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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Kaun's Avatar

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    Default 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.

  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Kelb_Panthera's Avatar

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    I just want to say you are all villainous bastards.

    Don't ever change.
    Last edited by Kelb_Panthera; 2012-07-08 at 09:30 PM.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaun View Post
    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.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Kaun's Avatar

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
    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.

  5. - Top - End - #35
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    newBlazingAngel's Avatar

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Maybe a d2 or d3 of minor damage.
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  6. - Top - End - #36
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    Kaun's Avatar

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by newBlazingAngel View Post
    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.

  7. - Top - End - #37
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaun View Post
    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.

  8. - Top - End - #38
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    Default 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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    No I did not make my own banner, it was created by a very talented person who I've lost contact with.

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    First level paladin.
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    DEX: 8
    CON: 10
    INT:13
    WIS: 12
    CHA: 16

  9. - Top - End - #39
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    Default 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.

  10. - Top - End - #40
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    Default 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 )
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  11. - Top - End - #41
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    AssassinGuy

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Xerinous View Post
    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.

  12. - Top - End - #42
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    SwashbucklerGuy

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    Default 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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    *Proceeds to google "Bride of the Portable Hole", jokingly wondering if it might exist*

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    What.

  13. - Top - End - #43
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    Kymme's Avatar

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    Default 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.

  14. - Top - End - #44
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    biggrin 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.

  15. - Top - End - #45
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    Default 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 they have come across one guy who was turned to stone but mostly they are just rather good statues
    "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

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  16. - Top - End - #46
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    Kobold

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    Default 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.
    Last edited by supermonkeyjoe; 2012-07-09 at 10:45 AM.

  17. - Top - End - #47
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    Default 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.

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    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.

  18. - Top - End - #48
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    newBlazingAngel's Avatar

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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Seriously, the God of spite. It was really far too easy.
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    No I did not make my own banner, it was created by a very talented person who I've lost contact with.

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    First level paladin.
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  19. - Top - End - #49
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by holywhippet View Post
    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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  20. - Top - End - #50
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dire Panda View Post
    This is how you dish out poetic justice to problem players. C&P'ed from the funny stories topic.

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    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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  21. - Top - End - #51
    Orc in the Playground
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Shnezz View Post
    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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  22. - Top - End - #52
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    Default 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".
    ~Sneaky Weasel~

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  23. - Top - End - #53
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    AssassinGuy

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    Mar 2007
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    Canberra, Australia
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    Default 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.

  24. - Top - End - #54
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Doorhandle's Avatar

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    May 2011
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    Australia
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    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by North_Ranger View Post
    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.
    Can't write. Can't plan. Can draw a little.
    Quote Originally Posted by Craft (Cheese) View Post
    "In his free time, he gates in Balors just so he can kill and eat them later!"

  25. - Top - End - #55
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Feb 2012

    Default Re: Hilarious Ways to mess with your players.

    Quote Originally Posted by Pokonic View Post
    -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...
    Quote Originally Posted by SSGoW View Post
    95% of martial problems can be solved by Tome of Battle...

  26. - Top - End - #56
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Nov 2007
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    As often as possible
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    Default 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...
    Gnomish Decker by me! You can find more of my work here!!! Also, my Tumblr, if you're into that
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    You fell for my firewall, chummer
    The data highways are infinite and I've info left to tread

  27. - Top - End - #57
    Spamalot in the Playground
     
    DigoDragon's Avatar

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    May 2008
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    Orlando, FL
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    Default 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...
    Digo Dragon - Artist
    D&D 5e Homebrew: My Little Pony Races

  28. - Top - End - #58
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    The Random NPC's Avatar

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    Jul 2009

    Default 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.
    See when a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, you can bet we've bought the vinyl.
    -Snow White

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  29. - Top - End - #59
    Titan in the Playground
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    Oct 2010
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    Dallas, TX
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    Default 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.

  30. - Top - End - #60
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

    Join Date
    Aug 2011

    Default 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.
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