Alright this is the Dungeon Board so I figure most of us are DMs if not sadists. As DMs we've all seen players loose their character's heads to the green mask in Tomb of Horrors or other similar "unfair" death traps. We have also created horrible monsters and used them to savage our friend's characters into unrecognizable lumps of pudding while they sat and wept at the loss - "sniff - rend." We've misled them with illusions when they depend on us (the fools) to give them the correct information about their environment. And yet they return all for the chance of being a hero.
So my question is, what stomach-clenching, player-wailing, TPK-inflicting, make-you-squirm-in-your-seat sort of horrors have you inflicted upon your party either by design or accident or should I say serendipity?
Sadistically yours,
Old Testament Great Green God
I'm in the process of introducing an intelligent weapon into my game. But not just any intelligent weapon - the rapier is possessed with the spirit of one of the players' dead sister! :D
The rapier spends it's time alternating from nagging the player to track down her killer and nagging the player for not eating right, staying out too late, etc. :D
That's pretty evil, Zherog. Worse still because the sword will probably telepathically call all of her intelligent magic item friends and rag on the poor guy.
The only thing worse I think would be a be an intelligent telepathic magic sword with the spirit of your mother inside. I can hear it now:
"Are you having impure thoughts about that scantily-clad true necromancer we're fighting?"
"No ma. I was just err - looking for a chink in her chaimail bikini - NO, I mean ARMOR! ARMOR!"
"Humph!"
-GGG
Hm, the worst thing that I ever did to my players? To be honest, I'm not outright malicious towards my players' characters. Nor have I ever accomplished a TPK, either by accident or by conscious choice.
That being said, I have came close to killing an entire party purely by accident when I ran a module from Dungeon (forgot the # and name at this point) where the pcs faced a ghost sorcerer in the depths of the ocean. His spells were not that terribly impressive but the fact that he was incorporeal and did ability scores draining is what killed 3 party members. But they did manage to defeat the ghost permanently though.
One other time though, I did manage to kill the same pc 4 times in a row (he ultimately lived though thanks to his ring of nine lives). It was just a matter of lucky rolls with criticals on almost every attack the npc did in two rounds. Burned 4 charges off the ring in 2 rounds though. I was shocked and impressed by the rolls that day and I thought "Wow, this npc is even better than I thought...maybe I made a miscalculation here?"
So far, I haven't killed pcs with the intention of actually doing so. The worst I did that was not lethal in any way was to place a *barrel of poverty* in a dungeon. ;)
I haven't ran a game in years but have played in many, and by far the most insidious foe was the medusan monk that had at least 15 levels up on any of the PCs. unfair? highly. In combat anyway. Took us hours to realize she was there to be reasoned with, not fought. especially dificult when there are PCs that think with their swords. Still makes me laugh when I thik about it.
That's pretty evil, Zherog.
It gets worse. :D One detail I left out: the character belongs to my wife. :D
***
In her PCs background (named Rosa), she was raised by this sister. The sister taught her how to survive on the streets - picking pockets, running scams, etc. Rosa came home one day to find her sister and her sister's boyfriend killed. In a panic, Rosa ran away and used the talents she learned from her sister to survive. One day, she stumbled upon a temple dedicated (as it was) to Olidammara. She was invited in to join the party, and found herself swept up. Soon after, she joined the clergy - though never really lost her larcenous ways.
That was the jist of the background I got from my wife for Rosa. As a DM, I was a little frustrated that Rosa never seemed too interested in trying to track down whomever murdered her sister. I'd talk to my wife about it and she'd say that Rosa just doesn't seem to have the time for it (even though I build in large chunks of "downtime" for the PCs to do what they want). So I decided it was time to push the issue a bit - and hence the magical rapier.
This is my first time ever including an intelligent magic weapon. It's been a lot of fun so far - in no small part because I get to nag my wife for a change. :P
In the second edition Psionisist's handbook, there was a Metadisipline called "Personality Switch" or something like that. . . when you did it, your had to make a Con check to avoid losing a point of Con for that day. Eventually, that game mechanic meant that you would have to switch back or die.
Anyway, my evil baddie had been switching bodies for centuries, his own form long dead and buried. . . however, he always had to hunt for new people to switch with - they always decayed rlatively fast. He would specifically look for the strongest and healthiest people he could find, catch them, use the power, and then leave them with his used up husks.
The party Paladin, er... fell victim... his new body had a 6 Con, dropping each day. . . it was fun. . . they couldn't even kill him ... the plot required the party to find a way to switch them back first... then he died a horrible death by the party Half-Giant.
The villian came back later in the campaign as an Arch-Lich (from Spelljammer) and TPKed the party. Oops...
Those were the days.
It gets worse. :D One detail I left out: the character belongs to my wife. :D
You must be suicidal, Zherog. Careful though, "gamemates" are still as near as I can tell a rare breed. Cudos on finding one.
:)
GGG
Hm, the worst thing that I ever did to my players? To be honest, I'm not outright malicious towards my players' characters. Nor have I ever accomplished a TPK, either by accident or by conscious choice.
I'm not actually a mean-hearted monster. In fact I am the characters' number one savior more times than not. Not that they know. Only I know what the real die roll was for that 7-headed cryohydra in Zenith Trajectory's breath weapon. Had I used it half the group would have been rolling up new characters. When I updated that "thing" to 3.5 it of course became the equivalent of Lernean.
That part was my bad. Oops ;)
Speaking of the Adventure Path, VIRTUE reminded me of the no-win encounter in "Life's Bazaar" where the final encounter is CR 18 or so (this in a level 1-3 adventure). In my version it featured a rakshasa monk 4/mindspy 3(Complete Warrior)/sorcerer 1 instead of the beholder. Well, the characters (six all about 5th level by that point - of course I scaled up) would not take "no-win" for an answer. So I applied about four rounds of non-lethal beatdown to them. Oh, they do hate their "Fluffy" as they have taken to calling rakshasa.
Funny thing is they have met the mind-reading shapeshifter twice since then not that they noticed. And yes, he has Deflect Arrows as a monk feat.
So I guess I am a mean-hearted monster after all.
Wink,
GGG
My fiance's rogue is attempting to 'earn' enough money to buy her parents back from the local mafia/theives' guild. What the party doesn't realize is that the guild's led by a sorcerous goblin with a taste for gnomes that actually killed another PCs family. I love tieing multiple storylines together. They'll be rather surprised when he busts out the Dragon Breath draconic feats from Complete Arcane.
Although I have yet to pull any particular evil twist on my players, the current campaign I'm running does involve an evil twist, albeit a classic one. They're a bunch of do-gooding heroes (some more so than others) and they think they're on a quest right now to save thousand and thousands of lives. Thing is, at the end, they'll find out the final boss is not really the *final boss*, but someone who has been pulling their strings all along to commit the very same evil they wanted to prevent, albeit in a different way.
Sometimes I think I watch too many movies and read too many books. I have a penchant for the dramatic, ;)
I was running an Undermountain adventure as a one-shot, and this guy made a Spellsword with a Spellstoring weapon and feats like Weapon Focus(short sword). Really, the guy spend more time talking about playing with his sword than was healthy.
So when he was fighting the drow cleric at the end of the adventure, I gave her an evil weapon that granted Improved Sunder. I thought he would run after the first hit on his sword dropped it to half HP, but he kept on and I sundered it.
This then leads onto the second most evil thing I've ever done.
After warning the players that it was a bad idea to walk out of the tavern exit of Undermountain loaded with treasure and dragging a load of adamantine armor and weapons, they did just that. The mage and gargoyle team that attacked them that night threw a Subdual Fireball, then escaped with the load of armor and weapons.
I did show a little mercy, and allowed the Spellsword to keep the adamantine sword in his sheath that he had gotten from the drow and was using as a replacement.
Strolling down memory lane, I do recall losing an adventuring companion into the death gate in Tomb of Horrors. We were young and mean-spirited then, which worked out to our advantage that day. Nobody else bothered to go through and see what happened to the one adventurous (foolhardy) PC. The DM left the one player is suspense for about a half hour, then finally just said, "OK - your gonna need 3d6."
That was the same campaign that included kicking the paladin's dead body into the Abyss in Q1. Good times.
I'm older and mellower now, and I usually can restrain my cruel nature. I did drop a PC into a 30' pit not too long ago. The pit door immediately closed, and the kobalds (led by a sorcerer)that had set the trap up sent an illusion of the PC strolling along with the group like nothing happened. Meanwhile the kobald warriors pulped the poor guy all by his lonesome by pouring out of secret doors at the bottom of the pit and outnumbering / overwhelming him. It took about ten minutes to realize that the PC hadn't said anything for a while, and by the time that they figured out their companion was an illusion, it was way to late. RIP
The most devious thing that ever happened to me as a player, was to my cleric of Thor. He dropped his hammer in combat on rolls of natural 1 so often that he started tying it to his wrist with a rope. The next time he dropped his hammer he was on a steep wall of a chasm, and it fell right in front of a baddie who promptly yanked it and sent him tumbling down almost to his death. He cursed his luck so vehemently that Thor took it personally, and he lost all his spells until he could atone. That was just plain cruel.
I inadvertently had a TPK once. My fiancé and I had just gotten my kid sister into gaming, and wanted to take their newly rolled up characters out for a spin. Since there were only two of them, I had let them roll beefed up characters, and then threw in my own NPC Kender rouge for good measure.
First encounter of the first adventure, they drop down a mine shaft and are greeted by 3 wererats. Thanks to their inability to roll above a 9, my Kender included, the 3 rats obliterated the party, chewed up the body, and brought the tender flesh back home for their young.
To this day my fiancé still grumbles about how his precious eleven wizard /ranger (AC 17) was done in by 3 rats. Cracks me up though!
You must be suicidal, Zherog. Careful though, "gamemates" are still as near as I can tell a rare breed. Cudos on finding one.
:)
GGG
I've noticed that... I am fortunate, since my husband also plays in my game. We also game together as (mostly) players in a game my brother runs about once a month, except when he isn't prepared and my husband or I end up running the game instead.
- Ashavan
Made a secret arrangement with one of the players at the start of a new campaign that he would be a traitor laying a trail for the PCs who were being pursued, he played it to a tea - in fact so much that after they'd killed his character (as we expected and agreed that, should this happen he'd get a level 2 character to start with) they never ever trusted any of his characters again.
Made a secret arrangement with one of the players at the start of a new campaign that he would be a traitor laying a trail for the PCs who were being pursued, he played it to a tea - in fact so much that after they'd killed his character (as we expected and agreed that, should this happen he'd get a level 2 character to start with) they never ever trusted any of his characters again.
I have unfortunately done that with NPCs to the point a lot of my players just don't trust them anymore. So now I give them nothing but nice honest NPCs who their characters alienate by not trusting them thereby making them antagonists.
It must come from running too much Vampire: the Masquerade, or maybe I was just born evil. :)
GGG
It gets worse. :D One detail I left out: the character belongs to my wife. :DYou must be suicidal, Zherog. Careful though, "gamemates" are still as near as I can tell a rare breed. Cudos on finding one.
:)
GGG
I'd tell him to be careful too, but since he's already killed his wife's character off once in the game, I suspect he's a lost cause. :-p
-Amber
:blush: it's not my fault she stood up from prone while next to the orc chief while he was in a really bad mood because some adventurers had raided his stronghold. :D
One of my favorite D&D memories is of "Hard Core Gaming Night."
I'd had a hard weekend (our game was on Monday nights) and I was in a bad mood. We'd agreed to start a new campaign the previous week, but I was in no mood for an evening of coming up with backstories. I made everyone roll up characters the old fashioned way: no adjusting, or assigning scores, just straight down the list. Then I put them through absolute hell. The first encounter in a forest glade killed three characters, one of whom never even had a name (due to a well-placed crit from a psychotic boar). I killed two more on the forest path and one more going down into the valley where the main part of the adventure was set. As my players' characters died, they'd make up new ones, throw them in, and watch them fall to my fury in under five minutes.
Odd thing was, as the night progressed, I lost my bad mood and began to really enjoy the game. My players, usually blase on everything from dragons to demigods, were in stark, living fear of such simple things as darkened cave mouths. It turned out to be a wonderful evening.
And you know what? My players still feel, years hence, that it was one of the funnest D&D sessions they'd ever played in.
One of my favorite D&D memories is of "Hard Core Gaming Night."
I'd had a hard weekend (our game was on Monday nights) and I was in a bad mood. We'd agreed to start a new campaign the previous week, but I was in no mood for an evening of coming up with backstories. I made everyone roll up characters the old fashioned way: no adjusting, or assigning scores, just straight down the list. Then I put them through absolute hell.
So there I was in DMing as usual. The players had actually gotten to a point of deep immersion and where only saying things in character. They where exploring a underground system of grottos that where home to a evil group of elves and hobgoblins when they come a cave filled with sand and a giant anthill in the center. And someone says - "Oh it must be giant ants."
You know, even though it was giant ants - you never test your DM like that. So when on the fly I decided to change them into three umber hulks. Well things got a bit ugly and a -small- TPK occurred. Hey I didn't know how the CR thing worked yet. Who knew reach, confusion, and burrowing tactics could do that to a party. Every now and then when they think I'm hosing them the group chants T-P-K T-P-K....
Oh well, slay and learn I always say,
No really, I always say that.
-GGG