Bizarre Encounters Needed

[Vaern]

Monster Manual III has living spells. Their stats are derived from the caster level and attributes of the spell that created it. Creatures who are struck by the living spell's slam attack are subjected to the effect of the spell that the living spell is made from, as though targeted by or standing in the area of the spell itself.

Living spells are described as oozes that are formed from residual energy in areas that have been devastated by magic. A magical planar disaster that wiped out a kingdom sounds like good circumstances for living spells to be created. Or maybe even just have a specific area where any spell cast becomes a living spell at its target location.

[brian 333]

A Shade Tree

This broadleafed diciduous tree hangs over a clear spring in a meadow which is a perfect campsite. It appears to create a nice shady spot to escape the heat of an afternoon.

The tree will bend its branches to keep the characters shaded. All is well until someone tries to leave the shade. Then the tree will grapple the character and force him back into the shade.

The tree will not inflict damage unless it is attacked. Then it will fight to subdue.

If a cloud blocks the sun so that the character casts no shadow or if the sun sets the characters may come and go as they please.

[Bohandas]

*The sun and moon display images of the future

*People and animals whose feet/hands/paws are disconnected from their bodies like the title character feom the videogame Rayman

*Everyone gains an accent that they didn't have before

*Trees grow overnight

[Wizard_Lizard]

Verything becomes headless.
Trees are made of pigs
pigs are made of wood
Platypuses

[Bohandas]

*Pyramids with actual living giant eyes embedded in them

*Eyes in all sorts of buildings

*Prophetic/premonitory dreams. Not about important events; just about everyday stuff.

*Geodes, except instead of crystals they're filled with bone

*The flesh of all local animals is rubbery and slightly translucent

*Wands, staves, and scrolls go off on their own

*All the grass blades move and sway in unison, completely independent of any sort of wind or seismic activity

*Unusual seismic activity

*Erratic weather. Heatwaves followed by snowstorms followed by tornados and that sort of thing.

*People's hair colors and animals' fur colors slowly shift and change

*Spomtaneous animation of inanimate objects

*Spontaneous reanimation of the dead

*Raining urine

*A volcano erupts paper pulp

*Spontaneous uncontrolled levitation of people and objects

*Spontaneous combustion of people and objects

*Mind Fog covers the land

*Food ceases to provide sustinence

*Mud provides nutritional sustainance

*Areas with no oxygen in the air

*People's teeth spontaneously fall out and then regrow overnight

[noob]

People starts speaking of the mechanics of the world as if they knew everything about the rulebooks and proceeds to forget those rules as soon as you talk to them.

[Wizard_Lizard]

People randomly trats ot kaeps sdrawkcab.
It rains pillows
A platypus.

[noob]

You encounter Wizard lizard and they make no mention to something they usually mention at the end of each post.

[brian 333]

A devil pretending to be a djinn grants a wish, if the character agrees to sign a two hundred ninety-seven page release form lndemnifying the granter of the wish from any legal responsibility or liability for the outcome of the wish.

The wish will be granted exactly as requested with no attempt to twist its meaning, within the limits of the spell description. The drawback is that on page one hundred thirty-four a small clause grants the devil title to the character's soul. Not to worry, though. The devil will sign a nine hundred twenty-three page document leasing the soul to the character in exchange for evil acts done while announcing they are done in his name.

[Wizard_Lizard]

You encounter Wizard lizard and they make no mention to something they usually mention at the end of each post.

huh, what do you mean?/
also, a platypus.

[Bohandas]

*Mirrors display things ghe right way atound instead of mirror reversed

*All written material in a certain area spontaneoualy switches to a different language

[Wizard_Lizard]

gravity reverses
the players are given a compass that only points the wrong way.
a platypus

[brian 333]

Lists of events are not encounters. And there is nothing bizarre about platypusses.

At a clear spring the party encounters a water sprite in the guise of an elderly woman who keeps the spring and its surrounding meadow clean.

She will be friendly and helpful until someone wants to bathe in her spring, at which time she will become annoyed and demand the character not get her water dirty.

[noob]

Lists of events are not encounters. And there is nothing bizarre about platypusses.

At a clear spring the party encounters a water sprite in the guise of an elderly woman who keeps the spring and its surrounding meadow clean.

She will be friendly and helpful until someone wants to bathe in her spring, at which time she will become annoyed and demand the character not get her water dirty.

Encounters can be anything that either hampers your quest or is a part of it.
So if you meet the precious material growth event the danger of it hampers your progress toward your quest and thus it is an encounter.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Lists of events are not encounters. And there is nothing bizarre about platypusses.

Have you SEEN a platypus?

[Aniikinis]

Have you SEEN a platypus?

Naw, forget seeing. Have you looked into their anatomy? it's even weirder.

[brian 333]

I've touched one. They are placental mammals, no weirder than you or I. Well, no weirder than me at any rate. I find lizards which can asexually reproduce and discard segments of their body at will to be far weirder.

A clockwork knight stands in in the road like a giant child's forgotten toy. It has an obvious key in its back which can be used to wind it up. If any character chooses to wind it up have the player say how many turns.

The knight will animate for a number of rounds equal to the number of turns. It will also duel the PC who wound it as ifa fighter of equal level.

[Bohandas]

I've touched one. They are placental mammals,

No they're monotreme mammals; they have fur and nipples but they lay eggs

[Bohandas]

*Try as they may to do otherwise, the bard is only able to sing radio edits of their songs

*Wild magic zones appear everywhere

*Flying islands

*Lookalikes of the party

[Wizard_Lizard]

I've touched one. They are placental mammals, no weirder than you or I. Well, no weirder than me at any rate.

They are Bird mammals, that can swim, and have poison feet.

The party encounters an old hag, who, upon being approached, disintegrates into butterflies.

[Squire Doodad]

Hmmm

Aside from making a "Dire Camels in a swamp" joke, there's something to be said about having Prehistoric animals, particularly invertebrates. I don't mean 50 Deinonychus chasing after you, I mean things like Heliocrion, which is basically a shark with a sawblade mouth. Try working with puns to have Trilobites with exotic powers and a whole bunch of Cambrian-Denovian buggers that look weird as hell. Give them the ability to afflict people with hallucinations and delirium, but only say that the person afflicted sees something, but when others try to interact with the "something" nothing happens. There's a weird one that is called Hallucigenia, try making either a swarm of medium ones or a few Huge ones. If you want to mess with your player's heads, give them equipment that is good against Abberations, then funnel in normal ones with "Extraplanar" versions of the same creature.

Oh, and bring pictures! Preferably sketches, from the internet or otherwise. Yester-Worldly horror isn't complete without giving someone something to visualize with! After all, the human mind is woefully inept at imagining things that we really really hope don't exist and look nothing like anything, at least not big ones.

[Bohandas]

*The sky changes colors, cycling through the colors of the rainbow every 30 minutes or so

*Everyone in the area walks silly, like a character in the 'silly walks' skit on Monty Python. Or possibly they moonwalk everywhere. At any rate, in this particular area that's a more efficient way to walk. Anyone walking normally takes a penalty to their speed

*Text turns into zalgo text

*The PCs encounter a panicked town wherein everyone's eyes have just popped out of their sockets and now dangle by the optic nerve as occasionally happens to that one breed of dog (edit: several breeds apparently, including pugs and shih tzus)

There's a weird one that is called Hallucigenia, try making either a swarm of medium ones or a few Huge ones.

and Opabinia, which was discovered in the same region and looks vaguely like a cross between a beholder and an insect, with a mess of eyestalks and a chitinous segmented body

[Squire Doodad]

and Opabinia, which was discovered in the same region and looks vaguely like a cross between a beholder and an insect, with a mess of eyestalks and a chitinous segmented body

Ohhh that's a fun one >:D
I once told someone to add that into a game. They asked what sourcebook I got it from. I gave them a book on Cambrian life.

Crinoids are a tad more modern (they've endured since the Ordovician) but are fun for a marine variant of the "plant-vine-beast comes to life and wraps around your guide's head" trick, or anywhere at all if you have a sufficiently bizarre (read:a bit) otherworldly scenario. They are animals by the way. Give them razor feelers and mild stat toxins (only does 1d4 of either DEX or STR or something and prevents you from getting hit again until after it wears off, clears up after any rest or an hour), and if you want make them spew acid/poison/blinding dust/dust that explodes (either whips around briefly to spray it in the target's direction+up to 1d8-1 (1d6 if using hexes and stuff) more directions, or gathers up the stuff in itself and hurls a blob at the target.)

Nature is absolutely full of things to use in games, some horrific, some exotic, some as substitutes for daily things, and some just for sheer epicness. If I had more practice sketching out monster stats I could probably write a sourcebook of just prehistoric creatures alone, that's how many viable creatures there are.

[Bohandas]

Any of the weirder options feom the Heimberg/Gomberg Would You Rather books, like a man with a sausage halo, or a ketchup dispensing navel, or their own (seperate and diegetic) narrator, or the heads of the cast of Fantasy Island where their hands should be

[Squire Doodad]

Any of the weirder options feom the Heimberg/Gomberg Would You Rather books, like a man with a sausage halo, or a ketchup dispensing navel, or their own (seperate and diegetic) narrator, or the heads of the cast of Fantasy Island where their hands should be

That sounds like we're getting into Magicant-style territory here, interesting. There's always a way to randomly combine things to get weird effects.

[Wizard_Lizard]

everything gets inverted.

[Squire Doodad]

everything gets inverted.

That is one of the simplest ones, though. Making specific things that work weirdly tends to be more fun. It also makes it less likely to bring up questions that you can't answer, like whether or not color spray is supposed to produce inverted colors and how that would work. And then you have to compare it to whether or not the inverted color spray will still work on a creature that was supposed to be vulnerable to bright lights and whether it is now vulnerable to dark lights, or if it is rather weak to darkness...

I find it simpler to make certain, planned bits of chaos, if that makes sense.

The area is filled with 50 different kinds of slimes and elementals. Element-based weaknesses are the same, but matter-based attacks now are treated as though they were magic, and magic is treated as though it was a matter-based form of whatever occurred, even if the spell itself is not meant to be a manifestation of anything.

Next room: lots of ravines and deep pits, but also plenty of moderately deep shafts. Fall damage works in reverse, getting less significant the further down you fall. There are plenty of distortions present that make you pop up much closer to the ground, shortening the trip and causing you to hurt more. Feather Fall works as usual, but has a 1 in 6 chance of being dispelled by a portal.


Egg-shaped machines that shoot chickens as a breath attack
A can of tuna is sitting in the middle of the road. If the players touch it, it becomes full of olives which disintegrates if the players attempt to eat it. Two rooms/encounters/etc. later is a monster that is enraged by the smell of olives and will attack furiously.

[Wizard_Lizard]

All water mysteriously turns into acid.

[aimlessPolymath]

Upside-down crabs walk along the underside of the surface tension of water.

[Wizard_Lizard]

A massive sandstorm engulfs the area, and three frogs crawl out from under a rock, if anyone attacks a frog, they all turn into Dire Wolves.