Absolutely Horrifying Encounters

[atemu1234]

I'd like to know the most terrifying encounters you've ever had. I'm not asking for one that's completely unbalanced, like a tarrasque against a first level bard, but more like horrifying, as in unsettling, creepy, and, well, horrifying. Mine involves a Paladin 1/ Blackguard 9/ Ur-Priest 10 with Practiced Spellcaster x3. Basically he'd cast horrifying spells and there was little we could do to stop it. At level 20, he was the most powerful opponent we'd ever faced, wielding a +5 Vorpal Greatsword. In other words, we could barely handle him.

[sideswipe]

....stumpy the hydra.....

[Amaril]

I was in a 4e game once where we got stopped on the road by a platoon of skeletal soldiers led by a wraith. It was in the middle of a pouring thunderstorm, clouds blocking out the sun, very atmospheric. It was particularly scary for me, because I managed to piss of the wraith right away, and he used that lonely death power they get in 4e to cut me off from the others. He had me pinned on the ground at like 3 HP before it wore off and my party took him down--a few more seconds, and he would have turned me into another wraith. So yeah, that was pretty terrifying, as I recall :smalleek:

[Val666]

"Make the players fight Aboleths, lots of them in their lair. Before the fight let them search over the lair just to find the room were aboleths keep their female prisoners just to lay eggs inside of them. This is the only reason (knowing my DMs) why I never play a female character in D&D. Then make a lot of aboleth appear, maybe a really big one with wtf templates or the like."

This was the explanation from my DM when we asked why in the nine hells he made us go through that....and the only female player in the group was nearly crying...

[atemu1234]

"Make the players fight Aboleths, lots of them in their lair. Before the fight let them search over the lair just to find the room were aboleths keep their female prisoners just to lay eggs inside of them. This is the only reason (knowing my DMs) why I never play a female character in D&D. Then make a lot of aboleth appear, maybe a really big one with wtf templates or the like."

This was the explanation from my DM when we asked why in the nine hells he made us go through that....and the only female player in the group was nearly crying...

Ah, nothing more fun than a PC crying.

[With a box]

Rust monster in null magic demiplane prison
The wizard had to club it to death with her wand

[Flame of Anor]

"Make the players fight Aboleths, lots of them in their lair. Before the fight let them search over the lair just to find the room were aboleths keep their female prisoners just to lay eggs inside of them. This is the only reason (knowing my DMs) why I never play a female character in D&D. Then make a lot of aboleth appear, maybe a really big one with wtf templates or the like."

http://i.imgur.com/WUdY33C.png

[TheIronGolem]

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I'll relate this story from a Pathfinder game I ran a couple years back. Buckle up, because this is a long one.

This was a homebrew setting, which included an organization of adventurers called the Wardens who, for the purposes of this story, can be thought of as the Fantasy FBI.

The party had already been introduced to one NPC Warden who was kinda-sorta traveling with them. He was a paladin, a firm-but-friendly type. Less Miko, more Hinjo, etc. This guy being the first and only Warden they had encountered thus far, the party assumed that all Wardens were like him.

They would soon learn otherwise. A few sessions in, I introduced the party to Warden Straad.

Straad made his appearance by showing up on the PC's airship with an arrest warrant for one of them, who was alleged to have murdered several people (he hadn't). He then set about questioning each and every character aboard the ship, PC or NPC, about their backgrounds and their actions over the previous adventure, while not-so-subtly insinuating that each one was a lowlife criminal scumbag (even the ones who weren't!), all in full view of the whole ship. He also took every opportunity to suggest that everything that had happened thus far was somehow the fault of the paladin, making it clear that he held some kind of grudge. Think of every jerk cop you've ever dealt with in real life, and every overzealous Internal Affairs agent you've ever seen on TV, all rolled into one - that's Straad in a nutshell. Even after the party arrived at their destination (the same city where the trial was to take place), found and exposed the real killer at the accused PC's trial, Straad still managed to twist the facts and testimony into an indictment of the paladin's performance as a Warden, earning the paladin an official reprimand from the Wardens and considerable public humiliation.

Now, everybody hated Straad. But the one who hated him most was the party's halfling rogue. He insulted her for being so many things - a halfling, a woman, a criminal, a foreigner, and that's just what I can remember. And in spite of her own alignment (Neutral leaning Evil), relationship with the law (rocky), and worship of Norgorber (secret, obviously), she quite liked the paladin, and was pretty incensed by the way Straad kept gunning for him. The trial was the last straw for her, and she resolved to kill Straad.

Also, the halfling was from a foreign land where undead are almost completely unknown, to the point where she didn't believe they existed. This will matter later.

Shortly after the trial, the rogue sought out the local Norgorber cult. Initially, this was unrelated to her grudge against Straad; she was simply looking for work. But it took some doing for her to ferret out the cult since Norgorber worship was illegal in this city, and when she did find the local cell, they were distrustful of her. She asked how she could prove her loyalty, and received a rather convenient answer: kill a Warden, do it publicly, and make sure everyone knows it's on Norgorber's behalf. A terrorist hit, essentially.

Of course, the rogue not only gleefully accepted this task, but announced that she already had a target in mind: Warden Straad. At this, half of the cultists gasped in awe, and the other half rolled their eyes in disbelief; Straad was the most hated and feared of the Wardens among this element, and this newcomer just casually announces she's going to take him out? Imagine some fresh-faced recruit to Al Capone's gang boasting that he's just going to go pop off and whack Elliot Ness real quick.

She pulled it off, though. Long story short, she lured him into meeting her at an inn with promises of evidence of real wrongdoing by the paladin, poisoned him, set him on fire as he lay choking on the floor, and ran out shouting "glory to Norgorber" or something. She even took a trophy - Straad's signature pistol - and turned it in to the cult, earning serious brownie points. The inn burned down, and it would be revealed later that a few innocents died in the fire as well.

Shortly afterwards, she met with the paladin and cheerfully informed him that Straad wouldn't be bothering him anymore. Sounds stupid from the outside, I know, but she was a complicated character, and it made sense in context. But the conversation, as you might suspect, did not go as well as she expected. She ended up inadvertently confessing to the murder/arson and outing herself as a Norgorber worshipper, and he in turn had to arrest her (putting her in the custody of another Warden, a new PC who had just joined the party). The paladin eventually convinced her to roll on the Norgorber cult and hope that this would earn her leniency at her trial.

The party made a plan to bust up the cultist cell. The rogue would go back to the hideout, where she was expected for a ceremony honoring her accomplishment. She would wait for the right time, then signal the rest of the party, would would arrive to subdue and arrest the cultists. When she arrived at the hideout, she found the cultists seated at pews, with the high priest in front of them next to a throne prepared for the rogue, their guest of honor. She was seated, and the high priest started going on about how Norgorber had chosen a champion who would lead them into a new age of glory and suchlike. Seeing the rogue's expression at this, the priest basically said "Oh, no, I didn't mean you. You're not the champion, you're his tribute", and paralyzed her with a hold person spell.

And that's when Undead Straad appeared and started draining the life from the rogue.

It turns out that Straad, in his last moments, had so raged against the rogue, and against his city and his god who had allowed her to do this to him, that Norgorber himself had taken notice and offered Straad the chance for revenge against all of them. Serve me, Norgorber offered, and I will give you the power to take your revenge, starting with the snotty little halfling who killed you, and right when she's expecting to be rewarded, no less. Spiteful SOB that he was, Straad had gladly taken up the offer.

Of course, that's when the party showed up, and in the ensuing fight Straad was destroyed. Everyone was glad to get a piece of him, because as I said before, they all hated him.

But here's where the horror part comes in.

The encounter, the rogue's player felt, had so thoroughly rattled her that she simply could not continue to function as an adventurer. Not only had the undead turned out to be very real, but one of them nearly killed her, and betrayed everything that he - and more importantly, her friend the paladin - had stood for and vowed to protect. And she was responsible for it all. Coupled with later finding out about the innocents she had killed along with Straad back at the inn, she came to realize what (in game terms) had been true since that night: she was capital-E Evil. That was a big deal for a character whose worldview hinged entirely on the whole everything-is-a-shade-of-grey thing. The player decided - entirely on her own - that despite the fact that she loved playing her, this character was now completely emotionally shattered and unplayable. There was a little follow-up where she went on trial (and did indeed get a degree of leniency), and I left a story hook to allow us to bring her back in any time the player wanted, but sure enough, the player left her where she was for the rest of the campaign and rolled a new character.

And that's how I - quite by accident, mind you - didn't merely kill a player character as any DM could do, but actually broke one.

[Sception]

In a generic sewer dungeon, the party came across a generic treasure box with a mix of gold and also a bunch of worthless shiney objects. Nobody thought anything of it, but the party started hearing strange scuttling, splashing, and hissing sounds after that. Adventure went on otherwise as normal, and we rooted out the were-rat thieves guild we were there for in the first place, using up much of our daily resources in the process.

On the way out, in a maze-like stretch of cramped sewer with frequent grated off drains it struck - a wyrmling black dragon whose very first starter horde we had looted. Normally it would have been no threat, but we were all tired already, and it would blast us with it's breath weapon from behind the protection of a closed gate, and dart back down a pipe or tube before we had any way to get to it. I think our wizard nailed it once, with his last magic missile. Said wizard died in the confused rush to the surface, and had to be stuffed in a bag of holding to revive later (which cost more than the gold we had taken from the little monster).

The dragon became an ongoing thorn in our side, never attacking us directly, but always stalking the party, tipping off enemies to our location, ambushing the party in our sleep then scurrying off into the darkness before we could deal with it. We did eventually pin it down and kill it, but until that point it was a nightmare, and easily the most memorable adversary from the campaign.



This was the explanation from my DM when we asked why in the nine hells he made us go through that....and the only female player in the group was nearly crying...

Your DM is an jerk and the player in question deserves better friends and a better gaming group.

[atemu1234]

Your DM is an jerk and the player in question deserves better friends and a better gaming group.

Yeah, he is. But to be fair, PC's tears are delicious.

[Ossian]

I was ever the GM. So, plenty of mighty tests (all relative to the players' level at the time, of course...).

Let's see....

...I guess the best would be in the Mystara (Ierendi archipelago) campaign. Both, in fact.

One summer I threw a grade-VII kaiju at the city. Shaped like a kraken. But the idea was more of the "cetus" (i.e. what Hollywood today calls "the kraken" in toga movies). i.e. a giant sea monster which makes its way tot he coast, to destroy it.

It was so big that the kaiju was basically a dungeon. It required a concerted attack of all the wizards of ierendi (rebel fleet) to distract the monster enough to let a barge (on steroids) get close enough to enter the monster (yeah, an x-wing...). Once inside, they had to battle through its immune system, until they got to the heart, where the "pilot" was, a dracolich (so, a skeletal dragon reanimated, with level 20 sorcerer spells). Once that was taken care of, there they actually had a chance (deflector shield, down) to attack the thing and take it down.

All racing against time because even without the level 20 casting, the thing in the sea was so big that even very far from the coast its very act of swimming towards Ierendi was sending tidal waves and tsunami every 3 minutes or so....

[Vedhin]

Your DM is an jerk and the player in question deserves better friends and a better gaming group.

Sad thing is, there's a PF monster that explicitly does things like that.

The Gutpuppet (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20011215a) is one of the creepiest things I've been up against.

[Sception]

It's one thing to craft a creepy or unnerving or sad encounter to put players on edge or upset them. I've had my share of nefarious moments as a DM myself, and for the most part I'm quite proud of them. The goal, however, should always be to make the players feel their character's discomfort at their imaginary situation, not to make the player personally uncomfortable with the real situation of having to sit at the table with you.

Crafting an adventure in such a way that it singles out your lone female player to make her personally uncomfortable at your table because of her gender is crossing a line, imo. Bringing campaign elements on bad hentai plots without the whole group being explicitly ok with that sort of thing from the start is the kind of immature behavior that gives the game a bad name.

[Fortinbro]

I began my last campaign where everyone started as commoners. They were told to give me a list of people they cared about what they did with their days in addition to their personalities and backstories. I started the campaign like a typical one, a relaxing night at a tavern. Then, suddenly everything dead on the plane came back to life at once due to overarching plot reasons. The party had to use mundane items and tactics to survive a zombie infested city. As commoners, they were outmatched at outnumbered and trying to lead other survivors to safety and save their friends and loved ones.

[Mordokai]

It's one thing to craft a creepy or unnerving or sad encounter to put players on edge or upset them. I've had my share of nefarious moments as a DM myself, and for the most part I'm quite proud of them. The goal, however, should always be to make the players feel their character's discomfort at their imaginary situation, not to make the player personally uncomfortable with the real situation of having to sit at the table with you.

Crafting an adventure in such a way that it singles out your lone female player to make her personally uncomfortable at your table because of her gender is crossing a line, imo. Bringing campaign elements on bad hentai plots without the whole group being explicitly ok with that sort of thing from the start is the kind of immature behavior that gives the game a bad name.

Yeah, I'd tend to agree with this. In fact, any kind of singling out should be frowned upon.

[Phelix-Mu]

It's one thing to craft a creepy or unnerving or sad encounter to put players on edge or upset them. I've had my share of nefarious moments as a DM myself, and for the most part I'm quite proud of them. The goal, however, should always be to make the players feel their character's discomfort at their imaginary situation, not to make the player personally uncomfortable with the real situation of having to sit at the table with you.

Crafting an adventure in such a way that it singles out your lone female player to make her personally uncomfortable at your table because of her gender is crossing a line, imo. Bringing campaign elements on bad hentai plots without the whole group being explicitly ok with that sort of thing from the start is the kind of immature behavior that gives the game a bad name.

Ditto. Though I would also like to add that this situation probably is just off-screen type stuff that needed less detail. Aboleths don't have a reason to pick on just women; magic in D&D makes cruelty an equal-opportunity offender. So just picking on the women-folk seems to be both over-the-top and unwarranted sexism in a situation where that isn't really logical. Plus, squick is squick, and needs to be used while cognizant of the squick-tolerance of each and every player, gender aside. Even if it was all guys, that stuff isn't automatically green-lighted.

In short, challenging the players and their role play abilities = good, rendering those abilities less due to overwhelming force/atmosphere = not good. A DM should treat the DM's ability to create absolutely anything with great respect, for it is terrible if abused.

Anyway, aside from that stuff, the best scene that I ever participated in involved a forest that was trapped in bit of a time bubble, a curse on an ancient druid-dragon that had once upon a time sacrificed the land he protected in order to prevent a bigger evil from coming to pass. The spirits of the plants, warped by evil, anger, and the dragon's own shame and guilt, had turned into ghost-like beings that lived mainly on the Ethereal Plane, but could phase into existence right before attacking. A great hit-and-run type tactic that had the party wondering just what was going on for a while, especially as they had no idea about the druid or the curse, and basically walked right into a very bad situation.

And then the party ninja went Ethereal, and could see that an entire forest full of four-armed, man-eating ghost trees, all full of anger and determined to kill visitors, surrounded the party in every direction, as far as the eye could see.

What followed was a series of endurance-type encounters where the party was staving off an endless horde of not-so-mookish enemies (they weren't harmless given the party's level, but it was a large party and could really pack some punch once they weren't being constantly taken by surprise). They couldn't find their way out of the forest, which was a extradimensional maze that folded back on itself in order to keep the dragon prisoner. So the party wandered around, slowly dying (though I skipped through large parts of what otherwise would have been endless combat, just narrating it as the enemy gradually homing in on the party, as the ghosts weren't all aware of the party's presence if the party kept moving). Eventually, they bumped into a series of the dragon's own aspect-ghosts, all humanoid, manifestations of the dragon's broken mind after centuries of torment had driven him mad. Several of the aspect-ghosts were bona fide crackerjacks, a couple were malicious and deceptive, trying to get the party killed, and one was actually cognizant and penitent, sorry that the party had wandered into his personal hellish nightmare-made-manifest.

So, basically a mix of endless undead horde (with a nice twist) and the cursed ghost archetypes. Once the party helped the ghost achieve some closure via trapping the fragments of his mind near his actual dragon-body (still alive, but sleeping, trapped in a cursed nightmare), they managed to lift the curse, I believe (man, it's amazing how details start to escape after almost a decade, lol). Not before several near tpks and a lot of serious gulping coming from the players as they wandered through the custom-made slice of insanity that I had brewed up, just for them.

Hehe, good times.

[BWR]

I was helping a friend run a Kult game for a group of girls. One of the characters I ran for him was a homeless, paranoid, crazy bum. I played the guy so well the girls were huddled together on the sofa eyes wide with unease bordering on fear. Of course, said friend is an excellent GM and knows how to build atmosphere, which made my performance possible.

[Vedhin]

I began my last campaign where everyone started as commoners. They were told to give me a list of people they cared about what they did with their days in addition to their personalities and backstories. I started the campaign like a typical one, a relaxing night at a tavern. Then, suddenly everything dead on the plane came back to life at once due to overarching plot reasons. The party had to use mundane items and tactics to survive a zombie infested city. As commoners, they were outmatched at outnumbered and trying to lead other survivors to safety and save their friends and loved ones.

In my experience, things like this just teach players not to get invested in the NPCs and setting.

[Karoht]

1/2 CR orcs operating out of a run down castle. Place didn't even have a roof.
They operated much like Tuckers Kobolds. They never really engaged the party directly, it was always ambushes, and most of the time they were just positioning the party while a sapper team broke the supports and shoved a wall on top of them. There was a lone tower at the end that one of the orcs had a wand of magic missile and took potshots at the party. When they got to the base of the tower, flamming barrels of oil went rolling down the stairs while the orc made his escape.

They were really nothing special. But they took a party of 7's and 8's and kicked them very solidly in the teeth.

@Aboleths.
Squick aside, Aboleths are awesome for creating a horror atmostphere. Illusions at will, Dominate Monster has all kinds of uses, easy to use illusions + terrain to separate the party. Illusions are capable of some awesome atmosphere, never mind all the creepy uses for it. Keeping the party guessing about everything and second guessing themselves is key.
Steve the Aboleth prides himself on being the master of atmosphere.

[cosmonuts]

I don't like giving PCs NPC levels. Hell, I don't like giving NPCs NPC levels.

[Val666]

Your DM is an jerk and the player in question deserves better friends and a better gaming group.

The funny thing is, the DM was the female palyer's boyfriend e.e

[Gnome Alone]

Re: TheIronGolem's story --

That was awesome. I was prepared to be bored after being warned that the story was long, but bored I was not. You can toot your own horn all the livelong day as far as I'm concerned. Good setup, good execution, sounds like a good player btw.

Re: the squicky tentacle rape stuff --

I'll agree that it is not cool to spring that stuff on people who are going to be upset by it.

But personally I find it hard to imagine being that affected by something in a game. I mean, I'm deathly afraid of fish in all their myriad disgusting forms but I can't imagine being freaked out by someone describing them in a game... cuz it's a game.

Hell, I could probably see/play a horrible cleric of horriblocity who feeds babies to fish monsters and not really be that squicked out. Maybe this means I've burnt out my imagination unit with a kajillion hours of videogames or something.

[Sception]

The funny thing is, the DM was the female palyer's boyfriend e.e

Yikes.



Re: TheIronGolem's story --
I'll agree that it is not cool to spring that stuff on people who are going to be upset by it.

But personally I find it hard to imagine being that affected by something in a game.

Same here, but then again I've never been the only girl at a table full of guys. Whatever the situation was, if she was reduced to tears over it, then clearly she was affected, and not in a way that I'd be proud of were I the DM.



All that aside, I do love aboleths in general. All their great abilities, The lovecraftian angle of creatures so ancient as to predate the universe itself, working towards the day when they can end reality itself, returning existence to its rightful primordial state, the genetic memory aspect, which allows an Aboleth villain to return to plague the heroes again and again, just the weird alien design of them.

Beholders and Mind Flayers are great and all, but Aboleths really are my favorite aberration in the game.

[Ace Mace]

I once had my PCs fight a goat that was worship as a deity by this cult. The PCs had to fight their way through this temple of cultist than do battle with this goat I gave a ridiculously high AC and DR. It was both equally terrifying and hilarious watching my mid level PCs fight this small goat that no one touch as it just stood there and went "BAA!" It became a recurring joke amongst my friends just how terrifying goats can be.

[atomicwaffle]

Vampire Blackguard on a Beholder Mount.

Actually had to face one. And that was just the prelim. Twas a TPK.

[Calimehter]

Not 3.5, but from a silly Heroes system game in the mid 90's . . .

We were an odd pack of superheroes fighting evil in the old college town, when we happened upon a particularly nasty set of foes. We fought a pack of Mighty Morphin Power Reindeer, who, in addition to being ninja masters, were able to form into a single giant monster. Said giant monster was a gigantic fuzzy purple dinosaur whose power was pretty much just to make you *like* it, usually accompanied by the player being required to sing "I love you, you love me . . ."

Truly terrifying, and a near TPK. I had very little mental defence against the creature's attack (to say nothing of having a terrible singing voice) and ended up jumping off of the roof of a skyscraper rather than face it. Fortunately, as a human slinky, I was able to survive the jump, and the survivors did manage to (eventually) save the remaining PCs from a fate worse than . . well, maybe not "death", but disturbingly close.

[Karoht]

I once had my PCs fight a goat that was worship as a deity by this cult. The PCs had to fight their way through this temple of cultist than do battle with this goat I gave a ridiculously high AC and DR. It was both equally terrifying and hilarious watching my mid level PCs fight this small goat that no one touch as it just stood there and went "BAA!" It became a recurring joke amongst my friends just how terrifying goats can be.Goat which belonged to a Wizard and was his familiar. Leaped down from a hay-loft to go and deliver a Bestow Curse for his master, who was incapacitated at the time.
"BAAAAH!" *whump*
*1 nearly dead and very crippled Monk without so much Goat in it later...*
"My EVERYTHING! OWWWWWWWW!"

The player very nearly flipped the table on that one.

[atemu1234]

The thing is, I find my favorite missions are the most horrifying ones. And the most terrifying missions are the ones where the DM is acting like an *******. Does this make me a masochist...?

[RedMage125]

"Make the players fight Aboleths, lots of them in their lair. Before the fight let them search over the lair just to find the room were aboleths keep their female prisoners just to lay eggs inside of them. This is the only reason (knowing my DMs) why I never play a female character in D&D. Then make a lot of aboleth appear, maybe a really big one with wtf templates or the like."

This was the explanation from my DM when we asked why in the nine hells he made us go through that....and the only female player in the group was nearly crying...


The funny thing is, the DM was the female palyer's boyfriend e.e

Everything Malisteen has said is correct. The fact that the DM was her boyfriend and he did that to her makes it more despicable, not less, because in theory, he has a vested interest in her emotional well-being.

A DM should never try to make a player uncomfortable.

But my own horror encounter wasn't even a combat encounter.

My players had been captured by some enemies (they did not yet know this, but it was the remainder of a group of devil summoners that they had previously encountered before). After breaking themselves out of their cells, they gathered their gear and progressed further into the dungeon. They entered a narrow corridor of cells, with 3 cells on each side. The room was dark, so the only light was their Everburning Torch.

Something large floated up to the bars on their right. It was a beholder, but its central eye had been gouged out, and all of its eyestalks cut off and cauterized. Across from the beholder was a mind flayer with a scar on its forehead. It was still reasonably intelligent, but it did not have the power to command even so much as a rat. Next to the illithid was a medusa, who had been blinded and her head shaved. Across from her was a lich. He introduced himself as Bernard, a human historian who had extended his lifespan because he felt he "did not have enough time". While the lich had the power to break out, his captors had his spellbooks and his phylactery, so there was no point. Next to him was a nymph who had been so badly scarred, that she kept herself covered in a tattered blanket in shame. And across from her there was an ettin. One of the ettin's heads had been severed and cauterized, leaving the other head alone. He was angry, and swore that "Morg and Torg will...Morg will crush puny wizards who did this".

My players looked at me in horror. The universal response was that I was a sick SOB, and they none of them ever thought they would feel pity for monsters like that.

[Honest Tiefling]

What perplexes me is WHY the DM felt the need to single out female NPCs like that, since that's only going to be what, about half of the population of a given area and therefore, somewhat inefficient for a race of super-intelligent monsters. Also, it always confuses (and worries me) that this situation is frequent, even with monsters who are known to warp the laws of nature to their liking, so there is no reason they couldn't use males as well.

[RedMage125]

Furthermore, any tentacled, aberrant horror that needs humanoids to propagate itself probably implants its young into humanoid bodies regardless of gender, like how illithids reproduce. Or the Alien movies.

That way, the horror would have been spread through more party members, and no one person at the table would have been singled out and made uncomfortable.

[Phelix-Mu]

*snip*

Agreed. "Fleshbag" is a gender-neutral noun.

[Val666]

Furthermore, any tentacled, aberrant horror that needs humanoids to propagate itself probably implants its young into humanoid bodies regardless of gender, like how illithids reproduce. Or the Alien movies.

That way, the horror would have been spread through more party members, and no one person at the table would have been singled out and made uncomfortable.

The freaking Aboleths specify "female" creatures...

[Honest Tiefling]

It's been a while since I've read Lords of Madness, so can you give us a source?

[Val666]

While is not it's only reproductive way (they can just lay eggs on water or stick them to the walls) Theres a sample Aboleth villian called The God in the Lake. The book describes the rooms of his lair, with room 14. as the "Breeding Cavern" (Lords of Madness page 36)

"14. Breeding Cavern This cave smells of sickness and rotten food. Several shallow pits line the northern wall, and blood-stained manacles dangle from iron hooks driven into the wall above the pits.
Female prisoners who are enslaved and won’t be missed by anyone in town face a truly terrible fate here. Zlorthishen uses them as incubators for new skum. The birthing process is nearly always fatal, and the remains are fed to the skum or the ooze in area 12. If the PCs are searching for a missing female NPC, she might well be imprisoned here."

Maybe the DM was inspired by that...omg wtf..

[Phelix-Mu]

Well, then it's the aboleths' fault, apparently, for not knowing that simple magic and surgery can turn any warm-blooded creature into an "incubator."

While this takes a bit of pressure off of the particular DM, saying "it wasn't my idea...see, it's in the book!" is still pretty bad form, not to mention unwise from a normal relationship perspective.

[Val666]

While this takes a bit of pressure off of the particular DM, saying "it wasn't my idea...see, it's in the book!" is still pretty bad form, not to mention unwise from a normal relationship perspective.

Im prety sure they fought after that game....haha...they still going out and now with some weird sex tendencies...

[Phelix-Mu]

Im prety sure they fought after that game....haha...they still going out and now with some weird sex tendencies...

Ah. I'm glad that real people are even more diverse and mysterious than the whacky ways of 3e RAW.

Still, I think the general advice to avoid traumatizing players is good. Maybe this guy knew her limits (BF-privilege, if you will) and felt "comfortable" pushing her. Or maybe he's just a **** and she puts up with him because... wait, why do women put up with men, again?

:smallsmile:

[Honest Tiefling]

Pickle jars, I presume. I'll have to ask one.

[RedMage125]

I think my wife puts up with me for the aforementioned opening of jars, and the reaching of things from high shelves. I'm not terribly tall (5' 9" or so), but she's like 5' 1".

I'm also really warm at night. It's like I get into a bed and polymorph into a space heater. Which works out, since, for some odd reason, whenever any woman on Earth crawls into a bed, the temperature of her feet and butt drop to below freezing.

And wanna put it on you...

[AlanBruce]

Two encounters come to mind in my 3.5 game, which I DMed.

The first wasn't so much horrifying as tense, given the situation.

The party of five, mid high level PCs and all caster types (abj. champ, conjurer, druid, bard, spirit shaman and npc effigy master) descend into a completely flooded cavern. There is no air, so the party prepares their water breathing spells and what not.

They are ready. Drowning is not an issue. Slow fighting udnerwtaer is not an issue. They can handle wahetevr comes their way.

Enter the sea hag. This villain was geared to her very rotten teeth and had a sea snake familiar and a cadre of four Ekinoloths in the underwater cavern.

Combat begins and the sea hag is dispelling left and right. The Ekinoloths take advantage through a mental link and target those that have been dispelled, rending and bleeding the Pc with their infernal wounds.

The mage is doing his best to transpose foe and ally alike around the cavern, trying to get the jump on the sea hag by all teleporting around her- she's got nowehere to go now.

The mage tagets her with a GDM and the witch uses a ring of spell battle and redirects the spell to the druid, who had 10 buffs or so on him.

The mage's player is apologizing as I had him roll dispel checks vs. his ally.

The others were at 25% health as the Ekinoloths began summoning more and more and more of their own.

The cavern is now 80% blood as the shaman decides it's time to summon greater water elemetals and vortex the minions for good- something he is quite successful at.

However, as the shaman is in spirit form, the pcs feel their lungs burning- it's been over ten rounds and with disepls and such, their Con isn't as impressive anymore. Worse- swim checks in heavy armor are difficlut and the sea hag had the advantage as she used her mastery of electric spells to fry and stun them underwater.

The group succeeded in driving her away, and only because she got overconfident and decided to sink the island where the party was anchored using a powerful version of control wearther on the surface. The party reaped a lot of Xp and items and gold out of this, but they know that out there, in the vast ocean, the sea hag is watching. And she will have her revenge one day.


The second instance was the same group minus the druid, abj. champ, and spirit shaman.

The mage and bard hear of this old abandoned tower in the middle of the sea, half submerged and abandoned. Lore says it belonged to some mad wizard and who knows what happened to him.

Despite the party's warnings, the mage and bard take a rowboat off course from their destination and reach the dilkapidated tower as the waves crached mercilessly against the jagged rocks at its base, crushing the rowboat.

The two fly in and investigate.

It turns out the wizard had opened a portal, protected by trtons, to the Far Realm, and with his massive summoning spells, had left a bunch of pseudonatural sea demons swimming in the sunken section of the tower.

Caught in the darkness of stagnant waters, both arcanists managed to reach the upper areas of the tower, free of the water and severely injured (not to mention a tad on edge).

Cue in some old notes and doors that should not have been opened and they find themselves being chased through door and walls by one of the wizard's most insane experiments- a half farspawn scrag with a few barbarian levels.

Nowhere to scry on their main ship. No idea where to teleport to, the bard and mage had to use every single protective spell on their arsenal just to keep the tentacled horror from tearing them apart.

Rope Tricks, dimension doors to reach the upper and lower levels as the beast just broke through the old doors and weak walls.

In the end, they found the old wizard's sanctum and learned how to seal the portal (it was underwater). So down to the dark deopths of the tower with the scrag in hot oursuit and the pseudonatural demons below, aching to rip these guys apart.

In the end, by sheer luck of the dice, the portal was shut down and blindly, the mage, teleported out of the tower, leaving the aberrant scrag to roam his master's lair alone.

[Sception]

"14. Breeding Cavern This cave smells of sickness and rotten food. Several shallow pits line the northern wall, and blood-stained manacles dangle from iron hooks driven into the wall above the pits.
Female prisoners who are enslaved and won’t be missed by anyone in town face a truly terrible fate here. Zlorthishen uses them as incubators for new skum. The birthing process is nearly always fatal, and the remains are fed to the skum or the ooze in area 12. If the PCs are searching for a missing female NPC, she might well be imprisoned here."

Maybe the DM was inspired by that...omg wtf..

Ugh. While such exonerates the DM somewhat - not every DM is confident or aware enough to recognize when the authors of the game are being terrible and know to correct it - they should still have recognized when it was upsetting the player and shifted gears, and hopefully after whatever fight they had afterword learned his lesson on that front.

Still... ugh. And I like that book overall. What was the author thinking? What was their editor thinking? Lords of Madness was a main line expansion, not part of the 'book of vile immaturity'. Sigh.

[atemu1234]

Ugh. While such exonerates the DM somewhat - not every DM is confident or aware enough to recognize when the authors of the game are being terrible and know to correct it - they should still have recognized when it was upsetting the player and shifted gears, and hopefully after whatever fight they had afterword learned his lesson on that front.

Still... ugh. And I like that book overall. What was the author thinking? What was their editor thinking? Lords of Madness was a main line expansion, not part of the 'book of vile immaturity'. Sigh.

Yeah, this is why I flat out ignore most of the adventures given in those books in favor of writing my own.

[Val666]

Ugh. While such exonerates the DM somewhat - not every DM is confident or aware enough to recognize when the authors of the game are being terrible and know to correct it - they should still have recognized when it was upsetting the player and shifted gears, and hopefully after whatever fight they had afterword learned his lesson on that front.

Still... ugh. And I like that book overall. What was the author thinking? What was their editor thinking? Lords of Madness was a main line expansion, not part of the 'book of vile immaturity'. Sigh.


Yeah, this is why I flat out ignore most of the adventures given in those books in favor of writing my own.

Well...that DM is kinda of a hentai lover (his girlfriend is a little crazy too...) so..in the end..****..

[Balor01]

An invitation to dinner in the Abyss. The host was improved balor (with which our PC group was making a deal) with his balor liutenents present. Dinner consisted of male and female human children on which regeneration was cast. Basicaly, you would carve pieces of them and roast them in braziers of eldritch fire while kids watched and screamed.

Entertainment was in a form of succubus bard group that would provide bacground "music" by having an entire group of commoner villagers watch their children feed on each other. One of the children was mindraped and was "spaying" other children (no anesthesia) and was then devouring their private parts while parents watched.

Should I say we all left the table that evening with some lost sanity points?

[Val666]

An invitation to dinner in the Abyss. The host was improved balor (with which our PC group was making a deal) with his balor liutenents present. Dinner consisted of male and female human children on which regeneration was cast. Basicaly, you would carve pieces of them and roast them in braziers of eldritch fire while kids watched and screamed.

Entertainment was in a form of succubus bard group that would provide bacground "music" by having an entire group of commoner villagers watch their children feed on each other. One of the children was mindraped and was "spaying" other children (no anesthesia) and was then devouring their private parts while parents watched.

Should I say we all left the table that evening with some lost sanity points?

So...freaking...cool..

[atemu1234]

Well...that DM is kinda of a hentai lover (his girlfriend is a little crazy too...) so..in the end..****..

I think I speak for everyone here when I say this kind of DMing makes us uncomfortable, and that maybe we should change the topic back to the original topic of the thread: encounters that are horrifying, not creepy.

[Val666]

I think I speak for everyone here when I say this kind of DMing makes us uncomfortable, and that maybe we should change the topic back to the original topic of the thread: encounters that are horrifying, not creepy.

Hes not always like that...maybe he just wanted to "****" his girlfriend

[atemu1234]

Hes not always like that...maybe he just wanted to "****" his girlfriend

Nevertheless.

[Seto]

I think I speak for everyone here when I say this kind of DMing makes us uncomfortable, and that maybe we should change the topic back to the original topic of the thread: encounters that are horrifying, not creepy.


I'm not asking for one that's completely unbalanced, like a tarrasque against a first level bard, but more like horrifying, as in unsettling, creepy, and, well, horrifying.

I think that creepy hentai encounter pretty much fits the bill.

I haven't ever faced really horrifying encounters. The closest I can think of is a well-roleplayed Defacer. We were deep underground and couldn't see very far. There were pillars in the cave. The DM described it as "a disturbing wail fills the air. As you approach, it amplifies and becomes downright terrifying, as if someone were in horrible pain". Then he made us roll Spot checks, and those who succeeded saw a fast shadow circling the pillars and hiding between them, after which... we couldn't see it anymore. Then the Defacer sprang up from the ground, stole my face, and went back in hiding, leaving me with the face of a young man screaming maniacally for help. The thing had my face on and grinned. When I got it back, we all grouped together and stayed close and away from the pillars, so it wouldn't catch us running one by one. The whole encounter was us trying to react accordingly to its hit-and-run tactics. And we were an unoptimized party with a focus on mundane multiple low-damage hits, which means its DR was a pain to us. And it had a lot of HP...

[Vedhin]

Ah yes, hit-and-run tactics. They make almost any encounter scarier.

[SethoMarkus]

Running a 3.5 game I unintentionally created a creepy and horror driven side quest. I had intended to make the area a bit off from the norm, but never intended it to go this far. Luckily, the players are loving it. I based a lot of the setting and atmosphere off of "Shadow Over Innsmouth", and although the cause of all this is an Aboleth, the players have not encountered the beast, nor any combat thus far.

The characters are playing a sort of band of bounty hunters, choosing their next adventure by way of a bounty board that I list 4-5 options on. This time they chose to go after the "Mysterious Bounty." This is what the bounty read:


The small fishing village of Outmaw has recently gone quiet - withdrawn from trade, travel, and all festivities. Everyone sent to investigate thus far have gone missing, and a large aquatic creature has been spotted in the area by fishing vessels. A bounty of 1,200gp will be awarded to anyone who can link this creature to the disappearances and slay it.

** 1,200gp **

As the trio of bounty hunters were reading the notice, an old man comes up and warns them against investigating the town. He says that it is unnatural, that he lost his son to that godsforsaken town, and that they have turned away from the country's religion to instead worship some dark god of the sea. The characters decide to investigate anyway, and head towards Outmaw. Upon arriving, I shared this description:


As you arrive in town you notice that the streets are fairly empty, but the town is not abandoned as some would lead you to believe. In the shadows you see humanoid figures slinking back from your sight. Everything is quiet, only small whispers and murmurs catching your ear if you strain to listen. The little that you are able to hear you cannot make out. It seems that the villagers, whatever their species, are not speaking Common nor any other dialect that you know.

I also shared a map of the town, along with a description of the geography. The town is set in a rocky cove, a barrier reef creating a natural harbor that helped form this village as a fishing town. The reef, called Devil's Rock after the number of lives it has taken through sinking unwary ships, is largely unremarkable, but it surfaces above the water level during low tide, and rests only several feet below water at high tide.

The group talked among themselves a bit, and one character had the Scent ability and asked in private if he could smell anything that might tip him off. I replied that "They all seem normal, but there is an underlying fishy smell about the whole place that messes with your scent ability. You can still pinpoint foes as normal, but everything smells fishy at the same time." Remember, this was a fishing village so they didn't think anything of it right now, but this comes up again.


One of the more normal looking villagers approaches the trio. "You are not form around here. Do you have business in Outmaw?"

And I shared this picture of how the residents looked: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d9U8dIKVl6U/UFud2gI4VUI/AAAAAAAABYg/7uXHT1urKis/s1600/innsmouth+portrait+fishy.jpg

Starting at about this point, I also start playing some music that is inspired by Shadow Over Innsmouth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoKsBX_0SiY).

The party and the villager(s) have a short interaction, where the villagers reply with stiff, direct answers. The whole time the villagers attempt to get the party to stay at the town inn, a run down looking building. The villagers shuffle around in the background, down streets and behind half-drawn curtains.

Under the guise of religious pilgrims they make some inquires about the Temple, which is closed for renovations at the moment, the players discover that a new priest in town, Father Angus, had brought a new religion with him into town, making short work of converting the entire town and becoming a bit of the town's leader in the process. The villagers continued urging the trio to stay at the inn, but they refuse and leave town as it starts to get dark, making camp a safe distance from town.

They set up a watch over night and make a big fire to keep up the appearance of simple pilgrim travelers. Nothing happens, but the character with Scent can smell that same fishy odor lurking about in the woods. Near what would be 1:00am, they hear a scream coming from the direction of the cove's mouth, and Devil's Rock.

This is where we left off last week, and should be playing again tonight.

This wasn't supposed to be a horror campaign, and we play over roll20.net so we aren't even in the same room, but between the creepy imagery, the picture, the music, and playing between 9-11 at night, I guess I added an extra dimension to this game.