Worst DM judgement calls

[MerakSpielman]

Ok. here's my story (not fair to start these things and not post in 'em).

I did this to my party just last week (I'll be adding the tale to my story hour soon).

They are exploring the tower of a Vampire Lord, locked in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. Naturally, the VL has some local allies, such as a white dragon he's known for centuries.

I hadn't planned on the (12th level) characters encountering it yet, but they zipped quickly though the tower on a beeline for the dragon, encountering it before I had done a proper write-up of that level. I had no notes on the dragon, its age, spells, treasure, nothing.

So I flip open the MM and, remembering that whites are the smallest and weakest of dragons, make it "Very Old"

Three rounds into the combat I found myself strongly hinting to the player of the cleric that "You have a spell that will help you get though this." Most of the party was 90% down on HP at that point, and the dragon was almost unharmed (still had 95% of its HP).

The player of the cleric, no dunce, slapped a Harm on the dragon, effectively ending the battle (he tends to avoid Harm because it channels Evil energy).


So I managed a near TPK, provided the hint to allow the characters to survive, and let them kill a dragon beyond their means. The session ended, and I'm left with the decision on XP and treasure... Less than it should be (because the dragon was rendered not a threat by me, not the players), or more (to make up for my error)?

*SIGH*

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, heck, I'm a terrible DM. I couldn't even begin to list all the mistakes I've made. Fortunately I have very understanding players, none of whom have any interest in DMing so they're willing to put up with all my nonsense.

A couple of doozies:

"Hey why can't a 5th-level party deal with an Intermediate Diety/Vampire/40th-level Sorceress?"

"Why not give the party rogue weapons that let him do monk-style flurry of blows, big honking damage and an initiative bonus? What do you mean he gets sneak attack damage on EVERY attack? Oh."

I do a lot of backpedalling and damage control. Fortunately, I'm extremely lazy and almost never stat things out properly so it's not like I waste a lot of effort rejigging things.

I am in frankly in awe of some of the DM's on this here board. Especially those who run friggin' amazing campaigns and then go ahead and write up such great pieces about them on Story Hour. Very cool.

 

[seasong]

Honestly, I make mistakes all the time. But I'm not boneheaded about it. I will, for the sake of keeping flow, delay a rules check until afterwards; but if that hosed anyone, I'll make it up to them. And, of course, I always make absolutely certain of a rule when it's getting someone killed .

The most boneheaded thing I've done so far was to make a giant spider with lots of special abilities, spells, etc... and no buffing abilities at all. It had 100 hps against three lvl 3 characters, sure, but they still beat the tar out of it.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Well, not to pimp my story hour twice in as many posts, but I'm a much better writer than I am a DM (IMHO).

Also, my campaign was intended to be low-magic. The idea was that there are times of great magic in the world, and times of little magic, when the "lore is forgotten." This was to be a time of little magic. I promptly had my characters run off on quests involving the exploration of areas not disturbed since the time of great magic, uncovering loads of those forgotten goodies, and from there, we got into a monty-haul campaign.

I'll do better next time.

 

[Emiricol]

I'm more into the story than the rules, to be honest. I like balance, though.

Anyway, I have recruited my rules-laywer player (who is very diplomatic about his rules-lawyering, which is nice) to be sort of a semi assistant DM. He handles the stuff I don't, though honestly most of my rulings boil down to an ability roll, a 2 or 4 point circumstance bonus or penalty, or synnergy bonuses with skills someone has.

If you've got a rules-lawyer, and he's either capable of being discrete as mine is, or trainable , then use them! I love it when my players lighten my load in any way.

Worst bone-headed DM call? Back in 1E, we found a figurine of Orcus that summoned orcus and controlled him for a single task (like a geas, only more so). DM didn't even try to make him use his other resources against the party, or twist wording, or anything. It was lame. At the time, he just said, "well, this IS an EPIC campaign, dudes." He was one of those with a book in his head and we were just there to read our lines so to speak.

 

[Hygric]

Happened just recently:

Two 32 foot tall elementalls on either side of a 5'6" tall PC. The sorcerer in the party moves to line the two elementals up from 60' away and wants to hit both with a lightning bolt angled up to avoid the PC. The following diagram should illustrate the situation:


EE EE
EE EE
EE EE
EE EE
EEXEE____________S

Our DM ruled that no, the sorcerer could either hit only one elemental or both and the PC.

 

[hunter2112]

I had my favorite character in years killed by a coup-de-gras issued by a raging barbarian who was standing less than 20 feet away from a still standing enemy. Campaign ended after that session. He has improved a great deal since then however.

 

[Petrosian]

In the first session of a run, my ships engineer (traveller) was not having a very good time of things and when the i finally told the Gm i wanted to look up a number in the phone book he promptly asked me to "roll for it." Staring jaw a gape, i promtly tossed a die and failed. My engineer is unable to successfully use a phone book.

I promptly sat down and decided to wait. 14 minutes real time later, the NPCs showed up to offer us the help we needed in exhcnage for...

So a short time and the silliest sham of a negotiation i have ever seen, later, we are ready to take off.

So the ship's pilot/captain tells the Gm... ok so we are pretty much ready then so we take off and head to the planet they told us to go to and..."

The Gm interrupts and for the next 5 minutes we get the monolog of how the authorities and such deal with our illegal takeoff... "you did not say you were requesting clearance to depart the starport. You did not say you we filing the usual forms. You did not say..."

This was a "vote with your feet" moment. I think only one player showed for the second session (not me of course.)

 

[suburbaknght]

The second time I ever DMed I had the third level players enter a tomb where they had to face off against a 20th level lich. Of course the players only needed to hold her off for three rounds before my Ancient Great Gold Wyrm would rescue them.

*Sigh*

Oh, and that entire campaign went by before I discovered that spells had saving throws.

*Sigh*

I've gotten much better since then. Really. I have. Honest.

 

[EarthsShadow]

I had a DM had out treasure like this...

One character got a Dwarven Waraxe +4....
One character got a potion of cure light....
One character got a ring of jumping....
and one character got a scroll of identify.... (and already had that spell)
and the one character that didn't get treasure got a bonus of 2000 XP to help make up the difference....

and the only thing we fought was 3 gnolls and talked to a green dragon that didn't attack us after we told him we were not going to steal his treasure.

Needless to say, I never showed up for his game again, and I was the one that got the 2000 bonus XP.

It was his first time ever running a game, so I hope he has gotten better over the last year, but I never saw him again after that.