happy by feeding our kills every once in a while. As he was level 9, the new player figured he had a decent chance to fight his way past the beastie and threw some fire at it, plinking at its health. The snake promptly bit, grabbed and constricted him for about 90% of his hp, all in 1 round.

None of us were close by to tell the snake to back off, but some of our NPC crew members had found him there by this point. Unfortunately, they were even more scared of the snake than we were and ran to fetch one of us, preferably the druid. It would take numerous rounds for that person to arrive, however, and by that time there would be precious little left to save.

The Swordsage had but a single play left: a stunning attack. However, his DC was 18 and the snake had +18 on its fort save, and the player didn't know this.
"What's the DC?" the DM asked as he readied to roll the save.
"18" the player replied.
The DM rolled and burst out laughing as he saw the results of the dice.
"You do realize the snake has a fort save of 18, right?" the DM asked, still laughing, and I saw the player go very pale. "Guess what I rolled, though. Nat 1."

The player rolled the maximum duration for the paralysis - 4 rounds. When the DM told him that he could now coup-de-grace the snake about 3 times and hope that is enough to kill it, the player responded:
"I'm not taking the chance, I'm out of here!" and ran out the door and up the steps.

Our story is not finished though. You see, the snake had poisoned him with a particularly nasty d8 con poison and its second tick was coming up. If he failed the save (very likely, since his con was already <10 due to failing the first tick) and we rolled 3 or higher on the con damage, he was DEAD. Not unconscious, but well and truly dead.

As he reached the deck, he found me (the captain), our wizard and our beatstick waiting for him, having already been told what had happened by the sailors. The DM kept exact track of rounds passed as we grilled him, lectured him on the pirate's code and bickered amongst ourselves about what to do with him. Eventually, as there was 1 round left before the poison would trigger, I cast lesser restoration on him the only way I could - by stabbing him with my sword. My sword was a legendary weapon and could cast lesser restoration by stabbing someone. Of course, I never bothered to inform the Swordsage. All he saw was the Captain trying to stab him, so he attempted to dodge, much to the player's dismay (who knew). Luckily for the player, I stabbed true and my damage was low enough so as not to kill him regardless.

The poor player had to go take a smoke break after all that, but the rest of us were tearing our sides in laughter during the whole ordeal

So in this story, it's the new guy who's gritting his teeth right? I don't blame him at all.

[Spore]

First of all the following story has been made on my personal request and the DM did a solo session just for me. Don't feel sorry for me but share my feelings.

So my character and his companions were in an underground dwarven city besieged by undead for centuries. One of our PC's quests (as well as his dead cousin) was to uncover the reason for ongoing undead activities and finding a solution. We went in there with high spirits, eager to help. The party consisted of an Paladin, a CN Dwarven Barbarian (a Non-Dwarf in their eyes, not worthy of respect), an CG Half-Fey Sorcerer and me, an at the time CG Rogue.

The others defeated countless undead and freed a huge cathedral with a library possibly containing a solution. Also an undead clerical dwarven lich who promptly was killed by a zealous Paladin. So we're back in the city again and instead of being generally nice to us the Dwarves are "less suspicious" and even at court they just are not happy. I know their situation is grim but my character didn't feel rewarded enough. After being imprisoned for several weeks in an pocket dimension by the lich, his grudge was huge. So he decided those Dwarves to not deserve the items they have and doom themselves (we had to pass high Diplomacy checks for them to even accept our help). So I decided to rob the city blind, leaving the last of the Dwarves helpless and being forced to live on the surface as their much clever relatives already did.

I sneak into the weapon smith's shop, past 3 CR 8 traps, past the snoring dwarf and his infant son (the DM's ineffective pledge to me not to rob the father) into the treasure vault. There I see my target item, a bow worth 8.000 Gold. But wait, there is more. Being a greedy bastard, I try to open the chest. The chest grabs me, revealing it's a mimic and exclaims to his master. I try to stab it in panic then get loose. I grab the bow and run ... right into the infant leaving it mortally wounded behind.

Yes, I was interrogated in the same night. Yes, they chopped off some fingers after some diplomacy checks to keep my right hand. After all that going to smoothly I screw it up in the last second...

After that I am bitter about rogues. You can't play a classical thief believable in an adventuring group without gaining general distrust. You are always accused of the worst things (I didn't rape your wife, she fell for my Diplomacy check!) when you only did the second-worst. I love being a rogue but just not in Pen and Paper... I am deeply frustated with rogueish characters and changed my character to an divine character since they are much more grateful to be played.

[Rev666]

I'm confused. Is the Grit Your Teeth Moment having wasted the favour on a party member who died to random chance, or the fact that polytheism is apparently a criminal offence?

It was that a group favour was used up because of a cleric who tried to keep donations for himself. And polytheism isnt illegal but admitting to worshiping the thief god (which is slightly taboo) after having claimed to being a worshiper of only pelor made the church upset.

[MesiDoomstalker]

This is 4e.

In a random dungeon to get a random MacGuffin the random NPC wanted for random reasons (the GM wasn't too keen on saying anything in certain terms. We weren't even told exactly what the MacGuffin was just "The NPC tells your characters what it is"). We enter a huge cavern in what was clearly a Kobold den. We were confused for all about half a second till a giant log comes running towards us and plow through us for quite a significant chunk of damage. I should mention there was no dice rolling, requested or behind the screen. The trap was tripped and there was nothing we could do about it.

So the cavern fills with several dozen Kobolds that the DM assures are Minions. They are standing about 30 squares away across the completely empty cavern. Luckily someone passed their Dungeoneering, so they quickly figured out the entire cavern is trapped to high heaven. I'm playing a Mul Battlemind, and I've got a whole slew of teleporting and levitating powers, so I spam those to avoid every trap between me and the group of minions. I then use my one AoE power (which was a Daily), that encompassed about 2/3 of the group of Kobolds. I roll, get a 19 on the die. No Kobolds fall. Which means 1 of 2 things; either the Kobolds had insane Fortitude to avoid that, or none of them were actually Minions and survived the damage.

But I'm not done! The party carefully navigates the cavern, closing the gap in 2 rounds with minimal trap interference. In those turns, I manage to drop 2 of several dozen Kobolds (who are definitely not minions at this point) while only getting hit once (I used most of my Utlity's to buff/avoid damage). So the party finally joins the fray and the pressure is off my guy, who's nearly running on empty of useful powers. The entire group is ravving about how badass I'm being thus far. One Kobold charges the Wizard, who's sitting just above Bloody because of the Unavoidable Trap. I see my chance, using Lightning Rush (and spending my last 2 PP to not burn up my Standard Action). For those who don't know, Lightning Rush lets me attack an opponent attacking an ally as a Imm. Action and by spending 2 PP I don't take up my next turns SA.

So I Rush the Kobold, and drop it, saving the Wizard (apparently it was a crit and would have dropped the Wizard to unconscious. For sure, they were not Minions). The DM gives me a death glare and says "Kolbolds don't like when Dwarves move more than them." The entire group of Kobolds pull out Spears and chuck them at me (which they didn't use when I was fending them off for 2 full rounds solo). Out of 23 attacks, 8 of them are crits and only 1 misses. My Battlemind drops for full (the Cleric had healed me up to full when he reached me) to -40%.

The battle got much much easier after I fell, as every Kobold dropped in 1 attack, even ones I didn't hit before. The entire campaign fell apart the next session.

[LordBiscuit]

Mine is player related in a rather generally madcap campiagn. My most gritworthy moment was a session derailment.

Essencally it boiled down to a new player, a fighter used out of character knowledge to try and kill the barbarian* during a counail meeting of the party in regards to dealing with a dragon. Needless to say it descended in a brawl of the fighter and the bard against everyone else. As they were fighting in a keep, the guards came and attempted to make everyone calm down.

Sarrender? Nope he jumped through a 10 story window, then tried to climb back up the tower when the guards were naturally curious about how he fell out of a 10 story window. The only thing that broke that awkward deadlock is when the black dragon showed up and proceeded to trash the village, only the druid didn't fail the DC to flee and ended up being killed when he tried to talk to it.

This started a fruied between the two, the session afterwards was filled with a lot of messing around by him just trying to avoid going on the quest with the dwarf, and ended after a scuffle ended up with him and the bard jumping in a river, and both drowning, largely because we had lost the will to put up with the constant interupt brought up. It's a much longer story then I care to talk about.


*He had perfectly valid reasons for doing so, as the Barbiarian was a crafty, power hungry psychopath whom murdered two other members of the party in an isolated location and turned up to the meeting after cleaning up. While it was strange for them not to be present, we had no reason to suspect that our friendly commrade would have murdered any of our friends, though we would inevitably find out/figure it out, that lead to his death.

However it was the timing of the attempt, nor the lack of any indication things were off that lead to it being a bad thing. Right action, horrific timing and no communication at any point, aside from a "I don't like him, so I draw my sword and attempt to kill him right here." The lack of compelling evidence left me, the elven wizard, silent as I wondered whether their limited lifespans were for good reason

[TheMonocleRogue]

Every time I play the wizard and don't put blast/SoD spells on my spell list, my party calls me out on that fact whenever we enter combat.

My goal is to buff, debuff, and overall support my teammates by making their job easier. The damage a caster can deal is dependent on the BBEG and his thugs missing their saving throws. AC is much easier to penetrate than spell resistance, and there is also the issue of enemies completely immune to my magic. Perhaps you have a better excuse as to how you were unable to out-DPS a wizard whose damaging spells only deal their full damage 30% of the time.

I mean, dealing 30+ damage with a fireball is cool n' all, but it won't make a difference once enemies start having more than 10 HD.

[Osiris]

Do you mean annoying level one situations? I have one, my first game
I was an inexperienced blaster mage, and we were unoptimized. It was our first game, OK?
We had to fight off 6 goblins and a 3rd level Kobold Sorc. We leveled. After that, I asked the DM the ECL of the adventure. He checked.
1 to 3
In another room, the odds were stacked. Final results, me at -9, cleric at -9, barbarian at 1 because of Rage HP.
The campaign died away shortly after.

Worst game ever. Can't believe we didn't die.

[Spore]

Do you mean annoying level one situations? I have one, my first game
I was an inexperienced blaster mage, and we were unoptimized. It was our first game, OK?
We had to fight off 6 goblins and a 3rd level Kobold Sorc. We leveled. After that, I asked the DM the ECL of the adventure. He checked.
1 to 3
In another room, the odds were stacked. Final results, me at -9, cleric at -9, barbarian at 1 because of Rage HP.
The campaign died away shortly after.

Worst game ever. Can't believe we didn't die.

RNGesus was on your side.

[Osiris]

RNGesus was on your side.

RPGesus, you mean :smallbiggrin:

[MesiDoomstalker]

RPGesus, you mean :smallbiggrin:

No, its RNGesus. As in Random Number Generator(esus).

[Oncoming Storm]

I've got one:

Last session, our group was setting up an attempt to reclaim one of our party member's ancestral castle from the -INSERT EVIL RELATIVE- who had stolen it. We were up against superior odds, magical firepower, and spent hours hashing out plans for infiltration and doing recon.

My char, an oracle, had a past with this relative, having been used as an assassin for a number of years before being betrayed and brutally tortured. As you might understand, he was a bit hacked off at that. During the torture, he lost his arm, and had to acquire an arcanotech replacement. I'd written a fairly substantial backstory for this char.

So, we decide to use an NPC who is trusted by the BBEG to get close enough to pull an assassination. We send a request for an audience, get an invite, and go to the island where the fortress is. the BBEG's minions poke us in highly uncomfortable places with detect magic wands and the like, but most of our questionable stuff is hidden in pathfinder pouches and the like, so the party passes just fine...except me. Now, I've rolled upwards of 30 on my disguise check, but SOMEHOW the guards just recognize me and stick me in custody. the DM then drops the kicker: he's changed my backstory (didn't even read what I wrote) without telling me, and my arm was ACTUALLY a gift from the BBEG for faithful service.

Of course, I had no prior knowledge of this, so my character had functionally just gone full retard for no good reason. The DM refused to allow us to remake our plan to make even a modicum of sense, and I was locked up and out of a lengthy combat central to my backstory and motivation without a single dice being rolled and some lame excuse about having been mindraped to forget my 'true' past (in a setting where we have met not a single caster above lvl 9). When I escaped, the DM informed me that my primary weapon (+4-equivalent glaive-guisarme) had 'broken' for no good reason. (he relented after everyone yelled at him for it.) I spent a solid 4 hours gritting my teeth and watching the rest of the party solve my character's main sidequest for him.