In my case in was way back in 1985 or 1986 during or shortly after high school with my younger brother a mixed group of friend play a AD&D 1ST EDiton game (about 10 of us) in one of the classic modules.
A buddy of ours, Ralph (who due to his parachute pants & funky boot was always an elven fighter or ranger with elven boots & elven cloak, Ralph wasn't very bright or swift on the uptake, not stupid just lacking common sense GOD gave a chipmunk. He never did understand why he got arrested for trying to marry a 15 year old when he was 23. DOH!), got lucky after one combat and got a vorpal blade long sword. Mage ID-ing it explain he should never use it against undead. To which Ralph the HORROR Film fan extrodinaire honestly replied, "Um what's an undead?"
Everyone eyes open wide as Yuri and my Brother Keith both exclaimed, "You can't be serious? Are you?"
Ralph, "Yes, what are undead?"
Keith, "Um, Pat should we tell me or will you?"
I peered up from behind my DM yellow DM screen from reading a magic item description to the party's mage, swiviled my head backa forth like a Terminator scanning targets, locked in on Ralph, and began to smile very wide and evilly. LIke a Red Dragon who just had his combo meal of dinner and loot delivered to his lair and shook my "NO!", "Let him learn he should know that already."
ALL the while Yuri was exclaiming; "OH CRAP! Pat's smiling. The DM is SMILING! DAMN IT all to *(*%(% Ralph, you made the DM happy, never made them happy unless it with a pizza, a hot chick they like, new dice, or all of the above. We are so in trouble!"
Jeff H, "Dang it! WE are going to die. He is already rollign dice."
Next encouter out of town was with a LARGE mixed group of skeletons and zombies. Elvis Ral alph(Ralph the elven super ranger w/ vorpal blade in hand) charges.
DM: You have initiative vs. zombies.
Ralph: "OK. I roll a 20, a natural 20. with my 18/00 strength and now double damage and looky and Rolled max damage. 1d8+6(str)+3(V blade enchantment so that's 17 times 2 is 34 points. CRUNCH! right?"
Party in background: "GROAN! Here is comes!"
DM(with a straight face follow by a grin and evil laughter):
"Zombie is not injured but you take 68 points of damage! Your body looks like burnt BBQ! You scream like a little school girl."
Ralph: "WHAT? HOW? I only have 54 HP! That would mean that I am...."
Group: "DEAD!"
DM: "You just learned the hard way what undead are. Maybe night next you won't flip off the cleric! {evil laughter}"
Ralph: "As I go down, I yell CLERIC! 150 gp to heal me ASAP!"
Yuri: "Hehe, and he laughed at me for buying potions of healing instead of a really big mace!"
Ralph spent the next 5 hours hiding behind the magic user and cleric every time they ran into skeletons & zombies but the stupid fool charged the first vampire they ran into and nearly bit it again! It took 10 minutes for em to stop laughing and get my fat butt picked up off the floor. he last words to the cleric were; "Don't worry it's not an undead like skeletons and zombies, right!???" Cleric: "Um, well, uh, actually it kind of (ZAP! as Ralph score another near perfect hit) is, oh nevermind. Let's see do I have another cure moderate or serious wounds left?"
I was Dming once when we had a Rogue that felt he was being treated unfairly. To accentuate his point, he tried to become a suicide bomber. He took out his bag of holding and punctured it, creating a swirling vortex of inescapable fury...well as some of the party members flew by they all managed to latch onto something and were saved...after the vortex disappeared, the party only shrugged and picked up the Rogue's fallen treasure. But this is only one of the many many hilarious situations we've been in.
I remember when we first started playing, we had an older more experience guy as the DM. Well we were attacked by stirges and one of them starte sucking the blood out of the neck of our mage. Our fighter says "I'm going to hit it with my sword!" Well since he didn't specify, the DM rolled a % to see if he hit with flat or edged side. The edge side won...he nearly took off the mage's arm at the shoulder. Needless to say when the fighter was in trouble, the mage turned his head and didn't pretend to see it!
*walks in* Hmmm.... This seems to be a good thread to necro.
*begins to perform the ritual, which is hitting a staff on the ground several times* Arise Chicken.... er.. Thread! Thread Arise!
My favourite was the rogue who when searching for traps on a door didn't specify whether was searching for poison either. Suffice to say there was indeed poison on the door handle, and the rogue was dropped from full hp to about -5 by an uber poisoning. This was from a conversation earlier about how the party had never come across poison at all, and indeed I tended to favour mechanical and magical traps.
Was it a rule back in AD&D that you take double damage whenever you try to hit undead with a vorpal sword? I've never heard of that before.
I was wondering the same thing. In modern D&D, a Vorpal Sword operates against undead just as it does against anything else (the only caveat being most undead will not be hindered by the loss of a head).
I think that might have been a Life Drinker or perhaps the Nine Lives Stealer swords that hosed you over when you hit undead with energy drain attacks...
On topic: players in the Kingmaker campaign are confronted by not one but two dragons under veil provided disguises as regards the heads of their slain offspring (tatzylwyrms) over the main gates of the capitol city.
Paladin's player: "Smite Evil!" - panic ensues.