Tell Me Your Best DM Dirty Tricks...

[RigaMortus2]

Well, another tack is to use illusion. Just don't tell them.

This prompted me of another trick...

Take an elemental-based creature, like a Frost Giant (spellcaster of some sort), and have him cast spells on him that make him look like a Fire-based creature. Continual Flame, or some sort of fire immolation. They will assume he is fire based and hit him with ice/cold/water/frost based spells, which (the their surprise) will do little damage to him.

 

[blargney the second]

Hit and run tactics when they're days from civilisation. Attrition is scary.

 

[Warren Okuma]

Read up on grapple rules.

 

[Gentlegamer]

A friend of mine once played in a game where every time the monster was hit, it got stronger. The way to defeat it was to cast a healing spell on it.

Nilbogs!

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Lies!
Have some of your nicest and most pleasant NPC's but pure evil in a candy coated wrapper.

That way you can trick the PC's into destroying the world, with a simple smile and a lie.

 

[Presto2112]

The thing I've done with my players that confused them the most were to put a room in a dungeon that had statues in the room that were... this is the nasty part... JUST STATUES! Not golems or constructs, not earth elementals, not petrified past adventurers waiting to be freed from their stony prisons... just statues! The party must have spent ten minutes figuring that out.

 

[MarauderX]

Give them the old "Capture the evil sorcerer so we can bring him to trial" adventure. Have the adventure days away, give the evil sorc Still Spell and Silent Spell. Have some fun in the morning when his spells reset and the PCs let him rest. If they kill him, no reward.

Or the old "protect the massive caravan" adventure. Get some kobolds & bugbears into the action with diversionary tactics to draw away the PCs. There's usually one PC who will charge headlong at the first sign of trouble; make him pay in a number of ways.

Use spells the party isn't familar with but are great for crowd control - Black Tentacles, Web, Confusion, Stone Spikes, a bard with Fascinate...

 

[jeff37923]

All of you are giving great suggestions!

I know one thing that I'll use that they seem to not understand is softening up your opponents with missile fire or long range spells before closing to melee range.

 

[kensanata]

Spoilers

When playing in a high-level group, I was constantly amazed at how often a simple spell like darkness (the old 3.0 darkness) would hinder us.

Well, in a recent low-level game (The Distraction from Dungeon #145) ...

Spoiler

a gnoll cleric cast Darkness at the bottom of a dark pit, negating the party's Light spell and their torches. The effect was the he was fighting in Darkness (20% miss chance), while they were fighting in a pitch-black cavern (50% miss chance, no Dex bonus to AC, and additional -2 to AC, moving at half speed, no line of sight and thus no spells requiring a line of sight such as Magic Missiles).

Other than that, I'd use a typical PC build against them: A spiked chain wielding improved trip fighter-x/sorcerer-1 having cast Enlarge and Shield on himself, and having drunk a potion of Bull Strength, for example. Works at low levels, too. Have mooks fight from under his 20 ft. umbrella of protection.

 

[Xath]

A few things that have thrown off relatively high level adventuring parties:

Nets. Twenty kobolds with nets are an effective way to hinder PCs, especially spellcasters.

Gellatinous Cube. This almost TPK'd a 15th level party I played in.

A pool of water with something shiny at the bottom. Another almost TPK, but this one may have had more to do with the abnormal number of Nat 1's rolled.

A very wide pit with Darkness and Silence attached to the bottom of it. The PC's won't be able to tell how deep the pit is (even if it's 40 ft) and the silence spell will stop them from dropping rocks down to hear the distance. Then, if one of them falls in, in whatever attempt they make to cross, you can just laugh at them and have them take 4d6 falling.