NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Squire James" data-source="post: 4057655" data-attributes="member: 548">My favorite DM moment came during college, where anywhere from 6 to 10 of us showed up with rotating DMs.  I knew about half of them had a badly-timed exam for my game so I had decided to run a "pickup" game for the 4 or 5 I was expecting to show up.The "plan" was for the players to be hired to guard a 40 year-old elf (which I jokingly portrayed as a little kid) from some unknown guy who was hiring orcs.  The first half of the adventure was various pranks perpetrated by the cantrip-wielding kid, and the climax was a rousing brawl against 10 orcs.Two people showed up.  They decided to play a thief and an illusionist.  I was at a "stubborn" phase at the time, so I told them I wasn't going to change the adventure just to accomodate sub-optimal character choices.  They were okay with that - one of them commented that it was pretty much a one-night game anyway.The kid made prank noises in the basement with the 1e equivalent of Ghost Sound, and the players hammed it up, acting like I stuck a wight or vampire in there.  The role-playing was surprisingly good, and they were playing it to the hilt.Then the orcs showed up, and the illusionist decided that he needed to do an illusion of a dragon.  I had a short discussion with the player, and decided that there was SOME chance he's seen a dragon and that he should roll a d20.  The better the result, the more realistic the illusion.  He rolled a 1.Enter Puff the Magic Dragon.  Several orcs fall down laughing.  At that point I decided the players did too good on the comedy to let their impending deaths happen, so the kid came to the rescue with some prank that scared the rest of the orcs away.They wanted more, so I ran another scenario.  They discovered the mastermind behind the orc attacks was the town's mayor, a level 7 fighter.  They pooled all their money to buy a single dose of Drow "sleep poison".  So here's the thief, using a light crossbow he wasn't even proficient with, firing a single bolt with weak sleep poison (+4 to save) at a guy who can wipe both party members out with a single blow if he gets a turn.The illusionist burns his one spell with an illusion to distract the guards, and the thief moves in and fires.  He needs a natural 19 to hit.  He rolls a 20.  With the +4 bonus, the mayor saves on a 6 or better.  HE rolls a 2.  Blokes didn't get saves against coup de grace attacks back then, so it was all over.Needless to say, they fled town (and ended the campaign) as level 2 characters, 1 XP away from level 3.  "Hunting chaotic squirrels" as my expression goes.</blockquote>

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