PC Stupidity Stories [Archive] - Page 2 - Giant in the Playground Forums

EndgamerAzari

2007-02-28, 12:21 AM

Ok, on the subject of PC stupidity and the players who cause it....

I love the D&D campaign I'm currently in. The DM's brilliant, and she's incredibly patient. I, however, am not. One of the players is a metagamer in the extreme. Some half-celestial race Thrallherd who, when faced with any sort of encounter, will do one of three things: 1. If it's hostile, try to dominate it (and then raise hell when the DM won't let him mind-control plot-central characters), 2. If it's just a common person, convert it to his weirdo religion, 3. If it has boobs, sleep with it.

Not to mention he more-or-less plays it as a game of numbers, as opposed to a ROLEPLAYING game. You know the kind: every little bonus from obscure loopholes. I play a rogue in the campaign, and I feel grotesquely underpowered due to this character and the spellcasters, not to mention the duelist with the natural 28 DEX.

/rant

P.S. And I should probably mention the 'door' made out of rare metal that the rest of the party spent around half an hour trying to figure out how to steal. The DM was eventually forced to declare it made of 'unobtainium'.

brian c

2007-02-28, 01:35 AM

not to mention the duelist with the natural 28 DEX.

...
*blink*
...

how so? 28? is this after a bunch of ability increases or some homebrewed race with +10 dex? at lvl20 you've gotten 5 increases, so either you're a very high level or the character has a very high racial modifier

J_Muller

2007-02-28, 01:40 AM

The DM was eventually forced to declare it made of 'unobtainium'.

Let me guess. That just made them try harder?

Swordguy

2007-02-28, 01:46 AM

Let me guess. That just made them try harder?

The better answer is "handwavium", which has properties of whatever plot requires. And it doen't set player into the "gotta obtain it!" mode. :smallwink:

Dervag

2007-02-28, 03:12 AM

DM: "Uh ... no need. The Landshark sizes you up as easy prey with it's cold, fully-functioning can see in the dark, twilight, and even better in this daylight eyes. It bounds toward you and leaps."

*DM rolls four +15 claw attacks, cause natural ones are posssible, all hit then tallies damage (total 8d6+32 slashing) compared to the Gnome's wizard HP*

Monk's Player to the former Gnome player: "So, whatcha gonna play next?" So the gnome tried to hide from the bulette by tiptoeing so as not to set off its tremorsense... in broad daylight? Wow. That takes the cake.

EndgamerAzari

2007-02-28, 10:31 AM

...
*blink*
...

how so? 28? is this after a bunch of ability increases or some homebrewed race with +10 dex? at lvl20 you've gotten 5 increases, so either you're a very high level or the character has a very high racial modifier

I think it had something to do with divine intervention, so maybe 'natural' is the wrong word. The point is it was his base score. Eh, I dunno. Either way it irks me.

And as for the unobtainium, there is still talk of going back and trying to get it. Shrinking it, melting the stone around it with acid, using this weird magical artifact on it.... all of which it has been determined would have a DC of NO, which is slightly less difficult to over come than PLOT.

Diggorian

2007-02-28, 12:44 PM

So the gnome tried to hide from the bulette by tiptoeing so as not to set off its tremorsense... in broad daylight? Wow. That takes the cake.

Yeah, that player's main contribution to the group is the funny stories we have from his choices that stem from the fact that he thinks he knows more than he actually does.

Collin152

2007-02-28, 05:29 PM

See children? That's how god punishes metagamers.

EndgamerAzari

2007-02-28, 11:57 PM

See children? That's how god punishes metagamers.

Every time you metagame, God kills a kitten.

The Orange Zergling

2007-03-01, 12:19 AM

Every time you metagame, God kills a kitten.

Then my group slaughters 15+ of them every session.

Me: "Why... are you going to the mayor's house?"
PC: "Because when we did that last adventure, orcs attacked..."
Me: "..."

Maga

2007-03-01, 12:58 AM

I'm running my first ever campaign at college as a part of the Role-Playing Games Society, and am doing a D20 Future build... however... stupidity is never limited to D&D.

So the set-up is this: My PCs are on trial for treason and for aiding the rebel force (named the Arakesh). One, who is also the Society President AND a remarkably stupid DM, is playing an alien female named Inia, who has already been stupid about this whole process: for example, when arrested, he tried to claim that "Inia" was speaking Spanglish to confuse the guards. (...Yeah. It's a futuristic society where most people can speak at least three languages, and he was convinced that the guards "shouldn't" know Spanglish.) I, on the other hand, am trying to convey three different NPCs at the same time- one who just wants the trial to be over with, another who insists on doing everything by the book, and the general, who wants them all to die for abandoning their unit.

Rather than being patient, "Inia" decided that she needed to insult the Chancellor of the Planetary Council. Given, I had decided that the woman would be on their side from the start, and wouldn't be interested in the trial in the first place, but when the player did that, I couldn't help it. After all, if you were the head of three intelligent species' united government, you wouldn't let some upstart mouth off to you in public, right? So the Chancellor gets very cold towards "Inia", and tries to remind her of her place. Rather than getting this hint, "Inia" overreacts and claims that she and the other PCs aren't getting a fair trial. As I'm just about to tell the player OOC that they need to calm down and remember that they are pissing off the most important person in the galaxy, "Inia" shouts that she's changing her plea to guilty.

"All right," I say, "so be it." For the rest of the session, "Inia" bitches about how his character hasn't gotten the chance to speak freely, while other PCs have. It was then that I felt my first moment of sheer "I should just kill this character now and save myself the future pain of dealing with this person". I was also very close to saying "You know what? For your insolence and attitude, the Chancellor orders you killed at dawn. An entire roll of duct tape is used on Inia's mouth, a bag is pulled over her head, and taped to her neck, and her ankles and wrists shackled. She is then sent back into her cell, blinded by the bag, and unable to free herself. When day breaks- which she can only tell by the opening of her cell door- she is dragged unceremoniously to another room and shot in the back of the head. If you shut up, that will all be a bad dream. If you don't, I will rip up your character sheet and everyone will pretend that you never existed!"

However, I didn't. And we got through it... eventually.

brian c

2007-03-01, 02:02 AM

I'm running my first ever campaign at college as a part of the Role-Playing Games Society, and am doing a D20 Future build... however... stupidity is never limited to D&D.

Hello, fellow member of a "D&D club" at a New England college (I'm at Boston University). Fortunately for me, everyone in the club who I've played with has been very sane, or if not then at least entertaining. I kinda want to try DMing a campaign, but I didn't feel like it at the start of the semester so I should probably email the president and ask her to send out an email to the members... or jsut not because I'm lazy. Who knows

Destro_Yersul

2007-03-01, 04:44 AM

Another one from the group I'm not part of but hear stories about:

The group has just finished killing a vampire spawn. It took them a while, but they did kill it and it turns into mist and vanishes. This ring falls out of the mist, as well as some other stuff. The party argues over the stuff and the rogue picks up the ring.
DM: You feel compelled to put the ring on. Roll a Will save.
Rogue: *Rolls, gets natural 20* I pass.
DM: You stop wanting to put the ring on. It starts whispering to you.
Ring: Put me on. You know you want to.
Rogue: Well, I'm not sure...
Ring: Come on! You want to be powerful, don't you? You want to have magical powers, don't you?
Rogue: Well, yeah, but...
Ring: Then do it! Go ahead, put me on!
Rogue: Ok. *puts it on*

So then he becomes a vampire spawn. He only has control of his actions because he passed the original will save, and the ring is quite obviously cursed. Well, no taking it off for him. The rest of the party thinks they should kill him and spare the world from him, and he's arguing that he's still in control. Then they get attacked by a bunch of orcs and the rogue takes them all on in single combat, and ends up killing three of the four. By himself. Needless to say, the party is freaked about this. In the end, they decide to cut the finger that has the ring on it off. Best part is, the rogue is a halfling. So, OOC, everyone calls him "Frodo of the Nine Fingers"

Maga

2007-03-01, 08:24 AM

Well, mostly everyone else in RPGS here at UMaine is sane, or at least plays at it very well... but we're being headed by the most self-absorbed and petty person I have ever come across as a DM, PC, and club president... and that's saying something!

Thankfully other than him, the other guys in the campaign are all good to me and tend to not freak out when I throw plot twists at them.

Vodun

2007-03-01, 06:11 PM

Ive only been playing for about three years, but only now do I realize that after I decided to DM a group of entirely new people. 15 year old boys, if that matters. (which it really, really does). One of my favorite events was when our barbarian (this guy will only ever ever play a fighter or barbarian and some sort of orc race) decided it would be perfectly normal to cuss out a very impulsive high-level gnomish Wizard, who happened to be a shopkeeper. One ray of enfeeblement later, and a pity raise from me, the DM, and he then decided that antagonizing the town guard trying to hire them to fight undead would be a reeeeallly good idea. One PC destroying session later, I let the party play as the town guard who had recently slaughtered a band of miscreants for the rest of the campaign

rankrath

2007-03-01, 07:44 PM

My only really good one: We (all lv 1; cleric, sorcerer (me), fighter, ranger) are on are shiprecked on an island and caught in a war between the natives.

DM: you see a group of sea elves standing around in a clearing, arguing about something.

Ranger: I charge! *Cirt**kill*

Me: ok, you have an high Wisdom right?

Ranger: Yep

Me: ok, I cast sleep

DM: passes saves

Ranger: Natural one.

DM: ok, it's the sea elves turn. one of them coup de graces the ranger

ranger:....................

later in same adventure: the ex-ranger, now a rogue decides to get revenge
while we were resting, he taker a bolt, stabbes me in the face. parts wakes up next morning, notice the ranger is down bolt, kill him, 5 minnutes later a group of elves ambush them, TPK from a CR 1 encoounter.

Stormcrow

2007-03-01, 08:54 PM

I'm on a break so i cant delve too deep into the details here but;

A frontal assault in Shadowrun.

Allways Stupid.

Collin152

2007-03-01, 09:11 PM

J_Muller

2007-03-01, 09:29 PM

I'm on a break so i cant delve too deep into the details here but;

A frontal assault in Shadowrun.

Allways Stupid.

Isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you can't just charge in? Because the enemy is always better than you in a straight fight like that?

PaladinBoy

2007-03-01, 10:08 PM

Not sure how funny this is, but I think it's pretty stupid.

The campaign was set in the Forgotten Realms, and following the "high level NPCs everywhere" theme I had created an epic elf archmage, with full stats. Of course, despite the fact that the players had no way of knowing this guy's stats, I wanted to show it to them, so I did.

This archmage basically ran all the elf communities in one of the (very large) forests. The players were taking orders from him and met him reasonably often.

About this time, the druid character decided that he was the type of druid that believed in fire's cleansing power. He decided that he wanted to convert to Garyx, draconic deity of fire and destruction. I told him: Sure. But you have to find a cleric of Garyx and prove yourself in order to formally convert. I thought this would throw him off. Boy, was I wrong. He snuck off one night, and because I didn't want to disappoint him, I let him find a cleric of Garyx.

However, I decided to have the cleric test the PC druid's devotion to Garyx's ideals. Basically, by destroying something significant. The cleric would even provide free transport to and from the proper location. I expected the druid to shy away when he saw the elf village. Nope. Apparently he thought the epic archmage wouldn't investigate the magic attack on one of the villages. This time, it was his turn to be wrong.

That player rolled a new character for our next adventure.

Collin152

2007-03-01, 11:06 PM

Hey, if you keep throwing him bones, he won't know the difference when it's laced with Arsenic.

rob

2007-03-02, 01:28 AM

Swordguy

2007-03-02, 08:49 AM

Stormcrow - god I love shadowrun... My current campaign ain't that good, but I've had my players blow up subway trains, hijack 18 wheelers, everything...

Yeah, frontal assaults don't work too good against corporate folks. Heavy machineguns fix players but quick...

For stupid Shadowrun players (including some of mine), go to the Dumpshock Archives CLUE files:

http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/index.php3

WARNING: Not safe for keyboards if reader is drinking.

XenoGeno

2007-03-04, 02:00 PM

Alright, this wasn't stupid (actually it was quite smart).

My dad was one of the original gamers, playing 1st edition. He told me how he was once playing a ranger who happened to have a helm of brilliance that had never been used. After all his allies had died, his ranger on low hps himself, he walked into a room full of various high-level enemies. He whipped out the helm, cast a fireball far away from him, but close enough to the monsters to really hurt, then tossed the helm into the blast. The thing went off, and cleared the room. The best part was my dad's ranger didn't get hurt once.

Collin152

2007-03-04, 04:32 PM

Yeah, a fresh Helm going off all at once is a nuke, man. A realy, REALY expensive nuke.

Nahal

2007-03-04, 05:08 PM

Aren't nukes by definition really really expensive? Retributive strikes aren't terribly cheap either

martyboy74

2007-03-04, 06:46 PM

Not in D&D. The biggest current nuke in the is, IIRC, the True Created anti-osmium. Something like 685 quintillion damage for an 8th level spell slot.

Nahal

2007-03-04, 07:27 PM

Not in D&D. The biggest current nuke in the is, IIRC, the True Created anti-osmium. So,ething like 685 quintillion damage for an 8th level spell slot.

I can't see that being allowed in DnD, seeing as it doesn't follow RW physics or chemistry. D20 Modern perhaps, but I don't think you get powers of that level.

Also wouldn't we be better off making real osmium to convert into railgun ammunition?

martyboy74

2007-03-04, 08:51 PM

685 quintillion points of damage. Are ye' daft lad?

Dark

2007-03-04, 09:01 PM

Not in D&D. The biggest current nuke in the is, IIRC, the True Created anti-osmium. Something like 685 quintillion damage for an 8th level spell slot.
So... what's the gold piece value of anti-osmium?

(And why don't you go straight for anti-neutronium?)

J_Muller

2007-03-04, 09:02 PM

So... what's the gold piece value of anti-osmium?

(And why don't you go straight for anti-neutronium?)

The whole anti-osmium thing was calculated out by someone (I don't remember who). I don't know why he went for osmium--it may simply be efficiency because of its density.

Renrik

2007-03-05, 04:20 PM

I was DMing for this guy who played a paladin. His paladin was the champion of his order, the greatest kight they'd ever seen. They gave him the mission to track down the Gold Dragon Orb.

He went on the mission. He tracked it down to a port city, where a young girl had inheirited it from her mother, a cleric of Pelor who had years ago won it away from an evil villain.

So he found the girl, broke both her legs (crippling her for life), claimed a victory for Heironious, enslaved a gold dragon with the orb, and flew back to his order's keep.

He actually wondered why they cast him ut of the order, and was pissed when he had to get an atonment spell and make reparations.

And then, to top it all off, he ended up being tricked by an obvious ploy, and gave the orb back to the villain, who then enslaved his gold dragon mount, and seriously injured him before using his flight of gold dragons to sack a large city.

NullAshton

2007-03-05, 04:27 PM

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 04:36 PM

WOO-HOO!

My creation is a legend! Look at the link in my sig for the Created Anti-Osmium Nuke o' Doom.

Osmium was used because it's the densest non-radioactive substance I could think of (and I think it's just the densest one period). Once you get into radioactive substances you start getting things with a critical mass, and I didn't feel like dealing with that.

I made a mistake in the math, though. Instead of quadrillion, it's quintillion damage.

And, no, there is no gp value for osmium (or anti-osmium) listed in any supplement anywhere. That's how the trick works with the Eschew Materials Feat.

I can't see that being allowed in DnD, seeing as it doesn't follow RW physics or chemistry. D20 Modern perhaps, but I don't think you get powers of that level.

Had the DMG not given a damage rating for 1lb of TNT (specifically), you'd be absolutely correct. Tough luck, though - if TNT works in D&D, that means chemistry and physics in general do. unless directly contradicted somewhere. They set the prescedent. :smallbiggrin:

Ranis

2007-03-05, 04:39 PM

Remember, Paladins aren't taught how to Detect Sarcasm.

Mewtarthio

2007-03-05, 04:46 PM

Remember, Paladins aren't taught how to Detect Sarcasm.

But they are trained to not break the legs of little girls who don't detect as Evil and then use an artifact that earns you the enmity of dragons for all eternity to dominate the most noble species of dragon in the world!

Seriously, he was ticked at having to Atone? He's lucky he got to atone at all! What should have happened was Hieroneus himself coming down and beating the crap out of him with his crap-beating stick and then sealing him in a package and mailing him to Vecna with a note attached reading "Merry Christmas! Have fun!"

NullAshton

2007-03-05, 04:50 PM

But they are trained to not break the legs of little girls who don't detect as Evil and then use an artifact that earns you the enmity of dragons for all eternity to dominate the most noble species of dragon in the world!

Seriously, he was ticked at having to Atone? He's lucky he got to atone at all! What should have happened was Hieroneus himself coming down and beating the crap out of him with his crap-beating stick and then sealing him in a package and mailing him to Vecna with a note attached reading "Merry Christmas! Have fun!"

Actually, simple possession of the artifact is enough to earn the enmity of dragons for all eternity. If you find one, you're supposed to destroy it and set the soul in it giving it it's powers free.

lumberofdabeast

2007-03-05, 04:53 PM

Not really PC stupidity, but me and a friend were looking through Complete Psionic and we noted the Planar Champion power, which summons some powerful celestials for characters of good alignment.

Like my psion...

Jonathon Hodges: Wait...
Jonathon Hodges: I can summon a tall, beautiful woman with the same alignment as me.
Jonathon Hodges: And at level 19, I can summon two of them at once.
Jonathon Hodges: *wink wink nudge nudge*
teh_kaen: <.<;
Jonathon Hodges: Wait, she's LG, not NG.
Jonathon Hodges: Well, still, same basic cause.
teh_kaen: X
teh_kaen: *XD
Jonathon Hodges: I sense psionics in the air...
teh_kaen: Wha?
Jonathon Hodges: Well, it can't be magic in the air, because I can't use spells.
Jonathon Hodges: I'd hit it.
Jonathon Hodges: If I could nail that damn 25 AC...
Jonathon Hodges: Hey, it's only 13 for Touch.
teh_kaen: Oi.
Jonathon Hodges: ;D
teh_kaen: If you can get past continual flame.
Jonathon Hodges: Hey, she doesn't have to use it...
teh_kaen: And the +2 greatsword
teh_kaen: And Brain Lock
teh_kaen: And ego whip
Jonathon Hodges: Well, it would have to be consenting, of course.
Jonathon Hodges: Wait, whip?
Jonathon Hodges: <3
teh_kaen: 2d4, DC19
Jonathon Hodges: Anyway.
Jonathon Hodges: You're just jealous because I can summon two beautiful women at once.
teh_kaen: Who are only interested in the destrction of evil.
Jonathon Hodges: Well, they presumably must have some sort of hobby...
teh_kaen: Destruction of chaos?
Jonathon Hodges: I was hoping for something more along the lines of "Wild sex with lecherous psions", but whatever.
teh_kaen: Well they do have a supernatural ability with tongues.
teh_kaen: Haha, these chicks are crazy
teh_kaen: "Sibyllic guardians believe a final war is on the horizon, a war that only they ... can sense. Divinations cannot confirm the sibyllics' belief in any approaching, ultimate conflict."
Jonathon Hodges: They could be right, you know.
teh_kaen: "THE END IS NIGH! YOU JUST CAN'T TELL! ONLY I CAN!"
Jonathon Hodges: "Sure thing, babe. I believe you. But hey, we may as well enjoy ourselves while we wait, just in case, right?"

Gave the conversation to a friend, and continued it just a little...

[23:57] ChenStormstout: Maybe you're the enemy, invading them?
[23:57] Jonathon: XD
[23:57] ChenStormstout: Or you're just sending in reinforcements.
[23:58] Jonathon: Nice to know I'll have company in hell.

RandomNPC

2007-03-05, 05:01 PM

a friend of mine had created a side quest and took over DM busines for a while so i could actually play. it went something like this.

*indoor encounter*
bro in law: i attack with my club. *rolls*
DM: you miss, probably because wizards have lousy BAB and str is your dump stat
Bro in law on next turn: i use my sling *rolls*
DM you miss by two, because your a wizard and you have a low BAB
Bro in law on next turn: i five foot in and use my club *rolls*
DM: no you don't, that is not an acceptable answer.
Bro in law: what?
everyone: dude, you're a wizard cast someting.

Nahal

2007-03-05, 05:03 PM

Re: Renrik's Paladin

Wow, there's stupid and then there's this. This has got to be almost as bad as the time my party purged most of the magic from the cosmos.

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 05:10 PM

Wow, there's stupid and then there's this. This has got to be almost as bad as the time my party purged most of the magic from the cosmos.

Which thing is stupid? This is a thread filled with 10 pages of stupidity, after all. :smallwink:

DaMullet

2007-03-05, 05:18 PM

Blah, blah, fishcakes About this time, the druid character decided that he was the type of druid that believed in fire's cleansing power. He decided that he wanted to convert to Garyx, draconic deity of fire and destruction. I told him: Sure. But you have to find a cleric of Garyx and prove yourself in order to formally convert. I thought this would throw him off. Boy, was I wrong. He snuck off one night, and because I didn't want to disappoint him, I let him find a cleric of Garyx.
when I first read this, I thought you were looking for a cleric of Gygax... That would be totally awesome.

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 05:43 PM

Since it was asked, I though I'd share something:

Assume that the earth is a uniform substance throughout: hewn stone. In reality, it's much less dense and hardy than this, but if we can blow up a solid rock earth, we can blow up the real one.

Now, the earth has a volume of 10,832,073,000,000,000,000 cubic meters. A 10x10x3 stone wall (300 cubic meters) has Hardness 8 and 540 hp, for a total of 548 points of damage capacity. 36,106,910,000,000,000 of those stone walls can fit in the earth. 548 hp x 36,106,910,000,000,000 = 19,786,586,680,000,000,000

19.8 quintillion hp damage to destroy the earth utterly. Now, actually, it would take a lot less to simply break it apart into large planetoid-like fragments. Probably less than half that.

A 50th level wizard generates 685,807,615,638,766,519,030 average damage with the Created Anti-Osmium Nuke. That's 685.8 quintillion damage. The planet's toast.

A 17th level caster creates 5.18 cubic meters of AO. This produces a yield of 10,084,142,769,981 ktons of TNT. The produces 10,084,142,769,981,696,156 grams of TNT. 454 grams is equal to 1 lb of TNT (3d6 damage). Dividing 10,084,142,769,981,696,156 by 454 we get 22,211,768,215,818,714 increments of 3d6. 22,211,768,215,818,714 x3.5 (for average damage) comes out to 77,741,188,755,365,419 hp average damage.

A 17th level caster does 77.7 quadrillion damage-easily enough to fragment the earth into pieces.

A wizard casting it at minimum level (9th) will do 41,149,567,976,661,361 hp damage on average. 41.15 quadrillion damage. Again, the earth is at least toasty. You're looking at severe climate and continental shift, and the assured extinction of everything on earth, as well as enough chunks being blown off it to put the earth off its rotational axis and probably tear itself apart via centrifugal force. No, I'm not doing that math.

As for the blast radius, well:
Well, when I figured out that for every foot AoE a nuke has, the yield will be roughly 0.01056kt. (1 megaton nuke = 2 mile blast radius).

The blast radius for the lvl 50 caster is 28,080,506,622,878,787 feet, or 53,182,777,060 miles.

The explosion reaches slightly more than halfway to the sun.

BOO-yah!

Surgeon General's Warning: NEVER ALLOW THIS COMBINATION IN REAL GAME PLAY. Swordguy cannot be held liable for destruction of game world, game system, or gaming group caused by the use of this spell.

Monseigneur

2007-03-05, 05:48 PM

*head explodes*

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 06:03 PM

*head explodes*

As does everything else. :smallbiggrin:

LotharBot

2007-03-05, 06:08 PM

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 06:13 PM

make sure you keep "quadrillion" and "quintillion" straight. You mention the 9th level wizard doing 2.5x what it would take to destroy the earth, but it's actually only 1/400th the earth's hp. And, as we all know from D&D, as long as it has 1 hp left it's completely unscathed.

I'm keeping them straight. The earth, in D&D terms isn't 'dead', true. However, a blast of that magnitude (RL physics-wise) is more than enough to eventually break the planet into 3-4 large chunks. Also, keep in mind that I'm significantly over-estimating the earth's hp by assuming the whole thing is made of solid rock. Magma has a lighter density than solid rock does, and so would have far less hp.

You are correct that I misspoke on the wizard doing 2.5x what it would take. That was from my earlier, pre-math-checked version. I just forgot to take it out. I can do that, though. See? Gone! :smallbiggrin:

I pasted in my second draft of this. I couldn't find it quick enough to post first. Serves me right.

LotharBot

2007-03-05, 06:16 PM

a blast of that magnitude (RL physics-wise)

What is this "real world" you speak of?

In the D&D world, dynamite does 3d6 damage, and anything with 1 HP left is still completely intact. Them's the rules.

XenoGeno

2007-03-05, 06:32 PM

Yay! Even from the grave, my dad can kill catgirls! And, like, millions too! Albeit indirectly.

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 06:34 PM

What is this "real world" you speak of?

In the D&D world, dynamite does 3d6 damage, and anything with 1 HP left is still completely intact. Them's the rules.

So if somebody hits a door with a greataxe and it has 1hp remaining, you wouldn't allow them to look through the great horking rent that the axe made in the door?

Hp damage to objects can have effects on the object. Same idea here. The consequences are just a little bigger.

And even the mage doesn't cause a mass extinction event (it's about 3x the power of the asteroid impact that killed the dinos and started 5 million years of rapid continental shift), you still did 41 quadrillion damage (there should be force AND fire damage in there). Show me a corporeal creature that can soak that, and I'll show you a hole in the RAW. Nothing short of a diety should be able to survive that.

brian c

2007-03-05, 07:11 PM

So if somebody hits a door with a greataxe and it has 1hp remaining, you wouldn't allow them to look through the great horking rent that the axe made in the door?

Hp damage to objects can have effects on the object. Same idea here. The consequences are just a little bigger.

And even the mage doesn't cause a mass extinction event (it's about 3x the power of the asteroid impact that killed the dinos and started 5 million years of rapid continental shift), you still did 41 quadrillion damage (there should be force AND fire damage in there). Show me a corporeal creature that can soak that, and I'll show you a hole in the RAW. Nothing short of a diety should be able to survive that.

When you're talking about damage in the quadrillions I think that might get up to deicide levels.

Nahal

2007-03-05, 07:24 PM

Mewtarthio

2007-03-05, 07:28 PM

Your average overdeity will likely have DR well below 100, and we're lucky to see more than a couple thousand HP. His only option is to avoid the blast, which can be done with magic or the Alter Reality SLA. He could also reconstitute himself if he had the right SLA, which wouldn't mean he survived so much as reformed after death. But yeah, catching that blast without evasion and a reflex save means doom even by RAW.

The Rogues will still survive, though. They'll just dodge the solar-system-destroying explosion. Best of all, per RAW, there's no rule explicitly stating that you really need air to breathe (correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you survive just fine in the Paraelemental Plane of the Vaccuum?), so the explosion would annihilated everything, including the gods, but leave a bunch of Rogues floating in space, laughing maniacally.

lumberofdabeast

2007-03-05, 07:39 PM

I think Monks, Scouts, and Ninja can, too, but I'm not sure...

Anyway, I tried to do the math, but I keep messing up somewhere, and I don't know where. Could someone smarter than me please check my numbers?

Osmium, and thus anti-osmium, is 22,610,000 g/cubic meter.
A ninth-level caster summons nine cubic feet with Psionic Major Creation. (My own little touch... With PMC, you don't even need Eschew Materials.)
Nine cubic feet is a cube about 2.0801 feet to a side.
2.0801 feet is equal to about .634 meters.
Thus, nine cubic feet is about .2548 cubic meters.
The final density is 5,761,028 grams of anti-osmium.
One gram of antimatter produces an 86 kiloton reaction along with the normal matter.
The total reaction of all the anti-osmium is 495,448,408 kilotons.
This is equal to 495,448,408,000,000 kilograms.
1 pound of TNT does 3d6 damage.
1 pound is equal to .4536 kilograms.
Thus, the reaction of the anti-osmium would deal 1,092,258,395,061,728.3951 increments of 3d6 damage.
This is a total of 3,276,775,185,185,185d6 damage.
This will do an average of eleven quadrillion, four hundred and sixty-eight trillion, seven hundred and thirteen billion, one hundred and forty-eight million, one hundred and forty-eight thousand, one hundred and forty-eight damage.
A one-megaton bomb has a blast radius of two miles.
Therefore, the range is one foot for every .0106 kilotons of damage.
Thus, this spell has a range of 46,744,189,433.9622 feet.
At each level, the damage will increase by 364,086,131,687,242.7778d6, the average damage will increase by 1,274,301,460,905,349.7778 damage, and the range will increase by 5,193,798,825.9958 feet.

The_Werebear

2007-03-05, 07:41 PM

Wizards and sorcerers would survive too. All they need is a scroll of Rope Trick and they are good, since the blast would only last 6 seconds or less.

Quietus

2007-03-05, 08:00 PM

Gotta love it.

"The world explodes, make a reflex save".

Swordguy

2007-03-05, 08:16 PM

What Reflex save? There's no Reflex save listed under Major Creation. :smallbiggrin:

There's a reflex save listed for TNT, but this isn't TNT (it's just using that as a baseline to determine damage). No evasion for the poor Rogue.

Oh, I'd probably fiat one if the rogue is within 5' of the edge of the blast radius though. Seeing as how that would put him in deep space (no air required, but space is still cold enough to deal damage every round...).

Oh, I tend to look at most overdieties like Great Cthulhu. You can do enough damage to "kill" him, then he reforms and eats 1d6 adventurers the next round as though nothing had happened...

Vaynor

2007-03-05, 08:58 PM

Me (DM): Ok, as you walk through the corridor two large rats jump out at you from the darkness.
Rogue: Ok, how much damage?
Me: *rolls*
...
*rolls*
...
...
...
*rolls*
Holy crap you died.
Rogue: :O

Turns out the rat instant-killed him. Three nat 20's in a row. :O

Now, another story:

Me: (gnome druid this time, wolf companion): Ok, I head down the hallway to explore. *rolls spot check* Oh, and my wolf is following me.
DM: You see a large hole blocking the pathway. There are no visible ways of crossing except for rope on the other side. Someone has to go down.
Paladin: Ok, I climb down into the hole (he's at fairly low HP)
*rolls climb check*
Dammit!
DM: Ok, you fall down and are knocked unconscious.
Me: Ok, I'm the only one who can heal (our cleric was absent from the session), so I'll head down there. *rolls climb check* Woot! I made it!
DM: *rolls silently* Ok, heal your friend, he's at -3 now.
Me: Ok. *heal*
Paladin: Thanks! *rolls climb check to get out, succeeds*
Me: *Rolls climb check to get out, succeeds also*
DM: What about the wolf?
Paladin: Wha...?
DM: The wolf. You said your wolf was following you.
Me: Ah crap. Sorry guys.
Paladin: I have the most HP, I'll go down and get him. *rolls, fails*
DM: Take 13 damage.
Paladin: Dammit I'm unconscious again! (this is a level 1-2 campaign btw)
Me: Hehe, I'll heal you. *climbs down* *heals* Ok, now lets hoist the wolf up...
Paladin: No way. That wolf is too much trouble, I'm not helping.
(The wolf had been a slight nuisance....)
Me: What!? Fine... I'll hoist him up.
DM: Dude, you're a gnome. He's almost twice your weight. He's your goddamn mount!
Me: Oh yah... crap. How deep is the hole?
DM: About 10 feet.
Me: My wolf is going to try and jump... *makes a handle animal check, succeeds*
DM: OK, the wolf tries to jump 10 feet in the air and.... *rolls* ... it misses, falls down, and *rolls* dies.
Paladin: Ha! Stupid wolf...
Me: Wolfy! (I forge the actual name...)
Paladin: Can we PLEASE move past this freakin' hole now?
DM: ....Yes.
Me: Awwwwww.

*sniff* I never saw Wolfy again... I think I ended up getting a bear after we finished. :smallbiggrin:

daggaz

2007-03-06, 10:45 AM

Death by rats. He should be proud. He should wear the T-shirt.

SpiderBrigade

2007-03-06, 11:28 AM

What would the shirt say, SQUEAK?

Oh, wait, Death BY Rats. Nevermind.

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-06, 04:51 PM

Wolfpwned

That was bullcrap. I don't think I'd be too soft of a DM to allow you to retcon the wolf going on autofollow and just jumping down someplace it might not be able to get out.

Mewtarthio

2007-03-06, 05:01 PM

That was bullcrap. I don't think I'd be too soft of a DM to allow you to retcon the wolf going on autofollow and just jumping down someplace it might not be able to get out.

You know your animal companion isn't Dominated. It can still think for itself. If you say "Follow me" and then trip and fall into a vat of acid, the wolf isn't going to jump in after you (heck, not even a Dominated guy would jump in after you).

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-06, 05:08 PM

You know your animal companion isn't Dominated. It can still think for itself. If you say "Follow me" and then trip and fall into a vat of acid, the wolf isn't going to jump in after you (heck, not even a Dominated guy would jump in after you).
Exactly. It was just stupid.

martyboy74

2007-03-06, 05:15 PM

Would a 2 INT count as stupid? (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wolf.htm)

Murongo

2007-03-06, 05:23 PM

DM: You enter the temple of elemental evil
Fellow PC paladin: I detect evil
DM:... you serious? Yes. The answer is yes.

JimmyDPawn

2007-03-06, 05:34 PM

Would a 2 INT count as stupid? (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wolf.htm)

That means it isn't capable of learning like most humanoids are.

It still has 12 wisdom. It would have common sense.

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-06, 05:36 PM

Would a 2 INT count as stupid? (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wolf.htm)
For an ordinary animal, it's the smartest they can get without a spell. So, no.

SpiderBrigade

2007-03-06, 05:42 PM

Yah, even for a humanoid Int 2 would mean drooling, idiotic, unable to even speak, etc... - but it doesn't mean "will walk off of cliffs because I'm too stupid to know better."

Demented

2007-03-06, 07:28 PM

Eh, it was only a 10 feet "cliff", and its master was down there. It could've tried to jump down, thought better of it, then slipped and fell.

(@Swordguy: There's nothing guaranteeing that all the anti-osmium collides with all the normal matter at once. The explosion would be more like a planetary-scale flame, as the initial detonation vaporizes the anti-osmium into a gigantic cloud that ignites spectacularly against ground and atmosphere. The greater explosion against the ground would push the osmium cloud, and much of the local atmosphere, into space. The Reflex save... 10 + 1 per 2 damage die.)

Vaynor

2007-03-06, 07:50 PM

Umm, here...

Heel (DC 15): The animal follows you closely, even to places where it normally wouldn’t go.

It wasn't imminent danger, and I rolled pretty damn high on my Handle Animal.

EDIT: Also, if it helps, this was at the start of my D&D career and we were all pretty much noobs. :smalltongue:

Diggorian

2007-03-06, 07:55 PM

Yeah, Int 2 wolf knows better. A little lower Int than the DM that killed the wolf with fall damage it couldnt have taken cause it didnt jump up 10ft (the minimum height of getting falling damage).

Here's a 2-for-1 I'll share with another stupid PC:

Star Wars D20 game. Heroes are trying to escape Imperials in their ship. They get into orbit and find a Star Destroyer blocking their hyperspace jump vector. While they're evading tractor beam lock, a PC making repairs in engineering decides to blind jump the ship to safety without any course plotting.

He makes every high DC skill check to set up the jump, even disabling built in safeties, with huge totals but fails every low DC check I ask him to make to realize how suicidal this is. He jumps the ship manually while in the planet's gravity well with no online safeties so the ship jumps inside out, TPK. :eek:

My stupidity, as DM, is that I could have reasonably ruled setting up the jump took longer than 1 full round per skill check. :smallannoyed:

Vaynor

2007-03-06, 08:09 PM

Diggorian

2007-03-06, 08:32 PM

It did jump 10 feet, it just fell. :smalltongue:

So it did jump out of the 10ft pit, then failed a Balance check and fell back in -- taking 1d6 damage that took the wolf to -10 HP? Sounds like Wolfy got cheated, but it's your sad memory :smallbiggrin:

Silkenfist

2007-03-06, 08:35 PM

Floor hit Wolfy critically?

Anyway, I know of exactly NO roleplaying system that handles falling damage remotely realistic.

Douglas

2007-03-06, 08:43 PM

Were there spikes on the bottom of this pit or something? Falling damage for 10 feet is 1d6, automatically nonlethal if you intentionally jump, and completely negated if you make a DC 15 jump or tumble check.

Vaynor

2007-03-06, 08:49 PM

So it did jump out of the 10ft pit, then failed a Balance check and fell back in -- taking 1d6 damage that took the wolf to -10 HP? Sounds like Wolfy got cheated, but it's your sad memory :smallbiggrin:

Hey, it was like 3-4 years ago. I'm really sorry I can't remember exactly how deep the pit was, or exactly how much damage he took. All I remember is he died...

DaMullet

2007-03-07, 06:51 AM

Alright, here's one from this weeks session.

The party consists of a Sorcerer (me, embarrassingly enough), a Rogue, and a Paladin. I've got the Celestial heritage feats from the PHBII, so when I picked my spells, I went thematically. Sadly enough, this left me with no direct-damage spells. The closest I came was Enlarge Person.

On with the story. The DM has this fairly odd plot where things magically appear and dissapear at random. One of the things that appeared was a hydra.

We're failing miserably at fighting this thing, because I can't do squat to it, the rogue has 5 health left, and the paladin was been rolling very poorly. Suddenly, it's the paladin's turn. and he gets a natural 20. He confirms. With a natural 20. And he confirms that. With a natural 20. This hydra which had been ROYALLY kicking our collective asses (us being underpowered and short one person to meet the CR) was instantly slain by the only person who hadn't hit anything yet that session.

But I still didn't have any combat-oriented spells.

Rigeld2

2007-03-07, 07:21 AM

But I still didn't have any combat-oriented spells.
Different thread, but combat oriented isnt the same thing as direct damage. Enlarge Person is definitely a combat oriented spell.

DaMullet

2007-03-07, 08:37 AM

Alright then, I didn't have MANY combat oriented spells. So sue me for semantics.

02youeng

2007-03-07, 10:46 AM

Hehe, my story, though I think it was the DM being harsh

Group of level 12 pc, human wizard [Khaliid, me], dwarven cleric [can't remember name, Doug], drow rogue [Dol'tax, Jase] and a drow fighter [can't remember name, Emma [yes, a girl]].

Black dragon appears. Cleric gets priority, then Khaliid, then dragon

DM: a large black dragon flies overhead. Roll priority!
Cleric: Right, I'm up. What shall I do?
Khaliid: Either kill it the slow, boring way, or kill it in one go
Cleric: How?
[me and Doug whisper]
Cleric: Hehe, I move into base-to-base, and cast slay living
[fails miserably]
Cleric: Bum
Khaliid: Baleful Polymorph! Into a sparrow, as you'd get a +4 to resist if it was another toad [one source of bets in our group was who'd win in a fight out of my familiar, a ferret, and various Baleful Polymorphs]
[rolls 20 to beat SR]
DM: Still, it's a 2 to fail...
[rolls 1]
[group roars in laughter]
[DM rolls Will Save: 19]
DM: Right, dragon sparrow is up, and he breaths acid on that wizard
[Khaliid dies]
[rouge searches my pockets, then kills the sparrow by throwing my dagger at it]

So you know, I thought that the dragon was in the air, despite the fact that the dwarf tried to use his instant-kill slap on it.

Swordguy

2007-03-07, 11:01 AM

Floor hit Wolfy critically?

Anyway, I know of exactly NO roleplaying system that handles falling damage remotely realistic.

Stargate SG-1 does a reasonable job. It's a Wound/Vitality system, and so the 1d6/10ft goes straight to wound points. So a 30' fall is gonna have a pretty good chance of killing the average character, or at least knocking then out and bleeding.

Rolemaster is fun too, but I don't need to take 25 minutes to figure falling damage for a 20' fall.

kamikasei

2007-03-07, 11:03 AM

Hehe, my story, though I think it was the DM being harsh

Yeah, what?

The target retains its own hit points.
...
The target loses all the special abilities it has in its normal form, including its class features.

geek_2049

2007-03-07, 12:24 PM

Grappling A Swarm

In a lowish level campaign we encountered a swarm of rats. The LE halfling monk tells the DM "I grapple it." The DM after a moments hesitation says "ok, make your touch attack." The monk succeeds. The DM says ok you snatch a rat out of the swarm, role your grapple check, the monk rolls a natural one, rat beats the monk in a grapple. The monk was infuriated that it lost to a rat so the next round the monk does the same thing and targets the same rat. The second go he succeeded in grapppling it. Before the monk's next turn the party dispersed the rat swarm. The party kinda focuses on the monk who is still locked in a grapple with a rat. The player tells the DM "ok, I am going to squish the rat." The DM says "ok but you have to pin it first though." The monk succeeds and pins the rat (at this point the rest of the party, players and characters are rofling). As it is obvious that the monk is about to destroy the rat my rogue retorts "Finally found something your own size, to pick on hmm?" The halling was none to fond of wisecracks about his stature and replied "I don't need to get rat guts all over me anyway." The party druid asked to hold it before the monk let it go, then cast Speak With Animals and offered to keep the rat well fed if he accompanied us on our travels and the rat accepted much to the chagrin of the halfling. Where ever we went we introduced the rat as "the rat that out grappled a halfling." Later on at midlevel the druid Awakened the rat which got really high rolls on its mental stats and frequently outwitted the halfling afterward.

Diggorian

2007-03-07, 03:47 PM

geek_2049

2007-03-07, 04:15 PM

I concur with ^, many of these stories are not the players fault but the DMs. My story was a player doing something stupid and everyone rolling with it including the player.

Gamebird

2007-03-07, 05:08 PM

I don't see what the problem is with the wolf story though.

Here's how I read it:
Guys are going down a corridor with the wolf following. PCs have hijinks involving a 10'x10'x10' pit they couldn't get around. Both PCs end up on the other side of the pit. The wolf is on the opposite side. The PCs how have a choice of 1) leaving the wolf there, 2) coaxing/commanding the wolf to jump the pit, or 3) going back across, getting the wolf, rigging a harness for it, lowering it to the bottom, getting yourself back across, then raising the wolf to the other side.

The PCs picked option 2. The wolf failed its Jump check, didn't clear the distance, and fell to its death (depth of pit, presence of spikes and hp of wolf are all immaterial).

It wasn't the best option, but maybe they didn't think of option 3. Maybe they didn't have enough rope. Most likely, I figure they didn't look at the odds Wolfy would make it, or they simply didn't expect to the wolf to roll that low on the jump.

It's not necessarily DM stupidity, though I agree a lot of these stories reflect that. (just like 90% of the "clever tactics" threads are about cheating)

kamikasei

2007-03-07, 05:30 PM

Here's how I read it:
Guys are going down a corridor with the wolf following. PCs have hijinks involving a 10'x10'x10' pit they couldn't get around. Both PCs end up on the other side of the pit. The wolf is on the opposite side. The PCs how have a choice of 1) leaving the wolf there, 2) coaxing/commanding the wolf to jump the pit, or 3) going back across, getting the wolf, rigging a harness for it, lowering it to the bottom, getting yourself back across, then raising the wolf to the other side.

The PCs picked option 2. The wolf failed its Jump check, didn't clear the distance, and fell to its death (depth of pit, presence of spikes and hp of wolf are all immaterial).

Nope; the PCs had to go down and get the wolf, and the wolf failed its jump check to get out of the pit, not across it. The wolf, "off-camera", followed its master by jumping into a pit it couldn't escape. It was already in the pit when the DM thought to mention it.

Gamebird

2007-03-07, 05:34 PM

That might be DM stupidity or it might not, but it's sounding more like DM fault. The wolf should have stopped at the edge, though a jump down, if his master was down there and didn't command him not to, is completely within a wolf's intelligence. Dogs do stupid stuff like that. If you go out to get something out of the car, they're going to climb into it, hoping you're going somewhere, even if you aren't. The wolf doesn't "know" the PC isn't planning on taking some unseen tunnel at the bottom of the pit.

But when the issue came up, the DM should have said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot about the wolf. Did you command him to stay at the top? Because otherwise he's going to jump down there with you."

Demented

2007-03-07, 05:40 PM

The way he described it, the wolf was in the pit (it made it to the bottom of the pit easily) and tried to jump out. In essence, the wolf managed to jump high enough to kill itself. Pretty fancy way to commit suicide, if I may say so myself.

Edit: Oh fie, I should post faster.

CHASE THE HERO

2007-03-07, 05:41 PM

wow man i thought we would have dropped the subject by now. and also, if they did blow up the world, managed to get a high enough reflex save to avoid it, then wouldent they need to make like a million more to avoid moving debris? and anything in no gravity wont slow down so a rock the seze of a ant, could possibly deal like 30d6 becouse the inertia od the blast would propel the rock thraight through them. not to mention there are also larger rocks outthere to worry about.

Ninja Chocobo

2007-03-08, 05:50 AM

Which means more easily-made Reflex saves.

Artanis

2007-03-08, 10:01 AM

I've read and heard alot of tales similar to Vaynor's, DaMullet's, and youeng's where perfectly reasonable choices (non direct-damage style wizard or well cast Polymorph) and minor mistakes (not telling your wolf to 'stay') are harshly punished. In some cases these result in amusing memories, in other cases players develope annoyingly paranoid playstyles, others still may leave RPing completely from a capricious GM.
This happened to me. It's the reason why, after the first DnD campaign I was in, it took a full FIVE YEARS to bring myself to enter a second, and it's the reason why I get so incredibly stressed over character creation and planning ahead even today.

It was a 2nd edition campaign. Dunno much more than that, only that it had THAC0. It being my first time, I asked for advice as to what would be an easy class to play, and the DM suggested Fighter. So, I chose a Fighter and started making my Fighter.

Now, I always liked using bows in RPGs like the Diablo series (the closest thing to DnD I'd played to that point...I toldja I was a noob :smallcool:), so after asking the DM to make sure a bow wouldn't totally cripple me or anything, I put all my points into Longbow, with one leftover point that I stuck into Short Sword, "just in case". I assumed that I would, at some point, get a bow.

I was wrong.

I got a Short Sword to start, which was alright, given the plot of that particular campaign. However, no enemies dropped bows, no chests held bows, and no stores anywhere sold bows. The other players got really cool stuff, and I didn't even get a mundane version of my primary weapon. So in my very first DnD experience, the DM saw to it that the thing I put a ton of points into turned out to be totally worthless, and what's worse, the other places I had put points turned out to be even worse, since it seemed at the time that if I hadn't put that one point into Short Sword, the DM might've been forced to give me a bow eventually.

So nowadays, character creation mostly consists of me being scared to death that I'm royally screwing myself over with every decision I make, no matter how reasonable it seems, and gameplay wasn't much better at the start. Thankfully, I've had a couple of really good DMs, and am finally loosening up to where I can (sometimes) actually speak without fearing that a TPK is the obvious, natural result of such presumption on my part.

Vaynor

2007-03-08, 10:11 AM

brian c

2007-03-08, 10:22 AM

Which means more easily-made Reflex saves.

You're gonna get a 1 eventually.

Nahal

2007-03-08, 10:54 AM

I'm not try'in to grill Vaynor over inaccuracy of rules. It just bothers me that alot of these tales actually show DM stupidity, not PC.

I've read and heard alot of tales similar to Vaynor's, DaMullet's, and youeng's where perfectly reasonable choices (non direct-damage style wizard or well cast Polymorph) and minor mistakes (not telling your wolf to 'stay') are harshly punished. In some cases these result in amusing memories, in other cases players develope annoyingly paranoid playstyles, others still may leave RPing completely from a capricious GM.

I've played and GMed for alot of those in the second category. They overreact to the everpresent crisises that the game presents by doing too much (blind jumping the ship) or being paralyzed into too little (sneaking past the Bullette). In there noob phases, some DM trained them this way through their rash judgements

I think my GM has learned himself out of the second category by playing with us. He's been an excellent world-crafter from the get-go and always uses his won campaigns (though may borrow wholesale from other areas as necessary). But the first two campaigns had such a low margin of error that it was pretty much decided from the get-go that the universe was doomed (though having at least one idiot in the party at all times didn't help matters). Third time seems to be the charm, though we are once again having to deal with the actions of a stupid/immature player almost getting us killed.

alchemy.freak

2007-03-08, 12:03 PM

Our rogue woke up a sleeping ogre, by massively failing a move silently check. Ogres are not light sleepers.

after this incident our rogue got the nick name "captain sneaky pants" for the remainder of the campaign.

KoDT69

2007-03-08, 12:43 PM

One of my players had a big DUH moment in this week's game. The cleric was alone encountered by 3 Rust Monsters. Now he being an experienced player, let alone his spell power that could have easily killed them, should have known better. The 3 beasts dissolved his weapon on the first part of the round, to which he angrily responded by smacking it with his shield. He failed the save on that too. Then I had to show him the book to prove it does say that if you strike the Rust Monster with metal, it's gotta make the same saving throw. He sure was mad :smallmad: The rest of us laughed hard, mainly because he also DMs a different campaign in which he used the same monsters against the other party. DUUUUUUHHHHH that was smart! :smallbiggrin:

Gamebird

2007-03-08, 01:15 PM

The ogre story reminds me of a less-than-bright moment for the rogue in one of my games. The PCs were headed towards a goblin settlement with the intent of destroying it. They knew that up ahead was a ford and on the other side, a mile away, was the settlement. They decided to send someone up ahead to scout the ford. Initially they were going to send the wizard's familiar (an owl), but the rogue begged for the opportunity to finally use his roguish skills.

The rest of the party decided to let him have his moment. The wizard cast Invisibility on him and the rogue took off towards the ford. The first several hundred feet I didn't ask for any rolls, but as he approached the ford there was a half dozen goblin women out grubbing around under the trees digging for roots. So I asked him to roll Move Silently, since I was going to auto-succeed his Hide rolls due to Invisibility. That's when he discovered he'd maxed his ranks in Hide, but never put any into Move Silently.

Swordguy

2007-03-08, 01:36 PM

Ooh! Ooh! I've got one!

See, I'm at work, and one of my players JUST called me. He said that they're tired of doing a bunch of plot-critical stuff, and they heard on the web about this (direct quote) "Crypt of Horrors thingie".

Me: You mean TOMB of Horrors?
Doesn't Know Any Better Player: Yeah! That's it! I called around, and we'd all like to go play through the Tomb of Horrors!
Me: Um...'K. On an unrelated note, you don't happen to have enough printer ink for a bunch of fresh character sheets, do you?
Poor Sodding Player: Sure. Why?
Me: Oh, no reason.

This one's ALL on them. :smallamused:

KoDT69

2007-03-08, 01:39 PM

The Tomb of Horrors was good clean fun for the whole party! :smallamused:

Swordguy

2007-03-08, 01:44 PM

The Tomb of Horrors was good clean fun for the whole party! :smallamused:

This group:

lvl 9 bard diplomancer whose sole combat skill is to be bad at archery
lvl 9 Kai Lord (Ranger3/Psion3/Fighter3) with crappy OGL psi and a quarterstaff
Fighter4/Wizard3/Spellsword2 who specializes in evocation and fights 1-handed with a single longsword and no shield

No heals past the bard, no arcane magic besides direct damage, no divine magic at all, and no trapfinding ability. They want the ToH.

Yeesh.

Penguinizer

2007-03-08, 01:45 PM

I dont know much about it. But I see them getting slaughtered.

The Great Skenardo

2007-03-08, 01:55 PM

Druids are versatile characters; well-balanced between melee and magic with a lot of tricks thrown in. However, curiosity was the undoing of a particular druid of my acquaintance. The group was wandering in the mountains of a campaign world where the northern mountains were the single-most foreboding feature known of, and stories abounded of magical kingdoms and endless mountain ranges and horrible alien landscapes. I tried dropping a few subtle hints that they shouldn't be there yet (in the form of difficult obstacles and fantastic creatures. i.e. a Gerivar, a half-mile wide caldera that fills with Etherial Swarms every night, a strange purple forest full of strange shadow/plant creatures that attacked them every night while they were within a 20-mile radius...), but they persisted.
Maybe I should have taken them aside and flat-out told them that they should go South again instead, but they seemed to keen on exploring further. (this despite two deaths in the party in a week) In any case, they wandered into an area that was a coterminal point with Mechanus (they came to notice that the sky was filled with colossal turning gears covered in cities and.) And then they wandered into a city populated by Visilights. I tried to go easy on them in this respect: I made it pretty clear that the Visilights were trying to paralyze them (the druid was scouting ahead and tried to talk, at first).
So this is where curiosity kills the druid. The visilights were met at the perimeter of a city a few miles in radius populated solely by constructs with a shining spire of golden gears in the center. Despite the attack upon his person, the druid flies in wildshape to the center of the city to investigate the tower. In the center of a gigantic city. Whose denizens have already been hostile to him once before.
He then lands in the center square, and knocks on the door of the tower.

Gamebird

2007-03-08, 02:03 PM

That *is* pretty stupid, but there are times when you need to stop the game and talk with people out of character. Even then, there are a lot of people who will insist their character goes on for the TPK. I had a group like that. After interrogating a goblin about what monsters lived in the mountains, they found out about "the land where the dragon eats people". This sounded like a charming place to visit and so the PCs began a trek across the valley inhabited by demon-worshipping, undead-allied goblinoids (they'd heard about them too, but figured "eh, they're just goblins!"). I tried talking to them out of character. I tried giving them more information in character. I tried summing up their situation. Eventually I killed them. That seemed to work.

Diggorian

2007-03-08, 03:36 PM

Very nice, now these are stupid players :smallbiggrin:

My group routinely takes similar risks because metagaming is so discouraged amongst us, since all of us are very experienced D&D players -- and many of us have DMed --it's necessary to keep things exciting. Our current DM is still very good at surprising us with non-specific but accurate descriptions of monsters from various sources. The maintainence of suspense though does keep Mr. Sneak-past-bullette cowardly alot, despite that he plays a Paladin now. :smallannoyed:

I had a group that were set on investigating Drow incursions to the surface so they marched south to a vaguely rumored Drow stronghold beneath a volcanic mountain chain. I wanted to tell them out of game it was too direct a tactic, but couldnt; it felt cheap to me.

So in character, every helpful NPC they met and told of their plan called them crazy. A NPC dwarf fighter that pledged himself to their cause began to despair and drink too much, but wouldnt quit because of his honor.

They persisted to the last city on the edge of the mountains ruled by a circle of elemental casters. They fought a pair of Obsidian oozes and lost the dwarf, then finally decided to replan and redirect themselves. The wizard had just learned teleport so it was an easy choice to take now.

I'm glad they didnt have to meet the Red Dragon Lord I had planned :smallbiggrin:

silentknight

2007-03-08, 07:09 PM

I ran a new player through a short dungeon crawl recently. I had three NPC characters with him, to make sure he didn't die if the dice were unfavorable.

After exploring a large cavern and dispatching the critters therein, they decide to check out the large crack in the floor near one of the walls. As they approach, an ogre crawls out, growling in a menacing way.

Initiative is rolled and the new kid goes last. NPC 1, 2, and 3 all make their rolls, with varying levels of success. Now it's the kids turn...

Player: Hey, can I throw my sword?
DM (that's Me!): Uh...sure. You can throw it but...
Player: Cool! Okay, I throw it...(rolls d20)...oh, that's not good.
DM: Yeah. So, not only did you throw your sword into that hole the ogre crawled out of, you no longer have a weapon to fight it with.
Player: (looking sheepish) Oh.

Well, he learned that you can do anything you can think of in D&D, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Vaynor

2007-03-08, 07:18 PM

I just remembered this one, never volunteer to collect the firewood when you're playing a druid, and especially don't try to harvest lumber from a dryad's tree.

I believe I am known as "Forest-Killer" in certain areas with that druid now...

Ranis

2007-03-08, 10:14 PM

This is one of my favorites. I was DMing for I think the third time, and I had the PC's clearing out a fairly decently sized goblin tribe. All of the PC's were 12th level, and the fighter was bored because hey, they're just goblins. This is the kind of player who unless he has a serious challenge, he blows the rest of the game off, and he learned a lesson that day.

I had just been hinting at the fact that this goblin looked a bit beefier than the rest of the 30 or so that were on our huge fight scene, and the fighter had just cleaved his way to the big one.

Figher: Ok, my turn, right? I'm going to moon the goblin.
Me(flabberghasted): Um...okay, which one?
Figher: *points* That one.
Me: Ok, that'll provoke an attack of opportunity from all 3 of the goblins around you.
Fighter: I know, they're just goblins, I'm not worried.

I should interject to tell you the two things that the Fighter didn't know.
1: The big goblin had 10 levels in fighter.
2: The big goblin had taken the entire featline for weapon focus, specialization, and whatnot with the longsword, and he had one. a +2 Flaming Burst Longsword, to be accurate.

Me: Okay, here's the attack of opportunity for the slightly bigger goblin. *Natural 20* *Confirms*

I love this part.

Fighter: What?! How much damage is it?
Me: I don't think it's quite as important as how much damage at the moment; I think the more prudent question is exactly where that sword is going to go. And that it bursts into flame right before it does.
Fighter: "YEARGH!!"

The goblin dropped that guy to -4 from almost full HP as a level 12 fighter. Ahh, sweet bliss. He learned the hard way that in a medieval setting, there is no Preparation H. Hurtins' in the hind quarters do nothing but burn, sting, itch, and build character.

Rabiesbunny

2007-03-08, 10:29 PM

Once, there was a huge battle between the Knights of the North, who had hired orcs to help take out Zhentarim caravans. As members of the Zhentarim, we were attacked by them. The Knights came our of forest to the north, and the orcs came from the south, so we circled the caravan.

The gnoll, druid, and cleric took the orcs, while the two meatshields and the hin rogue took the Knights. The Knights had six archers, three rogues and three rangers, who stopped a good distance from the caravan and readied to fire. It was the hin's turn, so guess what the halfling rogue DOES?

She rushes the archers.

She had a wand of fireball, a wand of magic missile, and her OWN bow and two meatshields to hide behind, and she rushed the darned ARCHERS.

Nahal

2007-03-08, 10:47 PM

RE Ranis: That's why you NEVER disrespect DURING melee. Before, sure. Happened in Braveheart. After? Hey, pull a Duke Nuken and use the chest cavity for a toilet. But during? That's just ASKING for trouble.

Back OT, we once had a situation where the party got split up and one got knocked unconscious. The character in question was an 8 CHA monk, which correlated surprisingly well with the player (classic General Jackass archetype who practiced judo). Anyways, the monk gets herself knocked out and wakes up in a jail cell. No way out, can vaguely see silouhettes beyond the bars and indistinct muttering. Gets served food and drink when hunger + thirst set in, but there's no door (just a slot in the floor) and she's not strong enough to break the bars. For two or three days the monk wakes up, eats, ponders and escape, fails, sleeps. Eventually the monk gives up and goes "I disbelieve." Poof. Bugger's sitting right where she fell unconscious, on a large tree branch. IIRC the GM retconned that the monk was only out for a few minutes to save us the aggravation of waiting two days for her to snap out of it.

Foeofthelance

2007-03-08, 11:26 PM

Party is hunting Dark Evil Artifact, that seems to be in the possession of a Collossal Scorpion. Early Scouting reports confirm this, as well as the fact that it didn't seem to mind offensive magic (The DM had given it a template that gave it SR equal to it's hit dice, and it was a 3rd Edition scorpion. I think it had 64 SR. We were level 12, and house ruled nat 20s only add +10 to a check.)

Players prepare to confront Scorpion by going after it in it's own lair. They promptly leave their entire force (all hd seriously abused Leadership, including myself) and run into the hole!

Long story short, next time I try to take on a Collossal sized Scorpion with just a lvl 12 dwarf rogue and a juvenile blue dragon, I will attempt to sunder the tail first, then the claws, and then try and poke out its eyes. I will not first attempt to blind it, and I will not stand there when it tries to grapple me.

Yeah. I got torn in half.

Diggorian

2007-03-09, 12:01 AM

Heh. Back in 2 ed. we stormed whole keeps that turned out to be illusions. :smallbiggrin:

Here's a bleek one:

We were playing a Dark Matter game (modern setting, X-Files style). A PC marksman had received an alien implant that was killing him and was holed up in a motel with a reformed thief PC that just rescued him and was connected to a covert anti-alien organization.

The connected PC called her contact, Dr. Smith (I forget), and told him the deal. He said he'd handle it. Cut scene then cut back to them, a stranger showed up at their room carry a physician's satchel. The stranger said he'd been sent to help.

Implanted Marksman: "Doc Smith?"
Thief: "Wrong doctor."
*Marksman shoots the stranger, and crits!*

The thief dragged the stranger inside an miraculously stabilized and revived him. He explained, as every sane player at the table had instantly surmised before, that Dr. Smith sent him to help as a specialist in alien medicine. In this game system big damage meant big penalties to skill checks, so the doctor having to operate on this tricky implant in a motel room with only his satchel for supplies -- many of which had to be used on him -- now needs to be propped up by the thief and perform surgery with a shaky single hand while struggling to remain conscoius.

The marksmen died in a bathtub stained with his own blood. Then the implant reanimated him to defend itself. He finished off the doctor, and hurt the thief whom ended up blowing his head off zombie style.

Sadly this encouraged more paranoia with his new PC, but other silly stories. :smallamused:

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-09, 12:41 AM

Silkenfist

2007-03-09, 09:51 AM

...artifact...
...giant scorpion...
SR 64...

...Did your DM have a thing for Zelda, by any chance?

Hey nothing wrong about insider jokes.

I had some fun during my Shadowrun campaigns. Whenever the players crossed Elven Terrirotry, I gave the places Sindarin names that contained clues about what could happen.

It was fun when they had to figure it out themselves. It was not fun anymore when one of the players took Sperethiel as a language and just demanded translation.

MaxKaladin

2007-03-09, 10:16 AM

She had a wand of fireball, a wand of magic missile, and her OWN bow and two meatshields to hide behind, and she rushed the darned ARCHERS.Yeah, but you said she was a member of the Zhentarim, so it sounds to me like she was playing in character. :smallamused:

Pocket lint

2007-03-09, 10:21 AM

Hey nothing wrong about insider jokes.

I had some fun during my Shadowrun campaigns. Whenever the players crossed Elven Terrirotry, I gave the places Sindarin names that contained clues about what could happen.

It was fun when they had to figure it out themselves. It was not fun anymore when one of the players took Sperethiel as a language and just demanded translation.
What's to say that Sperethiel and Sindarin are the same thing anyway? The name could mean "Full of scary spidews" in Sindarin and just "Green hill" in Sperethiel...:smalltongue:

NecroPaladin

2007-03-11, 01:57 PM

Ah, here's one I just remembered from a past campaign I DM'ed...I'm not gonna give the full story, just the basics; A melee PC chasing a flying-just-out-of-reach imp around the city's extensive walls, who decided that he didn't need something to let him fly to get it, since after the kill it would be a total wasteful expense (I mean, a full fly spell to take out one imp, probably in one hit?).

So, logical person that he was, he decided to not use a ranged weapon, but rather fire himself out of a defensive catapult at said imp. It just warped 10 feet to the left as it saw the catapult straining (moving out of his reach by only a few inches) and the unfortunate PC's corpse was found on a roof in the neighboring village two days later.

Lord Tataraus

2007-03-11, 09:04 PM

So these just happened last night. The party consists of a CG human sorcerer Flint, a CG halfling rouge Red, a human Paladin Charles, and a NG elf cleric Fa'laith (both 6th level):

DM (me): You enther into an enourmous cavern underneath the castle and notice that the 15ft ceiling seems to move.

Party: Bats!!! (they where vampire hunting in the vampire's castle)

Flint: Okay, I cast burning hands on the ceiling! FOOSH!!!

DM: The bats in the blast area are burnt to a crisp, but the other bats go into a frenzy and attack, roll initiative! (Flint goes, then the bats)

Flint: Okay, I cast Ghost Sound to mess up there echolocation, I don't know how it works so I just make it too high pitch for me to hear.

DM: The bats swarm around all of you dealing (a sizable amount of) damage.

Fa'laith: I cast repel vermin!

DM: ...bats are animals.

The rest of the party drops to the floor and covers up.The next round they take hp drain and Flint goes unconscious. Red manages to slip him a cure potion and they all crawl back into the hallway, the bats stay in the cavern still frenzied.

Fa'laith: I know what to do, I'm going to cast Flame Strike!

Red and Flint ready actions to run up the stairs while Charles sets his tower shield and stands back. Fa'laith proceeds to confidently cast the spell.

DM: ...right. The bats in the area are fried, but the remaining millions swarm at you and fly up the stairs out of the castle in a scared frenzy. The cleric takes 223 damage in the first round of attacks, and he will received 64 hp drain the next round. Needless to say he was skeletonized, but he did clear out the room. Afterwards we calculated the number of bats in the room to be 5,068,800 individual bats, totaling 79,200 swarms.
----
Senerio #2: This is just the players and has nothing to do with the characters.

Flint is looking up a certain spell to figure out how it works before the battle starts, while Red is looking over Flint's shoulder. Flint, finished reading and annoyed at Red, hits him in the head with his character sheets, spell list, and spell description list stacked together then rolls his initiative, nat 20. Amazed at his luck he proceeds to hit Red again, and rolls an 18 "sweet!", thus 10 minutes of play were taken up proving that everytime you hit some one in the head with the "luky papers" you would roll high, and sure enough everyone (except Charles who rolled 8s and lower) rolled at least a 17. Meanwhile I sat and groaned while determining who was most likely to die in the upcoming battle. (Go level drain!!!)

Magnus_Samma

2007-03-11, 10:22 PM

Our party is attacked by goblins. Wanting to know why these goblins are attacking us, we knock them out, tie them up, and wait for them to awaken so we can interrogate them. I'm mentally patting myself on the back for this, because in any other game I've ever played those goblins would have already been hamburger.

The goblin wakes up... and proceeds to cuss all of us out in goblin. Which my character can't speak.

"... I don't think I quite thought this plan through."

Fortunately the Bard spoke goblinoid. >_>

Vaynor

2007-03-11, 11:08 PM

5,068,800 individual bats, totaling 79,200 swarms.

How the HELL is that even close to fair to the players? Or were they not supposed to attack the bats? Even so, 5,068,800 bats it pushing it... like, so far past the line of fair all those bats lying in a straight line couldn't reach it.

Talanic

2007-03-11, 11:11 PM

Vaynor

2007-03-11, 11:24 PM

Shadow of the Sun

2007-03-11, 11:52 PM

You have never been to some of the bigger bat caves, have you?

Vaynor

2007-03-12, 12:07 AM

You have never been to some of the bigger bat caves, have you?

I do realize how big bat swarms can get. However, 5 million is too much.

Austin, Texas is the summer home to North America's largest urban bat colony (under the Congress Avenue bridge), an estimated 1,500,000 Mexican free-tailed bats, who eat an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects each night and attract 100,000 tourists each year.

The_Werebear

2007-03-12, 12:28 AM

Austin, Texas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin%2C_Texas) is the summer home to North America's largest urban bat colony (under the Congress Avenue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Avenue) bridge), an estimated 1,500,000 Mexican free-tailed bats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_free-tailed_bat), who eat an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects each night and attract 100,000 tourists each year.

From Wiki.

1.5 million bats under one bridge is possible, so 5 million in a large cave doesn't seem like a stretch.

Talanic

2007-03-12, 12:54 AM

Really, whether they're killed by 1.5 million bats or 5 million bats doesn't matter much from the player's perspective.

Vaynor

2007-03-12, 12:59 AM

From Wiki.

1.5 million bats under one bridge is possible, so 5 million in a large cave doesn't seem like a stretch.

Yes, but that's the largest one. More than tripling that amount in a single cave is a stretch.

The_Werebear

2007-03-12, 01:00 AM

It's the largest urban concentration.

I have no idea what the biggest rural one is, but I am willing to be it is a lot bigger.

Diggorian

2007-03-12, 01:15 AM

I can believe 5 million bats in a cave, but if a swarm of five thousand bats does 1d6 damage a round and the cleric can only be in one swarm at a time then how does he take 223 damage in a round?

DM error.

Triggering the swarm was stupid though, unless they were trying to smoke out vampires hiding amongst them.

Yahzi

2007-03-12, 01:23 AM

and no stores anywhere sold bows.
That's just stupid.

How did your character practice and train with a bow to where he could put so many points in it, when your character lived in a culture that didn't have bows?

You DM was just a jerk.

Yahzi

2007-03-12, 01:33 AM

DM: OK, the wolf tries to jump 10 feet in the air and.... *rolls* ... it misses, falls down, and *rolls* dies.
That wasn't your fault. That was your DM being an idiot.

A German Shepard has a decent chance of clearing a 10 ft. fence. And in any case, a wolf really isn't capable of jumping high enough in the air to kill itself with the fall back down.

Wolves would like, become extinct, if they could commit suicide simply by jumping up and down on a flat surface...

Yahzi

2007-03-12, 01:47 AM

The DM was eventually forced to declare it made of 'unobtainium'.
I thought this thread was about PC stupidity, not DM stupidity...

Falconsflight

2007-03-12, 04:35 AM

I was dming a campaign with a druid, a sorcerer and a fighter (small party I know, but I work with what I got.)

anyway. So the story behind the druid is "I'm here becuase my sorcerer freind convinced me to come along." That is alright. He had lived in a community of druids. you know, with a grand druid and then druids under him... all that jazz. I accepted it.

So he goes to one town, does one of the quests I set up and I have the gods come down and ask him to help them solve this probelm(It's the thing tehy are supposed to deal with.)
Druid doesn't believe in the gods. Alright. Druids don't need to believe in the gods to be druids. So I was hoping to appeal to his good nature. Nothing. He decides to return home. The others agree and follow him. I let them go.

They return home. The druid meets up with his Grand druid. I say that the grand druid tells him to go on the quest.

He then says, and This is almost a direct quote "I disagree, He removes my druid powers because I talked back and then I go and kill myself for not being a druid anymore."

... Then he blamed me for not making his character go out on this quest. He blamed me for the fact that he made a character that didn't want to go adventuring. Even though I tried anything to get him to go on this adventure. Yeah, stupid.

Lord Tataraus

2007-03-12, 06:08 AM

Basically, it looks to me like they would have passed through the cave full of bats without issue if they'd just let them be. Instead they took it upon themselves to provoke and engage a few million bats, knowing how many bats there were. If they realized how badly they were outnumbered, then yes, it was stupid. If not, then it's more the DM's fault.

That's exactly the case, when they walked into the cavren, they knew it was very big and that the local vampire attracted them their, all the needed to do was walk under them, they were sleeping! But unfortunitly they woke them into a frenzy, but then the cleric goes back foe more? The bats where flying past the cleric and attacking on the way (they were slightly advanced). The bats were meant to just warn the party from waking them up and maybe provide a distraction, they only attaked in self defense.

daggaz

2007-03-12, 08:53 AM

Its still retarded that every single bat (or even just every swarm) decides to attack him on their mad frenzied rush out of the cave. I would think the vast majority would simply fly past in their panicked escape. Whatever.

Gamebird

2007-03-12, 09:32 AM

Learn from this, Lord Tataraus. If you put something in the PC's path, they will usually try to kill it. While it may be realistic for the thing you put in their path to squish them for the offense, a wise DM will realize his PCs can't resist poking the big thing and will therefore either put patient big things in their path or otherwise make it very clear this isn't something they're supposed to kill.

Though I must say, normal bats aren't aggressive and don't do damage, even if attacked. A bat swarm, in the Monster Manual, is a creation of magic or magical control.

On the other hand, hey, DM's call.

Lord Tataraus

2007-03-12, 09:57 AM

Well, one thing that makes the bat senerio a stupidity story is the fact my group is very good at determining major threats that can be avoided, that is one reason it shocked me that they attacked, and the cleric's action is true stupidity. Plus, they knew the bats were at least slightly controled by the vampire. So it was not just a paniced escape, it was retailiation, but it doesn't really matter now.

Anyway, I must say that I hate characters made in such a way that they don't go on quests or go against the party, mostly because I made the mistake of playing an eternily pissed of rouge//druid shifter that needed a serious attitude adjustment. Of course his backstory made him hate all gnomes and bards with a passion, so what does one of my fellow players make? A gnome Bard. My character hates gnomes and Bards, I personnally hate gnomes and Bards. That player knew all of that before hand. A long story short the campaign started going down the drain in the first session and the bard challenges me to a duel. A gnome bard//rouge vs. a shifter druid//rouge optimized for poison and dex fighting both at first level. The DM made him stop since he would have been sluaghtered and made me change my character's attitude. Of course the gnome got mualed by a horrid panther (in the desert?) after piss off the entire group for the past three sessions and the player got kicked out.

MaxKaladin

2007-03-12, 11:49 AM

It's the largest urban concentration.

I have no idea what the biggest rural one is, but I am willing to be it is a lot bigger.According to the Carlsbad Caverns website: http://www.nps.gov/archive/cave/bat-count.htm

The population of that cavern complex used to be 8.7 million, though it's much lower now evidenly thanks to pesticides. My parents took me to that cave when I was a little kid (perhaps 7-8 years old) and I remember sitting there watching the bats pouring out seemingly forever as the sun went down. That was just a couple hundred thousand. Millions of bats must take ages to get out.

The wikipedia entry on the kind of bats that live in my area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Free-tailed_Bat

mentions caves with up to 30 million bats in them.

There's an old railway tunnel near the town I grew up in that houses about 2 million bats. It's not that big of a tunnel, either.

Saph

2007-03-12, 12:03 PM

Learn from this. If you put something in the PC's path, they will usually try to kill it. While it may be realistic for the thing you put in their path to squish them for the offense, a wise DM will realize his PCs can't resist poking the big thing and will therefore either put patient big things in their path or otherwise make it very clear this isn't something they're supposed to kill.

Quoted for truth. If the PCs are in a dungeon and run into a creature, you can usually count on at least one player to say "I kill it!"

Areas where you do not want PCs to do any fighting should be clearly labelled, preferably in advance. Put up a sign in the dungeon saying "No Killing Zone - 100 yards" or something like that. Then after fifty yards, put up another sign saying "No Killing Zone - 50 yards" because by then half the party will have forgotten about the first sign. If the NPC in the area is plot-critical, a third sign is recommended.

- Saph

Variable Arcana

2007-03-12, 12:16 PM

I thought this thread was about PC stupidity, not DM stupidity...

Hey! DMs are players too!:smalltongue:

KoDT69

2007-03-12, 12:37 PM

Heh not too long ago I had an evil wizard NPC that was not a direct threat to my chaotic neutral (chaotic stupid) party. He had a large estate on a hillside with 2 nightmares fenced in. They started out at 4th or 5th level when they came across the estate, and the NPC is level 13+. Somehow they deduced that he was a inter-dimensional beast trader because he had nightmares and did offer to sell one (knowing they could not pay of course) to the party. They decided that was reason enough to attack him. He owned them all and gave them a chance to run away. They got the hint and took off. Their shattered logic led them to believe he was not only a black market beast trader, but a humanoid slave trader as well. I never gave them any indication that it was even remotely true, but I figured if they were gonna make him worse, let's roll with it. They came back for some reason at 6th level thinking he would be an easy source of XP. Hah, Owned again. Now being 8th level they encountered him again and this time he laid the truth on them, willingly allowing a zone of truth and they still were convinced he was a slave trader. I wonder what is it going to take to convince them he's not so bad for being evil? :smallwink:

Diggorian

2007-03-12, 01:40 PM

KoDT, I found that players like this see NPC's in two flavors: allies or enemies. If the wizard offers them services they can afford/use they may leave him alone. I say may cause they are CN, therefore dont need a reason for anything :smallwink:

If you dont want this, or if they still harass him despite his being helpful, you've been merciful three times ... killing some PC's is perfectly reasonable in character.

As a last comment on the bat thing, I agree with Gamebird and Saph but wouldnt go so far as a posted sign. :smallbiggrin: If Tataraus described as part of the scene that there seemed to be millions of bats, then the party's choice to attack them is their responsibility. Still, the epic encounter level given by one thousand bat swarms is a bit much.

PC's built to specifically not get along with their party violate the teamwork theme central to RPG's IMO. Our parties usually have inter-character conflict, which is an excellant source of roleplaying interaction, but it never results in blood. My LN hobgoblin PC in a party of Good allied and dwarves is called "baby-eater" or "blood-thirsty monster" while naming others "idealist fools" and "naive idiots" several times a session, but we dont let it destroy our cooperation.

LotharBot

2007-03-12, 02:29 PM

you can usually count on at least one player to say "I kill it!"

"We kill it" is like, our party rallying cry.

I'm just waiting for this week's session, when (hey, if you're in my party, stop reading!) the party will walk into a room in one of the local temples, and I'll say

"in this room is [member of rival adventuring party]"
"we kill him!"
"... somebody has already done that for you."
"oh. Uh... we rez him?"

Phoenix Talion

2007-03-12, 06:00 PM

Lord Tartarus's story reminds me of someting similar that happened in a game I played. it was an acident though, we'd created out character without knowing what anyone else was playing.

Me: I'm playin an elven rogue/urban ranger who hates hobgoblins, she was enslaved by them when she was younger.
Other player: Um.... I'm playing a hobgoblin ranger who hates elves because his while tribe was killed by them.

Turned out alright though, we ended up tying our backstories together.

Talanic

2007-03-12, 06:59 PM

Heh, reminds me of the online group I DM'ed for a while. They weren't stupid, but they were fun to play with.

Party was:
Elf rogue, Saber (played as goofy)
Human fighter, Parthus (played as acting dumb, but smarter than he looked)
Aasimar Sorceress, Lieae (played as a fiery flirt; spell thematics: roses)
Taerlae (custom race) barbarian, Kyrena (didn't speak common, had to rely on DMPC to translate, had no equipment except for a nifty sword, player is a marvelous roleplayer and great person)
Elf cleric (had severe personality conflicts with rest of party, left soon after) (can't remember name she used)
Taerlae Rogue, Nathirai (only one who spoke the same language that Kyrena did, and HATED her; grudgingly accepted her after she saved his life, left the party at the end of the session, giving her the remainder of his items).

So the party's stuck in a stronghold-turned-tomb and the only way they figure they can get out is by going through an area marked off as trials, for one of them to ascend into the power of the necromancer overlord who once ruled here. Their tests are supposed to challenge their strength (climbing test, with some traps on the climbing wall), stealth (the test in question), endurance (pool of acidic gel; key to next room is in the middle), intelligence (a riddle that the master used to favor, with different doors for different answers, leading to various hazards and one being correct), and doctrine (an actual powerful undead guard with a prepared arena ideal for it to fight from).

On the way in, they also encountered one of the necromancer's most deadly experiments, which he hadn't released onto the battlefield ever because it wasn't reliable or controllable enough. They skinned it after they killed it, intending to see if they could make armor out of it later. They then forgot that the skin was inside of one of their backpacks--no curing or treatment for it--for several in-game weeks. Not pretty.

Anyway, they reached the test of stealth, and Saber goes first into the room, since he has low light vision and all. He sees that it's a large room, about 60 feet square, and he can make out a door on the far wall. The whole ceiling is full of undead batlike monsters. He carefully shuts the door and leans against it.

The party promptly started arguing in character about how, exactly, they are to pass this challenge. Saber wanted to try everyone sneaking it (which would've probably worked if they were careful, put away armor first, et cetera) while others wanted a frontal assault (I made sure my description to Saber made that clearly a BAD idea) or sonic bursts or other ways to get past.

They argued for some time. They even got pretty fierce in their arguments. Quite loud.

Saber started hearing wings, and a thump on the door behind him nearly knocked it open. He threw himself against it and whispered to the party that the things were awake.

Within seconds of him relaying this information, everyone said "I shut up and help Saber brace the door." I asked how long, and the party consensus was to just wait until the thumps stopped, everything quieted down, and a few more hours had passed (they were in no hurry).

Enzario

2007-03-12, 09:27 PM

If I'm unnecessarily adding to the "DM Stupidity" sub-thread, then I apologize in advance.

This is my first time playing DnD. I am using a pregen rogue that my DM made for me.

dm: okay, here's your character
me: am i sneaky?
dm: yes
me: sweet!

a few minutes later

dm: you see a goblin sleeping on his bunk
me: *sees an ability called "sneak attack"* i sneak attack him
dm: okay
me: so what do I do? what is a sneak attack?
dm: uhm, well, just attack him twice with your dagger instead of once
me: okay
goblin: ow! *wakes up and kills me*
dm: let me check the rulebook...
me: ...

Douglas

2007-03-12, 09:51 PM

That kind of situation is what a coup de grace (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm#coupdeGrace) is for.

Diggorian

2007-03-12, 10:52 PM

me: so what do I do? what is a sneak attack?
dm: uhm, well, just attack him twice with your dagger instead of once
me: okay
goblin: ow! *wakes up and kills me*
dm: let me check the rulebook...
me: ...

DM stupidity column, but still funny as all get out. Thank you for not quiting D&D. :smallamused:

olaf

2007-03-13, 11:42 AM

Last night the players in my campaign discovered some graves that had been recently excavated and were now empty. They spent the next 10 minutes discussing various reasons why someone would have emptied the graves. Not once during the entire discussion were the term "necromancy" or any of its derivatives mentioned.

During the same session, the gnome barbarian decided to try to get the attention of an owlbear by chucking a rock at it. No one really understands why the player decided to try to get the owlbear's attention. Regardless, two rounds later the halfling rogue was at -6 and falling, the owlbear was dead, and the barbarian escaped completely uscathed ... ah well.

NecroPaladin

2007-03-13, 06:09 PM

Look out for that spotaneous grave eruption, Olaf. It's really becoming a problem in some places. :smallwink:

Enzario

2007-03-13, 09:35 PM

just thought of another one.
we are in the wilderness. my friend the wizard is a changeling, and is currently in the form of a very attractive woman. we hear a "ruckus" from a few hundred yards away. i, the druid, am sleeping in panther form. I scout it out,a nd the wizard follows me. right into a group of drunk dwarven men.

hot woman
drunk dwarves

the only thing that needs more to be said is what the dwarf leader said:
"Grab the woman!!"

NecroPaladin

2007-03-13, 10:11 PM

Hrm...PC stupidity...INCLUDES DM STUPIDITY!

The god of this thread hath SPOKENED! So shall thee maketh DM Stupidity for my divine entertainment!

*raises hands threateningly and gives an eye-bulging glare*

Vaynor

2007-03-13, 11:37 PM

NecroPaladin

2007-03-13, 11:49 PM

*floored*

Gwaaauuuuh...Commence...stupidity...my Minions...

That reminds me, since in my world detecting evil, turning undead and the like causes brief flashes of light, I've had my PCs use the cleric as a torch before...

EDIT:

just thought of another one.
we are in the wilderness. my friend the wizard is a changeling, and is currently in the form of a very attractive woman. we hear a "ruckus" from a few hundred yards away. i, the druid, am sleeping in panther form. I scout it out,a nd the wizard follows me. right into a group of drunk dwarven men.

hot woman
drunk dwarves

the only thing that needs more to be said is what the dwarf leader said:
"Grab the woman!!"

A very similar situation to this happened when an all-male party of PCs unwittingly got involved with a gang of male doppelgangers pretending to be concubines...The children weren't pretty. Or wouldn't be, if they had any. They were pretty freaked when they saw what their dates really were, and it's the cleric's own damn fault for (A) not remaining chaste, and (B) not trying to truesee or detect anything about some women who randomly approach him without a seeming purpose.

Vaynor

2007-03-13, 11:50 PM

*floored*

Gwaaauuuuh...Commence...stupidity...my Minions...

That reminds me, since in my world detecting evil, turning undead and the like causes brief flashes of light, I've had my PCs use the cleric as a torch before...

I prefer the spell "Light". Preferably cast on the fighter's sword/armor, cause then things attack him more, and it prolly looks pretty cool. :smallwink:

J_Muller

2007-03-14, 12:20 AM

A very similar situation to this happened when an all-male party of PCs unwittingly got involved with a gang of male doppelgangers pretending to be concubines...The children weren't pretty. Or wouldn't be, if they had any. They were pretty freaked when they saw what their dates really were, and it's the cleric's own damn fault for (A) not remaining chaste, and (B) not trying to truesee or detect anything about some women who randomly approach him without a seeming purpose.

...You know, the first thing I thought was, "How stupid of the players."

But then I realized, "Wait... what kind of DM does that to his players?"
So it's less PC stupidity as it is just the DM being a total jerk.

NecroPaladin

2007-03-14, 12:34 AM

...You know, the first thing I thought was, "How stupid of the players."

But then I realized, "Wait... what kind of DM does that to his players?"
So it's less PC stupidity as it is just the DM being a total jerk.

Define "Jerk." Because I clearly stated that "she" was picking the rogue's pocket, but he withheld the information and went along for the ride. I think they were just the "PCs who don't leave the bedroom." :smallyuk:

EDIT: Before I get anything else, I did everything within my power to dissuade them for the sake of the plot and failed. Stupid sex. Shoulda never mentioned it.

Talanic

2007-03-14, 12:45 AM

I was under the impression that doppelgangers were gender neutral anyway, and required another race's males to actually produce children...could just be thinking of hags.

Diggorian

2007-03-14, 12:53 AM

DM Stupidity:
My group just finished a long quest and decided to head back home. I prepared encounters and plot hooks for the journey.

Wizard: "Can we level up in this city? It's run by mages so I'd like to do some research."
DM (me): "Sure. OK, a week later the north horizon is clear, beckoning you to the trek home."
Wizard: "I cast Teleport."
Me: "... um ... *reads spell description and rolls d100* ... OK, you're back. "

Was a pain retrofitting all the encounters, most just didnt fit and were a waste.

Quietus

2007-03-14, 01:39 AM

I was under the impression that doppelgangers were gender neutral anyway, and required another race's males to actually produce children...could just be thinking of hags.

Might be hags. I'm pretty sure that dopplegangers split, like amoeba.

NecroPaladin

2007-03-14, 08:52 AM

Might be hags. I'm pretty sure that dopplegangers split, like amoeba.

I think doppelgangers have genders, but they're vestigial and amount to very little.

Justin_Bacon

2007-03-14, 09:50 AM

Anyway, I know of exactly NO roleplaying system that handles falling damage remotely realistic.

D&D handles it just fine.

The conceptual problem some people have is that (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html), beyond 5th level, characters are superhuman. You don't see people say, "Well, Spider-Man just fell off a building, he should be dead." Yet when you get similarly superhuman D&D characters, people want them to still react to falling damage as if they were Joe Blow from down the block.

Gamebird

2007-03-14, 09:56 AM

Good point, Justin Bacon. I am increasingly of the opinion that for the style of play I like, D&D should range from 1st to 7th level, or maybe 10th if we want to get into some really heroic stuff there at the end.

Edit: I want to add that the link you provided is FASCINATING!! And it would go a long way towards answering many of the balance questions I and other D&D players I know personally have with D&D. When D&D is presented as a 1-20 level range, then naturally one expects a campaign to phase through all 20 levels, whereas the essay you reference makes it clear that most realism is defenestrated after 5th level. With that in mind, then suddenly the full caster vs. tank balance issues make sense - the campaign is never supposed to get to that point, or if it does, making any "realistic" arguments is silly.

Saph

2007-03-14, 11:41 AM

Wow, I agree. That link is REALLY good. Makes me understand why I've always preferred lowish level campaigns, and think of high-level characters as really special.

- Saph

Nahal

2007-03-14, 12:31 PM

I like high-level, but that's mainly because I've only played in campaigns where a level 20 PC is still outgunned. And I'm a power-hungry maniac with a penchant for wizard archetypes.

factotum

2007-03-14, 12:43 PM

Stupidest thing I ever did as a PC was in a game based on "Judge Dredd" many, MANY years ago. I'd got a character with a really low initiative score, which meant I usually got to take my first combat action after all the bad guys were already dead. So, I was getting irritated about that, and in the next fight we engaged in, I decided to use a non-aimed shot because it meant I got to go much earlier in the turn sequence.

Trouble is, I missed. Badly. I ended up shooting my team leader in the back. With an INCENDIARY round. Needless to say, I wasn't the most popular person in the team...

MaxKaladin

2007-03-14, 01:00 PM

Trouble is, I missed. Badly. I ended up shooting my team leader in the back. With an INCENDIARY round. Needless to say, I wasn't the most popular person in the team...Reminds me of the time I was playing in a game that used critical fumble rules and the wemic fighter missed the giant he was throwing a javelin at and hit my paladin in the chest instead. "Oops", indeed.

Magnus_Samma

2007-03-14, 01:00 PM

I prefer the spell "Light". Preferably cast on the fighter's sword/armor, cause then things attack him more, and it prolly looks pretty cool. :smallwink:

In my first campaign the cleric cast Light on the paladin's pants.

The female paladin's pants.

By patting her on the butt.

Lots of things went wrong with that campaign, but I'll always remember that particular incident with a fond smile.

Nahal

2007-03-14, 01:10 PM

I remember hearing about a gnome who avoided a mob of guards by casting minor image followed by putting light on his finger to make himself look like a lamppost.

Diggorian

2007-03-14, 01:24 PM

Factotum reminds me of a Mage I played with that was the type to drop area damage with fellow PC's in it to "maximize utility" since we could "take the damage better anyway". :smallannoyed:

My Aasimar paladin was holding off thugs from rushing him so he casts a cone of acid into my back. Kills all of them and takes me to -12! The cleric checked me and I said that I was dead in between multiple deep diffusing breaths.

Then, I remembered my racial acid resist 5 and coughed blood to let'em know I was still breathing with -7. Was close to a table flip there. :smallamused:

I'm saving the web page to that Calibration Article it justifies alot of campaign design philosophy. Near level 10 the time between my adventures grows because most missions for the heroes are beneath them or they can solo them individually. "Orc raiding tribe attacking an outlying village? Let me clear my Wednesday afternoon."

Magnus_Samma

2007-03-14, 02:09 PM

Factotum reminds me of a Mage I played with that was the type to drop area damage with fellow PC's in it to "maximize utility" since we could "take the damage better anyway". :smallannoyed:

Wizard in my current campaign is JUST like that. Whenever the other PCs close to melee, he drops a fireball in the middle of the combat. If he's in the center of the combat? Still drops a fireball.

"You're surrounded by demons. They're already on fire."

"Fireball."

Then when the other PCs realize what's going on and stay the heck out of his way, he starts using Scorching Rays.

*They close to melee.*

"Fireball."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

The_Blue_Sorceress

2007-03-14, 02:21 PM

THe first high-level game I played in was one that began in a pretty nasty dungeon that used that absurdly huge map that WotC had up on the DnD website some years ago. I played a 3.0 half-elven rogue/psion/soulknife, and was having a massively fun time using all my fun rogue skills and stabbing things with my longsword-sized manifestation of my otherwise much suppressed anger. Things were going pretty well until we found ourselves in a long room with a pile of garbage at one end. Being the party skill-monkey, I went up and searched the pile, and low and behold discovered a button hidden amongst all the junk. Now, my poor character was CG, but bordering on CN since the death of her husband of twenty-some odd years in a big war a while back, and had become something powered solely by emotional impulses that were poorly directed and poorly controlled. Forgetting that the number one rule in any dungeon is "don't push any buttons unless you have a good idea about what they do," I pushed the button. This triggered a spell that made the direction of gravity shift so that everyone in the room started falling toward the far wall in the room. I was able to manifest spider climb and stick to a wall, but the rest of the part wasn't so lucky. They fell down to the "bottom" of what was now a large pit, and were shortly after their landing pelted by a whole pile of debris. I decided, for some reason, that the best thing to do would be to push the button again thereby, I hoped, putting gravity back the way it was supposed to be. Instead it shifted gravity back toward the wall that the button was on, and I was pelted by a whole lot of debris as well as my fellow players. I was thenceforth forbidden from pushing buttons.

I redeemed myself later by mindblasting an epic cleric using one of my soulknife abilities, thus rendering him helpless so that the party tanks, a half-golem ranger/tempest and fighter/weaponmaster/warmaster were able to reduce him to a fine mulch.

-Blue

XenoGeno

2007-03-14, 04:39 PM

a half-golem ranger/tempest

Okay, I've seen some weird stuff on these boards, but how the hell do you have a half-golem? Is it... half-flesh golem, or what? Just the thought of a golem and whatever the base creature was getting jiggy with it makes me want to blow my charred brains out.

Rumda

2007-03-14, 04:41 PM

half golems are created by attaching a golem limb to a non construct

Winterking

2007-03-14, 05:09 PM

Somewhat off-topic response to Calibration article discussion:

The Calibration article is quite good. I realize now that my objection is not to D&D's rules vs reality at high levels, but rather to the extreme range beyond the norm that is capable/expected/automatic for D&D characters. Fighting a relative handful of opponents is enough of a life experience to drive an exceptional individual into superhuman territory?
I don't think that it mirrors reality very well for PCs (and indeed, most NPCs at high levels, if the PCs are not simply to be Gods walking the earth) to be so far beyond the imaginable range of heroism. If Aragorn, as the article suggests, is little beyond level 5, how do we even conceive of level 20 characters? The experience point arrangement also seems a little off: soldiers, for example, if they survive, are likely to kill a great many enemy (equal cr to level) in combat--that experience should be driving them to levels of power well beyond anything seen by historical soldiers who killed a great many foes.
Additionally, such Calibrated expectations place a huge range of human variety within a mundane 10-11 ability score and a single class. Many people I know are consistently more talented at given tasks than others who specialize in said tasks (ie, both have "skill focus" and the relevant skill)--they certainly aren't exceptional or genius-level, but there is a real, qualitative difference. That difference gets losts when 95% of humanity is mashed into a single space.
Finally, the structure of levels, and in particular, combat feats, suggest that many maneuvers which would be taken for granted in the real world actually require godlike power--spring attack, a common fencing trick, needs half a dozen feats before it can be taken; improved feint and other swashbuckly skills require higher levels than the average plucky pirate; Leadership, the ability to draw others to follow you by sheer force of personality, requires level 6.

NecroPaladin

2007-03-14, 06:04 PM

Yeah, a la Magnus I have had not one, not two, but THREE d4 hit-dice-ers cast fireball in melee. Sigh.

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-14, 06:15 PM

Yeah, a la Magnus I have had not one, not two, but THREE d4 hit-dice-ers cast fireball in melee. Sigh.
I found an altar in the Tomb of Horrors that launched a lightning bolt and then a fireball when touched.
We were shortly thereafter attacked by a bunch of undead insect swarms.
...That altar was the best bug zapper ever.
Unfortunately, it was also the best cleric zapper ever.
Afterward, he debated casting Destruction on me.

Stormzen

2007-03-14, 06:22 PM

In this week's game the party was in Sigil, looking for the key to the plane of Limbo. The problem was, the key, as our guide (a talking book) told us, the key was in the Lady of Pain's district. Following a magic sword that detected dimensional disturbances, we came to a giant, almost endless wall with man-sized spikes coming of of it. The fighter handed the sword to our wizard and tried to climb it. He failed and took enough damage to put him at -9, so we healed him. The party then decided to mug a random person walking past us and ask him what the signifigance of the wall was, and/or how to get through it. The man told us that belief was a powerful thing in Sigil, and if enough people believe in something, it will happen. The same fighter preceded to run torwards the wall, saying this:

DM:You are approaching the wall.
Fighter:What wall?

After a few minutes of following the book and sword, which were shaking violently, the fighter then decided to stab the book repeatedly. Which happened to be the answer to the puzzle of where the key was. The book bled pure light, and formed into a tree growing out of the book. An apple fell out of the tree, and the blind girl (an NPC following the party with her friend "Ugly", an outsider) caught it. The book closed, and the fighter checked if the book could still talk.

Fighter:Can you hear me now?
Book:Yes.

Shortly after, the Lady herself saw us and we ducked for cover. One of our players had an abysmal will save and rolled poorly on the hide check, so his brain imploded and got all over everything. The session ended with an intangible disembodied head calling demonic hounds after us.

CHASE THE HERO

2007-03-14, 07:10 PM

ok this literally just happened. the player (Stormrider played by my next door neighbor's) a lvl 2 psi warrior, is approaching an village (controlled by bandits unbeknownst by the PC). he succeeds on a listen check and hears a group of 4 saying:

person 1: ok the surviving scout said that he will be coming up this road.
persons 2&3: ok we will keep an eye out for him.
person 1: if you see him coming make this sound*insert strange sound*
persons 2&3: ok
person 1: if you need me to stay where I am make this sound*insert different strange sound*
persons 2 & 3 : ok we will keep an eye out for him

(this is on a road in the middle of the plains with waist high grass)

so the bandits position themselves on either side of the road.
now the player walks calmly down the middle of the road intent on trying to negotiate instead of jumping out of the grass and punching them to death(1D4 + 4 + 2D6 at level 2 without any spells (1D4=fist + 4 = str bonus + 2D6 = psionic fist(feat)

so the pc walks up to the bloodthirsty bandits thinking that they would want to negotiate. so as he is walking down the road the bandits both jump up and shoot him with their longbows, hitting him and both getting high damage and leaving him at low health. so the pc runs away, barely surviving the ordeal pissed at me about why the hell they didnt talk to him. so i replied ok their bandits. so he responds"ok so if their king walks would they shot him?", so im like no he is their king, even bandits dont like court martial. so he replies "what if a king walkes up, would they still shoot him?". im like hell yes they would, i mean their bandits and kings are rich stuff man" so he just gos away makes camp and builds a wall of weaved panels. so then 1&1/2 days later he goes back and following my reccomendations he just sneaks up and attacks the bandits and makes short work of them. (those unarmed attacks are so cheap man!)

Swordguy

2007-03-14, 07:14 PM

Finally, the structure of levels, and in particular, combat feats, suggest that many maneuvers which would be taken for granted in the real world actually require godlike power--spring attack, a common fencing trick, needs half a dozen feats before it can be taken; improved feint and other swashbuckly skills require higher levels than the average plucky pirate; Leadership, the ability to draw others to follow you by sheer force of personality, requires level 6.
[/spoiler]

Heh. Take a look in the Spartan Warrior thread in homebrew. We've got the exact same problem going on. I mean, Spartans need to be 6th level, minimum, do fulfill their basic tasks inside a phalanx. :smallfrown:

SpiderBrigade

2007-03-14, 09:30 PM

Heh. Take a look in the Spartan Warrior thread in homebrew. We've got the exact same problem going on. I mean, Spartans need to be 6th level, minimum, do fulfill their basic tasks inside a phalanx. :smallfrown:That's madness!

Magnus_Samma

2007-03-14, 10:51 PM

That's madness!

THAT'S SPARTA!!!!!!!

*shot*

SpiderBrigade

2007-03-14, 11:07 PM

Thank you magnus.

lumberofdabeast

2007-03-15, 12:18 AM

What, he wasn't kicked into a pit? ;_;

Back on topic, I recall an occasion where a certain Fighter stayed up all night keeping watch, as opposed to simply setting up sleeping shifts. The sorceress, when she awoke, proclaimed that the fighter needed sleep. The fighter disagreed. The sorceress cast Sleep. (Low level game.) The argument ended.

Diggorian

2007-03-15, 12:21 AM

Didnt wanna respond cause it's off topic, but you can definately make Spartans below level six if you dont consider Formation Fighting Expert feat a basic requirement, like Phalanx Fighting would be.

Those 300 in the movie may have had Formation Expert, but they were the elite of Sparta's army -- best of the best.

On topic stupid PC story (ashamed I have so many):

Back in 2nd Ed Dark Sun we're in the desert dying of thirst. We come across an oasis with a single pool with an all roadkill version of Noah's Ark around it's edge, including a pair of dead pickup truck size meekliots. Our cleric, ran by an a-hole player, casts Detect Poison and asks for a DM note on the answer.

Me: "So it's poisoned right?"
Cleric: "I'm not telling you."
Half-giant fighter: "Um ... I'll dip in my pinky and taste a single drop from the pool."
DM to fighter: "You drop stone dead, no save."

Then, we had to drag a dead half-giant through the desert while dying of thirst and being pissed at each other.

Ranis

2007-03-15, 12:45 AM

Zincorium

2007-03-15, 02:39 AM

Spartans are the finest warriors in the world, you know.

Were. Supposedly.

The fact that there isn't a separate nation called Sparta, and that Greeks who are from the region that once comprised Sparta probably have very little to nothing in common with them culturally, would presume that there either are no people around that consider themselves Spartans in that sense.

As far as the finest warriors in the world right now, most people's opinions are probably going to be the special forces of their respective country's armed forces. Possibly even a specific branch of those. But until they decide to waste all that training in a real life death match, we'll never really know for sure. And it's probably not a big deal anyway, since rarely do the special forces of opposed countries directly compete anyway.

Eikre

2007-03-15, 03:37 AM

Snip

Stop it! Stop it, you horrible, fun-hating man!

Hypothetical

2007-03-15, 04:42 AM

I have a stupid PCs story......

I joined a group, already in progress. My character was a a 4th level fighter, imprisoned by the Drow that the party was fighting. Before I joined the party officially, I got to sit and listen to the play, as they were progressing to where I was being held.

So, the party comes up against a nasty little Earth Golem. It's protecting the room with the cell I am inside.

Round after round, the DM descibes the golem...it's a giant mound of rock, vaugly human shaped, with a pale clear crystal in the middle of what should be it's forehead.

The Ranger continues shooting from the back of the room. Both of the fighters are up close and personal hacking away with thier swords, and the mage is hanging back, out of spells, and doing nothing.

This goes on for a good 20 minutes. ABout 2 minutes into the battle, because I listen, I wrote a quick note, and passed it to the DM. THe note said " What would happen if the party were to call an aimed hit, and aim at the crystal?" The DM looked over, and smiled as he drew his thumb accross his throat.

Needless to say, I sat on the sidelines, watching this battle progress for what seemed like hours.....turn after turn, and always the DM telling the party about the gem....and no-one, NO-ONE, picked up on the clue.

Finally, the ranger got lucky, and rolled a natural 20, and the DM took a good 2 minutes describing how the arrow managed to hit the gem in the golems forehead, and the golem first went into a kind of frenzy, and then just collapsed into itself, and went dormant.

OK, I can understand, battle is fun. But damn guys, listen to your DMs, they generally try to help you get a clue as to whats going on.

Proven_Paradox

2007-03-15, 05:15 AM

Not really a “stupidity” story, but I think this is a good play to put this little gem...

Okay, I'm the DM here. Everyone in the game is pretty inexperienced, but they asked for me to DM again after my first game with them resulted in a TPK. Not just any group would do that, so I figure it's a good idea to stick with them; only one person complained and with the way the dice fell for him I'm inclined to think he had a right to do so.

Anyway, Xavier (I think) the human fighter, Tress the human ranger/barbarian, Rolley the human rogue, and Chamberlain the halfling cleric, all sixth level, and for this fight they're all in decent condition, though the cleric's starting to run low on spells and the fighter's kinda banged up. They’ve done an excellent job of navigating this dungeon, expertly diffusing a rather elaborate trap set-up that would have gotten them trapped between a pair of gelatinous cubes in a narrow hallway had they been a little more brash.

At the moment, they're fighting a mummified sorcerer, who hits them with... I think it was fireball. I'm not completely sure.

<Me> "Okay, the rogue is cowering and therefore cannot do much about his reflex save."
<Rolley> "The dice hate me anyway, I'd still manage to fail."

It's true; I let him re-roll a triple critical fumble on a disable device check because I didn't want to end the session on a TPK earlier in the game.

<Me> "Yeah, you've had a rough night... Anyway, the halfling's cowering too. Tress and Xavier: roll D20's."

(Both players roll poorly)

<Me> "Oh... wow... so, you each take... *Rolls dice* ... 4d6 damage..."

As I begin adding up the dice results in my head, the players all start moaning and cussing about the damage. These guys have taken a lot from me, grinning and hacking through anyway. I found the sudden complaints rather odd.

<Me> "Whaaaat? It's just 4d6 damage, everyone but maybe the rogue should have no problem surviving this, and I'm pretty sure unlucky's still going to be okay!"
<Xavier> "Dude, that's something like 70% of my max HP! With all the damage the Mechataur (a clockwork minotaur they encountered earlier) left me with, I'm at 10 HP after that, and I'm pretty sure everyone but the raging ranger is in the negatives!"

Now, at this point I am rather confused. See, I let them have nearly full HP, and if I recall correctly the fighter ended up with something like 70 HP. Plus, I hadn't announced the damage yet.

<Tress> "Dude, you've been tough on us, but I think forty-six (we're in the South, so it's said with a "d" instead of a "t" here) damage is a bit much."
<Me> "4d6 damage is NOT a big deal, guys! It comes to... *adding* ... 15 damage!"
<Everyone> "..."

When we realized what had just happened, everyone laughed about it.

They went on to murder said mummy without a lot of fuss, though Tress drained a few charges out of a healing wand afterward. In hindsight I should have given the mummy some mooks to hold them back: they closed in for melee too quickly...

The Prince of Cats

2007-03-15, 05:44 AM

That reminds me of how a mage brought our game to a standstill with just a handful of candles and a spare pair of tights.

Me: "Okay, so what have you got in that belt pouch?"
Mage: "Four candles."
Me: "..."
Mage: "And some 'ose..."

(she was a Londoner)

hewhosaysfish

2007-03-15, 07:21 AM

OK, I can understand, battle is fun. But damn guys, listen to your DMs, they generally try to help you get a clue as to whats going on.

Yeah, those guys have obviously never played any Zelda games. Every boss with a Super-Secret Weak Spot(tm) as obvious as a bulls-eye on its chest...

Swordguy

2007-03-15, 07:42 AM

The BBEG of our campaign (actually, she's more like Sabine's role to the REAL BBEG - but the PCs don't read these forums and don't know it yet) is a demonblooded (succubus) nymph with a bunch of roguish class levels and with a Wisdom-draining whip (to set up for the "I'm so hot you die" ability - I run nymphs old-school). The party ran into her by accident early on in the campaign (killing her boy-toy Ogres) and has run into her occasionally after that. She's amused by the party and "plays" with them as a sort of fun (think the evil Willow from Buffy - she' put eyes out, and at one point castrated the party Ranger for spell components), naturally, this has led to all sorts of mental trauma for the PCs.

However, just recently, she got asked to "escort" a promising Ogre Mage for the real BBEG on a pillaging run against the PCs home country. Naturally, the party comes in after the pillagers spend a day attacking a remote village. A Seven Samurai-style adventure ensues, and having defeated the mooks, the party Ranger-type tracks this mob back to their encampment, where the few survivors (incl. the ogre) are frantically packing to get the heck out of dodge.

PC go in and stomp all over the mooks and the ogre, only to come up short when they they hear "honey, what's going on?" in a familiar voice. This time, the nymph isn't taking prisoners, and instead of using her natural weapons, starts lashing out with the whip to drop their Will saves. It's a +3 Sadistic Will-Sapping Whip of Spell Storing ("Agony" spell from BoVD). They're getting hit by this thing HARD, and one of them finally fails his Will save against the Will-sapping effect and loses some Wisdom. I tell him that the whip seemed to drain something from his soul and he loses some wisdom, and it feels good.

All other players (incl. my wife): "The whip feels good? I stop fighting and get in line!"
DM: *head hits table*

Sampi

2007-03-15, 07:59 AM

Okay, I guess I'll have to contribute to my favourite thread now. This happened quite a bit earlier in an introductory adventure to my new campaign world. The PC's (level 1) were tracking a slaver orc sorcerer with his goblin lackeys, and finally catch up to them in a rocky valley. Thae party consists of a barbarian, a ranger and a cleric.

THe cleric, who isn't much of a combat type has a player that's way too much into heroics and anime. So he charges the wagon of the slaver, across the rocky valley floor. He knows beforehand that he can't make it in one round, even running full tilt. So he runs the first round, revealing himself to the bad guys, and promptly gets a heavy crossbow bolt in the chest. He falls, and realizes he can't make it across the field without being killed, so he hides in the rocks.

This leaves it to the other two guys to sneak up to the wagon (quickly, since two of the goblins are going to check if the foolish cleric is dead) and finish the challenge made for the whole party.

They were lucky, so they survived. But that took the anime hero out of that cleric for good.

Gamebird

2007-03-15, 09:16 AM

All other players (incl. my wife): "The whip feels good? I stop fighting and get in line!"
DM: *head hits table*

Hahah. That whip did an area-of-effect Wisdom drain!

Holocron Coder

2007-03-15, 01:21 PM

Alright, I figure I should add some PC stupidity. Sadly, all of these are done by the same person, my cousin.

Alright, so the first time we played DnD, my uncle was attempting to run us through an old 1ed dungeon using 3.5 rules. That aside, we get to the top of the pyramid and we are there to collect a particular gem that will help us summon a genie to fight another genie. Anyway...

DM: "You see a wall with a picture depicting an old egyptian riverboat, with a gem mounted on the boat's front."
Me: "I check the gem to see if its the one we want."
DM: "You find that it's just a depiction of the gem. Additionally, while touching it, your hand goes throug the wall as if it isn't there."
PC1: "The wall isn't there? I run through the wall to the other side."
DM: "...seriously? You run through it?"
PC1: "Yes."
DM: "...alright. You run through the wall." -turns to me- "Your group mate runs through the wall. Shortly after, you hear a scream that quickly lowers in volume."
Me: "...I stick my head through the wall and look down."
DM: "You see the outside of the pyramid with -PC1's name-'s body far below, falling down the side of the pyramid. Additionally, you see a rope with the floating boat depicted in the picture moored to the side of the pyramid."

Yeah, he died. Fell a couple of kilometers down the side of a pyramid. Not comfortable.

Earlier in the same dungeon, that same PC did this:

DM: "You walk into a large shaft. You're standing on a cliff jutting out into the chasm with another about 25 feet above you."
Me: "We should probably try to check it out..."
PC1: "I throw a rope up there and attempt to climb." -climb check- -fails-
DM: "Erm... roll a reflex save"
PC1: -rolls- -fails-
DM: "Alright... you fall past the cliff your friends are on and into the darkness. After a moment, you pass them again. Then again." (Basically, its a pit of everfall, once you reach the bottom, you're teleported to the top and keep falling)
Me: "I ask the party wizard if he has any spells to stop him or something similar."
PC1: "No, no. Next time I pass everyone, I'm going to try grabbing the cliff edge."
DM: "You sure? You've fallen past them a few times, you're going pretty fast."
PC1: "Yeah, I'm sure."
DM: "Alright... reflex check."
PC1: -rolls- -succeeds-
DM: "Alright, you grab onto the ledge. The sheer speed you are travelling at causes your arms to break and nearly rip off."
Me: "I watch as he bleeds to death as he keeps falling by, amazed at his brilliance."

Silkenfist

2007-03-15, 01:45 PM

D&D handles it just fine.

The conceptual problem some people have is that (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html), beyond 5th level, characters are superhuman. You don't see people say, "Well, Spider-Man just fell off a building, he should be dead." Yet when you get similarly superhuman D&D characters, people want them to still react to falling damage as if they were Joe Blow from down the block.

I did not mean that.

In D&D you take damage completely independent from your size. No matter whether you are a 60 pounds halfling or a 280 pounds half-orc, the fall is handled exactly the same. And since the half-orcs will usually have more HP, they have less to fear than the halflings.
This is just ridiuclous and plain wrong. In reality, the damage you sustain from a fall increases exponentially with your weight (since it determines the force of impact). Even though big guys and big animals might be sturdier, the exponential growth of the damage works against them.

One example: Take a mouse and a horse and throw them down 20 feet onto stone ground. In roleplaying, they would take the same damage. Horse with many HP walks away and the mouse dies.
IRL, the mouse wouldn't be able to break a bone even theoretically. And the horse...the horse would literally go splat.

This is what I meant. Size determines everything when dealing with falling damage but it is ignored by every system I know. Similar problems arise with starvation, but I am afraid, I'll drift off.

ExHunterEmerald

2007-03-15, 02:04 PM

Okay, so, we're in a battle with a boneclaw in the Sunless Citadel.
And it's kicking our asses.
By the end we bring it down, but we've lost three players in the battle. We don't want to leave them, so the remaining members of the group huddle up. I suggest we cremate them, but the other members want to bury them up topside.
So we get together a canvas and the lengths of rope we have, pile their bodies on the tarp, and make a bunch of use rope checks to check that it's secured. We rolled a one.
So while we hoist the tarp and the bodies on top. Crunch.
So, I suggest again we cremate them.
No, we have to try again.
Another round of checks...and one of the hoisters crit fails his strength check. Splat.
Cremation? No! Once more! Third time's th--
Spatter.
We went with cremation.
Just as well, at that point we'd managed to liquefy the remains in the first medieval blender.

Fax Celestis

2007-03-15, 02:06 PM

Stop it! Stop it, you horrible, fun-hating man!

That is quite possibly the most entertaining thing I've ever seen on these fora.

Gamebird

2007-03-15, 02:40 PM

In D&D you take damage completely independent from your size. No matter whether you are a 60 pounds halfling or a 280 pounds half-orc, the fall is handled exactly the same. And since the half-orcs will usually have more HP, they have less to fear than the halflings.
This is just ridiuclous and plain wrong. In reality, the damage you sustain from a fall increases exponentially with your weight (since it determines the force of impact). Even though big guys and big animals might be sturdier, the exponential growth of the damage works against them.

The funny thing is that if you take a dead halfling and a dead half orc and throw them on someone, then the halfling does a lot less damage to them than the half orc. And if the halfling and half orc are alive, they can't fall on someone even if they try.

Phoenix Talion

2007-03-15, 03:33 PM

Earlier in the same dungeon, that same PC did this:

DM: "You walk into a large shaft. You're standing on a cliff jutting out into the chasm with another about 25 feet above you."
Me: "We should probably try to check it out..."
PC1: "I throw a rope up there and attempt to climb." -climb check- -fails-
DM: "Erm... roll a reflex save"
PC1: -rolls- -fails-
DM: "Alright... you fall past the cliff your friends are on and into the darkness. After a moment, you pass them again. Then again." (Basically, its a pit of everfall, once you reach the bottom, you're teleported to the top and keep falling)
Me: "I ask the party wizard if he has any spells to stop him or something similar."
PC1: "No, no. Next time I pass everyone, I'm going to try grabbing the cliff edge."
DM: "You sure? You've fallen past them a few times, you're going pretty fast."
PC1: "Yeah, I'm sure."
DM: "Alright... reflex check."
PC1: -rolls- -succeeds-
DM: "Alright, you grab onto the ledge. The sheer speed you are travelling at causes your arms to break and nearly rip off."
Me: "I watch as he bleeds to death as he keeps falling by, amazed at his brilliance."

http://onatable.comicgenesis.com/d/20030609.html
Read the next few strips of this. I think you'll sympathize...

TOAOMT

2007-03-15, 03:51 PM

Alright, here's a story of my own personal stupidity (although really I think that the DM was trying to get someone to kill themselves on it).

We're in a DM, the party consisted of myself (A Cleric character who was apparently not well-liked, but then I don't think I was particularly well-liked), a Ranger, an insectile fighter, an oversized lizardfolk fighter. We were in a temple and had entered a room with the primary feature of a pedestal with a swirling orb of black fire. We all made some rolls, including my cleric's knowledge arcana roll (Natural 20, total of 26) and no one knew what it was. Eventually, my character decides to touch it. Sphere of Annhialation.

At the time it seemed like I had just been stupid of me, but the more I played under that DM the more I think that 26 Knowledge Arcana should've told me something.

Diggorian

2007-03-15, 05:59 PM

At the time it seemed like I had just been stupid of me, but the more I played under that DM the more I think that 26 Knowledge Arcana should've told me something.

See, if the best roll in the party cant tell ya what something is I personally dont think the DM should put it in the adventure, let alone something extremely deadly like that. That's just me.

In our games we would've metagame guessed it was that, but in-game been cautious because all black things are bad (a runing joke in our group, since 3/7's of us are African-American :smallbiggrin: ).

marjan

2007-03-16, 12:43 AM

Ok here is one more about illusory walls.

DM: You end up teleprted into room with three walls.
Me: OK I search all walls.
DM: As you search the wall number 1 your hand pass through it, on the other two walls you find nothing.
The other guy: OK, I run through the wall number 2!
DM: ...??? you take d6 damage.

Dervag

2007-03-16, 01:26 AM

Yeah, those guys have obviously never played any Zelda games. Every boss with a Super-Secret Weak Spot(tm) as obvious as a bulls-eye on its chest...I dunno. I seem to recall some of them having non-obvious weak spots.

The BBEG of our campaign (actually, she's more like Sabine's role to the REAL BBEG - but the PCs don't read these forums and don't know it yet) is a demonblooded (succubus) nymph with a bunch of roguish class levels and with a Wisdom-draining whip (to set up for the "I'm so hot you die" ability - I run nymphs old-school).Wow. Talk about your intimidating villains.

...and at one point castrated the party Ranger for spell components), naturally, this has led to all sorts of mental trauma for the PCs.Well, if that won't lead to all sorts of mental trauma, what will?

I'm afraid to ask what the spell was... [shudder]

The New Bruceski

2007-03-16, 06:11 AM

I dunno. I seem to recall some of them having non-obvious weak spots.

Wow. Talk about your intimidating villains.

Well, if that won't lead to all sorts of mental trauma, what will?

I'm afraid to ask what the spell was... [shudder]

Male's Wisdom?

Swordguy

2007-03-16, 08:29 AM

Sam K

2007-03-16, 10:19 AM

Situation:

I and another player were going to join a pre-existing evil party, consisting of a dark elven berserker (dark elves being pretty physically powerful in this setting), a halfling mage, and some rogue type that I cant remember (this was some 15 years ago). I was playing a high elven wizard, the other new player a dwarf dragonslayer (essentially a fighter with bonuses to fight larger creatures, especially dragons). Needing an excuse for why we'd be joining up with this rather unplesant party, we decided that my character and the halfling had studied under the same masters, and he had contacted me to join him on the expedition they were about to undertake (which, from what I understood, mostly consisted of finding people with nice stuff and killing them, but high elves are extremely arrogant, so killing lesser races was ok with me). I had then hired the dwarf to be my guide and bodyguard, and we'd decided OOC that the party would offer him to join as well. Not the best plot, but we were 13 or so at the time. The dwarf personality was pretty much greedy and mercenary, so he wouldn't have any problems with the nature of the party.

As we were coming up to the location where I had been told to meet my new allies, we spotted a fight going on.

DM: New guys, you see a camp site with some horses tied to a tree. About a hundread feet away, a party of three are fighting a group of men that you think are guards. The party of 3 are clearly winning, there are several dead guards, and the rest seem to be trying to retreat.
Me: This must be my friend and his allies.
Dwarf: Have the party noticed us yet?
DM: No, they're busy fighting the guards.
Dwarf: I'll run into the camp and steal the best looking horse!
Me: What the hell?
Dwarf: My character is greedy! He will steal the horse!
DM: Ok, the dwarf foolishly rushe into the camp and attempt to climb onto the big black horse. *to the party fighting the guards* You guys hear someone rushing into your camp, and see a dwarf climbing on to the dark elfs horse.
Halfling: I'll cast my withering spell on the dwarf!
DM: *rolls some dice* The dwarf shivers up to about the size of a rasin as the powerful magic drains all the life from his body.
Dwarf: WHAT THE HELL!!?! Why did you do that???
Halfling: Dude, you were stealing our stuff...
Dwarf: What if I was roleplaying a horse thief? *to me* And why didn't you help me steal the horses? You were on my team!
Me: I had no idea what you were doing, the peope you tried to steal from were allies I was suppose to meet up with, and they killed you before I had a chance to do anything anyway.
Dwarf: You should have still helped me! You were on my team!

I ended up joining the party just fine.

Sadly, I had many many games with the dwarfs player (there weren't too many people willing to try RPGs where I grew up), and he never did improve much. Among his other achivements was going on a random killing spree of civilians with the explanation "my character is like a mafia, and they insulted him so he had to kill them to restore his honor" (his character at that point was a knight with no ties to any criminal organizations), then being upset because guards would attack him ("Why are they attacking me, I wasn't attacking THEM, just the civilians!"), and trying to make a chicken into a combat pet by outfitting it with dragonscale armor and a magic sword (which he made out of pieces of his own magic sword).

M._A._Foxfire

2007-03-16, 09:39 PM

So, first time I played tabletop D&D? The escort mission from hell.

Our party consisted of a monk, a rogue, and a wizard with a weasel familiar (me)*, as well as the merchant we were escorting, his NPC bodyguards - a fighter and somebody who was probably a cleric, and the two horses pulling the merchant's wagon. (The merchant and cleric were riding inside the wagon, everyone else was walking.)

After a few hours of travelling, the DM started cackling, and we were attacked by a rat swarm. The monk, rogue, and fighter waded into battle. My weasel hid in the wagon with the merchant. The cleric freaked out and ran, or at least attempted to do so. I was an idiot, if a lucky one.

Me: I grab onto the cleric as he runs by.
DM: You do know that you have a strength penalty, don't you?
Me: Yeah!
DM: ...Roll.
Me: I got a 16!
DM: Ok, you successfully grapple the cleric.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was discovering that the rats were diseased.

DM: You spend the round throwing up.
Rogue: ****... I throw up on the rats.
DM: They're rats. They eat it.

A couple rounds in, a wererat snuck into the wagon and abducted the merchant. I decided that the most efficient thing to do would be to use the cleric as a missle weapon. He landed a few feet away, then ran sobbing into the woods. I wasted my next round cussing him out with my disembodied voice. The rogue, who had stopped vomiting, was the only one to do anything about the actual abduction, but when the wererat's pals showed up, he backed away to deal with the rat swarm overwhelming the others.

The swarm taken care of, the monk patched himself up with first aid, the unconscious fighter stablized his bleeding, and the DM explained to me that my spell component pouch was automatically stocked, therefore making it unecessary to dissect the rats for parts. I also tested the rat flesh for disease by feeding one to my weasel.

The PCs then decided to sleep off their wounds/meditate to renew their spells and monk skills. The weasel spent the night vomiting under the wagon. The next morning, the DM cheerfully informed us that the unconscious fighter, who we had left outside, had been devoured by rats in the night.

Other highlights of the campaign included the monk accidentally killing a dwarven prisoner we were attempting to lift out of a pit, me slicing off the rogue's shirtsleeve out of boredom, then attempting to pick his pockets, the DM springing random drow on us, the rogue setting off a timed mass disentigration spell in an abandoned temple, and the monk throttling the rogue as his last action before turning to dust.

* First sign of noob-ness. I'd figured that I should play a spellcaster to balance out the other two, despite being a more of a melee type of player.

Drider

2007-03-17, 01:46 AM

im not sure if this counts but...
We were having an ecl-10 adventure
i was a reptillian fighter and gray elf sor/cleric(jackass of the group...and leader) with a halfling ninja and elf fighter. at the end of the dungeon, we fought a possessed copper dragon till it was at half hp, whereas its "mother" showed up. because of diplomacy, we managed to get the mother to realize the child was possessed and attacked us, and were awarded for not killing it(the mom had some dispel magic scrolls)

anywhoo, after getting our treasure from the mom's hoard, we went to a town we had our rented rooms in and spending 3 weeks there before leaving, on the road we make listen+spot checks, my elf getting 30 and not noticing anything, we get knocked out.
we wake up with our equipment missing and we're tied to poles and my characters are interrogated by the dragon and some old man(a big plotpoint character)
Me: Yo, ****-face WHY THE **** AM I ******* TIED UP?! UNTIE ME OR I"LL ******* KILL YOUR *****(my elf cursed alot, part of being the group's offical jackass)
old man:*Slaps me* Tell Me where you Hid it!
Me: ? HID WHAT?!
old man: You know what im talking about!(We had no idea)

After a heated debate over 15 minutes of me attempting to kick him while tied up and him Trying to subdue me the conversation gets to a point where we all know he wants a valuable magic gem that he assumed we had(we still don't know WHY he thought WE had it, and the dragon became a mute or something)
Me: hand me my wand of fireballs, i put the gems inside (bluff natural 20+3)
DM:I'm not supposed to interject here but...*a disembodied voice says, "no it isn't"
Me: ...
After more heated debate, we convince him we don't have it and are un-tied, and re-armored
Old man: We may have gotten off on the wrong foot
Me: you think? was it with the tying us up for no reason or the YOU BEING A **** MUNCH?!
Elf fighter and reptillian: grapple elf and muffle with their hands, barely lessening the stream of insults, curses, and worse
Old man: ahem, well... we would like to hire you on a quest of the utmost importance, the reclaiming of the Plum Jewel, before the forces of evil use it for dastardly deeds.
elf fighter: We would be happy too.
Reptillian:(without accent) With a powerful dragon and mighty spellcaster such as you in our group, will ensure our victory.(the spellcaster had at least 23 skill ranks in use ropes, the halfing's roll proved)
old man:...uh about that...i have important wizardy stuff to do...(the DM actually said this)
Dragon: i have dragonly needs to take care of...
Me: having finally escaped their grapple, i ready my staff of thunder and lightning, aim, then fire as they're leaving.

and that is the story of how my party fought a 23rd lvl wiz and cr 17 dragon...i'll spare the combat details...but we need a new group, so its obvious who won

Diggorian

2007-03-17, 02:54 PM

and that is the story of how my party fought a 23rd lvl wiz and cr 17 dragon...i'll spare the combat details...but we need a new group, so its obvious who won

New group, or new DM? :smallwink:

Solo

2007-03-17, 03:25 PM

BoVD uses body parts to help empower ritual spells. :smallbiggrin:

What spell needs.... that kind of body part?

The Glyphstone

2007-03-17, 07:54 PM

Apoc360

2007-03-17, 11:32 PM

In the group I DM, we have a player who delites in doing the randomest thing, at a whim. He's basically playing a Halfling Barbarian named Zoomblah Jubjub, who has 3 ranks in "Craft:Monkey" and "Perform:Dance". That aside, onto the story.

The party had just had a nasty encounter with Undead and an Outsider prior to entering the town. So first thing they do is find a tavern. As soon as they enter the tavern, the halfling goes up to the bar manager person, and asks him some random questions. "Have you ever been to McDonald's, What's it like being fat?" etc. Naturally the guy is getting irritated, and so I warn my friend that the guy is clutching the bottle and looks as if he's about to toss it at his character. He shrugs it off, as he didn't think it would hit him with his AC 20. Barbarian then chooses to dance a cheery jig, so, bar manager chucks the bottle, and I roll to see if it hits. Natural 20, twice in a row. This drops him to low Hp(I wasn't aware of this though), and he says he continues to dance. I have the manager chuck another bottle at him, and it manages to do enough damage to drop him to -1 Hp. Near death by thrown wine bottles....

What we learned? Do not mess with fat bar keepers.

kamikasei

2007-03-17, 11:47 PM

Suvarov454

2007-03-18, 09:20 AM

I did not mean that.

In D&D you take damage completely independent from your size. No matter whether you are a 60 pounds halfling or a 280 pounds half-orc, the fall is handled exactly the same. And since the half-orcs will usually have more HP, they have less to fear than the halflings.
This is just ridiuclous and plain wrong. In reality, the damage you sustain from a fall increases exponentially with your weight (since it determines the force of impact). Even though big guys and big animals might be sturdier, the exponential growth of the damage works against them.

One example: Take a mouse and a horse and throw them down 20 feet onto stone ground. In roleplaying, they would take the same damage. Horse with many HP walks away and the mouse dies.
IRL, the mouse wouldn't be able to break a bone even theoretically. And the horse...the horse would literally go splat.

This is what I meant. Size determines everything when dealing with falling damage but it is ignored by every system I know. Similar problems arise with starvation, but I am afraid, I'll drift off.

I started going into a diatribe about two objects with different masses falling at the exact same velocity, then I realized that you were saying that they hit with different energies, and that the energy is proportional to mass. That is perfectly reasonable.

The problem comes from translating energy (measured in Joules) into damage (measured in HP). By straight pysics, if a human male (160 to 220 lbs) takes 4d6 of damage for a 40 foot drop, then a halfling (40 to 55 lbs) should take 1d6 for the same 40 foot drop. I'll agree to that wholeheartedly, as long as you accept that HPs are linear to weight, and that a 4th level halfling has only 1 hit die.

Is that all right? No? Who is being unrealistic?

Dant

2007-03-18, 12:32 PM

Silkenfist

2007-03-18, 12:35 PM

I started going into a diatribe about two objects with different masses falling at the exact same velocity, then I realized that you were saying that they hit with different energies, and that the energy is proportional to mass. That is perfectly reasonable.

The problem comes from translating energy (measured in Joules) into damage (measured in HP). By straight pysics, if a human male (160 to 220 lbs) takes 4d6 of damage for a 40 foot drop, then a halfling (40 to 55 lbs) should take 1d6 for the same 40 foot drop. I'll agree to that wholeheartedly, as long as you accept that HPs are linear to weight, and that a 4th level halfling has only 1 hit die.

Is that all right? No? Who is being unrealistic?

*shrug* we could argue about whether height, weight, force of impact or other variables translate linear or exponential to HP and damage. However, since roleplaying is a constructed system and HP/damage are arbritary constructs, there is no "right" to that question.

I'll resort to what can be simply proven. In real life, humans and animals have a higher chance of surviving the fall if they are lightweight.

The problem in your argumentation is that you use the HP system against which I am already arguing. In real life, there are no HP, there are bones and internal organs. If your bones meet enough force, they break. If your organs meet enough differential in speed, they rupture.
Your point of view is that big people should have a linear amount of HP, so they should be able to take that much damage. However, reality dictates that organs and bones have certain breaking strengths. Those breaking strengths are not linear dependant on their size.

Once again, there are issues with the thickness of tissue and the problem of nonlinear translations. Still I refer to the example of horse vs. mouse in the 20 feet drop.

Demented

2007-03-18, 04:56 PM

The mouse will slap down to -6 hp on average. Not dead, just dying. If you want a dead mouse, drop it from 30 feet.

Swordguy

2007-03-18, 04:59 PM

The mouse will slap down to -6 hp on average. Not dead, just dying. If you want a dead mouse, drop it from 30 feet.

The horse will explode.

Demented

2007-03-18, 05:38 PM

Try a pudgy halfling. =P

magicwalker

2007-03-24, 02:50 PM

More stupidity please.

CHASE THE HERO

2007-03-24, 03:09 PM

Bryn

2007-03-24, 04:32 PM

ok so now im with my bro and his freind. they have just their clothes and some gold on them. one is a gnome rouge the other is a thri-keen ranger (psi handbook). so they approach a small hamlet, and i tell them that all the houses have their shutters shut. so they approach the first house and kill one of the 3 ppl inside. after a slight battle w/ stolen weapons the pcs manage to kill most of them. the last guy runs out and alerts the town guard.
me(DM): you see about 10 angry farmers approaching the house.
rouge: ok i brace the doors and get ready.
ranger: i help him
me: ok the farmers start chopping down your barricade.
rouge: ill go jump out the window
me: ok you jump right into the shuttered and locked window.
ranger:ill hide under a bed.
(he failed to remember that theri "beds"' were actually bedrolls)
me: the guards come in and chop u pthe barracade whilt the 9ft insect is hiding under a 6ft bedroll, and see a gnome jump into a shuttered window.
rouge: i open the shutters and escape
me: ok you jump into some guards which (rolls) promptly knock you out.
ranger: ill stay here
me: the guards come and knock you out too.

ok now their in seperate prison cells with absolutely nothing.
rouge:ok ill bash my head against the wall to knock myself out
me: ok *snaps* youre knocked out
me: you wake up completely bound to the floor.
rouge i try to vomit to kdrownmyself in my own vomit
me: ok you do that and you are dead
ranger: i sit here
(to be cont)

Well, random killing is pretty stupid, but apart from that this is mainly the DM's fault. Even if a player forgot the beds were bedrolls, the character would have to be literally blind not to realise that. From the way you describe it, it sounds like you're paraphrasing it, so I assume you already mentioned that the beds were bedrolls.

Then there is the fact that the guards could easily overpower the players in one or two hits, and appeared instantaneously when the players started killing people. It seems almost as if you are out to get them. As for the prison scenario, what did you expect them to do? Pick the lock without lockpicks? Bash down the door? Considering how unbeatable the guards were, escape would seem pointless, and it sounds like the players were pretty tired of the game at that point.

Quietus

2007-03-24, 05:24 PM

Ahhh... I'd almost forgotten about this thread. Good times were had by all in my IRC game last Tuesday.

In that particular game, we have a group of PC's travelling through a very old forest, to reach the ruins of a Wild Elf city called Ennathe. Along the way, they've been encountering Wild Elves that have been driven insane, as well as skeletal remains of the wild elves and some wolves. Additionally, they've found that within a couple hours travel of this city, anything they've killed has risen again to fight them as zombies - as has one of the old teammates, an awakened monstrous spider. THAT was a fun fight.

Anyway. This city was built, not outward, but upward, into a four-tiered city that was grown, rather than built. As they enter the area of the ruins, they notice two things. One : The ground is absolutely barren. Nothing short of a natural 20 finds anything to eat with Survival checks. Two : Where there used to be buildings standing, there are now fallen walls, many of which have enormous holes in them. All of this on top of the insane elves and the undead. Makes for a very interesting scene.

Anyway. The group has been slowly making their way up, and in the last game, two of them (the only two present, an elven ranger that hates undead and a human cleric of Joramy) manage to make their way to the third tier. The elf makes a spot check, and notices something moving in a (intact) building on the fourth tier. So he takes a potshot at it. Amazingly, he rolls high enough that he would hit his target, but missed due to concealment, and one VERY angry kobold sorceror walks out, holds up a single hand, and shouts, "Halt!" - at which point the elf fails his will save, and stops in place for the next 36 seconds.

Now that, of course, was the first warning. Did they heed it? Of course not, they're PCs! They started shouting at the kobold, and managed to convince him, with a natural 20, that they were there to deliver a note to him. Of course, in all their brilliance, they didn't actually have a note with them... but even so, the kobold told them how to get up to the fourth tir. They get up there, and seem shocked when the kobold demands to see the letter. The human cleric decides that he'll read the letter out for the kobold, and fails THAT bluff check miserably... and the kobold demands to see the paper he's reading off of. The kobold takes one glance at the paper, and says, "... This is a scroll of mending. Now why are you bothering me?"

You would THINK, that if a kobold just made you stop in your tracks for a while, and then immediately identified a scroll at a glance, that the PCs might get the hint. But nah. They proceed to talk to him for a while, and start getting some of the information they were sent to these ruins to get (namely, the source of the undead issues), but eventually they decide to get him to identify this strange bag that feels like it's filled with goo for them. He takes one glance at it, and tells them he knows what it is, and it'll cost them ten gold for him to tell them. They go to pay, and purposefully spill some of it on the ground, in an attempt to catch the kobold unprepared, but the kobold makes an awesome dex check to catch it all - of course, he failed his spot to realize they intended to do that, but whatever.

Then, before the kobold told them what the bag was, the ranger decided to open the bag, turn it inside out, and shove it into the kobold's mouth. Of course, the ranger didn't know what the bag was, so this was entirely metagaming on his part - so I had no problems with asking for a reflex save, which he promptly rolled a natural 1 on, so the tanglefoot bag exploded all over him, gluing him to the floor. One Hold Person spell later, the cleric was standing stock still, while the kobold cast Spider Climb, Jump, and Expeditious retreat, grabbed the scroll of Mending, and left through the window. I do love 60 foot base speed, +32 to jump, and the ability to cling to any surface you want.

Two minutes later, the ranger can hear the sound of the kobold's voice in the distance, making a lot of racket and headed back in their direction. He dragged a total of 10 insane elf bowmen back to where the PCs were, and when he was visible through the window, the ranger took a potshot at him, hit, and really only managed to piss the kobold off. One Magic Missile spell later, the ranger was bleeding out, with the kobold perching in the windowsill. The cleric charged, struck the kobold, who responded by hitting the cleric dead in the chest with a Scorching Ray, dropping him as well.

I decided to play the nice DM, and only stripped them of anything the kobold wanted - the kobold now possesses a nice 150ish gold peices in addition to his various spells, wands, and the like. Plus 3 sillk ropes, one hempen rope, and a couple other things. Then the PCs decided to play nice, and actually talk to the kobold, who sent them to retrieve something for him, though he doesn't expect that they can do it... he more sent them away so that he wouldn't have to dirty his hands himself.

Ranis

2007-03-24, 06:08 PM

I do enjoy kobolds with a lot of caster levels. :D

Quietus

2007-03-24, 07:01 PM

It wasn't even a lot! He was a level 6 sorceror; If the cleric had attempted to grapple him, the kobold was VERY unlikely to escape. Even the ranger, at level 1, was pretty much an even chance as to winning or losing the grapple... actually, the ranger had a 1 point advantage!

They COULD have killed that kobold easily, they just didn't. They chose to do something absolutely ridiculous, metagamed like champions, and learned a lesson - I am completely willing to fire off a TPK if they do that again.

Rigeld2

2007-03-25, 10:18 AM

He cast 3 spells, grabbed a scroll and ran off before the other two party members could react? Or did they just stand there dumbly? :)

Douglas

2007-03-25, 10:24 AM

One was caught by a tanglefoot bag and the other failed his save against Hold Person.

Rigeld2

2007-03-25, 11:34 AM

Missed the fact that only two of them were there. Sorry.

Diggorian

2007-03-25, 02:08 PM

Star Wars D20 campaign, though this idiocy could happen in any game.

Two of the PC are weapon scientists -- Calamon and Serelle -- on the run from their former employer the Empire. Calamon got away only by surviving a coup-de-grace and being left for dead (another story). Another PC was a Rebel force adept, the remaining two were a Wookiee scout and a human merc that joint owned a ship the first too were crew aboard.

The party is trading on this planet when the Empire drops in for a trade conference. They caught it early on the news so the scientists lay low on the ship while the others continue business to fund their next trip. The merc even gets a job as security for the conference to "keep an eye on the Imps".

Things are going smooth until the merc gets curious about why his techie crewman are laying low. He askes for a DM/PC sidebar to investigate, I allow it while the other PC's roleplay some character interaction ironically about coming clean with their new friends.

So, he walks over to an Imperial officier:
PC Merc: "Pardon me. Do you know of any bounties for two technicians named Calamon and Serelle?" He describes them.

Imperial Officier:" ... Yes. Why do you ask? You've seen them?"

Merc: "Uh ... no ... just making conversation. I dont personally know them." *rolls a low Bluff, modified by the stupidity of the lie itself, regrets Cha dump stat*

Imperial: "... ofcourse. What is your name and where are you staying? I'll send you their files and an application for Imperial bounty hunter license." *doesnt even try a Bluff*

Merc: *doesnt try Sense Motive or Bluff* "I'm Scorcha. My ship is The Star Hawk, Floran spaceport south dock B13."

Imperial:"Thank you citizen." slides a 1,000 cred chit into his pocket. "We'll be in touch." walks off to call in a raid on the PC's ship.

The player and I return to the table, I ask what everyone is doing and note it. The merc commed everyone and told them to meet back at the ship immediately, but didnt say why. Scorcha, the Wookiee, and the Rebel are racing down the causeway on a luggage cart to their ship as a pair of Imperial Assault shuttles are landing on neighboring pads.

They escaped into space, but then it was the Force Adepts turn to be stupid (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2149436&postcount=324) and finish the TPK.

NemoUtopia

2007-03-27, 07:08 PM

Star Wars d20, I decided to be nice and let my friends play some 1st level jedi warriors who had escaped because of their master's sacrifice, yaddablah fishcakes backstory.

They get through their first adventure just fine...it's what they do when they stop into the spaceport that just ranks stupidity to some spectacular levels. First: they decide to split up, take alone time, shop, etc. This is necessarily stupid, but isn't high on list-of-things-to-do-in-Imperial-space-as-force-users, even if you are out in the outer Mid-rim. One of these wise-guys decides he wants to make some music...music that involves tapping the butt of his lightsaber on just about any inanimate object around. :smallconfused: Wellll, okay, the populace and guards fail their Spot/Knowledge checks to recognize the lightsaber as such, but the town guard comes to investigate the strange off-worlder tapping a rod of unrecognized tech on random surfaces. The guard arrives and asks him to cease and desist, be on his way. He decides it's a great idea to start his tappy nonsense on the patrol speeder. :smallconfused: :smallconfused: The other PCs, at this point, are looking at him OoG like he's grown a second head.

Guards (there are four) are all 1st level, but have (and this is improtant, mind) blaster rifles. Hanging on their belts. Quite obviously (this was a stress point in their description). The guards all palm their holsters and get a bit edgy, and ask him once more, calmly, to cease/desist/leave the area or be forced to spent the night at the local brig. Genius decides to draw his lightsaber and slash at the nearest guard. :smallconfused: :smallannoyed: :smallsigh: I rule he gets the surprise round (he was already holding it, and was acting erratically enough that the guards weren't prepared for it), slashes the guard (removing the guard's vitality points and causing a burn/slash). Guards get initiative and respond the way any guards would to being attacked by a crazy person with a light weapon: they all draw and fire.

4x Blaster rifle damage to level 1 PC = gaping cavity in chest. He asks if he's still standing. :smallconfused: ??? I respond: "I don't think you understand the definition of 'gaping torso cavity'. Your corpse has legs, arms, and the like, but is only connected by your spine and back muscle tissue, since your internal organs and ribs have been vaporized."

The player learned his lesson and stopped playing Chaotic Stupid after that (with his new, non-Force using character), and they had fun and did alright for themselves.

Foolster41

2007-03-28, 12:18 AM

I am so using that teddy bear thing. Totaly get my party all paranoid. :)

I love that thing about where thieves end up. I have a rouge who *really* wants to be a thief (He's new to D&D, I explained that rouges do not equal thieves) in my new game, and I'm definitely going to use that. I'll have to just see if he falls for it. :)

I have a lot of stories of stupidity from my group (A few that are my own). Here's a few stories

No Whammies!
partly stupidity from sheer pushing our luck. I'm a Lizardman Sohei (Oriental Adventures) along with a few others. We are investigating a big tower. In it are places for making and storing magic items. Rows and rows of magic items. We get to the second floor, slaughtering everyone that is inside (Challenging, but nothing incredible difficult). taking in probibly literally hundreds of thousands of gold worth of treasure, all organized and categorized for us even with a magic catalog. We get to the top of the tower, which is protected by some kind of disintegration shield (we tested it). We should have taken this as a warning.

The center of the tower has a feather fall spell built in to it, so we weren't too afraid of falling to get back down. We have a spell caster cast a fly spell and disable the magic of the shield.

I objected to this idea, and thought it was dangerous. We do it anyway. We were immediately attacked by four wind elementals.

They eventually captured us and a wizard (around level 40) who owned the tower came out. He was really mad (Understandably since we killed off all his mage magic crafters and stole a lot of stuff). He demanded we drop everything we stole. We do (except one who is sneaky). He then demands we surrender and be his slaves to pay off the dept, or we could challenge him to a duel. We choose the second. he even offers to allow us to choose the battleground. We choose a small room.

The battle begins and the guy keeps teleporting everywhere. And then somehow our monk manages to do about 150 damage and the mage is forced to roll for a check vs. massive damage. We failed the roll, but if we had succeeded, the theoretical experience would be enough for all of us to become 26! (Of course, only the monk would get the experience and you can't level more than 1 level anyway) Still nearly killing a character that was basically impossible was quite thrilling.

*Sigh* Rogues
So we have two rogues in our parties and we are investigating a tunnel of grimlock cultists. We find a circle of chanting guys in robes. they go away and we look at what they were chanting around. It's a big symbol drawn on the ground.
Rogue 1: I break one of the lines on the symbol
Rogue 2 (Within 2 minutes after): I attempt to use magic device
At this point I knew this was a bad idea, and may have voiced this. (I can't remember)
the GM rolls and tells us we hear a voice and there is a earthquake. He then tells us that either a critical failure or a critical success would have been very bad. I think it is enough to say we were VERY very lucky. However, the cultists were still alerted to our presence and came running. This was a problem because we had passed by a wall of them just to get inside and we don't know of any way out. Out of 6 people, only 3 got away, including both of the rogues. The moral of the story is that sometimes you get punished for what your idiot friends do.

Ranger Jenkins!
In a tower of some kind, Fighting two trolls. I'm a ranger with bow proficiency. We had a Cleric and a few others. We are standing in a narrow hallway. I don't like the idea of getting close to these bad trolls, but I'm in front and I also didn't want to be in the way of the others, so i plunge ahead past the trolls to a corner. I figured the team could down 1 (With my point-blank shot helping) and I would be fine. I don't take too much damage from the AoO (I think I might have either gotten away with no or just 1 hit.) My party wasn't all that helpful and I was the first to go down within 2 rounds. Maybe not stupidity as much as a grave miscalculation. This ironically was a week or two after making a "Leroy Jenkins" joke (I had just seen that video).

Gamebird

2007-03-28, 08:53 AM

The player learned his lesson and stopped playing Chaotic Stupid after that (with his new, non-Force using character), and they had fun and did alright for themselves.

Good thing they'd all split up. His stupidity didn't involve any of the others.

As an aside:

Rouge = red
Rogue = D&D skill-monkey class
Moral = a lesson about right and wrong
Morale = a person's level of confidence and bravery

Vaynor

2007-03-28, 10:25 AM

Good thing they'd all split up. His stupidity didn't involve any of the others.

As an aside:

Rouge = red
Rogue = D&D skill-monkey class
Moral = a lesson about right and wrong
Morale = a person's level of confidence and bravery

Rogues are red,
Wizards are blue,
Everything I know 'bout gaming,
I learned from you.

Except, not. Just felt inspired. :smallwink:

Foolster41

2007-03-28, 01:31 PM

Yeah, I lose at spelling. Fixed it.

Holocron Coder

2007-03-28, 01:43 PM

Yeah, I loose at spelling. Fixed it.

Just to add to the humiliation.

loose = the opposite of tight.
lose = to do something unsuccessfully; to not win.

DaFlipp

2007-03-28, 03:22 PM

Ah, this would be a good place to reveal how, after a year and a half of gaming at college, our whole party died at once.

It was, I think, in large part a matter of the characters not at all going in the direction the DM had intended. He'd asked for a mostly Good party, but near the end, I was literally playing the only Good character - a Lawful Good orc cleric who believed that Gruumsh had originally been a Good deity before Corellon Larethian blinded him in a duel (a religious revelation that was left up to the imagination whether it was a real vision, or a hallucination that inspired him to draw his magic from the Plane of Good). Nearly everyone else was Chaotic Neutral (some having originally written Chaotic Good on their sheets, but played them as Chaotic Neutral until the DM said "Okay, no, you're Neutral now"), except a Lawful Neutral wizard (a bureacracy-obsessed bookworm we often referred to as Lawful Petty) and a Neutral Evil Necromancer who joined late and really, REALLY tipped the general axis of the party's alignment.

Of particular note was the Fop, a social-oriented Rogue who had started the game Neutral (or was it Chaotic?) Evil, but less villainously than the Necromancer, more just as being completely self-centered. Now, the Fop was the type who got into the most scrapes out of anyone in the party, and generally was mistrusted by all since he had a way of insulting everyone in his path. But my character was assigned to keep watch over him as the result of a trial (we had a lot of those in our campaign), and did so faithfully, often giving him a chance when no one else did.

His alignment shifted to Chaotic Neutral when the party faced down an overpowered Eye of Gruumsh from my character's spotty Barbarian past (he'd lost his Barbarian levels through age, inexperience, and complete abandonment of the lifestyle... not technically allowed in the rules but it fit the character), and when my character was royally pwn'ed in single combat with him (after putting on a good show by casting Sanctuary to prove he could resist him without fighting back, though someone in the Eye of Gruumsh's entourage eventually cast Dispel Magic), the whole party leapt in to help him. This actually inspired the Fop's alignment shift because he was starting to see that there was something to the idea of caring for more than just oneself.

Fast forward a few sessions. Due to a play I'm in, I'm absent or mostly-absent from several sessions. It shows - the party gets more and more Evil in its actions, without my character to second-guess stuff. By the time I'm playing consistently again, the Necromancer's brazen enough to Fireball a small city as we're leaving it, burning it to the ground, and the party decides to save him from the ensuing archery fire rather than punish him. My character is appalled, but also isn't the type to just attack his allies (he'd have no problem with attacking the Necromancer, but the other allies sticking up for him, yes). I talk with the DM, and we decide that he undergoes a psychotic break, loses his Cleric status, and instead reverts to what he was before his conversion (again not covered in the rules, but it fit the character's progression) - a fierce, Chaotic Evil Barbarian warlord who now treats his allies like underlings rather than friends.

With no more Good in our party (the closest, ironically, being the Fop, who is sincerely frightened by his orc compatriot's sudden and violent nasty streak), our actions get worse and worse, and we end up seeking for a way to our home dimension by addressing the rulers of a city of Orcus followers. A council of Thralls of Orcus, in fact. They agree to send us home if we sacrifice one of our souls.

Now, there's a long argument, both IC and OOC, about who'll get sacrificed. Finally, I decide to roll two Will Saves - one for the cleric version of my orc, one for the barbarian. The cleric "wins", and the "good side" of my orc manifests, and he strides forward to offer himself. At the time, I thought this was the best way to resolve the conflict.

How wrong I was.

You see, the orc was the only genuinely beloved character in the party. So the Fop, yelling "NOOOOOOOO!", divetackles my orc as he tries to shake the head Thrall's hand. The Lawful Neutral Wizard, who's been pretty upset about recent turns of events himself, finally snaps and decides that if we all died now, we'd at least have a decent chance of going to mildly pleasant afterlives, and he casts a sudden maximized empowered Fireball on the Thralls and a couple of PCs also in range.

After the DM goes "You're really doing that?!" a couple times and the wizard's player says yes, he proceeds to RP out the Thralls' inevitable bloody slaying of us all.

All of us except the Necromancer, who didn't step forward to resist the Thralls, and thus was kept alive.

And then they used our souls (well, the soul of the Fop specifically) to open a portal to our dimension... and start marching undead minions into it, bent on taking it over.

So... in the current campaign, we're all playing decidedly Good characters fighting a two-front war against the original BBEG -and- the undead minions of Orcus, headed by the Necromancer PC (now NPC).

Gamebird

2007-03-28, 03:47 PM

What an awesome way to end a campaign. Kudos to you guys!

brian c

2007-03-28, 04:55 PM

Finally, I decide to roll two Will Saves - one for the cleric version of my orc, one for the barbarian. The cleric "wins"

I am so surprised! The cleric had a better will save than the barbarian?? really??
:smallwink:
All kidding aside, that's a pretty cool campaign.

DaFlipp

2007-03-28, 05:23 PM

At least we seem to have gotten our shenanigans out of the way with that campaign. Our new set of characters have conistently surprised the DM by actually setting out and completing quest objectives promptly, instead of getting sidetracked with comically-pointless minutia. (Sadly, I don't think we ever -actually- got Quest XP until the restart...) There was even one session where he had to go, "Umm... all righ, hang on guys. I'm not used to you being this competent. I need to figure out what you're doing next."

Also, the Necromancer used Animate Dead on most of us as the Thralls were slaying us. The DM's decided that the Thralls have since done their magic to make our old PCs into intelligent undead, so when we finally corner the evil Necromancer, we'll have to fight our old team first...

So far the only stupid thing our new group has done to my knowledge was, during a plotline where a Cancer Mage was infecting the city magically, our Monk (player of the Necromancer) strode boldly into Quarantined areas relying on his immunity to disease... not realizing it didn't stretch to MAGICAL diseases. Combined with some awful Fort saves, he had to sit out the entire climactic battle with the Cancer Mage.

BrokenButterfly

2007-03-28, 05:52 PM

Okay I'm running the Savage Tide for one of my gaming groups at school, and this guy Random just keeps doing stupid things with his characters...

His first character was a wizard who was fed up with being at the back all of the time and decided to take action. Of course this action led to a direct corrollation between his flesh and zombie mouths. There was laughter.

Now his rubbishy rogue-type indulged in even more mindless idiocy a few adventures on. His rogue (which we always complained was useless) decided that the best way to deal with a weaker monster adjacent to him was to run the other way...Straight into the dense fogs which the party knew harboured even more of the creatures. The party knocks down their foes, turns to aid their comrade, only to find that he has taken a Run action in the opposite direction...There was crying and mockery. These are not in-character decisions I might add, there is no excuse...

There have been other deaths in this campaign that have been funny through sheer lack of luck though. A wizards ran into a hostile room, took a critical throwing axe to the head, failed a five percent failure chance, then took another critical hit that wiped him clean off Oerth. And the cleric...well he got knocked off a boat by an aquatic hydra and drowned one round from safety. That was unexpected from my point of view...

Mr. Moogle

2007-03-28, 06:15 PM

once i was doing a campaign that included the book of the nine swords, and alot of blood-thirsy revenge-driven warlocks (all with darkness and devils sight). So my party and I (my party being a chaotic evil sorcerer, and a lawful good crusader/ bard) had just escaped capture in the warlock village (in which my previous character died, he was a fighter who got crited by a firey burst greataxe, pwned in the first hit) and we see a group of warlocks trying to ambush us (im the only one with ranks in spot) and i see them.

here is what the combat was like.

Me: i use hatchlings flame to crisp those warlocks!
DM: uhhhh... that will light everything on fire.
Me: so?
DM: your in a forest.
Me: And your point is?
DM: all right
*rolls*
you kill the warlocks
Me: yes!!!
DM: and the forest is on fire
Me: SH*T (im the only one without a stolen skelital horse) RUN!!!

Well, i burned to death ( even though i was within 5 feet of a lake), but the soul of kenny the cannon fodder lives on...

AtS

2007-03-28, 09:08 PM

I've got one!

The PCs were in a psionic temple of somesort. They had reached the final chamber, which consisted of a series of platforms over some manner of silvery liquid in a pit below. (It was a pool of quintessence, which freezes things in time if they are emerged completely. There were a few bodies in suspended animation floating in the goo. It was spooky.)

Anyway, the party rogue was doing a fine job of crossing the platforms, when a series of crappy rolls and a botched reflex save made him fall into the quintessence, removing him from the normal flow of time.

The party fighter, clad in full plate armor, jumped in after him without a second thought. *sploosh*

So now they had to fish out a halfling and a full grown human man in heavy armor. D'oh!

Heh, I was in that campaign... Unfortunately, I missed that day. And YOU my friend, used my character to kill the rogue... >_>

I still have no inkling of what happened there. Machines that cut people in half instead of fishing them out of suspended animation goop?

Anyways, I came back to the next session and everyone was like: "Hey, guess what, you killed the rogue! :)"

"What? I don't understand. I'm concerned. Rogue... dead?"

Yeah... I'm glad I can have experiences such as that again, now that I've found this site.

Beren One-Hand

2007-03-28, 09:29 PM

Background: I was DMing a game loosely based around the fall of Hadrian's Wall. (Okay, okay... it was ripped off whole-cloth from a historical fiction I read about it - I was young, deal with it)

The Party: All lower-level (not more than level 5 or 6). One monk, one fighter, and one bard.

The Scene: The PC's are leading a scouting patrol for the sole remaining army in the country that was suddenly overran with hordes of barbarians and other crazed folk. They discover a newly-fortified town and go to investigate. It was surrounded by a spiked trench and wood walls. Upon sighting some giants within the town's walls they realize that it was captured and is now an enemy stronghold.

Act 1:
DM: Okay, what do you do?
Monk: I charge forwards and do a flying kick over the walls.
DM: ??? Okay, if you're sure about that.
<rolls dice>
"With a mighty lunge, the monk leaps into the air and smacks into the walls falling to the ground."
Monk: Wait a minute! I said I was doing a flying kick over the walls, just because I failed the jump check doesn't mean it can't be an attack on the wall!
DM: Fine!
<Rolls more dice>
"With a mighty lunge, the monk leaps into the air. Failing to clear the wall he hits them feet first and bursts through wooden walls, falling to the ground inside the fortified enemy camp."

Act 2:
The rest of the party spent the next several rounds trying to get inside the camp. When the gates are finally opened they discover they are horribly outnumbered and the fighter (the highest in command) orders everybody to rush in and attack - while he stayed behind. A few more rounds of PC bashing results when I felt pity on them and had one of the NPC members of the party run away to inform the rest of the army and bring in some backup. On his way out he passes the fighter.

Fighter: I yell for him to stop and hit him with my fist as he passes me.
<rolls dice> (Natural 20)
<rolls more dice>
DM: "As your subordinate passes, you strike him full in the throat, crushing his wind-pipe. Collapsing he manages to make one last startled yelp before succumbing to his wounds."
Rest of group: What!?
DM: <shrug> He's wearing gauntlets.
Fighter: That'll teach him to run away!

Diggorian

2007-03-29, 12:21 AM

DaFlipp's entertaining tale reminds me of the one and only evil PC game I ran, and the stupidity involved:

Party were Dragon blooded Exalted (the evil rulers of the world) and charged with using a sacred artifact compass to hunt down potential Solars (the rare good guys of the setting).

After destroying a lovely prarie resort because they could, they're camping out when zombies beseige them. Lots of undead but they're squishy. The main meleers spot off in the distance a pair of uber-emo-goths (Abyssal exalted) that are controling the undead. They charge off.

The goths are very powerful and the two fighting them call for aid from the more spell inclined PCs. The casters reply "Uh ... cant. Still lots of zombies, besides your tough." The dark ones take down the warrior PCs just as the casters start ranged attacks.

Then the clouds parted to reveal the full moon at zenith and a castle built of warped bone and necrotic chitin rose from the bowls of hell itself. The casters turn to hiding while they're comapnions are drug inside the fortress.

I, Narrator: "The maw-like portcullis stays open invitingly. What do you do?"

Wood aspect PC: "I thank the mother of forests that it wasnt me, then leaf." *snickers at his pun*

I: "... huh. They have the compass now too, it was on Serr."

Wind aspect PC: "The fault lies on they that lay dead, atleast it will in my lies."

I: *shrug helplessly, then turn to the captured PCs* "Without hope of rescue the two of you wish for the hideous tortures of body and soul that linger in slow death ... suffer far worse. Campaign over."

Then I went back to D&D :smallbiggrin: