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View Full Version : The most unexpectadly insane session you've ever run



The Cats
2019-02-10, 02:56 PM
Share it! (This is blatantly just an excuse for me to share the bat**** crazy session I ran last night while also getting to see how it compares to other groups' insanity)

The setup: The party was unwillingly transported to the arctic. To get back to their stomping grounds they made a deal with a powerful Bheur Hag: They'll destroy a device that has been trapping souls in her territory and she would provide them transportation as far south as her power would allow. (She wants the device destroyed so she can snack on all those tasty souls, but the party doesn't know that and I'm pretty sure they're amoral enough they wouldn't really care either)

In a previous session, the party had sneaked into an Ancient White Dragon's lair while it was out hunting and stolen a bunch of loot. This dragon had created a slave race of white dragonborn to serve it that were magically compelled to follow it, but one of them had managed to shake that compulsion and left with the party (this was a new player).

The plan: The party was to infiltrate the ancient Dwarfish stronghold that had been taken over by the Deurgar who had made the device. Stealth, bribery, full-on assault, whatever. They'd get in, find the device and figure out a way to destroy it.

To make things more spicy, the dragon, who was able to track her escaped dragonborn slave, would start assaulting the stronghold shortly after the session started, putting things on a stressful timer as the party is nowhere near the level to tangle with an ancient dragon.

Once they destroyed the device, they'd find some alternate exit, meet up with the Hag and get the heck out of there. The dragon might show up later on as a recurring baddie they could one day take down.

I was expecting to have to adapt and improvise a bit as they came up with wild plans but holy cow I was not expecting what happened.

What happened: They went for the full-on assault approach. Little unexpected from this group but OK. A couple rounds into the epic melee against dozens of enemies, the mountain starts shaking as the ancient dragon slams in to the huge main doors. The speedy rogue decides to duck out of the melee for a couple rounds to zoom back to the entrance chamber to see what the heck is going on.

While the rogue is gone, the cleric goes down with two death saves failed, then the bard goes down and straight up dies (due to unlucky rolls and some unwise tactics i.e. splitting up and the healers engaging in melee). Luckily the hag provided each member of the party with a 'powerful potion that will aid you in any way you need.' They didn't ask questions. They should have asked questions.

The fighter feeds the potion to the bard. The bards eyes open all white-walker blue style and she raises as a zombie as her soul is sucked in to the duergar device. Luckily, most of the bard's powers come from the soul of a powerful fey within her magical instrument who didn't like the idea of losing its servant so it granted the bard some of its power in place of the bard's soul. The bard wasn't a mindless zombie, but was still undead and lost most of her abilities.

Meanwhile, the rogue sees the ancient white dragon forcing her way into the stronghold. Cue me sitting there smugly thinking "Hehe, watch him panic. This is gonna be great."

Cue the rogue pulling out the magic lamp he had gotten over a year and a half ago I had completely forgotten about. "I wish to completely dominate that dragon."

...

I mean you can probably guess how the rest of the session went after that.

I can always tell how well one of our sessions went over by seeing how many doodles of cool moments our wizard posts in the party's facebook chat. Usually 3-5. We're at 15 this morning and I'm still getting regularly alerts.

Thaumic
2019-02-11, 11:26 AM
Here's the most crazy session I've run, which just happened about a month ago as a part of a campaign that's been going for about a year.

Context:
The campaign is a Planescape-based adventure, in which the party warps between planes every 2-3 sessions. At the time of this session, they had just succeeded in a quest to cure themselves of a curse that was slowly turning them into Wraiths. They had determined that the magical healing they would need could be found in the lair of a Morkoth (which is an aberration that collects things compulsively). They had killed the Morkoth, looted its huge collection, cured themselves, and retreated to their apartment in the city of Sigil.

The Loot:
I had prepared a list of 30+ magic items for the party to recover from the Morkoth (that might sound like a lot, but only a few of them were useful in combat; most were basically toys). The previous session had ended before the party could begin the lengthy process of Identification and distribution, and as you can imagine, everyone was excited to see what new gear they were going to obtain.

Most of the items were of my own invention, and there was one in particular I was excited about: the Stick of Arbitrary Utility. When presented with a problem plaguing its owner or their allies, the Stick would attempt to solve the problem, effectively reproducing the Wish spell in power level. But there was a catch: I would roll a d100, and only on a 100 would the Stick be successful. 2-99 would have no effect, and a 1 would make the problem far worse. The stick could only be used 12 times.

The Effects of the Stick:
After the Stick was Identified, I didn't immediately reveal its function to the party. I merely described it as "sentient, capable of independent decision-making, and able to manipulate the weave of magic at will". The Stick ended up in the possession of the party Paladin, who started talking to it in an attempt to unlock whatever unknown powers it had. After a while, I couldn't contain myself anymore, and directly asked him, "PlayerName, does your character have any problems on his mind?"

That wasn't perhaps my best move, because after I said that everyone in the party started shouting any problem they could think of at the Stick in the hopes something would happen. And eventually, something did: I rolled a 100 when the party Rogue expressed his fears of the party's resident murder-hobo (who wasn't present at this session, and ended up leaving the campaign soon after for unrelated reasons). The characters watched in stunned awe as the Stick slowly rose out of the Paladin's hands, pointed itself directly at the murder-hobo, and announced in a booming voice "PROBLEM SOLVED!" After a bit of discussion with the players about what exactly they thought should happen, it was determined that the character would be cursed in such a way that he could never willingly end the life of another sentient creature ever again, thus making him much less of a threat.

The Aftermath:
The rest of the session devolved into shouting problems at the Stick for 45 minutes, which was absolutely hilarious, and resulted in these effects:

- The Paladin now has a permanent -10 to Athletics checks after informing the Stick that his athletic abilities were not good enough. I rolled a 1.

- The Paladin also now has a permanent +10 to Persuasion checks because of a similar statement on which I rolled a 100.

- The party's Fighter thwarted the BBEG's plot by expressing her problems with his magic storm of evil encroaching on her family's hometown. The portal from which this storm emanated instantly closed.

- Before the BBEG could re-open the portal, the party's Sorcerer got hid of him for good by informing the Stick that he had a problem with the BBEG being allowed to roam the Prime Material Plane freely. The BBEG is now banished to Carceri for all eternity.

The session ended there with triumphant joy. I've set the party on a new, more interesting plot course now relating to the Fighter's backstory, so all-in-all the removal of the BBEG was actually a good thing for the story, which was beginning to stagnate.

Since that session, the stick has triggered 2 additional times:

- The Paladin is now incapable of knowing anything about the Rogue's criminal organization or about the Rogue's involvement with it. I rolled a 1.

- The Paladin has also drawn the ire of one of Sigil's most prominent magic item dealers, and can expect a 95% increase in prices, as well as outright refusal to do business in some cases. Once again, I rolled a 1.

I'm excited to see how the remaining 5 charges will be used :smallbiggrin:

King of Nowhere
2019-02-13, 02:50 PM
just yesterday, one of our players had to make a new character.
he had all the background and personality set, and he was supposed to be a paladin. he only needed to roll the stats.
he rolled, and he got poor results. we agreed that since a paladin is the most MAD class, he may reroll one of his 10. he rerolled, and got a 7. rerolled again, 9. then 10, 10, 8, and a dozen other rerolls, none above 12.

at this point the dm said "give me the dice, i'll show you how it's done". guess what? he rolled an 18 straight away. We all complimented him on his dice-throwing skill.
Made doubly hilarious because the DM rolling poorly is a common joke at my table. Unless he's attacking my monk, then he crits all the time - we say he took improved picking on the monk