Luna eladrin's page

That would be "astral projection", a level 9 spell.

If you have Manual of the Planes, it also has a dream skill or feat (I do not remember which) with which you can travel in the Region of Dreams while dreaming.

One of my players plays a druid and another an elf fighter. Every evening they use their survival skills to find food in the forest - they specifically look for herbs and flavoring and then describe how they cook really fantastic meals for the rest of the group.

From the last trader they met they bought wine and nutmeg.

One of my players plays a rogue with an extravagant lifestyle. He always meets his contacts in the most expensive restaurants, throws huge parties and wears expensive clothing (and hates it when this clothing gets dirty).

On the other hand, one of my players plays a monk, who had a winter blanket which got so dirty that as DM I seriously considered letting it mutate into some kind of filth ooze!

Same group, different situation:

There are some kobolds in the dungeon who are not pleased at all with their king. The group meets some of these kobolds. The elf fighter and the elf druid start attacking them at once. The female rogue (the same one that so needed a bath) climbs upon a pedestal with a successfull climb check. Then she begins talking in draconic: "Bow to your queen!"
I let her roll an intimidate check and she rolls a natural 20!
Now she is officially the queen of the rebel kobolds. She has introduced the halfling to them as her fiancée and their king. This would not have been very convincing, if not for the following deeds the kobolds saw him do:

- when fighting against the gelatinous cube (which the kobolds believe is the ghost of the dwarf Druingar Glintaxe) they saw the halfling killing it in one blow with his magical sickle. (He was actually giving the death blow after the cube had been already thoroughly damaged by the other characters.)
- when meeting 3 skeletons he rolled a 19 for turning undead and instantly destroyed all three of them.

The fun is that the player plays the halfling as a character who is frightened of everything. Not really a coward, since he does what he has to do and fights against monsters, but who is constantly afraid. He is even afraid of imaginary monsters and believes every rumor he hears, which makes him even more afraid. Yet the kobolds see him as a powerful warrior and hero, and their rebel king.

I am running Crown of the kobold king for a group of four kids (aged 12-14). I ran a random encounter with 3 bugbears. I drew a part of the forest on the battle map, and added a small pool just for variety. They tried to negotiate with the bugbears, but this was unsuccessfull, basically because some of the players already decided to attack while the others were still negotiating. Then in the middle of the fight one of the players (playing a female rogue) suddenly remarks: "A bath! At last, I desperately need a bath!" and jumps in the pool. I let her roll a swim check and she succeeds. So far so good. However, another player, playing a halfling cleric of Yondalla, is engaged to the female rogue and she invites him to join her in the water. The cleric is wearing scale mail. The cleric jumps into the water and - yes! - fails his swim check and begins to drown. The elf fighter (a third player) leaves the fight with the bugbears and is just in time to rescue the halfling cleric. The elf pulls him out of the water and then takes his longbow to shoot the bugbears.
Next round. The female rogue decides to pretend to drown, because she wants her halfling friend to join her again. She succeeds at a bluff check. Then I cannot believe what happens next: the halfling jumps in the water again! And - yes - fails his swim check again and begins to drown again! The elf comes running to rescue him a second time!

They finally defeat the bugbears, with a lot of trouble. It left me wondering about giving them extra experience points because of the dangerous environment :-) but of course it wasn't dangerous - they created their own dangerous environment!

Haste gives an extra partial action. Since the feats you name (rapid shot, flurry of blows etc.) are full-round actions, you cannot use them in this extra partial action.

Run this as follows:
Give the PCs their full round action first. If they can use their full attack (so if they do not move except for a 5-foot step, etc.), they can use flurry of blows, rapid shot, etc. normally.
Then consider the extra partial action as a separate action. They can then either choose to make an extra attack (standard action as attack action, normal highest attack value with primary weapon) or take another standard action or a move action. The haste then has nothing to do with the feats you refer to, since a partial action is not a full round.

Of course, good idea. And I seem to remember that there was a 3rd edition rewrite!

After reading an article in Dragon Magazine about upgrading the Sea Wyvern, I decided to turn this into a side quest for the group. Basically they will find clues that a wizard years ago has been experimenting with magic items especially for ships (e.g. the dragon figurehead from Stormwrack and several items from Arms & Equipment guide), which are hidden somewhere in a hoard. This hoard is located in the Lost Citadel on the Isle of Dread. The PCs can find a key to the location in the wizard's tomb. With the key they can either enter the location or activate it (I was thinking of having it lie partly on another plane or trapped in another timeline.)
I use "deadly treasure" (from Dungeon 41) as the basis for this tomb, but I am thoroughly rewriting this adventure. Basically I want less combat and more puzzles. So far I have the following (some from the original module, others improvised):
- An ambush outside the tomb (some old enemies of the PCs); since this will already be a difficult fight, for which the PCs will not be prepared, as they will not expect it at all, this is the reason I want less combat inside the tomb.
- A trap where they have to navigate through a room full of water
- A room with no visibility at all, which they have to navigate while being attacked by an incorporeal monster
- A labyrinth with invisible stalkers
- A bag of holding trap (the corridor ends in a bag of holding and they have to crawl through it in the dark)
- A double teleport trap (with 2 locations which look identical)
- A trap with a force cage and lightning (ideally shot through the bars from the outside while the group are within)
- A logic puzzle where the group has to reason out the order of activating several handles on the basis of just enough clues

I can use some other puzzles, and perhaps riddles, but only very original ones (I have a player who instantly knows the answer to every riddle I throw at him). If an idea involves combat, it should not be just monsters attacking, but tricky tactical situations. I am also looking for a trick or trap involving the other planes.
As the wizard was not evil (he was actually good and was protecting his tomb because he was worried these powerful items would fall into the wrong hands), I have avoided undead and evil outsiders. So far, with all the changes I made, the dungeon has turned out elemental-themed.
Also, there is a silver dragon guarding the tomb. Ideally they should not fight the dragon, but it should have some kind of test or riddle for the PCs. Perhaps this should be linked to the dragon figurehead in some way (which is not in the tomb, but in the citadel).
Any ideas are very welcome. They can be Olman themed (the wizard was not an Olman, but was an Olman expert). Or something with time (time paradoxes, time standing still, etc.)
You cannot use teleport or passwall or dimension door inside the tomb. However, you can use plane shift, shadow walk and etherealness. This is not generally known. They will have to find out by experimenting with those spells.
They will be level 13 when they enter the tomb.

I remember reading somewhere on this forum that someone planned to let the PCs come out of Golismorga with a water spout. Did anyone use this? What were the results? When the Cerulean Curtain is destroyed, I imagine because of the high pressure the water comes rushing in very fast. I am thinking of a water spout high up in the air, making the group come out directly via the shaft in Thanaclan. It will be fun. But what damage does it do? Just 20D6? Or more? Is there a drowning risk? A pressure risk? And what will the results be for the rooms and corridors under Thanaclan? Will they be flooded? Will this be temporary? (I guess so.)

My group successfully negotiated with Emraag. They managed to keep one of Lavinia's tribute chests (and handed it back to Lavinia). Instead they proposed to Emraag to build an enormous Emraag statue in Farshore. Of course he agreed. It will have a continual flame in its mouth. When the statue is finished, there will be a celebration and this will become a yearly Farshore holiday (when Emraag gets new tribute of course!)
I think this was so clever and original a solution that I had to put it here!

Hopefully you'll be just as happy when she starts bringing forth the Unspeakable Horrors when she hits high school. :)

Can't wait! :-)

Let some Lotus Dragons have survived, because they e.g. were away on a mission when the PC's attacked their base. When the PC's are about to leave for Kraken's Cove, they hear disturbing rumors that these Lotus Dragons are after them. It will draw them into the Sasserine underworld first. If you want to make it more exciting, let a sniper appear when they are at the party at Castle Teraknian or in another public place.
Or you can lure them to the house of Brissa Santos. I had them investigate a fire there (and they immediately thought Vanthus would be there).
Some Vanthus sightings in Sasserine might also help.

Alternately you can just let them go to Kraken's Cove and have the festivities when they return (e.g. as part of the Wormfall Festival - you them probably have to have a festival lasting 2 or 3 days, otherwise they cannot rescue Lavinia from the bullywugs).

I think these are great ideas to get the PCs roleplaying. Especially if someone has a crush on Lavinia.

The gravorg, definitely. And the kobolds from Crown of the Kobold King.

I once based an adventure location on Bryce Canyon. Except I made all the hoodoos into salt pillars...

I remember an adventure called Tallow's deep, from dungeon 18. We were about levels 7-9 then, but the monsters got us running. I think it was goblins, not kobolds, but they were just as nasty. And had lots of small corridors, of the kind in which you could not cast an old-fashioned 1st level fireball...

I recently bought a stuffed Cthulhu for my 12-year old daughter as a Christmas present. She was so happy with it. I had never expected Cthulhu to make people happy :-)

Since you are already considering talking it over with your friend, you could also consider this: the next time he makes a new character in your campaign (if you are DM-ing), discuss his background story with him. If he wants to play a slacker again, ask him what would get him motivated in game. And then create a situation in game which should get him motivated according to his back story. Make it into an interesting story, so that he e.g. will find his motivation around level 5, 6 or so and slowly works towards it.

If you are a player in the same campaign, you could suggest making 2 characters who are e.g. already related or already friends. They you could put something similar in his back story (e.g. only his brother knows how to get him motivated, etc.). This way you could hopefully turn this into a fun roleplaying experience, especially because you say your friend knows how to roleplay.

That said, there are players who play the same character time and time again, just because it is within their comfort zone. So I think you have to make some allowances for that.

At the moment I am DM-ing for 4 kids (11, 12, 13, 13 years old). I basically had them make characters by asking what type of characters they wanted to play, and they made surprisingly original choices (only one character was based on a book, the rest were inventions of their own). Then I just started DM-ing and explained rules when situations came up. They are picking up the rules (D&D 3.5) easily and now (after about 10 sessions) are even beginning to get an idea which choices are optimal and which are subobtimal. They are also really roleplaying. What surprises me most are the original uses they have for items and spells. They are really creative. They also remember every little clue I give them. And they are having great fun, which is most important of all.
I try not to steer them too much in any direction. First of all I am curious what they will do, and secondly I want them to have as much fun as I had when starting D&D.
One of the players has even begun writing an in-game diary, which is great fun to read.

We have played the battle in a long drawn-out session. The most exciting part was the battle with Vanthus, who really turned out to be a problem to defeat for my group. He also got the chance to let the black pearl drop on the ground. The PC wizard saved the day by teleporting away with it, risking the acid gas coming out of it (my players thought that the gas would give them savage fever, so it was a really heroic thing to do).
The funny thing was that Vanthus made his will save (which is really very low) 3 times!

Cool! I have adapted Vanthus heavily, especially given him more HP. I am still looking for some cool one-liners for him!

I have also added some extra foes, especially in the water (skulvyns and ixitxachitls), since my PCs will have a lot of water animals summoned (they have a druid PC and there are various druid NPCs cooperating with them).

I really like the telekinesis idea. I am definitely going to use that.
Actually my player group are their own worst enemies. They made a type of cluster bomb which is wildly inaccurate - chances are when they drop one, that one of the wooden buildings in Farshore catches fire instead of an enemy. And if they set an enemy ship on fire, I can use the same tactic sir Francis Drake did: send a burning ship to ram the enemy.
So I definitely expect a lot of fire damage. And the vrocks can of course also use telekinesis on one or more of the cluster bombs :-)

They have also built a bunker, which is well-hidden, but it has only one exit. Lavinia is in there. So if the enemies discover the exit, they are in trouble. They actually want to disguise someone else as Lavinia and put her on one of the ships, but I am not sure whether they are going through with this plan. It will certainly be a lot of fun if they do.

If you want to lure them out of the fortress, you can make them really desperate by staging more and more night attacks, so that the chances of characters getting a good night's rest become slimmer and slimmer. No need to take away cleric powers then.

Also when reading your post instantly 2 adventure titles sprang to mind:

1) The siege of Kratys Freehold (dungeon 33)
2) Tammeraut's fate (dungeon 106)

If Khala waits and follows the fight telepathically he can teleport away and give the wastrilith a good shouting at for failing him twice now :-D

"You imbecile! Do I have to do EVERYTHING myself here?" ;-)

That would be awesome!

My group is finally going to play the attack on Farshore by the Crimson Fleet this Friday (after more than a year's delay). I am really looking forward to it! Nice for the final D&D session of this year.

My original savage tide group was mostly evil. Since 2 of the players have stopped playing because of lack of time, there is now still 1 evil character left and 3 neutralls with some evil tendencies.
But the campaign went well until the moment the two players stopped. It had a sort of "us against the world" feel. Characters did not fight among each other and it did not get tasteless.
What I noticed, however, that some evil characters had a tendency towards neutrality, so they were not all that evil in the end.

The best one was a ranger with an absolute hatred for humanity (she even sacrificed her own brother to her devil patron), but who went all soft whenever an animal was in danger.

That sounded like a smashing combat!

They must have used up resources by now. Let Khala send all the skinwalkers after them to weaken them some more, then if necessary send the hezrou, and then finally attack them himself, preferably when they have used their best spells on the other foes.

My Meravanchi clan (except Manthalay) are going to be moderately racist.

My Manthalay was quite racist. I made him into a landowner with a passion for hunting (hunting trophies in his house on Farshore) and an idea that gentry was better than ordinary people, and white people were better than Olman. I gave him exclusively Olman servants, who were not exactly slaves, but underpaid and treated badly. Moreover he was constantly complaining about them.

Unfortunately this was one of things that got him killed...

I have given Avner an older brother called Caldric. I needed him as a nemesis for one of the PCs.
In my campaign Zebula is the only living Meravanchi left, and yes, he will soon have a grudge against the PCs (who are more or less responsible for the deaths of all the other family members).

Using the shadow pearl in the lighthouse is a really cool idea! I wish I had thought of that!

I have combined the bow with a magical quiver. The quiver creates magical arrows randomly - i.e. randomly for the PCs, but I plan to put special arrows in it sometimes in order to give the PCs an advantage; you could even add arrows of demonslaying then :-)
Of course the quiver only works when it is near the bow.

The previous group just stopped before the final battle of TOD, so I had to get the new characters to level 10. Basically they make the same journey as in SWW, but are confronted with the consequences of the actions of the previous PCs (e.g. I played Tammeraut's fate with the previous group - they sort of managed to seal off Dagon's maw, but not good enough, so it is slowly opening again when the second group approaches this spot - and I have also added some ships taken over by savage creatures here and there). This has the nice advantage that previous plotlines are re-introduced during the sea voyage.
When they approach journey's end, some demons will teleport aboard their ship and attack. The enemy thinks these new PCs are reinforcements (and they are of course) and wants to prevent them reaching Farshore in time. I am trying to plan it so that they arrive in the nick of time to fight alongside the other characters in the siege of Farshore.

Drac was indeed very nasty. The fight in the lighthouse was memorable. I have also linked Dagon to TLD (instead of Holashner), so that they have reasons to go to Golismorga.
I liked DM-ing the Freeport trilogy. One comment one of my players made after having defeated Milton Drac: "I think this is the first night my character can sleep the whole night through since arriving in Freeport."

One very simple way to start is to give your character a hobby (or a craft or a profession) and occasionally let him or her talk about it. One of my players plays a brewer who knows all about beer. He sometimes tells things about various kinds of beer, and of course as the DM I describe what kinds of beer they have in any new village they arrive in.
This is a very easy thing to do, much easier even than roleplaying a paladin with a code.
If your friends roleplay, then take your cues from them. Let your character react to comments their characters make in game. That is a good way to start.

I have had a similar problem, since I had a suboptimal group when 2 of my players left. I ran some new characters through the Freeport trilogy and now they are about to meet the old ones in Farshore. In order to link the two campaigns I added some sea encounters and changed the nameless god into Dagon.
The Freeport trilogy is flexible enough to add some links to STAP, e.g. animal smugglers, thieves' guilds, etc.

That is really nasty :-)

Since it has two heads, it can do two extract brains attacks per round.

A fiendish mind-flayer or a mind-flayer halfdemon with the two-headed template? It would look awesome!

Good to hear you are still playing the STAP. We will be soon again, after a year's break playing the Freeport trilogy (long story), and we will be reaching the Emraag moment shortly. Hope it will be as epic as yours!

I was DM-ing "Hollow's last hope" for a group of teenagers. They got to the lumberjack camp, and managed to befriend the lumberjacks. They spent the night there and everybody was telling stories. So I let one of the lumberjacks tell the story of the terrible Tatzlwyrm that was hidden in the forest. One of the players began to tell his own monster story, about the terrible Tockhåkhân, a horrible monster that had killed nearly all the members of a wandering group of monks.
The next day the group travels further, and I describe that they hear a creaking noise in the dark forest.
One player suddenly shouts: "O no, it's the Tockhåkhân!"
Such fun!

I somehow doubt the battery would work on the ipad after 5,000 years. Also there are things that people could make mistakes in translating the user manual of the tome if they tried.

Quote:

That's exactly what I meant. They would have no idea what this thing is, since they cannot get it to work, and they make up all kinds of mysterious theories about it.

Some very simple tricks I pulled recently (compared to the white whales):

One player plays a monk, and he has been using his winter blanket for all kinds of practical things. So much that the winter blanket has become associated with this monk.
An evil group of adventurers steals the winter blanket and plants it on a crime scene. Such fun, especially when the players were wondering why the evil rogue would steal the winter blanket :-)

Another one of my players plays a wizard, and was so very glad when he got the fireball spell. So they were fighting an ogre assassin. The wizard cast the fireball. Of course the ogre saves and gets no damage because of his evasion. I let him comment: "I hate wizards!"
Next round the wizard angrily targets him with a magic missile. But the ogre had a brooch of shielding. Another dent in the reputation of this wizard :-)

One of my players has a yellow D20 with which I have never seen him roll higher than a 10!

When I DM and the BBEG has to roll a saving throw, about half the time I roll a 1. When I play a group of mooks of which my players are sure they could never hit them, I usually roll on average 2 or 3 crits, and several times I have rolled 2 or 3 20s in a row.

Of course this must be coincidence!?

I think another reason for this is that the older something is, the less is known about it. The example of Troy mentioned earlier is a good example.
And the less is known about something, the more mysterious it gets. And the more exciting. And the more stories will be told about it based on legends, myths and half-truths.

When an artifact is made last Tuesday, you could almost (real-world analogy) just read the user guide and use it. But the user guide, in fantasy terms probably a vague and cryptic tome, gets lost first. And if it still exists, no one can read it anymore if it is older, since it is written in an ancient, cryptic language. And if someone can read the language, he or she probably could only understand half of the text, since it belongs to an ancient culture of which practically nothing is known anymore except myths and legends.

So I think it is basically a storytelling device to make things more mysterious and exciting.

Just imagine that in about 5,000 years from now someone will find an iPad during an archaeological dig. Would he know what it is for? And what to do with it? That would be awesome!

I started playing in 1982 and DM-ing in 1988. I am still the DM of my currently 3 groups.

Do you still enjoy the same things?

Mostly, yes. I am still excited when I buy a new book, though not as excited as when my husband and I bought the first edition Monster Manual. We had to go all the way to Utrecht by train, since it had the only gaming shop nearby (it was actually a book store with a small gaming section). I remember how we were leafing through the book together on the way home, and oo-ed and aah-ed almost every monster.

Did you experienced some more dramatic changes?

We started out with a sandbox game, and slowly roleplaying began to creep in. This went very slowly. Our first DM had a sandbox campaign, but all the players began to long more and more for roleplaying as well, and began to roleplay more and more. When my husband started as DM in 1985, this became more important, but the adventures he made were still classic dungeon crawls, usually with a small plot in the final rooms of the dungeon. When I started DM-ing in 1988, I began with adventures which had solid stories. I still have 4 players from those days (now playing in different groups).

Do you yearn for the good old days?

Sometimes. I miss the feeling I had during my first playing sessions. I am now DM-ing a group with three kids, and I see the same enthousiasm. They want to play all the time. It reminds me of those days.
I try to let them make their own blunders and not interfere and suggest builds, special weapons, etc. They have to learn the game their way, as I did when I was young. It is part of this first D&D experience fun feeling.

What still get you in role playing game?

I like DM-ing a lot. I have my own campaign world since 1988 and it has really come alive now. I have 3 groups playing in different time periods in the same world, which is great fun: the PCs and NPCs of one period are the legendary heroes of another, etc.
I have noticed that my focus has shifted in the course of those years. When I started as a DM, it was all about involving the PCs in the story I wanted to tell, and to see where it went. Now part of my focus is not only inside the story, but also out of it. Now I am more concerned with whether the pace is right, whether all the players get enough screen time, whether all the players have a good time, etc. etc.

It is also great there is so much material now, and lots of it is of high quality as well. I hardly write my own adventures anymore (also for lack of time of course), though I do some heavy adaptation to make adventures and campaigns fit into my own campaign world.
I guess I will keep DM-ing as long as it's fun and as long as my players have fun and keep coming. Yes, even in a retirement home if at all possible.

I actually DM 3 groups at the moment.

DM (me): translator with her own company

First group:

1) Mathematics teacher and student advisor
2) Accountancy teacher/accountant with her own company
3) Secondary school student (high school)
4) Historian (has no fixed job, but does archeology work, etc.)

Second group:

1) Same mathematics teacher/student advisor
2) IT student (learning to program computer games)
3) Website designer, painter and volunteer worker in a cinema (program planner)
3) IT advisor (head of department), also organizes LARP events
5) Another secondary school student (junior high)

Third group:
Three kids, ages 13, 12 and 11. Two are in secondary school (junior high), the youngest one is in the final grade of primary school.

Perhaps the Burowao tribe has a ritual where a prospective husband must prove his mettle, especially something where he must prove his courage or strength.
Of course this will be a problem for the cowardly Avner (which he will of course deny), and the group has the choice of letting Avner do the test (which will fail) or rig something up (illusions, polymorph, you name it).

Perhaps the ritual involves swimming in a spot where the dragon eel is regularly sighted?

Worst player:

He wanted to sell the other PCs, not as slaves or anything, but as equipment.
He was always comparing D&D to WOW.
He asked me whether there were also any sidequests.
He found a combat-rich session boring and asked me when the real action would come (the other 2 players had a great time).

Worst DM:

He had a dungeon consisting of a room with one monster and treasure, stairs to a lower level, a room with one monster and treasure, stairs to a lover level, etc. The storyline was that we had to search for an artifact. I expect it would have been in the lowest room, with a monster of course, which we would hack down in one round. But I will never know for sure, since the campaign stopped long beforehand.
When we kept defeating his monsters, he complained that he no longer knew how to challenge us, since we could beat all his monsters.
When we wanted to attack a small village, which had so far been described as poor and small, it suddenly had a well-stocked fortress with an army in it.

I have a similar group with 3 PCs new to the game. Whe have played about 3 sessions now. What I have seen so far:

- See to it that they have a healer (cleric/druid). If no one wants to play a healer, then send an NPC cleric along with the party, only in order to heal, or give them a wand of cure light wounds. The reason for this is that new players tend to underestimate the damage they can take (at least mine do).

- A rogue might also be useful (depending on the adventures you choose; whether there are lots of traps) and at least 1 fighter type.

- If these players do not like complex rules, they probably do not want to play a wizard or sorcerer just yet. Mine don't.

- Choose adventures that are meant for one level lower than the average group level (at least, when there are only 3 PCs). This is hard at level 1, so be easy on them as long as they are level 1 (give them lots of time to rest between encounters).

Have fun with your new group!

That is wonderful. Thank you for reacting so quickly.

Today I received the above-mentioned order, but Pathfinder Adventure Path #43 Haunting of Harrowstone was not in the box. I had ordered it, and it is also mentioned on the order slip, which means I have already paid for it.
It was not in the second package either.
The other articles were all there.

Could you please send it to me in a separate package? Thank you in advance.

My campaign world has always been homebrew. Since I have been DM-ing since 1989, I will probably keep using it, since I know it like the back of my hand.

I have always had players who came up with their own inventions. These were mostly magic items at first (which then had to be approved and usually first adapted by me), but lately also religions, variations on base classes and races and sometimes even cities and countries in my campaign world. I also encourage this with my players.

Recently I was very proud when my daughter (who is 12 years old and loves playing monks) asked if she could play a sort of "wild monk". So on my advice she swapped the stunning attack (which she did not like anyway) for "track" and we swapped some feats in order to give her "knowledge (nature)", etc. She is already in the habit of wanting to tweak her characters, so perhaps she will be DM with her own homebrew campaign world some day :-).

Thanks all! You make me blush!

I always try to avoid railroading.
I have a reason for it, too. Even if I have to rewrite part of an adventure, it is more interesting when the players come up with unexpected actions than if they just follow the plot. I think it makes for a better game, and a better roleplaying experience for the players. When they have the feeling that their actions matter, they get more involved in their characters and in the plot. And then their actions are again more interesting for the DM.
You will have to be able to improvise, though. I can imagine not all DMs are completely happy with that.

I was DM-ing the adventure Dead Man's Quest (from Polyhedron) as an introduction to the Freeport campaign. At one point the PCs hand over the "eye of the sea dragon" to the priest of the sea god, who brings it inside the cellar of the temple, where he places it into the dragon turtle statue that was there. Then he goes upstairs in order to reward the PCs, and in the meantime the villains (yellow sign cult members) are supposed to passwall into the cellar and steal the gem again. The PCs then have to track them to an abandoned warehouse and there to fight the cultists and a horrible monster.
One of my players was playing a rogue who was rather opportunistic as far as religion was concerned, since he was only praying to gods who relate directly to the adventure. At the exact moment the priest arrives from the cellar, the players states: "I am going down in order to pray to the sea god." The incredible thing was that all the other players thought that he was planning on stealing the gems, but he was really going to pray to the sea gos. And of course nobody knew about the passwall.
I hesitated for a moment and at first wanted to delay the theft by the yellow cultists, but then decided it was too beautiful a coincidence and I let it go. So the rogue suddenly saw the hole in the wall appearing, and I changed the whole adventure into a chase adventure (which was luckily still quite exciting, mostly since nearly all the PCs slipped in the grease spell one of the cultists threw at them). Of course they finally captured the cultists.