Good gods, this thread makes me so glad I game with the people I do.
We have plenty of "Oh crap" moments, but they're generally never on purpose.
Lemme see here.
The 1st level party setting up a base in their hometown decides to take a job reclaiming an old cottage from some kobolds. Things get a little hairy when the party splits up, the barbarian and cleric go through the front door and the rest climb up into the top floor window. The cleric and barbarian end up falling right into a classic ten foot pit, and then getting wailed on by crossbo wielding kobold sentires. The other group fumbles into the attic, only to be jumped by kobolds. Eventually the all meet up and make it to the final room with the remnants of thew kobold warriors and all the eggs, babes, and females. They decide to force the rest of the kobolds out. but the barbaian makes a demand. He (a CN half orc who pretty much lived as a wildman in the woods since puberty) wants one of the eggs. To eat fro breakfast the next day. So begins an hour long debate. me asking him if he really wants to eat a sentient creature and to give me a good reason why his character would, the party all draws down on each other, half against the idea and the other half not wanting to get anyone killed over it. In the end, when the neutral characters all turn against him, the barbarian lets it go. We almost had a party vs party fight in the first night of the game.
It never fails. We come up with an elaborate shared backstory for why the PCs are together and in ten minutes they're at each others throats. We played a game where everyone woke up in the woods on night one with no memories. And eveyone were messed up races, a drow, a half-dragon, a half-celestial, etc. And they all get along like family and share their cure potions with eachother. :\
Oh no, I thought of another one.
Same group as the first story, same campaign. One new player, a girl we knew who roleplayed a lot made up a half-drow druid. True Neutral. The PCs go to work as armed escorts for the frontier townspeople. They go to a little out of the way walled farm. Basically, they suspect a werwolf killed some of the farmers, and they (wrongly) think that its one of the farmers doing the killing. So they gather everyone together, the druid begins using all her freshly prepared spells to create water and help all the farm crops grow. The cleric casts detect eveil, and the only person who registers is a teenaged boy who has given the party lip (thought to be fair the party did deserve it at the time.) Later on, half the group becomes convinced that the kid is the werebeast, and the other half think he could be but they need more proof. So they decide to stake him out, and set up camp at the farm, outside the communal sleep house. The moon starts to rise as the farmers have already turned in, and the young man comes outside. They watch as he relieves himself against a tree, and goes back inside. The rogue of the party is pretty convinced the kid is the monster, and even if he isn't the kid detected as evil. So the neutral halfing creeps silently into the large main sleeping quarters of the workers and their families, crosses the main room full of sleeping people, finds the sleeping youth, and slits him from ear to ear. Blood gushes but no one wakes up. He snakes back out, and informs the party everything is taken care of. Horrified at what he might have done, the neutral good ranger sneaks into the house, finds the body, and sneaks out to tell everyone what the halfling did. The party gets into a whispered fight about what he did, and before the decide on course of action, they hear the screams of a little girl in the house. Of course, someone woke up and stepped in a pool of warm blood. The farmers wake up and confront the PCs asking them whats going on. The ranger informs the farmers that they suspected the young man of lycanthropy, and the rogue made a tactical decision to kill the young man before he could change and kill them all. The townsfolk, knowing that there was no way the lad could have been the monster, start to hurl anything they can find at the party to drive them off.
And of course, as soon as the party rogue begins to scrable away and the party decides it might be a good idea to leave, a farmer screams out in pain as he's ripped from head to crotch by the teeth of a huge wolf. A huge and bloody fight ensues with the werewolf.
They manage to maim him after a while, and he starts to flee into the woods. The party is glad, as they're all about dead. Except for that same barbarian. In a rage, and with about 12 hitpoints left he runs into the woods after the werewolf. Alone. In the night. When he realizes no one followed him he slows down, only to be jumed by a pack of wolves in the werewolf's thrall. I rolled totally in the open using the stats for the wolf presnet in the MM1. And somehow, he killed all four of them and managed to stay alive with exactly one hitpoint. It was the most amazingly dumb thing I have ever seen, and he made it out alive. He chuged potions, and ran back.
So the party waits till the morning to leave, but not before a farmer lets slip that a boy had been attacked by the beast and survived. But fearing he was cursed and too weak to put him to the sword, they take the boy a few miles away to an old burned down estate and chucked him in a well.
So the PCs go to the well. And the halfdrow druid decides to go down into the well and haul the kid back up. As she gets near the bottom, she can clearly see the claw marks scratched into the stone and knows the kid is infected with the disease. But, knowing the party may mercy kill him, she tells no one and they haul the boy, who is inshock, out of the well and decide to take him home. Only problem, they still have one night of the fullmoon left, and no one but the druid knows he'll turn come sunset. She says they need to race him back before he dies of exposure. They do.
And they almost make it. The kid, riding on the clerics horse. Starts to fidget as the sun sets and they're riding hard past the town gates and to the temple of his god. He realizes whats gonna happen, rides his horse into the temple, and rushes for the cells the church keeps for the magically afflicted. And as he leaps down the stairs the kid turns. Chaos ensues. The werewolf starts to maul everyone. The cleric leaps into the cage, baiting the wolf to follow. It does, and they seal him in with it. But thankfully he manages to get off a spell to disable it and the encounter ends.
Fast forward a session, and after the group has cured the child of his afflicaton, as well as the party cleric and rogue who both too had been cursed and would have turned a month later. The group decides to go back to the farm, and take the villagers to task for leaving that boy in a well. (Which is funny, all things considering.) They find the farm totally empty, with no explination. It seems like the place was deserted (when really human hating elves murdered them all and buried them in the woods.) Of course, the group decides to spend the night to see if anything happens, and the orignal werewolf and his new pack are attracted the the abandoned village by the smoke of the cooking fires the PCs lit. A battle ensues, and the manage to take the monsters down.
That was the first, third, and fourth nights of the game.
Imagine how things went from there.
It was fun though.
Other than the time the rogue was almost killed while planning future landscaping by an assassin vine that lived in the back yard of the watch tower they moved into....
And when the ranger retired at sixth level due to job related stress and became a message carrier.
