Rare situations in a campaign

[Princesse]

Hi everybody!
I was thinking about some things that rarely happens in a campaign like the wizard getting his spellbook stolen or destroyed, or getting into a place without weapons and needing to fight bare hands so the monk can shine! Sometimes you make you character with some things in minds that just doesnt occur.
Let me know about those things that didnt happen to you!

[jdolch]

Let me know about those things that didn't happen to you!

This is awesome. I highly recommend the Things I May No Longer Do While Playing (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?573751-Things-I-May-No-Longer-Do-While-Playing-XII-A-Thousand-Yard-Stare-is-not-Permission) Thread in the General Roleplaying Area.

[Naanomi]

I often end up taking fringe-use cantrips that I never cast... when am I going to be surrounded that I need Thinderclap?

Also, carrying weapons of different damage types ‘just in case of resistance’ that then I never utilize

[Princesse]

Haha that's why i always use high level skeletons for my players to use blugeoning damage on!

[Sahe]

A Cleric/Paladin/Warlock acting against their God/Oath/Patron and suffering (mechanic) consequences for it is, I think, relatively rare.

Character's losing limbs, eyesight, etc. permanently without dying.

[Man_Over_Game]

A Cleric/Paladin/Warlock acting against their God/Oath/Patron and suffering (mechanic) consequences for it is, I think, relatively rare.

Character's losing limbs, eyesight, etc. permanently without dying.

It's generally bad habit for DM's to punish players when the player didn't know they were doing something wrong. Permanent damage without dying is a good example, since there's nothing you can do to avoid a critical, yet you are inflicted the most debilitating kind of punishment: the permanent kind.

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To the heart of the question, I actually did make my players start in a jail, and cause a jailbreak. Consequentially, the Monk was integral to their success, and couldn't have been done so well without him.

[Gastronomie]

A Cleric/Paladin/Warlock acting against their God/Oath/Patron and suffering (mechanic) consequences for it is, I think, relatively rare.That's true. A cleric of Lathandar I'm playing is terribly selfish, possibly to the point of evil (though I as the player in charge keep check to not hinder the party's actions), she doesn't really have faith in Lathandar in the first place, and she doesn't have whims of going to dance parties with vampires if she thinks it's gonna be beneficial for her, but she's still hurling around Fireballs and Spiritual Weapons all right.

At low levels I sometimes take Feather Fall when in doubt of what spells to take. Most of the time it never sees use because the DM avoids situations in which low-level characters must fall lots of feet. Just once it saved us from a TPK and I became the MVP of the week, but just once.

An example of a niche spell that actually did see good use was Tongues. In a campaign I was running, the party encountered the enemy mobs doing omnious chanting and gibbering in an unknown language (the enemies figured no one could understand what they were saying in the first place so they were speaking pretty important information), and so the bard declares she will cast Tongues.
Tongues? The hell is that? Is that even a spell? Why do you have that remembered in the first place?
But the Tongues spell succeeded in figuring out who the big bad was for the entire story arc, which allowed the characters to skip a lot of deceptions and plots and led to a quick, awesome, if not rather untimely showdown. The bard loved it.

[Sahe]

It's generally bad habit for DM's to punish players when the player didn't know they were doing something wrong. Permanent damage without dying is a good example, since there's nothing you can do to avoid a critical, yet you are inflicted the most debilitating kind of punishment: the permanent kind.

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To the heart of the question, I actually did make my players start in a jail, and cause a jailbreak. Consequentially, the Monk was integral to their success, and couldn't have been done so well without him.

To be fair, I'm not really doing that. At least the chopping off limbs part. If I were to do that I would either a) discuss it with the player in question beforehand or b) lay out the specific circumstances under which they may lose a limb. Something I could think about would be: instead of instantly dying when they take double their HP in damage, they lose a limb or sense. Or instead of failing a Saving Throw when they get hit while bleeding out they can loose a limb/sense instead. Alternatively I may allow them to take a Success on their Death Save in exchange for a lost limb/sense. IE: loss of limb/death doesn't happen from a mere critical hit, but when you're already at death's door. Which is a bit how it works in the Warhammer (40k) systems by FFG, where your hit points represent luck, fleshwounds, scratches, etc. and Critical Damage (all Damage you take that takes you below 0 HP) represents actual wounds and serious hits.

I also want to note that with certain mid to high level magic such effects aren't necessarily permanent.

In my current game I have an instance of a) where a player's voice was stolen by the BBEG.

[solidork]

Played a half orc War Cleric from 5-13 and never used Relentless Endurance once. In fights, enemies almost always focus the dragon in our party because he's a dragon. I have a similar problem with my current character, an EK/Warlock who almost never actually casts Shield.

[Pex]

Having to mark off rations. I always create a character starting with 7 days rations. The number of times I changed the 7 to a 6 since I've played from 2E is two. The number of times I changed the 6 to a 5 is zero. I'm not bothered by this. Often times during downtime we say we stock up on provisions, but keeping track of minutiae detail almost never comes up.

Same thing with tracking encumbrance. Once during a 2E game and once for a 5E game the DM wanted us to keep track to the ounce and where something was located, but eventually it was stopped because the continuous bookkeeping was taking away from the fun of playing. Yes it is part of the game. It's in the rules, but it gets ignored until it matters when someone wants to carry something that's obviously very heavy or bulky.

Probably more of what you're looking for: Evil bad guy the party defeats truly repents and joins team good guys, not necessarily becoming Good. I've only had one DM where that happened. A coven of medusa surrendered after we killed the Queen. They mended their ways and became recurring allies in other campaigns. An evil wizard who once kidnapped the party's rogue had changed his ways and became my character's NPC wizard advisor when I became Duke of the Western Realm.

[Sahe]

Having to mark off rations. I always create a character starting with 7 days rations. The number of times I changed the 7 to a 6 since I've played from 2E is two. The number of times I changed the 6 to a 5 is zero. I'm not bothered by this. Often times during downtime we say we stock up on provisions, but keeping track of minutiae detail almost never comes up.

Same thing with tracking encumbrance. Once during a 2E game and once for a 5E game the DM wanted us to keep track to the ounce and where something was located, but eventually it was stopped because the continuous bookkeeping was taking away from the fun of playing. Yes it is part of the game. It's in the rules, but it gets ignored until it matters when someone wants to carry something that's obviously very heavy or bulky.

Probably more of what you're looking for: Evil bad guy the party defeats truly repents and joins team good guys, not necessarily becoming Good. I've only had one DM where that happened. A coven of medusa surrendered after we killed the Queen. They mended their ways and became recurring allies in other campaigns. An evil wizard who once kidnapped the party's rogue had changed his ways and became my character's NPC wizard advisor when I became Duke of the Western Realm.

Actually my players have a chance of achieving something like this. They cleared an old ruined castle and killed the Bugbear King by allying themselves with unhappy hobgoblins who wanted to take over but lacked strength. Depending on how they negotiate another fight might break out or they could gain them as allies going forward.

[JackPhoenix]

Players know what they are doing, coordinate their actions, actually use some sort of tactic and try to preserve their resources instead of just blindly charging the nearest enemy and trading hits until one side fall down. Also, they check where they are going after they've encountered traps previously, and they pay some attention to their surroundings.

What? You've asked what happens rarely in campaign.

[Princesse]

Its great seeing how every party is so different! Lots of things here happened to me a lot while others not even once! That's that fun of DnD i guess!