do any paizo employees have stories they'd like to share? james? erik?
I got the biggest reward a DM can get in my opition which was them calling me a 'B@st@rd'. Dont you just love players :)You mean it's not the compulsory greeting?
All these years, and I never realised...
How did I know I would find you in this thread?
I'm surprised you're not in this other thread too.
Humph.
To continue on the theme of evil things you have done to your players.
Is there a line in the sand you don´t cross.
Is there things just to horrible to put your players through.
I am not just talking about the obvious things most people do not touch, like violence against children, rape, torture, most of us I am sure stay away from the truly depraved and X-Rated stuff.
My players have a high threshold for DM abuse, I have put my players though things, I would most likely get arrested for if I wrote about them here, I would most certainly get a life time ban from these boards :)
But still there are things I have never done, not once in the over, 20 years I have been a DM.
I have never outright just killed a character. I play fair if at times brutally. (With one exception, I brutally murdered a Bladsinger once, god I hate that PrC)
I have never gone after a characters family, sure the odd kidnapping to start of a plot, but never just murdered them all.
I have never intentionally made a character unplayable.
There are more things I am sure, but this is not about me. I want to hear where you draw your line.
killing a PC arbitrarily? nah, not since being an elementary student.
although I did play with a DM who loved to have assassins come in and take out his brother's character on a regular basis. good times.
BUT, I did destroy a PCs entire extended family once, but that was a combination of advancing the story and correcting munchkinism.
the story goes that I had a 1st level player who decided to write a backstory that included, I kid you not, a dozen members of her extended family with class levels in the 7-14 range, who also happened to hold key positions in the local community. we were playing forgotten realms, so it may not be *that* far fetched, but come on! the other PCs were orphans,etc. I was very apprehensive about the potential for abuse here, but I try to allow characters some creativity, yada yada. So, I allowed it, but told them they wouldn't get any help from them.
this worked ok for a few levels, but the player kept trying to pump information and favors from her family, and I was sick of it. so, I had a simple plan - I had a mated pair of red dragons burn down the home town + relatives. brutal, but efficient and provided a good plot device (and eventually horde) for the party. and, I thought it was pretty telling that the player never spent their share of treasure ressurecting the relatives. so, I don't feel too bad about that one
making a player unplayable? naw, the players do that just fine on their own...
Any of my cruel GM actions are never arbitrarily done. I would not kill a character arbitrarily unless it was a mime or a bard( who has 50 character sheets made)
Hide behind the mound of bards!!!
The line I would not cross would be actually describing real bad stuff like rape and violence. Especially I would never do that about kids. However if part of the story line I would possible suggest, as part of the story line, that events like this have happened to NPCs. I wouldn't do this just to mess with the players but to actually get some emotional response from them and then letting get a chance to get justice. Actually I never actually even come out and say things like that during my narration of a scene but merely suggest or hint at the possibility because I find that most people have a perverse enough imagination to think of the worse so it is not needed really to blatantly say it. In the end though I would push the envelope like mad but I would try my best never to actually cross the taboo line.
It is funny, the more I think about it, the more a lot of examples of "cruelty" that have been brought forward are just examples of DMs roleplaying villains effectively and letting the dice fall where they may.
sure, there are some examples of DMs stacking the decks so that players fail (mine included), but these seem to be mostly corrective (i.e. to teach players a lesson or remove some offensive cheese). either that or just plain funny.
i guess the line is what you can get away with and what you feel like. I've certainly played in games where cruelty, competition and pettiness is expected (obviously), but it was always in good fun. I am sure if it really upset players (beyond the pouty "I didn't get my way" variety) it wouldn't be done. but it can be tricky, and I am sure groups break up because of lines being crossed, but I've never seen it personally (thankfully). is it possible that the cruellest gms (those who run games where they are brutal with players for long periods of time) are the most sensitive to the players so there is lots of trust? or do they just weed out the more sensitive players (like the troll rended druid we heard about earlier)? my games haven't had a lot of turnover, but is that true for others?
Well I can only speak for myself, but I have had more or less the same group of players for the last 15+ years.
My players are used to my NC-17 play style, and that fact that I will not play my villeins, as morons.
I give my players a lot of room to make the characters they want, but if they abuse that trust, I will rain down hell fire on them until they beg for mercy.
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I wasn't the DM of this group, but a member. We were playing a short-term evil PC campaign that our buddy/DM cooked up. We were allowed to start at 12th or 13th level and our DM let us use whatever race we wanted. Well one of the players cooked up some crazy centaur w/ a half dragon template or something like that..since it was a short term campaign we were able to pick out a certain number of magic items...the rest of the players (myself included) were fairly reserved, took level appropriate stuff, a few stat boost items, but didn't go crazy. This guy took everything w/ the highest cost and boosted his strength to some truly insane number (high 30's maybe low 40's i forget) at level 13. He was always bragging about his strength and how much he could carry/push/pull.
Well cut forward to halfway through the first session. We were staring straight up a fairly sheer cliff... For all that strength, he couldn't climb a damn inch up that cliff and ended up havin to reroll his character. (he was much more reserved with his race and item selections the second time through)
QUOTE="Xpltvdeleted
I wasn't the DM of this group, but a member. We were playing a short-term evil PC campaign that our buddy/DM cooked up. We were allowed to start at 12th or 13th level and our DM let us use whatever race we wanted. Well one of the players cooked up some crazy centaur w/ a half dragon template or something like that..since it was a short term campaign we were able to pick out a certain number of magic items...the rest of the players (myself included) were fairly reserved, took level appropriate stuff, a few stat boost items, but didn't go crazy. This guy took everything w/ the highest cost and boosted his strength to some truly insane number (high 30's maybe low 40's i forget) at level 13. He was always bragging about his strength and how much he could carry/push/pull.
Well cut forward to halfway through the first session. We were staring straight up a fairly sheer cliff... For all that strength, he couldn't climb a damn inch up that cliff and ended up havin to reroll his character. (he was much more reserved with his race and item selections the second time through)
Haha serves him right for being greedy. As far as being cruel I am starting to feel like using having a Disenchanter pay they a visit in the night.
Forgot this one.
The idea was yoinked from a fanzine.
Okay I decided to scam a PC but in order for it to work I had to plant the seeds for the player to fall for it.
The particular player used to come around my house a lot and used to poke his nose around my desk where I would prep all the campaign work. Knowing this I left the Monster Manual on the desk opened to the hippogriff page...
Later I left the DMG open on the ariel combat pages...
Scrap bits of campaign notes with details of feeding costs for various flying beasts along with training notes...
With the "trap" set during one game session the party is approached by a merchant who has just bought some hippogriff eggs from a party of adventurers which he wished to sell them on "at a bargin 5000gps each".
Of course they were snapped up.
Months later the PCs are proud father's of giant ants.
Months later the PCs are proud father's of giant ants.
ouch. were they at least flying ants?
Speaking of just desserts, any stories out there about turning the tables when players abuse a mechanic? I'm thinking overpowered /broken material that the player exploits ruthlessly?
For example, I had a player agitating to take the abjurant champion PrC, so I let him do so, but the party was less pleased when they were trounced by an gang of cheesed out ab champs. In this case, I was actually surprised at how effective they were. The party was L15 and they were completely helpless against an equal number of L10 ab champs. granted, the ab chambs got the chance to buff up before the combat, but it was an open room combat and pretty straight up rolling. the party had to teleport out to avoid a TPK, lick their wounds and complain about how it was too hard.
Months later the PCs are proud father's of giant ants.ouch. were they at least flying ants?
Off course not!
Bad DM!Naughty!
In the previous game session my players had been commissioned by a merchant to safeguard a shipment over the sea. The cleric and rogue handled the pay negotiations themselves (strangely enough 'after' the paladin had sought out and secured the work) and the price landed on a total of 7000 gold, of which 2000 where paid in advance. The cleric and rogue split the 2000 and decided to not tell the others of the advance payment and just say they'd get 5000 on completion.
After a run in with two orcish pirate ships, whose summoners eidolon took out the players ships mast, a hectic discussion about the mission took place (the paladin died in the fight). At a point I had one of the sailors, the foreman, point out that they'd gotten a lot of money to safeguard the cargo (the sailors didn't fight for that reason) and was of course aware of the deals details. This revelation really pissed off the ranger, hectic bluff checks and diplomacy checks ensued.
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This is a great thread. I have no remorse for any dastardly GM'ing I've done in the past, but there was one instance where I felt I pushed the envelope harder than good taste allowed. I TPK'd a group of seven 11th level characters under the 3.5 edition rules, using only a 11th level evil cleric and his henchman.
I had said cleric use most of his starting PC value gold to purchase a Staff of Blasphemy with only 1 charge, and also bought 2 Beads from a Necklace of Prayer Beads (both beads of Kharma-if I'm remembering the name correctly-each added an UNTYPED bonus of +4 to the Caster Level of the cleric for 10 minutes), and as untyped bonuses stacked in 3.5, when I cast Blasphemy from the staff, it went off as a 19th level caster rather than an 11th, which as a result paralyzed all 7 of the charaters present, and I then had the cleric's henchman finish all 7 of them off... and the players were highly unhappy... :)
hats off to you, killer GM, that is truly evil, unfair and downright cruel! then again, so is that spell. no save and lose if you are lower level... it is the one reason I'm not throwing a Balor at my overpowered 15th level 3.5 party.
I trust that the henchmen were suitably weak and obnoxious and you provided a nice description of the kills?
just out of curiosity, how did the party offend you?
random unintentional cruelty...basically it came down to about 5 lvl 2ish PC's and two ogres (3.5) one of the PC's was just joining during that session and had rolled a barbarian...barbarian charges ogre, ogre gets AoO i roll attack nat 20, nat 20, 14 double crit confirms, barbarian dies instantly. i feel bad so i say his brother was in the area and will show up in three rounds...he charges ogre gets AoO i kid you not nat 20, nat 20, 14 barbarian dies.
meanwhile the ogres couldn't hit the rest of the party at all...
there was another fun encounter i played in...i should get the writeup from the guy who was DMing basically they were 8ish special metamagic golems which instead of being immune to spells reflected them randomly with metamagic feats applied to them needless it was an interesting fight at lvl 16 one other great thing is they had DR 15/mundane, a hilariously quirky monster
special metamagic golems which instead of being immune to spells reflected them randomly with metamagic feats applied to them needless it was an interesting fight at lvl 16 one other great thing is they had DR 15/mundane, a hilariously quirky monster
I'd love to see the specs on those, sounds perfect for my unstoppable band of heroes! I am quite sure they haven't a single mundane weapon between them... (evil laugh)
I wasn't the DM of this group, but a member. We were playing a short-term evil PC campaign that our buddy/DM cooked up. We were allowed to start at 12th or 13th level and our DM let us use whatever race we wanted. Well one of the players cooked up some crazy centaur w/ a half dragon template or something like that..since it was a short term campaign we were able to pick out a certain number of magic items...the rest of the players (myself included) were fairly reserved, took level appropriate stuff, a few stat boost items, but didn't go crazy. This guy took everything w/ the highest cost and boosted his strength to some truly insane number (high 30's maybe low 40's i forget) at level 13. He was always bragging about his strength and how much he could carry/push/pull.
Well cut forward to halfway through the first session. We were staring straight up a fairly sheer cliff... For all that strength, he couldn't climb a damn inch up that cliff and ended up havin to reroll his character. (he was much more reserved with his race and item selections the second time through)
Couldn't Half-Dragon Centaurs simply fly?
Humbly,
Yawar
Wanting to throw something different at my players I set up two scenarios which would overlap so that they experience the first, then stumble into the other, making it come almost completely out of left field.
The first one is a theft/murder-trial in which the pc's are falsely accused. And the second one is the actual main adventure, a dungeon which contains a lot of illogical puzzles. Impossible staircases (going though a corridor and down two flights of staris, and ending up where you began), neverending corridors and parallel stairs you can't ascend (when you get to the middle of the stair you suddenly walk down the middle of the other stair, all the while two eyeballs on the other side shoots lightning bolts at the party, and also if you fall down from the stairs, you re-enter the room from above and continues to fall (terminal velocity)) And of course detect magic is useless, because everything is magic in the dungeon.
I wouldn't really call it cruel, but I'm having menacing horror music play in the background.
Oh, the ranger found a box containing 10 potions (cure light, 5 cure moderate) and decided he'd put them in his new bag of holding, which he soon discovered wasn't a bag of holding, if you catch my drift. ;P
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I wasn't the DM of this group, but a member. We were playing a short-term evil PC campaign that our buddy/DM cooked up. We were allowed to start at 12th or 13th level and our DM let us use whatever race we wanted. Well one of the players cooked up some crazy centaur w/ a half dragon template or something like that..since it was a short term campaign we were able to pick out a certain number of magic items...the rest of the players (myself included) were fairly reserved, took level appropriate stuff, a few stat boost items, but didn't go crazy. This guy took everything w/ the highest cost and boosted his strength to some truly insane number (high 30's maybe low 40's i forget) at level 13. He was always bragging about his strength and how much he could carry/push/pull.
Well cut forward to halfway through the first session. We were staring straight up a fairly sheer cliff... For all that strength, he couldn't climb a damn inch up that cliff and ended up havin to reroll his character. (he was much more reserved with his race and item selections the second time through)
Couldn't Half-Dragon Centaurs simply fly?
Humbly,
Yawar
I dont remember what exactly his character was 2bh...if he was half-dragon he forgot he couldnt fly lol. Mighta been half-fiend or something like that...maybe were-centaur /shrug it was crazy w/e it was
This weekend I was handed a golden opportunity to be a cruel DM.
The party's elven wizard got separated from the rest of the group (TFoE, so you know where) and got pasted by Thedrick the nasty Cleric of Hextor. The player thinks his PC is dead beyond the door.
He isn't.
He has been taken by Thedrick back to the Grimlock lair and will be given two choices:
1. Tell me all while in a zone of truth.
2. Don't and we'll go down the speak with dead route.
The bladsinger I mentioned in a earlier post, was one of the few times I was evil just for the sake of being evil. The player in question know very well what I thought about the Bladsinger PrC. But he keep nagging at me until in a moment of weakness I gave in and allowed him to roll a Bladsinger. To make a long story short, he spent the next 7 sessions being a di*k and making my life as a Dm hard.......so in a "chance" encounter with a Beholder, he got turned to stone, the smashed to bits with Telekinesis, and as a final insult he got Disintegrated. None of my players, have ever wanted to be a Bladesinger after that.
Killing that bladesinger made me all warm and fuzzy inside :)
this stuff is great. I've taken some of the stories and e-mailed them to my players. I think it's making them nervous. I've got a small story of my own to add. I've been GMing, and playing tabletops in general, for almost a whole month now and I'm turning evil already. This thread has helped :)
The ranger got bit by a dire rat that has the lycanthropy disease. After turning into a were rat and going crazy a few times, the party goes to a cleric to get him healed. The cleric wants 10,000gp to do it and he won't budge on the price. Cure Disease is a lvl 3 spell. He should've done it for next to nothing.
Since they didn't have the money, the cleric strongarms them into killing the head of the Thieve's Guild for him. If they don't kill the guy then the ranger will turn into a mindless wererat permanently. The head of the Thieve's Guild was missing a thumb on one hand and the cleric demands the guy's hand as proof that he's dead.
Turns out the head of the Guild is also a wererat and has a ring that lets him control lycanthropes. He makes the ranger turn into a rat and start attacking the rest of the party.
The party finally kills the bad guy and the ranger returns to normal. I didn't think they needed to roll to cut off a hand, after all the guy's dead, but before I could say anything the barbarian's player slings a d20 across the table...and rolls a natural 1. I tell him that he missed the guy's wrist and lopped his own thumb off. Poetic justice right?
He tried to get it healed but nothing he tried would reattach his thumb. Even high level clerics that could raise people from the dead were unable to reattach this thumb. Hmm...wonder why? The barbarian ended up drilling a hole through his severed thumb and wearing it as a necklace.
this stuff is great. I've taken some of the stories and e-mailed them to my players. I think it's making them nervous. I've got a small story of my own to add. I've been GMing, and playing tabletops in general, for almost a whole month now and I'm turning evil already. This thread has helped :)
SNIP...
He tried to get it healed but nothing he tried would reattach his thumb. Even high level clerics that could raise people from the dead were unable to reattach this thumb. Hmm...wonder why? The barbarian ended up drilling a hole through his severed thumb and wearing it as a necklace.
warms my heart, another player discovers the joys of not getting their way. enjoy!
@Lemurion - that everhitting sword sounds nasty, I like it! how do you handle miss chance? does it auto-wield?
@Bogsmoll - I was wondering how you dealt with the bladesinger! out of curiosity, what was the character doing to be annoying? I take it it was a 2E bladesinger? I missed out entirely on 2E, but rumors abound.
/thread
nice find - different game but boy are the issues the same.
the visceral hatred of the posting cruel GM in the replies is pretty intense.another epic battle of entitled player vs controlling DM.
oh wait, that's another thread. :-)
@Bogmoll - I was wondering how you dealt with the bladesinger! out of curiosity, what was the character doing to be annoying? I take it it was a 2E bladesinger? I missed out entirely on 2E, but rumours abound.
I can´t for the life of me remember what, exactly it was he was doing, this was some 15 years ago. I just know that every time I think of that Bladesinger my blood boils.
Come to think of it I might have let him of a little to easy :)
On the topic of Cursed Items:
I had a rogue come across a skeleton in a dungeon which had a black ring on one of it's hands. Upon pocketing the ring (so the party wouldn't see it) the skeleton crumbled into dust.
Said rogue decided to try it out immediately and was shocked when the ring started to talk to him! The ring introduced itself and informed the character that it would heal him and would cast necromantic spells for him in return for the pain the PC would inflict upon others.
The ring then warned the rogue never to remove it. "It would be a bad thing to do."
Slowly over the next few sessions the rogue, who was having a ball with his new ring, was noticed by the other players as not having much appetite and becoming unhealthily thin and pale. When the other characters finally made the connection to the new ring they tried to talk him in to removing it. He refused, of course, so they jumped him in the hopes of saving him from himself. The rogue fought for all he was worth and the other players eventually had to cut the finger off to separate the two.
The party leaped back in shocked horror as the rogue crumbled into dust... all of his HP had been converted into charges.
I had something similar, but much slower-paced, and not quite as evil...
I ran a campaign where the party had thwarted their first major villain, and were rummaging through the spoils in the vault for their loot. The barbarian came across a magic gem that was locked away, separate from all the other loot. There was a warning on the box that no one could read, but the gem was radiating powerful magic. The barbarian took it, thinking he could get it identified and sell it.
Long story short, the group mage identifies it as a special kind of weapon-augmenting crystal; it basically bestows an enchantment upon a weapon. After rolling a very low spellcraft check, the mage figured the item checked out fine. The barbarian uses it on his sword and POOF! His sword becomes +2 Vicious. He's thrilled about this, despite the fact that Vicious deals 1d6 damage to the wielder with each blow.
After many gaming months, the barbarian started having strange dreams about being someone else, a different warrior in a different time. Eventually the dreams were becoming more and more real, and even while awake he would forget who he was and get confused. It got worse and worse, until a point where each night he had to make a will save to retain his identity. Eventually, through powerful divination magic, he discovered that augment crystal actually housed the soul of a evil warrior, and that extra 1d6 damage the sword was doing back to him, was actually the weapon feeding life energy back to the warrior spirit. Eventually, the spirit was going to possess the barbarian if he continued to wield that sword!
The funny part is, he switched off to another weapon, but still on occasion used that cursed sword. The party would all yell at him when he drew it out! lol
I once used an epic nightmare beast against the 3rd level party. It was never meant to encounter them, the adventure was about confronting a cabal of Derro releasing the monster to terrorize the area each night, but somehow the party has managed to anger the beast (even after warnings). They eneded up holed in a magically reinforced dwarven guard tower which should have endured any attack and kept them safe. Then the beast appeared. For fun I rolled beast's charge agains the tower... three natural 20s in a row... fortunately the tower had a basement.
zmar, you had me at "epic nightmare beast"...
hats off to you, killer GM, that is truly evil, unfair and downright cruel! then again, so is that spell. no save and lose if you are lower level... it is the one reason I'm not throwing a Balor at my overpowered 15th level 3.5 party.
I trust that the henchmen were suitably weak and obnoxious and you provided a nice description of the kills?
just out of curiosity, how did the party offend you?
The players were using characters they'd used under the group's other GM, who had in a moment of temporary insanity (i stress 'temporary' because he's a better GM than I am hands down) given them a 150,000 g.p. per player award when the players got the idea to sell the magical doors from the Shattered Gates of Slaughtergard adventure, and when I took over as GM, the players naturally wanted to continue using their over-valued characters. I resisted, but eventually yielded under continuing nagging by the players. I had the last laugh however.
The henchman was actually a capable menace who had (himself) greased 15 player characters to date (prior to that day's activities)! I chronicled the events on the old campiagn journal thread "Killer GM runs the Styes & Weavers"
I've got numerous other examples of 'Player Abuse' that I could post, and probably should before I forget them entirely. One leaps immediately to mind:
In 2001, in 3.0 d&d, the lads were tangling with my favorite villain (an evil Ranger/Fighter whom they lovingly refer to as 'Sir Laughsomore'), and a friend of one of the players on that day was requesting to play with us. I had never met this guy in my life. I agreed. He brought in a Rogue character. His character charged in to help the group, not entirely comprehending what was going on. My villain (who was hidden next to the square the guy's character landed on) sunk his full round of attacks into the new guy's character, and splattered him in his first round of existence. I thus welcomed the new player into the group by wasting his character in the 1st round he played with us.
I had another instance in 2001 where (Paizo poster) Hexen Ineptus had a character who surrendered to 'the Henchman' (a.k.a. 'Sir Connery') mentioned in the 2nd post above, after he failed a Hold Person spell from an evil cleric who was fighting with the henchman (the same evil cleric incidentally, who plastered the 7 characters with the Blasphemy spell, I posted about above). Hexen Ineptus thought he'd be freed in the aftermath. I had Sir Connery decapitate his held character and catapulted his remains to his fellow surviving player characters who were outside the castle (by that time) running away mightily:)
I once used an epic nightmare beast against the 3rd level party. It was never meant to encounter them, the adventure was about confronting a cabal of Derro releasing the monster to terrorize the area each night, but somehow the party has managed to anger the beast (even after warnings). They eneded up holed in a magically reinforced dwarven guard tower which should have endured any attack and kept them safe. Then the beast appeared. For fun I rolled beast's charge agains the tower... three natural 20s in a row... fortunately the tower had a basement.
That's really neat, and gives me an idea for a "survive or die" adventure... Mind if I borrow it?
Well, sure... go ahead and borrow whatever you want.
In the same adventure we had a player who was overall a jerk. Trying to thwart the party and ruin the fun etc.
The party was securing a food for a fort (a caravan with supplies didn't make it to the fortress before dark...) and found a crate with a few scrols of create food and water. Our player's elven babrbarian saw the 'quest item' tag from miles away and decided to destroy it. After setting the scrolls on fire I've made an improvised table on what will the released magic do. Before the rest of the party managed to charge the idiot one of the scrolls materialized a full load of food for 21 people about three meters about the party and they were all throroughly bombarded with cabbage, ham and some other foodstuffs. Then, much to gorup's satisfaction, I've rolled the second scroll (random attitude, distance and direction, using squares and d8s). You can guess that the second load materialized where the barbarian stood. He got a fortitude save, which he failed miserably, and then we had a lot of bloody foodstufs flying around a pair of elven legs. The group (-1 of course) was overjoyed.
(After that I rolled the third scroll, which triggered a randrom size ride, which had suddenly sent the party into an encounter with microbes (some ooze), ant army (a few giant ants), a centipede (rather large) and a scared (dire) hare (noncombat, but it scared the hell out of them, becuse they were alredy low on hp and knowing me they've expected more fighing). Eventually the kept growing rapidly (without ralizing that eventually with their size they could have escaped beast threatened area with a few steps) and reached towering heights. Our fighter then stubled after breaking into a shallow cave system with one leg and created his lasting (butt shaped) mark on world's toporaphy. Ever after they were riding around they could have seen life slowly taking hold near the twin lakes in the middle of the savannah, fishers moving in... Our fighter guy had been quite embarrased by this turn of events and eventually went so far to create fake legends about the origin of the area... my my, sometimes you get quite some results when you just ride the random events).
Okay, first I love some of the ideas I've gotten for my campaign from this, but here are some of my favorites for what has happened to my charachters.
1) To keep a really dumb Barbarian in line when he tried to wander off from the party sometimes, he would randomly find a "really pretty birdie with red eyes" (i.e. a cockatrice) and try to pet it, and the party would always find him somewhere turned to stone.
2) Deck of many things got that same Barbarians imprisoned by Tiamat
3) One of the parts of a recent dungeon had Demons trying to seudve the party. Half of the Charachters failed their will saves, and the follower of a charachter (his wife in game) got impregnated by the Demon.
4) The party is being hunted by an Astral Stalker. As they were heading through a portal, it had hidden and readied an action, and grabbed the last guy heading through, snapped his neck, and threw his dead body through the portal as a warning to the rest of the group.
Well, sure... go ahead and borrow whatever you want.
In the same adventure we had a player who was overall a jerk. Trying to thwart the party and ruin the fun etc.
The party was securing a food for a fort (a caravan with supplies didn't make it to the fortress before dark...) and found a crate with a few scrols of create food and water. Our player's elven babrbarian saw the 'quest item' tag from miles away and decided to destroy it. After setting the scrolls on fire I've made an improvised table on what will the released magic do. Before the rest of the party managed to charge the idiot one of the scrolls materialized a full load of food for 21 people about three meters about the party and they were all throroughly bombarded with cabbage, ham and some other foodstuffs. Then, much to gorup's satisfaction, I've rolled the second scroll (random attitude, distance and direction, using squares and d8s). You can guess that the second load materialized where the barbarian stood. He got a fortitude save, which he failed miserably, and then we had a lot of bloody foodstufs flying around a pair of elven legs. The group (-1 of course) was overjoyed.
(After that I rolled the third scroll, which triggered a randrom size ride, which had suddenly sent the party into an encounter with microbes (some ooze), ant army (a few giant ants), a centipede (rather large) and a scared (dire) hare (noncombat, but it scared the hell out of them, becuse they were alredy low on hp and knowing me they've expected more fighing). Eventually the kept growing rapidly (without ralizing that eventually with their size they could have escaped beast threatened area with a few steps) and reached towering heights. Our fighter then stubled after breaking into a shallow cave system with one leg and created his lasting (butt shaped) mark on world's toporaphy. Ever after they were riding around they could have seen life slowly taking hold near the twin lakes in the middle of the savannah, fishers moving in... Our fighter guy had been quite...
Awesome bring down the justice on those who try to ruin the game for others.
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I was GMing my daughter through a solo (mostly skill based) campaign in Absolom. She reached level 6 with only 3 combat encounters. She was running a Rogue/bard 3/3. Everything was working out great till...
I had my good friend and his son join us so I could run them through the "Entombed with the Pharoh" module J1. So the characters hooked up for a "job" that required all of them to complete. My buddy ran his fighter and his son ran the cleric.
They never got to Osirion. On the boat from Absolom to Solthis, they ran afoul of the competition from that module. This was meant to inspire investigation and other stealthy means of figuring out exactly what the "other" treasure hunters were wanting.
Instead, the cleric went on deck totally nude and pissed all over the deck. Why? I have no idea. He just wanted to do it. (My daughters character was in hide mode at this time...) The he flaunted his nakedness to anyone that would look at him. I had never had a player do something so stupid in my life as a DM (20+ years).
Then the fighter decided he would continue to threaten and insult the entire group of baddies every moment they crossed paths. So, I poisoned them and had them wake up as they were being dragged to the railing and thrown overboard. (I am simplifying so that this post doesnt take for ever to read, but if I put down everything that they did in detail, you all would have killed them off to!)
So, they started sinking deep into the ocean when a couple sailors jumped over to try to save them. I had them sink for 6 rounds before the sailors reached them, using the drowning rules for this. Needless to say, they both drowned before they could be brought to the surface. What was even better, was they were both within 1 round of getting to the surface when they failed the last save to live.
To be honest, I didnt feel bad about it at all.
My daughters character (who never left her room on the ship) arrived in Solthis safely without a scratch, glad to be rid of the incredibly stupid characters that were hired with her to complete the tomb raid.
Instead, the cleric went on deck totally nude and pissed all over the deck. Why? I have no idea. He just wanted to do it. (My daughters character was in hide mode at this time...) The he flaunted his nakedness to anyone that would look at him. I had never had a player do something so stupid in my life as a DM (20+ years).
Players can sometimes do the darndest things...
In my old Ravenloft campaign, there was a point where the party wound up in an inn in Barovia, home of Strahd von Zarovich, ya know, the vampire on the cover of most of the modules...
I decided to have him make a cameo in the game, with no outward intentions of a battle, just showing the players that the big guys are watching. I seriously underestimated the cajones of my players. So, Strahd comes into this tavern, in disguise as one of his Counts(to avoid being noticed). The players overhear him talking to someone about someone he's looking for, and they decide to pipe up. The cleric gets a little mouthy, so I have Strahd Dominate him; basically just stares him down and makes him back down in a whimper. The rest of the party decide they aren't down with this, and jump up to start a fight. I simply have Strahd turn around and leave the inn. It should've stopped there. It didn't.
The players go stomping out of the inn after him and try to start a brawl in the street. The dwarf grappler jumps on his back and tries to pin him. Strahd easily lifts him off and tosses him to the side. The barabrian runs up to try and punch him, and rolls a 1. Strahd catches his fist, twists his arm around,and pushes him away. Mind you, at this point, Strahd is only defending himself, and dealing very minuscule subdual damage. He's not trying to start a bloodbath in his own town. He makes several gestures that he is leaving, and wishes no further harm on the players. The cleric eventually staggers out into the street and tries to get the other players to listen to reason and leave well enough alone. They don't. They still think he's just some crazy strong noble and want to try and save face.
At this point, I paused the game and even warned the players this guy is not to be trifled with. I even came out and told them he is a very significant NPC. This was not meant to go this direction, and if they pursue their present course it will end badly. Once the situation is all over, I told them I'd even go ahead and let them know just who this guy is. This didn't dissuade them at all.
As Strahd climbs up onto his horse to ride away, the party wizard throws a Lightning Bolt at him. At this point, Strahd needed to do something back. Trying to start a bar fight is one thing, but openly throwing around powerful spells in public was another. People were in the street watching, after all. After Strahd recovers from the Lightning Bolt, he turns around, throws a Quickened Fireball and a Maximized Lightning Bolt back at the wizard. Needless to say he was pretty much toast.
Being the type who likes to make examples, Strahd trotted his horse over to the wizards corpse, cleaved off the head, rammed it onto a pike, and rode around town with it, waving it like a flag.
Maybe I was a bit harsh, but I made no less than 5 attempts for Strahd to walk away and leave well enough alone. Even the cleric was pleading with the party to just stop. Meh, makes for good story telling!
Well, if you think this was the best justice served then you should have seen the guys face in an adventure DMed by a friend of mine. We got trapped on a shadow plane and this guy's druid had decided that he'll pry the Book of World's End from an abandoned ruin of a shadow castle all by himself (we've already scouted around and made ourselves sure that the ruin is abandoned). And so, while sneaking around he has triggered a silent alarm spell and immediately got disintegrated by an invisible lich guardian lurking within the ruin. In a following temper tantrum we've found out that he has 'miscalculated' his Fort save bringing it 2 points higher thank it should have been (we all suspected that, but we didn't care either) and all chuckled that the Lich didn't really have any reason to open up with fireballs or anything weaker than his instant solution spells :)
OK, so my group and I played tonight and we had a lot of fun. They have been clearing out a giant ant nest that has been stealing bee larva and royal jelly from the local bees. That royal jelly is why they group was there at the bee hive in the first place. So the Druid made a deal with the Queen Bee to rescue if possible the young and she would reward the PCs. Now the group is all level 7, good gear and for the most part makes some creative and smart moves.
Now I know what you are thinking, Giant ants against a level 7 group? Ahh but wait there is more to tell these ants have been fed alchemically and genetically altered royal jelly. This has hyped them up into a berserk state that is starting to also re-write their genetic code so while they have the same HD they hit with a +12 to attack. They also tend to swarm. Now I know this is not evil but just a creative challenge to the party.
The cruel part is how I have the tunnels of the ant nest. Some tunnels slope down and some slope up. The one's that slope down have a lot of loose gravel on them so if they don't make their acrobatics check they fall prone and slip and slide down to the bottom giving whatever at the bottom not only a OOA but also a +4 bonus to attack because they are prone. Now one particular tunnel had a slope of a 30 degree angle so the Druid sent his Wolf companion down at full speed which made the DC harder for that huge of a slope. This tunnel in question was a long one and at four intervals along the way there were ant holes where giant ants high on royal jelly popped their head out for a OOA as this silly huge wold slipped and slides down the path. The look on my friend's face was priceless cause he really likes his wolf.
Well our Cleric 4/Crusader 1/Ruby Knight 2 had some gloves that casted mirror image twice a day. He activated mirror image and then slid down the path in a run to help save the wolf from getting swarmed. This I thought was particularly clever and brave thing to do. He did get hit once though and by the time he got to the bottom he had no more images level.
Also I paid attention to all those nature shows and had the ants swarm and gain up one opponent. Well they would do that to anyone they were closest to. Also with their hive mind mentality they were getting revenge on the Druid for using repel vermin and then forcing it on them. The funny thing is that he had only 1 minute left on his spell and ran down a tunnel the group suspected had ants. Well there were ants at the end of the tunnel and they came out of the wood works(holes) as soon as the effect hit and hurt them. Five of them came out, surrounded him, bit him multiple time, one managed to grab his sword arm and the other grabbed his leg and started to pull. He was down to like 4 HP after that.
So was this cruel,just realistic, or is that one in the same?
The cool part is that I told my group that the gloves were coming off, they were shocked to find out that they have been on all this time before the ant nest, but they were totally cool with it. One of my players was sick and ended up coming late, almost didn't come in at all but he started getting better as the game went on. I guess all that fun helped lower stress levels.
The cool part is that I told my group that the gloves were coming off, they were shocked to find out that they have been on all this time before the ant nest, but they were totally cool with it
I took the gloves of some 15 years ago, shortly after that I donned my brass knuckles, a few years after that I traded in my brass knuckles for a pair of spiked gauntlets. Now days my players are cautious with just about everything that is going on around them, they take nothing at face value, most everything is a potential trap (in there minds) :)........so now days I have to work half as hard setting things up, no matter how smart of a DM I might fancy my self it is nothing compared to 5 scared and paranoid players, they have given me more ides on how to make there life miserable, by just listening to them roleplay then anything my sick and twisted head could come up with on its own.
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I took the gloves of some 15 years ago, shortly after that I donned my brass knuckles, a few years after that I traded in my brass knuckles for a pair of spiked gauntlets. Now days my players are cautious with just about everything that is going on around them, they take nothing at face value, most everything is a potential trap (in there minds) :)........so now days I have to work half as hard setting things up, no matter how smart of a DM I might fancy my self it is nothing compared to 5 scared and paranoid players, they have given me more ides on how to make there life miserable, by just listening to them roleplay then anything my sick and twisted head could come up with on its own.The cool part is that I told my group that the gloves were coming off, they were shocked to find out that they have been on all this time before the ant nest, but they were totally cool with it
Hehe, I ran an advanced players test set in Galt, and I loved the fact that I didnt have to do very much to set the paranoid tone for this 1 shot adventure due to my previous DM experience with these players.
As a matter of fact, they were very good at keeping a low profile, and I rewarded that by not coming after them with squad of gray gardners. Just having some show up in town with 'Ol Bessy' in tow made them all crap their pants. I kinda liked that... :D
I must give David Shwartz his due for writing "flight of the red raven" as I used Azurestone for the backdrop of this adventure, and a few of his NPC's will be forever remembered by my players.
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<snip>....Now days my players are cautious with just about everything that is going on around them, they take nothing at face value, most everything is a potential trap (in there minds) :)........so now days I have to work half as hard setting things up, no matter how smart of a DM I might fancy my self it is nothing compared to 5 scared and paranoid players, they have given me more ides on how to make there life miserable, by just listening to them roleplay then anything my sick and twisted head could come up with on its own.
this is one of the wisest things I have seen regarding DM'ing....let the PC's dig their own holes, and line them with anti-personnel mines from the Players' imagination.
-t
Ok so I am running a post-apocalyptic campaign with my characters. once they entered a temple full of Mummies and Bearded Devils (They are Lvl. 5 but have high stats) the rogue ran ahead to try to make a deal with the head devil. Well, I decided right away that there was no chance of this. I gave him several false hopes and took them all away, culminating with him being bull-rushed into a pit to hell, falling for an hour, and landing with a giant spike through his back.