Stories: When you accidentially broke the game

[thematgreen]

I'd love to see some stories from people about when they somehow broke their DM's game. No power leveling shenanigans or anything, just where you or someone else did something that was just so not in line with what the DM intended that you actually made the DM facepalm in response.

Mine:

We were playing a homebrew game and I ended up with a genies lamp and three wishes. I carefully determined that the wishes were not the same as the spell "wish" and really the only limitation was a clever GM and liked to mess with us when it came to wishes ("I wish I was immortal" "You become stuck in a time loop of the next 5 minutes forever, never aging"). He was very good at letting party shenanigans go as long as it was for the fun of the group.

So I decided on the following:

Wish 1: I wish that you grant my next two wishes no matter their content.

Genie: Done (GM rubs his hands together)

Wish 2: I wish that this wish and the next were granted with my interpretation and meaning, both to the letter and the soul of the contract. In other words, I wish this was granted by what I intrepret it as and not what you do.

Genie: ...done? (GM looks confused and looks at the other players)

Wish 3: I wish I could grant my own wishes with no limitations and with my own interpretation.

Genie: ...done... (GM waits for what I am going to wish for)

Self Granted Wish: I wish that there was no power that could remove my wish ability.

Me: Done! (Wild giggling)

So I take a few moments to enjoy considering what I can do with my limitless SLA. I don't do anything else with my power, we continue on. Any encounter the GM first looks at me and I just roll initiative.

We eventually get to a spot where, due to a very bad set of decisions we were at the point of a TPK at the hands of a cabal of black dragons. So I spoke up "I wish we hadn't entered the swamp and were still outside of it planning, but still remembered what happened here!" And poof! Dream Sequence style thing happens.

So the session ends and the GM collects our character sheets as normal (We had a couple number fudgers)

The next session starts and I am given a new character...I ask why and he states that my previous character had obtained godhood from Ao and went off to be "God of Wise Wishes and Clever Bargaining".

Yep.

[jjcrpntr]

Not sure if this fits your description.

But in the current campaign I'm running the first mission the players were on was given to them by an Arcane Library. Someone had managed to break in and steal 2 artifacts that were known to be evil and cause extreme madness by anyone who was around them for more than a day. There was a cloak and a ring. The players managed to retrieve the items and were supposed to just bring them back to the library. They were informed that the items were cursed, highly evil and that the high level wizards at the library that studied them could only do so in rotating shifts because it drove them mad to quickly.

So during what should have been a pretty single fight the party wizard decides to put the ring on, having no idea what it does other than they were told the people at the library believed that it would allow the user to summon things once fully attuned.

This was probably my 3rd game I'd run as a DM. I had honestly not planned for this at all, I didn't think any of the players would be stupid enough to put on the incredibly evil, cursed ring. So I just made it up as I went.

Not it turns out that Lamashtu the goddess of demons and monsters had been sealed away for pissing off all the other gods and when the wizard got like a 5 on his will save (something like that he rolled terrible) he acted as her willing conduit to get out of her prison and he became enthralled by her. Next game he changed characters as his wizard has been mutated by Lamashtu and has recently shown back up.

As per your post. Originally the game was going to have gods be in a very limited role. It was supposed to be more political and stop wars type game. So now things have changed drastically and it in fact changed the entire way the campaign has played out. Was a great lesson for me as a new dm. Never discount your players doing something stupid.

[thematgreen]

Oh man, we had a similar thing happen, but was much shorter and brutal for our wizard. I was running a campaign where the group ended up with an event at the end to seal an abomination away between planes through the use of a bunch of crystals and spells (Think mechanics similar to a MMORPG raid fight). At the end they finally retrieved their McGuffin "The Crown of the Soulless", an item needed to continue to the next part of the campaign, destroying a lich who hid his phylactery too well.

"The Crown of the Soulless" - Instantly consumes and unmakes the soul of any being who wears it, even if that soul is not located in the body. Destruction is permanent and not even a wish or intervention of a god can restore the soul. Once a soul is consumed the item disappears from the plane of existance it is on and reappears in another random plane.

The item literally had one use. Get it on the Lich lord and that ends him. The artifact crown goes away, all done.

So, bloody and battered, they claim their treasure...

Except the Wizard in the group thought it would be funny to pretend to put it on. He had forgotten he still had a grease spell all over him, cast to escape a grapple from the tentacle of the abomination. I made him roll a DC10 will save, which he failed. Why? Because I was hoping he would have the wisdom to change his mind. I then had him roll a D20, telling him if he rolled 5 or below he was in for a surprise...and he rolled a 1...and the crown fell on his head...and he was dead.

The player was not amused, but rerolled a new wizard, one who was a twin brother to the one he had lost, with the same levels and spells, but higher wisdom.

Players do the weirdest things

[illyahr]

Wasn't me, but a friend of mine did this.

Found a ring of 3 wishes. He had ownership of a platinum mine so his three wishes went like this:

Wish 1: I wish all of the platinum in my mine was here in front of me.

Wish 2: I wish all of this platinum was transmuted into an equivalent value of copper pieces.

Wish 3: I wish each of these copper pieces was changed into a platinum piece.

What would you do with infinite wealth?

[Eisenheim]

No wishes involved, just an unintentional level of optimization well above what the party or DM or canned adventure was expecting.

I built a wizard, specifically a dwarven wizard into runesmith, so I had full-plate and no spell-failure chance. I spent most of my money on spells in my spellbook, scrolls and wands. I think we were level 7, so I had 4th level spells online, a good ac, could fly pretty much whenever I wanted, could shut down encounters with black tentacles or phantasmal killer. I wound up soloing some encounters while the rest of the party was elsewhere because the module wasn't designed to take player flight into account.

There wasn't a single facepalm moment, we just acknowledged that there wasn't much challenge left and didn't ever finish the module.

[jjcrpntr]

No wishes involved, just an unintentional level of optimization well above what the party or DM or canned adventure was expecting.

I built a wizard, specifically a dwarven wizard into runesmith, so I had full-plate and no spell-failure chance. I spent most of my money on spells in my spellbook, scrolls and wands. I think we were level 7, so I had 4th level spells online, a good ac, could fly pretty much whenever I wanted, could shut down encounters with black tentacles or phantasmal killer. I wound up soloing some encounters while the rest of the party was elsewhere because the module wasn't designed to take player flight into account.

There wasn't a single facepalm moment, we just acknowledged that there wasn't much challenge left and didn't ever finish the module.

See this is where I, as a fairly new player to the hobby only starting about a year ago, don't understand the fun. I mean it's cool to be uber powerful and all. But if you walk in to an encounter and just say ... oh, cast spell X, collect loot. Next? I never understood the fun there. Not criticizing, just I played a few games with guys that were heavy optimizers and there were a few instances where they'd just say, ok do X, next?

It's cool and all for maybe a 1 or 2 shot adventure but beyond that I'd imagine it'd get boring.

[dextercorvia]

See this is where I, as a fairly new player to the hobby only starting about a year ago, don't understand the fun. I mean it's cool to be uber powerful and all. But if you walk in to an encounter and just say ... oh, cast spell X, collect loot. Next? I never understood the fun there. Not criticizing, just I played a few games with guys that were heavy optimizers and there were a few instances where they'd just say, ok do X, next?

It's cool and all for maybe a 1 or 2 shot adventure but beyond that I'd imagine it'd get boring.

It's fun for me when things get optimized on both sides of the table. I can have fun if we are playing commoner vs housecat, but I'm in my element when everyone is playing their a-game.

To the op. I was in a campaign where we were making 10th level gestalt characters on their path to godhood. We were supposed to fight epic level threats. All tricks were on the table, so I built a Versatile Domain Generalist (9th level spells at 1st level), and then gestalted Dragon Disciple with Incantatrix (gestalting PrCs was explicitly allowed). Dragon Disciple gave me a bunch of 9th level slots, Incantatrix of course let me persist like crazy. The point of this, is even when a DM says no restrictions except PunPun, you can end up playing very different games.

[thematgreen]

See this is where I, as a fairly new player to the hobby only starting about a year ago, don't understand the fun. I mean it's cool to be uber powerful and all. But if you walk in to an encounter and just say ... oh, cast spell X, collect loot. Next? I never understood the fun there. Not criticizing, just I played a few games with guys that were heavy optimizers and there were a few instances where they'd just say, ok do X, next?

It's cool and all for maybe a 1 or 2 shot adventure but beyond that I'd imagine it'd get boring.

I build characters like the above when I am playing and not DMing to support a group of non optimizers. They are all fairly new to character building and go with themes, not effectivness, which is awesome. The DM is new and doesn't have the expierence to adjust encounters yet, so to make it easier I am the deathgod and they are the plate wearing elf evocation wizards and whirlwind leap attack fighters. I don't do anything but balance the group out and don't go out of my way to dominate encounters, I just kind of babysit.

When I play with more expierenced players I very much enjoy Social Effectivness over Combat Effectivness so I am almost always the worst in combat. My current bard that is ready to go for a new campaign only carries some nets and hides most fights, but can talk almost anyone into anything.

I like to theorycraft uber characters, I find it fun, sometimes it's fun to just blow through every encounter and see how big a thorn you can be to your DMs side.

[jjcrpntr]

I build characters like the above when I am playing and not DMing to support a group of non optimizers. They are all fairly new to character building and go with themes, not effectivness, which is awesome. The DM is new and doesn't have the expierence to adjust encounters yet, so to make it easier I am the deathgod and they are the plate wearing elf evocation wizards and whirlwind leap attack fighters. I don't do anything but balance the group out and don't go out of my way to dominate encounters, I just kind of babysit.

When I play with more expierenced players I very much enjoy Social Effectivness over Combat Effectivness so I am almost always the worst in combat. My current bard that is ready to go for a new campaign only carries some nets and hides most fights, but can talk almost anyone into anything.

I like to theorycraft uber characters, I find it fun, sometimes it's fun to just blow through every encounter and see how big a thorn you can be to your DMs side.

That makes sense. I didn't mean my comment to be rude or anything.

[Rickshaw]

One time we were stopping some baddies from pillaging vaults. They were using a tunneling machine that the DM hadn't stated out, though I did not know that...so when they tunneled in and started stealing, I ran up and stole thier machine, and had everyone pile in after me. The baddies and the DM were quite confused.

Sadly we did not get to become mole people adventurers with our new tunneling machine...

[thematgreen]

That makes sense. I didn't mean my comment to be rude or anything.

I didn't think you were being rude, I was just responding with my take on it. :smallcool:

[Eisenheim]

See this is where I, as a fairly new player to the hobby only starting about a year ago, don't understand the fun. I mean it's cool to be uber powerful and all. But if you walk in to an encounter and just say ... oh, cast spell X, collect loot. Next? I never understood the fun there. Not criticizing, just I played a few games with guys that were heavy optimizers and there were a few instances where they'd just say, ok do X, next?

It's cool and all for maybe a 1 or 2 shot adventure but beyond that I'd imagine it'd get boring.

I don't have much fun winning without a challenge either, that's why we never came back to the module and the character. If you read closely, you'll notice I said it was accidental. At that point I had not been reading these or any other boards and did not realize how much better than everything else I was going to be. I just liked the idea of an armored wizard.

[GreatDane]

This wasn't so much a game-breaker as my complete failure to predict the PCs' course of action.

We were on the last legs of a campaign I was DMing, and a horde of monstrous humanoids, giants, and the like were at the walls of a city. The PCs were running/flying along the wall, helping the soldiers where they could. On the fly, as they neared the main gate, I decided to put together an encounter rather than just having the PCs meet up with the high command. Thus, when the PCs arrived, there was a fire giant banging on the gate. With a horde of monsters behind him and the gate clearly crumpling under his blows, the party went to work on him - except for the cleric, who drifted out of his reach (he and the fighter were using fly to get around) and just said "I'm waiting" whenever his initiative came up.

Finally, the gates were nearly down, and so was the fire giant - one more round of pounding, and both would fall. The cleric waits until halfway through the fire giant's turn before calmly saying "I cast make whole on the gate." I hadn't even considered the possibility of the PCs trying to mend the gate (having intended the encounter to be a race against the clock), much less expected anyone to have the means (this player had a knack for preparing the exact right spells for a given day).

As the fire giant fell before the still-standing gates, I described their actions as a huge blow to the monstrous army's morale, and the PCs got to hop down and inform the high command that no, the enemy wasn't about to start pouring through the gates. That player had a smug grin on his face for the rest of the session.

[thematgreen]

This wasn't so much a game-breaker as my complete failure to predict the PCs' course of action. <Awesome story>

See, I love that kind of stuff. Clever use of spells that just break the flow of the game.

We were playing an epic level campaign and my Wizard only focused in water magic. I had one spell that would create a wall of force in a circle around the target, fill it was water, cast fear on the target and put that black tentacle spell at the bottom. I think I called it "Deep Terror" or something.

Anyway, we were tasked with decending into this cavern that was full of these nasty half Drow half fire demon of some sort. When we got to the entrance, which was inset on the ground, I opened a portal to the elemental plane of water above the entry and let it loose for a day, flooding out and drowning everything inside. Nothing could swim out because of the force of the water. Everything died and the encounter was over.

[Necroticplague]

Well, in one game, while I was playing an RKV, I accidentally discovered d2 crusader. I was disarmed, so I took a 5-foot step back, healed myself, and tossed a shuriken at him. It short-circuited the campaign, since an infinite amount of damage somewhat hinders plans to have the dude escape when he's low on health.

[Jeff the Green]

Not so much the DM's game as the DM, but:

My character, Mirielle, had been searching for the person who killed her family, friends, and fiance when she was in her 20s and her fellow cloistered clerics and archivists of Kelemvor a decade later. The investigation stalled, but then she got a taunting note from (presumably) the murderer. Then a package came, and Mirielle thanked and tipped the carrier. Inside was the head of a gravekeeper she helped a month or so back. This, combined with a failure to find the murderer in the following couple weeks, resulted in Mirielle's permanent insanity.

As you may have guessed, the carrier—whom Mirielle tipped for her sanity-destroying package—was the murderer (as the DM revealed just recently). If we'd been playing around a table instead of PbP I would have gotten it immediately as the DM cracked up.

[Hamste]

Well, in one game, while I was playing an RKV, I accidentally discovered d2 crusader. I was disarmed, so I took a 5-foot step back, healed myself, and tossed a shuriken at him. It short-circuited the campaign, since an infinite amount of damage somewhat hinders plans to have the dude escape when he's low on health.

Tossing a shuriken doesn't work, aura of chaos only works on melee attacks not ranged attacks.

[Nizaris]

I built a sonic screwdriver. More accurately my Factotum/Artificer built a custom magic item that had Detect Weapon, Detect Magic, Knock, Arcane Lock, Dispel Magic, Identify, Locate Object, Shatter, something for disarming traps, and a couple other low level spells.

The spell list for the custom magic items to replicate the TARDIS was finished but sadly never built because the campaign didn't last after the DM's apartment caught fire.

[JackRackham]

One time we were stopping some baddies from pillaging vaults. They were using a tunneling machine that the DM hadn't stated out, though I did not know that...so when they tunneled in and started stealing, I ran up and stole thier machine, and had everyone pile in after me. The baddies and the DM were quite confused.

Sadly we did not get to become mole people adventurers with our new tunneling machine...
That is SO sad.

[Brookshw]

Can't give you any for me breaking the game but will offer one of my players breaking it on me (well there was that one time in the worlds largest dungeon, feebleminded frenzied berserkers going into the realm of madness = bad idea).

Set up, minicampaign, homebrew world, told the group they would start on a boat heading across the ocean, don't expect to get to the other side.

Backstory: At some point in days of yonder, god of water (let's call him good, don't recall anymore, maybe neutral) and god of fire (evil) got themselves in a proper ol' tif with their followers going at it left and right. Big show down on an elven island, elves die off (followers of the water god), water god traps fire god on the island, sinks it to the bottom of the ocean. Time goes on, the wards weaken, fire god and island return to the surface. The ghosts of the elves are trapped on the island and appear in the mists that regularly roll over it, get in the mist, encounter elven ghosts. A cult of the fire god is setting up shop on the island now that it's back, the followers end up binding (nothing to do with Binders) fire elemental spirits into their body which, coincidentally, keep the mist at bay. They're looking for something if I recall correctly, it's been a while. Meh, whatever.

Anyway, I had a big story planned to take part in the mists as the players should have ended up in temporary jumps through time to when the war was still raging, learning the back story of the whole thing, the city, that the the ghosts in the mist were really the trapped spirits of the elves, etc.

Did any of that take place? Nope! After some preliminary flavor encounters and a sighting of shapes in the mist (and maybe one brief, very brief jump in time to some building before it was destroyed) the party meets a very hostile and antagonistic group of fire cultists who have the ability to keep the mist from them (bound fire elements), the party decides to play nice, go along with them and be captured, gets taken to the hq. Thinking I had laid on the "these guys are evil jerks" nice and thick the high priest offers to let them join the cult in exchange for their freedom. So they do! Now, with fire elements sharing their soul space they're free to safely wander the island with the best of plot armors, armor that keeps away plot, build a boat, and leave. And they did.

[AvatarVecna]

Does busting out all the stops count? Because I can think of a time when we had no right to win a fight.

Our group's failure in an encounter resulted in a monster appearing that we shouldn't have had a chance against in any sane world. We managed to stun the DM with an in-character speech of epic proportions, giving our characters time to buff the group to hell and back, before we assaulted the monster. Good luck and good teamwork combine to take down the monster, with only a single character dying.



So, this was with my first group, and it was the last game we ever played with these characters; they'd reached the end of the DM's projected campaign. Because the group was pretty small (just me an childhood friends), we had two players and the DM, with the DM being the most experienced of the three of us. Because of our party size, the DM had been fine with all three characters (2 PCs+1 DMPC) having leadership. Keep in mind that none of us were really good at optimizing (given our age, that wasn't much a surprise).


My character: Elf Monk 6/Rogue 2/Ranger 2/Swordsage 3 (switch-hitter, skilled scout, caster bane)

His cohort: Halfling Rogue 5/Monk 6 (melee support; monster with SA, skilled thief and scout)

Other PC: Human Paladin 12/Ranger 1 (melee tank, expert demon killer, diplomancer)

His cohort: Human Sorcerer 11 (blaster, arcane magic expert, backup diplomancer)

DMPC: Halfling Druid 13 (healer, buffer, summoner, divine magic expert)

His cohort: Goliath Barbarian 5/Exotic Weapon Master 2/Frenzied Berserker 4 (spiked chain master, battlefield control, glass cannon)


Let's set the scene: our heroes have been tracking down a demon cult for months (6 levels): going from location to location, collecting clues, interrogating witnesses, freeing hostages...hero stuff. So, after our last impromptu raid, we'd finally discovered the location we'd been seeking for a while: the clues we'd been gathering indicated that a ritual was being performed within the next few weeks that would summon a demon lord to the Material Plane, who would then open a portal to the Abyss and summon his minions to wreck havoc; the ritual had to coincide with a rather difficult-to-predict cosmic occurrence ("within the next few weeks" was as accurate as we could narrow it down to), but it could be done in any of roughly 100 different locations. As there was no way to search them all in time, we had to collect clues.

But finally, we had enough information to determine the location; I won't go over the whole process of how, for brevity's sake. Anyway, we arrived at the location and proceeded the stealthiest raid of a demon cult hideout any paladin has ever taken part in: by the time the cult leaders were aware of our presence, we had already been in their base for quite some time, and had killed many of their dudes. Unfortunately for us, the ritual was started, with the spellcasters running it figuring the common rabble would keep us busy long enough for the demon lord to arrive.

Long story short, we were about 2 rounds too late to stop the ritual: by the time the last cult leader had fallen, the demon lord was looming over us. It was some custom monster designed to be the physical avatar of one of the demon deities; when I asked the DM what its CR was, he just kind of chuckled quietly before asking us what we wanted to do. Because that's always a good sign, right?

Now, in hindsight, having looked over the DM's adventure notes, if we failed to stop the ritual in time, there were a few ways to escape with our lives, and we could begin the next arc of the campaign, where we'd basically be leading the rebel army against the demon lord. That would have been an excellent idea to have at the time: we'd just ended a pretty hard fight, but still had enough resources left to escape and recover. There was just one problem.


So, around 6th level or so, the druid started really outshining the monk and paladin; at first, the DM tried to compensate by playing the druid as ineptly as possible, but that didn't work out so well. So instead, he made a campaign where a paladin could shine (by killing demons) and the monk could shine (by disabling inept NPC spellcasters) without the druid having to be played stupid. Before that point, a common point of roleplaying was moral dilemmas presented to the paladin. I didn't mind that the paladin got most of the RP opportunities, but the paladin's player hated it; if you don't understand why, ask anyone who's played a paladin and had the DM present them "moral dilemmas". As a final note, I will say that, however much he hated paladins at any point in his career, this dude loved roleplaying, and never let it affect his character's performance.

I mention these things so that you can understand why what happens next occurred.


The demon lord has appeared, the party made it through the last encounter with many HP lost, many charges spent, and many spells cast. The demon lord spotted us, and in a booming voice, demanded that we surrender ourselves to its will, and that if we did, we could be its emissaries in the new world order. It is at this point that the paladin, still riding his mount, began yelling at the demon lord in the most aggressive manner possible; when asked later, it turned out that he was so fed up with the paladin that, one way or another, he was done playing it after this session...and he refused to end the adventure on a cliffhanger.

He loudly dismissed its personal power, switching between languages when he interpreted it failure to respond as a failure to comprehend the language originally used; he made insinuations about its mothers sexual prowess, as well as her subsequent attempts to substitute quantity for quality; he accused it of acts so extreme, it made the DM turn green. The best part is that, throughout the whole speech, he didn't use a single cuss word, because even though it wasn't mentioned in the paladin oaths, a gentleman didn't swear no matter the circumstances or the recipient.

Needless to say, the DM was struck speechless by this little display; it was a solid minute before he asked what we were doing during this little speech. The other player smiled and said that, both during the speech, and the long stretch of silence afterward, his sorcerer had been busy meta-buffing the party (so many full round actions). This was due to a rule the DM had added a while back when the other player and I had a tendency to endlessly discuss group tactics when our character were in no position to do so as much as we were; the rule went that, whenever a player was talking in-character (or was being silent when their character was supposed to go), it would count as their turn, and the game would continue. Some lucky initiative rolls, and it turned out that the sorcerer got 12 rounds of metamagic-buffing done before the DM had finally come out of his stupor. After a ten-minute argument, the DM finally agreed that the druid would've been buffing, too, and added 7 spells himself (reasoning that the other characters wouldn't be prepared for this, and would come out of the stupor due to their fear of the demon lord).

At this point, we finally began the actual encounter: the four non-spellcasters were buffed to the gills, including the currently mounted paladin with Favored Enemy: Outsider (Evil), a highly magical lance in-hand, several buffs, including one giving pounce, and a "Smite!" hanging from his lips. Unfortunately, the demon lord went before he did, although not first.

Round 1

The sorcerer spent his last spell hurling an ineffective Orb of Cold at the demon lord; now the goal was to see how many wand/staff charges could get used before he died.

The druid summoned a squad of bears with the intention of buffing them to hell and back as well.

The rogue leapt into the shadows, intent on getting behind the thing, so as to be in flanking position when the paladin charged.

Unfortunately, the demon lord was quite keen-sighted; he grabbed the rogue and swallowed her; because of action economy abuse b.s., he then boiled the druid's bears...and the druid didn't escape without damage either.

The barbarian raged and proceeded to swing his lengthly spiked chain at the thing, doing massive damage that, unfortunately, didn't seem to affect it too much.

My monk launched a volley of arrows (he, too, had Favored Enemy: Outsider {Evil}), but only half hit, and the damage wasn't much, especially in comparison to the barbarian.

The paladin finally got to go; he spent his smite, and had his mount charge the demon lord. Crit happened...and then the damage roll was maximum. After both I and the DM tested the dice for "cheatiness", we determined that it was just amazing luck. Which really sucked for the demon lord.

Round 2

Sorcerer tossed some offensive spells from a staff of force or something, but the demon lord swatted them back, and the sorcerer got stunned.

Druid summoned more bears, this time further away and further apart.

Rogue was angry. But rogues don't get mad; they get even. With her hit points already in single digits, I had my cohort follow the paladin's lead in not sacrificing principles for the sake of personal safety: being a halfling rogue, Str was a dump stat, and as such, the character compensated with many various extra-dimensional spaces, which she usually worked very hard to keep separate from one another, due to the ways they interact. Some back-of-the-hand calculations indicated that, at that point, she was about halfway to the stomach, about where the heart and lungs would be. Final damage calculation was as if SA was available for a full attack, SA was maxed, SA could apply to crits, and all attacks had been a crit. Unfortunately, the rogue was gone now.

Demon lord rips barbarian a new orifice; tons of attacks and Power Attack vs. Goliath Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker AC means lots of damage; the barbarian went into negatives. The monk got a few fireballs to the face, and the druid got one as well. The monk made it (of course), but the druid was pretty low on health at this point.

Barbarian flurries again, to much applause.

Monk launches a more successful volley, but damage is still less-than stellar.

Paladin charges again, smiting again (no smites left). Guess what else happened again? The DM called total b.s.; the DM and I spent another 15 minutes rolling that stupid die over and over and over, and it seemed pretty fair. Which meant, unfortunately for the DM, crit happened again. And damage, while not max, was still massive.

Round 3

Sorcerer makes save, drops staff, and UMD's some divine buffs onto the monk.

Druid tosses some healing at the barbarian and herself. Bears assault demon lord; failing, to the surprise of no one.

Rogue is beyond dead.

Demon lord is now feeling the pain: tons of SA damage, the barbarian's flurry, two arrow volleys, and two pounce-charge lance-smites from a high-level paladin. He brings the pain on the paladin, who barely makes it through; he then proceeds to summon reinforcements.

Barbarian flurries again, and is now back in the positives.

Monk is now Huge and has full BAB. Proceeds to enter melee (via free action move from items) and flurry against the demon lord with fists buffed to high heaven. Damage is now satisfying.

Paladin charges again, but with no smite, and no crit, damage is only at decent levels, not amazing, or "HOLY ****! CRITICAL SMITE!" levels.

Round 4

Sorcerer tosses a mass-buff from a scroll onto the bears, making them much more threatening.

Druid follows suit, also buffing the bears.

Rogue is beyond dead.

Demon lord is on his last legs, his swarm of lesser demons engages the bears, while he smacks the paladin and the monk down into negatives (most attacks went against the virtually untouchable monk).

Barbarian flurries again, felling the demon lord.

Round 5-7

Druid heals paladin and monk; barbarian, monk, paladin, and bears kick ass, barely (bearly?) making it out of that fight with their lives. Sorcerer sits back and watches. Rogue is beyond dead.


After the fight, the DM just kind of stared at us. After a few minutes of this, he quickly wrapped up the adventure, and our characters retired. He later informed us that this monster had been customized to be scary-effective against our team; by all means, we shouldn't have made it through. We should've all died. Fortunately, a combination of incredible luck, tons of buffs, and unknown damage sources allowed us to win what should've been an impossible fight (I later discovered the monster in question was, by the rules, CR 25, and was built to oppose our party specifically, and we fought it after a difficult fight).

It was a glorious session. And that guy never played a paladin again.

[Vhaidara]

Short Version: I built a bard.

Long Version: I joined a campaign late, and the GM didn't realize that he didn't tell the two late comers that it was a low magic world. Which is how we got a bard and a sorcerer.
Now, the sorc was a noble in City A with ambitions of ruling. We were in City C when we here news that City A and City B have gone to war. Sorc immediately derails the entire plot (we had one with our ranger whose forest had been poisoned by cultists of Talona) and turns the game into a war campaign. GM is okay with this, everyone but the ranger is okay with this (and he's just kind of sulky, but likes sniping fools).
So, this was my first bard, and I didn't want to overpower anyone, since I tend to optimize past everyone's ability. For comparison, we have a dwarven fighter going weapon master who thinks Weapon Spec is a fine feat. The other optimizer in the group went Hexblade as his handicap. So, I'm optimizing my power as a force multiplier. I find the Inspire Courage handbook. I use it to the point that the sorcerer becomes a viable melee combatant (he had the most last hits in a smaller battle, since he has lucky dice for crits).
I find the Alphorn in Song and Silence. It affects 1d10 miles. I am handing out +5 to hit and damage. TO THE ENTIRE FREAKING ARMY. Then I took Words of Creation.

Th best part: We were the side that has lots of relatively untrained troops vs the fewer better trained troops.

The war ended i the encounter that I got Inspire Greatness. Because giving out 4 HD to everyone in 1d10 miles totally doesn't break war.

[JackRackham]

I'll add a story of my own, though this is a little different than what the OP asked for. A friend of mine met a guy who claimed to know the game pretty well and fancied himself an optimizer. He was looking for players for a Forgotten Realms campaign he was about to DM. The other two party members were a DMPC (red flag) who turned out to be okay (mid-low op), but not at all rules-legal and a single-class ninja. So, my buddy and I decided to go easy. We set out to make good characters, but in no way game-breaking.

My buddy typically played batman-wizards, but instead opted to play a druid (mostly your classic bear, riding a bear, shooting bears build, though this was apparently unheard-of at this table) to be able to support the party without doing anything world-shattering. I went for a factotum with a single level of swordsage (again, apparently a revelation; they'd never heard of either class). I think we were level 12 or 14. Now, we were intent on not over-shadowing anyone, but the DM gave us little choice.

He apparently misunderstood CR. That was the root of the problem. He sent a bunch of beefed-up vampires at the party. Specifically, as I later learned, they were buffed to each be at CR. But he threw them at us five and seven at a time. For each encounter. Naturally, the ninja couldn't do much. The DMPC was taking modest chunks of hp from one each round, but we kept finding ourselves in shine-or-die situations. Making matters worse, the DM had an undisclosed love of traps. Now, I had a few ranks in disable device, but was counting on my factotum abilities to auto-win what were always very-rare traps in campaigns I'd played in previously. With this guy, every door was locked and trapped, every corner.

There was no single moment of game breakitude. There was just the druid flooding the entire dungeon and freezing it for hours at a time, me polymorphing into a 14-headed pyrohydra and sneak-attacking 14 times per round, and vampires poofing round by round. And, when hundreds of bats, each a vampire, came flying out of a pyramid at us, and we teleported away, leaving the DMPC and a ninja alone with their mistakes (their characters refused to flee), there was only confusion. Did we break his campaign? No, far from it. If anything, we repeatedly saved the party from TPK. But we apparently broke d&d (in their minds) to the point that the ninja refused to play with us again. Honestly, it was no fun for anyone, least of all us.

PS: No, it was not a personality issue. Everyone was very nice on both sides. We just had vastly different ideas of what d&d could be, and completely different ideas about encounter design (there was less dungeon-crawling and more RPING and intrigue in our campaigns).

[jiriku]

I've never done this, but my players have on several occasions. Most recently, the players were given a rather shady mission by a dread necromancer of dubious allegiance to obtain a minor artifact for him, a black gem capable of animating every corpse within a 1-mile radius and placing it under the user's control indefinitely. His "story" is that it is to be used as a last ditch defense of the player's city if their forces fare poorly in stopping a hobgoblin army that is encroaching upon him. They retrieve the artifact, but as they don't trust him, decide to keep it for themselves. Artifact is written down on a character sheet and largely forgotten, since no one is quite willing to trust that the DM hasn't made it secretly cursed somehow. :smallcool:

Months later, the players are driven, by reasons of plot, to the fabled Well of Souls in the Graveyard of Dragons, where they consult an oracle formed from the accumulated knowledge of every dragon ever to die there. After the oracle sacrifices its own essence on their behalf to obtain the answers to the questions they need to save the world, one of the characters looks around, notices the endless field of frost-rimed dragon bones around him, and his player asks me "so, just how many dragon skeletons are there here? Are they mostly great wyrm dragons?" Wanting my cool scene to be memorable in their minds, I hasten to assure him that the boneyard stretches for as far as the eye can see and that most of the skeletons are massive.

He looks at me and says, "I take out that black gem then, and I use it."

...

Very few campaigns can survive the creation of a massive airforce armada of hundreds huge, gargantuan, and colossal dragon skeletons.

[backwaterj]

Zur'Qi's tale:

For the only epic campaign I've been involved in (barely epic; we stopped playing at 21st level), most of the other characters were playing their Rappan Athuk "graduates". I decided my crazy ecoterrorist druid really wouldn't be into this particular plot hook so I rolled a bard. A changeling bard.

Nothing game-breaking there. There was the tiny matter that the DM saw the epic level campaign as an excuse to throw artifacts around. So within the course of a few sessions the following happened:

The current ruling house of our country (which was vaguely Roman-inspired) had the Shield of Prator as its symbol of rulership. During an investigation Zur'Qi became a humble servant of said house. Into the haversack went said Shield of Prator, with Zur'Qi gone before the alarm sounded. Due to Zur'Qi's philosophy (he basically espoused political tension as a means to the improvement of society) said shield ended up in the hands of a noble-blooded aasimar in the sticks. Hilarity ensued.

We tracked down an impostor in the Senate who turned out to be a rakshasa with the Shadowstaff, who managed to completely kill our Order of the Bow Initiate before we downed him. Said Initiate ended up playing the very aasimar I had "gifted" with the shield of Prator in subsequent sessions, but I digress. Into the haversack went the Shadowstaff. Never know when that might come in handy.

We then found ourselves on the Elemental Plane of Air, seeking out the uber-powerful air dragon that had basically put a hit out on the party (Invisible Stalkers, if you must know. Glitterdust is a beautiful thing). The dragon had an insane fly speed and so I decided to land on its back and charm it. Due to some massive DM save flubs, this actually worked, and the dragon ended up sending us after an Orb of Dragonkind used to enslave his kin.

Said orb was, of course, in the hands of the uber-powerful evil wizard who had been playing us for chumps in the Senate. After he had pulled all his nasty epic wizard tricks on us (we managed to talk him out of the time stop/delayed blast fireball cheese, thank goodness!) we were at death's door knocking loudly, and even after taking down all the demon minions, there was a particularly nasty (non-air) dragon remaining. Some debuff happened (I think it was Strength drain due to our gnomish wizard), but we were still no match for the dragon in our current condition.

Zur'Qi then reached into his haversack. Pulling out the Shadowstaff, he rather calmly summoned a Nightcrawler, which proceeded to swallow the uberdragon whole. Then retreat underground, leaving no escape tunnel even if the hapless dragon could find a means to claw its way out. And then, you guessed it, into the bag the Orb of Dragonkind went. That was the last session of the campaign.

The lesson learned here: there is one item in the game capable of breaking any campaign to pieces. And that item is Heward's Handy Haversack.

[Deox]

King's guard of monks (I don't know how they were promoted, maybe the King felt bad for the poor guys. OoC, it was the DM who sadly loved the monk and didn't want to believe that other classes could 'monk' better) came closing in on the party, requesting they relinquish a necklace they had retrieved from a dungeon crawl. The king states that the necklace has great power and could cause a 'great disturbance' if handled incorrectly, placed in a portable hole or even a bag of holding.

A PC gets the bright idea to hold the necklace ransom, by holding it in one hand and a bag of holding in the other. A second PC places a bag of holding on the ground. The first PC requests that the monks get into the hole in the ground, less they all go down in disaster. The king agrees and sends his guards into the hole. PC 2 simply closes the hole, letting those poor monks suffocate to death.

The party now has the king in a tough spot. Party demands one of the king's flying ships (read:airship). King complies. The PCs, no longer being threatened by guards or king decide to 'auction' the necklace off to the highest bidding kingdom.

King is now furious and sends another airship after the party, catapulting rocks and other assorted weapons at us.

We open the hole of 'monks', pour alchemists fire over their corpses, and begin to fire back the king's personal guard at our pursuers.

Game devolved quickly after that, as the DM was extremely sore about the party turning his prized king's guard into flaming projectiles.

[Crake]

Short Version: I built a bard.

Long Version: I joined a campaign late, and the GM didn't realize that he didn't tell the two late comers that it was a low magic world. Which is how we got a bard and a sorcerer.
Now, the sorc was a noble in City A with ambitions of ruling. We were in City C when we here news that City A and City B have gone to war. Sorc immediately derails the entire plot (we had one with our ranger whose forest had been poisoned by cultists of Talona) and turns the game into a war campaign. GM is okay with this, everyone but the ranger is okay with this (and he's just kind of sulky, but likes sniping fools).
So, this was my first bard, and I didn't want to overpower anyone, since I tend to optimize past everyone's ability. For comparison, we have a dwarven fighter going weapon master who thinks Weapon Spec is a fine feat. The other optimizer in the group went Hexblade as his handicap. So, I'm optimizing my power as a force multiplier. I find the Inspire Courage handbook. I use it to the point that the sorcerer becomes a viable melee combatant (he had the most last hits in a smaller battle, since he has lucky dice for crits).
I find the Alphorn in Song and Silence. It affects 1d10 miles. I am handing out +5 to hit and damage. TO THE ENTIRE FREAKING ARMY. Then I took Words of Creation.

Th best part: We were the side that has lots of relatively untrained troops vs the fewer better trained troops.

The war ended i the encounter that I got Inspire Greatness. Because giving out 4 HD to everyone in 1d10 miles totally doesn't break war.

This is more hilarious with dragonfire inspiration (because giving the entire army +10d6 damage, why not)

[StoneCipher]

I was playing a spellwarp sniper. I was skulking around on a roof for some reason (may have been before or after I pretended to be a demon). I had another party member on another roof and he was attacked by some rogue like person who threw glass dust in my party member's face. Without hesitation I blasted the bejeezus out of him with a twin split ray fireball sneak attack.

Turns out he was a major NPC that we were supposed to be talking to and helping out for that part of the story.

Oops.

Also, same campaign, the DM had some homebrew magic orbs that gave you elemental immunities. The idea was that you had to implant them in your body to make it work and it gave you a 50% chance to die every time you implanted one. Except I was a Lich and I just ripped the orbs out of these magically immune folks until I was immune to all elements.

That was a great character. I got away with so much.

[JackRackham]

I've never done this, but my players have on several occasions. Most recently, the players were given a rather shady mission by a dread necromancer of dubious allegiance to obtain a minor artifact for him, a black gem capable of animating every corpse within a 1-mile radius and placing it under the user's control indefinitely. His "story" is that it is to be used as a last ditch defense of the player's city if their forces fare poorly in stopping a hobgoblin army that is encroaching upon him. They retrieve the artifact, but as they don't trust him, decide to keep it for themselves. Artifact is written down on a character sheet and largely forgotten, since no one is quite willing to trust that the DM hasn't made it secretly cursed somehow. :smallcool:

Months later, the players are driven, by reasons of plot, to the fabled Well of Souls in the Graveyard of Dragons, where they consult an oracle formed from the accumulated knowledge of every dragon ever to die there. After the oracle sacrifices its own essence on their behalf to obtain the answers to the questions they need to save the world, one of the characters looks around, notices the endless field of frost-rimed dragon bones around him, and his player asks me "so, just how many dragon skeletons are there here? Are they mostly great wyrm dragons?" Wanting my cool scene to be memorable in their minds, I hasten to assure him that the boneyard stretches for as far as the eye can see and that most of the skeletons are massive.

He looks at me and says, "I take out that black gem then, and I use it."

...

Very few campaigns can survive the creation of a massive airforce armada of hundreds huge, gargantuan, and colossal dragon skeletons.

Awesome. I like to do **** like this with unassuming mundane knick-knacks ("Why do you have a masterwork snorkel?" "Why wouldn't I?"). I once bought a brass lamp that hung around, taking up space in my Handy Haversack for a while in a PF campaign, until we fought some (homebrewed?) fire elementals, one of which I managed to trap in the lamp.

[bobthedragon]

I was recently playing in a level 15 party as a sublime chord bard in a group with an optimized spell/power erudite, a cleric that could have been really powerful but spent way more time blasting then they should have and had very bad luck with dice (especially when trying to penetrate SR), a paladin with winged boots and polymorphed into a sun giant and dealing consistantly good DpR.

The DM was getting annoyed that we were able to take on challenge rating way above our level so he sent a pit fiend and a dragon after us (we didn't do well enough on knowledge to tell what type of dragon, but I suspect it was a shadow dragon) both of these opponents were CR 20 on there own. This is what happens when a DM forgets that he isn't supposed to be trying to "beat" the players. I looked at him, smiled, then used assay ressistance/baleful polymorph on the dragon. Suddenly we were fighting a pit fiend, and a salamander. After a turn of everyone struggling to hit, I played bardic music. Except I was using a focused performer feat from Dragon magazine (two bardic musics at once :smallbiggrin: ), so everyone was getting +8 attack, and the paladin was getting +8 dmg, and +8 fire dmg (I didn't roll well enough on knowledge check to know that pit fiend resisted fire). The pit fiend died pretty quickly after that.

This is the same character that I once calmly walked in front of enemy army to tell them that I was a spy for there leader and was delivering a message to them that they should go to a different place instead of attacking the "good guys" army.

I'm not allowed to do diplomancer/bluff shinanagins any more :smallsmile:
Also, spells that spontaneous casters should never be allowed to know-
Celerity (sometimes you just need to be able to cast it 4 times in a single encounter!)
Contingency
Assay Resistance - (Assay Resistance+ metamagic reach +Irresistable dance = ultimate cheese)

Also, Sublime chord gets 6th level spells at level 13 and can choose from either the bard OR the Wizard spell list, and if it appears on both lists she automatically gets bard version... irresistable dance at level 13 =]

[bobthedragon]

Short Version: I built a bard.

Long Version: I joined a campaign late, and the GM didn't realize that he didn't tell the two late comers that it was a low magic world. Which is how we got a bard and a sorcerer.
Now, the sorc was a noble in City A with ambitions of ruling. We were in City C when we here news that City A and City B have gone to war. Sorc immediately derails the entire plot (we had one with our ranger whose forest had been poisoned by cultists of Talona) and turns the game into a war campaign. GM is okay with this, everyone but the ranger is okay with this (and he's just kind of sulky, but likes sniping fools).
So, this was my first bard, and I didn't want to overpower anyone, since I tend to optimize past everyone's ability. For comparison, we have a dwarven fighter going weapon master who thinks Weapon Spec is a fine feat. The other optimizer in the group went Hexblade as his handicap. So, I'm optimizing my power as a force multiplier. I find the Inspire Courage handbook. I use it to the point that the sorcerer becomes a viable melee combatant (he had the most last hits in a smaller battle, since he has lucky dice for crits).
I find the Alphorn in Song and Silence. It affects 1d10 miles. I am handing out +5 to hit and damage. TO THE ENTIRE FREAKING ARMY. Then I took Words of Creation.

Th best part: We were the side that has lots of relatively untrained troops vs the fewer better trained troops.

The war ended i the encounter that I got Inspire Greatness. Because giving out 4 HD to everyone in 1d10 miles totally doesn't break war.

=D I'm currently about to play a bard in a battle between armies (this is my last thing with this char before I switch characters)

alphorn+fortisimo (doubles volume)+focused performer (one of options is two bardic musics at once) + Inspire courage (+7) + either inspire greatness or dragonfire inspiration
So everyone in 1d10 x2 miles gets +7 attk, +7 dmg, and either 4 HD or 7d6 fire damage =) I'll probs go with greatness, because the enemy army is all dragons/dragonspawn while the one I'm with is a few clerics, the party, and a whole bunch of soldiers (plus a contingent of lycanthropes with winged boots, not sure how this happens, but it's f***ing awesome)

[Blackhawk748]

I didnt do this but i was in the party. We were fighting on a train and for some reason, im still not sure why, the Druid cast Sudden Stalagmite on the tracks and literally derailed the story, and obviously the train. It started a mad dash across the desert to get a soul gem to kill a Lich. Eventually we mounted said gem on a ballista bolt and shot it at the Liches keep, turns out when you break a soul gem it explodes like a small nuke.

[BaronDoctor]

Bard seems to feature in "oops I accidentally the game". Was playing a pirate game with my brother and the DM. We were in a pirate haven island town and the Blackbeard of the game had been a thorn in our side recently. After a court hearing where we were found not guilty of wrongdoing (although we did kinda explode a building), Blackbeard was going back to his ship. The law of the island was that assaults were illegal but self-defense was allowed.
So after my brother's character proceeded to taunt Blackbeard into attacking, calling it an "honorable duel". The problem, of course, was that Blackbeard was notably stronger.

I'm playing the bard and I float him Haste and a Words of Creation boosted Inspire Courage and DFI but do not draw and properly conceal my casting. My brother was playing a dervish. This was the combat that got DFI banned by the DM; something about doing hundreds of points of damage in a round blew his mind.

Being a bard, I wrote a song about my brother the great hero having a titanic clash with Blackbeard. We proceeded to make it into a musical and completely changed the direction of the campaign.

[sideswipe]

not 3.5, but my friend was homebrewing a system set in a post apocalyptic zombie setting.

during the early stages i stacked a few items and abilities and found a way to be hit only 1 in 100 times (it was a D100 system with 100 being critical) basicly my equivalent of AC in the game was so good i could not be hit otherwise.
and there were very few things that do not use AC.

it was promptly errata'd

things like this continued for a long time. i continued breaking the game for a long time.