The upside is that your party probably made a small fortune selling a fantastically detailed and dynamic-looking sculpture of a heroic monk to the local noble for his statuary, right? 
My all time favorite ‘wft are you thinking?’ moment was a game when I was only 17, way back in 1979. Four of us played and rotated GMing. We played 6 characters each and the three of us playing would each pick two to put a party together.
One of the guys had a dungeon where there was this 100’x100’ block of 100 10’x10’ rooms. The contents and the doors changed every time you went through them. If you went forward one room, then went back to the old room, there’d likely be something different in the room than when you were there seconds ago.
So we were young and stoned out of our minds and, having a full day to game, decided to each go in with our full groups. Each of us would get a few minutes and an encounter, then we’d go to the next guy. Dave gets lost in the maze (which was on the 2nd level) while me and Jim head down a few levels. Dave walks back into a room he’s unfortunately been in at least 5 times, and there is a fountain in the middle of it. Detect Magic. Yes. Detect Evil. Yes. So his Cleric walks up and pours Holy Water into it.
The Water Weirds attack, grab him, pull him in and he dies. :eek:
Oh man, we laughed so hard. Why would you walk up to an evil magic fountain and pour holy water into it???
Then of course, since he doesn’t have a live Cleric, he’s wandering in circles getting destroyed. Jim and I had to go back and rescue his party.
Um, isn’t that obvious? To try to purge the evil from it.
And if every room is different every time you enter it, why bother to have 100 different rooms?
I wonder if livestock think we are evil (or would if they could understand the concept, but if they could understand the concept of good and evil, we probably would be evil for eating them, wouldn’t we?).
But you still got XP for the kill, right? 
I was playing in a D&D campaign at a game store. I was playing with one friend, and a bunch of people we hadn’t known before the campaign started. Anyway, one day we had to fight a great big zombie boss. We were outmatched. My friend said that our characters should have sex in front of the boss to deal him emotional damage. Out of desperation we rolled without thinking. Then the DM reminded us that zombies don’t have emotions. The zombie killed both of us.
I was going to say, isn’t holy water instant death to water weirds? But a little research reminded me that it’s purify water spells. Still, the damp mage wasn’t that far off.
Anyway, I’ve got a newly minted stupid D&D trick, from the game I ran two weeks ago. I’ve been running the Serpent Skull campaign for Pathfinder. Spoilers ahead, if you expect to be playing it anytime soon.
We’re at the end of the fifth book (out of six for the whole campaign). After some seventy-odd sessions over the last four years have brought the party from first level to around fifteenth. They’ve found the lost Azlanti city of Saventh-Yhe. They’ve found the hidden serpentfolk city of Ilmurea that’s underneath Saventh-Yhe, and which is surprisingly full of serpentfolk for a city that was supposed to have been razed to the ground ten thousand years ago. They’ve infiltrated the city, along with a couple of NPCs that have been with the party since the beginning: Sasha, a Red Mantis assassin, and Jask, a cleric with a skill focus in getting himself killed. Our story opens with Sasha having been captured by the serpentfolk, and taken to their fortress, Thousand Fangs.
The party is pretty strong, stealth-wise, and they’ve got a want of invisibility to cover for the party members who aren’t as sneaky. The map for the fortress is huge - way bigger than you can fit on a regular wet-erase mat, so I got a little creative. Anyway, they spend two sessions in pure stealth mode, which was pretty impressive. I was sure one of them would snap a murder a guard about fifteen minutes into the castle. At one point, in one of the upper reaches, in a well appointed bedroom, they find a woman that they recognize as one of Sasha’s fellow Red Mantises. She’s very grateful to see them, and thanks them from rescuing her from the perfidious snake people who had taken her hostage.
Stupid D&D trick #1: Hostages generally are not held in sumptuous, silk-lined boudoirs. (Well, sometimes they are, particularly when they’re buxom women in bad sword and sandals fantasy, but still.)
Anyway, they take this woman along, and eventually find their way into the dungeon, where Sasha is being held. Recognizing that this is, finally, the time to fight, they stash the other NPCs, Jask and the rescued “hostage,” in a convenient closet while they kill a bunch of snake dudes. Winning the battle handily, they return to the closet to find, Surprise! No NPCs are in there! Because their hostage was pretty obviously working for the snakefolk, and has kidnapped their other NPC. Cue an enormous fight scene as the party battles their way back up to the top of the fortress, this time aided by a small army of freed morlock slaves that they rescued alongside Sasha.
One of my favorite players is a guy named Chad. I love having him in my games, because he is, at once, the best roleplayer I know, and the biggest munchkin. He’s playing a lizardman in this campaign, who’s maxed out his stealth score and is a master grappler. With an invisibility spell on him, he’s rolling stealth checks in the mid-sixties. He’s literally walking directly between two guards in a 5’ x 10’ room, and neither of them has a chance of detecting him. He’s explored about 75% of the castle this way, and is still doing it while the rest of the party is pulling a fighting retreat up the huge central corridor of the castle. (The castle is shaped like a giant, coiled snake wrapped around a spire of rock. Much in the way so many human buildings are built to resemble gorillas. The corridor is the interior of the snake’s body, and goes up and around to the head, which is opened to provide a balcony overlooking the subterranean city.)
Chad gets to the top of the castle to find Jask, a couple of head honchos for the serpentfolk empire, and a succubus, who they’ve finally figured out was disguised as Sasha’s friend. Chad gets there just in time to see them sacrifice Jask as part of a ritual whose purpose isn’t really important to this story. Having completed the ritual, one of the honchos (the Big Bad for the entire campaign) teleports away. The other, who’s more of a fighter type, gathers his ten soldiers with him and marches off to investigate the fighting that they’ve been hearing. The succubus tags along.
Now, Chad’s got some ranger levels, and one of his favored enemies is “Evil Outsiders.” And he’s generally pretty good at getting one round kills, if he gets a full surprise round. And succubuses don’t look that tough…
So, Chad breaks stealth to pounce on the demon, and starts ripping the shit out of it. Like I said, Chad’s a first-class munchkin, and he can do an insane amount of damage in a grapple. But succubuses are tougher than they look, and he doesn’t even get her half way down in the first round. Meanwhile, the ten other serpent folk guards are coming back to help out their demon friend. It’ll take them two rounds to reach Chad, and surround him completely.
These serpentfolk are pretty tough. This is a high level campaign at this point. They’re bonus to strike is around +20, and they get an additional +15 to damage with every hit. And these are the grunts! They’ve been the primary disposable antagonist in every session for the last four or five weeks. And ever single time one of them gets a hit on Chad, he says, “Wow, I didn’t think they’d hit that hard!” At some point, you’d think he learn his lesson about these guys.
We’re about to come to that point.
Instead of taking the opportunity to run that I gave him, Chad takes another full-round attack on the succubus. He’s now completely surrounded by serpentfolk, in almost every adjacent square on the map. He can still get away! It’ll take a couple pretty lucky acrobatics checks, but it’s possible! He just needs to run. Right. Now.
He tries to kill the succubus again. And damned if he didn’t almost do it!
The serpentfolk attack. Ten of them, each getting two attacks. I hit on exactly half the attacks. Ten hits with masterwork heavy flails, each at +15 damage. That’s 150 hp before I even roll a die.
They basically beat him into pate.
When I ask him why he didn’t run when he had the chance? “I didn’t think they’d hit that hard!”
To be fair, I’ve been guilty of that “trick” myself in another Pathfinder campaign (the very first one). I had rolled a goblin monk/druid who had insane AC. I think I ended up in the mid 50s in the final adventure, but even starting out between the 18+ scores in Dex and Wis, the wild shape, the self-buffs, the mage buffs on top I must have rocked 30+ around lvl 8.
Beyond that my character wasn’t that busted (I deliberately avoided the more munchkin-y Wild Shapes in favour of a rhino with a stupid strong horn attack that I would Vital Strike with, but missed most of the time because I struggled with the ToHit), and I didn’t have that many HPs either but he really was a tank’s tank and I used him as such, frequently wading into mooks and letting myself get surrounded while the Fighter and Sorcerer went to town with the damage or even dropped acid balls right on my head (who cares ? I got improved evasion, a busted Reflex score and acid resist on top of that).
Turns out when the named bad guys get inside this happy circle of friends pounding on the giant-ass dire tiger/rhino/hippo/earth elemental, they actually *hurt. *So I grapple 'em to make 'em stop hitting so much and so many goddamn times ; but doing that reduces my AC just enough that the mooks start hitting on more than just nat 20s and… well, I got myself pâté’d a few times before the Sorc learned how to make force bubbles 
(BTW, my justification for being allowed to use my monk kung fu & Grapple stuff while wild shaped was a stupid trick in itself : “I’m a huge hippo, right ? So, I sit on their face. It’s just fatass judo.”)
Sorry for resurrecting this zombie, but yesterday I had a really fun gaming session with a bunch of friends in which, for a change, I was not directing, and I feel compelled to share how it ended. Also, because I think it is time for us to share new stories… They are always welcome! ^.^
Yesterday’s game was epic. Objectively speaking, it was absolutely silly and stupid, but boy oh boy was it fun…
Adventure in Rome, more or less modern times, and with an emphasis on “rule of cool”. Will just say…
…that we ended up storming the Vatican riding the PopePanzer (a heavily armored PopeMobile with turret and cannon), with the Pope driving like a maniac and all of us shooting everything we had (ranging from machineguns to Stinger missiles, and everything in between, up to and including bazookas) in order to depose an usurping cardinal who had used eeeeeevil arts and forbidden knowledge to take control of the Holy See.
Our irruption with the PopePanzer right through the Sistine Chapel was beyond epic. And I was the one who ended up launching a bazooka shell right up the kisser of the usurper.
It - Was - Glorious.
I didn’t start out even thinking about Intimidation as a tactic for my (now 6th level) Pathfinder Bard (Wit archtype), so he’s more optimized for Diplomacy (+22), but my Intimidate is also rather impressive now (+18).
Move Action: Step up into range of all the Humanoid bad guys (because it is language dependent with a range of 30’)
Standard Action: Cast Blistering Invective (From Ultimate Combat)
Result: Make an Intimidate check against all enemies within 30’, at my +18 on the die roll. The DC for ‘demoralize’ is 10 + HD + Wis Mod. So your average 6th level NPC is going to be DC 16. The NPC Clerics might be as high as DC 20, for which I need to roll a 2 on the die. If I meet or exceed that, they are Shaken for 1 round. Plus one round per 5 by which I exceed their DC. (The very first time I did this, I rolled an 18 on the die, for 36.)
If they are Shaken (which is -2 on basically all of their rolls in combat), they take d10 fire damage and have to make a DC 17 Reflex Save or catch on fire.
My Bard literally yells at people until they catch on fire. 
I’m thinking of taking a level of Rogue, Thug archtype, for 7th level, because a 1st level Thug, when he demoralizes, adds 1 round to the Shaken and can exchange 4 rounds of Shaken for 1 round of Frightened. (I just need to exceed their DC by 10 then to achieve this.) Which means they’ll run away for that 1 round, then have to come back. I also notice that if I set them on fire, they can’t put themselves out while running away.
Yes, it is a bit broken. Perhaps the new version of Pathfinder will fix this, but I expect that won’t be covered for a couple of years until they put out the new splatbooks that cover these.
Yeah, Pathfinder intimidate rules are pretty broken. I played a character optimized for intimidate, and ended up getting a free intimidate check every time he hit someone, getting a swift action hit on any one he intimidated, and standing a really really good chance of making those he intimidated flee for one or more rounds.
After a single session of playing him like this I went to the GM and apologized and chose a different set of feats.
Pathfinder social skill stuff is pretty bad, honestly. “What? You are my worst enemy because I killed your entire family, burned your farm, and salted the land? Well, I got a cumulative 30 on my diplomacy check, so now you think I’m your best friend.” :smack:
But on the other hand? Bardic Magic that allows you to berate people until they catch fire? Awesome.
The best story I have about stupid D&D tricks goes way back to my college days. We were playing 2nd Edition AD&D.
In one campaign I was playing in those days we came to a village that was being savagely attacked by what seemed to be a dracolich (huge magical dragon skeleton if people aren’t familiar with it). It seemed pretty suspicious that a creature as powerful as a dracolich would waste its time terrorizing a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, especially since all it was doing was incinerating livestock.
In the course of our investigations we discovered that the attacks seemed to coincide with the arrival of a shifty bard, so we decided to stay at the same inn where he was staying (which was probably the only inn in this tiny place anyway).
One of my party members was an elf named Karoth. Karoth was a puny little pipsqueak of an elf who was a fighter/mage/thief. In 2nd Edition AD&D there were options to “multiclass” but you made huge sacrifices in the process (you only got some of the class features of each class, you had to divide your XP between each class so you leveled slower, and so on). Karoth frankly sucked. He had many different things he could do but wasn’t good at any of them. I remember our first adventure, in some tavern he mouthed off to a half-orc who picked him up and shook him. He tried to kick his shins and the half-orc threw him across the room.
Anyway, we’re in this inn trying to see what the deal was with this bard. We’re taking it easy, acting nonchalant, and trying to blend in. All except Karoth. He’s very unsubtly asking questions about the bard (with the bard in the same room as him, the common area). He did succeed in figuring out which room the bard was staying in, to his credit.
Karoth goes to me and asks me to help him investigate the bard’s room. I was playing a pretty capable fighter in that game, nothing flashy, just a strong guy with a mace and a shield. I was used to pulling Karoth out of trouble and figured someone should keep an eye on him.
So we go upstairs and go to the bard’s door. Karoth asks my character to stand next to him and “keep a look out” (I don’t know what good that would do since the only way in and out was one staircase, but whatever). Karoth pulls out his lock picks and manages to unlock the door.
Before opening the door, though, he decides he wants to be “extra sneaky”. He asks me to wait there and runs back down stairs and runs through the crowded common room past a good-sized crowd of people. He goes to the party’s wagon outside and gets into his own pack, where he pulls out a set of dark clothes and a pot of “weaponblack” (which was basically black grease you’d smear on a shiny metal weapon so that it wouldn’t give you away when sneaking around at night). He dresses head-to-toe in black clothes and smears weaponblack all over his face, then runs back into the inn, through the common room, past a crowd of astonished people staring at a little jet black elf running past them, then back upstairs.
The bard was already suspicious since he knew the elf was asking around about him, so he follows Karoth upstairs. Karoth runs over to the bard’s door and then sees the bard get to the top of the stairs. He lets out a squeak, runs into the bard’s room (since that’s the only unlocked door in that hallway), runs through the room, opens the window, and jumps out onto the ground (taking a bit of damage). The bard runs after, looks into the room, sees that it’s empty and sees the window sitting open. He looks at my character, and I shrug, telling the bard “There is something wrong with that guy.” The bard grunts, and goes into his room to shut the window and lock his door.
Karoth, meanwhile, runs into a pile of hay and hides in there. Later that night, he tries to go back in the inn after everyone is asleep and the main door is barred. Our party which is sleeping on the common room floor refuses to let him in.
I can’t remember anything else about that adventure, if we ever solved the mystery or caught the villain. Years later the only thing I remember was that idiot Karoth.
In that case, I’d say that the GM is screwing up royally, because all of that should put some rather hefty negative situational modifiers on the roll.
I’m exaggerating somewhat, but I believe your objection is incorrect; From a rules perspective, it doesn’t matter why they had you or what they have done – their starting attitude is all that matters for purposes of the check. But you’re right, in a way too: This is a classic example of a situation in which the GM should not permit a roll. However, the way Pathfinder and its ilk write the rules, they seem to imply that, no matter what (unless you are already in combat) you should have a chance to roll, so your “diplomancer” always has a chance to swing their hilariously large modifier around.
Upon rereading, I believe it’s actually 3.5 that was super broken on this, I believe. Pathfinder is… just a bit awkward.
Except that I’ve run Pathfinder Society mods, like this last week, where they start with negative situational modifiers for various reasons. Sometimes they accumulate depending on PC actions during the scenario.
One just recently, in 5th edition. The Big Encounter of the evening was a ring of magical towers that act like beholder eyes and zap anything inside the ring (with, of course, the Macguffin we needed to retrieve right in the middle). And of course we were on a time limit. And the DM decided to spring a friggin’ tyrannosaurus on us at the same time.
I’m playing a ranger, the variant from Unearthed Arcana that doesn’t suck. One ability they get is to size up an animal’s mood, and tell things like what actions are likely to prevent it from attacking. Well, I reason, if I can figure out how to prevent an animal from attacking, I should be able to get it to attack, too. The DM agreed, and we decided on tying a torch to an arrow and hitting it right in the schnozz. Which I do, after positioning myself on the opposite side of the ring from the dinosaur, so it has to go charging through all of the zappy to get to me.
This is when the party’s wizard decides to join in the fun. He creates a Major Image illusion (which includes vision, sound, and yes, scent) of my character, running around inside the ring, so the dinosaur will keep chasing it in there. And then he has the illusion start climbing the towers.
I had a Brigand character (sort of a fighter/thief variant class) in Kingdoms of Kalamar (which used 3.5 rules) and with a high Cha and a lot of points sunk into the Bluff skill, by level 10 he could almost never fail with deception tests.
As a Brigand he had many bonus dice with sneak attacks. Using the Improved Feint feat he could make a Bluff check as a movement action and if successful his next attack was a sneak attack even if he and his enemy were facing each other. He’d go toe-to-toe with a enemy and destroy him. It was kind of broken. But I did like the idea of having this dirty-fighting duelist beating people with sleight of hand combat tricks.
Properly used, illusions can be incredibly broken. Unfortunately, I rarely see them played and most of what I’ve seen is simple stuff like moving walls to hide behind them or illusionary plants to hide in.
My personal favorite was when we were waging a war of attrition against an Orc tribe occupying a captured fortress. We pricked them enough so that we knew they were going to come out en masse against us. When they did, my Wizard cast an illusion of a small army cheering on our cleric as he roused them to battle. The Orcs took one look at it and decided to retreat to their fort.
My favorite as a GM was the giant circus tent of an illusionist. All of it was an illusion, with a couple of his minions hidden inside. Watching a player try to cast a fireball down an illusionary pit in their way was hilarious. Also fun to watch them continually follow the path when they were aware early on that at least some of it was an illusion. Just walk through the walls, guys!