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I had an Underdark encounter set in a large cavern with a Beholder Eye Tyrant and 2 mounted trolls riding triceratops. I figured the Beholder would be the worst of the problems, turns out mounted trolls with spirited charge are doing 90+ damage without a crit, and when you crit the poor sorcerer left alone by his partymates, well, it gets ugly.
The party wiped the Beholder out quickly, but had already lost 2 to the trolls.
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I didn't DM this one but I was a player and he explained afterwords what we should have done
I was a half giant (athas version) Blacksmith 3/soulknife 3/barberian 3 (this was 2e, I was a lvl 3 character, essentially my blacksmith stuff in combat was giant warhammer martial arts with bonuses to hit and damage with warhammers so long as I didn't spend weaponproficencies on any other weapons) the party also had one troll (actually 2 but the other one was not able to show that day so she played guard over the MVP NPCs) a drow monk/druid (not really monk/druid it was a ratial class that this was close enough to) a smerf nibbling (a kind of gnome I think) alchamist(actually apothacary)/thief(rouge) and a flying halfling ranger
the combat started with an ettin trying to make us pay a toll, this would also un stone to flesh one of our party members
the drow wouldn't pay and him and the troll were the only ones with money,
so he starts playing this horn that summons a buleet and this thing that had several paralizing tentacles, I attacked the buleet cause I could tank that kind of damage, and the troll, the ranger and the drow long range attacked the paralizer, with the alchamist/rouge was stuck on the other side of a gate, turns out either me or the troll was suposed to take out the ettin or at least distract him from playing his music or simply pay the toll, because when he saw that we had almost beat the the people we were fighting, he summoned his boss, a dracolitch, and we all (other than the troll (and the halfling and the rouge/alchamist but they ran off) died, well technically that's not true either, I didn't die, I failed to disbelive an illusion and I thought that I had my soul sucked out which left me brain dead
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My very first session as a GM was totally thrown off the rails when the player party simply ignored my carefully created ruined castle's inviting front door and instead used a rope and grappling hook to climb up on the roof and break through the ceiling.
Since then I've never really "assumed" the PCs will do anything, and so haven't really had a "players ruined my encounter" scenario since. I set up situations and let the PCs interact with the world while the world interacts with the PCs. The result is that I do a lot of thinking, reacting and adjusting on the fly, but I prefer it that way anyway.
Why am I smurfed I didn't say the word?
...the party also had one troll (actually 2 but the other one was not able to show that day so she played guard over the MVP NPCs) a drow monk/druid (not really monk/druid it was a ratial class that this was close enough to) a smerf nibbling (a kind of gnome I think) alchamist(actually apothacary)/thief(rouge) and a flying halfling ranger ...
Your phone/tablet spellchecker didn't like svirfneblin apparently :)
My brother roshamboed an ogre one time. That doesn't really fit the thread, but I thought it was important to share, regardless.
Also, same quest the party decided to cast invisibility on the barbarian (my brother), give him the potion of levitate, then have him dive-bomb the hydra who was guarding the wizard's tower. Ended up doing massive damage (I think a crit was involved), the hydra whiffed on attacks of opportunity, and they made short work of it at that point. Rules-wise, I probably didn't adjudicate it quite right, but everybody thought it was funny as hell, so whatever. Rule of Cool/Party Fun wins out from time to time.
Lord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
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Lord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
no we were in the underdark, I was the wierd one
no we were in the underdark, I was the wierd oneLord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
Eeww ... :)
Most of my games have gone at least moderately well (have no good stories to tell yet...). However, whenever I design an encounter, I always think "I should put this and this in there, or add these stats, just in case one of the PCs is crazy enough to try and do this instead..."
Saves me every time.
This was a 3.5 game in which I playing a druid 7/wild shaper 3/nature's warrior 3 (or there abouts) that ran around as a dire grizzly. Party had a mystic theurge, a combat maneuver focused fighter GMPC, and a ranger/rogue elf with a giant elven curved blade.
We were assaulting a Slaad stronghold, which was several floors of slaad guards. The GM had figured out rules for alarms, perception checks to hear fighting, cascading combats, etc. He was ready for us to attack the place and spend the next 5 hours in combat!
Except we didn't.
The caster put up a globe of invisibility, gave the rogue greater invisibility, and centered a silence on me. We all charged up to the front gate and he Knocked it open. We killed the first group of Slaads in complete silence and in like 2 turns of messy silent combat.
We then went room to room like this. We'd smash a door off its hinges in utter silence, charge in on the surprised and suddenly deaf/mute slaads, destroy them in a round (since the difficulty was meant to be in the large number of adds, not in any one group). Then we'd move on to the next room.
We had to move fast because the various spells were wearing off (such as haste, greater invisibility) and so it was just a whirlwind of awesomeness!
Then we got to the final fight. The Death Slaad casts his finger of death move on me, because hey I'm a giant bear with like a +21 fort save and the DC is only 20 so I'd only fail on a 1 and what are the chances of that... dammit.
Yeah, totally rolled 1 on my save-or-die check and bought it. However, I had alter fate and the natural speech feat, so was able to cast it and retry the save, which I passed. Unfortunately the game didn't go much past that point.
We all had a huge bunch of fun but definitely ruined his whole plan for that place.
And another because it is a good story.
Friend's first time as a GM. He had a whole castle in place that he wanted us to fight through in order to gather the three pieces of the key to unlock the main hall to find the final boss.
So when we found ourselves in a passageway behind the throne room, we just stoneshaped a door and walked in to face him.
The GM was a huge overplanner, so he had a three page tactics writeup for the boss with ideas on how to use every spell he had, even level 0 ones like create water (the boss had a shocking weapon, so he'd create water where we were standing and throw the weapon in do do shocking damage to all of us).
Instead, on round one the dwarf had flight cast upon him.
On round two, the dwarf flew over to the boss and hit him with his dwarven great axe. And critted. And rolled 6 6, 5 6, 6 5 (triple damage). Added to that was another 18, which meant 52 damage. The boss failed his fortitude save for the Tons'o'Damage check and died instantly.
I truly felt bad for my friend at the look on his face. All his plans, not just for the boss but for the entire castle... ruined! He never GMed again.
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Eeww ... :)no we were in the underdark, I was the wierd oneLord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
why is that Eeww?
Murphy, your story reminds me of one of our group's most memorable game sessions.
We were running some 3.5 module in some ancient buried dungeon/crypt/labyrinth or whatever, and the GM had built up this one encounter to be some sort of epic combat that we would be lucky to survive.
He got our attention. So we scouted out the encounter and managed to identify the enemy, their location and the quickest way to engage them. Then we quietly removed ourselves to another room and buffed the holy bejeebers out of the party, using rods of extend on most of our buffs.
Then, buffed up like bosses, we charged into the encounter room and totally wiped the floor with them in two rounds.
So, there we were, all buffed up with no boss to fight. So what to do?
CHHAAARRGGEEEE!!!!! Off we went into unexplored territory, kicking down doors and totally destroying room after room of monsters until our buffs ran out. In some cases we kicked down a door, saw a few monsters and kept charging letting them catch up to us. In the end we wiped out half of the next level in one crazed, buffed up tidal wave of bloodletting.
I've considered duplicating that session, but I'm convinced that our GM would be prepared for it if we tried it again. In this case he was totally off guard and going strictly from the module as we made mincemeat of the inhabitants.
why is that Eeww?Eeww ... :)no we were in the underdark, I was the wierd oneLord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
My remembering of Athas' Underdark was that is was a way, waaaay worse place to be than anywhere on the surface. There's a reason they didn't ever detail one in the years of the setting in 2e. Volcanic obsidian that energy drains every 10 minutes or something, filling the underground tunnel complexes comes readily to mind. Sounds like you guys had fun though!
I will admit that every so often over the years, I keep throwing that "strange and curious" door way into a dungeon or whatever hoping that the players will enter it *this* time! Unfortunately now the doorway has become the players "hey, we do some really dumb things - but entering *that* doorway is stepping over the line even for us!!"
It's getting to the point if they actually do enter the door, I'll just TPK the lot of them to teach them a lesson. Well... I'm not that kind of GM but it sure is tempting!
I can picture it now...
PC's enter door; "Helllllllooooo! Is anyone there?"
BBG; "You've no idea how long I've been waiting to do this..."
Have you read the short story "the green door". A boy as a child enters a green door and it is a world full of bliss, free of cares. However, each time after he sees the door, he is too busy to enter, and it keeps showing up in many different places.
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My remembering of Athas' Underdark was that is was a way, waaaay worse place to be than anywhere on the surface. There's a reason they didn't ever detail one in the years of the setting in 2e. Volcanic obsidian that energy drains every 10 minutes or something, filling the underground tunnel complexes comes readily to mind. Sounds like you guys had fun though!why is that Eeww?Eeww ... :)no we were in the underdark, I was the wierd oneLord Foul II: I am amazed that the GM permitted a svirfneblin PC on Athas - the gnomes were one of many races exterminated with extreme prejudice by the Dragon Kings. (I want to say that gnomes were the first race that were wiped out, but I'm not 100% certain.) If nothing else, word of the "albino halfing with the big nose" would have quickly made its way to that particular Dragon King and you guys would have been in sooooo much kaka it's not even funny.
The drow would be as bad or worse .... all that sunlight ... and of course another Dragon King might have taken care of Athas' "drow problem" ...
oh sorry I meant the toril underdark, I was from toril everyone else was local (other than the flying halfling ranger I think she was from the shadow plane)
I had retooled the Kingmaker BBEG to a fair-thee-well, making said villain meaner and nastier than scripted. Opening spell by the PC sorceress against no SR was horrid wilting . Nat 1 on the Fort save, nat 1 vs. Massive Damage, campaign over on round 1.
... 52 damage. The boss failed his fortitude save for the Tons'o'Damage check and died instantly.
I truly felt bad for my friend at the look on his face. All his plans, not just for the boss but for the entire castle... ruined! He never GMed again.
I had retooled the Kingmaker BBEG to a fair-thee-well, making said villain meaner and nastier than scripted. Opening spell by the PC sorceress against no SR was horrid wilting . Nat 1 on the Fort save, nat 1 vs. Massive Damage, campaign over on round 1.
Had a similar thing happen to me. Tricked out a fighter to be an awesome leader/tactician, first fight took 50+ damage on round one from a crit, flubbed the save and died.
I've refused to use that optional rule ever since.
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And another because it is a good story.
Friend's first time as a GM. He had a whole castle in place that he wanted us to fight through in order to gather the three pieces of the key to unlock the main hall to find the final boss.
So when we found ourselves in a passageway behind the throne room, we just stoneshaped a door and walked in to face him.
The GM was a huge overplanner, so he had a three page tactics writeup for the boss with ideas on how to use every spell he had, even level 0 ones like create water (the boss had a shocking weapon, so he'd create water where we were standing and throw the weapon in do do shocking damage to all of us).
Instead, on round one the dwarf had flight cast upon him.
On round two, the dwarf flew over to the boss and hit him with his dwarven great axe. And critted. And rolled 6 6, 5 6, 6 5 (triple damage). Added to that was another 18, which meant 52 damage. The boss failed his fortitude save for the Tons'o'Damage check and died instantly.
I truly felt bad for my friend at the look on his face. All his plans, not just for the boss but for the entire castle... ruined! He never GMed again.
Had a friend do a similar thing. Huge tower filled with magical traps and what not, all sorts of evil creepies ready to eat the party, with the obligatory BBEG casting an evil spell to destroy the world on the top of the tower. He forgot that flying was possible. Skipped the entire tower by having the druid wildshape into a giant vulture and carry the dwarf barbarian and halfling rogue up. The wizard just cast fly on himself, and then they proceeded to beat down the BBEG, who the DM planned would start buffing himself after the PC's went into the tower. Suffice it to say, it was a one round fight, and we were done with that leg of the campaign in an hour.
Fun side note, because there was nothing further planned in the campaign after that, we played Munchkin while the DM berated himself.
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I misread a PFS scenario and didn't prep quite right, so imagine my surprise after the party killed the guardian/protector monster that the McGuffin was actually in the room with it the whole time, just bound and trussed under a small table that had a cloth covering it.
The problem? Said party included a Negative Energy spamming channel cleric, who pumped out over 40d6 Negative Energy throughout the fight, radiating from him and filling the room, excluding the party members but sadly NOT the McGuffin guy.
Yeah, they killed the rescue-ee.
I roll my dice in front of my players...have since the first time I DM'd and realized the screen just did not look cool to me in the 70's.
More times than I can count, the only way the evil bad monster could fail was on a 1...and I rolled it!
I like to think of it as kharma...plus my players roll honestly when they see me roll the same way...
It still sucks to have and end game villian meet his/her/it's fate due to random probability and unfaithful dice!
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I screwed up a DM's plans. He was kinda railroady but ran an enthralling campaign. He carefully planned out several months of adventure as we had to transport a criminal (in a low-magic setting) across a continent and an ocean to bring him to justice.
Earlier in the campaign, I had gotten a veritable artifact that allowed a group to teleport without error one time. Somehow we went off the tracks and I didn't use it when it was supposed to get used. I tucked it away and it was about two years of real time from then until we were about to embark on this journey to deliver this criminal.
It was almost scripted. My friend just went through this long spiel about how much opposition we were going to face on his journey and I said, "Are you kidding? This is what that teleport rod was for!"
My friend beamed and I looked over at the DM and I could see by the look on his face that he forgot all about that item. He showed us the BINDER of notes and maps and stuff that he said he'd worked on for TWO MONTHS!! But he was so railroady that I was sure this was the moment for the item and he explained that the moment had passed and he simply forgot we still had it. I felt so bad, I said I'd be ok with the item not working for one reason or another but, to his credit, he said it would be wrong.
We got to triumph. While this criminal's allies were moving to intercept us, we delivered him to the authorities and watched as he was drawn and quartered. It honestly felt great to know the extent of our victory.
I have a few stories. I was running a Western style game in which there was a gun toting Paladin preacher. They were fighting the Seven Deadly Sins, and Envy was an Antipaladin Worm That Walks. Envy was in a maze made of grates, and almost killed the party wizard in one surprise round by engulfing him. Paladin walks in his room after the surprise round, takes one shot, smites, expends all his Lay on Hands with some feat, the gun was holy, and rolled almost max damage (seriously, there were like 8 6s), which was something close to 90. Envy had 75hp. Combat over. It was the most anticlimactic thing ever, because they'd been fighting through his dungeon for almost seven hours by that point, plus he had been harrowing them for two sessions.
The second story involved a homebrew bad guy who was the incarnation of Prowess. Every spell, ability, save, attack roll, etc, he gained that quality within a few rounds. We'd fought and lost to him twice. We were hiding on the Storm King's Castle (which was a ruin that we'd turned into our base while trying to figure out how to use it) when he popped in to rumble again. The third combat was going badly, and my barbarian and my friend's witch were pretty much totally outclassed, and I was rendered helpless round one. The unknown quality was the new sorceror who he had never met before. We were using some 3.5 material, and he had some hellfire spells, and blew through most of Prowess's hit points in two rounds. Prowess started doing his thing and jumped out a window to escape, vowing to get us and our little dog too. The sorceror jumped after prowess, and the GM said that they had three rounds in the air. Round one, the sorceror took Prowess to 3 HP. Round two, the sorceror killed prowess. Round three, the sorceror cast Feather Fall and successfully stayed alive and killed our main plot villain many, many, many sessions before we were supposed to. It was epic, but it took the GM by surprise and totally derailed his detailed plot.
The next couple stories come from a bad time in my life where I set out to de-rail a game and insta-kill the BBEG every time he started monologuing. I became unfortunately known for it in my local groups, and to this day, most of the people I play with tend to make the bad guys
In high school, I got invited to join a few of the older gamers that played at a comic shop near me to go to one of their houses to play 3.5. I was flattered, spent hours making a Warmage, and showed up ready for battle. I quickly found out that the guys did not play...very tactically and just basically made goofy characters and multiclassed pointlessly and played really underpowered characters. Basically, I single-handedly killed 4/5 of the dungeon on my own and still had gas when we hit the BBEG at the end of the dungeon. He started monologuing, and I asked the GM if I could have a surprise round. He said sure. I sudden quickened a lightning bolt then shot another lightning bolt, rolled like a champ, and the BBEG wizard (the 3.5 kind with d4 HP) failed both saves and died on the spot. The table of four guys who had been playing since First Edition stared at me in blank horror. I never got invited back.
My last story is the fastest time I've ever seen a game derailed. The game started off in a town where there was a creepy street preacher preaching doom and destruction and saying that his god was going to kill everyone, blah, blah, blah. I was playing a rogue and made an epic stealth check to sneak up to the podium and dump Sovereign Glue all over it just as the preacher slammed his hands down. He was stuck and suddenly didn't have his hands to use somatic components. Then I lit him on fire and started sneak attacking. He died, and the GM said his game was over because I killed the main villain an hour into the first session.
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I did have a big long chase encounter in a large very complex castle the PCs were having to work through day by day that didn't go as planned. Heavily undead-y place. They killed an umbral dragon in the courtyard. I had it not only rise as undead bu also had its negative energy-filled stomach start to meltdown. The plan was for it to mindlessly chase after the threat of it exploding became clear, with it tearing down walls along the way and making things more convenient for them getting through the cleared out portions later and providing an exciting chase scene/running battle.
As soon as they realized the thing was going to explode, they threw everything they had into sealing it up and ducking for cover.
Credit where it's due. They thought fast and things worked out much more safely for them.
But man they really could have used those shortcuts. :)
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My group was leaving the city, with a destination in the nearby swamp. In the outlying farmlands, I had set up an encounter where the party would meet a new race I have crafted similar to lizardfolk but, well.
I described him as well off the road in a tilled field, hunched over a body and apparently chewing something.
The situation was supposed to go "group charges/shoots" "Lizardy drops a ration bag, and holds up hands in obvious surrender" "Party gains important guide into the swamp, bunches of backstory and flavor block text"
How it really went: "ranger rolls triple 20."
A twist - after a few sessions like those listed above, I had a Boss Wizard who made himself to look like the prisoner the party was supposed to rescue (daughter of a noble) and another illusion to make the prisoner (In chains) look like himself.
The PC's, upon seeing the "boss", unleashed. The look on their faces when they realized what they had done....priceless.
However, it did put a crimp in the plot (I had thought they would wound her before realizing what was going on, not realizing how much hurt they could deal in one round). Ultimately they brought her back ($$$) but they were never sure about the BBEG after that....
I remember a homebrew shadow plane campaign. We were supposed to travel to a tower through the streets to meet the bbeg. Our druid had a wand of summon monster and summoned hippogriffs for us to ride there. My dm always curses when our PC's level beyond climbing/walking.