One Thousand Ways to Freak Out Your Players

[Jack Haggerty]

52. Begin the game by saying, "Everyone please roll for Initiative."

53. Begin the game by saying, "Everyone please roll for a Fortitude Save."

54. Begin the game by saying, "Everyone please roll for a Reflex Save."

55. Begin the game by saying, "Everyone please roll for a Will Save."*


*This is especially diabolical if you happen to be playing Call of Cthulu.

 

[Oracular Vision]

56. One I read here recently, talk about the dozen or so literary sources you used to make the adventure, when all you really did was copy out some monster manual stat blocks and put them in a town...

57. Give one player each new town they enter a girlfriend. Make the girlfriend want things from them, need money for a new cow, etc. Sometimes the new girlfriend is actually something else, a succubus, or a rogue who really wants all their stuff, or is just a barmaid who wants to get in on the good thing of rich adventurers. The party will eventually laugh at the misfortune of the victim, and they will all run from all women encountered. This gets to be really funny as a running gag, so to speak.

58. Every time you reach for a monster miniature, say, "I barely got this lich painted in time..."

59. Let them buy magic out the wazoo, then send them to a suppressed magic zone...

60. Keep a running total of all the bad guys they never got around to finishing off, and have them join together to eliminate the party. My party can't even go back to where they started, as there are hundreds of enemies there waiting....

61. Let them pick all the broken Prestige Classes they want, then make it impossible for them to find any other members of that class to advance...

62. Give them lethal enemies and restrict their ability to heal by making the gods unavailable...

63. Build a huge dungeon but make a simple back-door way in to where the bad guy/artifact/treasure is, that could have been found with just a few minutes of searching...

64. Here's my latest plan - make a blue shimmering curtain of energy be between every hallway and door, and make it chime when it is crossed...they are sure something is coming...

65. Put traps everywhere for no good reason, but leave the actual way to the treasure unguarded.

Too easy to make these really...

 

[Jack Haggerty]

58. Every time you reach for a monster miniature, say, "I barely got this lich painted in time..."

Or...

66. Say something along the lines of, "I just got my hands on this great Pit Fiend figurine, and I didn't want it to go to waste..."

 

[Frostmarrow]

67. [Classic] When the PC's are returning home with some hard-earned loot tell them they approach and enter a strange mist. Tell them that they lose track of time but that they eventually exit the mist and find themselves on a moor.

 

[Zappo]

67. [Classic] When the PC's are returning home with some hard-earned loot tell them they approach and enter a strange mist. Tell them that they lose track of time but that they eventually exit the mist and find themselves on a moor.

I have a player who DMs Ravenloft for another group. I wonder what he would say.

68. Every now and then, require a Will save. No matter the result, smile and say: "well, well...".

 

[Moe Ronalds]

69. When describing the big baddie, leave your DMG open to the page on Major Artifacts
70. (Okay, this idea I'm actually using) An insanely powerful intelligent magic weapon, that hates combat, and has an insanely high ego, and also refuses to be sold, and insists upon always being taken along. Give the magic weapon an extremely annoying personality (for example, if it's a Holy Avenger, have it think that it's the spirit of Heironeus trapped inside a sword)

 

[Nightchilde-2]

68. Orcs that act with intelligence and forethought. I nearly wiped out my 5th-level party with a few orcs that planned ahead. Once the patrol fired off their thunderstones as alarms to alert the rest of the nearby orcs, things got ugly.

69. Make good use of weird architecture (Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has some great examples). Again, in the Friday night session, the party was exploring the House of Stone, which had been deserted for centuries (and, at least the ground level, had been claimed by the aforementioned orcs), when they came across a room full of completely preserved meat (near the kitchen; this is a wondrous architecture item from the SBG). Especially once the wizard cast Detect Magic and found out the entire room was, essentially, magical, they freaked out.

70. Hint at something big and very nasty lurking outside of the PCs' line of sight. Once again, Friday night (wow, that was a good PC-freaking session), the PCs threw something down Stoneturn Well, and got back the sound of some massive beast growling. Now they won't go down to the lower levels.

71. Have a dragon use it's breath weapon to drop a ceiling on the PCs. This is amazingly effective.

72. Monsters with class levels. In our old campaign, at around character level 10, the PCs came across a room with a goblin in it. They said, almost in unison, "Just one goblin?!?!?!" A disintigrate, mage armor and a couple of fingers of death later and they got the clue. Also, remember, a kobold barbarian makes use of d12 hit dice. And 2-3 levels of fighter added to an orc make previously cannon fodder baddies nasty for lower-level parties.

 

[Sir Hawkeye]

69. Convince the party to let an advanced pit fiend join them (using threats by the fiend if necessary). The pit fiend doesn't help them in combat. He just follows them and occasionally laughs evilly. Party becomes extremely paranoid.

 

[Harlock]

72. Monsters with class levels. In our old campaign, at around character level 10, the PCs came across a room with a goblin in it. They said, almost in unison, "Just one goblin?!?!?!" A disintigrate, mage armor and a couple of fingers of death later and they got the clue. Also, remember, a kobold barbarian makes use of d12 hit dice. And 2-3 levels of fighter added to an orc make previously cannon fodder baddies nasty for lower-level parties.

This works extremely well. I had a party of 15th level (Psion/Slayer, Rogue, Barbarian, Cleric) who were walking down a corridor hall. One of them spotted a lone kobold who was ducking back behind a door and slammed it shut. That kobold had two friends with him. They were a 16th level adventuring party. One barbarian, one wizard (already had improved invis. up) and a cleric. Needless to say when my group of badasses came in and saw only two kobolds they laughed. The kobolds told them to leave or die so my PCs decided it was time to teach them a lesson. Once the Kob Cler. Flame Striked a few times and the barbarian had gotten buffed up by a mage they couldn't see the characters finally started to understand they were in for the fight of the session. It was great fun and now my players think hard about every encounter because they never know what I may throw in there next. I know: kobold succubus, Dire kangaroo, and a chupacabra Dire Lemur.

 

[der_kluge]

I think we're on 77 - the number got screwed up a bit here.

77. Randomly rip off small sheets of paper out of your notebook, and write " " or "this note doesn't say anything" and give them to random players.

78. Write notes that say nothing and give them only to the rogues in the group. Occasionally have them roll a D20. Everyone else will constantly be checking their gear.

79. When the PC find a treasure chest, give it a false bottom. When the PCs say "I search the bottom for any other compartments", have them find it - but there's nothing in it.