From my old 2e DS campaign:
- Low-level PCs are making their first trek through the wastes. The scout gets tagged by spines from a hunting cactus, which paralyzes him and drags his into a copse of cacti (is "copse" the correct word in this case? *shrug*). The next-sneakiest PC tries to rescue the first, and winds up in the same position. This goes on down the line until over half the group is paralyzed, at which point in time the preserver in the group casts burning hands on the entire area.
As expected, he is subsequently chastized by the others for not only hurting them but also for destroying a bunch of "innocent cacti." As I point out, there's no such thing as an "innocent" cacti on Athas.
- Anyone remember the spell Random Casualty from one of the supplemental spell books? Well, best PC death in the entire campaign was when a templar cast the spell on the half-giant gladiator's maul. Result: one decapitated thri-kreen and a bunch of hysterical players.
- Many levels later, above-mentioned half-giant goes toe-to-toe with an enemy fighter with a sword of slicing. He wins, but not until one of his legs and the opposite arm have been lopped off. IIRC when we rolled to see in what direction he fell after the leg came off, you can guess which character happened to be standing there.
Current 3e Campaign, now into the Epic levels:
- The psion in the group gets hit with a Repeat Maximized Flensing (Epic level spell slots plus PrC and/or Epic feats to reduce the metamagic level increases...can't remember which at the moment). The wizard in the group rolls his Spellcraft to identify the thing, and from across the battlefield screams "RUUUUUUUNNNNN AAAAWWWAAAAAAAYYYYY NOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" followed by the addendum "...AND MORE THAN 30 FEET!" Next action the psion manifests a power or two and walks his maximum speed, 30 feet, away from his current location. No one catches it at the moment, but as soon as it comes the enemies' turn I ask how far he's moved, get the response "30 feet, I couldn't go any farther" to which the entire group sits silent, staring at him dumbfounded for a few seconds. "okaaaay...the repeat flensing goes off and you're going to take a total of 12 Con and 12 Cha damage this round unless you make two saves." The psion player stares at me with a grimmace, rolls twice, marks his character sheet, and with a sigh states "well then, I'm dead."
From across the room: "WHAT THE F*CK DID I JUST YELL AT YOU!? MORE THAN 30 FEET!"
I ran Forest Maker. Ablach-Re survived, but the PCs disrupted her ritual and wounded her personally. She wanted vengeance, but these PCs were low-profile. She did not know their names. They'd attacked her in disguise. All she had was the sound of their voices. And they had been chanting her name, with the other pilgrims, before they attacked.
Ablach-Re prepared a new psionic enchantment, just to catch these people. She spun her memory of their voices into the enchantment ...
From the PCs' point of view, it seemed like assassins would suddenly appear out of nowhere. Eventually they realized they were teleporting in. And each time, they got stronger. The PCs would run to another city, and the attacks would stop, for a while, and then all of the sudden they'd start up again. They had all sorts of non-detect devices going, magical disguises, and could not figure out how she kept finding them.
Finally -- and it made me bust out laughing -- one of the PCs half-got it. "you know," he said, "It seems to me that the attacks always start immediately after we've had some discussion about Ablach-Re."
Boom. In come the assassins. Fight fight, PCs survive. PCs on the run again. Same player: "I think maybe we are getting attacked every time we say the words, "Ablach-Re." The other players hiss! In come the assassins again. They browbeat him afterwards. "Don't do that again! You nearly got us killed. Just say "HER;" don't say Ablach-re" :D
Whoosh!
Anyway, a few weeks later we're introducing a new player, and since the new PC is a halfling, he's hanging out only with the older PC halfling, a water priest named "Warwater," in the Forest Ridge, and they are about to travel to meet the other PCs in Tyr. The little intro was supposed to take only 15 minutes but they are hamming it up and the other players are anxiously waiting for them to get to Tyr so everyone can play. But Warwater is regaling the new player with info. I stopped out in the kitchen to bring in food for everyone, and I heard the older player saying "... and every time we say the words, "Ablach-Re" ...
I leaned out from the kitchen into the living room.
"Did someone say Ablach Re?"
The other players were laughing. I called them back into the kitchen and told them to play the assassins this time. Told them to use their own stats and gear and just change the character's appearance, & alignment, turn preservers into defilers, etc., to streamline play, and so they'd maximize the character's tactical abilities.
These assassins demolished the whole halfling village, defiling the trees it was built on, nearly killing the new PC (who wasn't a target anyway) and turning the Warwater into stone. Warwater sat as a decoration in Ablach Re's palace for 3 earth years of play until the PCs got up the courage and resources to go rescue him.
The quote "I know your damn words, alright?" keeps circling through my mind, now. Thanks.
They tried to run away but three party members fell into a pit. They tried to exit the 12' deep pit but the druid had an anti-life shell on him and was standing next to the pit!
Also in the pit were 20 agony beetles! Initiative order placed the beetles last. One of the PCs used a psi power and exited; another left using an item; leaving one person in the pit trapped by the anti-life shell.
The druid ended the anti-life shell (ending a spell/power is a free action in my campaign) and then decided to turn into a dire elephant and pull out the last pc with his trunck. He did so and then turned in the elephant even after me warning him about the size and weight of such a creature in this circumstance.
He transfromed anyway thereby collapsing the pit and, once again, trapping the pc in the pit with the beetles!
During their turn, the agony beetles found the remaining pc and his muffled cries of pain were still heard above the moist forest dirt for one round before going silent.
They left him and his equipment in the pit and continued the adventure!
It was funny at the time and still causes enormous amounts of laughter!
The new player, traumatized and not really understanding what had happened, decided that his halfling character would make the journey to Tyr alone from the forest ridge. His home tree had been disintegrated and he was right on the border between life and death, so I decided to say that he lived, but give him a permemant fear of heights. So using the info that Warwater had given him, the halfling heads to Tyr to seek out the companions that Warwater had told him about.
So he gets to the gates of Tyr, and they ask him his business, and he says, "I'm looking for Harkhal, the wizard." Harkhal was well-known in Tyr, but he'd worked very carefully to conceal the fact that he was a wizard from everyone except his most trusted associates. Sadly, Warwater had failed to explain to the halfling how Wizards were regarded in the cities. In Free Year 8, wizardry was I think legal, but still very frowned on by the populace at large.
(I like playing better, but I usually get stuck DMing because I have almost no interest in playing anything other than Dark Sun anymore, and find DS DMs hard to find. I still enjoy DMing, mind you; I just like playing DS even more).
One of the other players got it stuck in his head that the tar pits around Giustenal were illusionary. He would not let us go past those ##@$ pits until he proved that they were illusionary, and it ate up about 15 minutes. Finally, my thri-kreen proposed that we hold him by the ankles and dip him face down into the pit, over and over again, until he shouted "I believe!" Surprisingly, he agreed to it. Somewhere around when he'd lost about 2/3 of his hit points, he became a believer.
PC "- How much for this rope?"
Trader " - 9 bits"
PC "- Wow, that almost a Meg!"
lolShortly after my group got there hands on the 2nd edition boxed set we all sat down and made characters. Having just finished the Pentand I suggested to my friend (who wanted to play a halfling gladiator) that my character (a half-giant gladiator) should be a fighting pair. One of our standard moves was for my character to whip the halfling directly at the enemy with the halfling's blades extended. So much fun.
You know, that spell with saying "her" name, an teleporting in assassins... well.. that's not a detriment to me.. that's an XP generator!!! and since they get tougher, it automatically has a built in CR modifier. :D I'd set up a boobytrapped area, set to my benefit, and my parties, and then every now and then, we'd simply say "her" name. ;) did they get to keep any treasure??
She always scried the area before sending in assassins, and usually sent in summoned monsters and kreen, IIRC. I just had her vary from her routine and send characters that one time, because the other players were twiddling thumbs and their characters weren't on the scene. Trust me, they weren't happy about it -- it was scary.
She always scried the area before sending in assassins, and usually sent in summoned monsters and kreen, IIRC. I just had her vary from her routine and send characters that one time, because the other players were twiddling thumbs and their characters weren't on the scene. Trust me, they weren't happy about it -- it was scary.
that makes it even better
if they knew she was scrying them before sending the monsters, they could use it as a way to taunt "her" and set up a recurring joke of hasling her and making fun of "her" ;) might get kinda silly that makes it even better
If my PCs would deem that funny and game-enhancing, I probably would find it *so*
extremely funny to let Abalach-Re appear herself. There would be noone left to laugh except her after that. How *very* sad for the PCs...that makes it even better
If my PCs would deem that funny and game-enhancing, I probably would find it *so*
Yes thats just like XP farming in computer games, and any half decent DM would curb the amount of XP gained from repetitive trap setting. Unless the players make very creative and vairied traps. Even perhaps killing them and resurrecting the assassins/monsters and somehow reopening or holding the portal and flinging them back through at Abalach-Re he he!
If my PCs would deem that funny and game-enhancing, I probably would find it *so*
Since the PCs had nearly killed her (remember this was 2e where such things were possible) I decided that she was not going to take risks like that. Also, I did not mention the fact that my campaign was mostly city adventures; Nibenay might not like it if Ablach-Re were to personally teleport into the middle of his city to kill some high-profile guests of his city. (The PCs had succeeded in the "Marauders of Nibenay" adventure). King Nibenay might construe Ablach-Re's uninvited invasion and killing spree in his city as an act of aggression.
And I'm fairly confident that Nibenay could kick Ablach-Re's butt, at least in his own city. But perhaps just sending summoned monsters and assassins was too light-handed on my part. I guess I saw Ablach-Re as the most weak and ineffectual of the SKs, and since she runs her city through kuotoga, sending assassins seemed to be her most likely MO, even though it wasn't that effective.
If the PCs had responded as you guys describe, Ablach-Re would have varied her own tactics. I guess my story kind of paints the players as fools, but you have to remember, these things were happening in the middle of other adventures, some in Tyr, some in Nibenay; some in Giustenal. The PCs had other enemies, obligations, and interests. The part where one PC said "do you notice that we always get attacked every time we say the name Ablach-Re" actually occurred in the caverns above Giustenal. They didn't have time to make tormenting Ablach-Re into a full-time job, and getting hit by assassins when your party has already been reduced by the Caller in Darkness, and while you're hiding from Dray, is tricky business.They knew that another PC (my wife's character) had lived in Urik for several years before leaving, so they made up the story that she had been living in Urik as a spy, and was now leading this party of destroyers back to poison water supplies, etc. This mortified my wife, since her character actually WAS a Kurnan spy, although the other players did not know it. Pure coincidence that the made up story happened to be true. She was very quiet that day ...
After making up huge long stories about the PCs that they knew anything about, the announcers hesitated on the last PC, whom they knew nothing about. It was the same wizard who later got exposed by the halfling in Tyr. He had taken great pains to hide the fact that he was a wizard, and to keep a low profile. So the announcers introduced him as "some useless vagrant that we rounded off the street." They were soon embarrassed as survival pressures of the Death Ball game forced that PC to demonstrate his *substantial* wizardly abilities. (He was the most powerful of the whole group).
I was in a silly mood, and had just watched my the first pro-basketball game that I had seen in my life (Jazz v. Bulls) so I altered the characters in the opposing team to reflect certain famous and notorious sports figures. I named the opposing Urikite Death Ball team the "Nightmare Squad," and populated the team with folks like a male bard with multi-colored hair, a female halfling named Tonard who used a metal pipe to try to cripple opponents, etc. Sadly these spoofs of the "dream team," dennis rodman, tonya harding, etc. were lost on most of the players.