I risked my life for...that?

[Vulkarius]

I haven't been playing too long but I got to wondering ...

What was the stupidest thing you've risked your PCs life for?(in terms of rewards) Or just a more broad: what are some horribly stupid items that you have come across in your travels?

[taltamir]

1. belt of gender change...
2. a pittance of gold not even close to the value of items we found (neverwinter nights I am looking at you... gee thanks for paying me 100gp, Ill just go sell my 50k gp worth of items I looted)
3. No reward at all :(

[evil-frosty]

The stupidest item i have ever found is a wand with one charge and no way of recharging it. Also getting paid stupid little amounts of money.

[Totally Guy]

The party Wizard's impressive hat. Indiana Jones style.

He's got a reputation as "That guy with the impressive hat", no hat, no reputation.:smalltongue:

[Yukitsu]

For sake of petty revenge.

[cheezewizz2000]

Motorcycled through hell to rescue my party-mates from the nefarious clutches of the fey. Turns out they were having a perfectly fine time, and my motorcycle was trashed.

That was a really odd game of WOD...

[Starscream]

"I got a rock."

To get membership to a thieves guild, my rogue was told that he had to pass a test. The leader of the guild picked up a rock, carved a marking on it, tossed it into a deep dark pit filled with traps, spikes and a couple of otyughs and said "Fetch".

It was a trick. He used sleight of hand to switch rocks, and dropped a different one down the pit. My spot check was high enough to reveal his subterfuge, but accusing him of cheating in front of his friends would have gotten me into trouble pretty dang fast. Also, I wanted the XP from taking the challenge.

So I went into the pit, retrieved the fake rock, climbed back up, put the rock in my sling, fired it at the thief, and then took the real rock from his unconscious body.

Probably no good by RAW. A normal rock is not suitable for a sling bullet, and it's unlikely that I rolled just the right amount in a single sneak attack to knock him out without killing him (dunno how much hp he actually had). But the DM (and thus the other thieves) were suitably amused to let me get away with it. I didn't get into the guild (future conversations with the leader would have been awkward), but his friends looked the other way while I stole his gear, and gave me a head start before pouring a healing potion down his throat.

Not a bad experience, overall. I didn't get the membership I wanted, but I landed some decent xp and a nice magic cloak and ring.:smallbiggrin:

[ondonaflash]

"I went through the Tomb of Horrors and all I got were two crappy gems!"

[Ravens_cry]

"I went through the Tomb of Horrors and all I got were two crappy gems!"
Well, you got to keep something much rare though. Your life.

[comicshorse]

In a Warhammer game we defeated a Necromancer who was prophecied to destroy the Empire ( Sulring Durgal for long time Warhammer players) and found...... a potion that enabled you to walk on water for 2 minutes

[taltamir]

Well, you got to keep something much rare though. Your life.

last I checked your life was only valued at 5000gp

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/raisedead.htm

correction: 1000gp
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm

[RagnaroksChosen]

Ring of water breathing where every time you breathed out water would spew forth. well atleast when you where out of water when underwater you could lagitimatly breath water. though we didn't get that right away.

[Kobold-Bard]

Party hiked through a dozen sessions, two out of five members dead, obscene inventory costs. And at the end of it we found the sword that it's guardian chucked into a pit so not only could we not get it, we couldn't collect our reward.

Friggin' Halflings :smallmad:

[Ravens_cry]

last I checked your life was only valued at 5000gp

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/raisedead.htm
Rare, not just valuable.
And you're forgetting the cost of getting a cleric to cast it.

[Swordgleam]

To quote something I often say while playing Dragon Age, and which at least one of my housemates has started parroting, "Unlootable dinosaurs. The worst kind."

It's a very sad day when you kill something with no possessions and whose hide the game will not allow you to take. :smallfrown:

[Gametime]

In a campaign I played in awhile ago, each of our characters received various plot-related boons at certain points. Our barbarian (having slain a green dragon in the middle of getting away by getting a lucky critical hit with a dagger he picked up off the hoard) was possessed by that dragon's soul, gaining some spell-like abilities. Our ranger (having been captured by cultists and subjected to most of an evil ritual intended to make him the avatar of a dark mummy lord's spirit) got some eeeeevil powers that saved our butts a few times.*

I, on the other hand, received three kobold cohorts: a warrior, an expert (specialized in trap-making), and a rogue. All of them low level. :smallconfused:

Needless to say, the kobolds provided endless amusement by failing their saves against a Wail of the Banshee trap and getting their corpses lugged around for most of the adventure in a Bag of Holding.

*Mind, his attempt to obliterate an opposing army also took out half our party and most of the guys on our side, but hey! At least it got us past the city walls!

[Poil]

As many boxes of adamantine bars I could carry with me on our way out of a collapsing drow temple. Bad time to be a sorcerer.

[ondonaflash]

last I checked your life was only valued at 5000gp

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/raisedead.htm

correction: 1000gp
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm

And those two only work if there's somebody willing to go into the dungeon, collect your corpse, and pay gold to bring you back.

Assuming you still have a corpse

#Sphereofannhialationinthestatuesmouth
#whatthe****

[Bibliomancer]

last I checked your life was only valued at 5000gp

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/raisedead.htm

correction: 1000gp
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/reincarnate.htm

You're leaving out the cost of xp, which, if you ask any caster, is priceless.*

*Ie, worth more than 9,000 gp per experience point.

I've run into missions where the initial fee is trivial a few times. It seems fairly normal. However, I managed to avoid this in the current RHoD campaign that I'm playing in by getting an open-ended contract of 10 gp per goblinoid head per character (two other players signed it) with the town of Drellin's Ferry which we managed to evacuate to Brindol just to guarantee that they would keep paying us.

In a campaign that I DMed, the rest of the party broke into a castle to try to find the rogue, who was attempting to get additional gp (and that was when I learned to never give my players forgeable notes of credit). They managed to get out, barely. And the rogue only gave them part shares of the loot.

[Myou]

You're leaving out the cost of xp, which, if you ask any caster, is priceless.*

*Ie, worth more than 9,000 gp per experience point.


Casters love to convert XP to GP. You get more XP if you're behind the party.

The exchange rate is 1XP per 5GP.

[Sinfire Titan]

Considering there are two Cleric spells that revive dead characters with no level loss, both of which cost less than 2K to use, a character's life is only worth about 1000gp. Check out the Spell Compendium people, there's one that costs 500gp and can be put into a wand and the famous Revivify.




For me, it would have to have been a previous DM's entire campaign: "You went through 4 characters, a wasteland the size of Africa+Aisa combined filled to the brim with undead, and two of the most horridly thought out encounters ever, all for the sake of seeing your first sunrise. Congratulations, now go back to the starting point with no relevant explanation".

[taltamir]

Casters love to convert XP to GP. You get more XP if you're behind the party.

The exchange rate is 1XP per 5GP.

thats the exchange rate according to the DMG for hiring NPC casters to cast a spell with XP...

when crafting items the exchange rate is 1XP per 12.5gp for most items.

[ondonaflash]

And again, there needs to be someone who cares enough to contract the cleric in the first place. Its not like any of them are wandering through dungeons resurrecting people and demanding payment.

[Kobold-Bard]

Dweomerkeepers might do it. Just wander around resurrecting people with their component-less spells.

[taltamir]

And again, there needs to be someone who cares enough to contract the cleric in the first place. Its not like any of them are wandering through dungeons resurrecting people and demanding payment.

thats what you make friends and allies for. make some cleric friends.
the cleric doesn't pay any XP for the resurrection, you pay the XP for having lost a level (unless you can afford a true res)... btw, a true res also means no need for a corpse...

then there are spells like clone.

[Apollo1776]

Well while playing Vampires...

I once tried to break into a museum by picking a lock with a spoon I stole from an Elysium of an extremely territorial and powerful vampire. I failed and left the spoon in the lock.

**** did that get me into deep trouble.

Later on I took a corvette filled with explosives and tried to ram it into a heavily protected building guarded by a 4th generation toreador mechanic.

Wasn't too bright either. In my defense though, I was a Malkavian.

[holywhippet]

One former DM killed off two party members (both had the same player, the second one was his new character) by something akin to a werewolf. It was actually an NPC who was using an enchanted wolfskin to change his form. It gave him damage reduction though (or whatever the 2nd ed equivalent was). Of course, once we finally managed to kill him (in human form) it didn't take me long to realise there was no way we'd be allowed to use this item ourselves.

[SSGoW]

The party I was in killed giant spiders (some weird evil outsider spiders) and some constructs and 2 grown dragons and got the dragons weight in PP... which would have been awesome except we already had everything we wanted in the game already and then some >.> We really had nothing to buy with it and roleplaying was frown upon soooo yeah PP wasn't worth it

[Amphetryon]

A Wand of Inflict Minor Wounds.

[Thurbane]

Recently...a Belt of Strength that made lewd and rude groaning noises whenever it was worn. :smalltongue:

Back in our 1E days, we had an internal party TPK which stemmed from a dispute in me picking up some non-magical cloaks off clothes hooks, while we were inside the ToEE. The sole survivor of the conflict was then picked off by some amused guards who had watched the whole incident from a concealed spyhole into the room. :smallbiggrin:

[Irreverent Fool]

"I got a rock."

To get membership to a thieves guild, my rogue was told that he had to pass a test. The leader of the guild picked up a rock, carved a marking on it, tossed it into a deep dark pit filled with traps, spikes and a couple of otyughs and said "Fetch".

It was a trick. He used sleight of hand to switch rocks, and dropped a different one down the pit. My spot check was high enough to reveal his subterfuge, but accusing him of cheating in front of his friends would have gotten me into trouble pretty dang fast. Also, I wanted the XP from taking the challenge.

So I went into the pit, retrieved the fake rock, climbed back up, put the rock in my sling, fired it at the thief, and then took the real rock from his unconscious body.

Probably no good by RAW. A normal rock is not suitable for a sling bullet, and it's unlikely that I rolled just the right amount in a single sneak attack to knock him out without killing him (dunno how much hp he actually had). But the DM (and thus the other thieves) were suitably amused to let me get away with it. I didn't get into the guild (future conversations with the leader would have been awkward), but his friends looked the other way while I stole his gear, and gave me a head start before pouring a healing potion down his throat.

Not a bad experience, overall. I didn't get the membership I wanted, but I landed some decent xp and a nice magic cloak and ring.:smallbiggrin:

Actually you can:

You can hurl ordinary stones with a sling, but stones are not as dense or as round as bullets. Thus, such an attack deals damage as if the weapon were designed for a creature one size category smaller than you and you take a -1 penalty on attack rolls.

Though personally I'd picked his pocket. Your way is more impressive though.

obnoxious
sig

[Jerthanis]

One time our party was in a town with what looked to us like two thieves guilds, one of which we knew had been hired to kill us. One party member convinced us to start a war between them in order to gain some allies. Unfortunately, our plot was discovered and now we had two thieves' guilds working together against us. Them discovering our plot was pretty painful because it was a pretty clever plan and it wasn't entirely clear why it failed. When asked, the DM said we had made assumptions about the two guids' relationship which weren't true.

So when casting about for ideas on what to do next, eventually we settle on "Let's rob thieves' guild #1 for some cash to get out of town" (we're pitifully broke at this point too) So we all hide/invisibly scale the roof of the guildhouse, melt our way in the roof with acid, get past traps and locks and meet a Wizard right outside the vault chamber. He turns invisible and starts summoning monsters. We get the snot kicked out of us because he's summoning demons who have DR and we don't have the appropriate weapons.

Finally he runs out of spells and teleports away... we wait out the summons' durations and finally break into the vault to find chests everywhere. The wizard set off the alarm so we have a billion thieves coming and our wizard has one Dimension Door to get us out. We look it up and Dimension door has a weight limit... so we ask how much the treasure weighs. "not much" he says and I have a sinking feeling in my gut. Still, we don't have much of an option so we teleport out with what the spell can carry and we check it out.

5 copper pieces. and a note: "Never try to trick a trickster, never try to steal from a thief." Nothing we did in that whole campaign ever succeeded.

[Evard]

One time the party that was playing under me fought a mother dragon (they wanted the egg) which turned out to be a cadburry egg, they looked at the mother dragon again and saw that it was now a huge bunny with fake dragon wings and tail :D (the stats was a dragon though so it was a tough fight. The wizard fireballed the egg and ended up jerky'n the rabbit

They weren't to mad but I had planned on letting them sell the formula for the egg in town... but I didn't tell them that after they destroyed it so they wouldn't get mad lol

[Vulkarius]

Ah I remember one now. My first campaign we tracked down a gnome (after killing a couple dozen kobolds) who was digging up dragon remains and found an enchanted mirror. We sold eveything including some evil implement but kept the mirror. We took it through the dungeon that lasted for a couple levels and we just couldn't find a use for it. After killing what we thought was the BBEG we went down and met the real BBEG...an ancient white dragon. Apparently these were just sample characters to get the hang of the game. After the wizard expiditiously retreated, the paladin became a martyr, and the rest of the party became popsicles...

Me: So what's up with the mirror
DM: Yeah... You were just supposed to sell that when you got it three weeks ago
Me: Oh...and the dragon?
DM: Well it's the weakest ancient dragon!
We were level three...

[Xzeno]

I once risked the life of the entire party to get revenge on a cheeky NPC. In my defense, he refused to buy something.

Oh, and there was that time I risked my bard's life as well as the lives of five or six (non-cheeky) NPCs for a pimp cane.

[Lycanthromancer]

I'm sure some of you have heard this story before (at least the first part, anyway), but I was playing a LE goblin shaper/constructor, and was level 16. I was technically the weakest member of the party damage-wise, but I used my abilities cleverly, and so ended up being the team's MVP (he was a smug little bastard, and a braggart, but he did earn his keep by saving the party a few times, so they let him stick around).

An adult shadow dragon dracolich was sent after the party by the epic-level BBEG, and it targeted me as the party caster-type. It strafed the party a few times with its breath weapon, while the rest of the party sniped at it and I made a Large astral construct to try to grapple it (which was a mistake, because its grapple modifier was considerably higher than mine, since the DM optimized it for such). I knocked it out of the air with a wall of ectoplasm anchored to a tree right in its flight path, but unfortunately it landed very nearly on top of me., and spent its next turn trying to hit me with touch attacks, and finally succeeded on paralyzing me with its last attack.

So there I was, paralyzed, a ginormous undead lizard from the nether regions of the multiverse right in front of me, ready to snatch me up and fly off. So I mentally commanded my construct to pick me up and carry me off into the surrounding forest, after which the dracolich pursued (while being harried and delayed a bit by the rest of the party, which, to tell the truth, didn't do a whole lot initially, until the cleric blinded it with a well-placed failed save).

The construct buried me in leaf-litter, and I started manifesting me-shaped constructs 4 at a time (see the constructor class for details), which confused the dracolich long enough once it arrived on the scene for the rest of the party and my army of constructs to finish it off (and I didn't even use but a handful of power points, either).

And what did I earn for my part in the battle? I got visited by the BBEG herself, as well as the greater artifact staff she wielded, which had a permanent 50' antimagic field (which, of course, didn't affect her at all), and an invitation to join her covertly or die on the spot.

So I did. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to immediately double-cross her to my own eventual benefit, as I had to leave the campaign shortly thereafter. :smallfrown:

[Gamgee]

My party just raced half way across the world that a lich was going to end the world. Finally after months and months of playing they tracked him through the great western dessert and to his last underground fortress.

Battling their way to the bottom and through many dangers they finally come to the Lich. In what would be the most epic battle ever they managed to defeat him at the cost of half the party being dead. For various reasons these people could not be revived.

Then they go to loot his storage, and this is my biggest mistake ever giving out random loot. Of all the stupid times to do this, I thought it would be fun to see how it worked. That and I got it all mixed up.

So they ended up getting a little box that could turn into either a raft or a small boat of some kind with a button/lever. In the middle of what is an essentially Australia sized dessert. I'm not sure they ever used it.

I made it up to them later, big time. Also it was a surprise that is wasn't the end of the campaign as they had thought. lol

[TheMadLinguist]

A cup of sugar.

My character lived in a jungle temple for all her life. How was she to know that as a campaign setting, the entire jungle was full of ancient temples?

[dota600]

I killed a devourer single handedly and is able to save family that is kidnapped by a bbeg(which immedietely gives up for he is a coward).

And all I got is this lousy T-shirt.

[Set]

Random treasure rolls at the end of an epic battle;

1) Party member one, a psionicist - +5 longsword (that he ended up loaning to a fighter henchman for the rest of the campaign).

2) Party member two, a wizard - Ring of Djinn Summoning (the Djinn, through an unlikely series of events, ended up having a Ring of Efreeti Summoning as *it's* treasure, leading to the Wizard calling up flunky A, so that he could call up flunky B).

3) Party member three, a cleric - a Potion of Levitation.

The Cleric threw his treasure at the ground and stomped on it. :)


I kinda hated random treasure rolls. If I got junk, it always counted. The one time I rolled a 16 (or whatever the number was) and got an artifact (which I then rolled to determine was the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd), it 'didn't count.' Meh.

'Random' apparently only means, 'If it sucks for you, otherwise, reroll.'

[Zom B]

I'm about to win this thread.

A friend and I did a two-person team, and my wife was DM. We went to recover a wizard's very important shipment (which had the instruction that we were not to open it lest we end the magical wards), a journey that had us fighting legions of crocodile-men, getting our butts kicked by a black dragon, dropping a cursed polymorph potion down the gullet of said dragon (asleep this time) and keeping the bunny-dragon as a pet, traveling to the Demiplane of Swamps, participating in twisted carnival games to impress a fiendish ringleader named Jack, fighting an avatar of the Goddess of Night on the Plane of Shadow, and then returning the shipment to the wizard.

He cracks the lid and cold mist pours out of the box, and then pulls out...a ham sandwich. The protective wards were keeping it refrigerated.

[Closak]

A little something i found on Fanfiction.Net that i think may be relevant

And here is the reason why inputting cheat codes for infinite spells is a very bad thing.

It was cold. Very cold. Now Cloud understood what the man meant about not snowboarding down the slopes at a time like this. After wiping out he was now stuck in the great glacier, looking at a seemingly unsolvable iceberg puzzle. As soon as he jumped on one floating piece of ice the ones around him would sink and he'd have to swim in the cold water to shore.

At least it was soothing the black eye Elena gave him yesterday.

"Oh for crying out loud!" He said as he made the 5th plunge into the icy water. Thanking whatever power there was watching him that Tifa was there with a fire materia to keep him warmed up.

"Maybe we need to think differently."

"No, no. I can do this." Cloud told her, ignoring any signs of Hypothemia and made for the stepping blocks again. He decided that sometimes he had to double back on himself but just when he thought he had made it, he sunk again. "AAH!" Cloud screamed.

"Maybe if you iced over the gaps?" Red thirteen suggested.

"It's worth a shot, ICE 2." About an inch of the gap between the shore and the first block froze solid. "Well that didn't do much, ICE 2." Cloud noticed that a bit more of the gap iced over, he repeatedly cast the spell till it formed a bridge to the first ice block. Rather than risking another jump he iced over the gap to the next one, and the next one. The magic ice refusing to melt.

After 20 spells of second level ice Cloud crossed over to the island holding an igloo.

"Well if it gets us out of this Blizzard, I'm happy." Red commented as soon as they entered the frozen building, the wind whistling behind them.

"We're not resting here Red. We're scavenging in case someone left a summon materia here or something." Cloud reprimanded, no save points to use a tent meant no naps.

"Hey! I found something!" Tifa shouted from behind a set of furs left by the place's last occupant.

"Let me see!" Cloud shouted, taking the item "A safety bit." His voice dropped an octave and he started shaking. "All that for a safety bit." The spikes on his head seemed to grow larger in size and glowed slightly.

"Tifa, I think it may be advisable to stand back."

Bottom line, infinite MP, a mastered fire materia and a large amount of rage do not mix well.

Just saying.

*Runs from crazy guy with infinite mana*

[Vangor]

We came across a small group of nonaggressive, odd cavern goblins seemingly perpetually lost in dementia, and working our way through the maddened whispers found the chieftain who supposedly, according all of them, great power. He requested we return them to the "light". With the cave entrance actually in view of this tribe, you imagine they did not mean bring em to the sun, and we descended the depths of the fallen empire with various hints in the form of etched murals to locate this "light". Hordes of skeletal and zombie goblins, ravenous beasts of shadow feasting on tormented souls, the nongoblin crushing golems, a wandering cloud of madness which has taken and sustained the ruling magocracy, and a massive creature leaving trails of inky black and covered in razor sharp metal plates riveted to its form with gouts of dark flame pouring between the seams stalking us in the more open corridors.

Level upon level of having to risk our sanity to press on through the miasma or be clearly destroyed by the creature, rending our way through the unending, reforming undead, and dealing with the curiosities of manifesting chaos attacking us in unique ways each beast we encounter. Finally we find our way to a ruined facade where we surmise, due to the carving tools and writings elsewhere, the wall collapsed while inscribing the title and deeds of a new chief, opening to an ancient natural chamber with a pool of water surrounding four floating discs of bronze.

I will not spoil our grand confrontation to restore the seals of this interdimensional prison or what the "light" was, but nothing immediately changed except the creature was now locked away. Still insanity clouds, still undead, and still the goblins above were mad, only now angered because it was "too bright". The chieftain was not powerful, and an amulet we found mentioned or drawn throughout the ruins was a mundane circle of bronze which looks like the seals.

[John Campbell]

My shadowrunning team once risked our lives on a mission to intercept an armored van and retrieve its heavily-guarded cargo... which turned out to be a luxury toilet. Packed full of bleeding-edge simsense technology, sure, but still... Luxury. Toilet.

[ondonaflash]

Now that I think it... don't the gems from ToH turn to ash or break when you kill Acerarak?

[Dust]

We were on an epic quest to rescue the rogue's fiance. After months of doing so, we finally managed to free her from the wannabe-lich who was slowly turning her body into his phylactery.

After the tearful reunion, we were on our way back to the city when the rogue was killed by a random encounter.

We were stuck with a bawling woman for another two weeks straight, who insisted on lighting a funeral pyre for her husband with all his gear still on, thus ruining the equipment and magic items.

[Ishcumbeebeeda]

We were on an epic quest to rescue the rogue's fiance. After months of doing so, we finally managed to free her from the wannabe-lich who was slowly turning her body into his phylactery.

After the tearful reunion, we were on our way back to the city when the rogue was killed by a random encounter.

We were stuck with a bawling woman for another two weeks straight, who insisted on lighting a funeral pyre for her husband with all his gear still on, thus ruining the equipment and magic items.

Think I'd have killed her and looted them both. But then, I generally play CN-bordering-on-CE or strait CE.

[Dr Bwaa]

Ring of water breathing where every time you breathed out water would spew forth. well atleast when you where out of water when underwater you could lagitimatly breath water. though we didn't get that right away.

This is a fantastically fantastic item! Wonderful!


Now that I think it... don't the gems from ToH turn to ash or break when you kill Acerarak?

There are several flaws in this statement, but you have the basic gist--nothing good comes of that adventure, even if you (somehow) survive.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The PC's of the evil campaign I ran risked there freedom, there lives, everything... and all they got was trapped in an alternate material plane except for the Dragon Shaman whose alchemical jetpack was not sabotaged by Gizmo, and course Gizmo.