Humbling defeats

[BiggusGeekus]

There was something shiny at the bottom of the pond. The PCs wanted it. One dove in - critical failure on her swim roll

Sounds familiar.

We were in RttToEE. Six characters.

One guy scouts ahead. He gets to the lake and sees the boats. He hops in a boat to check it out. The sea critter in there grabs him, poisons him, drags him underwater. One of the party sees this happen, and follows in. The rest of us see that guy dash off and run to the aid of the first character.

Second guy dives in, gets poisoned, gets dragged under. I dive in, make my save, use my wand of cure light wounds to prevent the first guy from dying. All the commotion draws the attention of bullywugs. By the time the bullywugs had arrived, I had failed my save, three of us are drowning while the fourth guy is trying to save us. The other two characters exercise the better part of valor and run away.

20 minutes. Four out of six deaths. It's like Monte Cooke broke down the door of the game room and screamed "WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON, MEAT!!!!!"

I had a page and a half of background written up for that cleric, too.

 

[Old One]

Back in an old 2E FR game...the PCs (around level 3 or 4) sighted a group of kobolds that had been terrorizing the local populace. They gave chace and pursued the kobolds to a clearing ringed with fallen logs. I described how the kobolds ran nimbly over the logs to the far side of the clearing. The PCs followed...running straight across...and right into the big pit trap.

Captured and imprisoned by the kobolds, they were taunted, pelted by kobold dung and the thief's prized mount, Midnight...which had been tethered nearby...became a "Midnight Snack" for the kobolds. By the end of the session, the players were actually frothing at the mouth.

Just to add insult to injury, their arch-nemesis - and elven fighter-thief that had plagued them since level 1 - ended up springing them, with the help of the PC wizard-thief that had turned invisible to escape capture. The NPC continued to plague them for the rest of the campaign and never missed an opportunity to rub the PCs collective noses in the fact that they "owed him big".

~ OO

 

[Dracomeander]

Saw an animated rug kick the hell out of a fighter/rogue in a dungeon once.

I believe it was in Forge of Fury where our human barbarian was defeated by every animated object in the complex. He had a habit of entering the next room before the party was finished with the current one. Every time there was an animated object in the room, it beat him in initiative and proceeded to batter him into unconsciousness. He never once even managed to land a blow on any of the animated objects. (I think the highest his d20 rolled that night was a 7.) By the time the party pulled him out of the animated rug, he refused to leave the party and wouldn't enter a room until it was proved there were no animated objects in it.

 

[TheEvil]

I remember that Dungeon. I believe the monsters were called 'Househunters' or some such.

around 1988 or so...memory failing..

i think Dungeon 19.

 

[The Shaman]

TPK with an animated blanket.

The players just sat there and shook their heads for about ten minutes.

 

[ElvishBard]

I have a story that I still find very amusing. A paladin and his socerer friend have heard rumors of orcs around the town, so they naturally start hunting for them. It is near noon when they find the orcs sitting down to their human dinner*. The paladin charges the nearest orc while yelling an oath that would scare even Grumsh. The paladin missed with a 1 on his charge. The orc won initative, crit with his first attack and then got 3 natural 20s in a row. The paladin's head flew all the way back to the sorcerer, and the coward ran off back to town.

*As in, eating human for dinner...tastes like chicken.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Must....resist...stealing....jgsugden's avatar....must....resist...

We played a series of adventures many years ago where I was playing a 1e Bounty Hunter (from Dragon mag). A friend had a character who hated my character with a passion. At one point, a huge bounty was placed on my friend's PC, so I decided to go after him. Houseruling disguise rules, my character completely made himself over and adventured with the other character for several games, and convinced him to rob the palace of the caliph who had the bounty on him.

Flying into the courtyard on a flying carpet, my character turns to my friend's PC and gets a surprise attack on him and knocks him out (house rules, again). He woke up in the dungeon, with my character (back in his normal guise) sitting on the "free" side of the bars and taunting him, tossing a sack of money from hand to hand. My buddy was LIVID. I added insult to injury by telling him I could bust him out for the same amount the reward was, and after the player cussing me out and storming out of the house, he relented and agreed. To this day, he gets so mad about that he'll get the shakes.

 

[Richards]

I once ran my players' PCs through the Palace of the Silver Princess. We ended up with a TPK...by bubbles. Yes, they were all killed by bubbles. (Of course, a bubble in that module was a kind of ooze, but still.)

They chose never to speak of that again.

Johnathan

 

[toberane]

In Forge of Fury, and adventure for 3rd level characters, there is a roper. A roper (CR10). It is supposed to be there to teach you that there are times to fight and times to run. However, when it has half the party grappled before we have even found out what it is, running isn't much of an option.

Against all odds, we beat it. (Some very bad rolls for the DM, some very good rolls for our group.)

In the same adventure there is a brown bear. Just an ordinary, run of the mill, lone brown bear. We went swaggering up to it thinking "It's just a bear, how tough could it be?"

We ended up running like crazy crying every step of the way with our hit points at dangerously low levels across half the dungeon level to escape a TPK from an ordinary brown bear.

 

[sniffles]

ROTFL!!!!

Someone should rename this thread the "Book of Vile Embarrassments".