just to keep my self fresh on the best evil tricks, i thought we could share.
my party is about to gain a keel-boat with an alchemic engine; a rare but fast boat that will help them.However, sailing in it will trigger a daily haunt that i built using summon monster 5, making a fiendish killer whale attack them each day at sun down. the only way to destroy the haunt is to kill the whale with out the using the nice harpoon on the boat
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just to keep my self fresh on the best evil tricks, i thought we could share.
my party is about to gain a keel-boat with an alchemic engine; a rare but fast boat that will help them.However, sailing in it will trigger a daily haunt that i built using summon monster 5, making a fiendish killer whale attack them each day at sun down. the only way to destroy the haunt is to kill the whale with out the using the nice harpoon on the boat
APL 10 group (albeit with APL 11 money at the time) was set up against a 14th level Tiefling Wizard(Infernal Binder school, Augment Summoning, Superior Summoning, Diabolical Dabbler trait) who summoned fiendish dire tigers en masse along with one group of Erinyes. The Erinyes were about 30ft off the ground blasting holes in anyone not taking cover. Tigers were charging for full attacks, and grappling everything in sight. As the Tigers started dying off he had 4 or 5 sets of Dire Lions available as backup. All the while the summoner was inside a wall of force casting buff spells, control spells, and more summons as needed. Oh, I almost forgot the Imp familiar flying around with a wand of Scorching Ray(CL 11).
It was an absolutely epic fight and I gave them double normal XP for competing with all the summoned monsters along with the caster once Wall of Force finally gave up(he had plenty of damage spells prepared in lower level slots). I knew once the Wall of Force gave out the Wizard would not last long, but 14 rounds before they could even touch him.
All totaled one dead cleric; everyone else grievously wounded (two had actually dropped to negatives during the fight); and 20-25 rounds of combat before the Wizard dropped.
One recurring villain in my campaign is a summoner (master summoner archetype) with a grudge against the party paladin (who seems to single handedly destroy any opponent I throw at him).
Anyway, the summoner kidnaps the paladins girlfriend (sounds cliched so far I know, but bare with me) so the brave heroes set off to kill the nasty BBEG. Little did they know that the summoner had magic jar'd himself into the girlfriend, cast alter self to make her look and sound like his normal self, then donned a grinning devil's mask in case the party had access to true seeing.
During the following fight, which he did not expect to win, he spammed his summon monster SLA, mainly hound and lantern archons to annoy the holy boy. The party wizard decided to fight fire with fire and summoned up a salamander next to the summoner which caught him in a grapple.
Realising he could not cast any more spells he simply popped back into his real body which he'd stashed close by and watched while the salamander crushed the life from an innocent womans body.
When the party realised their error, the bad guy laughed, gave a short "that's what you get when you mess with me" type speach and teleported away.
Even I cannot believe I created something that evil.
Once I had a game, full of grim and grit and paranoia. One of my players had serious issues with ignoring the buddy system and running off solo, stirring up messes and bringing them down on the party.
There was a recurring villain, illusionist worshipper of Cyric. The player's response was to go solo vigilante, trying to bust up a Cyric cult longtime entrenched in Waterdeep, making public proclamations of his intent. He also had founded an orphanage with his name on it.
One day he was going about his rounds (same route every time) looking for trouble, he heard a scream nearby. Ran into the alley to find a sacrificial dagger stuck in a woman, and a cowled robed guy sporting obvious Cyricist symbols disappearing around the corner. He ran around the corner and didn't see anything. Looked back and the victim had disappeared as well. Spotted the cowled guy two blocks over running into another alley. Got there to discover a dead homeless guy, cultist disappearing around another corner. Repeat, repeat, most but not all victims disappearing every time he turns his back as well. Finally sees the guy running towards him, shouting obscenities interspersed with a child's voice crying for help. Player didn't hesitate, took his best shot, critted, and annihilated him. At which point the illusion dropped and he was standing over the body of his favorite orphan. Draaama.
Player eventually got the orphan raised, invested in raising his will saves, and got the party involved to actually come up with a feasible plan to eventually eradicate the cult.
Not before they snuck a Jumangelu (sp?, the aberrations that can shapechange into cute baby animals) into his orphanage, though. 10d6 sonic damage 60' radius when the party discovered it and that same player went off their plan and just jumped it before they finished sneakily evacuating everyone.
just to keep my self fresh on the best evil tricks, i thought we could share.
my party is about to gain a keel-boat with an alchemic engine; a rare but fast boat that will help them.However, sailing in it will trigger a daily haunt that i built using summon monster 5, making a fiendish killer whale attack them each day at sun down. the only way to destroy the haunt is to kill the whale with out the using the nice harpoon on the boat
APL 10 group (albeit with APL 11 money at the time) was set up against a 14th level Tiefling Wizard(Infernal Binder school, Augment Summoning, Superior Summoning, Diabolical Dabbler trait) who summoned fiendish dire tigers en masse along with one group of Erinyes. The Erinyes were about 30ft off the ground blasting holes in anyone not taking cover. Tigers were charging for full attacks, and grappling everything in sight. As the Tigers started dying off he had 4 or 5 sets of Dire Lions available as backup. All the while the summoner was inside a wall of force casting buff spells, control spells, and more summons as needed. Oh, I almost forgot the Imp familiar flying around with a wand of Scorching Ray(CL 11).
It was an absolutely epic fight and I gave them double normal XP for competing with all the summoned monsters along with the caster once Wall of Force finally gave up(he had plenty of damage spells prepared in lower level slots). I knew once the Wall of Force gave out the Wizard would not last long, but 14 rounds before they could even touch him.
All totaled one dead cleric; everyone else grievously wounded (two had actually dropped to negatives during the fight); and 20-25 rounds of combat before the Wizard dropped.
You can't cast through a wall of force. It is just as solid as a brick. I know you can see through it, but it still blocks line of effect.
PS:If you have a houserule then carry on. :)
You can't cast through a wall of force. It is just as solid as a brick. I know you can see through it, but it still blocks line of effect.PS:If you have a houserule then carry on. :)
Could have also been the old Project Image/Wall of Force trick.
Could have also been the old Project Image/Wall of Force trick.
You can't cast through a wall of force. It is just as solid as a brick. I know you can see through it, but it still blocks line of effect.PS:If you have a houserule then carry on. :)
True. I have not pulled that one off in a while, and it would work. I need to get some high level games in. :)
I'm about to start a horror campaign with my players, who as it as are min-maxing little bastards, where they will have a 10 point buy and they'll have no idea how many hit points they have once combat starts.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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One of my PCs decided to use an elixer of love on a captured female NPC. She was Neutral Evil, and a bad ass. She also failed the save to resist the elixer (which was mixed into some alcohol,) but made saves to realize what was going on. She decided to play along for a while.
Later on she convinced the party to let her take them to where the rest of the bad guys were, a fortified position in the woods that the PCs would need to break into in order to defeat them. She also convinced the guy who gave her the elixer to send the party around to the back while he and girl assaulted the front.
She knocked him out and used him to get back into the favor of her buddies. She also forgot to tell the rest of the group that the rear was guarded by undead. Nearly had a TPK, but the group loved it.
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One of my past GMs messed with our heads at the very end of his campaign when it was revealed that just about every NPC that was significant to the plot, and a few that were not, were really all the same person. It was the goddess of trickery and illusions. One of the PCs even had a night of passion with her and didn't realize that it was really her until the end.
What is even more awesome is that he did the reveal in a subtle way so that was time went on after the game we kept realizing more and more just how much that goddess screwed with us. In fact, because of her, the entire campaign was a wild goose chase after a red herring. It was so totally awesome how well he pulled it off.
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My best evil trick was inspired by an article on the Wizards site about adding templates to different monsters to make interesting and challenging encounters. It briefly mentioned how a Gelatinous Cube with the Fiendish template had enough Intelligence for class levels. So I made a Fiendish Gelatinous Cube Monk. There was also an Amulet of Ooze Riding in the Arms and Equipment guide. I gave a sorceress the amulet along with lots of rays and blasting spells. Top it all off with potions of Spider Climb, Invisibility, and Cure spells and you have a really deadly duo.
I killed two PCs, dropped another two below 0, while the last one got a lucky hit off that killed both of the baddies.
Most over powered combat ever in my games.
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You can't cast through a wall of force. It is just as solid as a brick. I know you can see through it, but it still blocks line of effect.
PS:If you have a houserule then carry on. :)
"Breath weapons and spells cannot pass through a wall of force in either direction, although dimension door, teleport, and similar effects can bypass the barrier...Gaze attacks can operate through a wall of force."
The spell description does not say it blocks line of effect. It says spells cannot pass through it. The spells were beginning and ending on the same side of the wall of force. This is how I read the spell and how we have been playing it so far (to be fair it does not come up very often). If there is a clarification somewhere I would gladly change my ruling as I do try to stay as close to the RAW as possible.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Never let them know their current hp totals, only a rough guess of how close to dying they are.
Whenever asked by a player, "Can I [insert task here]?" respond by saying, "You can try..." Then grin evilly.
My response to the "Can I?" questions is, "I don't know, can you?"
This has become a catch phrase with some of my former players, who now instantly respond with it when a new player asks a "Can I?" question.
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Two experiences I've had with my player's taught them the value of magic.
1. The party consisted of a shield-bashing paladin (bullrushed an ogre off a mountain side. It was pretty awesome), an elf sorcerer (abyssal bloodline, very anti-hero attitude), and "Robert's typical Dwarf Fighter" which really means a very powerful character who isn't min-maxed at all. Somehow.
The party had to deal with a minor lord in the noble estates. It turned out, said lord was a vampire. This encounter was designed to test the paladin's ability to understand what "the lesser of two evils" meant. Instead he attacked the vampire.
I was prepared for this, with greater invisibility and summon monster, as well as spider climb being used heavily. My favorite part was the summoned Lantern Archon constantly apologizing after blasting them.
My group formally requested (read: demanded) I never use Greater Invisibility again.
2. The half-orc necromantic Eldritch Knight. A warden of the prison in a city ripe with arcane spellcasters. They had to break into the prison and recover an item. Their only way out ended up being through the wardens office. You know, that guy who rode up to speak with a guard on a skeletal horse? I devastated the party fighter and rogue with Bestow Curse (cast through spectral hand, of course). They won. The rogue died.
Now my best friend swears by Iron Will and Improved Iron Will no matter what character he plays.
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My most evil encounter played off of an NPC that I gave to a visiting player. Unbeknownst to him, his girlfriend was a treacherous annis hag with barbarian class levels. Along with her coven, a green hag assassin and a sea hag druid (with a giant crocodile animal companion), she ambushed the party, devastated them, and killed the NPC and at least one player.
After the party got out of there and had Jeren reincarnated (they loved that spell), they tried to scry-and-die. The kicker was that Jeren carried the hag's eye, disguised as a necklace given to him by his beloved. As a result, the hags could see everything they did, and were prepared when they came teleporting in.
They eventually conquered the hags, but not without severe mental trauma to the players. They still freak out whenever anybody mentions hags.
We also had a DM who was known for excellent moral quandaries, and a PC paladin who was exceedingly gullible. That game often had us running around helping evil before the evil's true goals became clear. One of the worst couple of fights was against a half-fiend dragon that naturally had access to Blasphemy. (So that's what Greater Spell Immunity is for.) It also culminated in a brilliant fight with a misguided(?) Planetar.
The most devious fight in a whole campaign full of them was against a mind-flayer. Now, I had to be somewhere else that night, and I was playing a diviner, so I like to think it would have turned out differently if I were there. This mind-flayer was a really tough fight, it must have had class levels in fighter or something. The mind blast was really strong, too, and it seemed to get more of them. The paladin eventually triumphed over it, with the rest of the party stunned. He turned to investigate what the mind-flayer was guarding...
wow i posted this last night before i when to bed, and wow now i fill like i should add chainsaws to my whales flippers.
good stuff though
I made an encounter where a wizard has summoned three astradaemons and used veil to make them appear as birds flying around as they set up to energy drain some characters while the wizard hits them with flesh to stone afterward. They might survive, but it seems prett evil.
I've recently had a few enemies hit fallen PCs to ensure their dead because the healer has been using breath of life to bring them back.
I somehow got tricked into running an evil campaign (you know, where the PCs are evil supposedly for RP reasons, but in reality so they can get past all those moral problems I'd forced them to role play through as good guys...)
The problems started when I tried to have the group arrested by a paladin with some bad information on them. It was supposed to hook into another adventure, culminating in the chance to kill the paladin in vengeance. Instead of listening to my explanation about how feudal society (at least on my world) doesn't have freedom of speech, due process, or innocence until proven guilty, they tried to stir up a good old patriotic furor (minus the party's token dwarf, who promptly surrendered and stepped back)only to then try to rampage their way out of the middle of town. Needless to say there were lots of aid another actions involved in the grapple/overrun, followed by three very upset players. We cut the session short and took up from the local stocks the next week after the players had time to cool down (and egg my house...)
I've recently had a few enemies hit fallen PCs to ensure their dead because the healer has been using breath of life to bring them back.
Wouldn't it have been more evil for the enemies to attack after Breath of Life has been cast
Something happened a few nights ago, not an evil plan I prepared to curbstomp the players, but a thing one of them brough upon himself.
Now, before I start the story, I need to explain that we were NOT playing Pathfinder, but Legend of Five Rings, adapted to my homebrewed fantasy setting. In this system, there is no Alignments, but Honor measured from 0 to 10 and there is "classes" completelly focused in social interaction, the Courtiers, with several diferent abilities.
Well, to the story: The players objective is to bring down a prince that is known as a ruthless bastard, slaver and, supposedly, a devil worshiper. A very politic- and espionage-centered game. One of the characters is a dwarven merchant with a very short temper. He felt insulted by a joke made by another charater, a knight of a very powerful and influential order.
As a "revenge joke", the dwarven merchant told the biggest gossiper of the nobility of the kingdom's capital that said knight had bought all his victories in duels and was actually a coward.
Not-so-fun story, the gossip will circulate, the knight will face a hard time and end of tale, right? Well, no.
The gossiper is actually a very skilled Courtier. Her method of operation actually is to be known as a gossiper, but she uses this fame to blackmail people when the gossip they bring her to spread eventually hit the fan. Her Courtier abilities are totally focused in manipulation people she holds blackmail material against... And the order of the knight player will be very pissed when they find out that the character is actually honorable and never bought any duel and that someone is spreading lies about one of their members...
The sad part is: the NPC is actually sympathetic toward the player's objectives and was supposed to be used BY the players, not against them.
You can't cast through a wall of force. It is just as solid as a brick. I know you can see through it, but it still blocks line of effect.
PS:If you have a houserule then carry on. :)
"Breath weapons and spells cannot pass through a wall of force in either direction, although dimension door, teleport, and similar effects can bypass the barrier...Gaze attacks can operate through a wall of force."
The spell description does not say it blocks line of effect. It says spells cannot pass through it. The spells were beginning and ending on the same side of the wall of force. This is how I read the spell and how we have been playing it so far (to be fair it does not come up very often). If there is a clarification somewhere I would gladly change my ruling as I do try to stay as close to the RAW as possible.
blocks line of effect, not line of sight. Teleporting and summoning spells work just fine "through" a wall of force. Rays, missiles, breath weapons, etc not so much.
I don't pull evil tricks on my players.
My NPCs do! ;)
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I don't pull evil tricks on my players.
My NPCs do! ;)
Not so much Evil.
I might have the Minor BBEG develop a grudge and simply follow the PCs and kill people they even smile at after they move on. but that is when i harass them with Serial killers. Imagine Jack The Ripper decides that your PCs will select his targets by the way the PCs behave toward them.
I also pit them against the Hardline Lawful Good for every slight or alignment infringement they think they can get away with. Gygax definition of Lawful Good is Harmless and Lawful...but at some point those who are not harmless and lawful must be bought to Justice. That requires ostracising them from civilization without killing them. notices of their crime get to the next town before them. Guardsmen at the gate simply close the door and refuse to let them entry. Lawful Evil/Lawful Neutral Guards might attempt to kill them for their crimes.
I always take a hard ball on bozo PCs who have been killing others and taking their stuff.
Some very simple tricks I pulled recently (compared to the white whales):
One player plays a monk, and he has been using his winter blanket for all kinds of practical things. So much that the winter blanket has become associated with this monk.
An evil group of adventurers steals the winter blanket and plants it on a crime scene. Such fun, especially when the players were wondering why the evil rogue would steal the winter blanket :-)
Another one of my players plays a wizard, and was so very glad when he got the fireball spell. So they were fighting an ogre assassin. The wizard cast the fireball. Of course the ogre saves and gets no damage because of his evasion. I let him comment: "I hate wizards!"
Next round the wizard angrily targets him with a magic missile. But the ogre had a brooch of shielding. Another dent in the reputation of this wizard :-)
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The campaign my players have just begun features a time-traveler as an important villain (a weird side-effect of having an unstable demiplane as his home base). Today one of the PCs met him for the first time, but he had already known her for a while. He sat down next to her in a bar and greeted her (because he's never quite sure whether the PCs are going to love or hate him next time they see him--he is going to be both useful and infuriating). She, of course, asked him who he was and how he knew so much about her.
Now she thinks she might have some kind of memory loss and a mysterious past she doesn't know about. But of course he's from her future.
*evil grin*
I did a time-travel campaign where the NPCs of a small village had met the PCs before, so served them their favorite dishes and gave other small clues, but were trying to hide that they knew the PCs, except some dumber ones couldn't pull it off so well or thought it was a joke.
But they'd been told to lie by the PCs themselves, in the future, having come back.
It was a time loop, and to keep the time-continuum stabilized, the PCs had to circle back and ensure everything the NPCs remembered came true, including the town 'lie' that they didn't know the PCs.
The party also kept getting TPKed in dreams, except the dreams 'really' happened and were played out, and after the PCs gained access to time travel, they had to go back and prevent each TPK, in ways that couldn't have been detected by their previous selves.
There were even battle marks in the village they had to recreate.
After all that was rectified, then it got weird...
Good fun.
Ran a witch whose monkey familar would comicly prat fall while using a wand of Hideous Laughter.