Stupid D&D tricks

[Miller]

Well, I play RPGs because I like having good times with my friends. If the character one of them is using is making things less fun for everyone else, then something needs to be done about that. What, precisely, that something is depends, of course, on how the character is un-fun. The fix might be as simple as crossing off a single spell on a spell list, or it might be as drastic as having him roll up an entirely new character.

The problem with that in my group is that the players in my group most likely to bring a broken build into a game, are the ones who are going to whine the loudest if I nerf their character. In my current game (Pathfinder setting) one of my players wanted to use a fire arm, which I allowed. About three games into the campaign, Paizo released a new supplement with updated rules for guns, including a change in damage dice from d8 to d12. Which I thought would please the guy: more damage, right? Except now, he couldn't use his "lucky" d8 any more. You would not believe the volume of whining this provoked. Any time he rolled less than 6 points of damage, he'd bring it up again. And he's still dealing more damage per round than any other character in the party!

Sometimes, it's easier to just cheat.

[KidScruffy]

The problem with that in my group is that the players in my group most likely to bring a broken build into a game, are the ones who are going to whine the loudest if I nerf their character. In my current game (Pathfinder setting) one of my players wanted to use a fire arm, which I allowed. About three games into the campaign, Paizo released a new supplement with updated rules for guns, including a change in damage dice from d8 to d12. Which I thought would please the guy: more damage, right? Except now, he couldn't use his "lucky" d8 any more. You would not believe the volume of whining this provoked. Any time he rolled less than 6 points of damage, he'd bring it up again. And he's still dealing more damage per round than any other character in the party!

Sometimes, it's easier to just cheat.

I used to have lucky dice, so I don't usually care if other people do...but that's pretty darn funny to go to that extreme. I assume if he had petitioned you to keep using the lower dice, you would have let him?

Speaking of dice, for the longest time I was convinced that using a weapon with 2 damage dice significantly raised the average damage, so I would always opt, for instance, for 2d4 weapons rather than 1d10. And then, thanks to the internet, I learned the awful truth. Curse you, math!

[Chronos]

I've never had any lucky dice, but I do have an unlucky die. The first d20 I ever owned is strongly biased against 20s (and yes, I have done a large enough number of controlled rolls to be statistically confident of that).

And I just rolled it 100 times to be sure, and didn't get a single 20. There'd be about a .6% chance of that happening with a fair die.

[Miller]

I used to have lucky dice, so I don't usually care if other people do...but that's pretty darn funny to go to that extreme. I assume if he had petitioned you to keep using the lower dice, you would have let him?

He did, and I didn't. Not really sure why - I think I was peeved with him that afternoon over his general Munchkin nature. Generally, I let my players get away with a lot, but I wasn't in the mood for it then.

[E-Sabbath]

Hey, Pathfinder with guns? What is this, Miller? Sounds like something juuust perfect for a Planescape campaign.

[Miller]

Hey, Pathfinder with guns? What is this, Miller? Sounds like something juuust perfect for a Planescape campaign.

It's the standard campaign setting, actually. His character comes from the city-state of Alkenstar (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Alkenstar). The Inner Sea World Guide has rules for firearms.

One thing I'd recommend is a house rule that you can't enchant guns. I didn't implement one at the beginning of my campaign, and I wish I had - enchanted fire arms can be pretty badly broken, it turns out.

[Zeriel]

I've never had any lucky dice, but I do have an unlucky die. The first d20 I ever owned is strongly biased against 20s (and yes, I have done a large enough number of controlled rolls to be statistically confident of that).

And I just rolled it 100 times to be sure, and didn't get a single 20. There'd be about a .6% chance of that happening with a fair die.

I read somewhere that a strikingly large percentage (that is, well over 50%) of injection-molded plastic dice are significantly unfair. I should see if I can find the study again--I know it involved at least 10,000 rolls of d6s.

I have kept a rolling histogram for the FATE system (every roll is 4d6, on special dice that have 2 faces each of +1, -1 and 0) games I play in, and I consistently see my bell curve peak at around -1.25, over several dozen sessions and hundreds of die rolls.

I'm having a set of dice custom-machined out of aircraft aluminum and guaranteed by the craftsman to be very close to perfect. :D

[Miller]

Today's stupid WHFRP tricks:

If you find an incredibly evil and malevolent artifact of great power, hitting it with a hammer very, very hard might deflect the strike back at you instead of destroying it. Looks like my sigmarite priest can almost kill himself in one blow ... almost.


This reminds me of one.

My party has been given a mission by the Duke to repair a run down light house. As part of the mission, he gives us a very, very expensive replacement lens. We pack the lens in straw, and hire a cart to carry it to the light house. The lens survives a few random encounters, and our fight to clear out the light house itself. Finally, we carry it up the long, winding staircase to the top of the building, and attempt to fit it into the mount.

Only, no one in the party has engineering, and we all botch our untrained skill checks. We can't get the damned thing to fit into the mount. So one of the guys says, "I use the pommel of my sword to hammer it into place."

You can imagine what followed.

[paperbackwriter]

Only, no one in the party has engineering, and we all botch our untrained skill checks. We can't get the damned thing to fit into the mount. So one of the guys says, "I use the pommel of my sword to hammer it into place."

You can imagine what followed.
"What? It's a Fresnel lens! It's supposed to be hundreds of little pieces!" :p

I'm surprised neither your party nor your Duke thought to hire a engineer to oversee the installation once the adventurers had cleared out the nasties. Of course, that would be one more fragile thing you guys would have had to transport and protect all the way there.

[jayjay]

"What? It's a Fresnel lens! It's supposed to be hundreds of little pieces!" :p

I'm surprised neither your party nor your Duke thought to hire a engineer to oversee the installation once the adventurers had cleared out the nasties. Of course, that would be one more fragile thing you guys would have had to transport and protect all the way there.

And one, unlike the lens, with an annoying tendency to wander off at the worst possible time. Never trust a DM's intentions for a specialist NPC, especially if you have to escort him.

[Miller]

"What? It's a Fresnel lens! It's supposed to be hundreds of little pieces!" :p

I'm surprised neither your party nor your Duke thought to hire a engineer to oversee the installation once the adventurers had cleared out the nasties. Of course, that would be one more fragile thing you guys would have had to transport and protect all the way there.

Well, we thought of it the second time around, after we bought a new lens out of the party funds.

That one got destroyed when we left the place unguarded while exploring a local cave system, and some bandits set fire to the lighthouse.

After that, we bought a lens, hired an engineer, and a bunch of guards, and some carpenters to fix the burned out shell of the lighthouse.

All in all, I think that module resulted in a net loss for the party. We're just lucky we were able to talk the Duke out of fining us for the merchant ship that crashed on the rocks while we were dicking around with getting the lighthouse fixed.

[E-Sabbath]

It's the standard campaign setting, actually. His character comes from the city-state of Alkenstar (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Alkenstar). The Inner Sea World Guide has rules for firearms.

One thing I'd recommend is a house rule that you can't enchant guns. I didn't implement one at the beginning of my campaign, and I wish I had - enchanted fire arms can be pretty badly broken, it turns out.

Thanks, Miller. Oh, I don't consider _anything_ broken that I can't turn around. I'm going to limit them anyhow. Good old powdered amber ammo routine.

[Kobal2]

Speaking of ancient firearms, this reminds me of a 7th Sea player of mine. When I told him it was a Renaissance setting with musketeers and such he was dead set on playing a guy specializing in firearms. No problem says I, there's even a couple "swordmanship" schools specializing in just that. So, first session, he unveils his character, a Montaigne nobleman who has a pair of lovingly crafted handguns, silver plated, engravings all over, reinforced grips for pistol whipping, everything. Very proud of these here guns he was.

First combat, he opens up on a bunch of mooks, and is very satisfied to dispatch half a dozen guys with just two balls (7th Sea. Roll with it.). Comes round 2 and he goes "ok, I reload and shoot on the next bunch of mooks". Nooot so fast, bucko. These here are Renaissance handguns. They're not six-shooters. Takes over a dozen rounds to reload these babies, 20 IIRC. Each. He wasn't happy at the idea of sitting on his hands for 40 rounds, but then his character was also pretty damn min-maxed and single-focused - he was a great shot, but a mediocre regular fighter.

So for the rest of the campaign, whenever the group faced guys with guns, he'd loot them and load them between combats. It became a running joke: whenever his character had some free time, you'd know he was somewhere quiet, industriously loading guns. He started out with a bandolier of handguns, then two, and when even that wasn't enough he opted to tote around at all times a potato sack filled to the brim with loaded guns.
Classy ? Not as such, no. Effective ? Yup. Dangerous ? As fuck. Though in retrospect I think the impromptu rules for negligent discharges I made up for the sack were a bit too harsh - he killed at least three horses and one wine cellar over a single trip.

[Double Foolscap]

That was suggested by my DM as one use for all of the gold I've been hoarding in WFRP. We were in Nuln, a centre of industry, and he's all, "You know, you could always get some firearms..." *tosses me the supplement*

I think he wanted to have some fun with the misfire rules - he's a glorious bastard like that. In Dark Heresy he once rolled initiative for some enemies that weren't actually in the room, just to screw with our heads. The room was empty apart from a corpse and her liberally-spread viscera, so we were pretty nervous already, and I decided to take action. I shot the corpse in the leg, confident that there was something hiding inside, or possessing it, or maybe it wasn't even a corpse and was waiting for us to kill us.

Nope, turns out it was just a corpse. Of a local dignitary. Now with a shotgun wound that was clearly done after she was dead. Try explaining that to your superior officer. I think I went with, "Yeah, Eldars are crazy, eh?" trying not to draw attention to the shotgun strapped to my back.

[Springtime for Spacers]

Ridiculous NPC story. Due to my scrawly handwriting, a party I was DMing for met up with a dirty druid. I had a nice wander list for the foresty area they were travelling in and one of the most unlikely encounters was with a questing druid. I'd written this down as wandering druid. Only when I looked to see what the roll meant I read the der as a k, so my wandering druid became a wanking druid -- yeah in UK slang that meant they had just caught a lonely druid masturbating, coming red faced out of the bushes as one of the players put it. Just as the laughter was dying down someone suggested he had only been communing with nature.

Druids have had a bit of a funny reputation in our games ever since.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

So for the rest of the campaign, whenever the group faced guys with guns, he'd loot them and load them between combats. It became a running joke: whenever his character had some free time, you'd know he was somewhere quiet, industriously loading guns. He started out with a bandolier of handguns, then two, and when even that wasn't enough he opted to tote around at all times a potato sack filled to the brim with loaded guns.
Classy ? Not as such, no. Effective ? Yup. Dangerous ? As fuck. Though in retrospect I think the impromptu rules for negligent discharges I made up for the sack were a bit too harsh - he killed at least three horses and one wine cellar over a single trip.
That's pretty awesome. It seems like in some of the high seas historical adventures I've read, people who like to shoot handguns keep a boy on hand during battles whose sole job it is to hand them loaded guns and reload the empties.

[CandidGamera]

Well, we thought of it the second time around, after we bought a new lens out of the party funds.

That one got destroyed when we left the place unguarded while exploring a local cave system, and some bandits set fire to the lighthouse.

After that, we bought a lens, hired an engineer, and a bunch of guards, and some carpenters to fix the burned out shell of the lighthouse.


Then that one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp? :D

[Scuba_Ben]

Then that one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp? :D

Quite possibly the fourth lens mysteriously vanished 24 hours after going operational.

[notquitekarpov]

Then that one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp? :D

What happened to the bloody curtains?

[CandidGamera]

I just remembered a near-miss moment of my own from a convention game. It was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG scenario with the principal cast - the monster of the week could steal people's reflections - and in so doing, make them susceptible to mind control. He could also use the stolen reflections to disguise himself or others.

I was playing Xander, and we'd reached the climax of the scenario, when we were confronted by what appeared to be a violently-inclined group of our loved ones. I checked with a borrowed pocket mirror -

"No reflections! It's really them, we can't hurt them!" And then the lightbulb clicked. "Or, possibly disguised vampires. Anybody got a spare cross?"

It was vampires.

[Ranchoth]

Quite possibly the fourth lens mysteriously vanished 24 hours after going operational.

"Lighthouse five was the last, best hope for peaceful maritime shipping...

...it failed."

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Well, we thought of it the second time around, after we bought a new lens out of the party funds.

That one got destroyed when we left the place unguarded while exploring a local cave system, and some bandits set fire to the lighthouse.

After that, we bought a lens, hired an engineer, and a bunch of guards, and some carpenters to fix the burned out shell of the lighthouse.

All in all, I think that module resulted in a net loss for the party. We're just lucky we were able to talk the Duke out of fining us for the merchant ship that crashed on the rocks while we were dicking around with getting the lighthouse fixed.Why didn't you just camp out there, & cast a bajillion Continual Light spells on it?:dubious:

[Miller]

Why didn't you just camp out there, & cast a bajillion Continual Light spells on it?:dubious:

Because we were adventurers, not lighthouse keepers.

[Peremensoe]

Ideally, if you prepared the adventure well, you'd never need to roll the dice "just for noise". Now, obviously, perfect game design never happens, and you will occasionally need to fudge the dice to patch something. But you should still strive to minimize it.

I never fudged dice rolls, always rolled for things that should have been rolled for. But I did roll dice occasionally just for noise... to provide cover for legitimate rolls. If the only dice rolling had been when things were happening, it would have been a signal to players to be watchful (or even, as Double Foolscap thought, to start shooting). As it was, I rolled a couple dice from time to time for no reason, and was therefore able to make all the real secret rolls with no one the wiser.

[Chronos]

I never fudged dice rolls, always rolled for things that should have been rolled for. But I did roll dice occasionally just for noise... to provide cover for legitimate rolls.Ah, good point. Yeah, those are legitimate, too. Preferably leavened with a bit of "What's your Will save, again?", or "How good is your Spot score?".

And, of course, the response to a successful Find Traps roll should always be "You don't think there are any traps here".

[Stowed Bob]

I read somewhere that a strikingly large percentage (that is, well over 50%) of injection-molded plastic dice are significantly unfair. I should see if I can find the study again--I know it involved at least 10,000 rolls of d6s.

Reminds me of this video by Lou Zocchi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU) explaining the very phenomenon. He's defending his blemished dice, which comes from individually clipping the dice.

Everyone has to clip off their die. Most companies use the rock tumbler with course material to remove the blemish, dip in paint, tumble again, and then tumble with a fine material to polish off the blemishes from the previous tumbling. This creates inconsistent dice with rounded edges, varying sizes, and other abnormalities to make it biased to certain sides. You end up with lucky and unlucky dice, depending on the die.

[Chronos]

Ironic that Zocchi would lecture against oblate dice, especially while wearing a shirt showing one of his d100s. His Platonic dice might be fair, but his d100s aren't.

[mlees]

I never really considered imperfect dice before. sigh. Even more reason to walk through life a cynical grouch.

[Mister Rik]

The seminal problem isn't that some players like to be rules lawyers, it's how the DM handles it.

It's possible to be a rules lawyer and still be pragmatic enough to know that the rules are just guidelines and not binding, just as it's possible to tell a good story that's fun to play and remains within the rules. As long as the interpretations consistently adhere to an internal logic, there shouldn't be an issue, and if there is then it may just be a case of incompatible players. It happens sometimes.
But what about when ... the Rules Lawyer actually understands the rules better than the DM, and isn't looking for loopholes, but simply wants the rules to be applied correctly? That's the situation I found myself in when I played D&D.

A coworker invited me to join his established 3.5 Edition D&D group, and I happily agreed because it's a game I'd wanted to play for years but either didn't know anybody who played or didn't have the time. The DM was an "older" guy (late 40s, early 50s; the rest of us were in our 30s) who had been playing and DMing since 1st Edition in the '70s. He and the other players walked me through things for the first few sessions until I was able to acquire my own Player's Handbook. When I got my own PHB, I rigorously studied that book, cover-to-cover. My only goal was to catch up and learn the rules so that I wasn't slowing the game down with a steady string of "now what do I do?" and "how do I do that?" questions.

Once I had done that, and had joined the official D&D forums where I could get clarifications on rules I didn't understand, it didn't take too many sessions before I realized that this experienced DM had done little more than "skim" the 3.5 rules. While the players were all trying to play by the 3.5 rules, the DM was making his rulings based on a confusing mishmash of 1e, 2e, and 3.5e rules, as well as horrifically misinterpreting many of the 3.5 rules.

The first problem I noticed was that the dual-wielding ranger (played by another new player who didn't know any better) was insanely overpowered. The DM had so badly misinterpreted the dual-wield feats and the various Cleave/Greater Cleave feats that the party would walk into a room filled with half a dozen enemies, and in a single round this ranger would literally mow the entire bunch of them down. By comparison my same-level fighter, on his turn, could step up to an enemy (if there were any left alive after the ranger finished) and go "Whack. Whack."

I did the simple math and figured out that, with the way the DM had interpreted the dual-wield rules/feats, by 16th level this ranger would be getting 16 attacks per round, before his Cleaves were even figured in, and aside from the OP-ness of that we'd be looking at this ranger's every turn taking 30 minutes or more just to roll the dice for each of those attacks. I finally had enough, and after consulting on the forums to confirm that my reading of the rules was correct, I pointed out the problem. And even then, I had to step the DM through the rule word-by-word (basically, explaining the grammar of the wording) before he finally saw what I meant. Naturally, the ranger was disappointed that his power was now cut in half, but he acknowledged that he had been entirely OP.

The next rules problem was revealed when I noticed that I always ended up playing the wizard/sorcerer/other squishy spellcaster because nobody else wanted to. I thought that was odd, because I'd always heard that D&D players loved playing wizards. I soon discovered the reason, though at first I thought it was just that the DM had a bug up his butt about spellcasters. Eventually I figured out the problem was that he was applying 1st Edition rules to spellcasters, with the effect of completely crippling them. For example, in his apparent skimming of the 3.5 rules, he never noticed that the vast majority of spells no longer required a "full-round action" to cast. So, for example, I'd try to move 10 feet so I could get line-of-sight on that enemy hiding behind the pillar and cast a spell at him, and the DM would tell me I couldn't move and cast on the same turn because "casting a spell is a full-round action", and once I'd moved I'd have to wait until my next turn to cast the spell. And then, of course, before my next turn came around he'd move that enemy out of my LOS... I'd spend entire encounters being unable to do much of anything because of this. And don't get me started on the way his complete ignorance of the difference between 1E Concentration Checks and 3.5E Concentration Checks left spellcasters almost completely unable to function in combat.

There was also the problem of his blind adherence to the "logical tactic" of "take out the wizard first", even when the wizard had deliberately dressed in ordinary traveling clothing instead of wizard robes and carried a sword instead of a staff, and otherwise did nothing to obviously advertise he was a wizard. Nope, it's logical to kill the wizard first, even when there's no logical reason for these random ambushers to know who the wizard is. But that wasn't a rules issue.

Eventually, I just decided to bow out of the game. I wasn't having fun, and I didn't want to end up being the dick who argues about everything and holds up the game all the time, so I just left gracefully.

So for the rest of the campaign, whenever the group faced guys with guns, he'd loot them and load them between combats. It became a running joke: whenever his character had some free time, you'd know he was somewhere quiet, industriously loading guns. He started out with a bandolier of handguns, then two, and when even that wasn't enough he opted to tote around at all times a potato sack filled to the brim with loaded guns.
Classy ? Not as such, no. Effective ? Yup. Dangerous ? As fuck. Though in retrospect I think the impromptu rules for negligent discharges I made up for the sack were a bit too harsh - he killed at least three horses and one wine cellar over a single trip.
Heh heh heh: You can never have enough [guns] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhe58xORWG0) (YouTube link)


Anyway, my own D&D "stupid trick":

I was playing a young, impulsive, impatient, low-Wisdom sorcerer. The party had entered the building where the bad guys had set up shop. We found ourselves in a medium-sized, empty room. As soon as we entered, the door slammed shut and locked behind us, and a handful of hostile creatures materialized and attacked us. We killed them, only to have another batch materialize. Repeat. Repeat. We were getting frustrated, because we needed to get to the room's other door to continue further into the building, but these constantly-reappearing monsters weren't going to let us.

But we finally figured it out. Along the back wall of the room was a series of small wooden cubicles, each with an open doorway (but no actual door). The cubicles were dark inside, but we eventually figured out (don't remember how) that there were evil clerics inside those cubicles who were summoning these monsters faster than we could kill them. We really needed to take out those clerics, but we couldn't get line-of-sight for ranged attacks or spells, and the veteran players in this group had an unhealthy aversion to melee (more to do with the DM, again, but I won't go into that here).

So my young sorcerer eventually came up with the perfect solution: Fireball! Yup, wooden structure, confined space ...

It worked - the fireball instantly killed the summoned monsters and the clerics in their cubicles, and of course knocked most of the party into negative hit points, including my sorcerer himself. The only one still moving was the rogue, who'd made his Reflex save. He was able to administer healing potions, and then we had to get out of there in a hurry before the now-burning building came down on our heads.

[soulmurk]

But what about when ... the Rules Lawyer actually understands the rules better than the DM, and isn't looking for loopholes, but simply wants the rules to be applied correctly?

That falls under "how the DM handles it." In this case, it sounds like he handled it poorly and I don't blame you one bit for bowing out.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

That falls under "how the DM handles it." In this case, it sounds like he handled it poorly and I don't blame you one bit for bowing out.
Indeed. There's definitely a place in the world for GMs who aren't rules-monkeys, but I suggest that place isn't with D&D, just like there's a place in the world for deaf judges, but that place isn't in a music competition.

If I found myself in a situation in which I knew the rules a lot better than the DM, I think I'd catch up with him after a session and say something like, "Hey, I'm a total rules nerd, and I wonder if it'd be helpful for me to act as the reference librarian during gameplay. If you want to know whether something provokes an AoO, or whether a spell affects everyone or just enemies, or whatever, I'm happy to look that up real quick. Also, there are a few rules calls you've made that I wonder if we could talk about...."

Otherwise, there's no way I could stay in the game.

[fluiddruid]

The next rules problem was revealed when I noticed that I always ended up playing the wizard/sorcerer/other squishy spellcaster because nobody else wanted to. I thought that was odd, because I'd always heard that D&D players loved playing wizards. I soon discovered the reason, though at first I thought it was just that the DM had a bug up his butt about spellcasters. Eventually I figured out the problem was that he was applying 1st Edition rules to spellcasters, with the effect of completely crippling them.I was with a group that was similar, except I don't really get why the DM wanted to cripple arcane casters. It just seemed like any ruling came out that way.

Now, I wanted to play more of a non-direct-damage caster, the kind that has a lot of utility spells and doesn't just zap things. Unfortunately, ruling after ruling came that I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I understand that things can't always go my way, but the DM always had an excuse why what I wanted to do couldn't work. Illusion, charm, Tongues, Grease... they all became useless. Finally it basically came down to using just combat spells, but because his campaign never seemed to have very much in the way of spells available for sale, I was basically stuck with Fireball and cantrips. Once that happened, Fireball would always be too dangerous to use -- there were always flammable objects that made it impractical. He particularly liked putting gunpowder around in configurations so I couldn't ever fireball enemies without blowing ourselves up. So I largely packed that away too and basically swung around with a dagger and threw rocks for a few sessions. We all got some cursed item that we couldn't drop but that for some reason had mega-abilities, like +2 to our prime stats, or bypassing damage reduction, or whatever... but my ability was "sudden extend spell once per day". I got a double-duration spell once a day. And the only spells I had that had meaningful durations were.. you guessed it... illusions, charms, tongues, grease...

Finally, we attacked a pirate den and I basically had nothing to do the whole time. Everything was just a melee brawl. We get to the end and we're supposed to .. I don't remember, kill the pirate boss or whatever, because he was going to attack some town with his ships. We found the armory and the team wanted to loot the gunpowder, so we seized a ship and took a bunch, but there was still tons and tons left.

I said, "So how much gunpowder?" The DM insisted it was far more than we could ever take, but we couldn't destroy it because we would blow ourselves up, so we'd have to confront the boss.

"Let's push all the powder into the bay." "The containers are watertight..." all these excuses.

Finally I said, can I have a map of the room. I pulled out several barrels of gunpowder and started putting them in a line. Each one would just barely encompass the next if it exploded. I then got the whole party on a ship, sailed into the harbor at the maximum range for fireball to the outermost keg.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

DM wasn't real happy but the party was so thrilled that he didn't come up with an excuse that time.

The next session I leveled up and took energy substitution: sonic so I could now sonicball instead. I never really got to use it much though because at that point he brought in his 10 year old son (without asking) and suddenly all our adventures surrounded his kid's character. I'm not even kidding, like our characters suddenly 'decided' to follow this orc warrior around for no reason and then ALL of the loot was basically awesome fighter drops and then crap for everyone else. Wow, we found this weird exotic weapon, it just happens to be the one he specializes in, and it's +5 flaming and gives a +4 to strength and con as well, when everyone else has +1 weapons!! By the second session he was already ridiculously overpowered compared to the rest of the group and I wasn't having any fun. I bowed out of the group.

[Mister Rik]

The sad thing in my situation was that I'm pretty sure the DM wasn't being malicious, he was just being ignorant and/or lazy. Essentially, he seemed to be assuming that the basic rules worked pretty much like they had in previous editions, instead of carefully reading the new rules to see what had changed.

[Miller]

I used to play in a game with a great GM - except for one thing. Any time a player came up with an idea, he had to come up with a reason it wouldn't work, or wouldn't work as well as the player wanted it to. It was automatic for him.

The thing that really brought it into focus for me was when my character wanted a better magic sword. The one he had was a family heirloom that was pretty tightly tied into his backstory. Over the course of the campaign, he'd saved up quite a bit of gold, and the campaign world was fairly high magic - it had been established that one could buy magic items in most large towns. So, I ask him if I can find an enchanter who can improve the spells laid on my sword, increasing it's enhancement bonus, and maybe adding a special ability to it.

The GM says no. But what I can do is sell him the sword I have, and he'll give me the sword I want, less the cost of the sword I gave him. This plan would have cost my character exactly the same amount of money, and given him exactly the same advantages, except I wouldn't have my heirloom sword. But he had to tweak it, just because it had been my idea, and he simply could. not. say. yes to a PC's idea.

To his credit, when I talked to him about it (using that specific example), he agreed that it was a bad habit, and started trying to be more accommodating. But shortly thereafter, he had a kid, and then dropped off the face of the Earth. I hoping to catch up with him again in sixteen years or so.

[Crackrat]

I think my best D&D trick was when we'd plane-hopped into a more modern setting, and been tasked with killing a politician. While the target was giving a speech, we managed to get the party up on top of the building behind him. Clean line of sight, no archers, but we had me, the wizard. No problem, right? Magic Missile, no problem. Except I didn't have Magic Missile. I'd specialized in Chromatic Orb, got a sweet bonus once a day, cast as though I was two levels higher (which much later resulted in one-shotting a baalor when I got insanely lucky and beat his magic resist and he failed his save). But Chromatic Orb has a maximum range, and it was shorter than the distance from our rooftop perch to the politician. Go through the list of spells, didn't have combat spells with the range, or may have vetoed them for collateral damage reasons (though I doubt it, considering how many people our party killed "because they were in the way"). Finally I was looking at the spell description for Mount...

I summoned a donkey a few feet in front of me, and dropped it right on his head. From several stories up, so it was moving very quickly. And mounts disappear immediately when killed. So The onlookers saw a grey blur turn the politician into a messy splat before the blur vanished.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

I used to play in a game with a great GM - except for one thing. Any time a player came up with an idea, he had to come up with a reason it wouldn't work, or wouldn't work as well as the player wanted it to. It was automatic for him.
At GenCon one year, I played in a Spycraft game with a bunch of people who kept coming up with totally ridiculous ideas. The only one I remember is that one player, during a car chase, jumped out of his car at 150 kph (or whatever), leapt onto the hood of a mook's car, chucked a grenade through the open window, and jumped back into his own car before the grenade blew.

No way I would've allowed that in my game. But the GM just laughed delightedly and figured out a series of rolls that made it happen.

I had an epiphany during that game: the default answer is "yes." Sometimes you might have to say "no" to a player idea, but make that as rare as possible, even if it causes medium-level screwage with your plans, and everyone will have more fun.

[Zeriel]

I had an epiphany during that game: the default answer is "yes."

The answer is never "No". It's either "Yes", "How?", "You can try...", or "Yes, but...(there are consequences)".

[Scuba_Ben]

fluiddruid, that bites. It seems to me you were setting up an excellent wizard character for non-combat use, and the GM just wouldn't let you do it. Which is a shame, because player creativity makes the game more enjoyable. (And can provide plot hooks, especially when you drop tongues on a mini-boss.)

Left Hand, what you say makes sense. Allow the player to try, even if there's no way in {local 'verse equivalent of Hell} that the plan would work in Real Life.

[Gedd]

I summoned a donkey a few feet in front of me, and dropped it right on his head. From several stories up, so it was moving very quickly. And mounts disappear immediately when killed. So The onlookers saw a grey blur turn the politician into a messy splat before the blur vanished.

Just one donkey? He was ASSinated. :D

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Just one donkey? He was ASSinated. :D

Brilliant.

[Balance]

I summoned a donkey a few feet in front of me, and dropped it right on his head. From several stories up, so it was moving very quickly. And mounts disappear immediately when killed. So The onlookers saw a grey blur turn the politician into a messy splat before the blur vanished.
I'll have to remember that one; it'll expand the usefulness of my cleric's "Summon Flanking Bonus" spells. I wonder if the DM will let me get away with summoning earth elementals in mid-air? "Rocks fall...."

On a similar note, I once sent a party through a lich's backup lair, where he kept all the magic devices too unstable, dangerous, or just plain weird to keep at home. Among the other things they came across was a cracked Wand of Wonder. The wand worked, but it "leaked", resulting in it manifesting a second effect every time it was used. This effect manifested at maximum range directly above the wand, and it was always "Summon Rhinoceros".

They used it anyway. They just gave it to the thief, who had the best chance of getting out of the way. In a way, it was more reliable than an undamaged WoW, since they really only used it to summon rhinos. They even managed to keep the rhino alive sometimes, but mostly it was a panic button for the thief--"I can't take this guy in melee. Rhino bomb!"

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

At GenCon one year, I played in a Spycraft game with a bunch of people who kept coming up with totally ridiculous ideas. The only one I remember is that one player, during a car chase, jumped out of his car at 150 kph (or whatever), leapt onto the hood of a mook's car, chucked a grenade through the open window, and jumped back into his own car before the grenade blew.

No way I would've allowed that in my game.

You'd do it for Tom Cruise!

[Kobal2]

I'll have to remember that one; it'll expand the usefulness of my cleric's "Summon Flanking Bonus" spells. I wonder if the DM will let me get away with summoning earth elementals in mid-air? "Rocks fall...."

And here I was thinking of Summoning Mid-air Nature's Ally, to whit: a sperm whale (and maybe a bowl of petunias to go with it :D)

[Chronos]

As always, of course, if the DM lets you get away with it, well and good, but I'll just point out that the 3e rules specifically disallow summoning non-flying creatures in midair.

And if I ever DM again, I'm going to be sure to give my party a Rod of Rhino.

[Balance]

And if I ever DM again, I'm going to be sure to give my party a Rod of Rhino.
You might want to think carefully about how you phrase that before you present it to them....

[Sailboat]

I'm speaking of times when the player commits an incredibly thick-headed lack of judgement that subjects the character to a cruel injustice or an untimely death.

One of our most memorable occurred in a spy game, I think it was Top Secret. Our team of experts in various deadly and stealthy skills was sent to Ankara, Turkey, as the first leg of a long mission. IN case we are captured, we do not know anything about the rest of the mission -- only that we are to meet our contact in a certain stall in the Bazaar and exchange a sign/countersign to be sure he's the right one.

And so eventually after some adventuring, we find ourselves in some merchant's stall in the Bazaar. Our team leader leans close to the wily old Turk and whispers the sign. The Turk twirls his mustache conspiratorially, and gives the correct countersign, positively establishing him as our contact.

Our illustrious leader pulls out his Beretta and promptly drills the contact full of holes, killing him. "Let's go home," he says.

We freeze. Maybe Headquarters told HIM something they didn't tell US. Maybe it wasn't the real countersign. "Why did you do that?!" we cry.

"He was our contract," the leader assures us. "We got the right guy." And suddenly it's all horribly clear.

"ConTACT, not con TRACT!" we yell. "Didn't you HEAR it clearly?"

"Um, I thought he was our hit contract," the leader says. "WHY would a TARGET give us a COUNTERSIGN?" we yell. "Well, I did think that part was a bit unusual."

So we fled, mission busted, and eventually found ourselves in a running gunfight in an underground tunnel. The leader got cut off, and we simply left him behind to die, frankly. After all, he'd already murdered one of our own agency's covert operatives.

[Malacandra]

And here I was thinking of Summoning Mid-air Nature's Ally, to whit: a sperm whale (and maybe a bowl of petunias to go with it :D)

You just bet that poor rhino was thinking "Oh no, not again..."

[Miller]

At GenCon one year, I played in a Spycraft game with a bunch of people who kept coming up with totally ridiculous ideas. The only one I remember is that one player, during a car chase, jumped out of his car at 150 kph (or whatever), leapt onto the hood of a mook's car, chucked a grenade through the open window, and jumped back into his own car before the grenade blew.

No way I would've allowed that in my game. But the GM just laughed delightedly and figured out a series of rolls that made it happen.

I had an epiphany during that game: the default answer is "yes." Sometimes you might have to say "no" to a player idea, but make that as rare as possible, even if it causes medium-level screwage with your plans, and everyone will have more fun.

In the last campaign I ran, one of my players had a barbarian/cleric who had a riding mammoth. Towards the end of the campaign, the party had to assault a small army of drow guarding an island temple. Their plan of attack: everyone climbed onto the mammoth. They then cast invisibility and wind walk on the mammoth, providing them with, essentially, an invisible flying APC. I'm pretty sure, if I'd read the spell descriptions, that I could have found some reason why their plan was impossible. But, Jesus, who cares? It was too awesome an idea to rules lawyer to death. Instead, I pulled up "Ride of the Valkyries" on iTunes and had them roll initiative.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

In the last campaign I ran, one of my players had a barbarian/cleric who had a riding mammoth. Towards the end of the campaign, the party had to assault a small army of drow guarding an island temple. Their plan of attack: everyone climbed onto the mammoth. They then cast invisibility and wind walk on the mammoth, providing them with, essentially, an invisible flying APC. I'm pretty sure, if I'd read the spell descriptions, that I could have found some reason why their plan was impossible. But, Jesus, who cares? It was too awesome an idea to rules lawyer to death. Instead, I pulled up "Ride of the Valkyries" on iTunes and had them roll initiative.
That's the spirit!

And Zeriel, you're right: it's not usually an unqualified "yes," but that's what I default to. Clear rules (no summoning nonflying creatures midair), overuse of a tactic (creating a ziggurat in a bag of holding and casting animate objects on it every battle), ridiculous minmaxing (finding two prestige classes in two different third-party sourcebooks that give always-on true seeing at 8th level when combined), and the like can lead to a different answer, of course. But aiming for the awesome almost always means a "yes" is in order, even if the rules need a little bending to make it happen.

[Chronos]

Actually, speaking as a rules lawyer... I still can't see any problem with the invisible flying mammoth. The only quibble would be whether a single casting also affects the riders, but you could argue that riders should count as "gear carried by the creature". Oh, and the 2nd-level version also has a limit of 100 lbs/level, but if they had access to Wind Walk, then they also had access to Invisibility Sphere, Greater Invisibility, or Mass Invisibility, all of which get around that.

[Miller]

The "players as gear" was the exploit I didn't want to look up, lest it ruin the fun. I hadn't realized about the weight limit, though, which would have tripped them up - as I recall, they didn't have any invisibility spells stronger than the basic version. It was not, generally speaking, a stealth-oriented party. The cleric in question was a cleric of Gorum, god of destruction. Gorum would only grant his cleric healing spells in the thick of combat, a restriction that could be circumventing by socking the target in the jaw while casting the spell.

"Awright, who wants healin'?" <cracks knuckles>

[Gedd]

The "players as gear" was the exploit I didn't want to look up, lest it ruin the fun. I hadn't realized about the weight limit, though, which would have tripped them up - as I recall, they didn't have any invisibility spells stronger than the basic version. It was not, generally speaking, a stealth-oriented party. The cleric in question was a cleric of Gorum, god of destruction. Gorum would only grant his cleric healing spells in the thick of combat, a restriction that could be circumventing by socking the target in the jaw while casting the spell.

"Awright, who wants healin'?" <cracks knuckles>

Sounds like an evil aligned version of "Lay on Hands."

[Scuba_Ben]

The "players as gear" was the exploit I didn't want to look up, lest it ruin the fun. I hadn't realized about the weight limit, though, which would have tripped them up - as I recall, they didn't have any invisibility spells stronger than the basic version. It was not, generally speaking, a stealth-oriented party. The cleric in question was a cleric of Gorum, god of destruction. Gorum would only grant his cleric healing spells in the thick of combat, a restriction that could be circumventing by socking the target in the jaw while casting the spell.

"Awright, who wants healin'?" <cracks knuckles>

It seems to me that Gorum would heartily support the idea of using a mammoth as an invisible flying troop transport way cool, mainly because the idea will almost certainly end with "destruction ensues."

Props to you for (1) letting them do it, and (2) giving them a sound track.

[Balance]

The cleric in question was a cleric of Gorum, god of destruction. Gorum would only grant his cleric healing spells in the thick of combat, a restriction that could be circumventing by socking the target in the jaw while casting the spell.

"Awright, who wants healin'?" <cracks knuckles>
In one deliberately silly campaign I ran, the cleric was an evangelical priest of Ilmater. The player habitually made a "mitre" out of a bandanna and spoke in-character in an over-the-top televangelist imitation--"Suff'rin' on earth puts jools in yer crown in HEAVEN!" Consequently, his faith would not allow him to deprive anyone of their suffering. As a practical matter, though, adventurers often need to be healed on the spot.

His solution to this dilemma? His healing spells worked instantly...but they compressed all of the pain of the entire healing process into that instant. Days of intensive-care-level pain in less than a second. I made them make Constitution checks every time he healed them to avoid passing out. (As compensation, every time they passed one, I awarded the character a willpower point that could be spent to ignore stun from massive damage, automatically pass a system shock roll, or even skip the Con check on a healing.)

I have never seen a party with a cleric spend so much gold on healing potions. :D

[Chronos]

To be clear, by the way: If I were DMing the invisible mammoth scenario, I would have allowed the "passengers as carried gear" interpretation for the sake of Rule of Cool, and would never have even looked up the spell, and thus would have failed to remember the weight limit (which is almost never relevant, after all). If I had remembered the weight limit, though, I'd have pointed it out to the player before he cast his spell-- I believe in giving the players the benefit of the doubt when the rules are ambiguous, but the weight limit is pretty clear.

[Miller]

To be clear, by the way: If I were DMing the invisible mammoth scenario, I would have allowed the "passengers as carried gear" interpretation for the sake of Rule of Cool, and would never have even looked up the spell, and thus would have failed to remember the weight limit (which is almost never relevant, after all). If I had remembered the weight limit, though, I'd have pointed it out to the player before he cast his spell-- I believe in giving the players the benefit of the doubt when the rules are ambiguous, but the weight limit is pretty clear.

Agreed all around, particularly with letting players take back actions if they were unaware of a rule that makes their action useless or counterproductive. I generally assume that a character, who has spent years training and studying to pull off a particular trick (such as casting a spell, or a complicated attack maneuver) isn't going to forget what he can or can't do - while a player who spent an hour rolling up a character and doing bong hits is likely to have poorer recall.

[Balance]

To be clear, by the way: If I were DMing the invisible mammoth scenario, I would have allowed the "passengers as carried gear" interpretation for the sake of Rule of Cool, and would never have even looked up the spell, and thus would have failed to remember the weight limit (which is almost never relevant, after all). If I had remembered the weight limit, though, I'd have pointed it out to the player before he cast his spell-- I believe in giving the players the benefit of the doubt when the rules are ambiguous, but the weight limit is pretty clear.
I have been known to bend the rules to accommodate the Rule of Cool. For an invisible, flying assault mammoth, I would have made some dodge available to get around the weight limit. I wouldn't have handed it to them for free, but I would have dropped some kind of hint that this time was special, and they'd get away with it if they could come up with the right justification. Find a ley line or a pocket of wild magic, stick a (Nose) Ring of Feather Fall on the mammoth's trunk, steal a very large balloon from a parade, cast Enlarge on the mammoth's ears and rename him Dumbo....

[Chronos]

I might be persuaded to go along with any of those, but it'd have to be the players' idea, not mine.

As for "the character knows their abilities better than the player", agreed, but it can lead to some awkward situations where the character would know that what the player is planning is a bad idea, or the character would be able to pick up on some clue that the player is ignoring, or the like. You want to give them a hand in that situation, but at the same time, it needs to be a gentle hand, lest it become you playing the character, instead of the guy who rolled him up.

[Balance]

I might be persuaded to go along with any of those, but it'd have to be the players' idea, not mine.
Like I said, I wouldn't hand it to them, they'd have to find something. I'm also not above planting "relief valves" ahead of time, even early in a campaign--odd items, places, or people that can be used to facilitate a one-off CMoA. It's up to the players to remember them, though.

As for "the character knows their abilities better than the player", agreed, but it can lead to some awkward situations where the character would know that what the player is planning is a bad idea, or the character would be able to pick up on some clue that the player is ignoring, or the like. You want to give them a hand in that situation, but at the same time, it needs to be a gentle hand, lest it become you playing the character, instead of the guy who rolled him up.
Of all the perks, positive traits, qualities, or whatever you want to call them from all the point-buy systems I've ever played, I think my favorite is the Shadowrun quality "Common Sense". It allows the GM to tell you, legally and at their discretion, "Your character thinks that's a really dumb idea."

[Crackrat]

As always, of course, if the DM lets you get away with it, well and good, but I'll just point out that the 3e rules specifically disallow summoning non-flying creatures in midair.

This was 2nd edition. Don't know if the rules specifically disallowed it, but I don't remember seeing it.

I had an epiphany during that game: the default answer is "yes." Sometimes you might have to say "no" to a player idea, but make that as rare as possible, even if it causes medium-level screwage with your plans, and everyone will have more fun.

I used to spend a fair bit of time at a forum dedicated to the creation of independently published RPGs. There were some awesome articles about how to make and run different systems. One of the tips I specifically remember was "Say yes, or roll dice."

[Miller]

I might be persuaded to go along with any of those, but it'd have to be the players' idea, not mine.

As for "the character knows their abilities better than the player", agreed, but it can lead to some awkward situations where the character would know that what the player is planning is a bad idea, or the character would be able to pick up on some clue that the player is ignoring, or the like. You want to give them a hand in that situation, but at the same time, it needs to be a gentle hand, lest it become you playing the character, instead of the guy who rolled him up.

Yeah, as a GM, I tend to be freer with the "helpful hints" than I probably should be. I've been trying to rein that in, but it can be hard. A little while ago, in my current campaign, my players found the animated, severed head of a demon. The demon head could talk, and the players could bargain with it to get information about the ruin they were about to explore. The session where they found the head went great, and ended with a very good bit of roleplaying where the players argued over whether or not they should just destroy the thing immediately. I should have stayed out of the debate entirely, but I ended up guiding them towards keeping it, because it played such a big role in the rest of the adventure. I kicked myself for doing that afterwards, because it wasn't me reminding them of something their characters should already have known, but rather, straight up meta-gaming foreshadowing. Not a good example of how I want to run my games.

So, for the next session, I resolve not to do that. No hints, no matter how cool a scene they might be passing up, just them relying on their wits and the tools they've accumulated to win through. And for the next two sessions, while they're exploring that ruin, not once did any of them think to ask the head for advice. Huge chunks of flavor text, background details, and a few nice treasures laid out in the module were missed entirely, because they completely forgotten the foul-mouthed, rotting head they were carrying around with them in a sack.

Of course, once they were out of the ruin, they suddenly remembered the damned thing, and now every time they run into a wall in the campaign, they haul that fucking thing out of its bag and interrogate it. Never mind that it had been locked in a vault for more than a century when they found it, and therefore doesn't have a clue about anything that's happened in the world since then. They're still asking it to report on the locations or motivation of NPCs who were born fifty years after the last time the head saw sunlight.

[fluiddruid]

One more story from me.

In a small campaign with some friends of mine, I played a bard. This was a pretty high-level group with the worst kind of Monty Hall loot situation going on, but my character just wasn't very good. I basically stood around singing ballads and casting haste for the two badass regular players we had -- a completely munchkined shapeshifting druid, and a halfling rogue who was also a vampire. I just couldn't do much, though I was definitely helpful outside of content for bardic knowledge and that sort of thing.

Anyway, so we are in some sort of temple and we end up fighting a balor (a powerful demon). He is smacking the shit out of everyone and the druid and rogue are just laying into him nonstop. It's getting desperate. The whole fight I'm just buffing and using this shitty anti-demon flute I found during the adventure (it was like 1d6 damage or something).

Finally the druid and the rogue are about to die and the demon isn't paying me any attention because I suck so bad but they've whittled him down enough that I manage to get the killing blow with something like a 3 damage -- while they're at negative hit points and falling.

Anyway, they survived, but my bard was just so stoked about the whole thing. He consistently rubbed their nose in it as if it was his personal victory, conveniently forgetting the whole rest of the fight. As soon as he got back to town, he spent lavish sums of cash commissioning an elaborate series of artistic works commemorating his victory. He posed for massive paintings of him smiting the beast through the power of song, and showing him standing triumphantly over the corpse of the balor with his mighty demon-slaying flute in hand, his companions depicted as pleading him for safety from the great beast. He then purchased a bar in Waterdeep and refinished it as his personal business (mostly to display all the art). He called it 'the Bard and Balor' and used it to launch a relentless campaign of personal aggrandizement. No expense was spared -- the crowning achievement was getting the druid to awaken (give sentience to) a giant octopus, then using his massive charisma to convince it to work for him as his bartender. He hired craftsmen to make the octopus rings granting it the ability to levitate and breathe air. He hired shills to beg and plead with him to tell the amazing story of his victory over the balor in the bar, something he set to the tune of an epic ballad, until it became a local legend. The tavern became somewhat well known and made the bard a local celebrity. From then on, most adventure hooks -- much to my companions' obvious disgust -- started, "You've received an offer to perform at a prestigious event out of town, famous bard!"

We were all evil-aligned so I was kind of surprised that I didn't end up dead in the harbor over this, but for the most part, we were all getting so rich and powerful that nobody took it too personally. He did eventually make a pact with a devil to become immortal (well, 'timeless' -- not aging, but not invulnerable), but honestly this was pretty low on the evil scale for this group (the vampire's private affairs were particularly retch-inducing by the end of the campaign).

[Chronos]

The session where they found the head went great, and ended with a very good bit of roleplaying where the players argued over whether or not they should just destroy the thing immediately. I should have stayed out of the debate entirely, but I ended up guiding them towards keeping it, because it played such a big role in the rest of the adventure.Now, see, you had the perfect opportunity there to put your thumb on the scale without using Word of DM. Just have the head lay out its own case for why it shouldn't be destroyed, and how much help it would be in the dungeon. Which of course would be entirely within character for it to do.

[Miller]

Unfortunately, a prior session had established that discussing whether or not to kill an NPC, in front of said NPC, tends to have unexpected repercussions. They stuffed the thing back in its box while they considered whether or not to dispose of it.

That's the problem with players: they pick the most inconvenient times to learn from their mistakes.

[Balance]

Yeah, as a GM, I tend to be freer with the "helpful hints" than I probably should be. I've been trying to rein that in, but it can be hard.
Our current Pathfinder DM may be a little more free with hints than he should be; I think he's a bit uncomfortable with improvising, so he tries to keep us within the parameters of the module. That's not the easiest task, given the antics some of our party members get up to.

He also has a tendency to telegraph, though I'm not sure how aware of it he is. When he asks us to describe our characters, for instance, it invariably means that something we might be wearing or carrying can affect the encounter. Since he does this after he describes the encounter to us, and we have the better part of a century of tabletop experience at the table, it's very hard not to metagame it.

[notquitekarpov]

My DM days stopped in about 198x, what I called AD&D and is now called 2nd Edition (? - I really don't understand what happened to the gameI knew).

I had a party who had unexpectedly (to me) huge difficulty trying to get into my dungeon. They had a room with a grandfather clock in it going hickory dickory hickory dickory rather than ticking. It contained nothing - no exits- bar a well.

They for the life of them could not remember the nursery rhyme and there could not solve the puzzle to opening the secret door.

All they had to do was set the hands of the clock to one o'clock and the clock would have swung back revealing the door into giant mouseland dungeon thingie
So they lowered themselves on ropes down the well. At the foot of the well there were two giant mouse tunnels running off (which did indeed connect with various points in the dungeon but had not been designed by me for player passage as they were about 18" to 2' in diameter.) which after much buggering around they decided they had not choice but to take.

Now traversing those tunnels with all their kit was not easy. All shields had to be left behind, the 10' poles were cut down to 4' poles when the arrived at the first 90 degree bend in the tunnel etc etc. Much bulky stuff had to be left behind once they had filled every sack they had and tied them to their ankles. Access to anything in a hurry was a nightmare and only the first fighter in the queue to pull or be pushed along these narrow tunnels could see anything or do anything. I tried to hint that this was really not a good idea but they insisted in persisting....

The whole thing was remembered as very atmospheric and clostrophobic but also turned out to be very deadly. Pointman Fighter soon met something big and with teeth coming towards him that simply ate him up (how could he decently defend himself?) and the party was only saved then as his body was as much a problem for their attacker as it was for them.

After many incidents (included trying to navigate similar tunnels but flooded to boot)they were eventually wiped out bar one (who was loaded with the choicest magic from all the copses that would unbalance many later games but whom despite my best efforts to kill - as I realised he would be over-magiced for his level - escaped me).

It is still remembered on occasion in the pub when they players get together (still friends and gamers but long moved on from RPG).

[Kamino Neko]

My DM days stopped in about 198x, what I called AD&D and is now called 2nd Edition

Second Edition doesn't refer to AD&D as a whole, it refers to AD&D Second Edition, which came out in 1989. First Edition is the original AD&D. Basic D&D, and the original pre-1977 D&D aren't counted in the 'editions' - Wizards of the Coast dropped the 'Advanced', because there was no longer a Basic set to be advanced from, but the edition numbers flow from there.

[Chronos]

First and Second editions were pretty similar, though, more so than 2nd to 3rd, or 3rd to 4th.

[Kamino Neko]

No argument there - I think 3e should have simply been called Dungeons and Dragons, and 4e...eeh, I have no idea what they could have called it to specify it's not really compatible with 3e, but not implying it's another Advanced/Basic situation. But that's really a separate point, so I cut what I had along those lines.

[notquitekarpov]

Well, I don't have any dog in this fight as I have not played for over twenty-five years (:eek:).

Sounds like I played Basic Set first (sort of thin blue booklet with info for levels 1-3), then went backwards to D&D (boxed set plus 4 supplements) as we needed more level info than the basic set gave us, then finally AD&D (first edition -then DM Guide, Players Handbook and Monster Manual).

Stopped in 1982 when went off to Uni and never touched it again. Still have it boxed up and should probably look to eBay it all sometime as it may be collectable - not the rulebooks but maybe the UK fanzines (White Dwarf 1 - 36, Underworld Oracle, The Beholder, Trollcrusher etc)?

[Mere110]

Dusting off the tome it looks like. A friend linked me here and I couldn't resist. It's been about a year now since I started playing D&D (3.5 edition) and I already have 6 stories about my party's stupidity.

The first two happen regrettably on my very first day. The party had just arrived from some island where the DM had done a warm up (I had joined about 3 sessions in) and they had arrived on the main continent via boat. The party had discovered that the captain of the vessel was attempting to smuggle in contraband into the country, and half the party attempted to blackmail the captain. The other two members, compelled by their alignment, went to the port authority and had the entire party arrested, where they were to meet me in jail. However our fighter decided that his honor was slighted and decided to fight the burly captain in single combat, whom I might point out was wielding two bastard swords. After a quick initiative the captain wins and in one round reduces our brave fighter to 3 health. The fighter quickly negotiates his way to safety by handing over his weapon. Then, placing all of his money (or, at least, he tells the captain he does) in one sack, and a bunch of meat chunks in another, our fighter tries to buy his axe back by saying he'll trade one of the sacks for the weapon. Not amused the captain takes both sacks as well and starts to walk ashore. The fighter then calls to the captain and asks if he'll give his axe back for the rest of his (the fighter's) gold, after just saying he gave all of it to the captain. The DM, having cautioned the fighter several times throughout this, decided that both he and the captain had had enough and had the captain completely strip our fighter of everything he owned. Yeah, he got the point after that.

And then what occurred is referred to by our party only as the "court scene". I guess because they thought they'd get a good laugh, the port authorities decided to give the rest of the party excluding me (because I wasn't implicated in the blackmail) their day in court. Our party in another lack of wisdom decided to have our insane (literally) sorceress take the stand. She then goes on several rants including accusing the judge of assisting the captain in the smuggling (I should point out at this point the captain was actually smuggling. The party was just so bad at rolenplaying at this point no one believed them). Needless to say after about an hour of this the DM finally realized this was going nowhere and headed it off sending the party to a work camp, which he was supposed to do at the start of the session (a whole 3 hours ago) but the party interfered.

The next one happens to the fighter from the first story. Apparently he formed a grudge against goblins at some point and decides in the dead of night to completely burn down the goblin neighborhoods in the town we were currently in. Because we slept two to an inn room, and because our rogue was a light sleeper, we managed to stop him before he killed himself and were forced to chain him to a wall because at this point the player was getting ridiculous :mad: . So even after both the captain scenario and this recent development, the fighter breaks out of his chains while we are away at another mission (yes, we shouldn't of left him, but he was getting really annoying at this point). He breaks into a supply store (armed only with his underclothes), manages to steal a flint and steel, and attempts to again burn down the goblin neighborhoods. With no one to stop him this time, he get messily devoured by the goblins as retribution for his attempted arson. We walk back into town with this news.

The last three should be shorter, hopefully.

This should be a short one. So our local meta-gamer, the monk, decided to annoy the DM by trying to argue about the result he gave me for checking the weather (I was a ranger). The DM, annoyed by his constant meta-gaming (at one point he increased the CR of a fight by 3 because the monk had peeked has his screen) attacked him personally with the surrounding forest. I know that doesn't make sense, it was meant to be a sign to the monk. The monk however for some reason (I forgot) got a reflex save to dodge it, and because he passed and had evasion he took no damage. The DM of course eventually killed him off then reversed time after teaching his lesson, but we'll always remember the day our monk dodged the forest.

So for the next story our party was heading to a fort to accomplish some goal. Unfortunately we had to head across goblin territory, and low and behold a band of warg riding goblins greets us. They seemed initially hostile, questioning or business (the nerve of some people), so our monk (Yes, THAT monk), completely against the wishes of the party, decides to charge the mounted opponents. What follows is a short fight scene with what was supposed to be our escort, and the mounted opponents easily defeat us. Thankfully the DM was feeling kind and after killing the monk decides the wargs take the opportunity to nom on his body, allowing the rest of us to escape.

The last one involves the same insane sorceress. So for a while now we had acquired a vial of what our DM referred to as "Spider excrement" which we had never checked out because we forgot about it. After being forced into the military for plot reasons our dear sorceress decides now is the time to figure exactly what the vial contains, and takes a swig. It's spider venom, which the sorceress finds out exactly a third of her way into the bottle. Not to be discouraged the sorceress finishes the bottle, leaving her at 2 strength on the eve of a ship battle.

Gee, those were long. Ah well, hope you enjoyed them. We've managed to straighten ourselves out and have only encountered two deaths thus far(both by being devoured, interestingly).

[Lumpy]

Well... the fighter was certainly staying in character as all brawn no brains. :p

Every campaign should start out with a few warm-up sessions which have plenty of opportunities for stupid people to get themselves killed. Saves time in the long run. Example:

GM: "You look down into a steep ravine. The ravine is crawling with spiders the size of dogs; fortunately they don't seem to be able to climb out. At the bottom of the ravine, sparkling in the sunlight, you see a fabulous jeweled sword".

More Brawn Than Brains: "I climb down into the ravine to retrieve the sword".

GM: "Roll Saves" <rolls> "The spiders completely envelope you." <rolls saves> "You're dead".

In fact, you should not begin the regular campaign until you can go three sessions without any character deaths. A Pons Asinorum as it were. Maybe you could set it up in story as a series of trials to see if someone can join the party.

[Prof. Pepperwinkle]

A big red lever set into the wall, with the words "Do Not Pull" clearly inscribed.

They pull it every single time.

The ceiling collapses every single time. They still pull it.

[Mister Rik]

Well... the fighter was certainly staying in character

Speaking of that ... I mentioned in my post a couple years ago (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14120823&postcount=279) that my DM, intentionally or unintentionally, made things difficult for casters. So, in the last session in which I participated, I decided to act truly "in character". Granted, this required inventing some character details on the spot (non-mechanical details, though — these were backstory/personal history details).

It was the "final battle" of the adventure. The party was helping to defend a small town from the bad guy's army. Throughout this particular adventure, we'd been repeatedly frustrated by the way the bad guy and his army always seemed to know what we were going to do before we did it. This included something I mentioned in the linked post: somehow always knowing who the wizard (me) was and attacking him first, even in seemingly random encounters. This bad buy had a pretty big army, so we were constantly stumbling across small groups of scouts or "commandos". And these enemy agents always knew which of us was the wizard, and seemed to be aware of all the PC's special abilities and any special magic items we'd picked up, and had ways to counter them.

When we players complained about this, the DM simply said, "It's an army. They have spies to learn all this." Apparently this army had some way to mass-produce portraits of the PCs, since no matter where or when we bumped into random enemies from this army, they always immediately recognized my not-dressed-like-a-wizard wizard whom they had not seen cast any spells. Now, I'm not sure if the published adventure the DM was using actually said the army had all these spies, or if the DM was simply assuming they did.

In any case, the final battle rolled around. We were in the walled town, and the enemy army was arrayed before the walls. My wizard had not learned much in the way of AoE spells — I'd conceived him as more of a "utility" spellcaster than a "combat" caster. So, the day before the battle, he had obtained a Wand of Fireballs. I'll note here that he obtained the wand and immediately tucked it into his clothing, and never used it before the big battle. Nor had he ever used any kind of fire spell in any encounter leading up to this battle.

And yet, the first time he used the wand to hurl a fireball at the row of boulder-throwing giants at the rear of the enemy army, he learned to his dismay that all those giants had been warded against fire damage. Yes, it was those mysterious spies again. He used the wand over and over on the giants, hoping to eventually overcome the warding, but after several rounds and no dead giants, he gave up. That was when I invented some new backstory for him.

He had originally joined the party a few sessions into this particular adventure, and only agreed to accompany them because of the promise of financial gain. This was already established. The new information: he was a married man with a wife and children back home. So, given his ineffectiveness in the battle he decided, "This is not worth leaving my wife a widow and leaving my children without their father!" He cast Invisibility on himself, found his way out of the town in the opposite direction from the attacking army, and ran away.

After that, I bowed out of the game entirely.

[mlees]

When we players complained about this, the DM simply said, "It's an army. They have spies to learn all this." Apparently this army had some way to mass-produce portraits of the PCs, since no matter where or when we bumped into random enemies from this army, they always immediately recognized my not-dressed-like-a-wizard wizard whom they had not seen cast any spells. Now, I'm not sure if the published adventure the DM was using actually said the army had all these spies, or if the DM was simply assuming they did.

Did you remember to turn nameplates & titles "off"?

[dotchan]

My current roleplay group contains a guy who's kind of a jerk in real life, so after spending several sessions being endlessly trolled by him (I'd made the mistake of playing a traditional hippie-type druid in a campaign where most of the random encounters were animals, so his character would taunt mine at every opportunity over my rampant hypocrisy), I'd always make sure to play character types that would be in minimal conflict with his.

Cue current campaign, where our first adventuring party (foreshadowing!) had a cleric channeling negative energy, the flavor text being that the character worshipped a god of death, and death comes to all equally. So of course This Asshole decides to run the joke into the ground, including one session where the cleric's player wasn't available in person and so was "botted" by said asshole.

To nobody's surprise, we total party wipe on the dungeon boss because This Asshole refused to stop for rest on account the cleric having been appointed team captain (because we had three spellcasters and a paladin and thus had to full rest a lot to get our spell slots back), and since the captain's philosophy is "death comes to all equally" that means we should all be stupidly suicidal, right?

I'm not too mad about this wipe, since our party was kind of suboptimally built and our DM has been very forgiving about letting us pick up where we left off with new characters, but I'm getting to the point where I may have to quit the group.