Dopey things DM's have done.

[zypherillius]

We were playing in a 3.5 quasi home/brew quasi module design by one of the other gamers my age at a friends house over the weekend. im 24...

we managed to drop a mature adult silver dragon in 5 rounds. now, people having played for a while might appreciate that, knowing the cr for one, being 14, but ill get a bit more into it. the average level of the party was 7, and ill break it down a bit more like this.
wizard - level 8
rogue - level 8
cleric - level 5
fighter - level 6
ranger - level 5
kobold- level 1/2

for all those again who dont run campaigns at all, a mature adult silver dragon has damage reduction 10/1 and spell resistance.

p.s. he still gave us the full experience for it, he admitted that he forgot and we legit dropped it, plus it failing its reflex save for a channeled pyroburst leading to double damage from fire spells was a nice add on .

after we were all cleaned up, the guy that was running the camapaign goes, 'S***, I FORGOT THE DRAGON HAD DR AND SPELL RESISTANCE!"

anybody ever had any other quirky experiences where the dm forgets something 'little' like damage reduction or spell resistance?

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I've been the DM and done things like that several times.

One game the party encountered a creature that had a chance to absorb weapons into its body whenever it was struck. I forgot to check whether the party's weapons would be absorbed through almost the entire fight. When I finally remembered, the character attacking hit it for enough damage to kill the thing, making it a moot point.

 

[Dog Moon]

I tend to forget monster's abilities until I'm glancing at them in the middle of battle and trying to figure out what to do next. For some reason, they're almost always beating down the PCs when I go 'Oh yeah, TOTALLY forgot about that!' The first time I did that, my players just like stared at me or something. It's bad getting beaten down by a monster, but when you forget one of it's strongest attacks, it kinda makes players freak out a little cause it makes them wonder what the battle would be like if the creature had used that attack earlier in the battle.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I've forgotten incorporeal = 50% miss chance against magic weapons. I fggured that my CR-6 Grim specter (homebrewed undead creature, whose stats were comarable to other undead of his challenge rating) would be a difficult one, but they blitzed right through it without even having to turn undead.

 

[Dragonbait]

I've done that a lot. Especially when there are 5 different creatures on the battlefield. I've sometimes made creatures harder then they should be, because I thought that monster A had DR 10/something, when its DR 5/something, and so on. I admit my mistake, and award the PCs with extra XP because of it.

 

[iwatt]

I've usually had this problem with SR. The new stat block really helps with this though.

 

[Stalker0]

I've had plenty of times forgetting a big SLA, DR, SR, adding in the damage from power attack, etc.

Its completely different as a dm, as a player I know the phb and dmg practically by heart, but as soon as you have to deal with so many things at once that knowledge can just fly out of your head.

 

[Dragonbait]

Its completely different as a dm, as a player I know the phb and dmg practically by heart, but as soon as you have to deal with so many things at once that knowledge can just fly out of your head.

This is THE TRUTH. I had a friend who knew the rules backwards and forwards. Once he sat behind the screen, BOOM! He forgot everything. I'm the same way.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Oh, more than I'd like. But as a non-divine DM, I make mistakes like everyone else.

The storm elemental from MMII has a property that causes anyone who hits it to take damage. The monk had beaten it mostly to death before I remembered that little tidbit.

I once let a skeleton be sneak attacked. (3.0 was new, it was the first undead the party had encountered and the rogue was at 1st level)

The first time poison was used I forgot about the secondary damage. I later realized the bard should have died.

 

[Sledge]

There is stuff like finding out that you can't quicken enlarge and having to break it to the group, only to find out that they never actually had been quickening it. I just got it into my head somehow.

There are lots of worse things of course, but my players think I'm perfect, and some of them even read ENWorld, so I gonna keep those to myself.