D&D 5E Runaway Hex and Other DM Cruelties

[iserith]

Last night, I'm kicking butt and taking names with my fighter/warlock in the dungeon. We're taking the fight to a faction therein that has given us some trouble in the past. Now it ends!

My shtick, of course, is to drop a hex on someone, then either eldritch blast them or hit them repeatedly with my polearm. Once the enemy drops, I bonus action the hex onto someone else, then repeat.

Catching on to this, the DM has one of the hexed enemies, who is much faster than my encumbered character, run away. I can't catch up, and it's not smart to just go dashing into a yet unexplored section of the dungeon for who knows what lay down that way. But at the same time, I can't reassign the hex until that guy dies or until I drop Concentration and cast it again! I've got just one other spell slot and I don't foresee a short rest coming up immediately after the current battle, so I'd rather keep my options open. Dang it!

Normally I'm the one who likes to put the DM into a bind and force them to make hard decisions. Now the shoe's on the other foot. Luckily, the guy returned (only with reinforcements) shortly after so I was able to take him out and keep my shtick going, but the DM really had me there for a little while, and I thought that was a novel (for me) approach to short-circuiting the hex spell.

What are some other fun and challenging tactics a DM might use to disrupt a player's go-to plans?

 

[jasper]

NICELY EVIL. GOOD DM. GOOD DM.

 

[CleverNickName]

You have a good Dungeon Master.

That bit about "he runs away, but comes back with reinforcements" is awesome. Your DM is telegraphing to you that he knows how to break your favorite tactic, and knows how to adjust the encounter difficulty level on-the-fly to account for optimized tactics. I'd be careful not to depend too much on it in the future, and experiment with new combinations.

Does your table use the additional class features in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, that let you swap out invocations and fighting styles whenever you earn an ASI? You can really keep your DM guessing with those.

 

[iserith]

You have a good Dungeon Master.

Yep, all good DMs in our circle, thanks!

Does your table use the additional class features in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, that let you swap out invocations and fighting styles whenever you earn an ASI? You can really keep your DM guessing with those.

I'm pretty sure we do use those. I'll have to check and see, plus think about what changes would still make my character remain viable. I don't imagine this would happen a lot anyway. It was just novel to me and I thought it was a cool DM screwjob.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've been personally fond of misdirection. I've used illusions and reflections to make the PCs think the enemy is in one locations, so they waste their most powerful spells. It gets harder to do, as the players start looking out for this trick. I'm waiting for the opportunity to make the players think I'm using the trick again, only to have it not be true!

Looking forward to this thread, as I'm always on the lookout for fun/evil ideas

 

[GMMichael]

. . . My shtick . . .

You know you're in trouble right here. Against intelligent opponents, anyway.

. . . of course, is to drop a hex on someone, then either eldritch blast them or hit them repeatedly with my polearm. . .

They take repeated hits from polearms? Okay, forget the "intelligent" thing.

What are some other fun and challenging tactics a DM might use to disrupt a player's go-to plans?

Outnumber the PC? Specific immunity? Diplomatic immunity? I could take one from the CIA playbook: enemies have a bard who plays horrible music that prevents long and short rests.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I'm still salty about the 2nd Ed. Frost giant who ran away with my +3 intelligent throwing axe stuck in his back...

I almost wrecked a 10th-level stand-and-bang-melee-heavy party once with a dozen goblin "horse' archers mounted on worgs.

Another time, a party whose melee guys were big on polearm shenanigans discovered that the tribe of ogres they hadn't managed to take out the last time showed up to the fight using tables as tower shields, lol.

 

[iserith]

I'm still salty about the 2nd Ed. Frost giant who ran away with my +3 intelligent throwing axe stuck in his back...

That reminds me:

Different DM in my circle, but not the DM I mention in the OP. The party is inside a pyramid battling some monsters. I don't recall the exact reason why, but one of the characters borrowed another character's +1 dagger (the only magic weapon in the party at that point), and threw it at one of the monsters. It misses, then a monster picks it up and runs away. We were fighting a lot of creatures where a magic weapon would be helpful, so the player of that character has never lived it down.