Was gaming today, with Archard Cowl, master detective.
He and his two companions are in search of a group of thieves, who we know like to leave traps behind. We track them to a sewer.
Getting ready to go in after them, I warn one companion to be wary, as they've got a habit of leaving traps behind them. After which, I pull open the grate, completely forgetting to actually LOOK for the fricking traps and getting myself stuck with a poisoned needle. *headdesk*
(Of course, since I couldn't roll anything out of the low single digits today anyway, it probably wouldn't have mattered had I remembered to check.)
Gone adventuring; a damn foolish activity to pursue. ;)
Kira almost singlehandedly took down a CR 13ish elder fire elemental by spamming sound arrow and sonic bullet spells while using the superior speed of being hasted. one hit could have killed her and the DM intervened with the mage mart owner dropping a sudden maximized lightning bolt because we were out of time. he beleived that the darn thing would have eventually killed me. she was 8th level at the time and recasting haste, sound arrow, and sonic bullet. she used 80% of her spells before his suspiciously convenient Deux Ex Machina and she had done a fine job kiting the darn thing. pulling it around the city of cauldron. the elemental could have easily been finished off by 4 more sonic bullets with the luck i was having.
sound arrow is scorching ray but deals sonic damage instead of fire without an unneccessary die reduction. still a 2nd level spell
sonic bullet does the same thing to the base magic missile instead. still a first level spell.
sonic sphere was the same thing done to a base fireball spell, still a 3rd level spell
despite the fact that that shackled city game had kira moonsong at 8th level and everyone else at 9th. and a group of 10 pcs against a CR13 fire elemental. Kira was the only one of those 10 to even participate the entire combat. all 6 martial hybrids complained that they couldn't harm it because it was made of fire and the other 3 casters were lazy and complained that they needed to conserve thier spells. despite the party getting a full nights rest and being full on everything. kira kited the darn thing while hasted and had to blow 80% of her spells because the party was too lazy to do anything. the DM had to both intervene and lecture the other 9 through the help of the mage mart owner. the mage mart owner even took kira back to the moonsong estate and nursed and cleaned her up himself for the day with the help of various lucky first level acolytes tending to her health and offered to pay for her renovation personally. Kira got her own holiday in cauldron and the wealth of many townspeople who offered to compensate her for her efforts. her noble status elevated and her 9 companions were not allowed to interfere with her recovery for 48 hours. she was knocked into the negatives, not by the elemental but the lightning bolt, despite making the save. 48 hours of recovering.
yes, i'm talking about Kira Moonsong.
I was gaming today too.
The party Rogue/Sorcerer (not me) goes just ahead to use his "trapdar" (Trap Spotter Rogue Talent) and inhales some fumes that make him panicked for a few rounds. He runs by my fighter and I grab him to get him to stop. He threatens to start attacking me with his flaming staff, so I let him go. The cleric runs after him to make sure he's okay.
They fall into a pit of boiling oil. The cleric was killed instantly and the wuss barely survived long enough to cast Fly and get out. Good thing we had a Luck Blade with a wish left to revive the cleric.
I know you mean pen and paper games, but I'll answer what I've done in a different genre.
When playing Fallout 3 for the first time, I tried to walk up to one of the people in the high school to see if I couldn't initiate a conversation. I hadn't played anything like Fallout before, so I hadn't realized that outside of towns and the occasional trader, virtually nothing in the wasteland doesn't want to kill you.
I did the same foolish thing in Red Dead Redemption. Walked up to a campfire, and when I got up to leave, they started shooting at me.
Recently, at the start of a long combat, my witch cast a vampiric touch spell but never had a chance to discharge it - the enemies we were fighting were successfully stonewalled by our tanks, so I never got within touch range of the enemies, and my familiar was otherwise occupied.
We had all been cursed by our recurring nemesis, Graz'zt, with character-specific drawbacks for the duration of the adventure. One such curse limited our healing resources (the cleric's holy symbol was turned into a symbol of Graz'zt, preventing him from channeling positive energy, and he was also unable to spontaneously cast cures).
The cleric had several wands of CMW and CSW, but in order to help him preserve non-renewable resources, I decided to use my healing hex on our tanks, who had taken some pretty hard hits during the previous combat. I reached out to touch the barbarian - and in doing so, my vampiric touch discharged simultaneously with the healing effect.
As luck would have it, I rolled the exact same amount on both dice rolls, so the barbarian wasn't any WORSE off - and I got some healing out of it too - but I had completely forgotten about the held touch spell. I took a lot of flak for that for the remainder of the session, though.
The barbarian's reaction: "Hmm. Weird. I don't feel better. Don't feel any WORSE - but I don't feel any better." =]
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I listened to the suggestion of a party member: Try drinking from the water.
We'd found a pool of still water that had a ring of runes carved into the stone around. Unable to determine what these runes were for, the Sorcerer suggested that I drink from the pool. A few rounds later and I'm drowned by a water elemental that had me pinned underwater.
Last week our group was sneaking into a bandit cave with a guard post by a cliff. There was another guard post down at the bottom of the cliff on the opposite side of a lake 100 feet away. Conecting between the two guard buildings was a gondola (of sorts).
We snuck into the building and heard voices behind another door. We burst into the next room, catching the two surprised guards sitting at a table playing poker.
We quickly dispatch them and start inspecting the building and winch system for the gondola. Our swordsage notices a small window (not facing the other guardhouse) and looks out it to see what it's facing.
Just the cliff face 50' away. However, there is a 'button' in the windowseal.
Hmm...guardhouse...button...
Yep he pushed it, setting off the alarm and alerted the other guard house making our lives much more difficult.
He has been the recipient of much razzing after that. XD
-Flea
Recently?
Walk up to a desk.
that was all it took for me to get attacked by a Morgh, get paralyzed (yay +6 fort save :D), and then eat a Coup De Grace.
of course all of this would have been avoided if I had heard the DM correctly (turns out all of us heard something different, I assumed the Skele was in the corner, someone else thought it was naked, etc etc), but since I didn't, away I went to find the Magic, and bam, a Character who had just been made like 4 encounters ago dies.
so Now I'll play a Paladin :D, Saves and Bonuses to slaughtering Undead, me thinks is a good idea.
Rifts game
Our party had just fled Atlantis and landed in Coalition territory in what had been the eastern coast of USA in the game.
We had arrived in a small town to try and get some information and supplies before heading out.
Some of the locals are talking to one of our party members and casually mentions about the town being part of the Coalition.
Quiet until now I chirp up asking what the coalition is. Not softly just normal converstional tones.
The silence was deafening as everyone in the building turns to look at us.
We were clear of town within in about five minutes.
The Coalition turns out is an extremely xenophobic group of humans controlling most of the eastern US. Think Orwell's 1984 government run by say Nazis.
Not one person in the party was human.
Stupidest thing I've ever done in game?
Attract the attention of a pirate plundering the ocean surrounding Sarenrae's domain in Heaven. In solo RP my primarily healing based cleric of Sarenrae 12 had to go to heaven to get her paladin cohort restored, I thought, had a epic level guide who saw the pirates poised to beset a ship full of healing items. The guide thought saving the ship would be a good way to introduce ourselves to my goddess. Pirates attack, boggards everywhere, led by this particularly cruel pirate lady. First round, the excellent switch hitter paladin smites with his bow for close to sixty damage, and she well... wants the high charisma paladin for herself. She does loads of damage to him, and as I'm right beside him. On my cleric's initiative, she Heals the paladin, restoring his health, capturing the attention of pirate lady, who is smart enough to recognize who the real threat is now.
In one hit of an enchanted freaking lightning sword she dealt over 90 points of damage and brought my cleric within two negative hit points of non-existence away from the table. Luckily half the crew were at least adepts and they all spammed healing after the epic level guide rained lightning and fire everywhere, completely decimating every villain in sight in a single round.
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D20 Modern. We're all standing next to a precipice. We need to get to a platform 15 feet away. Everyone starts discussing how best to do this. After almost an hour (out of game time,) I finally get sick of the arguments, and declare that I'm going to jump. I'm playing a fairly physical character, I figure he's got a good chance of making it. I think he only needed a 15, and from memory he had a pretty decent jump check.
Naturally, I rolled a 1. Not a critical failure, but it was a failure anyway.
GM allowed a reflex save, which I also rolled a 1 on. In desperation (he'd built a storyline around my character) he allowed a final save to latch on to the wall. I'm sure you can guess what I rolled. :)
I was running a D20 Star Wars game for my group. They had played these characters for a while, and proceeded up the level ladder at a pretty good pace. At the time, they were around 14th of 15th level. They were suffering from a sever streak of good luck, and were getting more than a little "full of themselves."
I had always made it an unspoken rule, until that point, that the characters would not interact with characters of the established cannon. The galaxy was big enough for their exploits to be heroic without affecting the story of the movies. As I said, until that point.
They were attempting to run a blockade of a planet, when they got picked up by flagship of the Imperial fleet. Which just happened to be the Executor. The face of the group demanded to see the "highest level of authority on this rust bucket," and rolled well enough to con his way up the ladder to the big man in black himself.
Now I figured; once hearing the description of the jagged breathing, and seeing the fully enclosed black suit coming towards them, the players would realize that they were in for it, and back off their high and mighty routine.
How does that old GM saying go? "Expect your players to go right or left, they will instead go right up the middle." Well, that is just what the face of the group did. Before Vader could utter one word, Faceman, who was the master at the con, knew his number was up, and decided to run up and kick the big guy right in the.. ah.. cod piece.
Retribution was, needless to say, swift and painful for all involved, including me. We spent the rest of that session rolling up new characters. Funny afterthought though, at least with that group, we know why Vader did not have the Executor during "Shadows of the Empire" because of that encounter. :)
In Ars Magica my mage got incinerated by a fireball. Spent a year recovering. Next time he went on an adventure, decided to parlay with a dragon. Got incinerated again.
So a few game years later I get my revenge and kill said dragon. A few game months (i.e. a couple of weeks real time) afterwards I turn to my companions as we shiver in our crumbling covenant and say "You know, we really should have looted that dragon's treasure. And, in unrelated news, have you noticed that all of the local peasants have mysteriously got stinking rich and buggered off?"
Before Vader could utter one word, Faceman, who was the master at the con, knew his number was up, and decided to run up and kick the big guy right in the.. ah.. cod piece.
I'm sorry, but you've failed to convince me that this was foolish. I would TOTALLY sacrifice my own character for a chance to do that. Gladly. Without hesitation. And I'd never regret it. Even if it made all the other players mad at me, for getting their characters killed as well. Faceman managed to do something that even Han Solo couldn't!
I haven't laughed so hard all week. I'm still laughing.
In Ars Magica my mage got incinerated by a fireball. Spent a year recovering. Next time he went on an adventure, decided to parlay with a dragon. Got incinerated again.
So a few game years later I get my revenge and kill said dragon. A few game months (i.e. a couple of weeks real time) afterwards I turn to my companions as we shiver in our crumbling covenant and say "You know, we really should have looted that dragon's treasure. And, in unrelated news, have you noticed that all of the local peasants have mysteriously got stinking rich and buggered off?"
Are you saying that you simply FORGOT to loot the dragon's horde? Or did you get diverted? Or were you afraid to explore the dragon's lair further while you were wounded from the fight? Or what?
New stupidest thing EVAR:
A very "Ghostbusters-esq" moment...
When the Elven goddess Calistria appears to you in your dream, surrounded by a horde of wasps, tells you She likes you and how much it would amuse her to give you boons to help you achieve your revenge -
Do.
NOT.
mock.
Her.
and
say.
no.
I threw a stick at a magical sword floating in the air. It then went right through my heart and killed me.
In a homebrew LARP system that included a very ritualized magical system, my ritual mage was collecting spell components to add power to his spells. I retrieved some water from a creek nearby and commenced to use it in the spell. The last step of the spell is for me to pour the water over my head.
I failed to notice that there was a crawfish in the water I collected from the creek, and our plot lead ruled that the added component overpowered the spell.
My spell's intent was to attune my mage with the element of water. I ended up becoming a water elemental and attuning two of those who were watching the spell be cast with me. I also turned the entire town blue for a month and drew the attention of a blue dragon.
How I miss those days.
Are you saying that you simply FORGOT to loot the dragon's horde? Or did you get diverted? Or were you afraid to explore the dragon's lair further while you were wounded from the fight? Or what?In Ars Magica my mage got incinerated by a fireball. Spent a year recovering. Next time he went on an adventure, decided to parlay with a dragon. Got incinerated again.
So a few game years later I get my revenge and kill said dragon. A few game months (i.e. a couple of weeks real time) afterwards I turn to my companions as we shiver in our crumbling covenant and say "You know, we really should have looted that dragon's treasure. And, in unrelated news, have you noticed that all of the local peasants have mysteriously got stinking rich and buggered off?"
We forgot.
But we did get loads of lovely Raw Vis.
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Dumbest thing I ever saw any player do: I have a player who always does everything right. He's a great roleplayer, a strategist, a tactician, a diplomat, and he even hangs back, letting others have their place in the limelight. So one particular session, he was in a tough spot. He's trapped on some stairs with bad guys above and below him. Worrying more about the bad guys below, he suddenly declares, "I levitate up!" All of my players looked at him in shocked disbelief as he slowly floated up past a staircase of bad guys who each took a swing at him. "It must be my birthday, cause here comes a pinata," one bad guy exclaimed. Needless to say, he died. We still tease him about it.
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'Twas in the most wretched city in all of Avistan: Kaer Maga. My intrepid Pathfinder companions and I...
After marveling for a moment at the massiveness of the cephalothorax on this monstrous specimen of Compsobuthus gargantuensis, I concocted the scheme to start a fire in order to lure the prison's defenders out into the courtyard, where they would have to contend not only with the mindless aggression of the giant scorpion, but also with "the slings and arrows" (and spells, look you) "of outrageous," er, Pathfinders.
Little did I reckon that such a scheme would alert the entire nest of villains to our presence, or that there would be so many of them. As it turned out, that little prison was a veritable clown-coach of Shadow Lodge blackguards. The scorpion did deal with a few of them for us, but when we were forced to pursue them into the depths of the lair itself, we neglected to remember that the scorpion was also cutting off our only route of retrograde. It was with great difficulty that we effected our assault, but ultimately, we ferreted out and slew the Shadow Lodge ringleaders and the Pathfinder Society triumphed yet again.
--Professor T.A. Forthlake, lecturer in anthropology, archaeology, Osiriontology, and naturalism at Almas University, explorer, and Pathfinder
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This was not mine, but one witnessed with the sort of mute, wide-eyed incomprehension that's all you can manage when struck completely dumb by something, well, dumb.
Amber DRPG game - for those not familiar with the setting, jist is that there are two forces in play, one of chaos and one of order, with immortals on both sides generally at odds with one another (though they share a common family tree, in many cases). There's a third force - a void, a place of absolute destruction - that nobody knows much a bout and doesn't seem to have a horse in the race. It's called the Abyss. Pretty much everyone who's ever gone down into its black depths has never come back, by common knowledge.
So our party of order-ites has a Chaosite companion who is sort of a mole among her own people for us. This player has already irked the GM by recreating a character that she's played in four other campaigns, some still ongoing, despite character creation being like a ten minute thing, mechanics-wise. He's not the sort to take it out in-game, though, and when we meet up with a slowly-expanding 'rip' in reality filled with Abyssal nothingness, she's front and center to try and figure out what it does. Like most Chaosites she has a power that allows her to extend a sort of ectoplasmic sensory tentacle that can also be used to initiate direct mind-to-mind contact, so she sticks that tentacle in the hole and tells the GM that she's opening her mind to whatever she can feel by groping around blindly in the rip.
Right away, some awful, bone-chilling blackness burbles out of the hole and wraps around her legs - cold enough to hurt, but not yet enough to keep her from kicking her way loose. GM describes an awful sense of death and oblivion and asks if she wants to continue opening her mind to it.
She says yes.
So the black stuff climbs up her body til she's wrapped to the waist - she couldn't kick free now, probably, but she could yell for help and one of our stronger friends could have yanked her loose, probably. The GM describes a sense of a seething anger beneath the cold void, an anger that seems to have noticed and focused upon her PC. He asks again if she wants to continue opening her mind to it and tells her, out of character, that what she's doing is very, very ill-advised and could result in the death of her character.
She says... yes, I want to continue.
So the black stuff crawls up her body til it's engulfed her completely and (of course) yanks her down into the rift. The GM tells the player that her character isn't necessarily dead, but won't be back in the campaign for several weeks at least, possibly months. To this, she's shocked.
SHOCKED.
What the heck did she expect? I'm just floored by this. Anyways, much later somebody figures out how to safely go down into the Abyss and discovers that it's being manipulated by various consciousnesses trapped inside, so he elects to purge it by... killing all conscious things therein, including her character. Which, when related to her, causes her to burst into tears and snub the friendship of the Abyss-delver's player.
It's not like she couldn't just fall back onto one of the three other copies of that character she had though, innit?
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A few friends and I were playing a homebrew 4E campaign. Long story short, our party of 6 being chased by about 35 guys. It was a horse race, and we had the lead. First obstacle was a set of switch-back trails. There, we managed to ice over a bridge and knock out 5 of them. We also managed to take out another section of path, slowing them down. That left us well ahead of the other 30. We made it to a town, got to stop and buy supplies and swap out for fresh horses, then we began making our way to an abandoned fortress on a hilltop two days distant. We made it there with about 30 minutes in-game to plan what we were going to do. We paused the in-game time to go through and plan an ambush and set it up. We had an iced hallway, a pile of flammables, a jar of black powder, a flaming bed, and a surprise. One of the things we had picked up in town was a semi-broken magic sword. Our DM had told us that if we broke it, it would have a random effect ranging from nothing to exploding to ripping a hole in reality. We thought it would be a good idea to use that to stop a door and bet on it exploding in their faces.
So, we've laid the ambush and we're just in time for them to walk in the front door, which is what we planned everything around. They came over the roof. There was a large bout of facepalming all around.
Finally, when we'd managed to take out most of them (there were maybe half a dozen or so left), somebody opens the blocked door. DM rolls high when determining the random effect, so it opens a small hole in reality. We have one guy in position to see that, and he screams and bolts. All of our guys follow in short order, but at that point we have to squeeze by a few of the remaining baddies through the one door, and the rift is expanding behind us. We make it to our horses just in time for the rift to swallow the fortress and the living baddies and then disappear.
Moral of the story? Make sure you aren't nearby when the magic item breaks. And always look up.
Old campaign in 2nd edition. We came across a room with two wells in it. One was a well of life/curing the other was filled with a strange glow. One player stuck a +1 staff into it and it sucked it from his grasp. It was a well of wishes that would grant a wish if you put a magic item in it. We did not know that.
One player got a smart idea to start taking water from the well of life and pouring it into the other well in order to overfill it for some reason. (Never figured out why)
So the water fused with the magic item wishing well and suddenly there was a magic item monster killing the party. I was playing Raul the ranger i had a rod of cancellation. I went to fight the magic item creature and canceled the magic causing explosions from items failing saves that it was made of.
The result was a 60' radius crater that just happened to hit the crystal artifact we were searching for which failed its save. It exploded completely vaporizing the dungeon and leaving a 400' null magic crater.
I managed to completely wipout the dungeon and campaign with a total everything kill.
The only thing that survived was The Tarrasque (becasue he was always around in all high level dungeons) and the DM NPC because he had her start running as soon as the magic item monster fight started. plus she rolled a NAT 20 on save.
Finest moment in game I ever had. :)
This happened recently.
The party was constantly getting attacked by giant wasps (random encounters) to the point where we were weak and weary.
Well MORE giant wasps come. So where do we run to?
INTO the unexplored dungeon.
Half the party gets toasted by a trap we just RAN (literally into) the next room (kept running) was filled with a leech swarm and the next room triggered a combat.
What do you do?
Run!
Which way?
apparently, farther into the unexplored dungeon.
Two characters died, one was reincarnated, the other got a raise dead scroll, which ultimately ended up retiring the character because the two negative levels resulting from it just put her too far behind the rest of the party, took the thunder out of her progression.
Recently we had been in a very very very haunted house that was being haunted by it's former owner, a world class if slightly insane Bard, think someone along the lines of Beethoven who also in his live made deals with lovecraftian beings for his musical talent. So as we were going through this place I for some reason decided to play everysingle instrument we found along the way, by the end of the session i was down to a 6 wisdom from 11, and a 4 constitution from 16, all due to every single instrument being haunted.
(In a non D&D game created but never published by my ex-husband) I antagonized the evil dark dragon that had taken up temporary residence in my mind until it could guide me in crafting it a new body. I spent an indeterminate amount of time laying on a stone floor, away from everyone who knew me, in agonizing pain.
In a robotech game in the 90s, One of our players turned on his protoculture engine to 'distract' invid from a veritech pilot that was trying to sneak his way over to his hidden beta fighter.
But the invid in question were Royal Command Battloids, which we had never fought before, and have protoculture targeting devices so good, that if they are targeting protoculture they can't miss.
Both of them had full missile compliments, Both of them full attacked him and fire all their missile compliments at him, The resulting mushroom cloud was something we made jokes about for years after.
In a heroes unlimited game, I was playing "Invader" which was a 'Brick' (equivalent to a 'tank') which essential was a combination of the hulk and captain america. A really strong guy.
We were fighting "Fem Force 5" a villanous group of females supers. One particular one I was faced off with was "whiplash" who hand tentacles for arms and used them like whips.
My character needed to "bulk up" by drinking his steroid shake ( a disadvantage i eventually bought off with experience) so I ran into the mens bathroom and hid in a stall to drink my shake.
She ran in and started kicking down stall doors looking for me. When she got close I wanted to bash down the door and make a presence attack (similar to dazzling display/intimidation) i rolled so lousy, i failed to break open the mens room stall door (which was after drinking my strength shake) so all the lady on outside heard was "thud"
Pretty humiliating.
In a Macross campaign I played in, I fired a volley of missles from my veritech fighter at a zentraedi officers pod, who dodged it.
I took out grand central station with 4d6x4000 structural damage, and was reduced in rank from corporal to private (but they let me keep my veritech! however never let me carry missiles again....I wonder why?)
I refused to bow before a dark god when commanded by said god. Enough said.
I refused to bow before a dark god when commanded by said god. Enough said.
My bard lied when Calistria commanded her to tell Her how awesome She was.
It all worked out okay, though, because Calistria is apparently amused by anything that crawls, and rolls exceedingly well on their perform checks.
(Forgotten realms) A voice , only I could hear, told me to say his name.
I said, "Bane?"
The rest of the party almost did not raise me afterwards.
(Forgotten realms) A voice , only I could hear, told me to say his name.
I said, "Bane?"
The rest of the party almost did not raise me afterwards.
I don't even know or understand the reference to this one.
In a LARP, I tried to disarm an armed nuclear weapon.
My character had no applicable skills.
All I can say is that it seemed a good idea at the time.
Couldn't identify the potion, but I tried it anyway.
My teeth were silver for a while from that Silver Sheen.
This one time.....
at band camp.....
I refused to bow before a dark god when commanded by said god. Enough said.My bard lied when Calistria commanded her to tell Her how awesome She was.
It all worked out okay, though, because Calistria is apparently amused by anything that crawls, and rolls exceedingly well on their perform checks.
Lol, that's great.
This was in a different game, the character I was playing was dark in nature but also very independent and self-serving. Even though the dark god was said to be the founder of her country, who ascended to godhead, and the main deity of her lands she refused to bow before him saying "I bow before no one."
Instead of hurting her, or causing her direct harm (which he easily could have) he instead sent her to another plane, she did not have the inherent skills to get back home on her own and so in the end had to bargain with a dark goddess of those lands (by promising to devote the dark gods temple to her when she returned) in order to get back home.