Unexpected Moments You Pulled On Your DM

[Jolly Giant]

Our party were attacked by a group of orcs, which we wasted quite easily. Except for the leader, that is: He ran behind a tree and when we looked for him he was gone. No-one understood how he could have vanished so quickly.

Then my ftr/rogue/wiz (diviner) casts Detect Thoughts. Two rounds later I announce that the squirrel sitting up in that tree over there is more intelligent than the party tank. I had to do some quick explaining then: I wasn't making fun of our fighter, I was just pointing out the wild shaped orc druid.

Took the entire group by surprise actually; none of them had realized that there was no save against that first part of the spell's effect.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I had a DM once who prepared a large complex full of twisting passages with lots of encounters in them. We were supposed to slog through it looking for the McGuffin. I wasn't about to do this randomly and get lost, so I announced to the group that we were going to follow the "Right Hand Rule". This confused the DM, but he grew more and more agitated and we soon found the item with minimum fuss. It seems the DM had never heard of the right hand rule and the "secret" to finding the McGuffin just happened to be taking all right turns from the entrance.

For those not familiar with the right hand rule, it simply means that whenever you are presented with a choice of directions to go, you always take the one on the right. That way, when you want to leave, you always take the leftmost turn and it will lead you out. It's less subject to tampering than marking the walls or trailing a string behind you (and anyone who has read the 1e books ought to know the problem with trailing a string...)

-----

Another one was the character I draw my screen name from. Max Kaladin was a Paladin of Torm. Max is one of the longest lasting characters I ever had. Further, I'd rolled well for his stats and gave in to the temptation to make him "be all he could be". In other words, I min-maxed him. Among other things, he had 18/00 strength and a high constitution. He was a killing machine. We used to joke there was a panel on his armor you opened up to set him to "slice, dice or puree". This had already caused some trouble by the time of this incident.

Max was travelling with his companions when they reached an area being terrorized by a dragon. After much ado, we tracked it to its lair. That's when we found out it was a mated pair. We were supposed to turn around an go looking for help or something. I don't remember what he expected us to do. My paladin, however, was very confident in his abilities and I, as a player, knew he was a very tough paladin. My paladin was also not about to let these things go around eating people any more, so he drew his swords and calmly walked in. The DM was very surprised, but Max was prone to do things like that -- not because he was suicidal, stupid, arrogant or proud, but because he really was that good. His gift from Torm was his strength and skill and his duty was to use them to protect the innocent. He thought he could win so it was his duty to fight the dragons so they wouldn't have any further opportunity to hurt people. It was really that simple.

Anyway, the party then heard a great ruckus with lots of roaring and sound of battle. Then, there was utter silence. I wish I could say I came walking back out cleaning the blood off my swords, but I didn't. Oh, I didn't die. I killed both dragons in a massive melee while barely surviving. The problem was that the DM ruled that since I had killed the last one while it was trying to bite me, the head fell on me and pinned me down. I was still trying to work my way out from under it when the party finally worked itself up to peeking inside. That was what shocked the DM. The dragons were supposed to be too tough for us and we were supposed to go off on some long quest or something to get help but I short circuited all that.

The DM made me retire the character shortly after that. I miss Max.

 

[Angel of Adventure]

Fun High Level Divine Oracelness

My character's cohort, played by me, did a couple of shocking things last time we played. First, we were on a distant plane, hiding out and waiting for our mission to start while a huge week of gladitorial events took place. Naturally, there was betting . . .

So, during a commune, I started asking about the outcome of the games and my diety (Bocob, TN, He don't care!!!) let me know about a 10 to 1 upset taking place that day. Well, all being high level, and relatively wealthy (maybe a tad greedy?) we cashed in a bunch of our stuff and bet big. We walked out with several million gps of winnings, probably more than the DM had ever given us in the past few years of gaming!

So, what could I do to follow that up? Well, during a fight with our mark's epic level henchman, I cast a Time Stop, flew above the rival party, cast Prismatic Sphere, then Reverse Gravity as the Time Stop ended. No one ever saw such a nasty combo coming! Even our RBDM was suitably shocked!

 

[Zen]

Our team was on a mission in wilderness territory controlled by gnolls. We popped into a cave, expecting trouble and sure enough there were gnolls in the cave - a LOT of gnolls- but what really surprised us is that through some magical mishap involving a ring of three wishes, we were all instantly transformed into gnolls ourselves.

What surprised the DM is my bard at once began bluffing, and bluffing hard. In a few rounds of fast talking and good dice rolls, I was able to convince the gnolls that we were from a nearby, friendly tribe, and also convince our ranger (who had gnolls as a favored enemy) to keep his temper long enough for us to get through the cave entrance and into the lower halls where our real mission -and the cure for our gnoll status- awaited, all without taking the serious hurt we could expect from the odds we were facing.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Star Wars game, we're on Nar Shaddaa, in the undercity, in this stinky bar with our Hutt patron, who's being pursued by his brother's minions, including the REALLY ANNOYING Hutt in power armor.

We exit, and run into this gang right outside, brandishing cheap weapons, etc. They're obviously hopped up on Tempest (this, of course, being from the Tempest Feud adventure).

We groan, and roll initiative, 'cause we know they're going to be psychotic killing machines that won't go down no matter what happens.

The soldier goes first. He pulls out a thermal detonator and tosses it into the mob, set for impact detonation. The mob is now a fine red mist.

The DM is stunned. We're stunned, too, but start laughing. The guy playing the soldier says that he was just sick and tired of all these fights, and he wanted it over with.

Brad

 

[nameless]

My DM really hates me for all of the unexpected moments I pull, mostly to kill his BBEG when he is attempting to get away.

First was probably when we ambushed a cabal of evil mages lead by a powerful senator of the local parliament. He was wounded and cast gaseous form to escape. We were only level 3 or so, and had no magic weapons yet, but my character had bought an oil of magic weapon earlier that day in case he fought anything too magical. I applied the oil to my bow and killed the mage as he slowly escaped. That kind of messed stuff up.

Later, the same character killed an Illithid that was living in the sewers. It was invisible, so he shadow conjured glitterdust and made it visible. He wounded it badly, and as it dimension doored away, it provoked an AoO from the armor blades that weren't easily seen (again, I was holding a bow). One swipe later and you got a dead invisible illithid.

And once again, to my DM's dismay, our whole party got captured by the Lord of Blades. He took all of our stuff, but didn't end up putting me in a cage, because he knew that I could escape with magic. So I disguised myself and got some equipment, including a dagger that had special powers against constructs. After the LoB didn't let us go, and was very condescending to boot, I pulled out the dagger and stabbed him in the back. I knew it was risky because he was fully armed and I wasns't, but I figured it was really my only choice. He rolled a natural '1' and was paralyzed, so I drew my keeper's fang weapon and coup de grace'd him. Not only did the LoB die, but I stole his soul and made sure that he'd never be ressurected. I then escaped with all of my friends by magical disguise as the LoB and ordered his guards to destroy the body of the "shapeshifting elf" who just tried to kill him. The guards were good, but no match for my expert bluff and disguise skills.

I'm particularly proud of the last one.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

There was one time I was playing my cleric of Torm, Rozhena..... And one session we faced this huge evil tree with tentacles I was one point off from literally blowing it up with the Implosion spell that I'd never used before.....

Then there was the day in a much lower campaign where I'm playing a, at the time, 1st level wizard. The DM threw about 5 orcs at the party, who were trying to sneak up on us. They were in a conical type formation and I flipped thru the book. Thought evilly and waited for them to get closer and when they got into range, threw Color Spray at them. They all blew their saves save the one that wasn't in the area of effect..... The DM looked at me and said, "I didn't know you had that spell....."

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I had a DM once who prepared a large complex full of twisting passages with lots of encounters in them. We were supposed to slog through it looking for the McGuffin. I wasn't about to do this randomly and get lost, so I announced to the group that we were going to follow the "Right Hand Rule". This confused the DM, but he grew more and more agitated and we soon found the item with minimum fuss. It seems the DM had never heard of the right hand rule and the "secret" to finding the McGuffin just happened to be taking all right turns from the entrance.

For those not familiar with the right hand rule, it simply means that whenever you are presented with a choice of directions to go, you always take the one on the right. That way, when you want to leave, you always take the leftmost turn and it will lead you out. It's less subject to tampering than marking the walls or trailing a string behind you (and anyone who has read the 1e books ought to know the problem with trailing a string...)

-----

You sound like a guy who gamed with us... our DM did that and we had a guy who figured out his format for dungeons...... This guy, before moving, coincidentally, to Texas got the party quickly thru a dungeon, missing all the baddies and getting to our goal. After a half session of trying to figure out how to get his cleric's pinned arm out of a trap without having to chop it off......

 

[Chimera]

CoC game set in 1920's England.

There is this town in Norfolk(?) that holds a New Orleans Mardi Gras style celebration every year, complete with Crues and floats. Our group is there to investigate something else that leads us to one of the Crues.

We find out that they are building a float dedicated to The King in Yellow (Hastur) and are planning something big during the parade. Like "Hastur eats the entire town" big. We manage to break into the building where they are building it and steal some books and stuff, but aren't getting far with anything we can use publicly to shut them down.

We find out the name of the guy who is funding the crue and two of us invite him to dine with us at a prominent local place. Very public.

Now, my character, being a Solicitor (Lawyer) had a reasonably high Psychology roll. The other character present is an actual Psychologist, so hers is even higher. As we talk to the man, we begin to learn things about him, such as that his wife and children were killed a year or two previous.

So I start baiting him with sly comments about his wife and subtle insults, getting him all riled up. The psychologist player is getting extremely upset with me and telling me OoC to knock it off.

BUT. The guy flips out and attacks me, right there in the restaurant of the hotel. It takes several others to drag him off me. He completely loses his composure and threatens to kill me (as if he hadn't already tried), mentioning Hastur by name. The police are called and the man is taken away - certified as insane by our own good doctor - just one day before the carnival is to occur.

Without their patron and centerpiece (and planned public sacrifice), the crue breaks and dissolves.

Adventure solved.

No one saw that solution coming!

 

[billd91]

I come from a gaming group that has a knack for doing things that are unexpected by the DM, including me when I am running games. Usually, we end up going for the bottle of tylenol. Some examples:

When one of our younger friends was running, instead of going on the adventure that involved clearing a tower full of orcs, the three dwarven party members plus the lone human went prospecting in the wilderness for three years. Found a good vein though.

In another campaign, while we were supposed to be helping a woman avoid some men pursuing her for a map she had to some fabulous treasure, my character (an elven priest of a trickster god) decided to 'haunt' and inn and then exorcise the ghost in a massive con job. My character ended up in jail for 6 months.

While I ran an OA game, one character was playing a ninja from another country sent to destablize things as best he could. He managed to murder a retired emperor and get away with it. Unfortunately, he also came up with a grandiose plot to steal the deceased's body and that was their undoing. Most of them were imprisoned and, the wu jen was boiled alive in oil as his execution, the ninja was quietly murdered while in jail, the imprisoned monk died of a plague outbreak, and the samurai, who managed to stay uninvolved in the shenanigans, felt he had to commit suicide to rescue his honor for having associated with such miscreants. So, while they committed the unexpected, I managed to play out enough rope for them to hang themselves.

Ah, the stuff local legends are made of...