The best and the worst

[SpaceYeti]

This thread is for posting your best and/or worst table-top gaming experiences. This includes RPGs, TTW games, or whatever else you play on a table, so long as it's a good read. I'll start off;

One of my players made a Fighter named Bob. Bob was notoriosly oblivious to traps, even though he actually had a decent WIS (and thus a bonus to perception). He continually fell victim to traps, though it was usually more to a lack of caution than to simply not being able to notice. Two of my favorites;

One was a rope some hobgoblins had tied across a broken building strewn field inside a ruined city, with wild grass growing all over and obscuring the view of the rocks, specifically to slow creatures down that much more as they approached for a bit and provide them more time for shooting arrows at the approaching enemies. Well, Bob wasn't much of a ranged guy so he charges straight at the building the hobgoblins were in. As an aside, there were some relatively undamaged stables to the side of the field, which might be walked through to cut down on the amount of time the group was out in the open and which bypassed the rope. Further, approaching the rope at a steady pace (not charging as fast as possible) made the spot DC 10 (55% chance of someone with zero bonus to notice), but Bob was charging headlong, so I gave him a -2 penalty for charging, and another -2 because of all the loose rocks.

Well, didn't matter, he rolled a 1, tripped over the rope, and became the primary target for the archers for a full round. If he had even simply approached with the group, someone would have probably noticed the rope, and he wouldn't have been the closest (and therefore easiest to hit) target. Or, of course, used the stables for cover!

The next one is one of my favorite traps ever, and I try to work one into ever campaign, if not every "dungeon". I call it the "Rock on a rope" trap. Basically, a stick or something is propped against the backside of a door, holding up a rock, or brick, or hammer, or whatever, which is attached to a rope or chain or whatever which is attached to the door frame. Opening the door moves the stick or whatever and causes the rock or whatever to swing towards whoever opened the door. It's a cheap trap, and one easy to avoid or notice beforehand, but good old Bob didn't even bother looking for a trap. He just swung the door open and got a face full of rock. This is also extra funny because he had a pretty good reflex defense. It's almost as though my dice like to punish characters who are good at certain things, but he could have also avoided the trap by looking for it, like most traps he fell for.

This brings me to two of my favorite Bob moments. Later in his career, it's assumed that the group's going to find the traps because Bob's going to set them off. There was one fairly complicated pit trap near the entrance of a cave the group was entering, and for some reason someone besides Bob went in first. This person actually noticed the trap, but walked over it anyhow just to see what happened. Well, she fell down the hole. So Bob, in his infinite wisdom, says "A trap!", and dives in the hole behind her. The group effectively does the dungeon backwards because this trap led to jail cells on the bottom floor, and they all dove in without trying to get back out the way they got in. I actually really liked this strategy though. While it was unexpected, it was highly entertaining, as the very second fight was the boss fight, and the boss wasn't expecting them because nobody rang the alarm.

Another time the group was in a dungeon that had undead in it. They made their way to a room with two hallways in the back corners. The hallways gently sloped downward. I'm not sure why, but the players decided there was a trap in the hallways. Incidentally, they were correct. Perhaps they knew me. It was actually a pretty easy trap to avoid (I didn't really want the group to fall for it). Because this was the next dungeon right after that last trap, which lead to success, Bob proclaims "I bet there's a trap here", and proceeds to jump into the hallway. Well, the trap was simply that the hallway was covered in super slick slimy mold, and spiraled down to a room with a bunch of skeletons in it (the animated kind that like to break flesh), and also the room was full of the slippery slime, making fighting them difficult. So Bob slides down the spiralling hallway trap, crashes into a skeleton, and falls on his butt. As he stands back up to fight the skeletons, he shouts to the group "It's a trap, guys! There are skeletons and stuff!", so the other fighter in the group jumps down the spiraling trap hallway, into Bob, knocking them both over in the middle of a horde of skeletons. Next round, the healer does the same thing. By the time the last player says they're jumping down there, too, I remind him "If nobody's left up here, who's going to trow down a rope or something to let everyone else back up?" So he says "Oh, right!", ties a rope to a pillar and the other end to himself, and jumps down the trap-way.

 

[Chad]

I once made adamantine skinned Warforge name Black Axe.
I took the description of Warforge being Young and Naive to the extreme.

I had a kick ass Warfore that could take on about anyone or anything but I had the temperament of an emotionally starved three year old. This created a interesting dynamic to the game that is not often found in D&D. I like playing with the racial personality traits when I play.

Right now I just started a pathfinders game and I am playing a "Svirfneblin" which is basically a underground dwelling gnome. I am not sure how I am going to play this character yet as I haven't started the campaign yet. Since he is going to by a Samurai I know I want him to be anti-ninja but I haven't really thought much into the details yet. The only Idea I have is to play him as a mostly nocturnal character due to his issues with sunlight but I an not sure if this would just hinder the party more than create an interesting characters.

As far as Worse experience I am not sure. It would most likely have to deal with the weekly campaigns I went to when I first moved here (Westbrook, Me) in August of last year. Its wasn't that the player/characters sucked (which they most often did because they either had players that had to nerf their characters or had no idea how to build a team player character.) However, my largest problem had to do with the fact that they changed the campaign nearly every other week. This sucked because you never got into the meat of a campaign. I don't know if anyone else has a problem with that but I didn't care for it.

 

[Hadoblado]

Nice thread idea ^-^

I play with a large group (10-12 people + DM). The DM is brutal, and the people I play with are mostly careless and/or unintelligent, with the exception of myself and my INTJ housemate (who have incredibly weak characters).

1) - We are making our way through some crazy witch's dungeon. We walk through a hallway and fail to notice a trap. A hidden chamber opens at the top of the room and tar begins spewing all over the party, followed by feathers. Fire appears at each end of the hallway and starts moveing towards us, but we extinguish it with cold spells. We are all now tar-and-feathered. We make our way to a door that opens up a room that seems to be full of swamp and fog. Our fighter and cavalier decide they will move back-to-back, so as to negate any surprise attacks. The tar is still sticky, and they are now stuck together, which is unfortunate because a very large frog monster appears and attacks. Without missing a beat, our cavalier takes his long spear our, and the fighter charges the frog-monster, with the cavalier riding upside down on his back attempting a mounted charge.
The charge worked, and they got off their attack for a large sum of damage. The frog then kicked them over, and they were unable to get up for the rest of the battle.

2) - In the same dungeon, we come to a sand filled room. A bunch of gargoyles appear, and we all make our action accordingly. In such a large group, there was a lot of talking, joking, and rustling of paper as everyone filled in their action sheets. Our cleric of Chandra (someone who while being one of the more intelligent players, almost certainly lies somewhere within the Aspergers spectrum), won initiative, and declared his action: throwing a double damage fireball (from an item) at his feet. He rolled for damage, and killed myself and our new guy druid (we have no protective gear becaue we both have new chars). Everyone else took a more mild 53 damage, the gargoyles, being gargoyles, were entirely unaffected. Everyone in the party have the cleric a funny look, he defended himself by saying he had asked everyone's permission prior, though being as quiet as he is it is probable nobody heard.

The gargoyles attacked with polymorph spells. Another 2-3 players were turned into snails (the room is full of sand, so they immediately begin dehydrating. The subsequent attacks finish off the rest of the party except for Frank, the Minotaur fighter. Frank, being a level 12 Minotaur, and having been in the campaign since the start, is almost entirely invincible. His saves vs polymorph are close to one, he can fully heal himself or other 6/day as a standard action, he has a +5 great axe, +5 horns, +5 fullplate that reflects natural weapons, storm giant strength, and some pretty dodgy character options that allow him to attack for an extra 3d10, and 3d8 (don't ask me how). He finishes off the gargoyles pretty much without a problem.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Worst.

Back pretty soon after third edition first came out, one of my friends decided to run what we would call "The Main Campaign". There were interruptions in it's play; people missing, wanting to try new things, etc, but it was the big, central campaign that, when we were all together for big events, it's what we'd play. There was playing it between those big times, but it was the campaign of the big gatherings primarily.

Well, soon after hitting level 13 (after starting at 10), I moved up north for a few years. I'd try to come back and play, but I simply couldn't keep up, even coming back about once a month. Anyway, the group quickly out-leveled me. They were epic, I was level 16. I was a wizard, so in theory I could reshape the game-world to my will, but the DM only designed things magic really couldn't effect. I became a buff-bot, because none of my spells could affect anything that was a challenge for us, even though my save DCs were so ridiculously high that I couldn't pass them myself. Then, as a final insult, during the last fight of the whole campaign, the only fighter who could actually effect the bad guys was basically the only one doing anything, everyone else was buffing/healing. Even the epic casters couldn't effect anything! Then, though, I cast a level 8 buff on the dude, a super awesome spell which was obviously meant to be, you know, useful, and the DM tells me it would remove all his other buffs.

What?! I mean, I'm not saying his claim didn't have any legs to stand on, I could see how a DM could make that call (as you're essentially turning the dude into a statue, so spells that effect creatures might be said to not effect him), but I don't understand why a DM would make that call. Way to make my character even less useful!

And I was the class which can break the game, rules as written! Instead, I was made insignificant by making my spells (the thing I use to do my job) completely useless! I mean, besides buffing the big fighty dude, but that's really not where wizards shine!

I even made myself an amulet of detect thought, just to help information gather. I could use it to detect sentience in the first round of use, so I just walked around using it all the time, to see if anything that thinks was around, that we couldn't see. The DM, however, made this useless as well, saying that, yes, I detect intelligence... the intelligence of my group and myself is always around. While the spell doesn't specify that you detect specific intelligences, using it any other way is silly, because of course the caster is always within the spell's radius, thus it would always pop a "yes"!!

 

[SpaceYeti]

Another worst;

One time we were playing with two DMs, and two teams, in a multi-layered, gladiatorial arena, in a one shot campaign where everyone fights to the death, and then is rezzed to do it all over again. My team was all killed, I was the last one. I knew where the bad guys were, so I sat in the shadows, waiting for someone to come out, with a readied action to shoot them with my crossbow. Well, for whatever reason, the DM at the other table let someone come out of their platform thing, climbing down a ladder, notice me, and then shoot me dead while still on the ladder...

I was aiming my bow and waiting specifically for someone, anyone, to come out, so I could shoot them. My bow was freaking drawn, I didn't even get an attack roll.

 

[Nezaros]

This happened just the other day, in Star Wars d20. Close enough, right?

Our campaign has us all playing Clone Troopers during the Clone Wars, and our unit is sent down to some planet and rescue a Republic spy in a city. My clone has a jetpack, so I figure I can save some time by jumping halfway across the map to the spy's location. However I neglected to put any points into the Jump skill and so rather than reach my destination I slam into the side of a building and lose most of my hit points. A group of droids comes up around the corner and fires at me, so now I'm hurting pretty bad and decide I have to get out of there. While a grenade would have sufficed to clear the droids out I was pretty tired at this point in the night and decided it would be a better idea to try my jetpack again.

I rolled a 1. And I exploded.

The blast managed to take out a few of the droids and many of the surrounding buildings (serves them right for getting in my way), and death by fire is my preferred method of such, so it wasn't that bad. But I fear my DM likes me a bit less after that one...

 

[SpaceYeti]

Likes you less?! That's hilariously fantastic, how could he possibly like you less?! If we ever find out you can make it to something I'm running, here's your open invitation!

 

[Hadoblado]

By rolling a 1 you probably would have fumbled a grenade for the same result anyway.

 

[Chad]

Another one of my favorite campaigns is when me and the other adventurer I was playing with totally broke our DMs campaign.

Basically he designed the campaign around us being chased by on over whelming necromancer army. We would go form city to city run form the this army and then the cities would be sacked and destroyed after we left them. We played along for the first part think we had not chance to take on this army at lvl 1. However, by time we made it to the second city and realized that the first was destroyed and we had 5 day until the army reached the city we were currently in. We decided to stop running and to fortify the city. We also lucked out to find that the lvl 20 necromancer that was leading the army against us had a lvl 25 wizard brother who was a recluse in a small tower about a days ride form the city. So, we sent the cleric to fetch him because we new even if you could destroy the army the necromancer could just create another one we had no way of killing the necromancer.

Well the DM wanting to keep his campaign on track basically made the DC on the diplomacy check have to be a 20 to succeed to convince the wizard to take on his brother. Well to keep it short the Cleric managed to succeed in his role and the first piece of the puzzle cam in to place.

However, there was still an army of 10,000 undead/orcs/trolls/and one nasty giant. We had a for member party and with in the city they had a city guard of about 100 archers. Since there were 4 gates into the city we decided that to each take a gate and have the archers guard the walls. We also set up traps and boiling tar pits and everything we could imagine form medieval war far.

I was playing a lvl 5 gnome Illusionist at the time but I had some how got my hands on a wand of infinite color spay which was my main weapon of chose due to all the possible effects that it could possibly have. On the luck of the draw I had to stop the giant and his league of undead form entering the city. I was doing pretty well at talking out they undead before they could harm the gate mostly because they were like live 2 or 3 and with very few hit points. Well then comes the giant with his huge mace to take out my gate. Even though I was a gnome and got bonuses the hit the giant I was having no success. I didn't know at the time this was because the DM had made 4 lvl 10 creatures for each of us to overcome. Well, I realized quite quickly that my damaging spells were not effecting this beast and I also ran out of spells since a lvl 5 illusionist has very few spells in the fist place. However I still had my wand of infinite color spray. So I used this on the giant landing a ray of enfeeblement which decreases the giants strength. After the first hit the giant couldn't raise his mace any more. After the second hit he dropped his completely, and after the third hit he fell to the ground under his own wait unable to move for the rest of the battle which was convenient for me because now one else could move him either making him an added protection for my gate.

After the battle was over and we won a sold victory. (we took out all the big guys and about 1,000 troops and the lvl 25 wizard we had befriended took out the necromancer remaining 9,000 with fireballs.) I went down and cut off the head of the giant and while he was still alive and paralyzed by his own wait. Than I put the head on a gold plate and dragged it body threw the town square declaring myself the great and mighty gnomish giant killer.

Well after this we went form lvl 5 to lvl 15 and the campaign was offically over since the whole goal of this campaign to to destroy the necromancer king after we became epic characters. So effectively we broke the campaign and won an almost impossible battle due to a fair amount of luck and creative playing. This would have to be my most epic D&D moment to date.

 

[Jennywocky]

It's always easier to bitch about the bad experiences.

One of my current gamer groups has some really boneheaded people in it. One of the players is actually very knowledgeable, but seems to enjoy making up characters more than playing them... so he'll do things to stay in character that get him killed without much attachment to the actual character. In general, though, he's a decent role-player and good player, and can GM decently as well. His most recent character has been alive two months, so that's positive.

The other one is worse because his characters aren't even that interesting. When playing a barbarian, he managed to incur an entire party wipe in the goblin tunnels by purposefully making lots of noise to attract things to fight (except for myself, the mage, who smelled disaster coming and ran away).

In a later Pathfinder one-shot at tenth level, where we were stealing a dirigible, he thought he could jump out of the damaged airship and somehow "catch it" .... which was ridiculous even with his hyper-boosted strength of 28. About 50,000 tons of airship landed on him; everyone else lived, he was squishy. I have to say, it was amusing because everyone could see it coming but him.

And most recently, he's been trying to play Mages from World of Darkness as if they were fighters, and dying each time. The worst is when my Daeva social-skilled Majesty/Awe vampire managed to ingratiate the group into a troupe of body-armored ghouls with shotguns who would have led us quietly into the facility we were hoping to investigate... and he decided to boost his Strength by 2 and run up and grapple for a shotgun. I just stood there as he was knocked down and shotgunned to death by five guards in the space of a round, while the Promethean hacked someone with a street sign, took a few shots to the gut, and ran away. We ended up rebooting the session with the normal GM the following week, and he did something equally as stupid and almost died in the "real continuity."

(It didn't help that the session started with me being a fairly newly turned vamp, sleeping in my hotel bathroom during the day in a strange city, already nervous; and he came sneaking into my room and knocking on the door and slipping notes under the door harassing me to "see if I was okay." Remember, my character had never met him. When I came out of sleep during the daylight hours, I was so pissed and scared in character I came within an inch of killing him myself.)

There always seems to be one in every crowd. Back in the 90's, we were playing the GM's home-grown game (which was all skill-based BYO class, basically, before D&D and other systems prominently drifted in that direction), and the one player was Vanidor, a self-styled knight, who was not really as noble as he thought he was; he'd loot treasure first, do things to get the glory for himself, trigger fights and then run away before returning to hit them in the back, steal items when no one was looking. I'd like to say it was purposefully self-parody, but no, the player was that clueless. In response (and this was the good part), I played a bard, and so I would compose goofy songs about Vanidor the courageous, who ran his enemies through from behind and was willing to show himself the knave in order to help define "brave," etc. My bard was actually very sincere, which made it even funnier.

Both of these players, btw, were in their late 20's. They play like they were 12.

The latter campaign was fun because i constructed my own spells, and the GM would help me set up parameters and point costs; two of my favorite spells were the "road to the stars" where I could just play my lute and sing and walk across things without falling / sinking (even off cliffs -- it would just create an invisible path for me and my group to proceed ahead on), and the walls / forbiddings, where as long as I sang, I could create a wall of force.

---

My very first "group" I was in, back in college in the 80's, had a great experience with the Grease spell before it became a tried-and-true part of the quirky inventory. We were only second level but had found a Decanter of Endless Water (which has a firehouse setting on it, triggered by the word "geyser" -- we discovered this when someone said, "Guys, are you okay?" after a fight and the decanter went off, causing havoc) and a scroll with Grease on it. Well, we were in a castle dungeon, and Bubba-the Half Ogre started coming down these high steps toward us, and so one of us Greased the step, another hit him with the decanter, and when he tumbled all the way to the bottom, everyone ran up and just started pounding on him, as we knew if he ever got to his feet, we were dead. Phester the cleric delivered the coup de grace with his magic mace, and history was made.

---

I also once briefly played Bixbee the Pixie, a rather megalomaniac pixie who was going to be the "World's Greatest Enchanter." He talked a mile a minute, annoyed the crap out of everyone, and instigated fights unnecessarily with NPCs that the party then had to deal with. (of course, it was purposeful but fun.)

At some point Bixbee was captured and stuck inside a Bag of Holding, and he decided to cut the bag and get out. The way it played was that Bixbee was almost sucked into the Void, and I managed to make a spectacular saving throw, his little wings beating furiously, and somehow managed to avoid being sucked into that black hole.

 

[Jennywocky]

Our lastest WoD (this past week) bears mentioning. It involved scouting out a university loading dock in Chicago for the trail to a pilfered package belonging to the regional Prince.

The first problem: Getting there. NOT a problem when you're a young female vampire with Striking Looks and Manipulation, Persuasion, and Awe out the wazoo. I just dazzled the first drunk guy that came out of the closest bar, and he passed out in the backseat of his own car as we proceeded to drive across town and use up half his gas tank. (For the record, the guy never did wake up. We ended up ditching him on some backstreet, still sleeping in his car, at 5am.)

We got into the building by the Changeling climbing the wall, who then lowered a roll of toilet paper for us to climb up. (He's not quite right in the head.)The mage charmed it briefly to make it as tensilely strong as nylon climbing rope. The Changeling tried to retract the paper when I went to climb, because he thought he was in the men's room and didn't want me to feel embarrassed by going up there; but I Celeritied up the line; and it turns out it was the women's room. (Who are these guys??? Don't they recognize those cute little pill boxes hanging on the stall walls?)

Someone made noise, and the security guard came out looking for us. While my Davae managed to duck behind some boxes and the shifter scurried up an overhead beam, the Changeling and the mage got cornered in the stairwell. But the Changeling (who is 50+ years old in character) managed to magically charm the guy to believe that he and the young-looking mage were on a frat initiation prank, and needed a copy of the security tape to prove they had been in the building. The rent-a-cop was like, "yeah, sure, wth," and actually duped the tape, being so uneducated in his profession that he didn't realize it would copy hours of video and not just the last 60 minutes. (We found out later the cop had been drinking and on edge for certain reasons, so he was kind of muddled anyway.)

My friends were like, "Great, who has a VHS player?" and I'm like, "guys, we're on a college park, and I look like a 19-year-old Asian coed, and it's a Thursday night / Friday morning, and they all probably have a stash of old porn they need a VHS player for.... Soooo.... FRAT HOUSE!" By sheer demographics [female] I got myself easily invited in with my friends [important for a Zelani, I need to be invited into residences], crashed in a room with some drunk/stoned/fornicating college kids, and started watching this surveillance tape, while the stoned kids started watching it too and and began tripping out on it.

One we reviewed the tape, it was obvious the security guard knew more than he had let on, so I was going to go back and interrogate him.

I was down a vitae, so I decided to drain one point of blood from one of the kids. Dumb move. They were practiced drug and booze abusers with high amounts of tolerance, and were stoned and high. Basically it was like the equivalent of me downing a few a shots and smoking two reefers in the space of about ten seconds.

So now you've got a n00b drunk stoned vampire with Celerity [superspeed], a loaded firearm, and pissed off at this security guard who lied to the group [her Vice is Pride].

I played it out as best as I could, with her going back there and jabbing the guy in the chest with my finger (I'm Asian and very lightweight, he was big and overweight and old) telling him off and slurring my words, intimidating the crap out of him, and my fangs were showing because I was kind of out of it, and since he has dealings with vampires, he immediately freaked and started groveling. When I said, "Give me everything!" he basically gave me more than I anticipated.

Which included a wad of bills worth about $20K (his bribe to ignore the crime), a half-bottle of really good bourbon, another copy of the security tape, AND a briefcase he had been instructed to not open until he got home... containing about a half-pound of high-end explosive that would have permanent ended THAT trail.

I gave him $2000 back, to keep his mouth shut, and he felt fortunate to escape with his life. So I went from broke to suddenly making $18K in clandestine money.

Better yet, he had never seen me or the shifter in the building the LAST time, but here I was drunk and spacing, and claiming that he had "lied to us before". He was so bewildered! And he'll probably be dead by someone else's hand by next week, but I digress.

Combat can be fun, but the interplay with the NPCs and figuring out "what to do next" can be even more fun, I think.

 

[Jennywocky]

@SpaceYeti: Haha, Bob the Professional Target / Polish Mine Detector!

I like the story about them diving down the pits and doing the dungeon in reverse, surprising the boss -- glad you played up on that.

@Hadoblado: Still laughing about the tar/feathered mounted charge that actually kills the baddie... and then getting knocked over and being helpless. Hilarious. Those moments are some of the funnest moments I remember in a game, where everything goes to hell, you just go with it, and somehow it still works out...

I also can appreciate group dynamics where almost everyone dies needlessly, and then the one guy left is pretty much unstoppable. Frank probably isn't much use negotiating or charming folks back in town, but in a fight Frank does what Frank does best.

@Nezaros: Buku points for inventive uses of self-immolation. Awesome epic fail!!

@Chad: Great use of the Wand of Enfeeblement. You know, I feel bad for GMs. My Pathfinder GM says he hates GM'ing games past a certain level because it gets really hard to anticipate players, their powers, and having things in the mix that can compensate... especially when the casters start picking up things like Teleport and the group can just skip certain encounters. Obviously there are solutions, but you have to stay on your toes.

 

[Nezaros]

Likes you less?! That's hilariously fantastic, how could he possibly like you less?! If we ever find out you can make it to something I'm running, here's your open invitation!

Haha, thanks. But our DM has an opposition to stupid decisions, and that was definitely a lapse in judgement on my part. I dunno though, if he ever was angry about it I'm sure he's over it now.

By rolling a 1 you probably would have fumbled a grenade for the same result anyway.

I'm not sure you understand how die-rolling works. You see, when someone tries to do something practical, like jetpack away from droids, the gods of RNG tend to screw them over. When an attack is attempted, such as a grenade, they're often more forgiving. And when you try to do something absolutely inane that could never, ever work, like shooting somebody with a tank in an attempt to launch them fifty feet onto a larger tank (which did actually happen once), the trajectory is perfect, the flying clone comes out unscathed, and he wins the Jedi commander's cape.

 

[Chad]

@Chad: Great use of the Wand of Enfeeblement. You know, I feel bad for GMs. My Pathfinder GM says he hates GM'ing games past a certain level because it gets really hard to anticipate players, their powers, and having things in the mix that can compensate... especially when the casters start picking up things like Teleport and the group can just skip certain encounters. Obviously there are solutions, but you have to stay on your toes.

Ya, it happens, however, he was a great DM so he rolled with it pretty will. He just honestly had no were to go with the campaign since it was his own home brew and he had worked on it for months. We all felt bad after he told us but it was all good. We just started up a new campaign the next week.

I enjoyed D&D during college but since than i haven't had the chance to play with players of the same caliber. This new pathfinder's Group I am may be just the kind of group I have been looking for. However there are some iffy things about it. Are DM is new to DMing (this is not necessarily bad he seems quite creative and he is using a existing campaign to help him learn the ropes). We also have two players that have played D&D in 20+ years so they are new too 3.5/pathfinder rules. It will be interesting to see how well the adopt to pathfinders.

This will also be my first time playing a Pathfinder campaign. I did play one pathfinder single encounter while in college but was part of a group I hadn't played with before and they didn't have very good organization. I played mostly 3.5 while I was in college until my Junior year when all my friend graduated. Since than I have played 4.0 mostly with a few playtest of 5.0 next (which I like much better than 4.0 but they still need to add more to it is they wish to improve upon 3.5). So, far pathfinder is very similar to 3.5 (of course all I have done is created my character)

 

[Jennywocky]

I enjoyed D&D during college but since than i haven't had the chance to play with players of the same caliber. This new pathfinder's Group I am may be just the kind of group I have been looking for. However there are some iffy things about it. Are DM is new to DMing (this is not necessarily bad he seems quite creative and he is using a existing campaign to help him learn the ropes). We also have two players that have played D&D in 20+ years so they are new too 3.5/pathfinder rules. It will be interesting to see how well the adopt to pathfinders.

I really really enjoy Pathfinder, including the various classes.
　
I'm kind of old-school D&D as far as my background goes. My first purchase was Dragon magazines (around issue #54?) and the Basic (magenta cover) and Expert (blue cover) D&D boxed sets, and I had a complete set of 1st Edition hardbacks, along with Fiend Folio. I also had the original Gamma World, Top Secret, Paranoia, and Champions.
　
I never actually PLAYED AD&D as a player until college, but it was a lot of fun. At that point, I think the paladin had been set up as a subclass of the cavalier.
　
I then didn't game until the middle 90's, where I was playing AD&D 3.0 (?) -- whatever version had all those red softback "Complete Guide To" books for each class and race. I also helped edit and layout a product attempt to the fantasy RPG market, but the ENFJ creator wouldn't adapt to the playtest results that showed the game was too complicated and wasted too much time in the mechanics, so it died. Magic The Gathering came out somewhere around that time.
　
Then I didn't play for years until maybe 2011, with AD&D 3.5. Once I moved to Maryland, I went straight to Pathfinder and loved it, and play New World of Darkness too. (I've played Exalted, but I hated it... way too complicated, it slows down play.)
　
So far in Pathfinder, I've played a rogue, a witch, and a mage. I did this for variety because normally i seem to like more fighter types nowadays. The witch is fun. She's beautiful but creepy as hell. At this point, she has nasty hexes that will make your life miserable, a high Intimidate, can fly, has prehensile hair, has a spider familiar that climbs around in her hair, and casts creepy spells like Pox Pustules, Burning Gaze, Pain Strike, Contagion, and Spider Swarm. Hexes are pretty awesome -- you can cast them an unlimited amount of times a day, just only [usually] once on a particular person 1xday. It's kind of a trip.

Anyway, I think Pathfinder is enjoyable, with my D&D background... kind of like the D&D I always wanted.

 

[Absurdity]

I've played D&D a few times but most of my table top RPG experience revolves around the Star Wars d20 like Nezaros was talking about. I played it a lot with my brother and neighbors, but since I was the one with the most (over)active I was usually DM.

However I did have this incredibly epic character who was a Gamorrean soldier/force-using shaman type of guy who wrecked anyone and anything. He had like 24 strength and his weapon of choice was a giant log with a spike through the end. The campaign I was playing in wasn't very strict about deviating from the movies, so during the battle of Hoth I force-leapt onto the cockpit of an AT-AT and killed everyone inside. He also had an ability where if he reduced any enemy to 0 HP with a single blow, he could roll again (and there was no limit to this) so he could take out whole trash mobs of Storm Troopers in one turn. Ah, memories.

I think the worst (or most annoying) experience was when I was DM-ing and this guy kept trying to metagame and kill Darth Vader, so I had Vader do his signature force choke on the guy while the Emperor sodomized his character.

More generally, I've had times where I create these super elaborate and intricate campaigns but the players can't connect the dots between clues they are given and it ends up failing. Can be very frustrating.

 

[Chad]

More generally, I've had times where I create these super elaborate and intricate campaigns but the players can't connect the dots between clues they are given and it ends up failing. Can be very frustrating.

I've never DMed out of chose, I am sure I could do it my mind is creative enough but I like focusing in on one character and telling his story. That is what I enjoy about RPG and I somehow thing that I wouldn't get as much joy out of playing a DM. This and I couldn't help by play a vengeful god as DM. It wouldn't be much fun for the players even if I was having a good time.

You know the scenario player is walking down the street and in crowed flat metropolis than tries to meta game and all of sudden a mountain fall form the sky and crushes him.

 

[SpaceYeti]

On another occasion, with a different group of which the consistency is mostly irrelevant except for one; The LG pally who was trying to impress the naive, elven youth, "Holy One" of his same God (and who her beauty was part of why the elves held her in such high esteem, hence the player actually caring)(Also, she's the NPC "grumble" healbot they hired). Anyway, he walks around this 15 by 15 foot room at the end of a hallway, with the door on the far side. I don't know why, but he was chosen to search this room for traps (maybe because the rogue rolled so many 1s before). He ignores the square in the very middle of the room, the one everyone else apparently presumed the trap would actually be in if there were a trap. The only way he could have worded his actions any more clearly would be to say "I search every square in the room except the one in the middle. I generally just let the group say they search a room and roll one roll, but he was specific about the walls and the squares right next to them. His specificity is why we think he also suspected a trap there. So he tells the Fighter that it's k, go ahead and charge the door we can't get unlocked. Fighter hits the trap door, falls onto poisoned spikes, and winds up at half HPs and poisoned in the most painful trap in the entire dungeon, which was also the easiest to find, but the pally didn't even look for one there.

That's not the funny part. The funny part is that, with the "Holy One", the most prettiest elf what ever prettied in pretty-town, who this guy was trying to impress/mentor, right beside him, the pally bursts into a roaring laughter during that moment when everyone else is looking down at the pitiful state the Fighter was in, concerned over whether he would even be alive in the next minute or so.

After then, she sort of ignored his status in their Holy Order and just thought of him as the jerk in the group... which he was.

 

[Jennywocky]

I think the worst (or most annoying) experience was when I was DM-ing and this guy kept trying to metagame and kill Darth Vader, so I had Vader do his signature force choke on the guy while the Emperor sodomized his character.

Holy Hothian Hells, that's hilarious!

yupper, never screw with the GM, or he will screw with you. I hope the Emperor didn't do that "electric" thang during that, uh, intimate encounter...

 

[Absurdity]

Holy Hothian Hells, that's hilarious!

yupper, never screw with the GM, or he will screw with you.

As a DM, it is better to be feared than loved

 

[SpaceYeti]

As a DM, it is better to be feared than loved

I call BS!

 

[SpaceYeti]

The group had befriended a bard who was boisterous and womanizing and egotistical, but ultimately good at heart (Take Gaston, make him a bard instead of a ranger, and make him a good guy (also, smarter... though I would claim Gaston wasn't exactly an idiot. He did scheme pretty well and knew what "expectorate" meant, and had the wit to throw it into a spontaneous song)). He was the leader of a group I used as good guy competition. The players weren't super great at finding a lead and then following it, so I was trying to get the PCs to find a plot to follow, and then follow it, before those guys beat them to the punch. It worked, and they were competitive friends.

One day, they ran into him on the way home from an adventure, except he was almost dead and missing an arm. He traveled with the group for a while, searching for a diamond of the appropriate value to regenerate his arm. There was a Macguffin the group was after which was, incidentally, a giant diamond. After a month of traveling, they find the Macguffin. I was paying attention this whole time to detecting magics and a bunch of stuff. The group never noticed the bard was acting differently and never used any of the bard powers they witnessed him use before. They managed not to discover it was the succubus who had almost killed Bob twice before in disguise! She grabbed the Macguffin and flew away with it, after a month of managing to fool some pretty experienced RPers, by that time.

On a separate occasion, the gnoll wizard of the group had managed to fool some underling priests that he was doing a sermon in place of the head priest, who had to leave suddenly, and he went on to give a pretty good sermon, and got some of the rest of the group arrested for trying to point out he was up to no good (this was the only evil character in the group, the rest of the group putting up with it only because he was mysteriously helpful to them). After the sermon, he left, and nobody ever thought of him as anything besides some guest priest friend of the head priest. Incidentally, he had abducted the head priest and kept him tied up in the closet of his inn room, the same inn room the succubus snuck into for information, found the priest, and killed him to put the party in more trouble.

Unfortunately, the succubus didn't find a good way to get someone up there to find the body before the group left town, so while he was wanted for murder, he was long gone by that time, even getting his friends out of jail to take them. However, this was also their hub town, and would certainly come back, had the campaign not ended first. Kidnapping and holding a priest was bad enough, but murder was far worse, and I was looking forward to seeing how the group would handle that situation (which, if they did poorly, I figure the real bard would eventually come along and talk to them and convince the King to let them go, after they were in prison for a month or so, but it never got that far)

 

[Jennywocky]

As a DM, it is better to be feared than loved

Kill them.
Kill them all.


(Just make 'em whimper a little bit first; and if you can, make them think it's THEIR fault they were dead, even if they never stood a chance!)

 

[SpaceYeti]

Adovan the Brave and The Ruined Symbol of Justice

In one of the few adventures I ran in 3.5 which got epic, one of the characters was a ridiculous Cavalier who got 5 times damage on charge attacks, pretty well min/maxed. This is the player who isn't especially good at math, so he would do everything he could to get a single, solid hit with a huge number at the expense of more attacks which add up to more total damage. He even went so far as to ask for a ring with True Strike to be made for him. I figured why not? So he can get a +20 to attack, spend all that 20 on power attack, and do an extra 150 or so damage in a round. Whatever. It took him a round to activate, and was usable 5 times a day. He was already doing, typically, more than 200 damage a hit. So he had quite the crazy hit, but he only actually made attacks every other round in order to pull it off, and doing less total damage as a result. He loved it, though, so whatever. He topped that off with a feat that could push his target a number of squares equal to the amount of damage he did divided by ten, or some such thing.

So the group is having the final showdown on a legendary flying ship made by the big ancient wizards of old, over a gigantic tear in reality connecting the north pole of their world to above the first layer of hell. The entire campaign was about devils trying to push the prime into hell to make it the new first layer, thus turning the blood war in their favor. The vessel is surrounded by angels, wizards, paladins, and every ally the PCs could figure out how to utilize, fighting against the hordes of hell. The big bad (a devil made from the twisted soul of the greatest swordsman who ever lived, specifically to bring about this apocalypse) and his bodyguards make it to the ship, the PCs waiting for him there.

The defacto leader of the PCs immediately engages in melee combat with it, allowing the casties to 1)control the ship and 2) cast their nifty magics as necessary. Their bow ranger helps him out through pelting the BB. Adovan the Brave, the Cavalier, has his way with whichever of the BB's bodyguard he attacked that second round from last time. The BB is getting low on HPs, so tries to kill the ranger in order to suck his soul into his sword, and then eat the soul from his sword, thus replenishing his entire pool of HPs. Unfortunately for him, the ranger survives at a single, one (1) HPs. This makes up for every time the PCs get a bad guy to one HP and they end up wreaking havoc for another turn.

The group has done enough information gathering to know that's what the BB just tried to do, so they know he's about to lose. It's Adovan's turn. Adovan's player looks up to me, the DM...

Adovan's P; If I shove this guy off the boat, would he crash through the membrane of the magical wing that allows this ship to fly?
Me; There's a good chance of it, yeah. The way you're angled, your attack would, in fact, send him at the wing, and he's certainly massive enough to rip through it, plus he's covered in spikes and has that giant sword.
Adovan's P; to the defacto leader's player; Should I do it?
Defacto leader's P; No! We'll crash into hell!
Adovan's P to everyone else; Should I do it?
Everyone; No!
Adovan's P; Okay, I do it!!1

There were a few facepalms, but I ask for his attack roll. He gets a crit, sends the BB's corpse (they were technically in hell, so a dead devil stays dead) towards the wing at stupid velocity, and I roll to see if the wing can survive the damage of the giant devil hurdling towards it. Even though I was being generous in my numbers, no, it's simply not strong enough (Perhaps the BB should have used a different strategy instead of allowing his hubris to take control). So the devils are defeated and retreating, the PCs are surrounded by allies in a giant flying melee with them and who can't do anything relevant to the problem, as the giant ship begins falling into hell, with all the crew and the PCs.

This ship is essentially a symbol of justice and Lawful Goodness and awesomeness... it's basically like a giant, magical dirigible made by Cadillac. And this is where it dies. The PCs already knew they couldn't teleport to safety, since they were technically inside hell at that point, and their teleports would just take them somewhere else in hell. Not good for relatively low level, hireling crew.

This is where the defacto leader shows just how awesome he is. He's the strongest elf to ever live, with class features that allow him to buff up his strength, plus an epic girdle of magical strongness. He gets Fly cast on him, and jumps over the side of the ship, and ups his strongness as high as he can get it. He gets under the ship, and starts pushing up on it. The wizard is using his concentration to try to make the ship go where he needs it to be (not the ground), and the cleric is still busy clericing. In 3.5, how much you can lift with Fly cast on you is just like normal flying creatures; dependent upon your strength.

This ship is just plain too massive to actually lift, even though he was super-gigastrong. However, he could slow it's decent long enough for the wizard to drive it out of the hell-hole. Each round I called for a strength check, and he was even rolling well. Just because of how awesome it is, I was probably going to let him save the ship this way regardless what he rolled, but the rolls kept tension up. A few rounds later, the hell hole closing, the world saved from Armageddon and torture and slavery at the hands of devils, the injured Super-symbol-of-awesome ship crashes down into mounds of snow, kicking up a cloud of frost miles wide.

The crew and PCs took injuries, but no deaths (from the crash). The Wizard and Cleric Wish/Miracle the boat back into operation. The wizard retired to put his and the cleric's souls inside some golems, thus making them both immortal. The Defacto Leader took the kingship of a nation and had plenty of half-dragon babies with his wife. The ranger wandered around killing orcs and any lingering devils until he was granted demideity status, and Adovan also took the kingship of a nation, and they all lived happily ever after.