What is THAT?

[Ringmaster]

Terrifying rumors...

The DM sent the party to explore a strange, primitive land planting a couple of well placed rumors of cannibalistic inhabitants before we ventured out. I spent the whole summer terrified (IC and OOC) that the party was going to be captured and eaten only to find out from her long after the campaign was over that there weren't any -- nor had there ever been any --cannibals on the island. The laughs she must have had...

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've developed an entire range of dragon strategies that I've never used in-game, because I don't want a TPK. But one of the few techniques I have used, and one that seems to fit the concept of this thread, is as follows.

Red dragon. Casts alter self before appearing to the enemy, so that it looks like...

A white dragon.

If you want to back it up even further, make sure cone of cold is one of his spells, so he can fake the breath weapon.

Then you just go through a few rounds of him pretending to take damage from fire and fire spells, let the party run through most of their offensive magics and cast all their protective spells against cold... and then roast them.

(You will probably see this technique in a module at some point down the road, if I ever write one high enough level to involve a powerful dragon. )

 

[DragonLancer]

LOL. Thats a great idea. Never thought of that.

If you don't mind, I might just borrow that.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I get pissed off too when one player has a tendency to blurt out what the creature is, or even worse, he'll go "HOLY CRAP! WE'RE SCREWED! HOW COULD YOU THAT!?" and get the younger players all riled up. Ohhh.. I just fume...
So I use the Monster's Handbook to alter things now.

Yes, understand why he got pissed at me. I hate when I'm DMing and people do that too. But it wasn't an aboleth anyway (we would have REALLY been in a bad spot if it was), but something he made up so we wouldn't know the details of how to fight it.

I may have to get him that Monsters Handbook now...

 

[Sejs]

Red dragon. Casts alter self before appearing to the enemy, so that it looks like...

A white dragon.

Party: "Alright, we're almost finished with the Ice Cave. The boss should be easy with all our stuff. I've got the Big Fiery Red Flame Type Flame Sword, the wizard has got some new fire spells, and a Scepter of Hot Burning Death, and the rogue has the Daggers of Hades..

Look out! Here comes the boss!"


Boss: "I am the Fire Dragon of the Ice Cave! Grrrrrr!"


Party: "......... what the F@#^?! That's it, we quit!"



Heh, thank you Adventurers!

 

[Seule]

A green dragon that painted itself red. The cleric with True Seeing saw... red. True seeing doesn't defeat mundane disgiuises, only magical ones.
A Stone Golem flying towards the party turned out to be a stone statue inside a gargantuan gelatinous cube. The fighter charged it......
A chicken (!) terrorizing the local village and eating all the other chickens turned out to be a polymorphed fire giant. With Power Attack, it could actually do respectable damage (1d4+6 or so) and still had a not bad chance to hit. When the party dispelled it, they got a nasty shock, and the giant was very happy, and rewarded them by not killing them... mosttly because it had 2 hps left.

I think that's the sneakiest stuff I've pulled.

--Seule

 

[Ghostwind]

One of my favorites was throwing a black undead dragon at the party... who breathed lightning. It was priceless to see their faces first when they realized it was undead and then again when it breathed lightning rather than acid.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Party: "Alright, we're almost finished with the Ice Cave. The boss should be easy with all our stuff. I've got the Big Fiery Red Flame Type Flame Sword, the wizard has got some new fire spells, and a Scepter of Hot Burning Death, and the rogue has the Daggers of Hades..

Look out! Here comes the boss!"


Boss: "I am the Fire Dragon of the Ice Cave! Grrrrrr!"


Party: "......... what the F@#^?! That's it, we quit!"



Heh, thank you Adventurers!

lol

Well obviously, one has to be careful how one does this. Something that blatant would indeed piss off the players. But if you have the dragon in an area that recently experienced a severe winter, or living in an arctic mountain that happens to be a dormant volcano, you can pull it off convincingly.

And the range on true seeing is less than the range on many offensive spells...

 

[Buttercup]

Paratrooping goblins riding wyverns and using rings of feather fall. The PCs were in a clearing and the goblins were trooping into the woods around them. Once on the ground the goblins retreated met back up and made another attack.

40 goblins almost took out a 5th level party

:sniff: That's beautiful, man.

Mind if I steal it?

 

[Dingleberry]

"Darn freaky-looking chickens! Stop pecking me!"

Our first encounter with the cockatrice in 3E was pretty funny... my character had an absolutely awesome fortitute save, and I did my best to play dumb, someone in the party nailed a knowledge roll and figured out what they were, but before he had time to tell us, I finished off the last of 'em!

I knew we had a metagaming issue in my group when I told the party they saw two large chickens fighting at the top of the next hill... and the sorcerer immediately put up a shield spell.