RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I started a campaign for 2 4th-level PCs a few years ago. It was designed to be a LOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGG term game. The main villain of the entire plot? A fiendish advanced great wyrm red dragon with 5 levels of the prestige class out of the Draconomicon involving replacing his heart with the heart of a demon. I can't remember the prestige class's name though. The thing was like CR 32 or so.
Disciple of Ashardalon, Fatespinner.
Hmmm, I try not to over the top with the power scale (my players might disagree), as I feel that's a bit too deus ex machina for my tastes.
Most of my over-the-top stuff isn't with the characters, but rather with the situations. Favorite: A crawling castle that could plane-shift. :D Mwah-hah-hah...It burst on the scene when the characters were in the Ethereal Plane, trying to evacuate the ghost elves to the Prime Material, and it came sailing through on one of the few solid chunks of the Ethereal.
Scared the snot out of the players when I described it. >:D
Disciple of Ashardalon. EDIT- Lilith, you beat me to it. Damn my long posts! :)
Anyway, I've got two categories of personal worsts that I've commited from The Chair.
One I touched on in the first Power MAD thread. This falls under "killer DM-ness." In a one-shot adventure that ended up taking three sessions or so, the party (approximately 6th level) ventured through a cavern system and fought wave after wave of wights, ghouls, ghasts, and shadows. They were allowed to rest after each combat (it was very early in my DMing career, and it was kind of just a "for s~~@s and giggles" game between serious campaigns). Anyway, they finally get to my BBEG.
A 10th level vampire sorcerer. Along with 6 wights, 6 ghasts, 6 shadows, and about 3 mummies. Do-able for a 6th level party, right? =/
Anyway, the vampire went invisible right off the bat, then cast fly. So, he's hovering around 60 feet in the air or so over the party. They can't see anything, but the hear the spellcasting, and the mage's Spellcraft checks let them know what's being cast. So, the party closes with the wights, and the melee combatants completely decimate the things with no level losses and virtually no other damage. The ghouls similarly perished.
Then came the shadows. Well, I think the monk ended up with around 3 Strength, the primary melee guy was down to around 10, but with their magic weapons and spells, they managed to finally kill all the shadows.
It was then that the mummies came to the edge of the cliff in the cave, and the party was exposed to their fear auras. Funny thing about mummies- no range is listed for that aura in the MM. Well, the ranger was the only one that was completely fine by this point, not having spells to expend, and having 0 damage on him due to hanging back and using his bow.
Another funny thing about mummies; their fear is one of those things that if you save against it once, you're immune to that same mummy's fear for 24 hours. Silly me, I missed that part! So, the fighter and ranger are having to make the saves each round. Only takes about two for both of them to be paralyzed.
Luckily, the wizard still has some fireballs, and mummies burn real nice. So, he's lobbing them at the undead, and the monk... I don't remember what he was doing. Didn't matter much.
Remember that vampire sorcerer? Yeah, well by this time he's also got stoneskin, mage armor, and haste (3.0 version) on. Then come the fireballs. The party makes it through two rounds of them, due to their being split up to catch different people.
The party tries to run for the chamber's entrance at this point, realizing that things aren't going to well. First time I've ever seen them (try) to retreat, by the way.
Too bad Mr. Vampy took wall of stone as his 5th-level spell. Hit the brakes, about face, and the party's running for the pool of water in the corner, hoping that it links to the river they passed back in the cave before. Yeah, about that... wall of stone again.
THEN I realize I only rolled 5d6 for the fireballs, instead of the 10d6 they were supposed to have. "Oh." I say. "Let me roll up that extra damage."
"Don't bother," says party with eyes rolling.
"Oh, come on, you don't know if it will be lethal or not!" I say as I calculate the damage. "Another 32 to..."
"Doesn't matter, we're all dead."
That last bit bled over into Bad DM category #2, "DM Timewarpping." The two I remember most were both in 3FoE. Namely, after 10 rounds of combat with Theldrick and his goons in the Hextor temple, I remember that he's got protection from arrows on and force the ranger to recalculate damage (not my proudest moment). Later in the same adventure (but a different session), I remember about 2 rounds too late that grimlocks don't have eyes, so color spray shouldn't have worked on them. Then again, you kind of dropped the ball on that one, too, Sexi, since you cast it!
Does that make me a bad DM? ;P
I'm better now, I swear. Want to game with me?
Favorite: A crawling castle that could plane-shift. :D Mwah-hah-hah...It burst on the scene when the characters were in the Ethereal Plane, trying to evacuate the ghost elves to the Prime Material, and it came sailing through on one of the few solid chunks of the Ethereal.
Scared the snot out of the players when I described it. >:D
Oooh ooh! I know this one! Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga! Howl's Moving Castle! I win I win I win!
Now that the 13 year old hyperactive TS has run off; I think the worst think I ever did as DM was to put a group of 4-5 4th level PCs against 4 owlbears. Ouch. Luckily I had planned on letting slip the wyrmling nature of that NPC 'knight' soon anyway, but otherwise it would have been a big dice fudge or a TPK.
My couple of tries at DMing ended up more on the other side, I ended up throwing things that were too easy because I was afraid of ending up with a TPK. However, a guy that used to DM for our group (time constraints more than anything prevent him from gaming much anymore) once sent 3 undead trolls (troll zombies) at us when we were 3rd level and there were only 4 of us... the kicker comes in when he kept the regeneration working on the trolls... It was a TPK.
How about giving the PC's 20 BILLION GOLD at first level? Eh? sound too crazy or too stupid? Cause that's what this kid did. Upon being told this by a few friends, I didn't freak out at the prospect of buying every magic item in every book printed, but wondered what would happen to the in-game economy...
My only Dragonlance PC met the entire Dragon Highlord high command on our first adventure - we were five guys at level 3, and there were 8 or so of them, plus their dragons. We lasted less than a round, and afterwards the DM yelled at us for playing badly.
I really don't like Dragonlance.
I don't know if this is why (and I don't mean to threadjack this thread) but I don't know a single person who does like Dragonlance...
My only Dragonlance PC met the entire Dragon Highlord high command on our first adventure - we were five guys at level 3, and there were 8 or so of them, plus their dragons. We lasted less than a round, and afterwards the DM yelled at us for playing badly.
I really don't like Dragonlance.
I'm not so sure that this is really the campaign worlds fault. I mean if I'm 3rd level and so is the rest of the guys in my party and the DM decides that Iggwilv is having a family reunion with Iuz, who she vary rarely see's these days, and they happen to be yacking away in the dungeon when the PCs barge in looking for Hobgoblins its not really the fault of Greyhawk or the designers of Greyhawk when the players proceed to get slaughtered. It does not even become EGG's fault if afterword the DM yells at the players for being such wimps that they let Iuz the Old and his mom wipe the floor with them.
Some where along the lines (like at the moment of its conception) this just became a badly designed adventure and it is the DMs fault not the fault of Greyhawk.
Dragonlance is for girls.
The transition from 1st ed. to 2nd got me Power-Mad. I remember just shaking my head at how my group would open a can o' wupass on a dreaded 88h.p. ancient red dragon. But no more! Say hello to Dragon Mountain, suckahs!
I've mellowed with 3E, its too easy to kill characters.
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My only Dragonlance PC met the entire Dragon Highlord high command on our first adventure - we were five guys at level 3, and there were 8 or so of them, plus their dragons. We lasted less than a round, and afterwards the DM yelled at us for playing badly.
I really don't like Dragonlance.
I'm not so sure that this is really the campaign worlds fault. I mean if I'm 3rd level and so is the rest of the guys in my party and the DM decides that Iggwilv is having a family reunion with Iuz, who she vary rarely see's these days, and they happen to be yacking away in the dungeon when the PCs barge in looking for Hobgoblins its not really the fault of Greyhawk or the designers of Greyhawk when the players proceed to get slaughtered. It does not even become EGG's fault if afterword the DM yells at the players for being such wimps that they let Iuz the Old and his mom wipe the floor with them.
Some where along the lines (like at the moment of its conception) this just became a badly designed adventure and it is the DMs fault not the fault of Greyhawk.
Yeah, it is a bit unfair to hold crap DMing against a campaign setting. On the other hand, DL kinda made dragons into a monster you could encounter anywhere, in any number, and its canon (tech-gnomes, mischievous kender, black-robed wizards etc.) is, at best, just dumb.
Still, to get back to mad DMs, in an earlier session (not DL) with the same DM, we were attacked by an enormous dragon of great power - the beast was so big that the only way my PC survived the encounter was to run into its ear canal and then dig my way into its brain with my military pick while everybody else became slow-roasted dragon snacks. Take that, mega-huge, super-ancient red dragon - you got beat by a level 5 Cavalier! Of course, the then DM denied me XP, because I had violated my code of honour by hiding in its ear and then attacked it from ambush. The crap we put up with in order to play...
Wow, Vattnisse, that's a sucky DM.
Just for the record, I've never played DL, but the novels are what eventually led to my playing D&D in the first place. I really like some of the DL stuff (like the original Chronicles and Legends, and a few other things), but it has more than its fair share of stinker novels, too.
Anyway, as much as I love DL's story, I wouldn't want to play in it. I knew I wouldn't the first time I took a ruler, used the legend on the map, and concluded that Ansalon was a little smaller than Australia. No offense to any Ausies on the boards, but that's just too small for a campaign world, especially one that's supposedly as diverse as Ansalon (not that it was amazingly so). The Dread Swamp and Dark Forest and all that stuff ends up being around 15 miles across and not really that Dread afterall.
Not to mention, I'm not sure I'd want to "meddle" with something I like so much by injecting a part of adventurers into it. I'm perfectly happy just reading about Ansalon, without really playing there. I don't want to start thinking about the stat blocks of the major characters while I read the book. Not that I have actually read any DL in about four years or so.
Wow, sorry for derailing the thread there!
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Still, to get back to mad DMs, in an earlier session (not DL) with the same DM, we were attacked by an enormous dragon of great power - the beast was so big that the only way my PC survived the encounter was to run into its ear canal and then dig my way into its brain with my military pick while everybody else became slow-roasted dragon snacks. Take that, mega-huge, super-ancient red dragon - you got beat by a level 5 Cavalier! Of course, the then DM denied me XP, because I had violated my code of honour by hiding in its ear and then attacked it from ambush. The crap we put up with in order to play...
You, sir, are no gentleman!
Sheesh!