....and the DM just gaped

[Kae'Yoss]

We all surprise the DM sometimes. Often, it's with relatively common things he just didn't think of, like the well-thought out enemy that gets downed in the surprise round because of a crit with a scythe or greataxe, or the big travel adventure that was ignored because the players teleported.

No, I want the unique stuff. The really funny stuff. I'm going to start (some of you may have heard these).


1. d20 Modern: StarGate.
It was the last session. We were getting close to the BBEG, which was a Gua'uld who, a long time ago, mastered the larva inside him and now intended to plant the god Sebek into himself, taking control of him and his powers. This would make him really powerful.

We defeated everything in our path, and finally got to the BBEG. Like every proper BBEG, he monologued us prior to the fight. "Ah, you. Yes, you can go now, my friends, we have no quarrel," he said.

Of course, stuff like this is ignored by every proper good-aligned D&D party out there, and the DM knew it.

Problem: This is no good-aligned D&D party, but a d20 Modern party, and most players, still in "D&D good mode" from the campaign prior to that one, felt a little off the road without proper alignments to guide the behaviour. So we started talking to the guy. He assured us that his quarrel was with the System Lords, that he had no interest in Earth for the next five centuries or so.

So we just went home.

Of course, he lost control of Sebek, and three years after that, Earth was destroyed (the DM said that "every action has its consequences", but we suspect that he wanted to pay us back.)

So we just skipped the big final fight.

2. D&D, Forgotten Realms, Unapproachable East.
More or less the same people as before (one stopped gaming, but we got several new players). Final session, we're in the Citadel of the Zulkir of Conjuration to free someone important. We enter through the "back door", a natural part of the Underdark that leads to an underground entrance, fighting Devils, Beholders and finally an Iron Golem (or rather Iron/Stone) to get in. We find our friend, free him, and want to go back.

That's when the enemy springs his trap: 15 feet of tunnel collapse right in front of us, leaving the exit blocked, and a smug gaoler telling us that there's no way out for us. After we subdued him - taking a round or so - we get the information out of him: Teleportation magic doesn't work, planeshifting might work - but chances are we end up somewhere. There is only one place where teleporting works, on the second floor of the citadel (probably just behind the room the BBEG resides). It looked as if we had to fight our way through that citadel to flee. The following conversation occured between me (playing an elan kineticist) and the DM
Me: "So the tunnel has caved in"
DM: "Yes"
Me: "How much of it?"
DM: "Well, the whole section to the bend you saw - that's 5 meters or so."
Me: "Hm... that's about 15 feet, is it?
DM: "That's correct"
Me: "OK, two manifestations of Disintegrate will suffice, I blast the tunnel free.
DM: ".......damn disintegrate!"

He hadn't thought of my disintegrate (as Psion, I can cast it often enought to dig out complete houses in a single day), and so we were able to get back to the tunnels and teleport from there.

The second final fight avoided, all with the same DM (this time, we went to a bar and the others started a brawl, just to do something...). Tomorrow, we'll start the fourth, and final, campaign with this DM (starting at level 14 - where we stopped with the old FR campaign, this time all evil, so some players could get it out of their systems), I wonder whether we can avoid it this time as well ;-)

 

[Mercule]

I once had a player playing a thief (2E). He was sneaking behind a member of the city watch and blew his checks. The following conversation occurred, but it was more the body language of the player that broke me:

Guard: Halt, who goes there?
PC: Me. *steps forward*
Guard: What are you doing?
PC: Sneaking into the city, why? *smiles innocently*
Guard: Carry on.

Yeah, I know, it sounds lame. It was totally in the delivery.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Guard: Halt, who goes there?
PC: Me. *steps forward*
Guard: What are you doing?
PC: Sneaking into the city, why? *smiles innocently*
Guard: Carry on.

That's a real good bluff check: thell them the truth when they expect a lie.

I have a similar one.

Player: "I cast charm person on him."
DM (As commander of the guard) *succeeds at save* "What the hell are you trying to do?"
Player: "Manipulation?!"

He thought the DM asked out of character. He didn't.

 

[Impeesa]

Robotech. Accelerated Training Program module, for relatively low-level characters - a series of simulations designed to test the party in a variety of tactical situations. In one, we needed to create a distraction to draw off the defenses of a small outpost (town built up around a downed Zentraedi ship some 1-2 km long) so the main assault force could move in. We had some opportunity to plan before going in, and it was my turn to be in command. I looked at the few defense emplacements.

Me: "That cruiser is along the edge of a cliff, it looks like. Is that the top or the bottom?"
GM: "The ship is at the top of a rather large cliff, yeah."
Me: "Okay, I have a plan. When we begin, I take the whole squad and circle wide around their perimeter, then down the side of the cliff."

We then took turns using our lasers to drill a small hole quite a ways into the side of the cliff, then popped some very large missiles down the hole. It was plenty enough to collapse a good chunk of the cliff, knocking out the ship's support and sending the whole thing sliding down into the valley.

Group: "We think that's sufficient distraction. We call in the main attack force."

--Impeesa--

 

[Jeff Wilder]

That's a real good bluff check: thell them the truth when they expect a lie.

Didn't work for Phillipe "the Mouse" Gaston.

 

[atom crash]

In a D20 Modern game, in the first session we were adbucted by a crazy cult in a bank heist (which we have since been blamed for) and through a deux ex machina escaped the compound. We've been on the run every since, following leads and trying to stay ahead of all the seemingly-omniscient crooked cops who are part of the cult leadership. The rank-and-file cultists we've met are all brainwashed and talk about "following the purple path." A string of leads points to a tuna canning facility in a port city, where we find shipping manifests that show deliveries made to a barge named the "The Purple Path," which is owned by the cult.

We snuck out to the harbor one night, climbed aboard the barge, snooped around, then sank the barge. We were all proud of ourselves.

The session ended early that night; the DM had counted on us stowing away on that barge.

 

[Alzrius]

I had a party that was trying to save a city that had been plane shifted into Hell (this was my own take on Hell in Freeport). However, they had to face a kaiju monster (specifically, Hotu-Bakete I think was the name, from Dragon #289).

Now, faced with a half-fiendish colossal centipede, most parties would have broken out the swords and spells and set about to fight the big fight. My party, however, announced that they'd spent the last few days visiting every temple in the city to collect holy water...enough so that they had a barrel full. At this point, one of them casts fly and dumps the barrel on the monster. Being an evil Outsider, it affects him, and the touch attack for the water easily hits. My party had calculated ahead of time that a barrel of holy water was somewhere over a hundred vials' worth (or something like that). And so, my BBEG was reduced to sludge with one attack.

Needless to say, I was miffed.

 

[Nellisir]

Gen Con, a few years back. A friend of mine from online was running a one-shot evil adventure, pretty straight-forward - break into a castle and bring back the owner's head. All other body parts optional.

The game went long, and the original players had to leave for other things, and myself, another friend, and a few people we grabbed off the floor gradually replaced them. I don't know what the earlier group had been doing, but our first action was wholesale slaughter of the orcish garrison, all of whom I (as the evil necromancer) reanimated.

Shortly afterwards, we crossed a graveyard, opened up a tomb, and exposed a long slide leading down. It was dark and we couldn't see the traps we were sure were there.

So one by one, we lit the zombies on fire and sent them down, and the DM gravely crossed off all the traps he had placed.

It was pretty funny at the time.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Impeesa]

My party had calculated ahead of time that a barrel of holy water was somewhere over a hundred vials' worth (or something like that). And so, my BBEG was reduced to sludge with one attack.

So what if it's a hundred vials worth? How much is actually making contact? A vial of acid, for example, does 1d6, while bodily immersion only increases that to 10d6. This needless tragedy could have been prevented.

--Impeesa--

 

[Viashimo]

Our group was playing a fairly standard D&D game, with characters about lvl 8-9, in a Forgotten Realms style game. We had found a pedestal that required some sort of activation rod, a staff perhaps, and we went to find the staff.
As we came up to the BBEG, there was the standard dramatic monologue. The members of the party lacking any sense just plained nicely asked the half-demon for the staff.

Fed up with the demon, we decided to kill it for the staff, as diplomacy wasn't really going to work anyway. While half-demon was distracted with being talked to, one fighter, one war-cleric, and one barbarian rolled their attack rolls on the half-demon with the intention of cutting him up before he got to fighting.

Dwarven Waraxe - Critical
Great Sword - Critical
Great Axe - Critical

Suffice to say, no enemy was left.