Some decisions seem innocent enough, in the moment that they occur, but end up being fatal for the party. The most common is probably the wizard who tosses fireball in small enclosed room and takes out the entire party.
Spoiler for episode 93 of critical role (As little as I can get away with)
What brought this on, I was watching Critical Role, Vox Machina made such a fatal mistake, that didn't seem that bad at first. Its always bad to leave a party member behind, its just the specific party member they left behind.
Context, the party doesn't have a cleric (as Ashely is off doing important filming things) and are in Hell to kill someone. They are attacked by some imps/other fiends and all take their movement to move away. Keyleth had chosen not to move on her turn as she was following another character who was leading the way. This resulted in everyone moving away except Keyleth, who then gets attacked and knocked unconscious by all the monsters, getting hit one last time to take 2 automatic death fails. By luck of the draw, the very next action was hers, forcing her to make her final death save before anyone had a chance to go toward her. The catch is that Keyleth was the way out with the spell planeshift and without it the party potentially would be stuck in hell for an eternity.
In a field full of scarecrows we find out some are ghouls in disguise (or so we thought). We thought to save going up to them all and seeing if they are ghouls or just scarecrows we would throw something at them..................... so me as my war Cleric throws Sacred Flame............ it hits............ turns out it was a kidnapped girl who had been bitten by a ghoul but easily healable/saveable.............. ends with one toasted dead girl and then we find her brother..................... bit of explaining to do and one upset sad worried scared Cleric unable to attack anything for a while as he is worried he will hurt someone innocent.
Party is fighting a huge mob of orcs while in a ravine where the orcs can't hit them from the sides. Wizard gets bored in the back and uses levitation to get high enough that he can drop a fireball into the back ranks. Bored orcs in the back row see floating dude with no armor. 36 arrow, javelin, throwing axe and crossbow attacks later the wizard is a very dead pincushion. If you can shoot them, they can probably shoot you too.
One of my friends is a metagamer. He was reading a book about traps and announces "I don't need to check for traps anymore because there isn't a single one in any rule book that does more HP damage than I have" The next door he opens is attached to the handle of a trebuchet. By the old rules they deal 1d10 structural damage and human bodies have 1 structural point. We scooped up his remains and used a resurrect spell on him. No it wasn't a grudge monster, the DM actually had the trebuchet there in his notes, he only chose to use the battlefield damage rules to make his point.
Party is walking through the shadowfell past realms ruled by frost giants and near a gateway to the abyss. They get in a fight with some giants who were chasing a witch, in the fight she gets stabbed lightly and only two characters pass the perception check to see that her blood turns to spiders when it hits the ground. One of them assumes that's flavor text about being near the abyss. After defeating the giants she shrinks herself down to human size and he accepts her offer of a kiss to reward him for his heroism. The other perceptive character notices that she took a couple strands of his hair while distracting him with a kiss, but chooses not to say anything because he has it coming. Later as he is afflicted with multiple curses and diseases (tongue rot, boils, lesions, etc) and each night gets weaker and weaker the second character asks him, "so, riddle me this Don Juan: What is it that wields magic, lives in the world of darkness just outside the gates of hell, can change its size and or shape at will and has blood that turns into spiders?" "Umm, I dunno but that doesn't sound good" "demon, night hag, or something worse you dumba$$. Why the hell did you kiss her?" "Well, she was cute".
2nd edition AD&D game, a level 12-ish party keeps seeing a great wyrm red flying in the distance as it terrorizes the campaign world. It basically just looks like a comet or fireball. They come to refer to it as the "Flying Orange Turd" and make the mistake of calling it that where its servants can hear. Two days later while walking along a lake the FOT shows up. Party behaves fearlessly, as if the dragon is a joke because they've spent a year of game time getting ready and they believe "if it is in the game the DM intends for us to kill it". Everyone is highly resistant to fire, weilding weapons with bonuses vs dragons etc., they stand knee deep in lake water and put up a bunch of buffs and wards. Dragon breathes fire into the water and puts up a massive cloud of steam blinding everyone. WOOOOSH it goes overhead. Steam clears. The rogue (who first invented the "FOT" nickname) is missing (grappled/grabbed and carried away by the dragon). Every few hours over the next three days the party finds a small piece of his body.
We are in a goblin cave. We've already avoided/sprung a few traps and dealt with one ambush. We know there are more goblins further in the cave and decide to set up our own ambush. We are waiting for about 10 minutes ready to attack when/if they come to see if we've left yet when the paladin gets bored and charges in completely alone and dashing so he can't take the dodge action. We're all spread out and have set up our own traps so we're all rushing to follow him. Two of us are at least two rounds behind the others because they stayed back to lob arrows/spells. Another one of us doesn't think to avoid our trap and gets himself caught in it. The last one also dashes to catch up to the paladin. Those two are turned into pincushions as soon as they round the corner. The rest of us are picked off one by one except for the ranger who decides to surrender when they threaten to finish off the ones that they have already knocked down.
They both took the left fork while we went to the right and that is when we heard it the sound of rollin' dice We wondered why we had ignored those words of sage advice...
Don't You Know? You never split the party Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty The wizard in the middle where he can shed some light And you never let that damn thief out of sight
*stops singing*
I've been in so many situations like yours sexy. When one or two people run off like that, it always ends badly. Well, sometimes both badly and funny.
They both took the left fork while we went to the right and that is when we heard it the sound of rollin' dice We wondered why we had ignored those words of sage advice...
Don't You Know? You never split the party Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty The wizard in the middle where he can shed some light And you never let that damn thief out of sight
*stops singing*
I've been in so many situations like yours sexy. When one or two people run off like that, it always ends badly. Well, sometimes both badly and funny.
Hilarious because the guy playing the Paladin is a veteran player and knew how stupid his action was.
Just last night: we were attacking a gnoll camp and decided to attack from a cliff above them with ranged attacks. We completely forgot that of all of us, the only one who would have the range to attack the gnolls was our ranger with sharpshooter. So the wizard and barbarian both decided to jump off the cliff and featherfall to the ground. So they were just floating there for the next four rounds as they gradually descended from 200+ feet up, all the while getting pincushioned by the gnolls with their shortbows.
The wizard was a kobold and it was daytime, so sunlight sensitivity was giving him disadvantage on his attacks. The barbarian had no ranged weapons, having sold his javelins in town earlier to afford the druid's bail when she got arrested for casting entangle in a busy street after being told by their young child guide that a halfling man posing as a child who was on that street had been bullying him.
Once I was playing a Gnoll Fighter, and was exploring a dungeon with my party.
Me and the rogue are standing by an alchemists table in the dungeon with a few potions on it. I try and identify them and fail epicly. The rogue starts giving me shit, so I say "**** these potions, I'm a Gnoll!" and flip the table.
They were potions of blasting or something. The DM got this huge smile and pulled out a whole fist full of D6's.
It did something like 60-70 points of damage. The rogue was already hurt, and he failed his reflex check, yet some how I passed mine. I survived, the rogue was melted.
Afterwards I took his magical dagger.
When the rest of the party came and asked what had happened I explained by saying "I'm a Gnoll."
He was the sort of player who had an idea for a new character as soon as he finished building the current one, so he was a little salty for about half an hour, but he got over it and made a new character.
Losing a character that you've "raised" is always painful, regardless how much an 'experienced veteran.' Losing a friend always brings a bit of salt out. A time-out is in order and after reflection, a new character and lessons learned carries the game! We've (mostly) all have been there. -)
TQQdles™
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Some decisions seem innocent enough, in the moment that they occur, but end up being fatal for the party. The most common is probably the wizard who tosses fireball in small enclosed room and takes out the entire party.
Spoiler for episode 93 of critical role (As little as I can get away with)
What brought this on, I was watching Critical Role, Vox Machina made such a fatal mistake, that didn't seem that bad at first. Its always bad to leave a party member behind, its just the specific party member they left behind.
Context, the party doesn't have a cleric (as Ashely is off doing important filming things) and are in Hell to kill someone. They are attacked by some imps/other fiends and all take their movement to move away. Keyleth had chosen not to move on her turn as she was following another character who was leading the way. This resulted in everyone moving away except Keyleth, who then gets attacked and knocked unconscious by all the monsters, getting hit one last time to take 2 automatic death fails. By luck of the draw, the very next action was hers, forcing her to make her final death save before anyone had a chance to go toward her. The catch is that Keyleth was the way out with the spell planeshift and without it the party potentially would be stuck in hell for an eternity.
Happened last night.......
In a field full of scarecrows we find out some are ghouls in disguise (or so we thought). We thought to save going up to them all and seeing if they are ghouls or just scarecrows we would throw something at them..................... so me as my war Cleric throws Sacred Flame............ it hits............ turns out it was a kidnapped girl who had been bitten by a ghoul but easily healable/saveable.............. ends with one toasted dead girl and then we find her brother..................... bit of explaining to do and one upset sad worried scared Cleric unable to attack anything for a while as he is worried he will hurt someone innocent.
Damn you DM!!
Evil DMs!
Punched a wall in frustration as a derpadin. Wall was warded/trapped and we were all burned.
In a group I DMed they used rope to get down. It didn't reach all the way so they dropped the rest. Then they were stuck down in a hole.
That rope thing sounds like classic players. Short sided and overcome one problem at a time without thinking about another one.
Party is fighting a huge mob of orcs while in a ravine where the orcs can't hit them from the sides. Wizard gets bored in the back and uses levitation to get high enough that he can drop a fireball into the back ranks. Bored orcs in the back row see floating dude with no armor. 36 arrow, javelin, throwing axe and crossbow attacks later the wizard is a very dead pincushion. If you can shoot them, they can probably shoot you too.
One of my friends is a metagamer. He was reading a book about traps and announces "I don't need to check for traps anymore because there isn't a single one in any rule book that does more HP damage than I have" The next door he opens is attached to the handle of a trebuchet. By the old rules they deal 1d10 structural damage and human bodies have 1 structural point. We scooped up his remains and used a resurrect spell on him. No it wasn't a grudge monster, the DM actually had the trebuchet there in his notes, he only chose to use the battlefield damage rules to make his point.
Party is walking through the shadowfell past realms ruled by frost giants and near a gateway to the abyss. They get in a fight with some giants who were chasing a witch, in the fight she gets stabbed lightly and only two characters pass the perception check to see that her blood turns to spiders when it hits the ground. One of them assumes that's flavor text about being near the abyss. After defeating the giants she shrinks herself down to human size and he accepts her offer of a kiss to reward him for his heroism. The other perceptive character notices that she took a couple strands of his hair while distracting him with a kiss, but chooses not to say anything because he has it coming. Later as he is afflicted with multiple curses and diseases (tongue rot, boils, lesions, etc) and each night gets weaker and weaker the second character asks him, "so, riddle me this Don Juan: What is it that wields magic, lives in the world of darkness just outside the gates of hell, can change its size and or shape at will and has blood that turns into spiders?" "Umm, I dunno but that doesn't sound good" "demon, night hag, or something worse you dumba$$. Why the hell did you kiss her?" "Well, she was cute".
2nd edition AD&D game, a level 12-ish party keeps seeing a great wyrm red flying in the distance as it terrorizes the campaign world. It basically just looks like a comet or fireball. They come to refer to it as the "Flying Orange Turd" and make the mistake of calling it that where its servants can hear. Two days later while walking along a lake the FOT shows up. Party behaves fearlessly, as if the dragon is a joke because they've spent a year of game time getting ready and they believe "if it is in the game the DM intends for us to kill it". Everyone is highly resistant to fire, weilding weapons with bonuses vs dragons etc., they stand knee deep in lake water and put up a bunch of buffs and wards. Dragon breathes fire into the water and puts up a massive cloud of steam blinding everyone. WOOOOSH it goes overhead. Steam clears. The rogue (who first invented the "FOT" nickname) is missing (grappled/grabbed and carried away by the dragon). Every few hours over the next three days the party finds a small piece of his body.
We are in a goblin cave. We've already avoided/sprung a few traps and dealt with one ambush. We know there are more goblins further in the cave and decide to set up our own ambush. We are waiting for about 10 minutes ready to attack when/if they come to see if we've left yet when the paladin gets bored and charges in completely alone and dashing so he can't take the dodge action. We're all spread out and have set up our own traps so we're all rushing to follow him. Two of us are at least two rounds behind the others because they stayed back to lob arrows/spells. Another one of us doesn't think to avoid our trap and gets himself caught in it. The last one also dashes to catch up to the paladin. Those two are turned into pincushions as soon as they round the corner. The rest of us are picked off one by one except for the ranger who decides to surrender when they threaten to finish off the ones that they have already knocked down.
*sings for sexyjesus*
They both took the left fork while we went to the right and that is when we heard it the sound of rollin' dice We wondered why we had ignored those words of sage advice...
Don't You Know? You never split the party Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty The wizard in the middle where he can shed some light And you never let that damn thief out of sight
*stops singing*
I've been in so many situations like yours sexy. When one or two people run off like that, it always ends badly. Well, sometimes both badly and funny.
Just last night, we took a large golden egg and caused it to hatch. Then my druid attempted to tame what came out of it, I was ate.
It was a newly hatched Tarrasque.
Just last night: we were attacking a gnoll camp and decided to attack from a cliff above them with ranged attacks. We completely forgot that of all of us, the only one who would have the range to attack the gnolls was our ranger with sharpshooter. So the wizard and barbarian both decided to jump off the cliff and featherfall to the ground. So they were just floating there for the next four rounds as they gradually descended from 200+ feet up, all the while getting pincushioned by the gnolls with their shortbows.
Lol. At least they could potentially attack while falling.
The wizard was a kobold and it was daytime, so sunlight sensitivity was giving him disadvantage on his attacks. The barbarian had no ranged weapons, having sold his javelins in town earlier to afford the druid's bail when she got arrested for casting entangle in a busy street after being told by their young child guide that a halfling man posing as a child who was on that street had been bullying him.
Once I was playing a Gnoll Fighter, and was exploring a dungeon with my party.
Me and the rogue are standing by an alchemists table in the dungeon with a few potions on it. I try and identify them and fail epicly. The rogue starts giving me shit, so I say "**** these potions, I'm a Gnoll!" and flip the table.
They were potions of blasting or something. The DM got this huge smile and pulled out a whole fist full of D6's.
It did something like 60-70 points of damage. The rogue was already hurt, and he failed his reflex check, yet some how I passed mine. I survived, the rogue was melted.
Afterwards I took his magical dagger.
When the rest of the party came and asked what had happened I explained by saying "I'm a Gnoll."
A gnoll's gotta do what a gnoll's gotta do.
And you always know it's bad when the DM smiles and says "I need more dice".
lol That is an awesome story. Hopefully the other PC wasn't mad at you afterwards.
Be careful what you Wish for... your DM may just give it to you!
He was the sort of player who had an idea for a new character as soon as he finished building the current one, so he was a little salty for about half an hour, but he got over it and made a new character.
Losing a character that you've "raised" is always painful, regardless how much an 'experienced veteran.' Losing a friend always brings a bit of salt out. A time-out is in order and after reflection, a new character and lessons learned carries the game! We've (mostly) all have been there. -)
TQQdles™
Apple ][+ MOSTech 6502 1.0 MHz • 64k Ram • Hercules 8k EGA video card • 300baud USR modem • 2 x 340k 5¼" floppy drives • Software Emulated Sound • Apple DOS 3.3 • Sony 13" TV monitor • Integrated Keyboard • No Mouse
Seeing the orc patrol and thinking, "We can take them!" To our credit, we killed 34 out of 36...
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