D&D Memory Lane

[cptg1481]

The fiendish Bridge

This one is I think best for Peter to tell but once in his game our party of characters was paralized for some time by the fiendishly devised Bridge Trap. I thought about throwing someone over but after several (like 30-45) minutes of argueing I just jumped it, for some reason I (we) would "not" walk across.

Twas a funny moment to realize that we spent all that time on a simple rickety bridge.

 

[Murrdox]

Getting back on topic to unhealthy familiar use...

Once the party discovered a wizard's tower. However, the tower itself was a ruin, only the door was important. The door was actually an portal to the Plane of Negative Energy, where the wizard had constructed himself a stronghold. In such a place, the wizard was reasonably safe from meddlers and such.

The party was instructed that in order to safely pass into the stronghold, they would require protection from negative energy. They were then provided with amulets that would protect them from the bad effects of the plane for a couple of hours.

Now, KNOWING what danger lies ahead, and while he's WEARING his amulet on his neck, the wizard in the party says, "I send my Pseudodragon through first to see if its safe."

I kinda blankly stared at him for a second, and calmly began looking up the rules that would determine how long his familiar would stay alive in the plane... and said "I'll give you one chance to re-think that statement."

It took him a minute to figure out why.

 

[Altalazar]

I had groups go from either extreme - to just saying "screw it" in the early years, to being so paranoid you'd think they were hearing voices.

Some old staples:

*Statutes are immediately assumed to be ready-to-animate monsters.

*Large scary doors are always bypassed with methods varying from etherealness, dimension door, to the big favorite, transmute rock to mud.

*Party theif overly paranoid, ala Phineas Fingers. His classic lines:
"I open the door."
"Ok, you see [insert first few words of scary, nasty something]..."
Quickly inturrupting, almost on same beat as first line above:
"I close the door."

*Locks all having poison needle traps - that somehow could always penetrate no matter what protections or precautions you use. They'd go through walls of force. They'd go through anything - the simple fact that you triggered the trap would force that save. The DM seriously said that it didn't matter what you did - if you failed to disarm the trap, you get hit. Even if you bashed the door down with a tree. Even if you (we hypotheically asked this one) used a tractor beam to open the door, standing on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, in orbit, with the shields up. As soon as the door opened, thousands of kilometers below, "make a save versus poison at -4!"

*Stupid paladins who would give away sneaky PC plans to save the day because of some insane interpreation of LG.

 

[SpringPlum]

In one of our very long, epic campaigns, our party would periodically be brought to various planes for meetings with a god or two, or moved forward or backward through time, and everytime they were dropped back in their world in was in a random and empty fields at least a days walk back to a town. It started out as a onetime joke but somehow keep being repeated. So now I tease that any of my characters in any game have an unexplained pathological phobia of fields. In our last space game, the GM crash landed our ship in a deserted field just to see me twitch.

 

[Skarp Hedin]

I had a player once who was so paranoid about Explosive Runes that he burned (unopened) every book he ever found, especially enemy wizards' spellbooks.

His wizards sucked, they didn't have many spells.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Stupidest Trap Ever:
A sign on a rope that reads - "If you pull this rope you will die".

Every time I have used it someone has pulled the rope.
Every time.
They didn't tie another rope to it and pull it from another room.
They didn't cast detect trap.
They didn't even just leave it alone!

They pulled the rope.
Then the cieling fell down on them and killed them.

(The reason the sign is there is because the party is the second group of adventurers though there, and the previous rogue had marked the trap to prevent someone in his party from setting it off...)

I've used that trap five times and killed 15 PCs with it...

The Auld Grump shaking his head sadly.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

AuldGrump, I am so stealing that trap. Classic.

 

[Spatula]

Yep- this happened quite a bit in games I DMed or played in...particularly when Tomb of Horrors was still new and people didn't know about the "Great Green Devil Face" and the other doorways.

I lost my first character to the giant devil face. But I didn't go in alone, I had convinced half the party to come with me...

 

[Paul_Klein]

Hmmm, in 3rd edition, how would you do a trap like that where you pull the rope and it is pretty much guarenteed that the person (or people) pulling it dies? Isn't there a max damage cap of 20d6 for even the most heinous traps? That's only about 70 damage average.

 

[hong]

Thread memory lane

I had groups go from either extreme - to just saying "screw it" in the early years, to being so paranoid you'd think they were hearing voices.

Some old staples:

*Statutes are immediately assumed to be ready-to-animate monsters.

D00d, I know that rules lawyers can be really scary, but don't you think you're taking it a bit too far?

*Large scary doors are always bypassed with methods varying from etherealness, dimension door, to the big favorite, transmute rock to mud.

I'm getting flashbacks to threads from months back, thought dead and forgotten, returning to haunt the living again. It's the... Night of the Living Thread!

Some old staples:

- Roleplaying versus Rollplaying

- Crunch versus Fluff

- Too Many Freakin' PrCs versus Options, Not Restrictions

- 3.5E Is a Ripoff versus 3.0E Is B0rken

- Alignment Wars, aka 1001 Ways to Screw a Paladin, aka How Many DMs Does it Take to Screw a Paladin Anyway?

- <s>Original D&D (1974) is the one true roleplaying game</s> (shoo, diaglo)

Well, maybe not that last one. But OTHER than that, the horror, the horror.


Hong "listen up, you primitive screwheads! This is my boom thread!" Ooi