Irresponsible use of magic and other WMDs

[Dannyalcatraz]

Edition: 1Ed/2Ed fusion

Location: The Abyss

WMD: Instant Fortress

W'hoppen: Thrown above BBEG as command word spoken; turned all below into a paste and simultaneously gave us a place to stay. The Fortress was broken, however, and would not return to its miniaturized state.

 

[Janx]

in 3e, my converted 2e character has dropped a summoned T-Rex on enemies before. I figured its weight was a known absolute via Master Wikipedius and was more reliable against our high-level foes that its actual combat and it hit point ability.

Worked pretty good.

(I made out like a bandit on those conversion rules, mega-hit points and enough levels to get me the summon monster spell I never had...)

In 2e, the same character had been staying at an in, and was getting called out by bad guys for a fight. So I bought the inn for 30K in gold, ordered everybody out, told the bad guys to come and get me and fireballed it on my way out.

A fairly expensive fireball, but nobody who mattered got hurt

 

[rgard]

1E fun:

1. Hopelessly outnumbered, down to 3 hit points and about to be cut down the character wearing a fully charged Helm of Brilliance deliberately fails his save vs. a fireball lobbed by a fellow party member. We all died, but the mushroom cloud was seen for miles.

2. Not high level, but a PC who was turned into vampire (via a cursed ring) cast sleep in a peasant's hut on the father and burning hands the children hiding under the covers on the bed.

3. During a PC vs. PC war one fighter is turned to stone. The the enemy PC magic user stone shapes him into a HUYA statue.

4. Whenever a PC died, after the encounter there was a rush to see who would bring him/her back. My magic user got there first one time and the 18 charisma paladin was reincarnated as a troll and another time the 'extremely hot' (as described by the player) female bard returned as a male gnoll. The magic user version of reincarnate was so much better than the druid version.

 

[kronos182]

I had a halfling sorceress, who ended up as a rage mage, with a love of electrical based spells. She had a hell of a temper. The other players refered to her as a tactical nuke with a hair trigger. She once electrical fireballed a village trying to kill a small group of dire rats. She'd also beat up the group's fighter and always refer to him as meatshield, often zapping him with low level electrical spells. Never enough to kill, just wound and occasionally maim.

She destroyed a few shops that were near a seamstress who got her measurements wrong on a dress.
The other players learned to never piss off the little halfling barbarian who can sling more powerful spells while raging, and had no fear of casting powerful spells at point blank range as she beat someone with her human sized morningstar at the same time.

 

[Wycen]

With a particular group, and within that group, I can point to a particular person. We shall call him Tim, but his name is really _____. He'll probably never read this but maybe the DM will.

Tim should never be put in charge of weapons of mass destruction. But he loves playing battle mages. Though he also plays munchkined warriors as well.

My first introduction to Tim was when he fireballed a party member or two because they were within the radius of the spell effect. Of course part of the issue was a house rule requiring a skill check when targeting spells at close range when PC's were engaged in close combat, but that rule eventually was forgotten and yet Tim still managed to kill innocents.

Eventually he found a nifty new spell from the Scarred Lands and during a battle used this new spell on a city street. The spell replicates various dragon breaths and in this case he ended up killing 2 or 3 prostitutes who got caught in the area of effect.

Later, with the same characters he at least had the courtesy to ask if he could fireball me while I was engaged with some ice based creatures.

A crime for which Tim will never be forgiven was during the climactic final battle of a different campaign which resulted in a near TPK. Only his character survived and I almost walked away from the game. But this wasn't an ordinary spell lobbed carelessly. No, in this case we were fighting a demon in a secret lab. The two spell slingers, (technically I should be mad at both, but one didn't have a history of this) were running out of effective spells.

I suppose some could argue I was using meta-game knowledge to know that you don't use fireballs and lightning to hurt demons. But you know we'd fought demons before and you would expect people would learn their lessons about what spells hurt demon and which don't.

So when they got frustrated they instead started shooting at the cubes radiating chaos that were stacked around the lab. Eventually one exploded, which of course caused the rest to explode.

Maybe someday the shoe will be on the other foot.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Eventually he found a nifty new spell from the Scarred Lands and during a battle used this new spell on a city street. The spell replicates various dragon breaths and in this case he ended up killing 2 or 3 prostitutes who got caught in the area of effect.

Ah LUV the smell of roasted harlot in the mornin'- it smells like victory!

 

[Keenberg]

I suppose some could argue I was using meta-game knowledge to know that you don't use fireballs and lightning to hurt demons. But you know we'd fought demons before and you would expect people would learn their lessons about what spells hurt demon and which don't.

An aside from the thread topic: I wouldn't argue that that was meta-gaming, it is highly possible that adventurers in the world would know effective and non-effective ways to combat different enemy types simply as "common adventurer knowledge." And if the character had fought demons previously, any argument about meta-gaming goes out the window.

 

[Starfox]

The sins in this case are my own.

First a druid who loved to cast Fire Trap on empty nut shells - creating a sort of magical fire caltrops. Generally, this was not so bad, merely an area control thing. But in a climactic fight I left the whole bag out and someone actually stepped on it. That tactic got thoroughly banned after that encounter.

Second, under some alternate metamagic rules, I managed to cast 2 maximized, Empowered, Enlarged Greater Firebusts (from Spell Compendium) in one round, instantly wiping out a whole attacking force. And the DM had been so happy about catching my character alone when the rest ran off for a diversion. I suppose he was expecting Dimension Door or some such.

 

[Keenberg]

The DM of the campaign expected us to be familiar with any spells we wanted to use, and let us learn by making mistakes. Here's a simplified diagram of the fight we were in:

D-----FE

Druid, Fighter, and Enemy.

The druid decides to send a Flaming Sphere rolling into combat in a straight line.

...Us being a low-level party, the Fighter momentarily yelled out for a combat medic.