Horrible DM blunders

[Firechanter]

I saw there's a Darwin Award thread here, for all those anecdotes of player stupidity resulting in their character's culling from the gene pool.
How about we collect some stories of terrible DM calls? They don't necessarily have to be lethal; unfair calls, heavy railroading, idiotic houserules, arbitrary ignoring of the rules for no reason, shafting the players just because, powertrip etc will also do.

I have a bunch of these to share. -.-

I once played in a Forgotten Realms campaign where the DM started out really fine and got worse over time. He made up a lot of stupid houserules, and was not easily convinced of their stupidity. For instance:

- "A natural 1 in combat is always a Fumble." When a 1 showed, we'd either hit an ally (who sometimes was permitted a Reflex save to dodge) or drop our weapon if nobody was in range.

- at some point during the campaign, he started having us make CON rolls during night watch (we didn't have a wizard who could cast Rope Trick or somesuch), and didn't even use the D&D check mechanics. Essentially a Con-16 character had a _20%_ risk of falling asleep during a bleedin two-hour watch. I kept ranting about this, but when he let the Elf roll his stupid check, I exploded. (At least that was the last time he asked for the check.)

He also distributed the loot very unevenly; at one point one player had some 70K wealth in randomly generated items while another had just about 10K worth. And it took forever to spend the treasure we did gather. I remember having some 10000 GP around level 5, which is fine by itself, but it took all the way until level 9(!) until we got into a town that was not either deserted or a total hick with no magic supply store whatsoever. When I hit level 9, the following dialogue happened at the start of a session (we were currently in Phlan and had no time pressure):
me: "I want to buy a Wisdom ammy" (Cleric with Travel domain).
DM: "Weeeeell, you first need to see if that kind of item is available here."
me: "This is a major city! You know what, I can cast Teleport now. If it has to be, I can port all the way to Waterdeep, gonna take, I don't know, a week maybe."
DM: (in a clearly dissuading tone) "Do you want to RP that?"
me: "I don't mind, but you need to ask the other four players if they don't mind sitting around here an hour and doing nothing."

Then he finally let me have my forsaken ammy. I think it was a +4, and drained pretty much all the wealth I had gathered by that time.

He also kept confusing D&D Mithral with Middle Earth Mithril, btw. When I wanted to buy a Mithral Full Plate, he almost laughed at me, maintaining that Mithral is terribly rare. "It's exactly so rare", I said, "that a full plate suit costs some 10K" I said, but he wouldn't listen at that moment. At least I got that suit a few sessions later as quest reward.

His adventures, mostly bought modules, were mostly not bad as such. But at one time he wanted to play a campaign that was supposed to go through levels 1-10 or so. And we were level 10 already at that time. And he didn't scale the encounters. Imagine our enjoyment at killing CR 1/2 Orcs and Zombies, of course without gaining any XP for them..
A few sessions into that campaign, we had to investigate in a city. It quickly became obvious that we could do nothing to advance the plot ourselves -- essentially we might just as well twiddle thumbs until we reached the point where his book said "Day 3. An informer appears." or suchlike.

(Aftermath: at some point, we switched posts and I DMed for a while. My first task was to get the party out of this stupid campaign. The respective Regent heard the PCs report and said "Very well. We will task some novice Adventurers to retrieve this sacred MacGuffin. For you I have more important things to do now". Next step was subtly dealing out customized loot during the next two adventures to get everyone on the appropriate Wealth by Level.)

To be fair, that DM wasn't all terrible. He used a very generous generation method, and was very liberal about character development issues, so if you discovered a PrC in some book that you wanted to take, he'd let you swap out any feats or abilities necessary to gain entry. Anyway.

Okay, your turn. ^^

[Vknight]

2ed one of my normal players is a *BEEP* as a Dm. He bascially is idiotic unfair focuing on the female players and there stories. Note there is 1Female and 3other people. Also we have his 2DMPC's.
Yes 2. Both of which are jerks.
In the Funny Stories I posted something that recently happened within the campaign.
The Druids curse is still in full effect. The army wants me dead for killing him. No Reason because they are at war with Druids. Also when we went south which was are only option we get to the Military area which was in the north and the guy calls us out for being late.
Also my characters plan is to remove the corrupt people from government. The Dm's response. The king is no longer corrupt just an idiot that basically worships the female players character.
The church wants me dead for being a Necromancer.
I started as a Illusionist but at level 2the Dm forced me to either make a new character or be a Necromancer after a near life death experience.
Also both the Druid and other DMPC (A Fighter) are Lawful Stupid and should have there alignments changed.
Also the druid dueled me, with a METAL SWORD!!
Did not lose his powers nothing.
So yeah horrible DM before even going into his railroading among other things.

He calls me a bad player, and Dm.


Yeah good friend but if this continues, (Only been 2-3sessions) I'm quiting by way of Fireball cast on the entire party well I'm out of range.

[Doc Roc]

Yeah good friend but if this continues, (Only been 2-3sessions) I'm quiting by way of Fireball cast on the entire party well I'm out of range.

What... why would you....
Let me just cordially suggest another means of conflict mediation, or you're likely to end up the subject of one of these stories yourself, mcdude.

[Cartigan]

I saw there's a Darwin Award thread here, for all those anecdotes of player stupidity resulting in their character's culling from the gene pool.
How about we collect some stories of terrible DM calls? They don't necessarily have to be lethal; unfair calls, heavy railroading, idiotic houserules, arbitrary ignoring of the rules for no reason, shafting the players just because, powertrip etc will also do.

I have a bunch of these to share. -.-

I once played in a Forgotten Realms campaign where the DM started out really fine and got worse over time. He made up a lot of stupid houserules, and was not easily convinced of their stupidity. For instance:

- "A natural 1 in combat is always a Fumble." When a 1 showed, we'd either hit an ally (who sometimes was permitted a Reflex save to dodge) or drop our weapon if nobody was in range.

Try playing with a DM who fails you when rolling a 1 on Skill Checks.

[Jack DeCoeur]

I don't have any horror stories as such, but one event does spring to mind. One of my regular DMs, very competent and rules-savvy for the most part made a huge blunder one session where he pitted the level 10 party against half a dozen wraiths (or whatever is CR appropriate, it was a while ago).

Now, we had the equipment to actually damage them no problem, the issue was that he completely misread the creature entry and, mistakenly believed, even after a player asked him to double check, that the 1d6 CON drain on each attack allowed no saving throw. To this day I have no idea how we escaped without any casualties, the entire 5 man party was reduced to 1 or 2 CON each. It was brutal. Still, at least no one in our group will ever make that mistake again, with any luck at least.

[Deth Muncher]

We hadn't quite read the rules for what being Entangled meant. Everyone thought you couldn't move until you succeeded. Actually...that's not quite true. I, the DM, knew it, but one of the other players who's more experienced said that wasn't how it worked. The blunder ended in a fairly simple battle becoming lethal for one of the party. However, this ended in me being able to drive the plot forward with it, so it was only a marginal fail.

[Vknight]

What... why would you....
Let me just cordially suggest another means of conflict mediation, or you're likely to end up the subject of one of these stories yourself, mcdude.

Yeah I know though I doubt it on the basis that I'm a good Dm and neither he nor I would let things from other games spill over.
Also the fact the player cannot hold a grudge in any shape or form outside of forum inappropriate topics.

But yeah keeping my cool in his campaign but I'm more then likely going to quit.
Also something else I forgot.

The party leader most important Npc's and unimportant ones think its the Cleric. Note she did not come until the second session after we cleared a dungeon and saved the kings daughter. Also my guy was the leader at that point the public face with the highest charisma and a good word to people.
Now Npc's do this.

NPC: "All hail the Valkyrie!" (Her In Character Title by the Church)
Me: Um guys she did nothing I just killed the Cyclops and saved everyone in that tomb.
NPC: "Hail her glory!"
Me: *Walks away*

Also she has nothing except church standing as a Preist. I have the kings seal and the Druidic Councils Seal, along with my Masters Seal. (Wizard after all. My master is also the most powerful arcane caster(Any caster actually) on the continent.)

The others had similarly awesome backstories.

[Angry Bob]

A few months back, we wiped to a rogue polymorphed into a hydra that kept all of her rogue abilities and a hasted wizard that used the 3.0 version instead of the 3.5 version.

On the other hand, it wasn't that bad, since we got to see the hydra do a barrel roll to evade the cleric's holy fire.

[Burnheart]

Yeah I know though I doubt it on the basis that I'm a good Dm and neither he nor I would let things from other games spill over.
Also the fact the player cannot hold a grudge in any shape or form outside of forum inappropriate topics.

But yeah keeping my cool in his campaign but I'm more then likely going to quit.
Also something else I forgot.

The party leader most important Npc's and unimportant ones think its the Cleric. Note she did not come until the second session after we cleared a dungeon and saved the kings daughter. Also my guy was the leader at that point the public face with the highest charisma and a good word to people.
Now Npc's do this.

NPC: "All hail the Valkyrie!" (Her In Character Title by the Church)
Me: Um guys she did nothing I just killed the Cyclops and saved everyone in that tomb.
NPC: "Hail her glory!"
Me: *Walks away*

Also she has nothing except church standing as a Preist. I have the kings seal and the Druidic Councils Seal, along with my Masters Seal. (Wizard after all. My master is also the most powerful arcane caster(Any caster actually) on the continent.)

The others had similarly awesome backstories.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess your DM wants to date this female player?

[Vknight]

Yes. The sad thing is she looks like his old girl friend the other sad thing is she is are youngest player, in 7th grade.
Note I'm the oldest as a Senior and he is a year younger then me.

And this is why I normally Dm because.
1) I'm not swayed easily like that
2) I'm fair to my players and give them each a 1 a session reroll
3) I try to get them all involved with the sotry.
4) I don't try to hook up with people5-6 years younger then me.
There is a fifth and a sixth neither of which I can or will post

[gomanfox]

- "A natural 1 in combat is always a Fumble." When a 1 showed, we'd either hit an ally (who sometimes was permitted a Reflex save to dodge) or drop our weapon if nobody was in range.

The DM running the game I'm in right now has a similar rule. With a natural 1 on an attack roll, the player has to make a reflex save or the character hits itself. Rolling some combination of 1s and 20s after that can result in hitting yourself with a critical, or instantly killing yourself, but it's extremely unlikely to happen.

The only time I've seen this do anything though was when an NPC in one of his previous games fumbled, hit himself with a critical hit and killed himself in one strike, it was pretty funny (although kinda sucked since the NPC was going to help us in combat).

He also uses critical failures/successes on skill checks. If a character rolls a 1 on perception checks on watch, they fall asleep. If they roll a 20, they might spot something like a belt pouch with a few coins in it. I think it's interesting to have something special happen for failing or succeeding in those cases.

The only complaint I've ever had is that he can be a little harsh in the situations he puts his group in. In one of our games, in our first session, there was an NPC that wanted us dead (we didn't know at the time), that we were having tea with, and our tea cups had black lotus extract on them. Only one person drank it, but of course they died (that's a ton of CON damage). The NPC was rich and could easily afford it so it made sense, it just seemed like a bit much, especially in a group of mostly new players.

[Volos]

I had a DM ask me to come in a couple of hours early to hatch out my character for a game he was already running. I had most of my stats down, so I just worked with fluff and double checked that my feat/item selection was approved. After two and a half hours of long work, we finished my character. I was playing a cleric focused on buff/debuff with a minor in healing. Most of the time I stayed out of sight or did my best to avoid conflict with the monsters.

So we're playing this game for the first few handful of rooms in this dungeon. Other members are a Barbarian/Frenzied Bezerker, a Rogue/Assassin, and a Wizard. We're in a completely empty room, but we find some potions. We idenfity one, and it seems to be a potion of mage armor. The Barbarian runs around nearly naked for some reason or another. So I tell him to drink it next time we get into a fight, as he was having troubles with low AC and taking tons of damage that I was getting tired of healing.

Needless to say, we get into another fight. The rogue/assassin runs to hide behind a pillar, the Wizard casts invisibility, and I cast Sanctuary. Suddenly the DM takes control of the Barbarain/Frenzied Bezerker's turn. The barbarain drinks the potion and immedately starts raging and frenzying. Then he begins charging at me to try and kill me. I'm on the other side of the room, mind you. There are five foes between me and the Barbarain, and they are all threatening him. Three have hit him with arrows already. He bypasses them, taking massive amounts of damage from AoOs. He's actually almost dead, but when he gets closer to me he starts to heal due to some spell I had cast earlier that aids my allies with fast healing. Or it was feat, something like that. He then strikes at me, critting, confirming, and doing three times my health in damage. When I ask what in the nine hells just happened, the DM's only responce is that the potion was cursed.

I nearly flipped the table right into the DM's smug face.

Here is a handful of reasons none of this should have happened.

•Regardless of whether or not the potion was 'cursed', if it caused the Barbarian to Rage and Frenzy, he should have been attacking the foes between the two of us who were doing damage to him. Or atleast should have attacked them first.

•The Barbarian/Frenzied Bezerker would have got a Will Save to avoid attacking his ally while in a frenzy.

•He needed a Will save to even attack me, and with Heightened Sanctuary and my insane Wisdom, he could only succeed on a 20.

•Unless the cursed potion took control of the Barbarain's character (which the DM later said it had not) the player would have control over his character.

•I healed the Barbarian before he attacked me, 30ft before he attacked me. That should have registered me as ally to even his rage addled brain.

So after half an hour of gaming, my character was dead. The enemies finished of the rest of the party with ease, having no one to buff or heal them. An entire TPK situation came out of the DM not only having a massive blunder, but just being a terrible person in general. The only people who play with him anymore are the gamers who have been kicked from my group. They must be deperate.

[NecroRick]

The DM running the game I'm in right now has a similar rule. With a natural 1 on an attack roll, the player has to make a reflex save or the character hits itself. Rolling some combination of 1s and 20s after that can result in hitting yourself with a critical, or instantly killing yourself, but it's extremely unlikely to happen.

I remember a friend of mine telling me about playing in one of the role-playing games set in the orient. That one had a rule that on a 20 you roll on a critical hit table, and a roll of 20 on that was instant decapitation.

Hence, if you spent long enough in combat, you were pretty much guaranteed to die. 400 rounds is average lifespan (assuming that anything that doesn't outright kill you just makes you stronger). Even a high level fighter would think twice about charging ten orcs under those rules. Killing one a round you'd get about a 13% chance of dying to decapitation. Another way of looking at it is that the orcs would roll ~3 natural 20s, so they'd be on the crit chart three times against you in that fight...

Anyway, eventually the players all gravitated towards non-violent conflict resolution for some strange reason. And the campaign tended towards low low level play (nobody got above 4th level and even that was rare if I remember his stories correctly).

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't have fun.

[LordBlades]

There is a guy in my gaming group that's just....weird.

He's an awesome player (great roleplayer although he does tend to try and domintate most RP encounters and great optimizer) but probably the suckyest DM I've ever seen.

Whenever he DM's he turns to a 'me vs. players' mentality and he just stops being reasonable.

He's now forbidden to DM in my group after his last campaign stopped with 2 very annoying blunders in the same session.

We were low-ish level fighting a 6 armed construct and stuff starts going bad, so we decide to run. One round ends with my dwarf crusader slamming a door in the guy's face, relying on the fact that by RAW it's a move action to open a door, so I'm facing at most 1 attack. The DM then decides that since a human can open the door with 1 hand (move action) and attack with the other hand (standard action), this guy can open the door with one hand, and attack with the other 5. He refused both to apply this rule starting next battle, and to allow me to take back my previous round's actions, since he just changed a rule that directly impacted what I had done. My char died.

Later on, after we made it out of the dungeon (that construct managed to kill another char apart from mine) the party goes about resurrecting the 2 dead chars , and chooses reincarnate, since we were short on cash. The other guy gets a 100 on the percentile dice. And what does the DM give him? Something completely useless (dude was a neraph gish, and became a satyr).

[RndmNumGen]

I think my biggest mistake to date was giving an adept my players were fighting a wand of scorching ray... when they were level 2. I ended up unintentionally 1-shotting the party sorcerer with it; he had 12 health, I rolled high and did 22 damage.

[BG]

Here's the scene, an oWoD Vampire LARP that some friends are in. There are about 8 members of clan Tremere. 2 of them 5 dots in Occult. 3 of them have 4 dots in Occult. The remainder have 3 dots. (That's 31 total dots). In addition, they have 4 dots worth of the Occult Library background. Essentially, if it's in the Occult, these are the people who will know about it.

The Storyteller has them encounter a strange ocean spirit that offers to help them. They all check through their sources, because they all assume it's a demon. Note that this assumption is both in and out of character, because this storyteller loves demons. He tells them flat out that in all their study, they can conclude that it isn't a demon. The Tremere refuse its help anyway, because being occult experts, they know that nothing supernatural ever offers anything for free, there's always a price. Eventually, they're railroaded into accepting its help (another story entirely), and *gasp* it turns out that the spirit was a demon the whole time!

That game had a lot of stuff like that happen.

[Zombimode]

He also distributed the loot very unevenly; at one point one player had some 70K wealth in randomly generated items while another had just about 10K worth. And it took forever to spend the treasure we did gather. I remember having some 10000 GP around level 5, which is fine by itself, but it took all the way until level 9(!) until we got into a town that was not either deserted or a total hick with no magic supply store whatsoever. When I hit level 9, the following dialogue happened at the start of a session (we were currently in Phlan and had no time pressure):
me: "I want to buy a Wisdom ammy" (Cleric with Travel domain).
DM: "Weeeeell, you first need to see if that kind of item is available here."
me: "This is a major city! You know what, I can cast Teleport now. If it has to be, I can port all the way to Waterdeep, gonna take, I don't know, a week maybe."
DM: (in a clearly dissuading tone) "Do you want to RP that?"
me: "I don't mind, but you need to ask the other four players if they don't mind sitting around here an hour and doing nothing."

Then he finally let me have my forsaken ammy. I think it was a +4, and drained pretty much all the wealth I had gathered by that time.

He also kept confusing D&D Mithral with Middle Earth Mithril, btw. When I wanted to buy a Mithral Full Plate, he almost laughed at me, maintaining that Mithral is terribly rare. "It's exactly so rare", I said, "that a full plate suit costs some 10K" I said, but he wouldn't listen at that moment. At least I got that suit a few sessions later as quest reward.

Uhm, this is not bad DM-ing. At the most it is a case of comunication failure. You and your DM just had different expectations.
You seem to think WBL as a given, MagicMart as existent. He seem to see wealth as in-game-rewards-as-they-make-sense and no MagicMart.
Both are equally valid ways to play the game.
Besides, the rarity of mithril or anything else is a setting detail. You can cite rulebooks all you want, if in the Setting of your DM mithril is ultra-rare, then it is.
Of course you can question his motives, and ask if he had considered the consequences for certain character builds.

[stainboy]

Yes. The sad thing is she looks like his old girl friend the other sad thing is she is are youngest player, in 7th grade.
Note I'm the oldest as a Senior and he is a year younger then me.

Yeah, you might want to worry more about that four year age difference than about your friend's DMing style.

[Tengu_temp]

Bad: One guy thought that adamantine is the same as adamantite - that it's available only in Underdark and that it crumbles to dust under sunlight.

Worse: It wasn't a normal game. It was a persistent world for NWN2, where one of the focuses was on a war between the surface and Underdark. Only Underdark had access to adamantine weapons.

Even worse: He wrote a script that checks if you have an adamantine item out in sunlight and removes it. The script was very buggy, caused a lot of lag and glitched several abilities.

[Leon]

And what does the DM give him? Something completely useless (dude was a neraph gish, and became a satyr).

A Satyr isn't completely useless and it could have been a lot worse - i almost had a Archivist Deer and i have seen a Paladin Badger

[Eldan]

Well, that's 3.0 reincarnate, though, isn't it? IIRC, 3.5 reincarnate only has player races on it.

Though I usually make custom lists of the same ECL as the player's race so it's about even.

[LordBlades]

A Satyr isn't completely useless and it could have been a lot worse - i almost had a Archivist Deer and i have seen a Paladin Badger

Well, he lost his outsider type (no more dwarf ancestor alter self) in exchange for +2 dex +2 con +4 natural armor (all except con was 110% useless for an alter self/polymorph based char).

Was just DM asshattery, especially since Reincarnation guidelines for non-humanoids state new body should have the same type.

@Eldan: in 3.5, for non humanoids, you need to make a table of creatures of the same type.

[Eldan]

True, same type as well.

But having them have different ECLs is also just a big hassle. Imagine something with LA +3 and 6 RHD reincarnated as something with only LA +2 and no RHD.

Also, can Outsiders even be reincarnated? I'm reasonably sure they can't. No body-soul dichotomy, and all that.

[LordBlades]

True, same type as well.

But having them have different ECLs is also just a big hassle. Imagine something with LA +3 and 6 RHD reincarnated as something with only LA +2 and no RHD.

Also, can Outsiders even be reincarnated? I'm reasonably sure they can't. No body-soul dichotomy, and all that.

Native outsiders can]

From the SRD:

. An outsider with the native subtype can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.

[Firechanter]

You seem to think WBL as a given, MagicMart as existent. He seem to see wealth as in-game-rewards-as-they-make-sense and no MagicMart.

Yes I do. First of all it was a Forgotten Realms game. Secondly I do consider WBL not just a nice thing, but an integral part of D&D game balance, especially seeing that AC doesn't improve by itself. Actually I wasn't too badly affected since I was a Cleric. The Rogue was also well off because she was lucky with the item drops (Ring of Blinking by 7th level or so). But some other players were terribly under-equipped.

[LordBlades]

Yes I do. First of all it was a Forgotten Realms game. Secondly I do consider WBL not just a nice thing, but an integral part of D&D game balance, especially seeing that AC doesn't improve by itself. Actually I wasn't too badly affected since I was a Cleric. The Rogue was also well off because she was lucky with the item drops (Ring of Blinking by 7th level or so). But some other players were terribly under-equipped.

that's the downside of random treasure. Some classes can use almost anything they find, while other classes need a very specialized set of gear.

[Shademan]

this is just bad DM stories. here, have some DM blunders I've done:
draw maps on three pages, stat out tons of npc's. forget to drop the right clue on time, pc's never go there.

Make incredible awesome villain, forget him completely when session start and dont have him show up for any suiting session. remember him when the players have left the place.

and oh so many dumb things that happens when they go all over the place and I must improvise my ass off

[Mastikator]

I did this:

Me: "As you open the gate you see a man inside, with blood on his clothes, he doesn't seem to notice you."
Player: "I call out to the man."
Me: "The zombie turns around, he looks pale."
Player: "So.. it's a zombie"
Me: ".... CRAP, I wasn't supposed to say THAT part... uhh, yeah, forget that last part, you don't know it's a zombie".

[Firechanter]

Ah here's another Bad DM Story, though different game system, different DM.
First of all, in that setting there were White and Black Magicians, and also Druids, Witches, the works. What was common throughout all kinds was that iron was harmful to magic powers. So magic users of any kind could wear no metal armour or use heavy weapons because it would make them lose their powers.

We were playing a kind of PVP-Campaign with two DMs and two groups simultaneously, Goodies vs. Baddies. It was set up as a treasure hunt with horror elements, and could have been awesome. But this one (main) DM unfairly favoured the baddies all the time. For instance, there was this nice enough mercenary (a PC) who filled the archetype of walking armory. Then all of a sudden, a few weeks into the game, she turns into a real evil black magician.

Also, when the evil chars wanted to spy on the goodies, that was all fair game. But when the goodies tried to prevent being spied on, they were practically forbidden to do so. For instance, the morning after a horrible murder was discovered; someone had tied an NPC to a chair and practically extracted their brain with a tongue or something:
Me, to ally: "Let's go outside to talk."
DM: "It's raining outside. It would be bad RP to go out in the rain."

Then the evils decided to frame my character (I played a goodie rogue). My char had awesome magic resistance, it was practically impossible for any like-levelled spellcaster to enchant me. And yet, one day I woke up, all my stuff was gone, except for my dagger protruding from an ally's chest. This violated all the rules concerning enchantment/domination spells, starting at Spell Resistance and going through to illegal commands.

I pretty much lost interest in the campaign at that point. It had become obvious that the DM was willing to let the evils get away with anything, and barred any kind of precaution or retaliation from the goodies' side. So I and the other goodie player left, and as far as I know, the other players never continued, now that they were robbed of easy targets.

[potatocubed]

I once instituted a house rule that it was a DC 10 Heal check to tell that someone at negative hit points was still alive.

That was un-instituted a session later after two party members were declared dead, their equipment looted, and their bodies slung through a nearby portal.

Oops.