Worst DM judgement calls

[pogre]

When we first started 3E it took a while for my players to convince me that someone could shoot a bow more than once in a round. Seems very silly now and dumb.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

When we first started 3E it took a while for my players to convince me that someone could shoot a bow more than once in a round. Seems very silly now and dumb.

The Fellowship of the Ring was what finally cleared that up for me. Although I'm still unhappy with any old fighter being able to do that (okay, one extra time with Rapid Shot), but still, at least I have a visual for it now.

 

[Dave Blewer]

In an abortive game of RttToEE our DM:

- Gave the Halfling Fighter a +2 Lawful, Keen Shortsword of Speed "because he was the Halfling King" when said character was 4th level. The King thing was his idea and not the players who was content to play a Fighting dog rider,

- This "king" was the centrepiece of a plot to restore the Halfling monarchy but the rebels weren't ready yet so the king was allowed to continue on his way until they were ready. Even though on the course he was upon had led to his death once already.

- This Kings Riding Dog steed was Awakened by these conspiritors. However the DM would not allow the dog (Barkley) to pick up any character levels because he didn't think that spell was very balanced.

- Basically fell in love with a certain Blue Dragon. Giving it DR 10/+1, SR 25 the manouvrebility of a hummingbird and Ogre warriors.

- The Druid character I was playing was given a relic called the Staff of Life by his god. Strangely the god couldn't tell me what the staff did. This god turned up again masquerading as my animal companion.

- We all had GM enforced backstory's which literally led to daily attacks by assassins/evil monks/drow sorcerers/undead warlords/demons. but no two groups ever attacked us on the same night and would always wait until all the other groups had had a go. We had visions of a Deli of Evil that was handing out chits somewhere in order to avoid confusion.

- It got to the point that everyone we met was part of one of these groups who wanted our deaths. The shame was that they were so incompetent about it that one Assassin infiltrated the group stood watch over our sleeping forms over night, cooked our breakfast and then tried to stab us as he was dishing the food up.

There is more, and the rest is even worse. I'll add some more later if people wish.

 

[Kyramus]

Hmm... Let me see (bunch of different DM's here):

The DM made a single d20 roll, and, without calling for spot checks or initiative declared that an NPC picked up a 5th level PC fighter with one hand and threw him into another character, causing them both to fall down.

A character of mine risked death by charging into the midst of a group of enemies to attack an evil cleric involved in a demon-summoning ritual over a sacrificial pit. He landed several blows, but the DM didn't even have the cleric make concentration checks, "because it's a ritual, not a spell". In desperation, I started saying I'd bull-rush the cleric into the pit (playing a fairly strong Ranger, definitely a reasonable course of action), only to stop when I saw the look the DM was trying to hide and realized that, going by his record so far, he'd have the heavily armored cleric automatically side-step and let my character fall into the pit.

(snip)

I believe that would be me. (raises hand) I'm the bonehead DM that did that cause I wasn't that familiar with the game as yet. It was the first 3rd ed game I ran at Neutral Ground. (chuckles)

 

[hammymchamham]

My most recent doozy was when I had the party fight a Yak man (forget its name from MM2). Well they can summon some kinda Genie (again forget which type), and I read it as summon ANY genie, so he summoned a CR 8 genie. I almost screwed the party fighter over (he was a -9 HP) but after the party defeated the Yak, the Genie offered to grant a wish. The druid asked for everyone to be healed, so the Genie used a heal spell on the most damaged 3 players.

If I had read the Yak description accuratly, the fight would have gone differently. I had the fighter and another player (who DM's our other game) call me on it. As both of them said 'Hey, it was fun though, and no one died.'

I did reward the fighter for my mistake later though.

 

[Zhure]

When the DM made it rain EVERY SINGLE DAY.

We also went cross-country for our first "adventure" following a psyhic vision and he made us RP every encampment. Day after day after day it rained and we set up and took down camp.

After a few real months of this my cleric finally got 5th level and access to Call Lightning. It never rained again. I kept the spell prepared and called it my "weather control" spell.

 

[mmu1]

I believe that would be me. (raises hand) I'm the bonehead DM that did that cause I wasn't that familiar with the game as yet. It was the first 3rd ed game I ran at Neutral Ground. (chuckles)

Remember, it's possible to love your NPCs too much

 

[Felon]

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.

Okay, enlighten me...what did the DM actually do wrong? The bloodthirsty barbarian dealt a death blow to a downed opponent before going after someone else. Bloodthirsty people do that sort of thing. The widespread notion that a character suddenly drops off the bad guys' radar the moment he becomes helpless is just a result of something that players often take for granted: your DM usually is not trying TOO hard to kill you.

 

[ichabod]

My own mistakes:

My second campaign I had the players try to find an evil magical sword of great power so that they could destroy it. As they are climbing out of the underground city, the player who has the sword decides to use it to kill the rest of the party. Lesson #1 in magical game balance.

Then of course there were the vampire monks I threw at my party before learning of the errata to the vampires energy drain. Had to tone them down a bit so they didn't slaughter the whole party. Of course, I really like part of that adventure. They're walking through an underground complex, and they keep finding holes drilled in the walls. What are these holes for? they keep wondering as they carefully map their location. After killing some of the vampires' minions, a couple of the vampires attack. They get smacked around a little bit, and then turn gaseous and retreat through the holes in the wall.

Then there was this Rolemaster GM I had:


Rappelling down an 800 foot cliff took six hours. Climbing a 1200 ft. mesa took four days.

My original character for that campaign was the son of a prostitute. After initially allowing this, he vetoed it on the grounds that his campaign was based on early medieval times, so there was no money. Since there was no money, there were no prostitutes.

One day he wanted to play INWO instead of Rolemaster, so he had us make riding rolls and hiding rolls for every hour of travel over the course of the week, along with random encounters like a bag full of dead ferrets. He did this until we got so sick of making stupid pointless rolls that we caved and played INWO instead.

There was only one city in the whole world in his campaign. Why, you ask? Because only the dwarves knew how to build city walls, and they wouldn't let anyone else do it. ???

 

[Kyramus]

Remember, it's possible to love your NPCs too much

hehehehe true, learned a lot of things along the way. It has been a couple of years or so.