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Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
This happened about a week ago in the campaign I'm running, and I thought it was epic enough to post here. Spoilered for length.
Spoiler
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In the Evil 3.P game I've been Dm'ing for a long time, things have gotten....... interesting, to say the least. The party's Artficer, to celebrate reaching epic, decided to throw the biggest wrench they could come up with into the setting. With some help from another party member, he managed to genetically engineer a mage-killing, monster-mutating supervirus, place the party in temporal stasis on their illusion-cloaked island base, and set a contingency to dispel it in 10 thousand years, just to see what would happen, completely ignoring the fact that another dimension-traveling villain was working on separating the outer planes from the rest of the multiverse. Needless to say, they were all a bit surprised when they woke up on
Mirage Island ten millenia later, Wynaut and all. :smalltongue:
Gonna be a pain to balance, though......
Anyone else have a similar story?
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
One time there was a player who was a big tomb of battle buff, "manuvers are everything, fighter sucks, etc" type guy.
After reaching around 15th level, he found himself in a farming community and of course bragged he could take on anyone, anywhere, figuring no one would call his bluff.
Shame that Kenshin happened to be taking a short vacation and was relaxing in that community.
Kenshin is a level 30 fighter/weapon master, and although that might not seem very scary at first...she's also the goddess of combat.
The guy got his ass kicked by his patron deity.
And no, this wasn't some "I feel like messing with them" things. I have a record of where every god and important NPC is in general terms on my computer. I literally pulled out a file saying, that yes, Kenshin being on vacation in this town was pre-planned. So this wasn't me being a jerk.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Morithias
*snip*
:biggrin:
This is awesome, and you are awesome, good sir.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Once, the players adopted a cat. Said cat was obsessivly protected by the local fighter, who probably loved it more than his sword.
About five real-life months later, a small town was being assulted by a small army of orcs. The party was pretty battered, and the cat was the only thing that was not utterly screwed over in combat. The party managed to fight off all but twenty or so orcs, and when all seemed lost, a fireball spell was casted.
The cat? A shapeshifted efreet. After wiping the floor with the orcs, it patted the head of the now mortafied fighter and plane shifted away.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Morithias
Kenshin is a level 30 fighter/weapon master, and although that might not seem very scary at first...she's also the goddess of combat.
I assume she uses a merciful katana?:smallwink:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
It doesn't really count if it was her divine ranks doing most of the work...
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I find my best "mess with my players" moments come when I least expect them. Little details wind up tripping up my players and they wind up spending a lot of time freaking out over nothing.
I think my best was the "Big Rock In A Clearing" incident. The party was walking through a forest and it was getting dark, so I told them they had reached a clearing. They asked me if there was anything in the clearing.
I hadn't given this much thought, so I replied "uh...Sure, there's a big rock in the middle of the clearing."
We must have spent half an hour on them trying to figure out what was up this rock. I had to eventually tell them flat out that there was nothing special about this rock before I could get them to give up on it.
It was great, they were rolling perception, using detect magic, one player even broke off a piece to look at the inner part of the rock. And it was nothing but a chunk of granite. What's more, it should have been clear from the way I told them about it that it was nothing but an afterthought.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Xerinous
I find my best "mess with my players" moments come when I least expect them. Little details wind up tripping up my players and they wind up spending a lot of time freaking out over nothing.
I think my best was the "Big Rock In A Clearing" incident. The party was walking through a forest and it was getting dark, so I told them they had reached a clearing. They asked me if there was anything in the clearing.
I hadn't given this much thought, so I replied "uh...Sure, there's a big rock in the middle of the clearing."
We must have spent half an hour on them trying to figure out what was up this rock. I had to eventually tell them flat out that there was nothing special about this rock before I could get them to give up on it.
It was great, they were rolling perception, using detect magic, one player even broke off a piece to look at the inner part of the rock. And it was nothing but a chunk of granite. What's more, it should have been clear from the way I told them about it that it was nothing but an afterthought.
Reminds me of the old magic cow strip in knights of the dinner table. The player's figure that the DM wouldn't mention it if it wasn't special, and his attempts at keeping the game moving are seen by the players as attempts to protect the "magic cow" and only make them more interested.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sith_Happens
I assume she uses a merciful katana?:smallwink:
Merciful no, Katana yes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Craft (Cheese)
It doesn't really count if it was her divine ranks doing most of the work...
Well the real injury to him came more from what she told him. She basically told him that it doesn't matter how powerful or skilled you are being an arrogant jerk, is the type of acting that gets you sent to limbo (the in between of the abyssal prison and rewarding heavens).
They then sat down and she told them a ton about the heavens, and how to better themselves. Ironically he actually learned his lesson about being prideful and became more humble and helpful towards innocents.
Of course in exchange she had him show her some manuvers saying she's been interested in the new fighting styles being developed. She also told them she's thinking of retiring soon and retraining herself, and letting an epic warblade or something take her place.
It was a nice encounter.
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Divine Ranks and god powers don't work on the material plane in my setting.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I had my players find slash fiction of themselves while searching the manor of an npc.
She(the npc) ended up being the final boss. She actually showed up to that fight naked because all of her gear was in the form of quori crystals laced into her bones and she was doing the "where we're going, we won't need pants" act.
This thread has a pretty good list of these, too.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
First game I ran, a 3.P horror game centered inside of a Genius Loci (Bwhahahah) had a few of these.
Best one I can think of was that one of the player's characters had a daughter or granddaughter that was really, really sick and he was out adventuring to try and raise money for her to get better. So the party enters this lab with large containment tubes holding semi-human experements. They think it's all weird and whatnot, and are about to leave, when the daughter steps out from behind the biggest container.
"Daddy? Daddy, I'm cold." (If you've seen 1408 you know where this is going)
"Dude, she's not real! It's the house playing tricks on us again!"
"Daddy, don't you love me any more?"
"Of course I do sweetie."
So she trots over to her dad, he hugs her, promising that she's safe now and that he's not gonna let anything happen to her.
Then she dies right in her arms.
Then crumbles to ash.
And I'm trying not to cackle like a madman at the player's expression when this happens.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Man, oh man, have I got a list of these.
Have the level one characters escort a cravan to a town (cliche, I know). The owner then gives them a bank note to take to "The big E.V.I.L. building, in the middle of town." Scares them silly, until they realize it's the "Everyday Villiager's Investment & Loans. E.V.I.L."
Have one character look in the mirror, watch his reflection commit suicide, then don't give him a reflection for the rest of the campign. And then don't explain why. Ever.
Have a character walk up to them on the street, and ask if they can wear the PC's shoes, "just in case."
Name your inn "The Chipper Mudskipper". My players refuse to sleep there, because they assume anything that happy in my setting must be a trap. (Which is wise, since I have an entire plotline set up for the first time they give in and sleep there, but that's beside the point.)
Give them a "Scroll of Locate Hands". They can't resist trying it. Have it announce in a booming voice "On the ends of your arms!" and have that be it.
Give them a massive, bronze key. Make it weigh like 75lbs or something insane. Watch them lug it around forever, because 'It will come in handy eventually!'
Edit: Oh, and a bowl of fresh fruit in the dungeon entrance. Every time.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Angry Bob
I had my players find slash fiction of themselves while searching the manor of an npc.
...It makes me feel SOOOO much better to not be the only one who's done that.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I can't remember if I've mentioned this here. Oh well, here goes:
My players were forced (for unrelated reasons) to stay at a particular inn in a particular room that had been nailed shut for the last 50 years. The innkeeper made them clean the room before they could sleep in it because, hey, the inn has standards. When the innkeeper came back to inspect the cleaning, she commented about a puddle of water on the floor but said otherwise everything looked ok. This is the conversation that followed:
Player 1: :smallannoyed: Of course I assumed we would mop up the water when we were done.
Me: I also assumed you mopped up the water.
Player 1: :smallmad: Great, the roof must be leaking.
Player 2: :smallconfused: Wait, was it raining?
Me: The ceiling is dry and shows no signs of damage.
Players: :smallconfused: We examine the puddle.
Me: There are tracks in it.
Players: :smalleek:
Me: :smallcool:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
It could be worse. How worth it would it be for me to write a 15 chapter erotica involving the players and a willing gnome maiden?
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nepenthe
The innkeeper made them clean the room before they could sleep in it because, hey, the inn has standards.
I take it they weren't there as customers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
newBlazingAngel
It could be worse. How worth it would it be for me to write a 15 chapter erotica involving the players and a willing gnome maiden?
Nah, no way your players will suffer through all of that. A page at most, and make it a point to read it out loud. A more realistic slash fic though would be to take the two burliest male characters and have them go at it.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
newBlazingAngel
It could be worse. How worth it would it be for me to write a 15 chapter erotica involving the players and a willing gnome maiden?
Scatter the chapters throughout the campaign, with details updated to reflect their exploits. If they find enough of them, they'll eventually be looking for the rest. You will have successfully gotten your players to look for slash fiction of themselves :smallcool:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Have a dungeon decorated with statues.
Make one of them a monster that attacks the party with some trigger.
Everything else is just a statue, but visually indistinguishable from the monster.
Chuckle as the players attack inanimate objects.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Craft (Cheese)
I take it they weren't there as customers.
Nah, no way your players will suffer through all of that. A page at most, and make it a point to read it out loud. A more realistic slash fic though would be to take the two burliest male characters and have them go at it.
Even better if one is a Paladen, for the "soiled purity" jokes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Frog Dragon
Have a dungeon decorated with statues.
Make one of them a monster that attacks the party with some trigger.
Everything else is just a statue, but visually indistinguishable from the monster.
Chuckle as the players attack inanimate objects.
This is wonderful. However, have something at the bottom of the dungeon cause all the statues to turn into stone golems if the party is stupid enough to mess with it.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Frog Dragon
Have a dungeon decorated with statues.
Make one of them a monster that attacks the party with some trigger.
Everything else is just a statue, but visually indistinguishable from the monster.
Chuckle as the players attack inanimate objects.
Doctor Who version:
Have a well-lit dungeon decorated with angel statues.
Make it so that something the players do causes the lights to very briefly go out, after which at least two of the statues are gone.
Start randomly asking for spot checks.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sith_Happens
Doctor Who version:
Have a well-lit dungeon decorated with angel statues.
Make it so that something the players do causes the lights to very briefly go out, after which at least two of the statues are gone.
Start randomly asking for spot checks.
I did have a gnome "With a strange little red hat" appear magically out of the air with a sweeping brush in one hand and a spanner in the other. Speaking very quickly he chucked the PC's the Spanner and disappeared, then reappeared telling them they should use it on the box then disappeared again. Shortly after the PC's find a large Adamantine Cube in a big old empty room... :smalltongue:
Quote:
I hadn't given this much thought, so I replied "uh...Sure, there's a big rock in the middle of the clearing."
I have been known to give details that have no relivence to the story at hand but just try and flesh the world out a bit and have the PC's try and figure out why *sigh* "The DM mentioned it so it MUST be vital!"
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Frog Dragon
Have a dungeon decorated with statues.
Make one of them a monster that attacks the party with some trigger.
Everything else is just a statue, but visually indistinguishable from the monster.
Chuckle as the players attack inanimate objects.
I (ok, the DM group I was part of) did something similar to this. Except the statues were all statues of particular white dragon. A white dragon who had a bunch of ranks of bluff and Blood Wind. And Trickery Devotion. So the party spent all this time pumping damage into the fake while the real dragon (taking massive range increment penalties) tore in to them. When they realized their mistake at least one character had been torn to pieces. Then they ran. Most of them got away... that's a different story though.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
1. In the dungeon, have a bat fly by every once in awhile. (Never introduce a vampire - that would relieve the growing tension.)
2.
DM: The far wall of the room is a brick wall. Make a Spot check. (Players roll.) One of the bricks is slightly darker than the others.
PC: We press that brick.
DM: (Rolls dice. frowns. Opens book or notes. Rolls again. Smiles) Nothing apparent happens.
3. Roll dice. "Does anybody have a frying pan on their character sheet? No? OK, you continue onward."
4. "Does anybody here speak Velociraptor? No? OK, you all here some screeches over the ridge." [Bonus points if there is nothing but a screeching bird over the ridge.]
To be fair, I should point out that I've only actually done the bats to my players.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
It could be interesting to put one thing in a room that shouldn't be there or even doesn't fit the time period. Make them completely ordinary, but something they would carry with them 'just in case.'
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Have an NPC try to do this. The PCs will carry those rocks forever.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
My players better skip over this post, cause this will come up :smalltongue:
I got some nice 'oh, crap' expressions out of my group once on the way back and forth through a lost dwarven city burried beneath Ravens Bluff.
First, they found a corpse of an ogre with some nasty cuts. They approach to examine it. Upon touch, the corpse suddenly shifts, and thousands of tiny Tomb Spiders swarm out of the wounds, leaving the quickly sacking husk of the ogre behind. They were a little freaked out :smallbiggrin:
On the way back - they were third level, out of spells and severly wounded - they spot a Beholder in a parallel corridor. First 'Uhoh' reactions. One eye of the Beholder turns in their direction - one of them stares at me open-mouthed with impressively big eyes - then the whole beholder turns towards them, a second later he charges forward. They flee in blind panic.
He catches up, and I count down the distance. "50 meters... 40 meters... 30..." I've NEVER seen more panicked reactions from any player. One of them in desperation urged everyone to drop the magical gems they found, somehow thinking the Beholder wants those. Their fasttalking arguments were glorious.
Then I count down to zero, they're out of ideas and on the edge of their seats... And then the Beholder just passes through their bodies, racing onwards and taking a left turn ahead.
At this point we had to pause for some moments until I was done laughing.
Was it a ghost, an illusion, something else? They preferred not to delve deeper into that story.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shnezz
Have one character look in the mirror, watch his reflection commit suicide, then don't give him a reflection for the rest of the campign. And then don't explain why. Ever.
This. Is. Awesome. Mind if I steal this?
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shnezz
Name your inn "The Chipper Mudskipper". My players refuse to sleep there, because they assume anything that happy in my setting must be a trap. (Which is wise, since I have an entire plotline set up for the first time they give in and sleep there, but that's beside the point.)
I once had a tavern called "Mermaids Rock". It was set a major port town was the party's standard tavern. Then, later in the campaign, they visited another city, and found a tavern called "Mermaids Rock". They tought "Hey, what a coincidence!" and went inside. Same barkeeper. Same gamblers. Same drunk passed out in the corner. Everyone tells them it was always here, no one inside had ever met the PCs. They kept finding that tavern in every city they visited. It was always there. It had always been there. No explanation.
It went on long enough that other people kept up taverns by that name when DMing.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
1. Have a small child appear, bloody and crying, on the parties path somewhere. Bonus points if she's somewhere thats increadbly harsh, like a icy cave or deep in a cursed forest.
2. Have the party make a few checks at random. Any check is fine. Just enough to make them realy paranoid about the little girl.
3. The little girl is completly normal. Nothing the party can do can prove otherwise. Shows up as LG, no magical effects, ect. According to her, she is lost. She does not know what village she came from.
4. At the next place the party rests, the little girl goes to sleep as well. Again, nothing strange at all besides her apperance.
5. The next day, the little girl is gone. Every party member has several massive bite marks, each showing multible sets of teeth. They do not feel these bites, but they did take damage. Any healing potions they had with them have turned into a blackish ichor that is corrosive to the touch, and any water they had with them has frozen into a black-red ice. They never see the little girl again.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Pokonic
*snip*
Genius! Brilliance of the highest magnitude! Other gentlemanly compliments!
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I used the egg timer trap room on my players once (ps, this isn't mine but i don't recall where it came from.)
Basically they enter a 15mx3mx3m featureless smooth stone hallway and once they are all in the hallway doors slam down closing them in from both sides.
At exactly halfway down the hallway a panel will open up and a large ornate egg timer will slide out of the wall suspended by a thick copper looking rod of metal attached at its middle, just below the egg timer protruding from the wall is a shinny red button.
Once the egg timer is all the way out of the wall it will perform one half revolution so all the sand is in the top half slowly trickling down into the bottom.
To anyone who is skilled enough to see it the egg timer will give of an intense magical aura, it will seem impervious to any damage the PC's try to inflict upon it and it will all so prevent any magical damage to the hallway and stop any magical travel spells/scrying or communication spells which attempt to target anything outside the hallway or dimension blah blah (basically it traps them inside a magical box.)
The walls and door are made out of smoothly polished stone which is barely scratched by any mundane forms of digging etc the PC's may attempt.
Pressing the button causes the egg timer to perform a half rotation after which the sand continues to flow from the upper half of the egg timer into the lower half.
Once all the sand is in the lower half of the egg timer the doors at either end of the hallway will open up and the egg timer and the button will disappear back into the now seamless wall.
It helps if you have an actual egg timer to use as a prop for this one.
When i used this it bought me about 45mins of DM joy barely being able to choke down my laughter (which is not bad considering the egg timer prop i had was set for about 3 mins). After the PC's escaped the room they called me many bad words and then went outside for a smoke.
They still however laugh about it now, a few years on.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I just want to say you are all villainous bastards.
Don't ever change. :smallbiggrin:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kaun
I used the egg timer trap room on my players once (ps, this isn't mine but i don't recall where it came from.)
Basically they enter a 15mx3mx3m featureless smooth stone hallway and once they are all in the hallway doors slam down closing them in from both sides.
At exactly halfway down the hallway a panel will open up and a large ornate egg timer will slide out of the wall suspended by a thick copper looking rod of metal attached at its middle, just below the egg timer protruding from the wall is a shinny red button.
Once the egg timer is all the way out of the wall it will perform one half revolution so all the sand is in the top half slowly trickling down into the bottom.
To anyone who is skilled enough to see it the egg timer will give of an intense magical aura, it will seem impervious to any damage the PC's try to inflict upon it and it will all so prevent any magical damage to the hallway and stop any magical travel spells/scrying or communication spells which attempt to target anything outside the hallway or dimension blah blah (basically it traps them inside a magical box.)
The walls and door are made out of smoothly polished stone which is barely scratched by any mundane forms of digging etc the PC's may attempt.
Pressing the button causes the egg timer to perform a half rotation after which the sand continues to flow from the upper half of the egg timer into the lower half.
Once all the sand is in the lower half of the egg timer the doors at either end of the hallway will open up and the egg timer and the button will disappear back into the now seamless wall.
It helps if you have an actual egg timer to use as a prop for this one.
When i used this it bought me about 45mins of DM joy barely being able to choke down my laughter (which is not bad considering the egg timer prop i had was set for about 3 mins). After the PC's escaped the room they called me many bad words and then went outside for a smoke.
They still however laugh about it now, a few years on.
You forgot something though! Whenever they press the button, they get 1d6 points of permanent damage to a random ability score, and/or a permanent negative level. And when the timer starts to get low the room needs to start shaking really violently as if something even worse is about to happen.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Craft (Cheese)
You forgot something though! Whenever they press the button, they get 1d6 points of permanent damage to a random ability score, and/or a permanent negative level. And when the timer starts to get low the room needs to start shaking really violently as if something even worse is about to happen.
Nah keep it simple, + you don't want to take away the incentive to keep pushing the button.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Maybe a d2 or d3 of minor damage.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
newBlazingAngel
Maybe a d2 or d3 of minor damage.
Ehh i wouldn't bother personally & they are less likely to continue pushing the button if there is a cost. While the button buys them time to think of a way out they will keep hitting it, until it brakes their will and they decided to except their own fate.
Ultimately the trap is just to mess with their minds and play on their own fears rather then actually trying to kill or hurt them.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kaun
Nah keep it simple, + you don't want to take away the incentive to keep pushing the button.
But it's all the more glorious when they "solve" the trap all the way back at level 1 with 1-3 in each ability score.
Of course your players will probably burn you alive for it, but I assumed that wasn't a factor we were supposed to be worried about with these sorts of things.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
That effect is perfect for one shot campaigns.
Just start them epic level, give them one or two difficult and high level fights, drain em, and watch them freak out when you introduce a level adjusted abeloth.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I just want y'all to know that I'm definitely using this entire thread in my next campaign.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
The best things to mess with players are things that are far less than they appear. Some personal favorites of mine:
--The BBEG is a 1st level commoner with no distinguishing characteristics, and a generic, common name.
--Statues.
--Helpful NPCs. No player of mine has ever trusted any npc they had a reason to trust. (they only trusted the shady ones :smallbiggrin:)
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Xerinous
I find my best "mess with my players" moments come when I least expect them. Little details wind up tripping up my players and they wind up spending a lot of time freaking out over nothing.
I think my best was the "Big Rock In A Clearing" incident. The party was walking through a forest and it was getting dark, so I told them they had reached a clearing. They asked me if there was anything in the clearing.
I hadn't given this much thought, so I replied "uh...Sure, there's a big rock in the middle of the clearing."
We must have spent half an hour on them trying to figure out what was up this rock. I had to eventually tell them flat out that there was nothing special about this rock before I could get them to give up on it.
It was great, they were rolling perception, using detect magic, one player even broke off a piece to look at the inner part of the rock. And it was nothing but a chunk of granite. What's more, it should have been clear from the way I told them about it that it was nothing but an afterthought.
I've heard of a similar case. The PCs had to cross a ravine which had a bridge that had been cut down. All the players but one worked out a solution and got across. That player, for some reason, was convinced the ravine was some kind of illusion. He tried disbelieving it, throwing rocks in it etc. Finally he jumped in convinced it was an illusion. It wasn't.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
In one campaign I was in, our party encountered several mimics in a single dungeon. Or rather, my character encountered several mimics, and was nearly swallowed whole (I was a gnome). Of all the "chests" we found, none were actually chests.
About halfway through the dungeon, we're walking down a hallway, and we see at the end of it what appears to be a chest. I happen to be near the front, and at this point I'm really jittery, not trusting any chests I see. So naturally, I decide to attack it…*by throwing an animal out of my bag of tricks and telling it to charge. It summoned a rhino, which obliterated the chest, as well as all the contents therein. Naturally, the rest of the party was mad at me for destroying the only treasure we had found so far.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
In my upcoming campaign, I intend to do a trick i have hinted about before. Before you cry foul, know that I intend to use this trick on the newbies joining the campaign.
In the first dungeon, one of the newbies will find a pipe. The pipe will be a simple ivory one, well made, but with a pentagram carved on the side. I will tell the character that the pipe has no value. If he decides to just throw it away, or something else like that, then they will find it the next moring in their rations. This process will repeat, without ever ending, until the end of the campaign. At the end, when the character asks about the pipe, I will remain silent. Forever.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I feel bad. The most evil thing I've done is to have a boss set an ambush after the party decided to camp in his soldiers, barracks after they murdered some of them!
In all seriousness, I have this campaign going on where the PCs are going against this cult that has people being mind controlled and getting mutations from a type of green crystals. Long story short, my PCs intercept a shipment from a mine and the rogue takes some small crystal shards and puts them in his coin purse.
Right after they learn of the mind control thing, I make a "ohhh right" face, and give him a piece of paper (which I rarely use, should use them more, they're awesome): "Where do you keep the green crystals you got at the mine."
He makes that "oh ****" face and sends me back "in my coin purse".
Now keep in mind, the other players are all silent, just staring at those papers being scribbled and sent back and forth.
My next one: "Roll a will save. Don't tell anyone why you're rolling, or what kind of roll you're making."
He takes out a d20, rolls it, nobody knows why. Rolls a 1. The guy's fair though. Plays his character as if nothing happened.
Then, the next session, they're still in town, I have a shady-looking man walk by them, growls at everyone, EXCEPT the rogue. They followed him for half of the session.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Oh that reminds me, I have a habbit of describing every statue as "Extreamly life-like" which leads the Players to endless want to go off and get a scroll of "Stone to Flesh" just in case :smalltongue: they have come across one guy who was turned to stone but mostly they are just rather good statues :smallbiggrin:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
As soon as someone gets see invisibility or similar endless fun can be had.
Villain turns invisible in a graveyard, you can now see him, and the legions of restless spirits wandering the area, better hope they don't figure out that you can now see them!
You cast see invisibility? You see that phantom fungus, and also that guy you killed back when you were second level. He's been following you ever since, watching everything you've been doing
You cast see invisibility, you can now see the invisible medusa.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
This is how you dish out poetic justice to problem players. C&P'ed from the funny stories topic.
Spoiler
Show
Don't F*ck with the God of Spite
One of the groups I DM'ed for during my undergrad years had a player we'll call "Tony" (not his real name). Tony was a lying scuzzball who fancied himself a ladies' man and played his characters much the same way. This would have been fine had he restricted his lies and petty larceny to the game world, but alas, he owed money to most of the group and small objects tended to go missing around him. He was also an unreliable gamer who (when he showed up at all) would frequently play in an altered state of consciousness. The rest of the group had pretty much decided this guy had to go... and luckily, he gave me the perfect opportunity.
A bit of background: Tony's character had recently used his cheesed-out Bluff and Diplomacy checks to seduce a sweet, naive princess into falling head-over-heels in love with him and eventually marrying him. Being Tony, he exploited his newfound royal connections as far as they'd go, and made it clear that his character only cared about her for the wealth and power. He even gifted her another PC's stolen ancestral amulet to show her family how wealthy he was.
Anyway, after doing a bit of adventuring, the group discovered that the villains responsible for a recent string of grisly murders were a cult dedicated to Cas, God of Spite (Heroes of Horror). After delivering pointy justice to said cult, they were looting the underground temple when Tony had one of his characteristically idiotic ideas:
Tony: "I'm going to take a dump on the altar."
Me: "You realize what you're saying, right? You plan to defecate on the sacred altar of the God of Spite?"
Tony: "Yeah, why not?"
So he desecrates the altar. At the end of the next session, the heroes are riding off towards their next adventure:
Me: "Everyone, it's Spot check time. You might also want to try a Listen check, but the DC is a lot higher."
Group: *rolls terribly*
Me: "Nobody notices the winged shape overhead... at least not until [Tony's character] and his horse are replaced with a mound of steaming dung."
Tony: "I don't get a Reflex save?"
Me: "Nobody in the party put points into Spot. You all have crappy Wisdom. You rolled a 2. You didn't even see the shadow until it was too late. So yeah, a dragon just shat on you from from six hundred feet."
Tony: *frowns* "How much damage then, *******?"
Me: "Well, it weighs several hundred pounds and fell from a great height... " *rolls* "45."
Tony: "I died from dragon ****?!"
While Tony sat there, red-faced and fuming, I calmly continued. The rest of the group attempted to dig his dead character and horse out from under the pile when one of them came across something familiar:
Me: "Alerika, you notice a glint of gold as you dig through the feces. Excavating a little more, your heart skips a beat as you realize it's your ancestral amulet!"
Tony: "THAT WAS MY WIFE?!"
Me: "Some it was, yeah. Don't f*ck with the God of Spite."
Uttering a primal shriek of rage, Tony flipped the table over and stormed out of the room, never to return. The group held it together for about five seconds before bursting into gales of laughter. To this day they say it was the best game I ever ran.
...yeah, I felt a little bad about that in retrospect, but the guy had it coming. If you steal my friend's phone and have the audacity to keep showing up at my gaming table, I will have a dragon fatally poop your wife onto your head, and will earn the nickname Assistant God of Spite.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Seriously, the God of spite. It was really far too easy.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
holywhippet
I've heard of a similar case. The PCs had to cross a ravine which had a bridge that had been cut down. All the players but one worked out a solution and got across. That player, for some reason, was convinced the ravine was some kind of illusion. He tried disbelieving it, throwing rocks in it etc. Finally he jumped in convinced it was an illusion. It wasn't.
Damn, that would make a fine dungeon trap.
Mind-affecting spell. On failed save, you're convinced something is an illusion.
Of course, you roll the save behind the DM screen after asking the player for his modifier. Then you just lean back and watch hilarity ensue.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dire Panda
This is how you dish out poetic justice to problem players. C&P'ed from the funny stories topic.
Spoiler
Show
Don't F*ck with the God of Spite
One of the groups I DM'ed for during my undergrad years had a player we'll call "Tony" (not his real name). Tony was a lying scuzzball who fancied himself a ladies' man and played his characters much the same way. This would have been fine had he restricted his lies and petty larceny to the game world, but alas, he owed money to most of the group and small objects tended to go missing around him. He was also an unreliable gamer who (when he showed up at all) would frequently play in an altered state of consciousness. The rest of the group had pretty much decided this guy had to go... and luckily, he gave me the perfect opportunity.
A bit of background: Tony's character had recently used his cheesed-out Bluff and Diplomacy checks to seduce a sweet, naive princess into falling head-over-heels in love with him and eventually marrying him. Being Tony, he exploited his newfound royal connections as far as they'd go, and made it clear that his character only cared about her for the wealth and power. He even gifted her another PC's stolen ancestral amulet to show her family how wealthy he was.
Anyway, after doing a bit of adventuring, the group discovered that the villains responsible for a recent string of grisly murders were a cult dedicated to Cas, God of Spite (Heroes of Horror). After delivering pointy justice to said cult, they were looting the underground temple when Tony had one of his characteristically idiotic ideas:
Tony: "I'm going to take a dump on the altar."
Me: "You realize what you're saying, right? You plan to defecate on the sacred altar of the God of Spite?"
Tony: "Yeah, why not?"
So he desecrates the altar. At the end of the next session, the heroes are riding off towards their next adventure:
Me: "Everyone, it's Spot check time. You might also want to try a Listen check, but the DC is a lot higher."
Group: *rolls terribly*
Me: "Nobody notices the winged shape overhead... at least not until [Tony's character] and his horse are replaced with a mound of steaming dung."
Tony: "I don't get a Reflex save?"
Me: "Nobody in the party put points into Spot. You all have crappy Wisdom. You rolled a 2. You didn't even see the shadow until it was too late. So yeah, a dragon just shat on you from from six hundred feet."
Tony: *frowns* "How much damage then, *******?"
Me: "Well, it weighs several hundred pounds and fell from a great height... " *rolls* "45."
Tony: "I died from dragon ****?!"
While Tony sat there, red-faced and fuming, I calmly continued. The rest of the group attempted to dig his dead character and horse out from under the pile when one of them came across something familiar:
Me: "Alerika, you notice a glint of gold as you dig through the feces. Excavating a little more, your heart skips a beat as you realize it's your ancestral amulet!"
Tony: "THAT WAS MY WIFE?!"
Me: "Some it was, yeah. Don't f*ck with the God of Spite."
Uttering a primal shriek of rage, Tony flipped the table over and stormed out of the room, never to return. The group held it together for about five seconds before bursting into gales of laughter. To this day they say it was the best game I ever ran.
...yeah, I felt a little bad about that in retrospect, but the guy had it coming. If you steal my friend's phone and have the audacity to keep showing up at my gaming table, I will have a dragon fatally poop your wife onto your head, and will earn the nickname Assistant God of Spite.
You, sir, are truly a scholar and a gentleman. Huzzah.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shnezz
Man, oh man, have I got a list of these.
Have the level one characters escort a cravan to a town (cliche, I know). The owner then gives them a bank note to take to "The big E.V.I.L. building, in the middle of town." Scares them silly, until they realize it's the "Everyday Villiager's Investment & Loans. E.V.I.L."
Have one character look in the mirror, watch his reflection commit suicide, then don't give him a reflection for the rest of the campign. And then don't explain why. Ever.
Have a character walk up to them on the street, and ask if they can wear the PC's shoes, "just in case."
Name your inn "The Chipper Mudskipper". My players refuse to sleep there, because they assume anything that happy in my setting must be a trap. (Which is wise, since I have an entire plotline set up for the first time they give in and sleep there, but that's beside the point.)
Give them a "Scroll of Locate Hands". They can't resist trying it. Have it announce in a booming voice "On the ends of your arms!" and have that be it.
Give them a massive, bronze key. Make it weigh like 75lbs or something insane. Watch them lug it around forever, because 'It will come in handy eventually!'
Edit: Oh, and a bowl of fresh fruit in the dungeon entrance. Every time.
I want to play with you... You and I.... our Humor would get along swimmingly. :)
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
One thing I like to use is the villain who keeps coming back. Here's an example.
I was running an all monster campaign where the players had to save humanity from an endless swarm of Kythons. Think xenomorphs from Alien, but in D&D. Anyway, they had fought their way into the first nest of the Kythons, and were engaged in a long, intense battle with swarm of the little buggers.
Then, an adult Kython appeared. CR 5 against the 3rd level party, and it used hit and run tactics. It didn't help that they were in the bottom of a shaft, and it effectively added +20 to jump checks. It was instantly assumed that this was the BBEG for this part of the story.
After a long, hard battle, they killed it, although the DMPC Red Dragon who was helping them got its head torn off. They're all at low HP, battered, they've used up most of their spells. Time to head home.
Then the grounds starts to rumble, and a huge sized slaymaster kython appears. It begins grappling two of them and repeatedly biting the rest, dealing huge damage with each attack. In addition, each round it spawned two broodlings(baby kythons) in an adjacent square. Of course, the PCs were so frightened by the big guy that they completely ignored the smaller ones. Big mistake.
They finally killed the slaymaster, with only a few HPs remaining. Luckily one of them has fast healing, but the others are nearly spent. They begin to clean up the broodlings, thinking, yet again, that the encounter is done.
Then one of the broodlings 'undergoes a strange metamorphosis. It grows to a massive size in just a few seconds, it's limbs falling off as it turns serpentine. It is now an exact replica of the kython you just killed'.
You should have seen the looks on their faces. There was silence for a few moments, then one of them said "I hate you".:smallbiggrin:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Here's one my former DM told me he did on a group of players he had. In his game world he had a ghost sorceress who was seeking power and preferred to strike at her enemies indirectly. The party first encountered her when they, and a paladin NPC, managed to thwart her plans. In retaliation she went back to the paladins home town and possessed his wife. When the party returned she attacked and left the paladin with no option but to kill his own wife - however, she vacated the body just as the killing blow fell so his wife would see her husband kill her and thus be unwilling to return via a raise dead spell.
The DM had intended this to be a throw away character as part of a side quest, but the players decided they absolutely had to eliminate her. So they set out to find a way of dealing with her for good. To monitor their progress she arranged for them to acquire a ring which could cast augury on demand. However, since this was 3.0, the identify spell only told them the lowest level of enchantment on the ring. It also had a second enchantment on it, I forget the name, but it meant that any scrying attempt on them would always succeed no matter what spell or item they might use to hide themselves.
As a result, she was always one step ahead of them. If they showed up at dungeon X to obtain McGuffin Y she'd teleport in ahead of them and take it.
Since she could possess people she would occasionally possess party members. Generally the DM would handle this by handing out notes to all PCs with one saying they had been possessed and the rest saying they haven't been possessed. However, he would also sometimes hand out notes to all players with all notes saying that they haven't been possessed - and watch the players go paranoid trying to work out exactly who was now possessed.
The campaign ended with two PCs still alive and in possession of an item that would trap souls. The idea was to wait until someone was possessed, kill them and trap both their soul and that of the ghost. The two players were each convinced that the other was currently possessed and battled it out until one of them was dead. They were wrong, neither was possessed but as soon as there was only one PC standing she possessed them.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
North_Ranger
You, sir, are truly a scholar and a gentleman. Huzzah.
Well, I don't think anyone who dishes out vengeance through a half-ton of fecal matter is a gentleman, but it was still commendable regardless.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Pokonic
-snip-
Your party doesn't have a watch order with at least one party member awake at all times? They deserve to be murdered in their sleep...
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
Ga'Kaal, the Party Leader of my longest campaign, was a Fighter who loved popularity. He kept a travel journal and got scribes to make copies so he could hand out his exploits, loved to tell stories in bars, that kind of thing.
Well eventually the party ended up on this far continent a few game years into the campaign (it was a VERY long running one) and he started hearing these stories of this demon who was plaguing the lands they had come from. They assumed that during their month-long boat ride somehow a demon had started destroying their homeland.
So the party is deciding whether or not to return home or stay in this continent when the Fighter finds a merchant selling stories of the Demon. He decides to buy the book to see what he's up against.
Very quickly he realizes the Demon's insignia was the same as his, and the stories were just a terrible retelling of his own tales translated to many different languages. Instead of the tale of Ga'kaal meeting the one-eyed prince and restoring him to power, the story version had Grakle the Demon force people to live under the rule of a horrible cyclops.
And it got even better when he learned that the mis-telling was actually set up by the BBEG to discredit him...
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
One time the party rescued a prisoner from an orc stronghold and the prisoner was so greatful that he offered his services as a bard to detail the PCs adventure into an epic song. The PCs agreed and took him along on a few more adventurers.
One night at an Inn, the bard vanished on them without warning, but left the completed musical work with the party. The party asked the innkeeper if they saw the bard leave, but the Innkeeper said no such person ever entered with the party. The PCs began retracing their steps, asking various people about the bard, but not one person ever recalled the bard being with the party.
Turns out the bard only existed in the PCs mind as they realized the bard never did interact with anyone except the PCs.
But how to explain the musical epic they have in hand...
:smallbiggrin:
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
The bard was a ghost, and he was so grateful for freeing him that he stuck around to finish the epic before passing on.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
The (low-level) PCs come upon a large battlefield. The wolves and ravens have come to feast on the dead; there appear to be no survivors at all. Yes, OK, they can loot, but the loot is just used weapons and armor.
As they turn to leave, they see, hidden away from the battlefield, a small child, scared and crying, who says, "Have you seen my daddy?"
He has no clothes except a wool blanket, which gives no clues whatsoever.
The child has no name for his father except "Daddy", and can provide no useful information. He is just a difficult problem for them as long as he's with them.
Presumably, they will find some kind of foster-parents.
Several adventures later, when it is impossible to re-find him, they will hear about the kingdom that has plunged into anarchy because the heir to the throne was lost in a great battle.
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Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.
I once "correctly" identied a mimic at the end of a hall. We put a hail of arrows into it from range and killed it. I then proceeded to march victorious into the room only to be reminded that Mimic's also can pose as doors and archways. The Door grew a pair of arms and started to pummel me.