Worst ways you have ever messed up the DM's plans.

[Gaseous Anomaly]

Let's hear it guys, how did you mess up the DM's plans for the characters, and how badly.

I was recently in a 2nd or 3rd level adventure where we had to infiltrate the mansion of a rival Don of the major city we were in. He was about to release a newer version of his sunscreen (the campaign was in a desert), and our Don wanted the formula, as well as other intelligence, if we could find it.
We disguised ourselves as guests and whatnot for the party that the Don was having, and during the party, our cover was seriously blown. Instead of beating feet out of the place, we decide to slaughter all the 20+ guards, which included a few class-level guards, and a lycanthrope with a few levels in fighter.
Our paladin hit a recurring NPC with a critical hit with his glaive, had gloves of ogre strength, and was under the spell bull's strength, and ended up dealing over 50 pts of damage. The NPC failed his save, and would have died if he didn't magically teleport away before.
I ended up holding all of the party guests with an exploding disk to cover our escape. every last one of us became wanted men, and the DM had to create another adventure just to get the bounty off our heads, and we end up messing that one up too.
Our group is a DM's nightmare.

[dethkruzer]

Hmm this reminds of a case when me along with a group of frineds had just started a 3.5 campaign. i remember that our mission was something like "Go talk to person x, he will give you further instructions", but we ended up doing sidequests, including trying to solve a fight between two rival families.

As fate would have it, it ended in massacre and "person x" had plane-shifted somewhere else. the gm had been writing the campaign for over a week.

[Mongoose87]

Immediately before getting into the bulk of our session, our party received a warning that we would have a choice to make between two options, and that neither option was correct. It was supposed to be foreshadowing something we wouldn't see for a while, but we took it to refer to the civil war we stumble upon shortly after. So, rather than taking the offer from either side to kill off their rivals' elite squad, we arranged for negotiations between the sides, and ended up deposing both leaders.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Killed a CR 3-4 Animal at 1st level, a challenge I and the other player were supposed to handle together. I did it solo before I'd even met the other player's PC. Our DM severely underestimated what a Barbarian with 23 Str raging can do.

[Kallisti]

Our DM once ran a no-magic game where, let me point out the obvious, there is no magic. Anyone with powers that appear to be magic must be a demon or other moster. The campaign world was under siege by outsiders...

We're in this dungeon, and we meet an NPC who's supposed to be recurring. Guess what? He's a wizard, left over from the previous civilization. We all scream, "DEMON!" and charge him. Three rounds later, he has the choice of running away or killing all of us, so he runs, because the DM didn't want a TPK. Then we get XP for defeating a level 20 wizard, because he ran.

Also, in a different game, there was this dragon we wre fighting, and an invisible cleric using shield other to suck up half the damage we send the dragon. The cleric is meant to be a boss many levels from no, hanging out invisibly to check us out as potential minions and give the dragon a little help. But our warlock has see the unseen up at all times, and sees him. So we beat the dragon unconscious, and our barbarian coup-de-grace's it, then our cleric uses close wounds to keep it from dying, because in this campaign the death threshold went down to -2xCon modifier. Then we do this a bunch of times, and invisi-cleric dies off, because he was taking half of all this damage. We all gain two levels, because the rules say that's the maximum you can advance at once, and we sell his epic magic items to get about triple or quadruple the money we should have at that level...

[Blackfang108]

Mostly by existing.

I have a very chaotic mind, and never act the way my DMs think I will.

In one campaign, it's come back to bite us in the ass.

[JeenLeen]

We just got to a turning point in our campaign. There are four of us in a Dimensional Locked country. We, lv 20, are fighting a group of probably lv 25-30 ToB chargers. We are losing badly, dying at least one person/rd. The druid decides to escape using Master Earth.

DM gets a puzzled look, checks the spell, and says, yeah, that works.

The rest of us are captured and imprisoned for six months. In the meantime, the druid rejoined our allies who are fighting a losing war. In the next game, the three of us are to be freed and have some mission before it makes sense for the druid to rejoin the group. (Worked out well as that player has to do something this weekend, so the rest of us are meeting for game and he'll catch up later.)


Earlier, we killed an thief NPC who was suppose to open a special locked chest. Ended up okay, but gave the DM a moment's pause.

[Cyrion]

Our 2E campaign opened with humanoids and giants conquering the city we started in, and the party had to run for it. The DM was a blaster at heart and was bound and determined that neither my cleric/mage nor the fighte/mage in the party was going to see magic missile because it messes things up with insta-damage. Instead, I got grease...

This spoiled his plans when we ran into a hill giant (we were first level). I'd guess that he meant it as a plot device, but we figured that there was no way we could outrun its rocks without TPK, so I greased it. A few failed saves later and we'd taken it out and left the DM wondering how it had happened.

[The Glyphstone]

In the middle of the Shackled City campaign path, we had infiltrated an evil noble's mansion and were crawling around underneath its catacombs. A three person party (psion, wizard, barbarian), we ran into some nasty monsters and the Barbarian ended up unconscious and bleeding out with relatively unhurt enemies menacing us - the solution we came up with on the spot was to have mr. psion Planeshift all three of us to Ysgarde before the Barb finished bleeding out, so he would get a free True Ressurection.

Unfortunately, when the Barb woke up and discovered where we were, he refused to go back and wanted to explore this plane of endless battle and fighting for a bit. Not really set to do anything without our meatshield, this sent the campaign off on a completely different tangent for three or four sessions.

[daggaz]

I got invited into a RL group of guys I had never met before, who were well into an Eberron campaign.

My character, a dwarven cleric with War and Travel domains, is introduced as the captain of the guard in Shar, where the party is at a big well to do party, hunting after the BBEG who they are sure is a vampire.

Now, they arent really planning on killing him here, as they are too low level, they lack definite proof, and its a big social pompous place full of folks who wouldnt be happy about murder, regardless of the reasons.... so they let me in on the details, as a security precaution. I am the captain of the guard, after all...

In the party, the vampire lets a few hints drop thru actions of his true nature, and I make the prerequisite knowledge religion checks to call him on his evil vampirism. I raise the alarm and call in the guards, and the other PCs square off for the challenge.... so far so good, far as the DM is concerned.

Lucky me, I roll a twenty on initiative, and go first. My first action? Cast silence on the vampire. I was worried about it casting spells, after all. The DM's face just dropped.. then he frowned, then we had a long, very quiet fight replete with a rat swarm before the vampire narrowly escapes the guards in a cloud of bats.

After the session, the DM nearly exploded... I HAD A WHOLE EVIL MONOLOUGE READY!! IT WAS ALL SET UP! TEN SESSIONS WAITING TO MOCK THE GROUP AND SET UP THE REST OF THE PLOT, AAAARRRRGHHH!!!


Hahhahahaha

[Milskidasith]

Our DM once ran a no-magic game where, let me point out the obvious, there is no magic. Anyone with powers that appear to be magic must be a demon or other moster. The campaign world was under siege by outsiders...

We're in this dungeon, and we meet an NPC who's supposed to be recurring. Guess what? He's a wizard, left over from the previous civilization. We all scream, "DEMON!" and charge him. Three rounds later, he has the choice of running away or killing all of us, so he runs, because the DM didn't want a TPK. Then we get XP for defeating a level 20 wizard, because he ran.

Also, in a different game, there was this dragon we wre fighting, and an invisible cleric using shield other to suck up half the damage we send the dragon. The cleric is meant to be a boss many levels from no, hanging out invisibly to check us out as potential minions and give the dragon a little help. But our warlock has see the unseen up at all times, and sees him. So we beat the dragon unconscious, and our barbarian coup-de-grace's it, then our cleric uses close wounds to keep it from dying, because in this campaign the death threshold went down to -2xCon modifier. Then we do this a bunch of times, and invisi-cleric dies off, because he was taking half of all this damage. We all gain two levels, because the rules say that's the maximum you can advance at once, and we sell his epic magic items to get about triple or quadruple the money we should have at that level...

It sounds more like your DM doesn't understand that having an epic cleric sit around and do nothing while you (strangely) decide to keep a dragon's HP floating up and down and has epic wizards not deal with people attacking him by nonlethal means.

Seriously, what caster in epic levels would be dumb enough to let himself get killed by sitting around while you beat up something he was channeling the damage of? And why wouldn't he break concentration on the shield other? Why did the DM think it would be a good idea to have a recurring wizard NPC at level 20 not do something nonlethal to the party instead of making him run?

[AstralFire]

You gotta give him props, though. When he uses high level NPCs, he's not afraid to let the PCs take control of the game rather than just using them to make a railroad.

[d13]

(...)
had gloves of ogre strength, and was under the spell bull's strength, (...)

They don't stack


Let's see... I had rolled amazingly good stats (say, two 18s, one 17, one 16 and two 14s) and was playing a monk, focused on grappling, just because.

I don't remember the level, I remember the BBEG sniping at our raft, from a bridge. An encounter we were supposed to run (paddle) away from.

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Me: - "I jump to the bridge"
DM: - "You, what?!"
Other players: - "What the hell...?"
Me: - "I jump to the bridge. I have a jump modifier of [obscenely high number], I can certainly make it with a good roll"
DM: - "Fine, roll"
Me: *rolls* - "17 + [OHN] "
DM: - "Everyone, you see d13's character pretty much fly up to the bridge, and engage the enemy!
d13, the dark figure stabs at you with a poison dripping blade! What's your AC?"
Me: - "Uhmm... 23"
DM: - "23?! Ok. Your innate reflexes let you deflect his blow like nothing. Your turn now".
Me: - "I grapple him, and jump to the water".
DM: - "You what?!?!?"

A couple of good rolls later...

DM: - "Y'know... That was supposed to be a recurring character . Go play Playstation or something while I sort out what the hell to do now "

[Totally Guy]

In my game, after a fairly climactic encounter the players said...

"We all will now get onto a big boat and sail away from this place in a random direction and I'm sure something exciting will happen! We're explorers now!"

I had to work so hard to write material for that. I'd not even thought about the possibility of that.

[Jergmo]

My first character ever, the mad elven wizard Ulaundr. An assassin attacked him specifically in the woods, and his companions were still asleep. He was a level 3 wizard. I shot at the assassin with my crossbow and tried to get a second shot in but it missed, so instead, I shot it with magic missile and the DM got really mad because I was so determined and killed it, because he wanted it to get away and show up later.

In another friend's campaign, Amer Gustavo, my level 1 halfling rogue, caused two towns to boil down into total chaos with his wild antics, the first domino being sending a barrel crashing into the first town's constable who was harassing the other PC involved because he got blamed for Amer's prank on a couple of passed out drunks. This led to the entire campaign being derailed, and the DM had to improvise the whole thing.

[Random832]

Me: - "I jump to the bridge"
DM: - "You, what?!"
Other players: - "What the hell...?"
Me: - "I jump to the bridge. I have a jump modifier of [obscenely high number], I can certainly make it with a good roll"

Your jump check should have had a circumstance penalty from jumping from an unstable surface, and logically if you'd succeeded you should have sunk the raft.

[d13]

Yeah, I know.

Tell that to the DM

[Mr.Moron]

Your jump check should have had a circumstance penalty from jumping from an unstable surface, and logically if you'd succeeded you should have sunk the raft.

Awesome > Logic.

[Haven]

Your jump check should have had a circumstance penalty from jumping from an unstable surface, and logically if you'd succeeded you should have sunk the raft.

I figure it works the the same way as how wuxia characters jump obscenely high; they can do so even if they're standing on a thin limb of bamboo, without breaking the bamboo.

But yeah, awesome > logic.

[theMycon]

By refusing to accept that I'm just a spectator.

I had one DM who held a strong mutual hatred with me, tempered by the fact that my then-boyfriend was one of his best friends and wanted us to get along*. So I played. Put up with the random, incredibly obvious disdain, and even found a way to profit from it. One example included my proceeding to make a fair & reasonable deal to some NPC, after providing him with lifesaving help, rolling a nat-20 on diplomacy, and being simply told "get the **** out fo my face", followed by someone with half my charisma score & no diplomacy ranks rolling a two on "just give it to me" and getting exactly what I'd asked for and a bonus. This was actually pretty easy to manipulate, as long as I asked for something immediately before the girl of the party she got it no matter what it was.

However, it made sure I was more of a "spectator" than most of the party, but we were all basically there to watch his NPCs play out his story (and occasionally get some nice bling). Many nights involved two NPCs bickering, pointing out they could kill us all with a snap of their fingers, saying we had something they needed, and then standing & watching as we fought random encounters, then sauntering off without any good reason. He loaded the rest of us level 4 & 5 folk down with 60K+ worth of goods- whatever item he thought was "cool" at the time. I didn't care, being a VoP guy. So he proceeded to hand us some artifacts that the "bad guys" wanted, and refuse to give us any information on them. Then insist I had to cary them, and they sapped my VoP powers because I had some very valuable stuff.

Hey, a cleric of travel with no items & no VoP ain't too bad- you can still be a fighter with somewhat better saves & no bonus feats. But when you're simply not allowed to participate or get anything, you get a bit pissy.

So... I waited 'til the next time there were three NPCs around, handed them each whatever artifact the guy to their left wanted most, and then started a bidding war with the rest. As I recall, the entire world was destroyed.



*It later became obvious that said DM was a Jewish-supremacist eugenicist who literally wanted me dead for making a crack about myself being "half-Jewish"**. He also attempted to rape a girl on more than one occasion, succeeded on one occasion, and got kicked out of college for plagarizing everything he considered "just busywork."
Less extremely, said boyfriend was an emotional black hole. Not a bad guy, and very fun to be around, but completely incapable of realizing other people have feelings, or that there's more to life than "make money, have fun". He's now engaged to some girl with a lot of money & no self-esteem.


**Dad's Israeli from way back- if you look in the book of Exodus, you see our name a half-dozen times, and we can trace it that far. However, I hold no religious ties whatsoever.

[Haven]

As I recall, the entire world was destroyed.

"Interesting, if true."

Sorry your DM sucked so much BTW ><

[AstralFire]

Wow. I believe that actually beats Xallace for worst DM ever.

[JMobius]

DMM Maximized Celestial Brilliance cast by a Radiant Servant of Pelor, when the major threat he'd spent ages designing was a zombie apocalypse. Legions upon legions of low level zombies.

Whoops.

[Skorj]

DM in exposition mode: You have released [the BBEG] from his millenia-long imprisonment. He is relatively weak now, but slowly regaining his strength. If allowed to return to his true power, he will be nigh-unstoppable by all the resources of [campaign setting].

Party: How tough is he now?

DM: If you attack immediately, you may all be killed. If you can obtain [plot coupon] quickly, you can probably take him.

Party: How long do we have?

DM: It will take [BBEG] at least a week to gather the strength to leave this place, at which point he will be much harder to defeat.

Party: OK, we run. We head back to town, and hire a ship for another continent. Let some other schmucks deal with it!

DM: What what what???

Party: Oh, yeah, first we introduce ourselves and tell him that we're sparing his life cause we think he's a cool guy and we're his friends. Just in case he does win against the combined forces of this continent.

We did this so often that is became the signature of our group. We'd measure our success in a campaign by the number of unstoppable menaces we had survived loosing upon unsuspecting civilizations.

[FoE]

This is why, when I DM, I only play episodic adventures. No campaign, no way to see it all come crashing down.

[FlawedParadigm]

Man, I would pay money to have Mr. Welch post in this thread.

That said, my own biggest DM screw was fairly mild, and didn't even involve his *plans*, but still, the group's reaction...

Basically, we had a DM that just plain hated all Bag of Holding/Handy Haversack, or any other extradimensional carrying space. I just wanted one as an ultra-quiver for explaining how I'm carrying over 100 arrows (D&D archery is much less lethal than its mediaeval European equivilant, and generally requires far more arrows than time period archers would have needed) on my person. This DM basically found ways to explain away why you couldn't carry much of anything but coins, totally round gems, and bunny tails in. Basically, just about everything could cause a rip, tear, puncture, or other damage to such a space, given enough time and jostling about, so it wasn't *safe* to carry most things in. Arrowheads, of course, much less entire arrows, whose shafts might break and become splintery, were right out.

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Of course, about five seconds after this, I say, "Alright, I'll wrap all the arrows in towels up to the fletching, leaving the heads covered, but loosely, so I can still draw arrows at relatively decent speed." There's a heavy silence in the air as everyone turns to me, a couple of them (the DM in particular) gaping. The DM, finding his tongue, goes, "You know, no one's suggested that before. Makes sense."

Of course, as the players glance at me in awe - this is a NOTORIOUSLY stubborn DM - I add, "Well, I've read the Hitchhiker's Guide. Of course the first solution I'll try applying to any problem is a towel." Cue laughter from the rest of the group (4 of 6 who have read the Guide laughing the loudest, but even the other two know a bit about it.) Seriously, this is how I think. My first thought when confronted with most problems is "Is there a way I can solve this with a towel?" I'm weird, yes. And I brought a towel to watch the movie. A beach towel. So yeah.

[Xallace]

I think our best goes to one of my roommates. He was playing a tibbit shadowdancer (I had a warforged ranger and we also had a human bard). We were all wanted by the law, being a crew of sky pirates, and halfway through the first session the tibbit gets captured. Well, he had tried to escape in cat form, but the guards caught on and managed to wrangle him in.

When the tibbit decides not to change back from cat form, the guards decide to lock him up in the dungeon anyway. So, there we have a tabby cat chained to a wall in tiny shackles, trying to figure out how to escape. Suddenly, he remembers his shadow companion.

The tibbit commands his shadow to kill the guards. The guards, killed via strength drain, become shadows. These shadows fan out and begin feasting on other guards, and soon the whole prison is shadows, under the command of the cat. Now, realizing that this is no way to escape, the tibbit's player says... well, "screw it," and commands his shadow to command its spawn to spread out across the city...

Well, our characters survived, and have managed to spread stories of Shacklecat and the apocalypse that befell the city of Drose. "The Legend of Shacklecat" is now a synonym for out-of-character decisions that go horribly, horribly awry.

I do realize that rules may not support what happened, but hey, could make a pretty cool module.

[SilverClawShift]

We did this so often that is became the signature of our group. We'd measure our success in a campaign by the number of unstoppable menaces we had survived loosing upon unsuspecting civilizations.

Then...

Forgive me for asking, but why play the game? What did you actually get together at the table for? I tried to think of a creative way a DM could turn that into an interesting game session...and I'm failing.

[Arakune]

He also attempted to rape a girl on more than one occasion, succeeded on one occasion, and got kicked out of college for plagarizing everything he considered "just busywork."

**Dad's Israeli from way back- if you look in the book of Exodus, you see our name a half-dozen times, and we can trace it that far. However, I hold no religious ties whatsoever.

Wait, WHAT?! WTF!!! When do you knew that?

On a diferent note, quite a long lived family you have.

[Milskidasith]

You gotta give him props, though. When he uses high level NPCs, he's not afraid to let the PCs take control of the game rather than just using them to make a railroad.

I can kind of commend him for not railroading, but for *insert deity here's* sake making your enemies act absurdly stupid because the PCs got a neat idea that works if they have an idiot ball or giving the PCs exp for beating an epic character because he decided not to kill them all with one spell is not a good thing.