Small Acts of DM Cruelty

[Shemeska]

Every week

We've got a house rule taken from a little snippet of speculative flavor text in one of the Planescape books, that eating a raw Bebelith eye will slide up or down a single layer of a plane.

Well, they tried this on the Astral plane last week. We ended the session inside a Bebelith hive on the Astral plane, around 50k Bebeliths in a silken hive stretched between the gnawed apart rubble of a dead god's petrified corpse. Thousands of Tanar'ri bound into the webs like flies at the mercy of spiders. The webs vibrating and screaming like disembodied vocal chords.

They saw this, I described it, and we ended the session with the following "Reflex save."

Mu-Ha.

 

[shilsen]

Just did this a couple weeks ago:

In one of my Eberron games, the PCs were trying to find some enemy warforged who they were sure were hiding in the Cogs (undercity) of Sharn. They had previously rescued and become very fond of a mute, permanently damaged (effectively retarded) warforged called Hulk. Trying to help them, Hulk went looking for the enemy warforged on his own and got captured. The group picked up his trail and that led them to the lair of the warforged.

The PCs, despite having encountered a set of magical traps, walked into the lair without any preparation and promptly began to have their asses handed to them by a bunch of significantly inferior opponents (8th lvl PCs vs. 4th-5th lvl enemies). Early in the fight, they heard a banging on one of the doors around the area and a couple rounds later, it flew open to reveal a manacled, wounded Hulk. The poor, dumb guy rushed into the fight, trying to distract the enemies from his friends, and tried to head-butt one. I rolled a 2 for his attack and in the next round, one of the enemies knocked him down.

When the turn came around in the next round, the enemy warforged looked at the PCs, all of whom were badly wounded and some already down, saw that he couldn't reach them anyway, looked down at the unconscious Hulk, and calmly decapitated him.

The PCs and the players both lost it at that point. They'd just taken for granted that as a popular and fun NPC, Hulk was going to be around for a while, and they really liked him in and out of character, so they were completely horrified at the death. The fact that the fight ended with most of them unconscious and captured (would have been 3 deaths, but I allow an action point mechanic to survive going under -10) didn't help either.

 

[Furby076]

promptly began to have their asses handed to them by a bunch of significantly inferior opponents (8th lvl PCs vs. 4th-5th lvl enemies).

In the defense of Shil's group, Shil tend's to make uber insane NPCs and manages to do it utilizing only core (or at least 95% core) and lower level then the PCs. How he does it I don't know. He just told me of this build he made (level 18) that would seriously devastate most DM's into a crying heap.

Shil is D&D U83R 1337

 

[Particle_Man]

One: Sea Voyage – Wights trying very hard to scuttle the ship in the middle of the ocean. Not like they had to breathe. Luckily, PC's heard a loud noise coming from the hold.

Two: 3 way fight. Party vs. a lot of kobolds. Behind the kobolds arises…a shadow. Kobolds have very low str. Do the math…

And I did the "pun" thing of White Knights that were actually Wight Knights (hands head in mock shame).

 

[Beale Knight]

What small, mean and nasty things have you done to a player lately?

When the ogre with the battle axe successfully crit'ed the fighter I didn't have quite enough d8s, so I borrowed one from the fighter's player and used it last - so the player's own die delivered the last bit of fatal damage.

This coming Saturday, I think there's going to be an unhappy lesson in what happens when the party wizard uses a flashy wand to cause great harm to foes when other foes are watching nearby.

 

[Agback]

Does cruelty in the role of an adventure designer count?

A cloak of poisonousness, with a scarab of death in the pocket. In a tournament modlue in which you lost a lot of victory point for leaving dead comrades on the map at sunset. Three parties each lost two characters to that little nasty.

 

[Agback]

During my pulp/CoC game this summer the players developed a powerful animosity towards an NPC protagonist

I don't blame them. When the protagonists are NPCs, I quit the game.

 

[pokedigimaniac]

He may have meant 'antagonist.'

 

[Agback]

He may have meant 'antagonist.'

I may have guessed that he did, and intended a quip.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

The party has spent a week traveling up a river gaurding a caravan from the local dinosaur wildlife. Toss in a few locals that have been trying to kill them and they've had a rough time of it. They then travel for a day through a crystal forest where excessive noise can trigger a deadly explosion of crystal. They reach the crystal castle they've come fro, use their magical key to enter. Find hundreds of ancient skeletons, and some imprisoned villians that want their key to get out.

About halfway in the find a room with a harmless seeming, and scatter brained old man. He tells them that he's been hear a long long time and that he just want to go home one last time before his passes. He tells them that he's willing to sell them some items of power he's managed to make using the castles power. In return they must pay him a fair price and let him out. He'll wiat for them to come back before trying to cross through the forest.

They by the items, and escort the "nice old man" out and tell him they'll be back to escort him out in about a day. He should be perfectly safe here. They enter back into the castle and proceed to get into the fight of their lives as they alert all the gaurds to their prescence and more just keep arriving. That is when they discover their cool new items are all cursed. The wizard begins to scream as his robes start to crawl with biting and scratching rats. The male human fighter suddenly becomes a woman, and the giant fighter begins to caper and prance around the battle field.

Man that was fun. The best part though was the fact that not once, in character or out, did they suspect this harmless old man of being something more. He was in the middle of a dungeon in a very dangerous corner of the world, surrounded by nasty's that would have no problem eating an old codger.

They have yet to find the villian they unleashed, but they will. They will.

-Ashrum