When you as DM cry foul in the players' favor

[Voadam]

Bodak save or die gaze attack.

I had a module for 15th level characters where there was a room with 8 of them ready to pop out of urns. The save DC was low enough that only the mage wouldn't succeed on a 2 but I didn't want a fight of "roll 8 saves each round and don't roll a 1 or you die" for the party. I swapped in comparable CR other undead monsters. Later I changed death efffects to be save or dieing instead of save or die so I'd be willing to use them against the party. I like the bodak description stuff about being formed from the souls of those destroyed by supernatural evil, but not so much the RAW death effect mechanics.

 

[Zurai]

Or... maybe the implantation is a really good spur to adventure? After all, aren't all hooks 'railroads'? I'm undecided.

Not at all, although a DM can easily make all of his hooks railroads. A railroad is when there's only one path through a plotline... more specifically, when the DM or module forces you onto a single path through the plotline.

To use an example I know you're familiar with () the volcano in my Into the New World game is a plot hook. The PCs chose to go in the group sent to appease the volcano spirit, and that's where my very loose mental outline has you going, but once you're outside the village there's really nothing that will stop you from going wherever the hell you guys want to go. If you guys decide to say "screw Cuirlen, we wanna explore!" nothing will stop you. With a railroad, you'd have no choice but to go try to appease the volcano spirit.

 

[Voadam]

Oh, absolutely and all the time. Your two examples above are definitely biggies, but there have been a whole slough of modules throughout the years (many of them 2e, a significant number of them crappy Ravenloft) that frustrated me to no end because I thought they would be grossly unreasonable to my players.

Adam's Wrath, Hour of the Knife, and one of the Azalin ones (From the Shadows?).

Players permanently turned into flesh golems with new bodies and abilities losing all their old ones.

PCs killed offscreen and replaced by dopplegangers without the PCs knowledge.

Players decapitated, heads kept alive by Azalin and they have to possess other bodies to participate in the adventure. At least there is a chance they can get their old bodies restored at the end IIRC.

 

[der_kluge]

The basilisk comes to mind. Fort save or get turned to stone. Also, the creature has a breath weapon which reduces Con - which in turn reduces Fort saves.

Nasty.

I agree about Shadows - a group of shadows should terrify even the highest level party.


I also don't like "unique" abilities that are grossly overpowered. No, the Spellthief has an ability to steal spells, but it's nothing like the lich described above. If you're going to give a villain a power like that - make it his *thing* - that which he is known for. At least the PCs can prepare for it then.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Slavelords actually had a few Player Screwing Moments;
1) railroaded capture & de-equipage
2) "your arms are bound with chains, leaving scars that are immediately recognizable to everyone, everywhere, marking you as a criminal"
3) "you open the door, a fire trap goes off, this destroys all body hair on the character permenantly."

I just bridged Temple and Queen and we never looked at Slavelords again.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

The Ice Worm from Monster Manual I. You kill it and then it explodes for something crazy like 20d6 damage over a huge AoE. I ran a party against one last year and I hadn't noticed the power of the 'death throws' ability until the battle was near the end. I just burst out laughing, showed it to my players and said 'That WON'T be happening.'

And I just gotta wonder: why does an ice worm explode when it dies? Some sort of steam powered golem I could understand. But a big worm? Why?

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

Green slime, especially in older editions (where there's almost zero rules for how not to die once you've touched it). Quite often, it was inserted into a module, for example, clinging to a ceiling with no indication that it would be there. The upshot of this being, if you didn't randomly check the ceiling on entering the room, you = dead. I always threw an ability check or save in there, just to assuage my wimpy GM conscience. (Usually killed'em, anyway.)

 

[Wik]

Can you imagine a spell that would allow the PCs to steal the BBEG's memorized spells?

I take it you hate the spellthief, then. Don't worry; every other GM does, too. That's why players of Spellthieves always get punished, and have to fight ogres, and goblins, and non spell-casting constructs. No love for the spellthief, man, no love.

Aliip: 1d4 perm wisdom drain at CR 3? Yet if you mentally contact these insane undead you only suffer wisdom damage? I switched their touch to do wisdom damage and mind linking to cause the wisdom drain.

Not really. After all, those points can be regained with Restoration - a 4th level spell. Sure, an Allip is gonna hurt your wisdom for a while, and your pay cheque when you have to go to the Temple, but they exist purely to cause terror in adventurers.

That being said, we misread the rules on drain, and assumed it was just temporary damage. And the encounter still scared the crap out of our PCs (the warforged had 1 wisdom left by the end of it!).

***

Regarding the OP: In the STAP, there were more than a few big grappler creatures that I took out, and subbed-in some odd wotc critters instead (including one of my favourites, the spark lasher!)

Also in STAP, I made a few of the puzzles (particularly the first puzzle, in Lavinia's vault) a bit easier, if only because my players aren't entirely familiar with the critters of the monster manual.

In a few 2e Dark Sun adventures, particularly ones that would say "the PCs start as slaves", I had to make a few changes. Many times, I made major changes to how NPCs worked out, and how the game played. But that wasn't necessarily to only favour PCs.

The one I always loved was in the Wheel of Time d20 RPG's adventure, it more or less says "A PC should invent an item that means a lot to them - maybe it's a keepsake cloak, or a masterwork weapon... in the first adventure, in the first scene, have the BBEG steal that item, to encourage the PCs to chase after it!"

Which is, of course, silly.

Yeah, it can kind of suck when you have to make these changes to the adventure, but really, I think it's to be expected. No adventure can be made perfectly, and I think a lot of designers realize that adventures are often being purchased by relatively new or inexperienced GMs, who might not have the repertoire of tricks that other GMs posess to get PCs into the game. While some of them are definately heavy-handed, you can't argue with results. While PCs might lose some great stuff in the slavers adventure, you can bet they hate the slavers for it.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

The Ice Worm from Monster Manual I. You kill it and then it explodes for something crazy like 20d6 damage over a huge AoE. I ran a party against one last year and I hadn't noticed the power of the 'death throws' ability until the battle was near the end. I just burst out laughing, showed it to my players and said 'That WON'T be happening.'

See, one of my DMs would make it into a half-elemental and then give it the Final Strike feat (which he may not need to do, if it already has the [Cold] Subtype...).

Brad

 

[The_Gneech]

And I just gotta wonder: why does an ice worm explode when it dies? Some sort of steam powered golem I could understand. But a big worm? Why?

That bit (the ice worm, and it exploding) was from a Conan pastiche written by L. Sprague de Camp. In the story at least, the thing exploded because Conan shoved a bucket of hot coals down its gullet, presumably causing its icy blood to boil explosively.

The remorhaz and a bizillion other ice centipedes have all descended from that same thing. For such a forgettable little ripoff story, it sure did make an impact.

-The Gneech