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Ever had one of those moments where your party comes up with a plan, it seems like everything is going to work out, and it partially does... but with unexpected results that you never saw coming until it was right in your face and your party is going "AW FUUUUU8%(@$#&!"?
Had my own personal experience of that recently, and was wanting to hear others.
My personal story: Custom campaign, me and the rest of the party got teleported to a demonic realm run by a demon named Reagis, who then sent us to a prison that was on a VERY hot plane (think Chronicles of Riddick, shade is good, sunlight will scorch you to death). We manage to escape, found a magically powered boat that has a magical shield that prevents scorching damage. We ended up dropping down a lavafall that damaged the ship tremendously, however a nearby town was established apparently by other escapees, who constantly forge for elemental cores to power the energy shield protecting the town.
Now, this is when it gets interesting. To get the ship repaired, we had to bargain, as money means nothing in this plane. In return for ship repairs, we had to earn a ship back that the dock worker had lost somehow to a local pirate named Cid. Although we gambled with him, we could only convince him to lend the ship for a week, and the repairs on our ship would take longer than a week. Interestingly, the ship's magical AI would recognize a temporary captain as the new official captain if the permanent captain became deceased. This said, the night after we docked, we were attacked by Drow, who had apparently made some sort of bargain with the drow. As a result, we planned to frame the drow to go against captain Cid. We first had our rogue drink a potion of invisibility, go into the basement where the brewery was, and use drow poison that we got off the corpses of the drow we had killed.
A sound plan, but as the rogue was about to leave, he decided to go upstairs and see if there was any loot in Cid's room. He opens the door, and a little girl was in there. She starts calling out for daddy, thinking that he may have opened the door, and wanders down the steps. The rogue grabs some jewelry, and leaves. The potion wears off roughly 6 seconds after he closes the door, and the rest of us were in the building with Cid, oblivious to our plan and not seeing us as enemies since we had gambled and drank with him prior to the entire staging. The little girl asks for something to drink, to which Cid replies "now now, you know you can't have too much to drink... but I guess its been awhile. You can have a sip!" The girl dies from the drow poison, while the dosage would normally knock out a larger man such as Cid. Infuriated, and realizing full well that it was drow poison, charges with the rest of his pirates towards the side of the town run by the drow.
As a result, our rogue has earned the nickname Child Murderer among our characters.
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Not so much a "f$#%ing hell!" moment, as it is a "Holy f$%#! I can't believe that just happened!" moment. It all started in a custom campaign:
Our party was fleeing from countless devils after they discovered our base in the first ring of hell, in Tiamat's nest. We managed to lock ourselves in a vault beneath the dead god's corpse, in which we found six statues: one for each chromatic dragon and one of Tiamat. Further examination revealed that they could be activated to release a breath weapon of the respective dragon... You can see where this is going.
Our gunslinger rolled a massive disable device check to figure out how the statue of Tiamat worked, and the gears in our heads began to turn. We set up silent images of walls in all the passage ways in the vault so the devils would funnel in to the area in front of the statue, and activated the statue. There was a small charge up time, which we used to open the massive vault doors and duck behind the silent images. A number of devils, ranging from barbed to a horned devil, filed in like planned. It was like shooting fish in a barrel with enough dice damage to TPK nearly any party.
To our dismay, the single horn devil survive the blinding flash of energy and began to flee for his life. As EXP grubbing adventures (and something about being good aligned) we would have none of this. Our gunslinger burst from behind the illusions and fired a single shot at the chain that held the massive doors open (roughly going off the blast lock rules).
>Nat 20
The door came crashing down in front of the devil, and we promptly meat swarmed the highly damaged, highly crippled, devil. When we checked the statue again, it had disappeared to reveal a passage which lead straight to Tiamat's treasure hoard. Mountains of gold, jewels, and magical items, as far as the eye could see.
Of course it had a irremovable curse on all of it. Didn't matter, we stuck a flag in the room and claimed it in the name of awesome. We'll get back to there someday when were not off saving the word and generally being total bad asses.
If you care to know, later surveying of the damage showed that the blast from the breath weapon was something on the scale of a laser cannon from an anime. We were finding devil corpses a mile out from the mouth of the vault.
Let this be a lesson to all the DM's who think it's a good idea to give their PC's a canon of any kind. Don't.
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Ever had one of those moments where your party comes up with a plan, it seems like everything is going to work out, and it partially does... but with unexpected results that you never saw coming until it was right in your face and your party is going "AW FUUUUU8%(@$#&!"?
Had my own personal experience of that recently, and was wanting to hear others.
My personal story: Custom campaign, me and the rest of the party got teleported to a demonic realm run by a demon named Reagis, who then sent us to a prison that was on a VERY hot plane (think Chronicles of Riddick, shade is good, sunlight will scorch you to death). We manage to escape, found a magically powered boat that has a magical shield that prevents scorching damage. We ended up dropping down a lavafall that damaged the ship tremendously, however a nearby town was established apparently by other escapees, who constantly forge for elemental cores to power the energy shield protecting the town.
Now, this is when it gets interesting. To get the ship repaired, we had to bargain, as money means nothing in this plane. In return for ship repairs, we had to earn a ship back that the dock worker had lost somehow to a local pirate named Cid. Although we gambled with him, we could only convince him to lend the ship for a week, and the repairs on our ship would take longer than a week. Interestingly, the ship's magical AI would recognize a temporary captain as the new official captain if the permanent captain became deceased. This said, the night after we docked, we were attacked by Drow, who had apparently made some sort of bargain with the drow. As a result, we planned to frame the drow to go against captain Cid. We first had our rogue drink a potion of invisibility, go into the basement where the brewery was, and use drow poison that we got off the corpses of the drow we had killed.
A sound plan, but as the rogue was about to leave, he decided to go upstairs and see if there was any loot in Cid's room. He opens the door, and a little girl was in...
So did the whole party become Evil because of this act? Clearly it wast intentional but some DMs rule that actions have consequences and the PCs action did result in the death of an innocent child.
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There where no nefarious intent in what they did. It was a knockout poison, it didnt even do constitution damage. Its not the pcs fault that their DM decided to rule it the way it did. Not to mention that drow poison isnt the ingested kind. It shouldnt have done anything at all except maybe give the girl an upset stomach
I had such a moment in the last session of my warhammer 40k only war game.
My players were sent to find and investigate an enemy camp, find out everything about it and then report back to the main assault force that would arrive within 3 days, after they had reported the location of the enemy camp. While they were watching the camp and had found out that it contained about 120 enemy foot-soldiers and some elite troops (a lot more than anticipated by their commander), they managed to get caught by one of the outposts of said camp. They killed him, before he could get an alarm of, but of course they knew that with the next change of guard shifts in 6 hours (they knew the schedule by then) the element of surprise would be gone and then their attack team would have no chance to overtake the enemy, while they where alert.
At this point, i figured they would report back to their sergeant and have him call of the attack.
They did not. They decided, between the 6 of them, to attack the camp on their own. At first I thought they were crazy, but then the sniper/scout/demolitions guy of the crew did the most amazing chain of stealth and demolitions tests, to rig the whole enemy camp with explosives from their own storage. After that they managed to silently snipe the guards in the heavy gun emplacements on both ends of the camp, without ever alerting anybody to their presence (iz was night)
Once they had secured the heavy machine guns, they triggered all their explosives and in the most epic battle I have yet seen in any P&P round, managed to kill all enemy survivors, while loosing only one of their own. After that, i was sitting there, lookong at them and was like "You did't seriously just pull this off..."
So did the whole party become Evil because of this act? Clearly it wast intentional but some DMs rule that actions have consequences and the PCs action did result in the death of an innocent child.
Well, it was intentional to start a war between the two sides (only way to become the permanent captain to our knowledge seeing as the captain would definitely not bargain an entire ship, especially not a fully functional one that can travel on lava, let alone the number of his crew outnumbered us about 4 to 1), although we mainly saw it primarily as a pirate who was mostly out for personal gain although willing to bargain, who had made a deal with the drow, who were more clearly evil. Didn't even know he had a kid, and was intending for the captain to drink it, as the drow poison was put into his personal canister of alcohol.
As for the child dieing from a sleep poison, the GM compared it to a tranquilizer dart. If it can put a fully grown humanoid out in a matter of seconds, imagine what it would do to a 5 year old kid. Obviously, not good.
This is from the campaign I'm running, last session.
Party last session is a N human alchemist, CN sylph cleric of Pharasma, CG kitsune "specialist" (ninja), CE beastbrood tiefling sorcerer, and the new character introduced at that session, a CN kitsune oracle with the Time mystery and tongues curse.
The party is given a quest by the mayor to stop some highwaymen that have been harrying people traveling from the village to the countyseat. The burgomaster/mayor specifies that he wants a particular bandit brought in alive because he's an ex-guard that deserted a few weeks before, and is also the son of one of the village elders. The town will pay 1000 gp if he's brought in alive without permanent injury, and will pay fifty gold for each additional bandit brought in alive.
The party sets up a "reverse ambush" for the bandits, including rigging a carriage with tanglefoot bag traps and starting a rumor that something valuable is being transported in the carriage, so it will serve as bait for the bandits.
The bandits attack the carriage as planned. The bandits consist of an armored human bandit (the town elder's son, using the CR 1 town guard from GameMastery Guide), two lightly armored bandits (Sczarni legbreaker and Sczarni smuggler from Pathfinder Campaign Setting NPC Guide, both also CR 1), and a standard tiefling rogue (CR 1/2, from the Bestiary). The bandits are defeated with no casualties. (Most reduced to negative hitpoints without dying.) All are stripped naked and bound.
Then it gets weird. The elder's son is put in the carriage so he can't see, then one of the other bandits (the Sczarni legbreaker) is tied between two horses and threatened that he will be drawn and quartered (halved, I guess) if he doesn't tell them where the bandit treasure is. Being a Sczarni legbreaker himself, he makes some threats back to the party, about the Sczarni seeking retribution if he's killed. The party assures him he will be killed, as a demonstration for the other bandits so the other bandits will tell them where the treasure is. The other Sczarni defers to the legbreaker and doesn't talk either.
The tiefling cracks and says he isn't Sczarni and he hasn't worked with these guys that long, and he'll tell the party anything they want to know if they let him go. He'll leave Ustalav and go back to Cheliax and they'll never see him again. He speaks to the party's CE beastbrood tiefling in Abyssal then Infernal, trying to find a language they can speak in privately, but the party's "CN" kitsune oracle understands both languages, so she's in on the discussion. She agrees to stay with the other prisoners while the tiefling takes the beastbrood and some others to the bandit treasure.
So the tiefling bandit takes them to the bandit treasure, which is quite extensive. Then they come back and they find that the "CN" kitsune oracle has been torturing the Sczarni even more with certain forms of genital distress involving ropes and also pouring acid flasks in their mouths.
The party gives the (still naked) tiefling a traveler's outfit (from the 35 they found among the bandit loot) and tells him they never want to cross paths with him again. They send him packing.
The session basically ended there because it was getting very late.
At this point, several things are relevant:
1.) Both kitsunes were in their kitsune forms while dealing with the bandits, who were taken alive. Meaning the bandits can out them to the locals as "werefoxes." This campaign is in a region were the locals are very superstitious and they already fear the party as freaks, and do have a recent werewolf problem. The closest analog the locals have in their conceptual vocabulary to kitsune are werefoxes.
2.) At this point I think the party are actually scarier than some of the "threats" the villagers would ask them to face, particularly because of the torture. They would have happily killed the bandits but they're greedy enough to want the 50 gp per live bandit captured. They wanted to break the bandits' legs but they were told by the mayor to return them in a condition that would allow them to stand at pillory. (Which, yes, pillory is a form of torture, but it's far more humane than what they've already one to these guys.)
3.) I really want the Sczarni to seek some kind of vengeance against the party now. If the bandits survive back to the village, they'll suffer some punishment at the hands of the village, but the real suffering they experienced was at the hands of the kitsune torturer while the tiefling was showing the others to their spoils.
I actually had a quest in mind that the party would have to deal with a pair of con-artist rogues, where the ideal outcome would be the rogues becoming hirelings for the party and working at their base-of-operations, but given the way these bandits were treated in this questline, I think the quest giver for that other quest might be hesitant to give it. (And he's the town healer, so he'll be aware of the condition of the Sczarni when they're brought in.)
Oh well, the way the party handled those bandits was kind of an OMG moment for me as I was running it. I definitely foresee more conflict between the party and the village if they continue down this line.
I actually had an awesome OMG WTF session last week, and I'm a player. HAHA
Party has a Bear Shaman Druid tank, with bear companion, half orc Scarred Witch Doctor, a small halfling-esque archer fighter, dwarven monk, and a NG human reach cleric (das me), all level 3.
To set it up, home brew campaign, after a roleplay session to kick off, we find ourselves transported to an underground cavern complex inhabited by hybrid deformed ogrekin. Extremely dumb but nasty if they hit. so for 3 sessions we are wandering around getting really freaked out by what we overhear before we slaughter, something about "Father".
We finally get into something looking man made, like the ogrekin tunneled into a castle wall. We come to a large hall, where every candelabra is broken except one.... so obviously our druid decides to pull on it, opening a secret room.... containing "Father" a 15 ft tall Ogre King Skeleton weilding a huge great club. We all C&%$ our pants, and me being all good and stuff, with a nat 20 init resulting in a 28, I stride up to the skeleton, about 15 ft away, shout "UNDEAD SHALL NOT BE SUFFERED" and channeled, for 2 pts of damage. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA regardless, I tanked the first hit, as everyone else rushed to help defeat him. After we downed him in about 3 rounds, we stood around like AW YEAH, except the skeleton was reforming. 2 rounds later, he is back up and chasing us. So we close him back in the room, to buy us some time to run. As we are running, I pass off my wand of CLW to the Druid, and post up as rearguard. We stumble onto an ongoing battle between drow and the ogrekin, and had to go into initiative. Again I roll an natural 20, but I delay until after the last one in our group goes. The group starts wading through the battle, trying to clear a lane to run through, but the drow won't have it. Finally "Father" shows up at the end of the hall, and I ready against the charge, as I'm the closest to him at about 60 ft away. He comes in, I hit, deal massive ton of damage (for level 3), he hits me, I'm at 7 hit points. Our group moves about 20 ft down, to the next skirmish, as I step back, ready to hit him when he comes in. I hit him, deal massive damage, he misses. Repeat 3 more times, moving less than 10ft a round as my group slowly starts putting distance between themselves and my tanking.
They finally clear the hallway and take off, fully expecting me to blitz away. But my character wouldn't, he would stand his ground for his comrades, to buy them as much time as he could. The Dm had me leave to a different room, since he wanted to increase the suspense for both sets of players. So a few minutes later, he comes in, has me roll my readied attack, again I hit, and managed to drop the boss. Soloed him, no one else helped in any way. Huge points for being a bad ass and roleplaying my character true. I walk out of the other room, like my character would, victorious, proud, ignoring his injuries, just as the boss reassembles and rushes to us as we get through a doorway out of the caves... The group was completely awestruck that my character handled the boss, they surely expected me to die, and honestly, I did too. I called my DM out on fudging rolls, something I hate personally. he showed me every dice roll to hit me as a courtesy, nothing higher than a 4. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Some people have all the luck, or none of it.
Sorry for the wall.
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One of our groups killed each other before the plot line was even laid down, once.
We all made characters that were kind of against each other. I can't even remember what caused it, but one of the characters decided after some comment about something he didn't like that he was going to backstab another character's wizard.
We all attacked and were killed. The last one alive was a paladin who was so overcome with grief for killing the others that he committed suicide. The DM exploded and threw us out of the house. We were all left standing on his porch dumb-stuck. We looked at each other and then burst in laughter. It was very memorable.
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My favorite story involves me!
Investigating a warehouse, I get caught by a local gang and sold into slavery. I wake up tied up, in a cell (brig?), on a boat. Well, being the awesome rogue that I was I escaped my bonds and picked the lock just in time to attack the guard sent to check on me (imp. unarmed, thank you). I then, of course, set fire to their gunpowder stores, ran up the stairs, across the deck and dove overboard just ahead of the explosion. Once I surfaced, I looked around only to find there was no land in sight. Oh well, everything worked out eventually.
***MINOR SPOILERS***
We were running a drow campaign in the Forgotten Realms before we decided to play the module Expedition To The Demonweb Pits(we were all followers of Eilistraee). During our foray into the Abyss we killed a demon and found an invitation to a conclave of demons. Seeing an opportunity, we decided to bluff our way in and have our cleric (a saint of Eilistraee, no less)appear as Eclavdra, a Chosen of Lolth, while the rest of us were her entourage.
It all went according to plan as we listened in on Lolth's schemes, even had a minor skirmish with a belligerent demon beforehand that my half-drow scout Vik took out quickly. All there accepted us as who were said we were. However, as the council ended the REAL Eclavdra walked in, and that's where the flumph hit the fan. She wasn't written in the adventure, our DM threw her in to scare the heck out of us, and said that she had gotten wind of our deception. Now the smart thing would b for us to run like mad since we were only level 14 and Eclavdra was CR 24 at least.
Being the idiot adventurers that we were,we naturally lingered a little bit, trying to stall her while we took out some of her bodyguards to clear the way to the exit. I summoned a huge water elemental from a magic item, which she promptly dispelled without a second thought. In desperation our cleric cast a Finger of Death since it was one of the few offensive spells that she had. At her level she would have to roll at least an 18 on the caster level check to get through Eclavdra's SR34. The roll is made...... natural 20. The spell managed to make it through but Eclavdra's saves were so bloody high that the spell was pretty much a futile effort. The DM rolled her save.....
Natural 1. Eclavdra drops like a stone while the rest of us at the table, DM included, just sat there silently with our jaws open. The fact that we had wiped out an epic-level character on some crazy die rolls was mind-blowing. The DM was speechless, and when he finally recovered he had nothing that prepared him for this outcome, saying only that the demons ran off in fear after they saw Lolth's own Chosen get smoked in front of them. It was one of the most epic moments we ever had and I remember it fondly to this day, even if the campaign stalled shortly after.
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And that, my friends, is why you don't chum the waters. Unless you want XP.
Just had some OMG moment tonight myself.
Our campaign is a custom world with many of the pathfinder material allowed, and then some. Our GM likes to make custom items a lot, more for the fact that he has an idea that he likes for the item, but rather just have it be what he decides it is vs what it actually might be in the books, if anything is close to it. In many cases there are intelligent items, primarily weapons, that we as PC's then get to use and have. I have such a weapon.
I have have a custom intelligent throwing hammer. One of its special abilities besides returning back to me, is that if it hits an enemy and deals a certain amount of damage, it gets to hit the closest enemy near it within 20' and damage him. Now I realize that this is very powerful, because it can go on forever as long as there is an enemy within 20'. Also, I do not need to make a separate attack for each subsequent hit.vas long as I do a set amount f damage it keeps going.
Well, tonight our party was traveling through a grove and came upon a castle. After one of our party members tried speaking with some of the authority figures we were turned away and barred from entering. Before we headed away, our psionic player had the door slam on the NPC behind. This in turn had the enemy crossbow man, 2 of them, fire 2 arrows near the psionic it as a warning.
Taking this as a challenge of sme sorts my barbarian went into a rage, took his hammer and sent it flying to the crossbow on the castle wall.
ALL 40+ of them. Each of them took minimum 40 Dmg, reaching up to 46 pts each. They were able to get an AoO on the party. Bu once I did that throw, and now over 1600+ points of damage, we were now in iniative mode for combat.
What was to be a night, sneak into the castle kind of fight, has now become a full out siege onto the castle, all because of a little CN barbarian idea.
The entire party is now now in the beginning of huge surprise battle, while the table of players are looking at me with utter shock, amazement in some cases, and forehead smacking sounds abound. Leroy Jenkins has nothing on me.
ok heres my first wtf moment with my grp. cleric, fighter, sorcerer, and a magus. using crit cards. lvl 2 and just started rise of the runelords.
ok, my party minus the magus bc he couldnt show up which is a cleric, sorcerer, and a fighter come strolling into town. thye are stopped by a woman who tells of details at her house and asks for our help. the party agrees and the fighter goes off to find the sheriff. well cleric and sorcerer arrive at the house and start searching. fighter shows up at sheriffs, tells the situation, and sheriffs like ok lets go, but where are we going to? the lady never gave a name and only name was the dog and didnt say where she lived. so ya fighters out for a couple rounds trying to figure out who it is.
well while searching, a lvl 1 half starved goblin (who i gave a short sword and forwent the penealty bc hes half starved...im the gm i can do that :] )surprises the sorcerer. hits and does a good amount of dmg. combat starts and goblin gets another good hit off on the clothy. clerics down stairs and is running up the steps. Sorcerer is outta lvl 1 spells from earlier and decides to just whack the goblin and hits him for 1 dmg. gblin atks again and sorcerers pretty low on hit points. cleric comes up and hes outta spells as well. sees a half starved goblin and decides to atk and kill the goblin. comes in from bad direction and p.a.o. rolls 20 and crit card says double dmg and person sick for 1d4 rounds. rolls a 4...yep. clerics was already fatigued and now sick and failed the save rolls. so hes out. goblin misses and sorcerer chugs a health potion for 4 health...
by this time the fighter is at the house with the sheriff. sheriff stays outside with woman and the fighter runs up and stops 10ft away from the goblin. fighter with no good way of approaching knows hes gonna p.a.o. he states "eh i got high enuf AC"
goblin rolls 20 on atk of oppertunity and (the players agreed that enemy npcs always uses the cards while they only use it once per battle) draws a card. The decapitation card. Yep, everyones WTF!! holy @#$%!
so ya this grp who has breezed and effortlessly smashed thru greatly beefed up encounters i have thrown at them BARELY survived an atk 3 on 1 against a lvl 1 half starved goblin.
We all had fly spells on when we decided to go down this one well in Alhaster to investigate the Ebon Triad, a cult that believed that the evil gods Erythnul, Vecna and Hextor were all actually one god and sought to combine them. Of course Kree flew ahead of the others since he was recklessly bold. As he came near the end, suddenly something burst out of the water he was flying over. It was the Overgod, an aspect of all three gods that stood thirty feet tall.. We rolled for initiative and it got the drop on me, my low AC not helping as it took out 3/4 of my hit points in one attack.
It wasn't looking good for me at this point. The rest of the party was at least 2 rounds away and wouldn't be able to heal me in time. I did the only thing that was reasonable to my character: I came out swinging. I raged and power attacked with my heavy pick, knowing that I didn't have much of a chance hitting the aspect anyways and so I did the all or nothing approach. I made my attack rolls and prayed for a miracle.
Natural 20. I blinked for a second as I saw I actually hit it. Not that it really mattered since it was going to kill me next round anyways. I rolled to confirm the crit......natural 20 again. With my x4 crit I did 246 damage, and the overgod failed its Fort save against massive damage. With one hit an aspect of three gods came crashing down, lifeless. It was one of those moments that elevated Kree into legendary status among his party.
