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View Full Version : Out thinking DMs - have you ever done it with a simple comment?



Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-05, 12:06 PM
Everybody talks about being a munchkin. And everyone talks about using some convoluted method to out thinking DMs (or GMs).

This isn't a thread for that.

Rather, this is a thread for stories of how you once out thought a DM inadvertantly, in an amusing manner that people just laughed, or by using a really simple spell.

For instance, the dead ale wives "I attack the darkness!" with magic missile. That's pretty funny and does count.

Any and all systems are allowed.


BTW I reward my players for out thinking me ;D



Here's my story:

It was a deadlands GURPS game. My character was a good Half-Demon guy who had his demonic power sealed in a deck of playing cards to prevent his incubus blood from taking over and basically making him spend all his time entertaining ladies in the saloon.

So, my guy is more or less weak, basically it's just a background/plot device.

The GM dumps us in the midst of a bunch of high level characters, equiv to 5th level. My guy is first. He gets captured and dumped in subterranean shafts carelessly dug beneath the city.

I prepare a spell with my cards - move earth. Allows me to move a great deal of earth. something like 3 cubic feet.
I state I study the tunnel walls, he says they're loosely constructed. Meaning it's pretty dangerous. I told him what I was doing (spell preparation) in relation to that information.

I walk in on a bunch of these occultists, the GM keeps laughing at me saying HAHA you're gonna die.

I touch my prepared card (which contains the spell move earth) to the ceiling in order to make contact with the earth (I was told to raise my hands), and I activate the spell. I purposely move all the earth I can move above their heads to cause a tunnel collapse.

I defeated 4 occultists with a level 1 spell.

He instantly threw a tantrum (oh it was a bad tantrum) and kicked me out of the group. I wasn't "out for exp", and had offered to replay the whole scene over to allow him to revise his encounter plan (before he kicked me from the group), but he refused. His game ended soon after that because apparently he couldn't deal with people who out thought his traps. I couldn't believe it!

I LOVE puzzle games such as ZORK, and as a result I reward my players if they can think of ingenious methods to conquer encounters and could not believe how this GM reacted, especially since I pretty much told him what I planned on doing ahead of time.

In the end I got a good laugh and a good story out of the whole deal.



What are your stories?

Kaelaroth
2007-11-05, 12:19 PM
Me: "But Friendly-and-normally-incredibly-intelligent-DM, 5 times 16 is 80, not 70!"
FaNIIDM: "Holy Sh--!"

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-05, 12:26 PM
Me: "But Friendly-and-normally-incredibly-intelligent-DM, 5 times 16 is 80, not 70!"
FaNIIDM: "Holy Sh--!"

LOL I don't even need to know what the situation is, that is funny :D

I admit I've fouled up on my player's Fire Ball damage in the past ( and given them bonus exp for just a simple thing such as counting to 30 ;D )

Alex12
2007-11-05, 12:28 PM
Not me, but another character in my party. We have supertech, supermagic, and are just plain uber, which is good because right now, we're trying to kill a bunch of magically-created super-tarrasques rampaging across the world.
This is the first one we're fighting.
DM: The creature roars and charges.
*we all roll initiative. Among our party, nobody gets lower than 18. DM rolls a 1.*
Rogue(first in line): I shoot it with my autocannon. *rolls attack*
DM: the neutronium-tipped hypersonic rounds slam into the beast with a tremendous crack, like a bolt of lighting. They simply shatter or ricochet off it's carapace.
Other wizard (not me): Crap! It's got neutronium armor!
[Note: at this point, we didn't have our Baleful Planeshift power yet]
Me: Well, we're boned.
Fighter: hang on guys, I have an idea. Get behind me for cover.
Us: Uh, OK.
Fighter: I take one of my antimatter grenades and throw it into the thing's mouth. I don't arm it beforehand. *rolls attack-natural 20*
DM: *rolls a 4* okay, the grenade sails in a perfect arc into the creatures mouth. I'm wondering why you left the grenade unprimed.
Fighter:*grins*So, does the thing swallow it?
DM: yeah...
Fighter: what does antimatter do when it touches matter?
DM: It blows up?
Fighter: yeah, and those digestive juices? What'll be the first part of the grenade that fails?
DM: The casing, I gue...*comprehension**facepalm* Okay, roll for damage
Fighter: *rolls an absolutely huge number*
*brief argument over whether it turns into a giant frag grenade or if its innards are vaporized and it spits a huge gout of energy from it's mouth, because the only thing that remains intact is the carapace. We decide on the explosion*
DM: Okay, the grenade detonates, sending a shockwave of fire and neutronium shrapnel flying outward. You are all okay, because you're shielded from the blast by the Fighter's neutronium armor. Great game, guys, but now I have to revise my notes significantly.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-05, 12:33 PM
LOL I realy should stop posting after each person's story, but that one was a really good story alex :D

I'm also glad to see that the GM accepted the strategy and had fun while rolling with the game rather than throwing a fit :D

Fax Celestis
2007-11-05, 12:38 PM
One of my players, in pretty much every session I've ever run: "Um, don't I get an AoO?"
Me: "Um. Sure."
Player: *rolls dice* "I hit him."
Me: "He dies. DAMN IT." *gets new minis* "Stupid AoO rules."

Alex12
2007-11-05, 12:40 PM
LOL I realy should stop posting after each person's story, but that one was a really good story alex :D

I'm also glad to see that the GM accepted the strategy and had fun while rolling with the game rather than throwing a fit :D

Yeah. The whole goal of this campaign is to become insanely powerful. I mean, if the DM wouldn't let us do stuff like that, why would he have given us, in effect, a personal plane filled with super-advanced weaponry and stuff that can make more automatically?

Gerrtt
2007-11-05, 12:43 PM
Me: Wait...are these ghouls or ghasts?
DM: Why?
Me: Because he's an Elf, he's immune to paralysis from ghouls.
DM: No he's not, it's not in his stats.
Me: Well...why don't you check the ghoul stats? Remember, in OotS when *cut off*
DM: Because I don't believe you. You're just trying to make me lose the fight.
*I steal the book and show it to him*
DM: Well damn, how about that?
Me: Yeah, how about you read the monster's stats before using it?
DM: *silence*
Me: You're welcome "Bob." (The Elf's name was Bob).

I kid you not.

If anyone who writes for Wizards is out there, put the Elf's immunity to ghoul paralysis in the stat section for races.

Fax Celestis
2007-11-05, 12:49 PM
Great game, guys, but now I have to revise my notes significantly.

Any DM that ends a session not using this statement is doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

Green Bean
2007-11-05, 12:51 PM
Player: (lying) I'm thinking about sneaking up on the orcs. What kind of leaves are there on the ground?
DM: The leaves are brown and crunchy, and they cover the whole forest floor; they'll make it difficult to sneak up on anyone.
Player: Brown and crunchy means dry, right?
DM: Uh...sure
Player: I light them on fire!

Five dead orcs and one destroyed ecosystem later... :smalltongue:

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-05, 12:53 PM
Player: (lying) I'm thinking about sneaking up on the orcs. What kind of leaves are there on the ground?
DM: The leaves are brown and crunchy, and they cover the whole forest floor; they'll make it difficult to sneak up on anyone.
Player: Brown and crunchy means dry, right?
DM: Uh...sure
Player: I light them on fire!

Five dead orcs and one destroyed ecosystem later... :smalltongue:

buwahhahahhahahaha! Good show :D


Me: Wait...are these ghouls or ghasts?
DM: Why?
Me: Because he's an Elf, he's immune to paralysis from ghouls.
DM: No he's not, it's not in his stats.
Me: Well...why don't you check the ghoul stats? Remember, in OotS when *cut off*
DM: Because I don't believe you. You're just trying to make me lose the fight.
*I steal the book and show it to him*
DM: Well damn, how about that?
Me: Yeah, how about you read the monster's stats before using it?
DM: *silence*
Me: You're welcome "Bob." (The Elf's name was Bob).

I kid you not.

OMG LOL


If anyone who writes for Wizards is out there, put the Elf's immunity to ghoul paralysis in the stat section for races.

Man, that is an example of the #1 reason why I refuse to waste my money on this 3e and 3.5e trash.


Any DM that ends a session not using this statement is doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

That's why I rarely ever use any notes ;D

Squee_nabob
2007-11-05, 01:06 PM
In one game I played in (it was his first time GMing) we were playing a sci-fi game which was supposed to be like firefly, but ended up more like superheros in space due to the amount of other stuff in the world (basically he just kept adding in more sources, until laser eyes were in, and after that everything was fair game).

Well 2 characters actually made use of buying ridiculously overprice weapons, me and "Rocky". I had a 7 barreled neutrino shotgun (yes, it cost something like 10-100million dollars, i forget by a power of ten), and Rocky who had actually done the theoretical work behind the GMs home made equipment table.

So we're in this room, and the NPC who we have just woken up (a helix warrior (super-humans from the distant past, sent at relativistic speeds to ensure the survival of humanity)). Anyway he say that he's going out a specific wall. Me and Rocky, the two most child-like characters say we're following him.

Next thing that happens, we all get initiative, and a secret door opens. The final boss of the campaign comes out and grabs everyone in tentacles....

Except for me and rocky, we were out of range, since we already said we were following Darwin (the helix warrior) out the opposite side. We one shotted the boss with super fire power.

It was anticlimactic.

SpikeFightwicky
2007-11-05, 01:41 PM
This one game I was in, we were fighting a hill giant, and after a long-ish battle, we emerged victorious, but not too badly beaten. As soon as the giant dropped, I (out of character) said something like 'Damn! I'm glad he didn't use power attack!'. The DM suddenly looks puzzled, pulls out the MM again, looks it over, and shouts out something like 'AW CRAP!!!!'. Needless to say, every monster since then that had power attack used it as much as possible.

AKA_Bait
2007-11-05, 01:54 PM
Any DM that ends a session not using this statement is doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

I hardly ever say it, I just think it. :-)

I only have one story like this that leaps to mind other than the occasional 'why don't we just teleport there instead of going through the horrifying monster infested x?'

In this campagin I was playing a rogue/sorc with a reasonable int, 14 I think, and the DM presented us with a clock puzzle room. There was a riddle, I don't remember what it was exactly at this point, but in the end you needed to turn the hands to three things. If you put the hands on the wrong times monsters were supposed to be summoned into the room or other nasty things happen.

She read the riddle and I immediatley solved it. Now, given various test scores, I have more than a 14 int so rolled an intelegence check for my character to see if he would have gotten it also and passed. Just as she finishes repeating it a few times for other folks and leans back with a satisfied look on her face I announce that my character walks up and turns the clock the appropriate ways. She stares at me for a second, says the doors open and to give her an hour or so since she now needs to go prepare a new adventure.

The following week she showed up with an issue of Dragon she said she bought because it had an article in it on 'how to deal with genius PC' was dissapointed in that it only suggested how to deal with when the character was smarter than the player...

MrNexx
2007-11-05, 02:15 PM
Any DM that ends a session not using this statement is doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

Correction: Any DM that ends a session not using this statement has players who are doing it wrong.

MrNexx
2007-11-05, 02:17 PM
Man, that is an example of the #1 reason why I refuse to waste my money on this 3e and 3.5e trash.

Dude, elves have been immune to Ghoul Paralysis since 1977, and it's never been in their PC stat blocks. I've got the books upstairs to prove it.

Jannex
2007-11-05, 02:30 PM
I'm not sure if this one entirely counts, but I'll include it because it's amusing.

I was running an Exalted game a couple of years ago. One of my PCs was a Night Caste gypsy-type. After one particular session, wherein a bunch of Creepy Stuff started to happen, the player decided that her character would consult her tarot cards and see if she could glean any clues to what was going on. So the player goes and gets her tarot deck and lays out a spread. I then sit and watch, not contributing or commenting in any way, as the player proceeds to deduce my entire plot based on the spread of cards. It was an... interesting experience, to say the least.

Lochar
2007-11-05, 02:34 PM
I'm not sure if this one entirely counts, but I'll include it because it's amusing.

I was running an Exalted game a couple of years ago. One of my PCs was a Night Caste gypsy-type. After one particular session, wherein a bunch of Creepy Stuff started to happen, the player decided that her character would consult her tarot cards and see if she could glean any clues to what was going on. So the player goes and gets her tarot deck and lays out a spread. I then sit and watch, not contributing or commenting in any way, as the player proceeds to deduce my entire plot based on the spread of cards. It was an... interesting experience, to say the least.

DM: Reroll as something with low int and wis please.
Player: Drat.

But that's very surreal though.

Blanks
2007-11-05, 02:39 PM
DM: Okay so you are going to assasinate the orc chieftain. (npc mage) tells you that he is going to cast invis 15' rad on the group. He says "now we have a faint chance"
Me, playing melee type priest: "COOL, then i cast silence on my flail - we can live without the mages spells if we are almost undetectable :D"
DM *reads spell 3 times, shrugs and we go kill him :)*
He later admitted that the guard dogs in front of the chieftains doors werent there before :smallcool: But he was cool about it, he made sure that there was a little bit challenge left (the dogs) but didnt destroy our plan.

OneWinged4ngel
2007-11-05, 03:28 PM
Any DM that ends a session not using this statement is doing it wrong. :smallbiggrin:

I disagree. The DM shouldn't reveal his hand to the players, IMHO. There is no reason to actually make any statement of that sort after a game. Plus, as a good DM, you should be actively revising your notes as the game progresses as a matter of course... it shouldn't be anything surprising or worthy of special comment, if you ask me.

Artanis
2007-11-05, 04:15 PM
I have two, both from an Exalted campaign.



The first one, the ST had made a really, REALLY cool villain, an Abyssal who had been a glass-blower that the Deathlords exalted when he was executed for helping another Abyssal. He was supposed to be a decent challenge for the Circle, as it was fairly early in the campaign and we were still getting a feel for things, especially the two newbies (including me, I had never played Exalted before).

The ST forgot to give him a perfect defense.

My Grand Daiklave-wielding Dawn got the top Join Battle roll and immediately unleashed her "kill stuff" combo. It turned out that, completely by accident, I had built my Dawn to be some sort of unstoppable goddess of death, and I couldn't help giggling as I figured up how many dozens of damage dice got through while the ST swore uncontrollably.



The next was from that same campaign, and didn't involve combat. We were in a city built on the still-floating ruins of a First Age flying city, and we were trying to get out of town and back to our airship. However, there was a big traffic jam between us and the bridges, and I knew that there was obviously some solution the ST wanted us to try.

Frustrated, I just said "f*** it" and activated Spider-Foot Style, then simply walked along the bottom of the aforementioned ruins.

Justin_Bacon
2007-11-05, 05:57 PM
He instantly threw a tantrum (oh it was a bad tantrum) and kicked me out of the group. I wasn't "out for exp", and had offered to replay the whole scene over to allow him to revise his encounter plan (before he kicked me from the group), but he refused. His game ended soon after that because apparently he couldn't deal with people who out thought his traps. I couldn't believe it!

What I can't believe is that the rest of the players didn't get up and leave the game with you. Life's too short to deal with that kind of idiocy.

Interesting you should post this, because I just blogged one of my Tales from the Table (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/talesfromthetable/tale03-unexpected.html) about my players pulling something like this on me.

(Minor spoilers for Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies (http://www.lulu.com/content/976187) behind that link.)

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

Lemur
2007-11-05, 06:14 PM
The master of the two party wizards had died, apparently murdered, for unknown reasons. Finding the culprit was apparently supposed to be the next step, but then I go,

"Why don't we just get him resurrected?"

...

It was kinda weird, because everyone at the table, including the DM, thought that it was a really good idea. So we had him brought back to life. This was the second campaign I'd ever been in (and incidently, in second edition).

skywalker
2007-11-05, 06:30 PM
One of my players, in pretty much every session I've ever run: "Um, don't I get an AoO?"
Me: "Um. Sure."
Player: *rolls dice* "I hit him."
Me: "He dies. DAMN IT." *gets new minis* "Stupid AoO rules."

Happens all the time.

My personal favorite: A campaign started as a sort of gritty youth gangs(IE Warriors) type of deal. Our party caught a member of a rival gang without back-up outside the city gates. Encounter goes like this:

DM: You see a boy dressed in rival colors, smoking a cigar-type(it's still D&D) of thing like an emo kid. What do you do?
Players: We watch... what does he do?
DM: *shrugs* he lights another cigar, and walks back into the city... down a dark alley...
We proceded to beat the crap out of him, shave his head, and take his stuff.

Three sessions later, we were going down into someone's basement to exterminate some rats. Conversation goes like this:
DM(As NPC): Here are some torches... uh... in you go...
Players: We enter the basement, what do we see?
DM: You can't see, it's dark.
Players: We light the torches, jack-ass(Yes, I called him that)
DM: What do you light them with?
Me: Flint and steel, duh.
DM: Nobody told me they were buying flint and steel.
Me: ...I have flint and steel, I looted that guy we beat up just inside the city gates.
DM: I never said he had any flint and steel.
Me: Then how did he light his cigar?
DM: You only saw him smoking it, not lighting it.
Me: Ah, but you said he tossed it down, and lit a second one.
DM: ...Crap...*starts drawing the room we see*

Tokiko Mima
2007-11-05, 06:39 PM
I once had a group of players surrounded by a horde of sea monsters out on the ocean. Things were looking grim until one of the players dumped the whale oil their ship was carrying and set the entire area on fire. Oops... there went the whole 'having them captured by an evil sea wizard' plot device. :smallbiggrin:

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-05, 06:55 PM
All of these are really sweet ^_^

But I'm only quoting J_B to respond ;D


What I can't believe is that the rest of the players didn't get up and leave the game with you. Life's too short to deal with that kind of idiocy.

Interesting you should post this, because I just blogged one of my Tales from the Table (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/talesfromthetable/tale03-unexpected.html) about my players pulling something like this on me.

(Minor spoilers for Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies (http://www.lulu.com/content/976187) behind that link.)

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

That is some good DMming there bud! I bet the same thing would've happened to me if I were in your position. Glad you didn't try to screw your players. To me that's what separates good DMs from bad DMs. Rolling with the punches :D

I mean seriously that is a good story.

As for that GM -- it was on a messageboard, so some of the people couldn't see what he was doing to my character. But I do think half of the party was able to read my character's thread. They did stop posting for various things he had been doing and he was ultimately the one who cancelled the game. So in essence I do think they walked away without telling him.

BRC
2007-11-05, 06:56 PM
Since it was haloween our DM put us up against a bunch of little golems with jack-o-lantern heads, we captured 2 of them and learned that dousing the candle killed them, but that you could relight said candle and it would obey you. Well after we discover this 8 of them attack us, One of the characters was a half-dragon with a water breath weapon, took out all eight in one attack. Later we fight like 30 of them, this time without holes in the pumpkins, our solution? put a hole in them, then have said half-dragon hit them with her breath weapon again.


It was fun times.

That same adventure, were attacked by a bunch of evil animated trees.
Me: Can I curve my wall of fire spell
DM: yeah
Me: I curve it so that it covers all the trees ( they were close together). We just waited in a sphere of invisibility while they burned.

tainsouvra
2007-11-05, 07:13 PM
Three sessions later, we were going down into someone's basement to exterminate some rats. Conversation goes like this:
DM(As NPC): Here are some torches... uh... in you go...
Players: We enter the basement, what do we see?
DM: You can't see, it's dark.
Players: We light the torches, jack-ass(Yes, I called him that)
DM: What do you light them with?
Me: Flint and steel, duh.
DM: Nobody told me they were buying flint and steel.
Me: ...I have flint and steel, I looted that guy we beat up just inside the city gates.
DM: I never said he had any flint and steel.
Me: Then how did he light his cigar?
DM: You only saw him smoking it, not lighting it.
Me: Ah, but you said he tossed it down, and lit a second one.
DM: ...Crap...*starts drawing the room we see* I'd be concerned about a DM who was seriously so interested in screwing the players in a practically-meaningless manner :smalleek:

skywalker
2007-11-05, 07:26 PM
I'd be concerned about a DM who was seriously so interested in screwing the players in a practically-meaningless manner :smalleek:

Yeah, me too. Notice I called him a jack ass. We don't game together anymore. Although that one was just for fun.