Highlights of Hilarious DnD Games

[Dmitri]

So I'm playing DnD with my wife, sister, and friend from church. The wife and sister are both brand new to the game, and the friend from church hasn't played in several years (only knows about 3.0). The wife is a bard, the sister is a ranger, the friend is a cleric.

So we are playing a simple module, just to get the hang of the game. After setting off a thunderstone trap, the heroes are entering a room. Though I actually asked if they wanted to listen at the door, or something along those lines, they don't. They barge right into the room, and are (of course) caught off guard by a group of kobolds, with cover, firing crossbows at them from behind overturned tables. Of course the kobolds roll ridiculously well, and manage to just about kill the bard, who insisted on walking in first. So the cleric rushes in, and starts healing. The ranger rushes in, shooting, and takes damage in excess of half her hitpoints. What happens next? Everyone runs back out, leaving the cleric standing there, with 9 kobolds shooting at her! Then, to top it all off, they close the door, again leaving the cleric totally stranded. I just about fell off my chair - thankfully the cleric had the brains to bum-rush the kobolds, and enter melee (-4 penalty shooting into melee). If she hadn't she'd have probably been dead.

[Dmitri]

Later in the same game, the heroes are entering another room, and they climb a ladder leading up to a ledge. When they reach the top, there are 3 kobolds standing there, with a huddled mass behind them under a cloak. All of the kobolds immediately place their weapons on the ground, and one, the obvious leader, steps forward to parley. It speaks to the bard, the group spokesperson, in broken Common, saying that they are not going to hurt the adventurers, that they face a common threat, etc. The bard asks how they know about the threat. The kobold tells her that there own people have been killed (the threat is an orc cleric spreading disease to a nearby town, who lives a little ways deeper in the cave). The bard asks why these kobolds are still alive. The kobold responds that he has some small measure of power to keep them safe, and begins casting a spell.

Now here's where it gets funny. Everyone rolls a spellcraft check to determine if they know the spell being cast. The bard succeeds, and realizes it is "Dancing Lights". The bard, because she is new, doesn't know what the spell does, so I let her look it up in the PHB, and explain it as well. She then attacks the kobold sorcerer with her longsword! The whole scene descends into chaos, as I never expected them to fight the darn things - I don't even have a list of the sorcerer's spells known! Meanwhile, they are realizing that these kobolds are not like the other ones - they have class levels! It would have been a CR 6 encounter or something, and they are 3 level 1 characters...

Needless to say, they all ran like the wind, and the nice DM didn't have the monsters give chase...

[Dmitri]

After my little group got the hang of the game, we got a real campaign going - wife (bard), sister (ranger), friend (cleric) and her husband (wizard), and friend's father (fighter). We played a bit, getting to know the town, finding the first "quest" (discover the whereabouts of the town's missing wizard), and beginning to explore the dungeon beneath the wizards house. After a few encounters, a couple of clues, and a little bit of looting of the missing wizard's house, we called it a night. Everyone went home except my sister, who had decided to crash for the night at my place on the couch. That's when it got weird...

My sister takes Ambien, a drug to help her sleep. She popped one right as the game was wrapping up, and started getting kind of loopy quickly. So she laid down on the couch, and me and my wife went to bed.

When we came down, the next morning, we were speechless. A table had been wedged into the landing of the stairs, there were dice scattered all over the floor, the fridge door was partly open, there was a water bottle half finished by the couch, and a half-eaten pack of pepperoni. And, lying by the couch, was a notebook outlining the nocturnal weirdness of my sister.

She had apparently awoken sometime shorty after we went to bed, still high on the Ambien. She decided she needed to make sure that my living room was a safe place to rest for the night, so she "barricaded" the steps (I had stressed to everyone the importance of setting watch and finding safety before making camp). She then rolled spot and listen checks on my floor, and looted the fridge before passing out again on the sofa.

This is why DnD and drugs don't mix...

[Kaber]

roflmao

Wow! Great stuff. That's awesome.

[Dmitri]

Just was reading the DM's guide, and remembered this story from my a while ago...

So my friends and I are playing a game with a real railroad DM. I mean to tell you, his plots are inescapable. No matter what you roleplayed, (and we where hardcore RP people), you were forced into his plotline. Anyway, we were a little frustrated, especially with his deus ex machina combat sequences (impossible CR enemy, ready to kill us, and an NPC shows up to save the day). So we decided to get the better of him...

I was playing a cler3/sorc3/mystic thuerge7 in a caster heavy group. As I recall, we had a bard, a wiz, a cleric, me, a ranger, and a rogue/wiz multiclass. Our DM threw a ridiculous SR monster at us (as usual), but we were ready. The DM couldn't figure out why I had spent so long trying to aquire a "Daern's Instant Fortress" in the last large city (see DM guide, wondrous items for full description).

It was some kinda crazy giant hell hound type of creature... like a cerberus or something... our rogue/wiz scouted it out using etherial jaunt, so we packed up the Instant Fortress in a piece of meat and sent the rogue to leave it as an offering...

So the dog ate it.

And we laughed as we spoke the command word and the cube expanded into a 20 foot tall tower... in its stomach...

Dead doggie... upset DM... kinda sweet revenge for us...

[Ashory]

LMAO Omg! I didn't know that you posted this about us, ya nerd! That is too hilarious. You forgot about how I survived being locked in the room of kobolds not only by bum-rushing, but by throwing diseased flour at them and creating a big toxic cloud. ;D haha Good times...

[Dmitri]

Yea, that was good thinking. I mostly thought it was funny having the cleric rush to save the day only to be abandoned and then shut in the room with baddies...

[Ashory]

I know. I don't think they understood the concept of mortality all that well...

[grond]

We recently got surprised by a beholder (we knew it was there, but it still ambushed us) in LGG3. It was a nasty fight at the entrance of a dungeon we had already almost completely explored in which 2 characters were the victims of finger of death beams and a third suffered from being turned to stone (flesh to stone beam). Meanwhile my character, who had to save against all of the beholder's beams at least 3 times, managed to survive and finally kill the thing. (I can't help but feel that a bone was thrown to us on that one). Here's where it gets twisted; In the previous exploration of the dungeon, we used the fly spell to navigate the many very long vertical drops created by the beholder. This time around we were at the entrance and the treasure was somewhere further inside the cavern, past an unclimbable 30ft drop, and then another unclimbable 90ft drop, and then a similar 60ft drop. The only character still able to move after the fight was a fighter/barbarian. No fly spell. So I thought about it, and with nowhere else to go, and nothing to save the party, I jumped down those holes. Yeah, I also never bothered with rope, and only one party member had a 50ft rope.
Unfortunately, I found a way back out along with a way to un-petrify our sorcerer, but for a little while I actually thought I was sending my barbarian into a living tomb he would never escape. He had a ring of sustenance, so he would also never starve, and thus not die for many many years.

[Rincewind]

Funny part: If you'd found one hidden doorway, it would have led to a 120 foot deep pit which led to a dead end where the beholder ate his meals. I'm not sure anyone would have looked for you there for QUITE some time.

[grond]

Yes, and the gnome in the other chamber, too afraid to leave lest the beholder should be waiting for him, might have starved to death!
That would have been a rather humerous total party wipe out (can't really call it a TPK now can we?

[Steve]

My players are currently running through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and just got to the Crater Ridge Mines, which is inside a dormant volcano. At one point, a few thoqquas burrow up for the party to fight, leaving a magma-filled pipe down to the main magma reservoir in the volcano. For some reason, my party thought there was going to be something at the bottom of this pipe, so they send down the half-fire elemental in the group (immune to fire/heat, of course) to look. After reaching the magma reservoir, he finds the diamond plug (a thick layer of solid diamond that's formed by the intense heat and pressure in a volcano) where the top of the volcano is. His immediate reaction, being a hack-and-slasher, is "diamonds=treasure=power". He gave no thought to geology.
I, however, had.
After he shot a few sonic energy spells at the plug, it cracked and a few extremely valuable hunks fell off, which he was able to salvage. He comes back up, triumphant, holding a massive diamond the size of his head.

Meanwhile, I secretly roll a d100. My result dictates that he has just reactivated the volcano. There is immediately an enormous earthquake, and magma pipes erupt all over the dungeon. The town near the base of this volcano now has significant damages that they are blaming the players for. Next session, the group will have to negotiate with a very, very angry town or face either execution or 100,000 gold in damage repairs. The diamond will be worth only 10K when appraised.

I love my group. I really do.