Calling for shenanigans

[sengmeng]

Sorry if there's a thread for this already... I want to hear the worst rules twisting or abuse your DM allowed... I mean stuff that you didn't know if you should feel proud or bad about pulling off.

Mine is: character has Deck of Many Things, starts using it for card tricks, asking random passersby to "pick a card, any card" and of course most of the cards disappear and do some weird stuff to them, but one of the cards that specifically doesn't is the Jester, which instantly gives 10,000 xp. Random stranger draws the Jester, my character finishes her card trick, rolls Sleight of Hand, and says "Is this your card?" And pulls the Jester herself. Boom, two level ups (not sure why he allowed that either).

[Ken Murikumo]

Im playing in a Pathfinder game where the DM decided he didn't like the Vancian magic system and chose to change things up.

Anyone can learn to cast spells and Arcane & Divine magic is now just "magic". Any spell is available to anyone with enough research/money/skill checks. Knowledge: Arcane, Spellcraft, & Use Magic Device got rolled into one skill called "Affinity" that we can use to roll spell DCs, learn new spells, etc.. (basically anything magic related). He also changed how the skill was calculated and determined that 1/3 of the skill total (not ranks) was your caster level and you get free metamagic for each 10 points in the skill.

Now here's me who achieved a 52 Affinity at level 5 resulting in 5 free metamagic feats, a caster level of 17, and the ability to learn ANY spell without rolling (DC to learn is 15+[spell lvl*3]).

After a few sessions, he capped the number of spell levels we can learn per session and outright said no to a few spells i decided i wanted (Genesis isn't REALLY necessary to move the campaign forward).



Just recently he decided to combine BAB and CMB/CMD stuff into a Total Offensive Capability or "TOC". He did the same with all our defenses.

Here's me again, with my 44 TOC and 72 AC (without the 10), while everyone else is 20ish for both stats.

He was white knuckling his DMG when i persisted a casting of bloodwind and used wings of cover to take no damage during his big boss battle. I might be dodging books when i decide to persist a casting of wraith-strike while hasted & pouncing. His lack of sleep may be catching up with him.

[Zhorn]

Nothing too spectacular, but still used to great effect.
Thanks to spells like Charm Person and Friends specifically stating that the target of the spell knows that the spell has been cast on them, I was able to persuade my DM that because Hex had no such statement in the spell description, as long as I didn't injure my target, I can Hex them without their knowledge.
And with that, Hex was used in almost every social situation to hamstring the NPC's social skills whenever charisma or wisdom checks were used.
Often requiring some elaborate RP to mask the V,S,M aspects of the casting, making the DM very wary when I'd ask to purchase 'off the menu' items from vendors.
Me: "I'd like to buy a jar of molasses and a bag of talc"
DM: "Why would you... ok fine"
*three session latter*
DM: "You son of a-"


...Deck of Many Things...
Keeping that one in mind, quite brilliant when you can get away with it.


DM decided he didn't like the Vancian magic system and chose to change things up.
I love seeing homebrew rules in action, but moment like this are thing we should all learn from. Test you ideas before throwing your 'superior' house rules at players, as they will always surprise you.

[JoshuaZ]

I love seeing homebrew rules in action, but moment like this are thing we should all learn from. Test you ideas before throwing your 'superior' house rules at players, as they will always surprise you.

And that's true even for tiny houserules, much less rules which fundamentally and massively modify the core game mechanics like this.

[Rhedyn]

Sorry if there's a thread for this already... I want to hear the worst rules twisting or abuse your DM allowed... I mean stuff that you didn't know if you should feel proud or bad about pulling off.

Mine is: character has Deck of Many Things, starts using it for card tricks, asking random passersby to "pick a card, any card" and of course most of the cards disappear and do some weird stuff to them, but one of the cards that specifically doesn't is the Jester, which instantly gives 10,000 xp. Random stranger draws the Jester, my character finishes her card trick, rolls Sleight of Hand, and says "Is this your card?" And pulls the Jester herself. Boom, two level ups (not sure why he allowed that either).
The worst I've done is convince my buddy to use two of his wishes from the Deck of Many Things to turn himself and my character into Liches. The GM just allowed it.

The worst I've seen was a girl in D&D 3.5 convinced the DM to let her cast spells of a level equal to her character level (so 7th level spells at level 7). Oh and that DM also didn't bother to keep track of spells expended or prepared and told everyone to wing it (which kind of screwed over my warlock).

[Spiritus]

I'm building a character for a game right now that allows everything from both 3.5 and Pathfinder. Mostly the players are self-regulating the cheese to things like infinite power point tricks, but I am doing an intimidate build with Imperious Command and Blistering invective on the same character.