Have you ever Broken your DM?

[Ceridan]

Have you ever broken your DM, or as a DM have you ever been broken by a player? To be clear what I mean is, has a character in one of your games ever done something so totally unexpected that you where at least initially at a lose as to what to do about it?

For example: As a player my character, a telepath, reached into a tiny rift in the fabric of the planes (caused by the BBEG) with her mind in an effort to see what might be out there. My DM looked at me and said "You do what!?" After a few moments he ruled that my mind was over loaded by the experience, and that the neat pin prick in the fabric of the planes was, unintentionally, torn by my effort. This lead to a great adventure where the other party members had to enter my characters mind and help to piece her psyche back together.

[arguskos]

Heh. I once threw the party gnome off an airship through a dirigible, and then cast Fly on him, so he could come back to us.

The DM just sorta went, "bwah...?" and shuddered. Then he let it happen, and charged the party for the dirigible's cost. XD

-argus

[skeeter_dan]

I want to play a Party Gnome. They sound like so much more fun than Whisper Gnomes.

[Chronicled]

I want to play a Party Gnome. They sound like so much more fun than Whisper Gnomes.

Untrue. Nothing can be more fun than a Whisper Gnome.

[monty]

I want to play a Party Gnome. They sound like so much more fun than Whisper Gnomes.

Is that the annoying guy who tries to make friends with everybody? Those people make me unhappy.

[Dr Bwaa]

I feel like I may have heard other parts of this subsequent adventure mentioned on these forums :)

As for being broken as a DM: happens all the time. I'm not as good on-the-fly as some of my friends (though I'm getting better), so it can be pretty funny.

For instance, there was that time half the party was stealing a major artifact and the other half (which included the wizard) was causing a distraction, and then they were all to meet up and flee. Which is hard, in the High Forest. So what happened? As soon as the wiz finished the distraction, he charged towards where they were stealing the artifact from, holding one hand out in front of him Detecting Magic. Since it was such a high-level artifact , which would have knocked him out immediately had he actually detected magic on it within range, I ruled that he eventually spotted a glow far off, where detect magic shouldn't work. Assuming (correctly) that it was the artifact, he... no, he didn't follow its magical signature to it. No, he grabbed the other party members, and said:

Wizard: "I teleport to the Diamond (as it was, in fact, a diamond)."
DM: "...I guess I'll get out the d10s."

Damn near killed himself that way

[LoneStarNorth]

One of my players broke me once. His artificer single-handedly wiped out all three of the evil doubles of of the party, who were one level higher. I was expected a TPK (I had a plot hook that required it, and they'd have got their characters back shortly), but it wasn't a specifically planned one, so it threw me off. It really bugged me at the time not necessarily because I had to use the less interesting plot hook, but because he dragged the battle out for so long. In retrospect I probably could have killed him off (without resorting to DM fiat), but I'm over it now.

I broke him back recently though with an actual planned TPK. He lived longest, but he was ripped apart all the same. And, again, they didn't actually die. It was a dream

[RTGoodman]

Lets just say that, if given the chance, a Batman Wizard and a Chain-Tripper Mage-Slayer Fighter/Barbarian can pretty handily destroy undead enemies given enough time to plan, a chain that can do bludgeoning damage, a Rod of Quicken Spell, and access to basically every PHB spell for research purposes.

For the end of our 10th level game this Spring, we were supposed to fight an epic Bard Lich and several cronies and probably die horribly. One quickened enlarge person, a web, and a 15x15 room later, the DM had to retcon the encounter so the BBEG lasted more than 2 turns.

[Occasional Sage]

Back when I GMed Shadowrun 2e, one of my players expressed an interest in researching a personal-effect-only Turn To Goo spell.

[Eldariel]

Heh. I once threw the party gnome off an airship through a dirigible, and then cast Fly on him, so he could come back to us.

The DM just sorta went, "bwah...?" and shuddered. Then he let it happen, and charged the party for the dirigible's cost. XD

-argus

Well, while not a "break"-story, now I just have to tell this:
-Once, a gnome dropped on our party tent at night - from a dirigible. The gnomes were terribly sorry for the broken (and bloody) tent and offered us a ride in return.

[Curmudgeon]

Once, but it was his own fault. He decided to allow unlimited cantrips and orisons. I played a Cleric. Not only were we all at full hit points (Cure Minor Wounds) going into every encounter, but we were buffed (Resistance, Guidance, Virtue) before every possible encounter point (every turn in every dungeon). We had Light everywhere to negate any advantage of enemies with darkvision. Detect Magic found every magical trap, and Detect Poison found every mechanical trap with poison.

But the breaking point came when we had tracked some powerful enemies to their underground lair. My Cleric just sat down and started casting Create Water, repeating every 6 seconds for many thousands of castings. Instead of heading down into untold dangerous underground encounters, we flooded the enemies out and ambushed them as they tried to escape death by drowning.

The DM actually cried. (I don't need to tell you how quickly the "unlimited level 0 spells" house rule disappeared from our game.)

[Occasional Sage]

Once, but it was his own fault. He decided to allow unlimited cantrips and orisons. I played a Cleric. Not only were we all at full hit points (Cure Minor Wounds) going into every encounter, but we were buffed (Resistance, Guidance, Virtue) before every possible encounter point (every turn in every dungeon). We had Light everywhere to negate any advantage of enemies with darkvision. Detect Magic found every magical trap, and Detect Poison found every mechanical trap with poison.

But the breaking point came when we had tracked some powerful enemies to their underground lair. My Cleric just sat down and started casting Create Water, repeating every 6 seconds for many thousands of castings. Instead of heading down into untold dangerous underground encounters, we flooded the enemies out and ambushed them as they tried to escape death by drowning.

The DM actually cried. (I don't need to tell you how quickly the "unlimited level 0 spells" house rule disappeared from our game.)

I would submit that anybody who can't see that "unlimited 0th level spells" is a bad idea, shouldn't be DMing.

[Hal]

My players did it to me, but it wasn't as dramatic as anything else here. They just did the usual shenanigans of attacking any NPC who didn't immediately swoon at them.

More specifically, I had a halfing member of the mob come swaggering into a tavern, talking big and really commanding the room. When he saw the players eying him up, he came over and really started pouring on the bravado, telling them about how they couldn't touch him, and how he and his friends owned the town.

The party fighter just took out his axe and tried to cut the guy's head off.

I brought in the rest of the mob, in an attempt to at least show these guys that they can't just bludgeon their way through my encounters, but they tore through the mob like they weren't there.

I was lost as to how to handle this. On the one hand, they just overthrew the mob which had put the town under it's heel. On the other hand, it looked like they had just moved in to be the new bosses. I decided to not push that angle, as they'd already gotten big enough egos in that game.

[Glawackus]

One of the players in my group decided to step up and try DMing an Eberron game. We went into a cave with some goblins. I was a warforged fighter.

DM: "One of the goblin charges at you. What's your AC?"
Me: "19" (please note that I do not remember my actual AC)
DM: "There's no effect. It's your turn."
Me: "I grab the goblin and throw it at the other ones."

This was, for both of us, our introduction to the grapple rules.

[RTGoodman]

This was, for both of us, our introduction to the grapple rules.

Those are always great. It wasn't our first experience with the Grapple rules, but we had to sit with several PHBs open for a few encounters with my grapple-focused Monk who, at some point, used some rope and a grappling hook to lasso and eventually wrestle with a dragon. It was awesome.

[Curmudgeon]

I would submit that anybody who can't see that "unlimited 0th level spells" is a bad idea, shouldn't be DMing.

He got talked into it by the guy playing a Sorcerer. Unlimited Prestidigitation and Arcane Mark didn't seem like such a big deal, and the DM just didn't think things through. He thought he could compensate for things like unlimited Disrupt Undead by beefing up encounters. And maybe if he'd controlled the pace by having our party on the run things would have worked out. But unlimited anything, when the players are driving the course of events, is just ridiculous.

Oh, I forgot to add one thing. After flooding the enemy burrow, I started piling their corpses in our wagon. When the DM asked why, I said I was going to carve them up for meat, because despite a week's journey back to town unlimited Purify Food and Drink would make them just perfect; and I could pay virtually nothing for wagonloads of garbage to add vegetable sides to the steaks. I could feed the whole town, charging half the regular cost for food. Profit!

That was when he started crying.

[Dr Bwaa]

That was when he started crying.

And right he was to do so. Which is not to say that you were not right to do what you did =D

[Arbitrarity]

Clearly, unlimited cantrips need to be higher level. Like 9-10.

Except Cure Minor, repair minor, and any other abusable cantrips from splatbooks . And maybe create water, though most dungeons counld drain out into the surrounding ground (which would, of course, cause some structural issues).

[nargbop]

I am a fragile and helpless DM, bound to my oh-so-clever story. I will not DM again until I've played another thousand hours with multiple groups and multiple systems.

One of my friends has the right idea about DMing - he plans ONLY plot arcs and general plans. No building descriptions, no floor plans, no personal descriptions, no tactics - he comes up with those on the fly. He can handle that because he has an excellent memory and can reliably remember that he said three doors of iron, not four. He has entertaining, memorable characters, and the story progresses because they STAY IN CHARACTER.

It's all possible because we trust each other to tell the story to each other together. Woah. Revelation.

[arguskos]

-Once, a gnome dropped on our party tent at night - from a dirigible. The gnomes were terribly sorry for the broken (and bloody) tent and offered us a ride in return.

Wow. Any other gnome+dirigible stories out there?

Also, on the "infinite cantrips/orisons" topic, I actually allow them, sans Cure/Inflict Minor Wounds. You prepare your cantrips, and can cast whatever you prepared that day an unlimited number of times. It's not really that bad.

-argus

[Dr Bwaa]

not a gnome-dirigible story, but my gnome bard (ECL 14ish I think at the time) once stole and hotwired and subsequently almost destroyed a prototype Gnomish hovertank called the OmniGorgon5000. In Lantan. Normal Faerun tech level. With a 70mm cannon

[MagpieWench]

not a gnome-dirigible story, but my gnome bard (ECL 14ish I think at the time) once stole and hotwired and subsequently almost destroyed a prototype Gnomish hovertank called the OmniGorgon5000. In Lantan. Normal Faerun tech level. With a 70mm cannon

Made of awesome :)

[MagpieWench]

Due to (unasked-for) cheese mongering by previous DM, my bard has access to Fire descriptor spells (don't ask, it's weird).

The next GM had us facing about 5 dozen undead pirates, a dozen dire sharks, and the BBEG.

Um... I didn't do much with the undead pirates, but the sorcerer and I pretty much wiped out the dire sharks and the BBEG in 3 rounds. Firebrand at 15th level is pretty dang sweet for a bard, even if you can't cast it very often.

The DM was concerned that this would be a TPK, but, not so much, really. I don't think he'd really *looked* at the character sheet copies we'd given him.

[Zuki]

I'll tell you guys the Saga of Murray. As a story about a goat, a submarine, and a demigod, I think this counts. It's a little long, but I'm proud of this little epic.

This was an Ebberon campaign, where we'd acquired a really amazing submarine loosely based off of the Apparatus of Kwalish wondrous item, except instead of a big barrel that unfolded into a lobster, it was a big submarine shaped like a giant sea turtle, that traveled ridiculously fast. The crazy half-orc artificer NPC that designed it was a pretty awesomely grandiose guy.

So after we'd taken our Submarine to Xen'Drik, so we could go investigate an evil world-threatening cult named Ashbane and their nefarious doings underneath Phoenix Bay, we left the sub disguised and hidden along the shore, with the Gnome Warlock cohort our LG Crusader had. Shame she was such a lousy roleplayer, that could have been a great odd couple. The party got involved in a longer-than-expected jungle expedition to help out another NPC (Damn Traveler's Curse!), and apparently in the meantime Merry, the warlock, had taken up dancing and busking to get by. We meet up with her again as she's threatening to blast some customer that wasn't paying well and was trying to talk her into coming back to his place...with, it is implied, the goat he had with him as well.

We drive the creepo off, and someone makes a crack about eating the goat for dinner. Someone else raises a fuss about that. We can't eat this goat! As a druid, and more importantly a shifter, I feel obliged to pipe up that I know a really killer recipe for goat curry.

We buy another goat for dinner and keep the one we rescued, who we name Murray.

By the end of that session, everyone is totally convinced adopting Murray is the Greatest Thing Ever. I observe that with two more levels of druid, I could Awaken him. Or teach him tricks in the mean time, and prep Speak With Animals. I didn't have an animal companion, so why not? We've already got a pretty big NPC cast and a fondness for adopting more, and we are dead-set on making Murray The Goat the party mascot. Because it's totally worth it to take a goat with you everywhere you go.

The DM is...less than enthused, and hopes it'll wear off by next session. No such thing. We take the goat with us onto the submarine. The submarine that we're going to use to (somehow) infiltrate a secret underwater base.

While we're maneuvering the sea-turtle submarine down to the base, we get attacked by one of the leaders of the cult we're trying to take down: The Destoyer, or rather, an extremely powerful fallen celestial that's taken on that mantle and personal in order to steal worship and power. As far as we're concerned, an unstoppable demigod. ...Fortunatelly, not that bright. The illusion spell we had put on the Turtle Sub holds and he thinks it's just an unusual beast. Big Game Hunter time!

A terse game of cat-and-mouse ensues, with us finally realizing that this was an encounter the DM intended for us to be useful in, to 'win' in some sort, and we start fighting back using the sub's magic missile battery and natural weapons. He starts fighting back too--and The Destoyer's Trident stabs right through the Crusader, killing her. It was a fairly sad and touching death scene, which she'd asked for as she had to leave the game. I think the goat even licked a little blood off her confusedly, and it was especially poignant as she'd taken the Hydrophobia flaw, and was absolutely terrified of the submarine and sure it was a deathtrap.

So, after that, the sub's leaking, we're freaking out, how are we going to survive this?

We toss an Immovable Rod out the back airlock/hatch of the sub, figuring at the speeds we're traveling suddenly running into that thing is going to hurt. DM rolls....and rules we nailed him right in the heart.

But The Destroyer's not finished yet, and Aounka, our headstrong and valorous elf duskblade, wants to finish the job. Amaranth (the crusader) deserves vengeance!

Everyone else evacuates the sub...and Aounka rams it into the Destoyer at full speed in a glorious underwater explosion of green fire.

The punchline?

We evacuated Murray but forgot our friend's corpse. Like, specifically mentioned casting Water Breathing on the goat and taking him with us, and completely forgot that I, as an 8th level Druid, could have taken her with us and applied a little old Reincarnate when everything was over. But no, clearly, the goat we picked up yesterday was more important.

So now we're wandering through the ruins of an abandoned Giant city in an underwater dome, with a goat.

At that point, the DM just kind of snapped and, the next time we realized we'd forgotten to mention Murray and what happened to him or what he was doing, he ruled we'd lost track of him in the city, and that he'd been found and eaten by a cultist, desperate for something to eat instead of rats.

Thus ended the Saga of Murray.

[Kalirren]

So we were playing this one module from a book (for interest of not spoiling the book, I'll not say which it is,) and we were doing it in Eberron because my DM thought it would be a good idea. There was a staff hidden in the private chest of the captain of a pirate ship, and as a sidequest, a local wizard had asked us to get it for him.

So our party naturally split up around town according to our degree of intelligence and common sense, as was the norm. A few people tried to look for a way to keep an eye on the captain and his ship in a subtle fashion. Meanwhile, the confused sorcerer and confused warforged psion robot went around asking for the captain by name in the market square, thinking his name was associated with a vague note about turnips that we had found pertaining to the main quest. They had assumed that "turnips" was a codeword of some sort.

Well, it wasn't long before the captain and his first mate come looking for these strange fellows who are asking about him. They find the two idiots still in the market square, and proceed to question them extensively. The captain and his first mate don't buy the (true) explanation that the two party members had found his name 'associated" with "turnips."

Little do they know that the rest of the party happens to turn the corner just at that moment (essentially by DM fiat.) The captain and first mate proceed to try to shake the sorcerer and psion down; naturally, we get into a fight, and due to the surprise factor of the rest of the party showing up, we win.

We tie the up the KO'ed captain and first mate and transport them in a manure wagon to the abandoned house of the guy we're supposed to be looking for in the main quest. We wake them up and ask them everything about his ship and the staff he's carrying under detect thoughts. Having found out that the staff is in the captain's chest, we knock them out again.

We then spend half an hour iRL arguing about an approach, during which we come up with a half-baked plan of having the changeling disguise himself as the first mate and try to drag the others aboard ship in ropes whih can be easily loosened so as to get the jump on the crew.

We're halfway down to the docks in disguise, still in the same old manure wagon, when the changeling cleric (who had come up with the first idea) comes up with an even crazier idea: the worforged psion is a shaper, and he'd summoned a few constructs before. Couldn't they just sink the ship? The warforged didn't have to breathe, he could just sink to the bottom of the harbor and retrieve the staff from the wreckage.

This, incidentally, was the instant when our DM regretted moving the module setting to Eberron.

The plan works perfectly. The warforged psion sinks to the bottom of the harbor and summons a few astral constructs who sink the ship. The rest of the party beseiges the dock and snipes off half the fleeing crew, who promptly try to contract a warforged of their own to find the captain's chest and bring back whatever was in it. But our warforged is already down there, and finds the key still in the cabinet where the captain thought it was, opens the chest, grabs the staff, puts everything back, and leaves. He meets the other (similarly clueless) warforged on the way and waves hi. The other warforged goes in, grabs the key and the chest, and goes back to the rest of the pirates.

It was perfect.

But the best moment was when we asked our DM to see if there were any more ship-in-harbor scenarios that were vulnerable to the same trick. He looked ahead about 50 pages and facepalmed.

[Talanic]

Me talking.

"...Okay. So your plan to clean out the manor house of kobolds is to unleash the zombie apocalypse?"

The party was good-aligned (well, chaotic good and chaotic neutral). They didn't follow through with the plan, but it was worrying to learn that the bard was actually the party's voice of reason.

[Chronos]

I think the goat even licked a little blood off her confusedly, and it was especially poignant as she'd taken the Hydrophobia flaw, and was absolutely terrified of the submarine and sure it was a deathtrap.

What's a goat doing taking flaws?

[MisterSaturnine]

Awesome goat story.

This is...I...I can't even...words...so amazing...

On another note, flames...at the side of my face...breathing...heaving breaths...

[monty]

But the breaking point came when we had tracked some powerful enemies to their underground lair. My Cleric just sat down and started casting Create Water, repeating every 6 seconds for many thousands of castings. Instead of heading down into untold dangerous underground encounters, we flooded the enemies out and ambushed them as they tried to escape death by drowning.

I have to ask, did your DM even bother to calculate the volume of the lair? Unless it was tiny, you'd be unlikely to fill it for a long time, even if there was no drainage or anything. Remember, cubing numbers tends to make them really big after a point.

To put it into perspective, a 2 meter deep Olympic-size pool (minimum depth) is about 660,000 gallons. At CL 20, barring a bunch of free quickens or something, that would take slightly longer than a day to fill. The average lair is probably bigger than a swimming pool, and if your BBEG doesn't notice water filling his room slowly over the course of a day, then your BBEGs aren't very smart.

[Dairun Cates]

I have a player that routinely does this. Mind you, I fully expect him to do something patently ridiculous, and I can usually catch it, but every so once in a while he does something so OUT of the norm that he ends up just gimping a problem the players were meant to solve. I'm not complaining. He always keeps things interesting, but yeah... wow.

This is the guy that took a super hard boss and managed to convince his own clones that he was an imposter with a stupid high disguise and bluff check.