D&D 5E Absurdist adventures (Idea me!)

[merwins]

So, I don't really torture my players. I mean, kinda.

But sometimes I just torture their characters in my head.

Like, I was just imagining an entire encounter full of Diviners with Lucky. The fate of the world doesn't hang in the balance. These guys know exactly which way the scales will swing. Sure, eventually their luck (and Portents) will run out. But until then?

Every d20-based PC action of import is more likely to fail, and every action taken by the Diviners' group is potentially more likely to succeed. It would make for quite a crazy encounter, methinks, even if every Diviner is only 2nd level.

Any other crazy encounters or groups out there you've thought up (or actually run) based on archetypes, classes, or even magic items?

 

[Yunru]

The Half-dragon template can be applied to any beast.
Including ducks.
My players learned to fear a duck's call.

 

[Oofta]

Evil squirrel swarms.

To this day all I have to do to strike fear into the heart of my players is to say that they hear chittering from the branches of the trees as hundreds of beady red eyes peer at them from the darkness.

Probably had something to do with the old guy in the park feeding the squirrels who was swarmed and left behind only a skeleton that had been picked clean.

 

[iserith]

Any other crazy encounters or groups out there you've thought up (or actually run) based on archetypes, classes, or even magic items?

Yep.

 

[Nimblegrund]

The pcs are cursed by a deity to spend eternity making strength checks to roll a boulder up a hill but the dc is always 1 higher than what the pcs can actually roll.

The pcs reflect on the puposelessness of the excercise, and life in general, but conclude that they can forge their own meaning despite this. They choose to persist in spite of their knowledge that they will fail. In this, they find victory.

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[Lanliss]

Currently working on a Gravity tower. PCs enter, and nothing happens until they step on some runes (Conveniently one for each PC, the same number of sides the tower has). When all runes are stood upon, they are activated and shift gravity to the corresponding wall. Now some players are standing on someone elses roof, and vice versa. You can't just walk around, as it is like walking up a slope that eventually becomes greater than 90 degrees.

Once this happens, the PCS walk up the tower, which has various traps and challenges, a few runes along the way to change someones gravity randomly and, most importantly, Walls! Walls that block the Party's access to each other, where they must choose how to split the party. It is a little tricky to explain in text, but essentially the wall cuts the tower in half vertically, and at least 2 PCs must make a decision on which side they will stick with. The wall location will change later, forcing a new split of the party into a different pair of teams.

Still a work in progress, but it is coming along nicely.

 

[Raith5]

You could play the old AD&D adventures by Gygax: Dungeonland (EX1) and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (EX2). Drugs optional.

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

So, my first attempt at a custom boss monster probably counts. The pcs were on a ship, and i had modified a level appropriate blue dragon to be a "sea dragon".
I changed its fly speed to a swim speed, and replaced it's breath weapon. Instead of lightning it breathed a column of water. It did no damage, but if you failed the save dc, it pushed you to the end of the 60ft line. Kept pushing them off the boat, and they could never actually hit the thing.
They told me to never do that again...

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[Lanliss]

So, my first attempt at a custom boss monster probably counts. The pcs were on a ship, and i had modified a level appropriate blue dragon to be a "sea dragon".
I changed its fly speed to a swim speed, and replaced it's breath weapon. Instead of lightning it breathed a column of water. It did no damage, but if you failed the save dc, it pushed you to the end of the 60ft line. Kept pushing them off the boat, and they could never actually hit the thing.
They told me to never do that again...

Sent from my SM-G920P using EN World mobile app

That sounds like fun. Now imagine the some thing, but with LAVA instead of water. They get pushed by a pressurized stream of magma into...More Magma!

 

[Shiroiken]

You could play the old AD&D adventures by Gygax: Dungeonland (EX1) and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (EX2). Drugs optional.

Came here to say that!

Sadly, upon rereading them recently, I don't know if they've aged well. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are not as well known tropes as they used to be.