Fishermen, Fish, and Bait (read: "GMs, Players, and Gold")

[Fauchard1520]

You see the loot. You want the loot. You know it's a bad idea. Like Indie and the golden idol, however, you can't resist the siren call of treasure.

I'm looking for tales from the table here. Have you ever rushed ahead to grab the goods, only to be hurt be your greed and/or impatience? What happened? How dead were you? And do you think the setup was fair?

Comic for reference.

 

[Schmoe]

It's been so long ago now that I forget the details, but there's a great example of this in B3 - Palace of the Silver Princess. I got at least one person each time I ran that.

 

[Riley37]

Last night's session. Spoilers for an adventure from Tales of the Yawning Portal. (The tale did not make *us* yawn.)
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(last chance before spoilers)
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So there's a room, with a magically warded door, which we manage to open. The room contains six sarcophagi, and an altar. There's a whistle and an eternally-burning candle on the altar. It occurs to me, that maybe when we touch the items on the altar, the sarcophagi will open, and something will emerge and attack. So we put caltrops in front of the sarcophagi, and oil just inside the doorway, go out the door, prepare weapons and spells. Then my Sorceror casts Mage Hand, and has Mage Hand pick up the whistle. Right on cue, the sarcophagi burst open, and undead emerge. They see us at the doorway, they rush through the caltrops to reach us, and we ignite the oil. Two of them at a time can attack us at the flaming bottleneck. We destroy them, taking only minor injuries. Yay us! The party's cleric then returns the bones of the undead to the sarcophagi. Rest in peace, I guess?

Later on, we return to the room. It seems a relatively safe place to rest, and to store our bedrolls and rations (to reduce encumbrance.) After all, we've solved the magical ward on the door, and defeated the guardians. While resting, we notice that there's a seam on the altar, perhaps a hidden compartment. The cleric casts Thaumaturgy, to see if the open-a-door feature works on the compartment. It does. Also, the bones in the sarcophagi re-form into undead guardians. So, same fight, except that this time, instead of starting from outside the room and using flaming bottleneck tactics, we start the fight surrounded and immediately engaged, with no back rank.

Having tried it both ways, I say with confidence, that the first way was easier. After the second time, the cleric didn't return the bones to their resting places; we reduced the remains to shards and ashes.

 

[Lanefan]

Happens all the time, often because I-as-player get impatient with all the caution and planning.

Sometimes my character ends up dead; far more often it ends up hurt or poisoned or paralysed or down a pit or something else fix-able by the other party members.

 

[Fauchard1520]

Happens all the time, often because I-as-player get impatient with all the caution and planning.

Sometimes my character ends up dead; far more often it ends up hurt or poisoned or paralysed or down a pit or something else fix-able by the other party members.

What kind of bait tends to get you?

 

[Sunseeker]

All the time.

For two reasons:
1: People WAY overthink things in D&D. There is a reasonable amount of planning that can be done for any given situation. Occams Razor is usually the answer.
2: I HATE when games grind to a halt with overthinking. Just push the button! Pull the lever! See what happens!

I'd rather the game move forward with risk than bog down trying to be safe.

 

[Lanefan]

What kind of bait tends to get you?

Any, or none. Sometimes the "bait" need consist of no more than an unexplored passage.

 

[ccs]

The most recent example of one of my characters getting loot - hurt was last summer. At least 3 times (!) In our CoS game.
1st, my character Bree is an 11 yr old 1/2ling child. She's a fey, chainlock, who's patron is an ancient psuedo-dragon.
2nd) So she's 110% insatiably curious, near fearless/doesn't stop to consider consequences, & has a direct mandate to bring loot back to her patron "Scales" (he might small, & friendly, but he's still a dragon.....).

1st) After dealing with a den of werewolves, she & her pseudo-dragon familiar gleefully helped our elven rogue shovel a huge hoard of silver coin into a bag of holding.
And we promptly got cursed for that.

2 & 3) In the Amber Temple.
We defeated a flame skull & some barbarians in an upper hallway. Laying in the middle of the hallway was a long dead guy clutching a blue crystal staff.
As I was about to investigate it, one of the other characters, looking into a room at the end of the hall opened its door.
Light poured out & everyone not immediately next to the door had to make a perception check to notice the delicious aromas of the feast set out (for us?).
Now Bree is all about 2nds, 3rds, extra meals, etc. Its joked that she can actually eat about 3x her own body weight somehow.... So advantage to my check!
This distracted her from the staff (wich I think was the DMS intent). She & the barbarian go in to enjoy.
As soon as we touch the food it disappears, the lights go out, Bree casts Light & we then we get attacked by Wraith (?).
Bree can't do much to wraiths. Initiative is rolled. Bree rolls stupid high, casts Expeditious Retreat & bolts at the incredible speed only small children can achieve.
Unfortunately she has the light centered on the end of her staff. Leaving the barbarian alone in the dark with ? # of wraiths..... oops.
As she bolted up the hallway towards the rest of the party she snagged the blue crystal staff as she passed by.

The end result of this?
The barbarian got killed by the wraiths.
The party took care of the wraiths.
Fiddling with the staff on the resulting rest, Bree failed a save & became infected with a shard of a long dead evil wizards spirit.
Oh, and there was no feast.

Fortunately the wizards spirit was able to be exorcism later, or that would've really messed Bree up.

 

[Riley37]

As I was about to investigate it, one of the other characters, looking into a room at the end of the hall opened its door.

After announcing "Is everyone ready for me to open this door", and waiting for every other party member to say yes or give a thumbs-up? Or did the door-opener skip that step?

With explosives: "Fire in the hole!"
On a golf course: "Fore!"
Mountaineering: "On Belay? Belay ON! Climbing? Climb on!"
D&D: "Ready for door?"

 

[Lanefan]

After announcing "Is everyone ready for me to open this door", and waiting for every other party member to say yes or give a thumbs-up? Or did the door-opener skip that step?

With explosives: "Fire in the hole!"
On a golf course: "Fore!"
Mountaineering: "On Belay? Belay ON! Climbing? Climb on!"
D&D: "Ready for door?"

But where's the fun in that?