What's the most rat bastard thing you've ever done as a DM?

[-Warlord-]

Oh those male medusae.....so much fun.

I had a large group of medusae hidden deep in the central forest around which a kingdom lay. The forest was also full of monsters like hydra's, chimera's and catoblepas. No problem for the medusae...they'd just turn them to stone.

So what to do with all this lawn ornaments....
And that was what one of the moneyhungry maedar thought too. So he took three of the statues, and sold them to one of the towns outside of the forest, portraying himself as a accomplished artist.

Now this was only half of the plan. Maedar (male medusae) also have a stone to flesh ability, and a move-through-stone ability. Move through stone, like the stone of the walls surrounding one of the moneyvaults in town. Of course these were pretty heavilly guarded, so he staged a big diversion.

When the players came back into town after a long trip, they noticed the new statues. And being players, they were suspicious.
After one put his arm down the maw of the chimera ("Hey! I can feel tonsils!"), they deduced that they were the real deal turned to stone. A guard came up to them an politely requested the players leave the new statues alone.
That night, panic broke loose. First the hydra returned to flesh. The players faced it on the town square, but with every head they chopped, another grew back. A lot of hacking later, the creature was dead, but the square was full of heads.
Than the chimera returned to life. The players decided the town guard would have to deal with that one, as they rushed to the catoblepas to destroy it before it could turn to flesh too. They smashed it to rubble, and than noticed the maedar that was coming over to turn the thing to flesh.

The players went in pursuit, and got the maedar. And than with all the players staring at him, he tried to use this item he aquired...a belt of masquilinity/feminity.

 

[alsih2o]

i guess i will just stand corrected, awesome replies folks.

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Well... How's this.
The players were set up to awaken a goddess of evil on a planet almost barren of sentient life except their own. Now they are the hunted, alien undead and alien monsters at every turn.
Welcome to Avonshar.
My players hate me but seem to love the game. Now if they could only find a way off the planet....

 

[KnowTheToe]

This is one of my favorites. I have used it once and plan to do it again. The best part is it is painfully simple and easily integrated and very adaptable.

The PCs had just killed a cleric, a minion performing ritual magic and when one of the players went to rape the cleric's body of his worldly possessions, he noticed an interesting tattoo on the clerics hand. He had not noticed it earlier, but when he touched the cleric the tattoo jumped onto his hand.

The player freaked out. The tattoo was cool to the touch, but he felt nothing else. The paladin detected evil and the PC with the tattoo read with a tint of evil, but was not clear. Each time the character slept I had the tattoo move closer to the PCs heart. If the PC did not sleep the tattoo did not move. The PC tried staying up for days at a time. They raced to the nearest city to research the symbol, but the character died from a fall of all things and believe it or not nobody went to collect any of his personal belongings.

I was actually going to make the tattoo harmless, but the possibilities are endless.

 

[howandwhy99]

I remember back in college we had a particularly nasty rat-bastard of a DM. In short, one of the demon wizards we fought and killed had created a customized spell which he cast on our Paladin during combat. The Paladin sprouted another head which was filled with all the evil nastiness the PC supposedly repressed.

It immediately started trying to kill itself (and the Paladin) during the fight. Afterwards, we had to tie them (both) up and gag the evil head because it kept trying to bite the ears off the other one.

In the end the spell turned out to be a curse. I remember that we tried dispelling the effect right away, but nothing seemed to work until we found a high level priest who could cast remove curse.

 

[Mallus]

-The Cursed Everstriking sword that a paladin player not only kept, but used exclusively at everything from melee to missile fire, because whenever it missed, it still hit, it just took the difference in hit points off of him.

Why my 1/2 Ogre fighter, Lt. St. John Grod has a sword just like that... He won't leave home without it, in fact, he can't.

He calls his mighty blade Ass-biter. Because he's never quite sure when it will up and bite him on the... well, you get the idea {apologies to Eric's Grandma for the ever-so-slightly salty language}

 

[Delgar]

Although I have to admit that Piratecat is truly the king of Rat Bastardness!

I can only strive to become a fraction of his true evilness!

My favorite quote of all in his story hour (I believe it was there), someone was spelling out the names of the characters in his game phonetically.

How to you pronounce Piratecat - RAT BASTARD

Delgar

 

[Doc_Souark]

You win PC you are the Cat Bastard !

 

[WizarDru]

Let's see: probably one of my favorite Rat-bastardly maneuvers concerned two players in a game I ran some time ago.

Understand that there were two elven races: the normal 'day' elves, and the Mordhel, the 'night' elves. The Moredhel were not actually elves, per se, but a mockery of them created by the Trickster god to irritate the God of the Elves. The players had encountered Moredhel raiding parties from time to time, and thought that they had a pretty good grasp of who and what they were. In their very first full-scale combat, they engaged and slew such a raiding band, unknowningly slaying a Mordhel prince. The Trickster god felt pretty bad about the enmity caused, and further, came to truly love his creations, who were, in fact, humorless. In point of fact they were aware of their own origins and thus hated their god, which perversely amused him. So much did he love him, in fact, that he wanted to make amends with the elves' god.

One of the players was a rogue, the other an elven archer. They became romantically involved. Had I mentioned that the Trickster god was also the patron of all Rogues and Thieves? Moreover, each of the players was, in fact, a chosen pawn of one of the fourteen dieties of the campaign's active pantheon. The rogue soon discovered that she wasn't just another suplicant...she had a destiny. The trickster god informed of as much, but left it vague what her task was...and since he had pulled her bacon from the pan at least twice, she felt even more obligated.

The player was more than a little miffed when the trickster god came in the middle of the night, awoke her and then informed her of her task. Trick her lover into coming along with a night-elf wizard, for reasons unknown to her, but that he would be teleported from the safety of his comrades into danger. She did as she was asked, and used both subterfuge and lies and lead her elven lover into nothing less than a duel to the death with a Moredhel prince (brother to the one who they had slain, who had been hunting them for months). While the elven god and the trickster god watched, they contested with rapiers, until (after what seemed an eternity) the elven archer bested the Moredhel prince, but refused to slay him (feeling that he had a just grievance). Moredhel law did not allow for such mercies, however, so the prince did something that stymied all present...he cut his hand, and held out his bloody palm. The archer, realizing what was happening, did the same and they shook....making the archer a blood brother of the prince, and thus a prince of the Moredhel in his own right. As such, he was not allowed to slay the archer, and restitution was paid. The gods, pleased at the expected outcome, departed.

Convincing the rest of the Mordhel aristocracy of the legitimacy of that claim and ending the centuries long strife between their two races was another story, for another time.

 

[Lord Belgar]

One of the characters in the party was killed by another member of the party and as a joke they cast re-carnate on him and brought him back as a Badger. He was so pissed. For weeks we let him run around before I killed him and resurrected him into his original form. But forever known as Eric's F**cking Badger. That was his last adventure with us, thank god.