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Ever had the contingency spell end up being a really bad choice? A friend and I were talking about some old games. The subject came up from some things that had happened to one of my characters.
Long time ago I had a character that was mostly just very hard to kill tank. Throughout most of his adventuring campaign he was rarely all that close to dead even when many the other were unconscious. At some point we found one of the old staves that would explode on breaking, but we didn't have anyone that could use it. At some later point someone offered to cast a few high level spells for each of us as a reward. I got a contingency to cast some powerful AoE spells on staff when my character died. We all figured everyone else would be dead or at least smart enough to move away from him in that circumstance and I would have a decent chance to take some powerful bad guys down with me. This was back when it was permanent until activated and could hold several spells. Then I promptly for got about it.
Several levels (and RL months) later, my PC agreed to trade his life to buy the release of some important hostages. (Totally in character for that guy.) Ended up taking place on ship board meeting between 2 vessels. The GM even had me make a couple of wisdom and intelligence checks for reminders. I rolled in the low single digits every time. Right after I put my head on the chopping block, the GM says "Ok, the axe is swinging down... Let me see exactly what you have written down for that contingency spell from last fall." Wait what?!?
The explosion/spells sank both ships, killed most of the bad guys, the hostages, most of our allies, and a few of the PC's.
More recently, had a character going into a very lethal situation. We certainly did not expect very many of the party to survive. Campaign BBEG, super secret stronghold, annex of Hades in our world, yadda yadda...
My caster uses a contingency and teleport. If PC dies, teleport to the chamber of the high priest of the sun goddess. Already paid him for a resurrection, heal, and what ever other condition removals are needed. I even left some backup gear with him just in case. Like I said, was expecting it to be lethal. Then I would be able to prep a little bit and pop back to aid my fellows. All planned out for the worst case.
Only it wasn't quite the worst case.
We are working through the lair. In his office We got a list of names that are traitors working with the BBEG. All good info for cleaning up after word. GM is still smirking though.
We're in a later fight with some sort of constructs and a bunch of 'dimension step' assassins. All of a sudden in the middle of the fight, my brain suddenly makes a connection. I recognize the 3rd name on the list at the same time as the GM is rolling the dice for the assassins flanking me. I don't have a chance to say anything before I died. That 3rd name on the list is the high priest of the sun goddess.
After a short while my character does teleport back to the others, but he is now a skeletal champion/sorcerer blasting his former allies with debuff/curse spells. Becoming the skeletal champion also removed most of the weakness that had been plaguing my sorcerer. I ended up being a tougher fight than the BBEG.
The group all threatened to immediately kill any of my characters that tried to use contingency after the second time.
You have any stories of contingency gone wrong?
Wish I did. Most of my stories are from the Polymorph subschool...
These are a good chuckle though!
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Happend to a buddy of mine back in 3.5:
He was a Mystic Theurge and his Contingency was a "Heal" cast on him when he was heavyly wounded, as in under 25% of his max.HP. (We had wound threasholds you could see roughly how injured someone was, in 25% steps -> so a legit trigger).
Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. What could go wrong?
But you see, our buddy here was on the paranoid side of being prepared so he always buffed heavyly before starting the adventuring day. One of his new buffs he got was a buff spell that gave him several immunities of the undead form and he could keep it up the whole day, so he loved it. Its drawback was that he had to use Inflict Splls to heal himself while it was up and running, but what he was the groups healer anyway. Just memorized some of them and 2x Harm and had a bunch of Harm-Scrolls for emergencys.
All dandy and fine. He loved the immunities of it. Until two or three sessions after he got his Undead Immunities spell he actually got outflanked and ended up in a melee-pickle. He got whammied and lost about 80%-90% of his HP. But wasnt afraid really afraid and with a smirk announced that his Contingency would kick in, rescueing him. Except that while his immunities buff was up not only did he need Negative Energy to heal, Positive Energy damaged him...
*PUFF* - killed by his own Contingency.