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This is a thread for sharing stories of when the PCs took an unorthodox approach and solved a problem/encounter in a way you as the GM didn't anticipate.
I had one happen pretty recently. The PCs were on a mission to find and acquire an artifact crown on behalf of the true (so he claims) ruler - the crown will legitimize his claim to the throne. After lots of searching, researching, and dungeon-delving, the PCs finally tracked down the lich who was in current possession of it.
I designed the lich's lair to be a deathtrap, with rooms deliberately constructed to take advantage of spell effects and defensive outcroppings from which the lich would safely cast spells at the party. Since it was going to be a single enemy vs. a party of six, the design of the lair was intended to make it a truly challenging encounter.
When the PCs entered, everything went as planned in the beginning - the lich got off a few spells that really hurt the PCs due to the architecture of his lair, and the PCs retreated after several rounds. That's when the PCs threw a curveball at me. I anticipated them coming up with a strategy (since they had gotten a general sense of the lich's capabilities and construction of his lair) and go back to confront the lich when they were ready. Instead, they teleported back to their employer and told one of her associates where the crown was - an associate the PCs knew to be a least an 18th level wizard - with the implication of, "hey we found your crown, could we get some help getting it from that lich?"
Since their employers had emphasized to the PC how important the recovery of this crown was, I couldn't in good faith manufacture an excuse for the wizard not to help. Given that time was a factor, the only reasonable solution was for the wizard to simply accompany them to confront the lich. With an 18+ level wizard along with the six of them, the 2nd encounter was a predictable cakewalk.
Really, I should've anticipated the PCs might do something like that. Going forward I've had to think harder about my plot and potential encounters if I want to introduce high-level characters as potential allies.
So what stories of PC ingenuity do the rest of you have to share?
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PCs are trapped in a room by a wall of force blocking the door and the air is being evacuated from the room.
Intricate puzzle with printouts is the controller/lock for the room and air vents.
After describing the scene when the trap triggers the Party Magus says without missing a beat "But the walls are still stone right?"
"Of course" I reply
He proceeds to chop through the walls with his +1 adamantine scimitar and 24 strength.
With the rest of the party helping, it takes two rounds to punch a 5 foot hole and the party continues on its merry way...
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Me: "The evil goddess gives you a tiny shard of her divinity as a reward!"
PC: "Sweet!"
Me: "It's a TRAP! MUWAHAHAHAH! And she can take it back at any time!"
PC: "That's okay! I use the little piece to steal the rest of it and and destroy her!"
Me: "I, uh, I don't think you can-"
PC: "No, I totally succeed!" *natural 20, plus earlier rules shenanigans mixed with a rather epic struggle*
Me: "Huh. Well, congratulations. You've just become goddess of revenge and undeath. Also immortal and prone to coming back from the dead."
PC: >:D
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I designed a backwards-dungeon once. The only thing keeping the monsters inert was the presence of an artifact at the dungeon center. Once picked up (using the handy-dandy container that blocks all artifact "signals"), I assumed I would be free to make the monsters all go berserk.
Damn PCs kept the thing out and just waltzed out of the dungeon with it, and all the monsters just sitting there.
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We faced an entire dungeon backwards because we took an hour too bash down what was supposed to be the exit door. Instead of using the unlocked door.
I wasn't the GM or a player but I did witness this. They were going into a mansion that a ninja friend of the party was spying on to bust some slaves out. The GM intended it to be a typical nighttime stealth section.
What happened instead is the rogue came in posing as a rich buyer with the kitsune oracle half-shifted and sorcerer with sweet buns making her look not as androgynous as normal both posing as his slaves. The fighter was posing as his bodyguard. Before you ask, yes this was in minkai.
The rouge and oracle went one way to talk to the man running the place to give an opportunity for the ninja to kill him (they discussed this in the plan) while the sorcerer and fighter stayed back to drug some of the guards with seriously potent alcohol that had its smell hidden by Prestidigitation.
After a swift kill and knock out on the remaining guards...also a random invisible undead fight, they found the slaves and got out of there.
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My group almost exclusively enters from the top floor or back side of a dungeon when possible. We also have a tendency of carring necklaceses of fireballs or masive amounts of alchemical fire and grenades. We have devised a tactic to single shot most bbeg or tough fights with our blast 'em and forget'em mentallity. As a "reward" our GM destroys all the loot including magic items. We shrug, meh, and just go blow the next guy to the boneyard.
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"The BBEG is hiding inside that stone tower with a metric ton of minions? I use my +1 Adamantine great axe to chop down the tower onto his head."
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Playing a game of Forgotten Futures with my brothers and one sister-in-law, in the first session of a homebrew adventure in which Burroughs' Red Martians allied with the Apache...
The group is hired to go to a gold mining operation to investigate why the last shipment never arrived. When they get there, they find the camp slaughtered, while in a valley over the ridge, an Apache war camp is mustered. I intended them to only scout it out, and so described the overwhelming numbers and heightened security around the camp.
"So this is a mine, right? That means they have explosives."
They then proceeded to fill the cart they arrived in with explosives, light it on fire, then roll it down the hill. This is after they planted shrapnel traps poisoned with cyanide (because one of them happened to know that cyanide is used to extract gold from ore), and the sharpshooter took up a safe position. So that camp was essentially slaughtered, based on guilt-by-proximity.
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My group almost exclusively enters from the top floor or back side of a dungeon when possible. We also have a tendency of carring necklaceses of fireballs or masive amounts of alchemical fire and grenades. We have devised a tactic to single shot most bbeg or tough fights with our blast 'em and forget'em mentallity. As a "reward" our GM destroys all the loot including magic items. We shrug, meh, and just go blow the next guy to the boneyard.
So... does your GM just never use fire immune creatures? Like, doing so wouldn't even be a specific "screw you" to this strategy, fire immunity is really freaking common in Pathfinder.
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Hah, yesterday my group bypassed almost an entire dungeon by knocking and asking nicely to be let in.
I'd thrown a quick dungeon into the game to fill in an unexpected player absence - the player's character (an oread) had been waylaid by a shaitan during a sandstorm and the rest of the party had to get through the dungeon to find their friend. They spot mephits when approaching and make the Knowledge (planes) and (local) checks to deduce that they're in a genie outpost. Genies not being overly hostile, when they find their first proper (trapped) door they decide to knock on it and ask if anyone's home.
The mephits answer and after a little negotiation they let the party in to wait while the shaitan finishes his chat with his oread guest. The rest of the session consisted of me describing the guardians and traps that the party was supposed to fight their way through. EDIT: I probably should have seen this one coming because this group goes for the diplomatic option 9 times of 10 but as I said the session was put together in a rush...
The best thing I had as a player was way back in 1E, when our DM liked to make up custom spells and scrolls for us to find as treasure. Our low-level party is confronted with a vampire -- such a hassle to kill permanently until I remembered one scroll of "Orbit," a spell that makes the victim take a turn around the planet... including the sunlit side.
When making my own material to run, I like to put in ways for the party to gain unfair advantage, so I'm not too worried if they come up with things I didn't think of.
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The group was investigating a skinsaw cult that was located at a pesh farm.
The barn was riddled with giant spiders, and had the tunnel to the skinsaw's temple underground, but after exploring the house they found notes from one cultist that found burning pesh repels the spiders. They leave, kill some spiders as they approach the barn, and find the tunnel leading down lined with spider webs and crawling with spider webs. Their solution? Burn the webs.
It put the temple on full alert, whereas if they had just burned some pesh and climbed down the tunnel, the spiders would have left them alone, and they could have maintained an element of surprise.
Playing a Star Trek rpg with rules we created--the set up was the players would have to beam down and rescue the survivors of a crashed survey ship, but the mission was going to be extremely dangerous. Their solution? Locate them in the caverns where they'd taken shelter with the ship's sensors, phaser a hole in the roof, then beam them out. Entire game was over in 20 minutes and we all left to go have Chinese buffet.
I set up an entire camp of lizardfolk for my FIRST-LEVEL PCs to encounter. Thanks to the strategic mind of one of my best childhood friends - and a lot of time to prepare - they managed to dig traps all around the fort, hang swinging logs, and trap a whole bunch of other stuff ... before setting the first building on fire and sending hordes of lizardfolk screaming out - and to their deaths.
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Playing a Star Trek rpg with rules we created--the set up was the players would have to beam down and rescue the survivors of a crashed survey ship, but the mission was going to be extremely dangerous. Their solution? Locate them in the caverns where they'd taken shelter with the ship's sensors, phaser a hole in the roof, then beam them out. Entire game was over in 20 minutes and we all left to go have Chinese buffet.
You see you forgot the #1 rule of every Star Trek ever: The reason you can't solve this problem with a teleporter is because *insert nonsensical sciency stuff here*.
Player: "Well we'll just pop a hole in the cave and beam them out."
GM: "Sure, but as your science officer will tell you the cavern is made out of unstable stewartanium isotope number 43. A mineral that detonates into an atomic explosion when hit with a high energy beam like a phaser."
GM: "Sure, but as your science officer will tell you the cavern is made out of unstable stewartanium isotope number 43. A mineral that detonates into an atomic explosion when hit with a high energy beam like a phaser."
Player: EVEN BETTER! :D
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Playing a Star Trek rpg with rules we created--the set up was the players would have to beam down and rescue the survivors of a crashed survey ship, but the mission was going to be extremely dangerous. Their solution? Locate them in the caverns where they'd taken shelter with the ship's sensors, phaser a hole in the roof, then beam them out. Entire game was over in 20 minutes and we all left to go have Chinese buffet.You see you forgot the #1 rule of every Star Trek ever: The reason you can't solve this problem with a teleporter is because *insert nonsensical sciency stuff here*.
Player: "Well we'll just pop a hole in the cave and beam them out."
GM: "Sure, but as your science officer will tell you the cavern is made out of unstable stewartanium isotope number 43. A mineral that detonates into an atomic explosion when hit with a high energy beam like a phaser."
"Like putting a sheet of tinfoil in a microwave!"
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You see you forgot the #1 rule of every Star Trek ever: The reason you can't solve this problem with a teleporter is because *insert nonsensical sciency stuff here*.
Player: "Well we'll just pop a hole in the cave and beam them out."
GM: "Sure, but as your science officer will tell you the cavern is made out of unstable stewartanium isotope number 43. A mineral that detonates into an atomic explosion when hit with a high energy beam like a phaser."
LOL I could've done that, and nearly did. But they clearly out-witted me and I wasn't going to take it away from them. Besides, we were more in the mood for food at the time, I think.. lol
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I had decided to do a side-track while the PC's were on their way to XXXX, so devised an ankheg infestation and tunnel network for them to tackle as the nights "excitement."
DM: "You come alongside a waddle fence, out about 200ft is a small grouping of buildings, some look like barns, the fields between the fence and the buildings have a half dozen holes in them, about 10-20ft in diameter, and the whole place seems deserted."
PC leader: "Hmm, looks dangerous. We give it a wide berth and go on our way."
DM: "Umm... are you sure?"
PC: "Yea."
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My PCs last week were supposed to go in through the main gate of the temple pyramid, but instead went in through a secret door into the bottom of the temple.
But I lucked out and actually prepared both levels of the dungeon!!!!
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I had decided to do a side-track while the PC's were on their way to XXXX, so devised an ankheg infestation and tunnel network for them to tackle as the nights "excitement."
DM: "You come alongside a waddle fence, out about 200ft is a small grouping of buildings, some look like barns, the fields between the fence and the buildings have a half dozen holes in them, about 10-20ft in diameter, and the whole place seems deserted."
PC leader: "Hmm, looks dangerous. We give it a wide berth and go on our way."
DM: "Umm... are you sure?"
PC: "Yea."
Ah yes, that moment when the PCs stop acting like adventurers in a fantasy roleplaying game and instead choose to act like rational individuals.
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Rational individuals happen to be an Ankheg's favorite meal...
Ah yes, that moment when the PCs stop acting like adventurers in a fantasy roleplaying game and instead choose to act like rational individuals.
Sadly those do seem to be mutually exclusive. As a high level adventurer who is literally working to undermine a global conspiracy bent on unleashing ultimate evil, no, I don't give a shit about the slightly "spooky" ruins we see on the way to the place that actually matters. Or at least I shouldn't. God knows if I do the reasonable thing and pass it up then I just skipped some mega-dungeon that just happened to house the legendary weapon that no one has ever heard of yet is required to fulfill our destiny.
I hate "plot hooks" that require you to leave both in and out of game logic at the door and just metagame go with it because the DM said he planned for us to go here for some reason and doesn't have anything else planned.
The pcs find an entrance to a cave complex, the "Fungarium" from which aggressive fungi have been issuing forth and terrorising the countryside and the pcs.
They slay the doorkeepers, are about to enter, receive the description of what they smell - a powerful stench of death, rot and multiple stages of decay, and decide "Nope", and head in the opposite direction. They were in unanimous agreement (and as I have said before on dealing with terrible dms, a dm cannot contend with all players in agreement and of one mind). So they sure told me!
Yes, the players said no to the dungeon that started with "fun". They are very suspicious of fun.
Okay, guess I won't be running that dungeon. Later they killed some cannibalistic raiders and were harassed by Mongols into entering a larger more dangerous dungeon (screw free will, look what they did last time ;) ). As the last dived into the subterranean city atop a swamp, their parting shot upon a Mongol horse archer was an insta-kill - a broadhead through the throat, which was very nice.
Now they are back on the "rails", and we will see if they listen to the vampire princess (attuned to the spirit of corrosive darkness) wanting to be freed as they unlock the way to the surface, or whether they listen to the giant golem of the insane dead and find another way up.
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City councilor:
"There's 3 routes to the estate the pirates can use and we don't know which route they'll take. How would you like to spread our forces?"
I had expected them to take 1 of the routes and devide the rallied allied forces to be devided.
PC: "Well, let's just bunker up in the mansion."
Yes.....so much for nice street battles, they turtle up.
This forced me to get all 30 pirates to be present on a battlemap, where they'd spread to be devided over 2 maps, namely the mansion exterior and interior.
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Playing in a 2nd ed. mod we came across a statue near the entrance.
Statue was actually a stone golem with instructions to attack any one who damaged it or attempted to pass through a door.
Being suspicious we put a bag over its head without damaging it.Thing was it was max. size bag of holding which we then took up a nearby hill to a 300ft cliff and then shook the bag out.
The DM's face was a picture....
Yeah - just because it can hold as much material as the golem doesn't mean that it can fit the golem through the bag opening.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Me: From a Marvel Superheroes campaign.
Bad guy is ranting about the disaster that ruined his life and cursed him with his powers.
"So you didn't intend to be the irradiated skeleton guy?"
"NO"
"Ok, tell you what, I'll fix it."
At this point the GM and bad guy go 'what?'
"I've the gateway power. I can go back in time, and warn you not to turn on the machine. Write me out a co-ownership of your tech business, I'll leave my secretary here, and go fix it."
"Um..."
"Look, you don't want to be a bad guy, I don't want you to irradiate the city, I live here. Win Win."
Thus was the Dr. Doom wannabe turned into an ally.
To Me:
Party has to fight a dragon to get through a portal. He can't leave the demi-plane alive.
So they fight and kill him, bring his body through the portal and raise him gaining a powerful ally. *sigh*
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"If he could be turned, he could be a powerful ally..."
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PCs had made their way through a somewhat damaging electrically themed prison level of a dungeon.
While in communication with the guy overseeing it, who was treating it as a sort of experiment under observation (helping and hindering them on the way).
Ultimately they find their way out, but in order to go through they had to engage a Mithril Golem (punching above their weight class) or go back and flick a series of intensely confusing breakers and switches.
The party paladin susses out that this mage always has a pass phrase on his golems, and totally out of nowhere, goes 'password: (name of the mage!)'
And, in my notes I had scribbled that down as the pass phrase assuming nobody would think the password was something so egotistical and obvious.
Golem shuts down. Party stares at it incredulously.
Paladin smirks, and says (I paraphrase), "The mage's an egotist who thinks he's smarter then us, of course that's the password."
I didn't know if I should've been angry or proud at the PCs.
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Hah, yesterday my group bypassed almost an entire dungeon by knocking and asking nicely to be let in.
That is my favorite thing to do, actually.
As a player once, the mission was to rescue a captive from a well guarded prison. We fought our way to the captain's quarters where the high value prisoner was being kept, big locked door, prepared guards, whole nine yards.
Me: "I knock."
DM: "What?"
Me: "Yeah, I knock on the door and go 'Sir! Intruders have breached the facility and are nearby! We need to move the prisoner!"
DM: "Okay, they get a sense motive check though."
Me: "Sure, every word I just said was true. Intruders have breached the facility, they are nearby, and we intend to move the prisoner."
DM: "Bwah?"
Me: "They can sense motive all the want, all they're going to get is that I am telling the truth. At no point did I say I was part of their guard, I merely addressed him with a standard 'Hello sir, can I help you?' style honorific."
They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.
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a buddy of mine regularly says that the most powerful thing in any RPG is the player characters, be cause they are the only thing the GM has no control over.
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They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.
Yeah - I don't think that should have flown. You may not have been 'lying' per se, but you were definitely deceiving. Besides - why didn't the guards there attack you as soon as they spotted you?
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Yeah - I don't think that should have flown. You may not have been 'lying' per se, but you were definitely deceiving. Besides - why didn't the guards there attack you as soon as they spotted you?
They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.
Possibly, but there's also "Thats just too ballsy not to work!" factored into it as well.
And they did try to attack. However they were expecting allies on the other side of the door and were not ready for combat. Hence a surprise round where the entire party was ready for it. Good use of things like trip and ample AoO's made it pretty easy to shut them down.
Yeah - I don't think that should have flown. You may not have been 'lying' per se, but you were definitely deceiving. Besides - why didn't the guards there attack you as soon as they spotted you?
They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.Possibly, but there's also "Thats just too ballsy not to work!" factored into it as well.
And they did try to attack. However they were expecting allies on the other side of the door and were not ready for combat. Hence a surprise round where the entire party was ready for it. Good use of things like trip and ample AoO's made it pretty easy to shut them down.
He still probably should have had a check. You wouldn't have needed to roll Bluff, and his Sense Motive DC would have probably been pretty difficult for him to make, but still a check.
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Yeah - I don't think that should have flown. You may not have been 'lying' per se, but you were definitely deceiving. Besides - why didn't the guards there attack you as soon as they spotted you?
They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.
Yeah, at my table at least Bluff is also "Deceive" not just "Lie". If you're doing something deliberately deceitful you have to make sure you don't give obvious tells (e.g. shaky voice). I'd probably give a -5 penalty to the sense motive due to the believability, though. Maybe a second -5 since they can't see your face. But there's still a check. If the prison were smaller then that sense motive mod for believability would shift from -5 to +10 due to the warden not recognizing the voice (which is normal in a big prison, odd in a small one).
But hey, it's ballsy, and if the PC happened to be a good bluffer I might skip the check just 'cause it's fun.
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It could also have just been that the GM was so blown away that they couldn't think of a solution at the time. It happens. :)
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It could also have just been that the GM was so blown away that they couldn't think of a solution at the time. It happens. :)
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GM has us stumble across a random encounter in Magnimar near the end of Skinsaw; a pair of orphans. We catch them and take them to the authorities right? No. I take them to the Pathfinder Lodge in Magnimar, then after we finish taking out the BBEG in Skinsaw (not fun, folks; not a fun fight.) I floor the GM by adopting the kids and taking them back to Sandpoint.
We've headed off for Hook Mountain now, so I left the kids with family while I'm off saving the world. Got to be somebody my kids can look up to, right?
Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment and just keep giving the GM more barbs to play with; but his expression was priceless.
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I've been guilty of the "not technically a lie" tactic . . . with a paladin, no less. Running through the good ol' ruins of Myth Drannor adventure, we had to get into a guard tower . . .
Me - Okay, I pull up the hood on my cloak, sheathe my sword and run up to the tower yelling "Demons! Demons in the forest! Let us in!"
GM - You what?
Me - It's the truth. There are demons in the forest and we want them to let us in.
GM - Roll your Bluff . . .
Me - (roll crazy high)
GM - Um they open the door . . .
Me - As soon as the door starts to open, I barrel through, sword drawn, and demand their surrender.
It was a hard fight, but worth it to hear the GM mutter "I hate you guys so much . . ."
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No one expects the paladin is a spy, secret agent or infiltrator. :D
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Yeah - I don't think that should have flown. You may not have been 'lying' per se, but you were definitely deceiving. Besides - why didn't the guards there attack you as soon as they spotted you?
They lower their guard, get the prisoner we want prepped, open the door, "Hi." *BLAM!* Surprise round ensues, guards go down real fast, prisoner rescued.
"A Lie?"
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I ran a game once where the PCs were going from town to town fighting a death god cabal that had overthrown the kingdom. It was a fairly gritty game where they had to sheperd refugees and track how many horses they were slaughtering on the road to feed them all, that sort of stuff.
A new player came in about halfway through and decided to play a social-heavy bard.
Rather than charge into battle in the next town as expected, the bard put on the outfit of one of the dead cultists, road into camp, and told the leader that the previous town had been attacked (true) and that they need reinforcements. He convinced the leader to send a quarter of the troops away with the bard, and the PCs moved in after the bard flashed them a signal as he rode away.
Even though they were down their support character, they easily retook the town, and when the bard finally reached the previous town, got them to charge into a fight that wasn't going to happen and then ditched them. BY the time he arrived, the party had recovered and were ready to take care of the much winded cultists that had arrived again.
I was dumbstruck in the best possible way.