It made perfect sense at the time! Extreme WTF stories

[Swordgleam]

The "I Once Killed A Dragon THIS BIG" thread made me think that we haven't had one of these for a while, either. (Apologies if we have and I missed it.)

Everyone has had those moments. Whether it's disarming a trap in a totally absurd way, or a bluff that was doomed from the start. But only a few parties have epic versions of these moments: long, twisted tales that are horrible ideas through and through, but that your players will swear up down and sideways made perfect sense every step of the way.


Post the ending of the story first, just for added dramatic irony.

Here's mine, and I challenge you all to top it: The striving-for-good-aligned party sacrificed the party fighter to the Raven Queen, goddess of death.

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What happened was that the party had a paladin of Torog (non-evil paladin, evil god; long story). The party found some goblins that worshiped Torog and the paladin decided that he could replace their leader and turn the goblins to good. Less killing, more allies. So far, so good, right?

The paladin challenges the goblin leader in single combat and kills her. The goblins accept him as Torog's true champion. The goblin's head shaman suggests that a sacrifice be made to honor the event.

The paladin, who despite striving for good was not the best at communicating with party members (and is rather low on empathy), decides to handle this on his own and sacrifice one of the goblins' just-released hostages. He picks one who "looks evil" to him, then walks into the cell and tries to grab the guy.

Right in front of the party ranger. Who has a passive perception of 23.

The paladin is not trained in stealth and has low dex. Needless to say, even if he hadn't rolled a 1 (which he did) he would have failed miserably. This is where things start to head south.

Immediately the paladin has a few unfriendly swords pointed his way. He explains the situation. The party decides (I maintain this was not my fault as DM) that if they don't sacrifice someone, the goblins are going to turn on them and kill them all.

Then they come up with the bright idea of going to find this woman who had betrayed them a while back, and sacrificing her. While they do that, they'll leave the fighter chained to the altar and have the paladin stall. He estimates that between his command of ritual and the fighter's high endurance, he can stall for three days.

If the party isn't back by then, he'll have to kill the fighter. The fighter trusts in the party and thinks that this is a great chance to show off how hardcore he is. I should mention at this point that the cleric's player, who is usually the voice of reason, was absent this session.

The party, sans fighter and paladin, set off on the one day journey to find the woman. This woman happens to be the sister of a clan leader, and the only people in the party the clan trusts are the fighter and the ranger. So the party shows up and the ranger - who has zero social skills - asks for the woman.

The clan leader asks, "Why do you want her?"
"So we can sacrifice her to Torog."
"Why would you do that?"
"She betrayed us."
"But she's my sister."
"But she betrayed us."
"But she's my sister."
"Well, when you put it like that..."
The ranger wanders off in defeat. "We need a new plan, guys."
The fighter's player starts cursing, mostly at the ranger.

The cleric's player is now back. In addition to the player being the voice of reason, the cleric PC is the party's mortal compass (sorta). I await the game's return to sanity with bated breath. Everyone explains the situation to him - they have a one day journey back to the goblins, leaving them a single day to find an alternate sacrifice. They could go after some wererats nearby, or just hope they run into someone evil to sacrifice on the way back.

The cleric says, "Don't worry, guys. I've got this. We don't need to go find anyone. Let's get back to the goblin camp right away." No one asks him what his plan is. The fighter's player relaxes slightly.

The paladin sees the party approaching the goblin camp, with no alternate sacrifice in sight. "Uh-oh. Good thing I never really liked the fighter anyway." The fighter thinks something similar, but the player overheard the cleric saying he had a plan, and their characters are good friends, so he's not as worried as he should be.

The cleric approaches the altar and says, "Well, we didn't find anyone. You'll have to sacrifice the fighter. Mind if I pray over him first to ease his pain?" The paladin is in the mood to be generous, so he says, "Sure."

At this point I get a note from the cleric. The fighter is mostly cursing the paladin at this point, but he's hopeful about whatever's in the note. He's pretty sure it says something along the lines of, "I bludgeon the paladin with my mace." The note reads, "I dedicate the altar and the sacrifice in the same of my patron the Raven Queen."

I ask the cleric, "Are you sure?" The cleric's player nods, and the PC tells the paladin to go ahead.

The paladin rips out the fighter's heart.

The goblins all turn and bow down to the cleric.

The paladin's player and the fighter's player start yelling at approximately the same time.

The upside is, the goblins now worship the neutral Goddess of Death instead of the evil God of Torture. The downside is, well, pretty obvious.

And they all lived dysfunctionally ever after, and had many, many adventures. And will claim to the day they die that every step of that journey was perfectly reasonable at the time.

[Morph Bark]

Personally I don't have any WTF stories, especially like yours, but judging from the reactions of the people I play with, every plan I come up with as a player counts as a WTF story for them...

[FelixG]

Dont have a rogue? Simple fix! "Gnome on a rope! TM" Tie a gnome you rather dislike to a rope 10-15 feet oughta do! Then you pick up said gnome and fling them while holding the other end of the rope or having it tied to you. Then pull the gnome back, if he doesn't die, the way is clear! advance 15 feet then repeat!

did i mention i hate gnomes? :P

[KillianHawkeye]

Why is it that whenever somebody says "Don't worry, guys. I got this," horrible awful things always follow?

[Accersitus]

We once had one of our players get notes from the DM for several sessions before the campaign ended (they were dreams that were warnings about how we were about to flood the entire continent), but all his character told the rest of us was some cryptic remarks about great destruction in the future. To his defence, there were a lot of secrets in the party (My character was secretly working directly for the king. Had a great reveal when we had an audience with the king :D ).
Anyway, the guy who got all the notes completely misinterpreted them, so he didn't really do anything about them. When we completed our misguided plan, and flooded the entire kingdom, the DM was a bit lost since he felt he had given ample warning, and we failed miserably.

[Skaven]

Not my story.

In a dungeon run, the party (to my knowledge, a fighter, a barbarian and a rogue) find a room completely covered in venomous insects with an important looking treasure chest at the end. They can't fight the swarm without risking poison and death, they have no way of curing even a single instance of poison. They come up with a plan.

'Douse the Barbarian in oil, light him on fire and have him run at the end, grab the chest and run back out, the insects will avoid the fire. he has a lot of hit points, he'll be fine.'. The 8 wis 9 int barbarian agrees. They begin the plan, douse the barbarian in oi, light him on fire, he runs in, the insects avoid the fiery man, he runs back out with a heavy treasure chest in his arms, dumps it down triumphantly.

Then the party realise they have no way of dousing the fire on the barbarian.

[true_shinken]

Then the party realise they have no way of dousing the fire on the barbarian.

This one if fantastic. ^^ I LOLed.

In the beginning of my current campaign, some 2 years ago, the players were sent on a diplomatic mission to a certain city. I gave the players lots of clues that the city's mayor was a green dragon in elf form - all players understood this... save for one.
The mayor and the party had just come to an agreement about how to deal with a goblinoid problem. They would assemble a small brigade and attack the following morning. That one player that didn't get the guy was a dragon sneaked upon his room trying to poison him. He got a thrashing, of course. The dragon lost confidence on the party and attacked alone - no one knew that a bunch of mind flayers were the driving force behind the goblinoids. The dragon died... and the dragon was the only thing in the way of the Big Bad's plan, making it work a lot earlier.

[Ormur]

I have one of those as a player.

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The party started out as my NG wizard and a LG cleric of Hieronymus. We began the campaign in a village which ended up hit by some negative energy wave that killed a bunch of people and turned them into zombies. We traced the wave to an artefact surrounded by a bunch of cultists that were conjuring up a new wave of negative energy. We nicked it and headed for the next big city to get some information. On the way we were besieged by people trying to get the artefact back as it belonged to some evil guy named Azimut, but we prevail.

We enter the service of the ruler of the city but nobody knows anything about this artefact. Soon the city is hit by another negative energy wave like hit the village and we hear a castle to the north has been overrun by Drow. The cleric is killed and replaced by a CN druid and we meet a new party member that's a TN Barbarian, leaving my wizard as the only original character and the moral guardian of the party.

Finally we get contacted by someone that claims to be Azimut, the owner of the artefact. He sends us a message that he has to get the artefact back so he can save the world. We agree to meet him and he explains there are more of these artefact and that he has to destroy them to ward of some evil force. We buy his story on a failed sense motive check, both in and out of character, but we're still sceptical so he offers us the witness the destruction of another such artefact.

He teleports us to a cavern below the castle that was overrun by Drow and we see a scene almost identical to the one where we found the first artefact. The guy that claims to be Azimut draws a circle against evil around us and as the cultists complete the ritual a huge negative energy wave blasts us with a few d6 of damage.

We immediately realize that we just witnessed a ritual that probably killed thousands of people just like all the other negative energy waves and turned them into zombies that will kill even more people. We had witnessed this all before and knew this was connected to the artefact and everything about this screamed evil but we just calmly stood by and watched it happen. Fortunately we didn't give this Azimut guy the artefact we had and we ended up killing him when he came back to get it.

It later turned out that this guy was just the real Azimut's librarian and destroying the artefacts actually brings the world closer to destruction.

TLDR: My NG wizard stood by and calmly watched a regional zombie apocalypse unfold before his eyes before taking any action, even though he should have known better.

[Dust]

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There was a powerful but peaceful kingdom located at the top of an immeasurably tall mountain in the Astral planes. We, the PCs, had discovered would an evil vizier had recently taken the throne, enslaved the entire population with a mind-control ritual, and was preparing to declare war to all mortal races due to his new army.
The catch, though, was twofold. We couldn't use magic in this Plane lest he detect our presence and be prepared for our arrival with his ten-thousand-man army of innocents, and the mountain had a powerful magnetic core for whatever reason. Saints and planar wanderers were forced to make the fifty-day trek up the mountain without anything metallic on their persons, lest they become too tired to walk after the first day or so thanks to the increased burden from their gear.

Our party Fighter (named Duncan Wills) is NOT okay with showing up to face the vizier without weapons or armor, so informs us that he'll 'catch up later' after he ponders out a solution. We try to talk him out of it, but no avail. At last we're forced to sort of just go on without him, knowing that he won't be convinced otherwise and he'll never catch up with us.

We make it to the top of the mountain just in time to interrupt a dimensional gate ritual that would teleport the vizier's army to earth, manage to save everyone, and defeat the BBEG.

Meanwhile, Duncan is deep in thought. The player has gone outside for a smoke while he ponders things, and ends up going for pizza. He has no idea that we have already resolved the issue without him over the course of about an hour. So he gets back, sits down, and starts to explain his plan. A few months back, we had bumped into a mad wizard working on an army of stone golems and was researching his own version of Flesh to Stone spells. We helped the dude out and he owed us a favor, and the Fighter figured it was time to collect. After all, fight an army WITH an army, right? And if he couldn't bring weapons up the mountain, he may as well BECOME a weapon. So the Wizard turns the Fighter's arms and legs into lightweight stone and lends him his golems, and the Fighter immediately straps them all up to harnesses and a sleigh and gets mass telported back to the Plane. At this point we're looking nervously at one another, and the GM jokes that the Fighter was really getting into the holiday season, what with Christmas coming up IRL fairly soon. Duncan's player thinks this is hilarious, and starts bellowing "ON PEBBLES, ON GRANITE, ON LIMESTONE AND STALACTITE!" as the Golems haul his sleigh up the mountainside at full speed.

Flash back to us. The vizier fallen, the people of this planar city have decided that one of the PCs would replace him as King, and we're in the middle of the crowning ceremony....as the walls suddenly explode outward by the force of a dozen stone golems bursting through them, with the Fighter at the helm. He's bellowing orders and warcries as his golems pick up (now no longer mind-controlled) panicking, fleeing citizens and start smashing them into the floor or one another....it's chaos. We're trying to scream at the Fighter and get down to him, but he's just clueless and waving at us, so proud to have come save the say. And he's singing butchered Christmas Carols the whole time.

"I'm making a list,
To bludgeon and dice,
Don't need my stupid party's advice,
'Cause Duncan Wills is going.....TO TOWWNNNNN!"

TLDR: Party fighter, separated from his group for an extended period, comes up with a great plan to 'save the day' involving golems, christmas carols, and wanton violence.

[MarkusWolfe]

Not my story.
Then the party realized they have no way of dousing the fire on the barbarian.

Stop, drop and roll.

Decanter of endless water.

There's 2 options right there.

[Greenish]

Stop, drop and roll.

In game mechanics, DC 15 Ref save, +2 if rolling in ground.

I wouldn't have bothered though, since it's a full round action, and the barbarian assumedly spend a round if not two retrieving the chest. Oil only burns two rounds.

Decanter of endless water.

They probably didn't have one.

[WarKitty]

Dungeons and Dragons, the only game where setting yourself on fire is not only a tactical move, it doesn't do much damage.

[Greenish]

Dungeons and Dragons, the only game where setting yourself on fire is not only a tactical move, it doesn't do much damage.

I bet there are several other games where it doesn't do huge damage, and of course it's a tactical move in every game where there are ninjas.

[WarKitty]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0243.html

[Urpriest]

Dungeons and Dragons, the only game where setting yourself on fire is not only a tactical move, it doesn't do much damage.

Bah. Any Dr. Mcninja-based game would also have this trait. After all, ninjas can't catch you if you're on fire.

Edit: Wow, swordsaged by a whole hour...that's bloody impressive

[Dust]

Sorry Urpriest, Greenish beat you to that joke an hour ago.

[DukeofDellot]

"I use Sex Appeal on the Monster!"
"It rapes you."

...

Happened twice.

[Ertwin]

I attempted to wield a puppy as a club. The puppy had it coming though.



We were fighting an enemy that had an at will minor action that reduced you to a child (can only use at wills, save ends) She used this on the rather violent druid, who was almost always in the form of an arctic fox. Thus she became a puppy.

My character couldn't help himself, and ruffled the druid's head saying "wook at the cute widdle puppy." Needless to say for about the 5th or 6th time that campaign the druid bit me (the other times were while saving her life)

Since she was clamped down on my hand anyway, I decided to just swing her at the enemy. Sadly I rolled a 1....

[Greenish]

Edit: Wow, swordsaged by a whole hour...that's bloody impressive

I have HiPS.

Never underestimate the sneakiness.

[AtopTheMountain]

I have HiPS.

Never underestimate the sneakiness.

So you're a Swordsage/Ranger? That seems kind of unoptimal...

[Greenish]

So you're a Swordsage/Ranger? That seems kind of unoptimal...

It wouldn't necessarily be unoptimal, but there are faster ways to gain HiPS.

[panaikhan]

hmm... odd moments.

The half-giant fighter and gnome psionicist developing the 'fastball special'.

Backstabbing the dragon at 400ft. After missing the first time.

Riding the door of a 20' x 20' x 10' room down the corridor like a surfboard on a wave of flame (1st ed Fireball).

[Asheram]

It wouldn't necessarily be unoptimal, but there are faster ways to gain HiPS.

Greenish... Are you going Gestalt on us?

Anyhow;

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My Druid/Warshaper/MoMF that ran around as a half-naked Firbolg inside a custom anti-magic field
(A test from the DM to see how we'd make it without magic items.)

After some annoyance and the fact that he didn't have any weapons that suited his size, he decided to use a solid metal door to fight with for the rest of the session, wielding it like Moses and a stone tablet.

The joy of bashing in a trolls skull with a door while screaming "Can't you hear me knocking?!" is immense.

So horribly unoptimized, but it was Fun.

[Xallace]

So the stealthy guy's infiltrating a nuclear reactor, when all of a sudden he hears some guards patrolling into the room he's in. Having no real place to hide, he rolls a bluff check and says

Player: "I'm a tree."

DM rolls sense motive.

DM compares results.

Guards: "Well, nothing but trees here!"

[Heliomance]

Dont have a rogue? Simple fix! "Gnome on a rope! TM" Tie a gnome you rather dislike to a rope 10-15 feet oughta do! Then you pick up said gnome and fling them while holding the other end of the rope or having it tied to you. Then pull the gnome back, if he doesn't die, the way is clear! advance 15 feet then repeat!

did i mention i hate gnomes? :P

We used to do that. We stopped at about the same time as the gnome in question learned to cast fireball.

Anyway, a story.

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In our town there was a cult of devil-worshippers led by the big bad that was systematically bumping off every other noble in town. Now, these nobles weren't exactly paragons of virtue, but if too many of them died, then the big bad would wield far too much political power for our liking, as all the people that would vote against him in the council would be dead. So we worked out who the next target would be, and on the night that we anticipated the next attack, we went to his house and offered him our protection.

Now this noble, Kerelak, was a thoroughly debauched individual. He knew about the impending attack, and figured that he was dead with or without our help, so he might as well spend his last hours doing something he enjoyed. So as we sat in his room, waiting for an attack, he summoned one of his maids and had very noisy sex on the bed behind us.

Luckily we didn't have to sit through too much of that before the attack came. An imp - we thought it was probably the big bad's familiar - and a hellcat came through the window. Now, this was the first time we'd fought hellcats, and we failed the knowledge check to know about them, so we didn't know that they became visible in the dark. All we knew was that there was an invisible, very gribbly thing clawing us up. So in desparation, I ask the DM if there's any powder in the room I can throw at it so that we can at least see where it is. He responds that yes, there's a pot of greenish powder by the bed. Not knowing what it is, I yell for everyone to hold their breath, and throw the powder all over the hellcat and the paladin fighting it.

At this point, the DM asks everyone to make fort saves. Everyone that fails starts seeing pretty lights and such, and taking penalties on their attack rolls. Oops.

The fight goes on for a short while longer, then the paladin manages to grapple the imp. As it's so small, the DM basically says that he's holding it in one hand. The paladin's response?

"I smite evil on the hellcat."

TL;DR: A Paladin, covered in drugs, smiting a hellcat with an imp, while a debauched noble has sex in the back.

[Sliver]

A short story...

Me, playing a rogue, and a fighter, were going through a small path in the woods. We find out that an enemy patrol is going through and jump into the bushes. As the patrol walks by...

Fighter: "I make bush sounds."

Me: "... I remain silent."

Patrol, looking at my bush: "This bush seems too silent to you?"

Me: "...... I make bush sounds."

Patrol continues walking.

I facepalm.

[Emmerask]

A short story...

Me, playing a rogue, and a fighter, were going through a small path in the woods. We find out that an enemy patrol is going through and jump into the bushes. As the patrol walks by...

Fighter: "I make bush sounds."

Me: "... I remain silent."

Patrol, looking at my bush: "This bush seems too silent to you?"

Me: "...... I make bush sounds."

Patrol continues walking.

I facepalm.

Epic Win I say

[nhbdy]

Dont have a rogue? Simple fix! "Gnome on a rope! TM" Tie a gnome you rather dislike to a rope 10-15 feet oughta do! Then you pick up said gnome and fling them while holding the other end of the rope or having it tied to you. Then pull the gnome back, if he doesn't die, the way is clear! advance 15 feet then repeat!

did i mention i hate gnomes? :P

My party did that for an adventure, but with a goblin, but then we decided to interrogate it, and that led to this marvel of a story...

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we were 2nd level and I was playing a necromancer in a party with a cleric, a sorcerer, a fighter, and a rogue, we had found this batch of goblins in the dungeon we were in, and after we killed them we found that one of them was the chief of this clan that ran through the whole dungeon. So we did the logical thing, decapitate him and put his head on a stick and continue on out merry way. The next room was also full of goblins and halfway through the fight I have the idea of "lets spare one and use it as a trapsmonkey/guide!"
Two unfilled-with-traps hallways later I think of a better use for our little goblin, I thought he might know of a way to open a secret door we found at the entrance to the dungeon (it was literally marked "here lies a secret door, but you'll never find a way to open it!") So we ask him the question (while poking him with the head of his chief) and he agrees to open the door for us.
And this is where the proverbial **** hits the fan... We make it back to the secret door and the goblin says some password in goblin and the door opens to reveal a ten foot tall purple slug-like monster that on the first round makes a magnetic field that repels all metal (still don't know what it was, but I was told it was CR eleven), so the party makes strength checks to keep their gear, only I, the necromancer, succeeded... So the cleric and fighter (both in armor) were flung to the far wall and the rest of the parties metal weapons (all of them) were stuck out of reach. Then I come up with the plan that stopped it from being a TPK, I delay action until the cleric's turn and we both cast our spells together, his was ghost sound, and mine was silent image. The image was of a portal opening and a giant gold dragon stepping through it, while ghost sound filled in, well the sounds! DM rolls saves for the enemy, all failed!
After that we decided that there will be no more interrogating trapsmokeys and a no one will listen to my bright ideas about opening doors that we shouldn't go through

TLDR: interrogating a trapsmonkey gets a level one party into a level eleven encounter that we not only survive but win!

[flabort]

Silver, thy name is black mage.

[Jaidu]

Why is it that whenever somebody says "Don't worry, guys. I got this," horrible awful things always follow?

This is certainly true... 4E Dark Sun game, the party was wiped from a tough fight clearing out a ssuran camp and decided to try to sleep there. On the first watch, the Warden, who was the only one outside of the tents, saw a half-giant approaching. This half-giant was a mercenary guard at a nearby fort and was selling secrets to the ssurans about gaps in the guard schedule at the fort. Seeing this hulking form approach, the Warden decided not to wake up the party. "Don't worry, guys. I got this." I ruled that the Warden and half-giant get one round to face off before the sounds of combat wake his allies.

The party emerged from the tent to find their defender unconscious and dying on the ground. Very difficult battle and near-TPK ensue.