Epic scenes you planned, which did not turn out so epic...

[celestialkin]

I recently had my first one of these incidents. With less than a year of DMing under my belt I am guessing I will see quite a few more.

Backstory:
-I made Death/The Grim Reaper a Greater deity in my campaign, who personally visits each PC upon their death as a skeletal male member of their species in black robes (or similar clothing, such as tattered black armor for a dwarf).
-Player C is becoming a vampire. He is using the Racial Progression from Savage Species, and the Wizards.com articles. (He got it earlier that session in STD form from a dominatrix bearded dwarf female [see the Book of Erotic Fantasy for those STD rules].)
-I had introduced hemp earlier on in that session.
-Player C is a ghetto + weeaboo + Dave Chapel funny Africa American.

So, the player just contracted the STD the night before they set off on an organ-trail journey across the continent, and had just obtained enough XP to gain the first level in his racial progression. When he woke up that day he noticed his heart had stopped beating. After some comic role-playing between the group and NPCs, that night I told him that he was feeling a "thirst".

He decided to go off into the woods alone hunting (he is also a Silver Dragon from the dragon racial progressions in Dragon #320...). Scene jumps to the dragon having his front claws on the carcass of a recently slain dire boar, it's body still warm as the dragon is biting into it's neck, blood dripping from the creatures neck to a small puddle on the ground. Suddenly the dragon notices (spot + listen check) that all the sounds in the forest have suddenly gone quiet. When he looks up he sees that the trees who's leaves and branches had been being blown by the wind seem to have frozen in midair. (Spot check) he sees a humanoid figure dressed in a black robe, carrying an elegant beautifully crafted and engraved scythe, appear from the forest, slowing walking towards him.

As it gets closer he notices that the figure's face, hands, and feet are fleshless bones.

*Player C transforms back into his elf form.
Player C: "Who the **** are you?"

*The skeletal figure (and the DM...) look perplexed.
Skeletal figure: "Do you know who I am?!"

*Player C pulls out one of the joints he had rolled from the herbs he found earlier.
*Player C takes a deep puff.
Player C: "A ni**er in a robe?"
*Player C takes another deep puff.


*Everyone at table:

*Everyone at table then proceeds to laugh their assess off, followed by even more comedy from the stoned-out dragon managing to actually annoy/piss-off arguably the most powerful being in my homebrewed setting.

*Death has since made a sort of hobby out of this PC, and the party regularly gets confronted by undead nasties, and other adventuring parties given a "second chance" deal to whack-off that PC.




So, do any of you DMs have such stories? Have any of you players done this to your DMs?

[EndgamerAzari]

I statted out an encounter with pirates based on the Flogging Molly song "Seven Deadly Sins." It was a non-lethal encounter, and it took the better part of a week for me put it together. The wizard in the party hit them with cone of cold and pretty much ended it then and there. I tried not to show it, but I couldn't hide how pissed off I was after that.

[Hal]

Oh yeah, I've got one of these stories.

My players had an unfortunate habit of tearing through my encounters without breaking a sweat. I was a new DM, so this was to be expected. I got some advice and crafted an encounter with a young red dragon that would make them hurt. Out in the middle of the wastes, they'd get scorched a bit, knocked around, have their magic items stolen, and then they'd have a nice little side-quest to retrieve their gear.

Problem: I'd forgotten about my NPCs.

See, I'd made an NPC fighter with an ancestral weapon who the players were first trying to find, then who tagged along. I made it a vorpal weapon for reasons that aren't clear to me anymore. It was a largely undead campaign, I didn't think it would be an issue. On top of that, I ran him during combat, so I could pretend he wasn't using that ability if it would overwhelm the encounters.

Except, after a while, I started letting the players run him during combat because I was tired of doing 100 things at once.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

The dragon had picked up the dwarven fighter's flaming war axe, and was going to fly off next round. They brought the NPC over, and . . . *WHACK*! Off goes his head.

That was the time I learned to stop caring about challenging players in combat.

[valadil]

I've got a buttload of them. Too bad I can't remember them all very well.

Basically what happens is that I'll build up some huge dramatic moment, which in my mind is the pinnacle of the game. When it comes time to let the PCs react, they're not qutie sure what to do. My players are usually very good roleplayers, but the situation either leaves them bewildered or waiting for a resolution. It's like I build up a plot and carry them towards this cusp where things can go in any number of directions, and when I step back to let them resolve the situation they don't take it over and run with it. I can never blame them for it. I just need to figure out how to hand the reins of the story over to them at a moment's notice when they're expecting me to dictate the conclusion for them.

[mayonase]

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH yeah, I've got stories like this, some with me at the helm, some with me watching another get his soul crushed. I'll describe one of the latter ones now.

I'm a player in a campaign currently with my Brother as a DM, so I get a bit of an inside look at the campaign and listen to him vent after hours about 'what went wrong'. Case in point: Our party had been hired to escort a civilian on a train between cities, 'just in case'. As it would turn out, he had stolen from the local mafia and had a hit out against him. This manifested itself in a brief but somewhat intenst encounter involving a small group of Warforged barging into our train car before we unceremoniously threw them out of the windows into the lightning rails. We lick our wounds, and then a member of the mob approaches our cart, flanked by a few more Warforged.

DM: (Mob) "I'm only here for him. Stand aside, and I'll double your (pretty meager) fee. Stay in my way and die. Choose."
Paladin: ...OK, you can have him.
DM + Everyone Else: ...WHAT?!?!?
Paladin: It's a reasonable deal!

Buh-bye, train-top fight sequence...

[celestialkin]

OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH yeah, I've got stories like this, some with me at the helm, some with me watching another get his soul crushed. I'll describe one of the latter ones now.

I'm a player in a campaign currently with my Brother as a DM, so I get a bit of an inside look at the campaign and listen to him vent after hours about 'what went wrong'. Case in point: Our party had been hired to escort a civilian on a train between cities, 'just in case'. As it would turn out, he had stolen from the local mafia and had a hit out against him. This manifested itself in a brief but somewhat intenst encounter involving a small group of Warforged barging into our train car before we unceremoniously threw them out of the windows into the lightning rails. We lick our wounds, and then a member of the mob approaches our cart, flanked by a few more Warforged.

DM: (Mob) "I'm only here for him. Stand aside, and I'll double your (pretty meager) fee. Stay in my way and die. Choose."
Paladin: ...OK, you can have him.
DM + Everyone Else: ...WHAT?!?!?
Paladin: It's a reasonable deal!

Buh-bye, train-top fight sequence...

Just wondering...what alignment was this paladin, and who did he worship?!

[mayonase]

Lawful Good Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut.

...


...


...*cough*... Yeah, he has some issues. It was actually an odd sequence: My Wizard was unconscious (poison), the Rogue tried to talk him out of it, and our Warlord wanted to negotiate for more money out of 'em. He said it was justified because the Civvie had lied to us about his involvement and that we really were returning the rightful property of the mafia. Of course, then he went and kidnapped a random farm hand for a Warlock to sacrifice to a demon patron.

Issues.

[FatherMalkav]

Alignment in 4th is alot more open then in 3.5. The game says it's not so much morality but 'which team you play for'. Unaligned are just that, they don't care who ends up on top.

...I just sparked an alignment debate, didn't I?

[hamishspence]

Personally, I see it as your actions determine your choice. While Unaligned can be "Evil-curious" according to Races and classes- a little underhanded or bloodthirsty, they cannot slide over the line into evil and remain unaligned.

Or: if your character is routinely committing seriously Evil deeds, they are acting in an Evil fashion rather than an unaligned fashion. They are making their choice by their actions rather than their words.

I'm not fond of the whole "unaligned characters can do anything they want, even be more evil than evil ones." That does not compute.

[Hunter Noventa]

I wasn't the DM, but our last campaign was a touch anti-climactic, mostly because it more or less ended early. Bascially one character was duped into sacrificing herself in a massive demonic summoning ritual, and we ended up with 13 or so of these 500 foot tall hunger demons roving about the city.

Said city was suspended on cahins over a pit with an angry god building an undead army with which to storm the gates of heaven.

Anyway, our party arrived too late to stop the ritual, so we're surrounded by a metric crapton of demons, the city's airship fleet closed in...and said airships were arms with what amounted to Sphere of Annnihilation cannons. Theyt ook out about 6 or 7 of the demons...then our boss showed up.

The boss was who had tricked the wizard into the ritual...and he used it to basically become an aspect of one of the lords of hell.

It was at that point we said 'screw this' and used greater teleport to run like hell.

The DM hadn't planned for this climax to come until we were level 20...but said wizard was prettyf oolish and drew such attention that things were acclerated,w hich rather annoyed the DM.

That being said, the next campaign will be int he same world...a few thousand years later, ought to be fun.

[hamishspence]

nothing wrong with alignment debates, as long as they stay civil.

Likely topics for 4th ed ones: how much "evil behaviour" is needed to moves omebody out of Good or Lawful Good alignment, and where do the borders lie, and does a person actually have to renounce their "side" to change all the way.

Points to make about the existing system: while being LG means you will probably be on same side as Bahamut, that generalization doesn't apply well to Evil or Chaotic evil. Lolth and Grummsh may make alliances on extremely rare, short term basis, but they and their followers are enemies much more often than they are allies.

Unaligned might not commits strongly to "Good" or "lawful good" but unaligned clerics of Good or LG deities will, since they are members of the same organization. Might interpret their "unalignedness" not as not choosing sides, but as being more willing to get their hands dirty than most of the hierarchy.

[FatherMalkav]

All I was saying is that I don't believe there is a major penalty for changing alignments in 4ed like there was in 3rd. Not to mention there are no real threats of power loss for clerics and paladins like in 3.X.

Also the alignments are more open. In our 4e group we have both a cleric and paladin of the Raven Queen. Where the paladin has a major belief in fate and 'her will shall decide' that keeps him neutral to good and evil the cleric heals, but demands all those whom are healed make a small blood sacrifice to her each night before they lay down to sleep (he cuts their hand for 1 HP damage)

Both are neutral, but where one balances good ends with evil (or questionable) means, the other walks a road of cold uninfluenced neutrality.

[hamishspence]

No penalty whatsoever except roleplaywise. You could be LG paladin of Bahamut, switch to CE, and retain all your powers and keep levelling. Hmm.

Dragon Mag's Wolves of maldeen had paragon path you need to be Good to qualify for. However I don't think you lose anything, or are stopped from advancing, if you change alignment.

Some combinations can lead to oddness. If DM allows CE games, and player plays CE paladin of Lolth, and takes Champion of Order paragon path, it might seem a little inconsistent. Though Elric of Melnibone was A CE guy who fought to prevent Chaos from taking over the world.

[Irreverent Fool]

The climactic encounter of the 2nd dungeon (which was an extension of the 1st) in a campaign I had lovingly crafted for my PCs in order to challenge them based on the classes they had chosen did not end up as much of a climax.

Their primary adversary was a vampire spawn who had been sealed for centuries inside the catacombs beneath a ruined keep. He guarded the entrance to the lair of his master (a vampire sorcerer who could easily slay the entire 2nd-level party) who held an item the PCs needed to free a certain spirit. He escaped their first encounter thanks to his pet stirges slowing the party down. He retreated to a room with a chained white dragon wyrmling (kept alive in a completely rules-legal way that I won't get into here).

The plan was that the vampire spawn would engage the party while his pet wyrmling would breathe on them as often as possible. Since Vampire Spawn have Cold Resistance 10, the breath weapon would not concern him much.

Well, there was an Artificer in the party and I mistakenly didn't check on all the rules, as he's our resident "D&D lore"master and I expected him to play fair.

So he charges in with his dragonbane/vicious quarterstaff and drops the wyrmling in a single attack. (Aparently an artificer can imbue such properties to a weapon and a quarterstaff can hold two -- one on each end. Unfortunately he though he could put two on a quarterstaff and get the benefit of both.)

So thanks to my poor understanding on the Artificer class, what was supposed to be an exciting climactic encounter was little more than a harsh lesson for the DM.

[Morty]

In my short DMing history, I've had one anti-climatic moment. I planned an encounter for the PCs -there were two of them and it wasn't D&D- that would be a turning point of the adventure -it was supposed to be quite tough. However, when the combat started, one of the enemies was instantly offed with an extremely lucky critical hit made from crossbow by a non-combatant NPC accompanying players that was supposed to provide only minimal support and was fulfilling his purpose very well. I still can't decide if it was fault of the system, myself(which would be the same, given that I designed it), or simply blind fate.

[AslanCross]

My players were on a ship bound for the domain of a rebellious marquis who needed to be crushed. The sea route they took was infested with pirates, but they choose it over the land route since it was faster.

Naturally, pirates attack. I have the pirate wizard launch two fireballs in an attempt to slow down the PC ship. The PC wizard counterspells (which I had prepared for), but the pirate ship was much faster.

One round from contact between the two ships, the PC wizard asks if the pirate ship was in range of his fireball. It was. He blasts the deck of the pirate ship, killing almost all of the boarding party instantly. The only one left was the ogre, but he was so badly hurt that by the time he jumped over to the PC ship, he drew an AOO from the paladin and died as he landed.

We haven't played in about a month, so I'm currently waiting until this coming Thursday to see how they'd deal with the pirate captain and his personal hit team, who've taken the pirate ship around to attempt to ram the PC ship and kill everyone on board. Their sniper has already incapacitated the NPC captain and first mate.

[batsofchaos]

I averted one in my last campaign by bending the rules. The PCs decided to assassinate the leader of a group of ogres that had chosen to live in a rock quarry that would have otherwise been advantagious to the PCs' employers. The plan as it stood was to frame his death on the rival gnoll tribe and start a small war to hopefully clean up their problems. They created a diversion and isolated the Ogre chieftain, who was supposed to put up a heck of a fight. A lucky crit in the first round would have dropped him, which was not what I was looking for as a DM; the PCs would have gotten their reward of clearing out the ogres with no effort. So a quick smudge of the hit-points on the ogre and he stayed in business for another five rounds. Just enough to give the PCs a workout and really make the reward worth it.

Was it against the rules? Yes. Did it salvage something that would have annoyed me as a DM and made the reward feel cheap? Yes. DM cheating is okay sometimes.

[xelliea]

paladins have detect evil and that destorys a lot of decepiton polts

[Revlid]

paladins have detect evil and that destorys a lot of decepiton polts

You know there are items and spells that can fool that, right?

[Gaiwecoor]

Here's one that I didn't plan, but was involved in. First, some back story:

I was playing a halfling barbarian/scout/ranger whose tribal lands were struck by a drought and plague of undead. He was out looking for the cure. During the course of events, his father had gone missing. The rest of the party had warned him that there was a possibility that his father might have been turned, and they might find him as an undead (they had encountered others he had known). He had told them that if they did, they would have to handle it - he couldn't fight his own father.

Fast-forward. The party is in an underground complex. The scout is moving in the front, as usual, when he finds a secret door. He opens the secret door. He enters the secret door. The rest of the party keeps waking down the hallway (I doubt I'll ever figure that one out).

Once my scout is inside the room, he hears a voice come down from above ... "Hello, son."

The red eyes of his vampire daddy gaze down upon him. He (barely) makes the will save to avoid being dominated, and backs out of the room, babbling madly. As the father came out of the room, drawing his weapon, the Radiant Servant of Pelor (who was walking at the rear of the party) walks up and melts him.

That's right, folks. The DM forgot about that bonus to turning checks she got from her ranks in Knowledge (Religion). He was supposed to be unturnable.

And thus a seed planted months earlier, with great recurring villain potential, literally turned to ash.

[Shadowtraveler]

Not mine, but in a group I was playing in.

We were involved in a quest to stop the machinations of Vecna. Literally. We were face to face with some giant magical machine thingy made by Vecna to change history and kill St. Cuthbert before he ascended to godhood. Unfortunately, in order to power it required the party's Psion.

(This is a 3.5 game in case you couldn't tell.)

So the Psion's down and being drained for energy, and we're in a losing battle with some demons or some such outsider, when our party Rogue remembers he has an Efreet bottle on him.

Three wishes later, the machine's dead, we're back in the main city, and we're all wearing funny hats.

[Ashtar]

This happened to my ex-fiancée, she had planned a complete mini-campaign (took 5 weeks to plan, write, make the props, maps, fake scrolls and books), with pre-created characters (each with a 3 page background), based around the idea of the players going around and releasing ancient seals to save the world.
The problem was that every time a seal was released, the area around it was catastrophically affected (volcano eruption, tsunami, eternal cold snap falling on the land, meteor shower, ...). And what happened was that after "releasing" the third seal (of five), the players decided not to go on, preferring to leave the world to sink into eternal darkness rather that freeing all these calamities.

So basically the campaign ended with "With the last light of the stars fading, you look down on your world as it is consumed by darkness..."

[Lochar]

Okay... Where'd my post go?

--Edit
Dang threads with similar names.

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

So, in one of my games I had set up an entire scene where this evil lady would seduce the barbarian, thus effectively making the group useless. The Barb was the leader, and basically whatever he said goes. However, he avoided the entire skill challenge, this is how the scene basically played out.

Me: She rubs her shoulder up against you whispering some nonsense about limitless pleasure and pow-
Barb: (interrupting) I tell her I like men.
-awkward pause-
Me: After a moment she replies, "But, you're a barbarian. You have to like women."
Barb: "Says who?"
Me: The lady thinks a moment. "Isn't it like in your barbarian handbook or something."
Barb: "Well, it might be. But then again, it's also in our handbook that WE CAN'T READ."
-awkward pause-
Me: "But-"
Barb: "Men."
Me: "But i just-"
Barb: "Ahblahblahblah.... men."
Me: "Not even just a little?"
Barb: "NO! MEN!
Me: Having defeated the evil necromancer queen with your homosexuality, you gain 750 experience. Now kindly die in a hole."

[FatherMalkav]

*snip*
Was it against the rules? Yes.
*snip*

It's not agains the rules. You're the DM, what you say goes. I had a similar scenario in a recent 4th game I ran. The party of level 1's were heading to pick up their reward at a fake address in the poor district of town. AS they get down there they begin to hear screams and laughter. They get there and find a flamboyantly dressed Halfling Warlock dancing on the center beams of roof tops raining eldrich blasts down on the people below, laughing all the while. The party (of about 6) all scramble into position to attack him. He was level 4 so I thought he'd up up a fight. With a ****ty init roll and about half the party using their dailies, the guy would have been paste, so I increased his HP to 100 and gave him DR2 (He was a member of an abberition cult and they all suffered mutations.)

They still dropped him in round 3

[Ravyn]

So there's my group, at the end of a rather messy sequence during which the group has fought among themselves, fought against some earlier enemies (the BBEG's offspring), worked their way through a friend's dreamscape, engaged in a cooking contest with a demon, and just about everyone has switched sides at least twice. Now the real BBEG, the one they've been swearing to destroy in various ways, has just appeared in the doorway as they were getting ready to leave, and I'm all geared up for a combat sequence with a participant count in the teens and plenty of scenery to work off of....

....and they run away.

I suppose it was better than their usual ability to utterly hash whatever they fight in two or three rounds....

[Sucrose]

So, in one of my games I had set up an entire scene where this evil lady would seduce the barbarian, thus effectively making the group useless. The Barb was the leader, and basically whatever he said goes. However, he avoided the entire skill challenge, this is how the scene basically played out.

Me: She rubs her shoulder up against you whispering some nonsense about limitless pleasure and pow-
Barb: (interrupting) I tell her I like men.
-awkward pause-
Me: After a moment she replies, "But, you're a barbarian. You have to like women."
Barb: "Says who?"
Me: The lady thinks a moment. "Isn't it like in your barbarian handbook or something."
Barb: "Well, it might be. But then again, it's also in our handbook that WE CAN'T READ."
-awkward pause-
Me: "But-"
Barb: "Men."
Me: "But i just-"
Barb: "Ahblahblahblah.... men."
Me: "Not even just a little?"
Barb: "NO! MEN!
Me: Having defeated the evil necromancer queen with your homosexuality, you gain 750 experience. Now kindly die in a hole."

...That is quite possibly the best thing ever. From my perspective as an uninvolved viewer, that is incredibly freaking hilarious. I can see how it would be angering for the DM, but still...wow.

May I sig your closing line?

[The_Werebear]

I had one that ended up being quite epic, but not nearly like I planned due to one PC getting revenge at an inappropriate time. The setting of the campaign is a county that is fairly forested, in which the local druids have a fair amount of power. They are led by a NE, rather power hungry elf druidess who follows the way of being the catastrophe aspect of nature. During a local power squabble, one of that Druid's long time friends, a dwarven lumberjack gets killed. She goes on a warpath and burns the city that supplied the troops, killing dozens of women and children. The party druid (in religion, class is a hybrid Divine/Savage Bard), whom was neutral good and a student of the Druidess couldn't take any more from her. She challenged her for leadership of the druids to prevent her from making any more attacks on the towns.

The two have an epic battle in the woods. This is an E6 campaign, and is very likely to get lethal if either side scores too many devastating hits, especially with spells. The NE NPC druid gains an initial upper hand, but the NG PC Bard wears her down, and eventually manages to knock her into submission, where there is a tense scene in which the Druidess begs for the bard to kill her, and the bard refuses, knocking her unconscious instead.

Here's where it breaks down. The Party's sixteen year old drunken farmboy sniper followed and watched the battle unwind. He was already annoyed at the Druidess, because earlier on, she mentioned that she had stolen his pants out of spite once while he was drunk and asleep in her woods. He had been harboring a grudge against her ever since.

So, while the Bard is agonizing whether or not to kill her unconscious master (which violates her morals, but is probably what her master would want), the sniper walks up and begins calmly stealing the druidess' pants and sewing them into a flag that says "HAH, I got you back."

Bugged me just a tad for ruining an emotional moment.

[F.L.]

I accidentally gave the party I dm dc 17 drow poison bolts, instead of the usual dc 13 bolts. That's ruined a lot of epic scenes...

[ImperiousLeader]

<Snip>
Me: Having defeated the evil necromancer queen with your homosexuality, you gain 750 experience. Now kindly die in a hole."

That's awesome. I love both the ending line and the way it derailed.