The biggest "Aw, crap" moment you've ever experienced in-game?

[AnonymousPepper]

Thus far, for me, it was something I witnessed as a GM last week.

In my 3.PF game, the high-level party is part of an invasion force trying to kick out a planar incursion. They're taking an important hill with a magic macguffin at the top of it they need to blow up. Of course, they've had to fight their way up past the defenders, who've been... not making it easy on them.

They rounded a corner and lost all their magic items, suddenly spotting five Beholders waiting in ambush for them. Then the party's Alchemist did something very stupid: he ran out in front, roughly equidistant from all of the gasbags. Who promptly unleashed Disjunctions on everyone in the group as a standard action. The Alchemist in particular got clobbered. And then I rolled some attack rolls - panic rising, as everyone else figured out what was happening. All hits, of course, with most of his magical protection gone. And then asked I him to roll me five Fort saves versus Disintegrate.

Only then did he realize the magnitude of his mistake.

He promptly blew Hero points to not die, but the "oh crap" was thick enough to provide full concealment.

What's something you all have experienced along those lines? Either from you screwing up, or the GM activating his trap card out of nowhere, or something like that, that caused a sudden moment of brown pants for you (or somebody else in the group).

[BWR]

Well there was that time in V:tM where started Gehenna (the literal end of the world, for those unfamiliar with oWoD). Spoilers: the world ended.

If we go for emotional punch rather than "I'm screwed", nothing tops when my PC in a L5R-ish game discovered his daughter had colluded with the BBEGod of the setting to save a family member and had to kill her.
To make things worse, she was fully aware of what she was doing and didn't actually do anything morally wrong other than ask the BBEG to help, and the BBEG did exactly that - nothing more or less. No strings, no hidden costs, no tricks, no half-truths or deceptions. The BBEG just removed the Taint from her nephew and let Honor and Law take its course. The fallout of this made a huge mess in the empire and left my PC emotionally broken.
Since these were characters we'd been playing and interacting with for years the whole thing left me with a lump in my throat and fighting tears.

[Yael]

Have you gotten so much hate from every stated good-aligned deity in D&D, plus 3rd party? Well, my party have.

We set free the Elder Gods from beyond the Far Realm, for which they caused madness, starting with the destruction of several Material Planes, and taking control over some Outer Planes. The "Aw, crap" moment came when we had to face the aspect of Ao, 'nuff said. Have you ever tried to face the aspect of the god who is worshiped by the gods? That's some next level "Aw, crap" right there. Long story short, we had a TPK that sesion, it was fun tho.

[Bullet06320]

back in the early days of 3.0 I was playing an elf wiz3/ranger1/fighter2/order of the bow initiate or something like that, I was scouting around, I was checking the hole in the ceiling we found, levitated up stuck my head in the hole to look around, oh joy, darkmantle to the face, kicked my face in, levitate ran out, falling damage finished me off.
the lesson here is never poke your head anyplace it might get eaten, lol

[AlanBruce]

This one is happening currently in my 3.5 game.

The party are all high level: Dervish, Cleric, Duskblade, Bard, Dragon Shaman, Beguiler.

All have, be it through class builds or ACFs, casting power. Not to mention a plethora of wands, scrolls, weapons, armor and gadgets at their disposal.

Following intel on a famed alchemist being trapped in an abandoned factory in a big city, the party decides to break in, despite the authorities having said that this place was "off limits". and the local hobos saying that the place was "haunted, making the old machines whirr and buzz and grind inside the metal walls after hours."

The hobos weren't wrong- the factory used to mass produce constructs of different types- from mundane tasks, such as tiny camera robots shaped like birds, to big hulking loaders, shaped like gorillas, to war machines, but this factory was shut down decades ago, reasons unknown.

The party made their way in and were immediately beset by the factory's automatons- someone- a disembodied female voice speaking to them through a PA, has reactivated the machines in the old factory. They are not building. They aren't doing their assigned tasks...

They are set to kill intruders- The PCs.

Large loader robots, falchion and siren blasting police bots, flying tiny helipad turrets and even a tank robot were summarily disposed of by the party.

It would be a pair of clockwork ninjas that would disarm an unaware shaman and take her precious Amber sword, crafted months ago IC from the tear of a very powerful forest spirit.

The thieving ninja got away. The other one was crushed by the party, as well as a pair of monk masseuse robots that insisted on getting too touchy and personal with the party by "helping them relax" using Stunning Fists.

The voice over the PA got more and more annoyed, as doors shut behind them, reinforced, hoping to trap them in the factory.

The party eventually found some human thugs (crime associates that had been set to work in the factory) and dominated one, who followed them 20ft. behind, so as to not get in line of fire.

After checking the map, they decide to investigate Manufacturing offices, where the mysterious voice offers them a deal- their precious amber sword in exchange for a clockwork key, which the beguiler found early in the Factory. The party knows that the key can jumpstart certain robots to help the key holder, but only in specific rooms. If the key has other powers, they haven't figured it out yet.

The party refuses, of course, and promise to trash every single machine in the factory...

That's when the ominous clanking footsteps can be heard further down the traveled corridors. Heavy and unsubtle. Powerful and deadly. And ever closer.

The party shrugs and decides to investigate a lone room in a detour, which lead them to a dead end workshop with a rather strong living construct and two healing bots that spray an alchemical version of Repair Serious Wounds every round.

The clanking down the hallways get closer, but the party chooses to engage these 3 new enemies, shooting blasting, hacking, punching... whatever it took.

A four round fight, enough for whatever was outside the workshop to stop and dent the metal door with a large sized fist. The beguiler casts Solid Fog on the hallway, so that whatever is on the other side, cannot get to them fast enough.

The fog doesn't work. Some unseen force has shut down the beguiler's magic completely.

The party keeps fighting the living construct until the dervish, using her Greater Demolition Crystals, drops the foe on the bloodied metal ground.

Then, the door is punched down as the party turns around to look at the source of the damage.

The dreaded Dead Iron Golem, thought to be a tale to scare wizards, these golems emanate a powerful AMF with a much wider range and the ability to turn any ground in said area into difficult terrain for any creature that casts spells or uses SLA.

Panic ensues as the bard, beguiler, dervish and cleric move to the far side of the workshop, still unaffected by the AMF.

The duskblade and shaman push their bodies to the limit, as they form a human barrier between their allies and the golem, who proceeds to bash both applying judicious use of Power Attack and magebane, which did hurt the shaman, since she took a single dip into bard.

How they get out of this one, is anybody's guess.

[Eno Remnant]

Let's open with my A game: I had my players running Tomb of Horrors without telling them. They didn't know until about the demon mouth, but the exclamations of "Oh, crap" and "I knew it!" were priceless. They were fantastic sports about the whole thing.

The big one was in the SCP campaign I'm currently in. Actually, a few big ones, but we're gonna go with the one that emotionally crippled my character:

So we're on a base on the moon, trying to locate the eggs of a certain SCP (can't recall the number off the top of my head, something like metal spiders). We get into a fight with some of them, and one slips its way down the NPC guide/ally's throat. I should add that this NPC had also recently, effectively become my character's girlfriend.

So my character, a Dragonfire Adept, did the only logical thing - he breathed fire down her throat. There were jokes made, our DM tried to make me deal damage to her (we both knew I'd used Endure Exposure on everyone, he just wanted to make sure I remembered), and it was left to lie.

Then, about halfway through the session, the NPC starts being forced to make fortitude saves. Which leads to the uncomfortable reminder that these things a) regenerate and b) lay eggs. Naturally, I repeat the process, try to burn (chill in this instance, but only because the DM asked which energy I was using which was sus AF) them out.

A few rounds later, she started making fortitude saves again. Which she failed, and then exploded as the spiders burst through her. Followed by a party member turning a flamethrower on her and the SCPs to make sure they were all eradicated.

Was a pretty big "Aw, crap" moment, all things considered.

[Andreaz]

Double Oh-Crap in my game. Level 5, pathfinder. Bandits-just-turned-pirates campaign (our scams were too profitable. For the sake of not breaking WBL so early we dumped about 60k in a super fancy ship)

One of our travels took us through a line where sea monsters attacked somewhat regularly. We start hearing banging on the hull, so the druid jumped and turned into a shark...
...and promptly sank right between 4 elasmosaurs (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/dinosaur/elasmosaurus). His very next action was a max-rolled swim check to jump back into the ship, shapeshifting back to human, with half a dozen bite marks all over his body and less than half hp.
This was his oh crap.
Then the entire crew went oh crap because the captain (my character. warder) looked at that, asked the wizard for some kind of water breathing. He had none. So he commanded the better swimmers of the crew to join him, took a few deep breaths and jumped.
That was the entire table's oh crap.
No one hurts my ship >.>

[Bronk]

They rounded a corner and lost all their magic items, suddenly spotting five Beholders waiting in ambush for them. Then the party's Alchemist did something very stupid: he ran out in front, roughly equidistant from all of the gasbags. Who promptly unleashed Disjunctions on everyone


I don't usually throw crazy homebrewed monsters at my players. For me, the crazy moments normally come from plot elements, like when the players discovered that their goddess was missing and they became embroiled in the elaborate ruse her subordinates had been running to keep it a secret.

[atemu1234]

Watching the soldiers mow down hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers was awesome at first. But then the dead began to rise, and the necromancer flew above on his Bodak Dragon. The town was overrun within minutes.

[LordAlabast]

The very first game I was ever in, with the very first character I had ever made. It was the night we started. Since everyone in the game was new, the DM decided to be cliche and start us off in a tavern called the Courageous Maple. My character had been predetermined to be a drunkard because passing out from alcohol gave me an excuse to stop playing when I'm sent to bed (The rest of the group would generally play until around 2-4 in the morning, we do it over skype call). Anyway, basically the entire group was calling for a bar fight. My character got the very first action of the game. I decided to jump on a table and throw a cup at an orc in my drunken state.
First roll of the game was a tumble check and I rolled a freaking critical failure, fell on my face, lost half my HP, and the character now has a crippling fear of all maple products.

[Draconium]

Any time somebody rolls a natural 1 during a crucial moment. 'Nuff said. (I probably have something more specific, but I can't recall anything off the top of my head.)

Also, shouldn't this be in the overall Roleplaying Games section, not just the 3e/3.5/d20 section?

[ComaVision]

My last DM had a habit of adding monsters to a fight if it seemed we were having too easy a time. This ranged from an extra 8 goblins pop into existence at level 3 to an iron golem enters from stage left at level 9.

[JoshuaZ]

For a few years I was running a PF/3.5 campaign where one of the main villains, the Telnathi, were using necrotic cysts from Libris Mortis to control people, slowly infiltrating the kingdom. At one point, they were helping defend a caravan that had a noblewoman in it who had annoyed the Telnathi (she was semisecretly a necromancer and had been a bit of a thorn in their side). The caravan was attacked by a red dragon which had bulging sores of undead, rotting flesh (which made it slightly weaker with slightly lower HP and slightly less DR but still pretty obnoxious), and after they defeated it, they were able to determine that it had to have been encysted at a very young age. The wizard character used Blood Biography (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/blood-biography) to find out more about the dragon, and I promptly told him that the dragon had been named "Red Number 12." All the players about instantly realized what the Telnathi had been doing for a very long time.

The look on their faces was priceless.

[danzibr]

I'm sure I can come up with some good ones if I think, but...

Outside of playing, I was writing up this awesome character. Warforged Totemist with VoP. Then I realized the armor bonus from my feat (Adamantine Body?) didn't stack with my sacred armor bonus from VoP (they're different types, but VoP specifically calls it out).

[Spore]

Homebrew Pathfinder Campaign, 7th level:

During the ongoing siege of an Dwarven city by undead forces of unknown origin, my rogue decided that the dwarves are too stubborn to be helped. They reacted to every help and heroic action we did for them with indifference. My impatient thief wanted to relieve them of a few goods and then continue with his quest so he decided to rob a dwarven merchant.

The DM agreed to allow me to reap greater rewards if I came in for a solo adventure. I snook my way past the door through the customer area into the forge, passing the blacksmith's bedroom. Entering his vault coming across various traps and alarms. I thought everything is in order. I opened the chest....until it decided to grab me. It was a mimic. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. The mimic began yelling "THIEF! THIEF!" as I eluded its grasp and ran for it. Weirdly enough that wasn't the "Oh crap!" moment yet.

Shaken up by the stir the merchant's SON enters the hallway and my rogue, rolling a 1 on acrobatics - trips over the little boy, severely hurting him and leaving a crying kid on the floor. In my shock I calmed the kid instead of running, revealing my identiy to the merchant (one of two humans in the city, and the other being bald and over two feet taller as well as a Paladin). I sat there, three thousand gp worth of loot in my right hand and a severly hurt kid in my left arm.

Long story short, for the help I provided towards the city, my rogue only lost two digits on his right hand instead of both hands. As well as all respect and trust the city's council had put into me - unknown by myself.

[Snowbluff]

So, 5th book of Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Mind Fog I have +20 to will, but I roll a one. :smalleek:

Dominate. I have a +10 to will, thanks to the fog. I roll a 2. :smallmad:

"Go steal that orb your monk stole"

Me: "Dammit, Yujiro! You did not take that thing we were supposed to destroy, did you?" :smallannoyed:

Trap the Soul. No save. Spent the next two hours playing Magic with the Arcane Archer (who was dominated to run away) while the rest of the rest of the team slowly ground out the fight. :l

[genderlich]

Me: Ravindra, a Lawful Good gnome oracle. My party: a bunch of ruthless killers-for-hire that happens to be on the same mission as me. Including Ivan, a VERY wanted ex-pirate and assassin.

This is Eberron, so naturally we're on a train. Ivan has disguised himself so as not to attract any guards' attention.

Somehow, our dumb-as-a-rock half-troll barbarian has gotten into an altercation with the guards, which looks about to turn violent. Ivan is good friends with the barbarian, so he's joining the argument on his side while I'm trying to defuse the situation before anyone gets hurt.

Ivan takes out his bow and aims an arrow at a guard - the guards have their weapons out but currently are also trying to get out of the situation without violence. Seeing this, I shout reflexively, "IVAN, STOP!"

Cue :smalleek: from Ivan as the guards realize this guy is the criminal they were told about, and violence happens.

[emulord]

Rolling 100 on a D100 in a Alice the wonderland themed game for the random encounter.
The jabberwocky shows up while everyone is asleep and wounded after a tough fight with a Lamia.

Luckily they hear it because its pretty loud, but it almost one shots two characters who hold if off while everyone else runs.
"If theres ever a fight to run away from, its this one"

[Nibbens]

PF - Rise of the Runelords - Level 11

The party sneaks up on a sleeping kobold - unaware that it has 11 levels in barbarian.

They take his spear and toss it back, but the clattering wakes him up.

Initiative. Players go first.

They all move in, surrounding him, to subdue him, and when they realize he's fighting back, they all use lethal attacks.

The kobold spends his turn moving 40 feet away (provoking AoOs). Once he's at max range he pulls a necklace of fireballs and tosses it at the party.

I didn't tell the PCs what it was, I just described "a string of red beads - smaller near the clasp and larger near the center."

This results in a simultaneous "Oh Crap!" From almost everyone at the table.

Boom. 36d6 damage to everyone.

[SwordChucks]

pure awesome.

I hope you don't mind but I have to steal that whole factory encounter.

[AnonymousPepper]

I don't usually throw crazy homebrewed monsters at my players. For me, the crazy moments normally come from plot elements, like when the players discovered that their goddess was missing and they became embroiled in the elaborate ruse her subordinates had been running to keep it a secret.

That's not homebrew. That's in Lords of Madness, it's a feat for Beholders, at the end of a short feat chain. The first lets them turn their antimagic eye cones into focused single-target emanations, and the second lets them instead use it to drop a Disjuction at-will at a standard (turning off the eye ray for the next round). :smallamused:

[AlanBruce]

I hope you don't mind but I have to steal that whole factory encounter.

By all means! If you need info on the constructs, do not mind sending me a PM.

[JBarca]

This happened to my group just last weekend.

We're a party of four/five, currently at 15th level in a homebrew setting. We have two Wizards, a Druid, a Cleric, and a Dawnblade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?190289-3-5-Dawnblade-the-duskblade-s-paladin)(More or less a Paladin fix that I highly recommend to everyone; it's great).

We, as a party, had just defeated a powerful warlord of a province in the "Evil Empire" sort of organization against which we've been fighting for, well, 5 levels. In doing so, high level spells and Artifacts were used on both sides. This display of power draws a certain being known as "The Godslayer" (a massive bird in form) to our location, as we knew it would. It happens all the time.

So, being intelligent, we fled. Shortly thereafter (next session, so we weren't really on top of everything), we decide we need to hop on over to that province to take control of the warlord's horde. The Cleric and Druid were not impressed with this plan, so we left them behind.

Two Wizards and a Paladin-ish enter the province, all excited to get our army. We're planning and chatting when we hear it.

A screech echoing throughout the land. The deep booming of heavy wingbeats. The looks on our faces were probably amazing. We were terrified.

We had all forgotten that a being rumored to have slain actual gods was nearby.

Shortly thereafter, we fled to the supposedly impregnable home of the neutral Wizard Guild type organization, the Godslayer followed, we got in trouble for threatening the fortress... Yeah. Things went downhill after encountering a being capable of killing gods (or so we're told).

Fun session in an awesome campaign, but man... When the bird showed up, then started following us across the Planes, I figured my time was running out quickly.

tl;dr: The party splits up, half of it encounters a god-killing bird because we forgot it was around, and we were very lucky that Epic Level Wizards being angry with us was the only consequence we've seen yet.

[Bronk]

That's not homebrew. That's in Lords of Madness, it's a feat for Beholders, at the end of a short feat chain. The first lets them turn their antimagic eye cones into focused single-target emanations, and the second lets them instead use it to drop a Disjuction at-will at a standard (turning off the eye ray for the next round). :smallamused:

Heh, I had completely forgotten about all those beholder feats! They must have really angered those guys if they were willing to ruin the chance to 'charge their dweomer-lobes'!

[amalcon]

The first character I played in a D&D system had a rather large party (six members at that time if I remember correctly). One of these members, the full-plated Fighter, had taken ill (in a way not responsive to magic) due to an absent player. The remaining characters were a pretty standard Barbarian, a basically-Cloistered Cleric of Oghma,, a melee-focused Rogue, a pretty normal Ranger with FE: Undead (remembering it was 3.0), and my Kobold Sorcerer. I don't remember exactly, but I think we were around level 6.

We're in a Forgotten Realms-like setting (basically, the GM used the deities, maps, and location names, but changed most all the details). There's this undead army wandering through Amn, and the party is also in Amn, so we figure to go into Athkatla, where the undead are less likely to be. As we walk in, we begin to realize that something is amiss: it's basically a ghost town. In a brilliant move on our part, we keep going anyway, hoping to find a building to hide in for the night.

It turns out that the undead were currently occupying Athkatla, and we didn't notice because the forces actually *in the city* were mostly vampires and their spawn. So naturally, that night, the inn we've holed up in is totally surrounded by an obviously superior force by the time anyone notices. This is totally the party's fault -- the warning signs were all there, and we just ignored them.

One of the vampires is actually a former party member whose player moved away. The character was kept around in a villain's capacity because frankly, that character was awesome. Anyway, due to that vampire's influence, they wake us up with loud noises and try to negotiate our surrender. He has a score to settle with my Sorcerer, and I think he wanted to turn at least one of the other characters into a vampire. This guy alone could probably take two of us at once, between his general effectiveness and his relatively newfound vampire powers, and there were plenty of others.

Fortunately, this is also when we figured out that spellcasting was really powerful. My sorcerer had Invisibility, and the Cleric had Silence (some weird houserules were in play there, but that doesn't matter to the story). After casting Invisibility on each member of the party, we used the Silence spell to totally mask our escape out the windows of the inn and make our way to the city wall on the coast side. This was actually quite difficult, since in addition to huddling within the Silence area, we had to carry the severely ill Fighter and his fullplate. We then gave the Cleric's ring of water walking to the Barbarian, who proceeded to run back and forth carrying party members out of the city across the water.

While all this hand-carrying was going on, whichever party members were still waiting caused general misdirective mischief (untying boats from the docks and pushing them off, forcing the undead to check if we're on that boat, things like that). Eventually everyone was outside the city, at which point we just ran away.

It was a huge "oh crap" moment for the party. Except for me (I'd noticed the possibilities of Invisibility on a Sorcerer already), none of the players saw any possible way out. I didn't even think my approach had a high chance of working. It really took a group contribution to make it happen -- invis from me, silence from the Cleric, distractions from the rogue, carrying from the Barbarian, and the idea to use the ring of water walking from the Ranger.

[TheBrassDuke]

By all means! If you need info on the constructs, do not mind sending me a PM.

I want to know how you statted GlaDOS. >_>

:3

I do love the encounter. As brief as it was...I may use it too.

[Rohim Firesword]

I once played in a PVP 3.5 game with two opposed parties. We were trying to cut out the heart of the Tarrasque, but only the evil party actually knew that was the objective. So, both groups fight their way into the central room, and the Tarrasque bursts out of the ground. This was not actually the "Aw, crap" moment, because it got worse. The good guys had a mirror of opposition that they wanted to use on the bad guys. Instead, the Tarrasque looked into it, and so there was a second Tarrasque starting a Kaiju-style deathmatch in a pool of lava. In-game, it was terrifying. Out of character, it was terrifying and incredibly awesome.

[AlanBruce]

I want to know how you statted GlaDOS. >_>

:3

I do love the encounter. As brief as it was...I may use it too.

Oddly enough, the voice on the PA isn't an ominpitent AI like GlaDOS, she's the factory owner's remnant of his dead wife, rebuilt as an android and given a soul through a cleric of Orcus. The cleric was handsomely paid and left to a far off island to run a small undead cult (which the party stumbled upon during their nautical arc).

The new robot wife worked at first, but gradually, she became violent and homicidal, rapporting with the constructs and machines of the factory, forcing her husband to unplug her and shut down the entire complex.

And that was the end of it.

Recently, a Crime Syndicate has developed a potent drug using the alchemist and have reactivated this woman to be a part of their prestigious outfit. Her factory is ideal to keep the alchemist trapped and working with no outside interference until... well, the PCs.

But in hindsight, yes. There is a lot of Portal influence here.

[TheBrassDuke]

Dead wife. Dead Caroline (not wife but still). Worked at first. But then went mad. GlaDOS. I love it.

[Fosco the Swift]

The first character I ever played, a 3.5 generic Halfling Rogue, who recently reached about level 13 at this point. We we're searching for the phylactery of a Lich we just killed in some underground tunnels where some kobolds were camping out. The party had split up to try and cover as much area as possible. I was sneaking through an abandoned campsite when out of an unexplored tunnel comes a half-dragon basilisk. Needless to say, I rolled a two on my move silently, tripping over one of the tent support ropes. The FIRST "oh crap" moment for that character.

About a session later the party had found the phylactery and were trying to destroy it. I successfully discover a trap, a Disintegrate spell. One successful dispel later, we open the phylactery and prepare to unleash our best attacks. The next three Disintegrates that I didn't find go off, tearing a rift in the plane and pulling the party in. That was the second "oh crap". On the plus side, the phylactery was destroyed. Not sure what the Lich was thinking there.

[J-H]

I was playing a Psion, and we ran into a (somewhat de-powered) lesser deity. I looked up the list of immunities that all deities had, and realized that I could not do better than 50-100 damage per round.

I ended up using Reality Revisions to move our Ubercharger around so that he could do a full-attack charge every round.

[AtlasSniperman]

One of my players is playing a Favoured Soul of a somewhat pacifistic deity.
Made an attack against a very unreasonable fellow who had caused a serious disturbance on a train.

"I'll roll Non-lethal"
*nat 20*
"Well, Time to confirm"
*nat 20*
"Oh god! I don't want to confirm."
*17, +mods confirms*
Me: "You crush his skull against the wall of the compartment with the flat of your greatsword."
"F***"

Yea, we use the instant kill rules.