In high school, I ran a game in which low-level PCs (like 5th level) found a decanter of endless water. Throw-away magic item, I thought.
Not so. The party wizard attached it securely to his staff and called it Stick. He made me devise rules for using it on its geyser setting as a weapon, and it was his main form of non-spell attack thereafter. What’s more, he convinced me that if he cast feather-fall, he would be light enough to be propelled around by Stick, and he rode it like a witch’s broom.
I have fond memories of his fighting ogres in a slaver’s arena, swooping overhead and drenching the crowd while the furious ogres threw things at him.
The Decanter of Endless Water is one of my favorite D&D magical items of all time.
I once warned someone that they shouldn’t have their character piss off my elf, if they wanted to keep their castle, because he has a decanter of endless water and is effectively immortal. Erosion’s a bitch.
Except the everburning torch–at least in later editions–is nothing but a “Continual Light” spell cast on an object that resembles a torch. It produces no heat since it doesn’t rely on combustion. Really you can make an everburning torch out of anything, but usually one used small objects such as sticks or coins because “Continual Light” was a spell that actually cost you pricy spell components to cast, and there are times where you want to extinguish the torch non-magically. In which case you typically put it in your backpack.
Even if it were like a regular torch that never burned out, a single torch doesn’t generate that much heat. I doubt you’d be able to generate much steam using one. Certainly, it won’t heat water fast enough that a decanter of endless water would be necessary. It’d probably work against you, really, since the constant addition of fresh, cold water would work to keep the temperature of the water you’re trying to boil down.
Besides, a Decanter on the “geyser” setting would be better employed to drive a Pelton wheel or a turbine, rather than provide water for a steam engine.
In the party I’m running with currently, our Sorc completes his level 1 Grease with level 2 Create Pit. Oh, what pranks he plays. I keep telling him to take Explosive Runes at level 3 to complete the trifecta
Heh, I looked into that spell during the creation of my new character since my arcane trickster got gibbed, and I giggled like a schoolgirl. We’re playing Pathfinder. That level 0 cantrip creates 2 gallons water per caster level, so 16 just at the level we’re at (60 litres for us metric users). Here’s where it gets funny: in Pathfinder, there’s no limit to how many cantrips a spellslinger can cast per diem (this to give wizards something to do at low levels).
My druid is going to be his own Decanter of Endless Water/portable flood. I can fill a 5 foot cube per ~3 minutes ! Now to compute the total volume of the fortress we’re storming next Sunday…
Our cleric is turning into a past master at this. I think that, over the last few adventures, she’s killed 3/4th of all bosses or tougher than usual creatures we’ve faced with her puny 1d4, no strength bonus, no enchantment Star Knife (which is sort of a hand held shuriken or something equally silly). She comes in when she’s out of spells (or the bad guy comes at her when the fighter’s dying, whichever comes first), and always manages to cherry tap the bad guy to death.
The most memorable one was, yup, a green dragon, similarly reduced to 1 HP.
One more story, but this one is more of an “asshole DM” story than player stupidity or cleverness.
We’re playing Deadlands, which if you don’t know is what happens when spaghetti westerns meet the Call of Cthulu. One of the players in the group is a gunslinger who’s very, very fond of chucking dynamite around, lighting it on his half-chewed cigar and uttering his catchphrase: “Short fuse, boys !”.
He also happens to be a Harrowed - Harrowed are undead that look and feel absolutely normal, except they’ve got a trickster evil spirit in them. In mechanical terms, Harrowed characters have some juicy extra powers, but in trade a few times per scenario the DM can try and roll against that player to direct his actions for him for a short time. Fun times.
Note that the other players had no idea of this: they were new to the setting (in fact, I had only allowed the last one to be a Harrowed to handwave away his own, extensive knowledge of it), their characters are greenhorns from the East Coast and besides the spirit hasn’t been much trouble so far - he did try setting them up for a murder trial/lynching once, but since the whole town was full of cannibals planning to eat them anyway it didn’t matter overly much. As for the Harrow himself, while the player of course knew, the character isn’t aware he died at some point.
Point is: for all they know, the gunslinger is just any old gritty pyro sumbitch.
Flash forward, and they’re exploring a spooky old abandoned mine that’s been trouble lately, the reason being it’s a portal to the spirit world so lots of bad juju tends to come out. They have no idea of this either - they just go in and figure they’ll get to the bottom of things once they’re there, as usual.
At one point, they take a rickety elevator down a mineshaft, which breaks under their weight and comes tumbling down. All of them scream and crash except the gunslinger who manages to jump out in time. He starts looking for a rope in his pack to either lift them back up or come down safely with them.
Meanwhile, at the bottom, while the Indian tries to fix the kid who broke a leg, the party’s scout is dismayed that there’s nothing for him to do (their lantern broke in the crash).
PC: What do I see ?
Me: Lots and lots of black. There’s no light at all.
PC: I really can’t see anything ?
Me: You’re at the bottom of a mine shaft. You have no source of light. What do you expect ?
PC: well can’t I at least hear something ?
Me: Mmmm… why not ? I roll dice behind the screen. I smile, roll some more
Me: You do hear something. It’s faint and echo-ey and coming from above. It goes: “Short fuse, boys !”. Then there’s some light…
Nah, they didn’t die. But they wondered what the hell had just happened for quite some time :p.
The amusing part is that I had planned none of this - I only got the idea because when I rolled the scout’s perception for him, one of the dice landed right in front of the part of the DM screen that deals with Harrows
There was this one-shot 7th Seas scenario. The players have rescued a kidnapped damsel in distress and are bringing her back to her father. Along the way, the party’s lewd monk is trying, and failing, to subtly put the moves on her (failing mostly because she’s secretly the one who set up her own kidnapping and is fairly goddamn pissed at them for fouling it up).
Growing increasingly frustrated by his lack of success, on the last day of the trip the monk goes:
PC: Ok, I tell her: “Look lady, let’s quit playing around: I have a huge cock, and we’ve only got 30 minutes of coach time left before you’re back to your father. Use it or lose it.”
Me: What, seriously ?!
PC: Oh yeah. I get to roll Seduction, right ?
Me: Yeah, whatever. Difficulty 50 (in a game where “Impossible” is 35 IIRC).
Long story short, this is why now, when we try to beat the odds, we whisper to the dice: “53”.
How does dice rolling in that game work that a 35 is “practically impossible” but a 53 can still happen with the blessing of the dice gods? Is it something like “whenever you roll a 10, reroll and add”?
And does “monk” mean kung fu monk, or European-style monk?
It would have been even funnier, though, if he had rolled a 49:
“She sticks her hand down your pants and grabs. ‘Huge? I’ve had plenty that were bigger than that. That’s tiny!’”
And I have a friend who once, while similarly blessed by the dice, managed to seduce Tiamat. But I didn’t see that one myself, and I don’t remember all the details.
Yup, 7th Sea uses (or used, I think they’ve gone d20 now) a system similar to Legend of the Five Rings, you roll Attribute + Skill dice, keep Attribute dice and add them up. If you roll a 10, add it and reroll it. Bastard rolled 3 tens in a row.
European style - 7th Sea is a swashbuckling RPG set in something like Europe.
I was in an AD&D tournament back in the early '80s when I was 12. We were in the last few minutes of the final session of the last day, and really pressed for time as we tried to complete that section of the module (we’d failed to complete any of the previous sections).
We didn’t manage to finish though, because the 10yo kid brother of one of my friends was on the team. He wasted about three of our final five precious minutes because he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to attack the water weird we were fighting with his +3 sword, or whether he’d rather attack with his +1 dagger. facepalm
Darn right. I had a group come across a caravan that had just been ambushed. They determined they could repair a wagon and take it with them, even picking what of the remaining stuff to put in it. Quote the DM, “Got draft animals?”
We were playing a random scenario in college and the DM had given us each a Wish spell. (That can be very bad). Our group’s Bard was mad at me for making fun of his songs; based on how he had been rolling, they must have been pretty bad. He finally decided he had taken enough and used his Wish to turn me into a newt.
Well I like to be an optimist and put myself to good use. I would sneak into caves and rooms and tell our Druid what was in them, and even made a distraction for a patrol once.
The DM decided the Bard’s level was only enough for the Wish spell to last for a few days so yes, in fact, I got better.
I also got some bonus XP and a nifty “talk to newts” ability.
I was playing a halfling assassin/thief combo and snuck up behind a frost giant and critted 3 times in a row, and the damned gm did not want to give me a valid kill on the damned giant … because i was so small compared to the giant. Asshat. Next game, the GM was playing his normal asshole fighter type, and he had a unicorn that someone as a joke snuck up and gelded, and he rolled crits, so I determined that the unicorns HP were all in its balls and it died. So much for his money making idea <evil grin>
