MesiDoomstalker
2017-07-18, 12:54 AM
Tonight me and my players had the most amazing unplanned thing happen. A bit of backstory; the party's Tiefling Paladin/Oracle was kidnapped by his Great^16 Grand Dad (whose an Archdevil) and took him back to the Plane of Dismanter (custom setting, essentially Hell). The PC's lacked the ability to Plane Shift (Tiefling was the only divine caster and they are only level 9), however luckily for them an Exorcist (level 9 Halfling Cleric) NPC was coming to their city to exorcise a Ghost Dragon from earlier in the campaign so it couldn't reform and continue to wreck havoc every couple of weeks. The PC's asked the NPC Cleric to take them to Dismanter and he agreed, if they paid him for the spells cast and a special charge for going to Dismanter (the NPC worshiped the main Halfling god, who is CG and associated with Water, the Sea, Sailing and to a lesser degree, Piracy). Additionally, the NPC wouldn't go to Dismanter till he did his exorcism thing on the ghost dragon that he was initially hired for first.
The Tiefling gets some plot info from Grand Pap and is sent out into the plane proper to find his own way home. He finds an Inn (Dismanter's second layer is a massive sprawling metropolis which functions as a trading place for the less scrupulous of all planes) and starts looking for someone willing to Plane Shift him back home. I gave him the option to go through the permanent portal to the EVUUUUUUUUUUUL Empire halfway around the world, but he refused go figure. Meanwhile the NPC has done his Exorcism thing and Plane Shifts the rest of the party to Dismanter. Hijinks happen, and the party is reunited and the NPC Plane Shifts them back to the Prime.
Now before I continue, a tad more information on this setting. The planes are all massive cylinder's instead of spheres or infinite flat planes. The way gravity works is there is a line that runs through the center of the cylinder and all gravity pulls towards that line (as opposed to a singular point at the center of the mass). So at the edge of the Prime's cylinder is either very tall mountains that end in the more sheer precipice imaginable or massive oceanic waterfalls that fall till they hit the cylinder's center, where it is pulled into the setting's Underdark equivalent's aquifer.
I rolled the off target for their Plane Shift spell, rolling 240 miles. Consulting my map of the setting, that puts them somewhere in the wilderness of the 3 neighboring kingdoms or in the ocean with a small chance they are near the world's edge. I ask them to roll 6d6 and 1d100, which they roll a 32 and 100. This of course calls for the most dire situation possible; the Edge of the World. They must desperately make Swim checks to get to and hold onto the Wizard who had prepped Teleport twice. They had 3 rounds to do so before they get pulled over the edge and if they failed 2 rounds before their fall pulled them into the Underdark aquifer where drowning would be the most likely result. Everyone but the Paladin (in his Full Plate) and the Rogue manage to do round 1. And for the life of the Rogue (literally) he can't pass a swim check. Even the Paladin passes and everyone else succeeds on their strength checks to keep hold of the wizard. So they go over the edge and the Paladin fails his check to hold onto the Wizard. Luckily, he's a Dragon Oracle so he has Fly on his list, casts that (passing the concentration check for violent motion and the 20% failure due to casting inside a waterfall). He grabs the Rogue, and then succeeds in grabbing the Wizard again. The Wizard tries to cast his Teleport but fails the concentration check, losing the spell. And this is it. They have 1 round to make it to safety and only 1 Teleport spell remaining. The Paladin fails his check to keep hold of the wizard, the Rogue fails his reflex save to grab someone, anyone. The Ranger passes her check to grab the Rogue meeting the DC exactly (she grabbed his ear). The Wizard casts his spell, passing both Concentration and the 20% failure. They had selected their favorite bar in their home city as their destination.
It is at this point I reminded them why they had prepped 2 Teleport spells. The Wizard's Caster Level was such that he could only bring 4 people, including himself. The party is 4 PC's plus their hired NPC. So the question became who got left behind to certain death? The Wizard wasn't an option, he would always be included in his own Teleport spell. That left the Ranger, Paladin, Rogue and the NPC Cleric. So I asked them to roll a d6, where I had assigned a different person to each number and put "GM's choice" onto 6 and "no one" onto 5. They rolled 6. Now, I didn't want to cope out and off the NPC nor did I want to arbitrarily kill a PC, so I asked the Paladin player if he wanted Evens or Odds. If he guessed correctly, the NPC got left behind. If he guessed wrong, he'd be left behind. But at least he still had his Fly spell plus several more 3rd level slots to use on more Fly spells. He chose Odds and I rolled a 3. The NPC got left behind and everyone is safe.
But of course, not everything is hunky dorry. They never paid the NPC and got him killed for his troubles. So I decided he will be coming back as a Ghost. I remind you, he was an exorcist who is now a ghost himself who worshiped a god of the sea and died by drowning. It was truly the most amazing thing I didn't even plan that has happened in one of my games. What stories does the Playground of unplanned awesomeness?
The Tiefling gets some plot info from Grand Pap and is sent out into the plane proper to find his own way home. He finds an Inn (Dismanter's second layer is a massive sprawling metropolis which functions as a trading place for the less scrupulous of all planes) and starts looking for someone willing to Plane Shift him back home. I gave him the option to go through the permanent portal to the EVUUUUUUUUUUUL Empire halfway around the world, but he refused go figure. Meanwhile the NPC has done his Exorcism thing and Plane Shifts the rest of the party to Dismanter. Hijinks happen, and the party is reunited and the NPC Plane Shifts them back to the Prime.
Now before I continue, a tad more information on this setting. The planes are all massive cylinder's instead of spheres or infinite flat planes. The way gravity works is there is a line that runs through the center of the cylinder and all gravity pulls towards that line (as opposed to a singular point at the center of the mass). So at the edge of the Prime's cylinder is either very tall mountains that end in the more sheer precipice imaginable or massive oceanic waterfalls that fall till they hit the cylinder's center, where it is pulled into the setting's Underdark equivalent's aquifer.
I rolled the off target for their Plane Shift spell, rolling 240 miles. Consulting my map of the setting, that puts them somewhere in the wilderness of the 3 neighboring kingdoms or in the ocean with a small chance they are near the world's edge. I ask them to roll 6d6 and 1d100, which they roll a 32 and 100. This of course calls for the most dire situation possible; the Edge of the World. They must desperately make Swim checks to get to and hold onto the Wizard who had prepped Teleport twice. They had 3 rounds to do so before they get pulled over the edge and if they failed 2 rounds before their fall pulled them into the Underdark aquifer where drowning would be the most likely result. Everyone but the Paladin (in his Full Plate) and the Rogue manage to do round 1. And for the life of the Rogue (literally) he can't pass a swim check. Even the Paladin passes and everyone else succeeds on their strength checks to keep hold of the wizard. So they go over the edge and the Paladin fails his check to hold onto the Wizard. Luckily, he's a Dragon Oracle so he has Fly on his list, casts that (passing the concentration check for violent motion and the 20% failure due to casting inside a waterfall). He grabs the Rogue, and then succeeds in grabbing the Wizard again. The Wizard tries to cast his Teleport but fails the concentration check, losing the spell. And this is it. They have 1 round to make it to safety and only 1 Teleport spell remaining. The Paladin fails his check to keep hold of the wizard, the Rogue fails his reflex save to grab someone, anyone. The Ranger passes her check to grab the Rogue meeting the DC exactly (she grabbed his ear). The Wizard casts his spell, passing both Concentration and the 20% failure. They had selected their favorite bar in their home city as their destination.
It is at this point I reminded them why they had prepped 2 Teleport spells. The Wizard's Caster Level was such that he could only bring 4 people, including himself. The party is 4 PC's plus their hired NPC. So the question became who got left behind to certain death? The Wizard wasn't an option, he would always be included in his own Teleport spell. That left the Ranger, Paladin, Rogue and the NPC Cleric. So I asked them to roll a d6, where I had assigned a different person to each number and put "GM's choice" onto 6 and "no one" onto 5. They rolled 6. Now, I didn't want to cope out and off the NPC nor did I want to arbitrarily kill a PC, so I asked the Paladin player if he wanted Evens or Odds. If he guessed correctly, the NPC got left behind. If he guessed wrong, he'd be left behind. But at least he still had his Fly spell plus several more 3rd level slots to use on more Fly spells. He chose Odds and I rolled a 3. The NPC got left behind and everyone is safe.
But of course, not everything is hunky dorry. They never paid the NPC and got him killed for his troubles. So I decided he will be coming back as a Ghost. I remind you, he was an exorcist who is now a ghost himself who worshiped a god of the sea and died by drowning. It was truly the most amazing thing I didn't even plan that has happened in one of my games. What stories does the Playground of unplanned awesomeness?