Crispy frogs

[ealan]

So I am running a premade for a party of level 6 adventures, and it is not a hard mod at all. Just has some stupid things to it.

For instance tonight they came to a lake, could have walked around it or gone over it after they figured out they could walk on the lily pads that covered about 95% of the water. If the water is disturbed frog jump onto the lily pads, 3-6 per pad. A pad is a 5ft sq, and the lake is 300ft to the bank on the other side at the shortest distance. The party monk tries to run it, disturbs the water and has frogs. the rest of the party is walking behind him. Well it gives a DC 17 ref save not to hit a frog while running and a DC 13 while walking. well the monk failed, and the frogs naturally explode in a 20ft radius fireball allowing no save because of the lily pads and the initial save for not hit the frogs i guess. well if one frog blows up so do the rest of the frogs on the lake, well the monk got a 20ft radius of 3-6 frogs per pad, dealing him at minimum 75ish damage to his 45 hp... i dumbed it down to 2 frogs per pad to try and save him. well the party being stupid is following and the explosion follows his trail back and hits the party, the wizard with 35 hp dies, right there, nothing to it. the other party members may survive. But after calculating damage the cleric falls and the druid barely hangs o while the NPC is about to die too. the wizard asks if he can bend rules and consider that round to roll the spot to see the fire coming and cast a fire resistance spell on his self, so we back up for a moment and he survives. well to top it off the monk think no problem and runs again activating more frogs and putting himself at -3 and he fails to stay on a pad and starts drowning. they do somehow pull him out and float him and the cleric on a disk to the other side, walking. after a painful healing process of being stupid and healing the monk instead of the cleric first and going "oh **** we have no more healing for the cleric" they rest. in the next day the monk killed the wizard and he had no answer this time, purely by "accident" and proceeded to kill the druid later on. the monk has a wis of 18 an int of 14 should he not get that acting stupid with his bonuses is not right, he planned going straight monk but his alignment shifted from lawful good to true neutral in 2 days, 1 session. should i even bother having half the party reroll and a player complain that he can;t take his class anymore or just wipe the game and start over, and ask this monk to be a bit more appropriate to his abilities/alignment?

[LibraryOgre]

Where is the lake of the exploding frogs?

Seriously... this sounds like a very poorly set up encounter that a character tried to circumvent, and got bogged down in rules.

[Telok]

Exploding frogs with 20' radius and no save, drowning, saves every time you move 5', and plants that are totally immune to fire damage (the lily pads ought to have burned in the fireballs).

That twit, Gygax, was the author of this module wasn't he?

If your players were smart, cunning, paranoid, optimized, dice-rapers, then they might stand a chance. You sound like you have some new players, or just silly players. Give them a Cursed Rod of Resurrection. The rod is a simple device, once activated it casts a True Resurrection spell on the corpse. In order to activate the rod the user must beat the corpse with it for one hour. Once the rod raises someone from the dead the curse takes effect. The curse is that the user and the target both change sex, roll on the following table for each person. The curse can only be undone by a Wish or Miracle, and it requires one Wish/Miracle per cursing.

1d100

01 - 45 : Male
46 - 90 : Female
91 - 99 : Neuter
100 : Roll twice and apply both results.

With this item your players will no longer be stopped (for very long) by death. However they will still strive to avoid death. Plus the bickering over who gets to sex change is hilarious, especially once someone gets a 100 twice and ends up with three sets of wiggly bits.

I usually drop this on low level parties during an extended overland chase. Then I kill their horses.

[Devils_Advocate]

Just start over, and with something less... only-exists-to-kill-the-PCs-ish... than exploding frogs.

Inform the monk's player that properly roleplaying a smart character entails, at a minimum, avoiding things that already nearly got everybody killed.

[Burley]

First, does the module actually say that it causes a chain reaction, or did you just figure that's how it works?
Second, reading from what you wrote, A frog explodes if it is touched, not if it is subject to a fireball. Therefore, the twenty foot burst happens once and any frogs in that radius are destroyed, leaving a fresh area of lily pads. This way, the one who ACTUALLY messed up takes the damage one time, and learns from it, and nobody else has to suffer for somebody elses mistakes.

Edit: I'd also use a daily use of flurry-of-dice-throws against that monk's player. He's being an idiot for the sake of being an idiot. If he whines about losing his class alignment tell him he deserves it, and make him take a level in Barbarian for his recklessness.
Something fun: Place an item that the cleric "correctly identifies" with Knowledge (Religion) DC1 as a "Cross of Atonement". The monk will think you've forgiven him. In reality, instead of just acting as the spell Atonement, it casts Geas/Quest on the character compelling him to actually attone for his stupidity. Just make sure the Monk volunteers to have the item used on him, otherwise, you just look malicious.

[Miles Invictus]

So I am running a premade for a party of level 6 adventures, and it is not a hard mod at all. Just has some stupid things to it.


One of the joys of being a DM is being able to say "On second thought, let's not go there. It is a silly place." I usually hit that point when the module describes exploding frogs or calzone golems.

[kamikasei]

calzone golems.

My players loved that golem. Seriously. We had to break right in the middle of that fight, and the idea of leaving it unfought appalled them, even as the stretch between games grew, and grew... Hell, one of them wanted to bring pizza so we could enact eating our defeated foe. :smallconfused:

[RTGoodman]

My players loved that golem. Seriously. We had to break right in the middle of that fight, and the idea of leaving it unfought appalled them, even as the stretch between games grew, and grew... Hell, one of them wanted to bring pizza so we could enact eating our defeated foe. :smallconfused:

Hey, at least you weren't fighting humanoids! :smallwink:


I, too, would like to know what module this is. It seems to me that players are set up to fail. Well, I guess they could magic their way over this lake, but that's beside the point.

[ealan]

It is off a mod called the dumping swamp. Ill have to go pull the author latter it is on my external. yeah it wasnt to hard to til the frogs.

I talked with the other players and they agree on starting over, they aren't new players, but not optimizers either. so they are going to roll new characters and the monk is going to play something else, and is on what the other players are calling Player Probation, and it he acts up again they are going to get him out of the game.

I am just hoping before next week they find someone to dm and i don't need to, i dont have the time to put into dming unless i just run mods all the time.

[Admiral Squish]

The first thing I thought of when I saw this title was this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6uLfermPU).

Monty Python FTW.