This is VERY true. Was in a session where we were playing a small bit of World's Largest dungeon.... Found a room with a forest.... We sent a fireball into the forest and closed the door.
only thing thats a nono is pilling stuff out from nowhere. Had an rp theme was survival battle royale type stuff. Were all basically wearing nothing and have no magic either. All of a sudden a person pulled out a knife. I said: How can you have a knife when we agreed on no tools at all? The DM was like "Lets just have fun whatever" This pissed me off because the rp rules clearly state that you cant bring anything with you. Needless to say I left the group chat and shortly after the whole group disbanded due to people arguing over what DM said vs what was stated in the chat page notes.
@@johnynoway9127 About two or three sessions ago, a group I'm in had something similar. I'm a druid, my magic was restricted, and our weapons were taken away. But the fight was in a make-shift arena in the middle of a tavern. Furniture broke so we had clubs and make-shift shields... Our strongest character actually PICKED UP a gnome (I think, it might've been another small race) by the heels and swung him around like a flail.
It’s the same as “I sure hope this NPC doesn’t betray as DM, since we don’t trust them”, and you just hear the crumpling or paper and the DMs forced smile “nope… they won’t be now” thought gritted teeth.
I played a Wizard with a few levels in Druid to prestiege class of Master of Many Forms.... When you can turn into virtually anything, some things can become trivial.
Not exactly a puzzle, but i had a prisoner they werent supposed to get to until after they beat the boss of the area, but my moon druid as a bear nat 20ed the iron bars and I just said fuck it, have fun bringing a little girl in the middle of combat.
Druid can become elementals. Need I say more. As in, like that villain from “The Flash” can turn into a sentient cloud of toxic gas, among other things.
And never underestimate a party getting stuck at a normal door for 50 minutes... I swear, D&D is the place that makes easy things hard and hard things easy.
It's more fun as a DM to let the players come up with ways to ruin your plans anyway. When I was DM'ing I always had an idea of what the different factions would do and how it might affect the players but I never plan anything long-term to avoid subconsciously railroading the players. DM's job is to come up with ways to create conflict, drama and humor in the story. It's up to the players how they deal with it.
this almost same scenario happened in critical role where Matt had a naval ship battle set up but talisen did a single spell that avoided it in one fell swoop.
Poor DM. Our DM had a huge plan where we went to find a poison cure after a party member foolishly fell for the poison trap... he set the DC at 40 to do a heal check. The cleric, with someone aiding her and the bard buffing her, managed to beat it. He had no words for just how unexpected that was. On the plus side, my cleric gained the title Surgeon General on that day.
@@internetdragon7624 At our level, I could roll a DC 30 if I rolled above a 15. House rule was aiding someone gives a +2 to skill rolls per person helping, and I believe the bardic inspiration gave a 1d6. I rolled a 19, bard rolled a 6. The total of the skill roll ended up being a 42. DM only set a skill check because the players were insisting that since I reacted immediately after the poisoning I should be able to get 1 chance to administer a cure before we had to do the DM's mission for the cure. That DM put up with a lot of player nonsense. It was probably cute when we were low level, but I'm sure we caused a heavy sanity loss for him.
I don't play D&D, but I remember my friend telling me about this one time that another party member pissed off the DM so the DM wrote a massive dragon to attack and wipe the party to teach this player a lesson. What he didn't count on was my friend rolling a bunch of nat 20s in a row. In the DMs words "Ok... so initially I wanted to teach Murphy a lesson because he pissed me off last session, but you somehow picked up your wooden sword and omnislashed the crap out of that dragon, lopping off its head. Your character goes up 2 levels, your now the only surviving party member. Everyone else reroll characters."
I like how the DM says, "this spell requires a verbal component," and they let the player do it as a dinosaur underwater with the explanation of "he can go BLBBLLBLBLLRBL!"
In the rules you can use a verbal component underwater but it takes your last breath of air and hastens Drowning. So if you can breathe underwater there's no reason you can't do verbal components underwater.
@quinnsinclair7028 Unless level 20, druids can't cast soells while Wildshaped, only before. As long as there's no concentration check the spell may persist.
Indeed. Plus druids can't talk in their wild shape form. A level 20 druid can only cast spells that way because they ignore verbal components. Also, as you alluded to, pass without trace is a concentration spell. So this straight up isn't possible according to the rules, but I get not everyone can remember all this stuff at the table. @@exosuite
I singlehandedly killed the final boss because of a perk for fighter where I get a critical on an 18 or more and the sword I was using decapitate's on a crit
@@foxwolf2346 in my case the druid completely skipped over a combat where I had planned to introduce the main antagonist. He never used wildform outside fights, since they were only level 6, but suddenly during that section he said: "Can I distract some enemies?" I asked what he wanted to do and there I realized how I missed it. "Wildshape into a bird, like a falcon or a predatory bird, and distract a sentinel" I asked him to roll on impersonation and Knowledge Nature and he rolled a 20 for both, add the modifiers and my entire battle was avoided by a fucking bird.
@@jolkert_ it was 3.5 and I let him do it because the idea had value so I was like "Just roll those 2 checks" To tell you the truth I was kinda happy he started reasoning like this because it meant he was engaging in the game
At a D&D session I was in, we "accidently" killed the big bad (we were definitely trying to, and the DM was trying very hard to keep her alive) all because my plan of running up and grabbing a mystical object from them not only did not get me killed but lead to them chasing me out into an arena where the rest of the players had just finished fighting in a tournament and were more than ready to continue. The DM had to develop a plan for the last session. They did great! It was a really good story.
How frustrating. I mean, it's nice to see the players thinking outside the box and using their skills at their fullest, but damn all the time spent to plan the fight flushed into the ocean
@@braedenmclean5304my players had a potential TPK event with a final boss (munchkins vs campaign, they knew the risks) but then for the FIRST TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN they used diplomacy and rolled 19-20 for the next three dip rolls. In Pathfinder, so at like a +16
one time, the dm made us fight a big kraken on a ship, we didnt know at first what to do but then the cannons were mentioned so we used them, and got d20 twice and did 400 dmg with the cannons, it was then killed by the bard using vicious mockery
Is vicious mockery like some special well known DnD move or just legit a person going "yes I shall heavly mock the enemy to death as my attack" Cause I have been listening to Tom cardys "perception check" song so much today and there's no way the vicious mockery thing there and here Is a coincidence xD (would check out the song, it's great lol)
Running tomb of Annihilation currently. Have a wildfire druid in the party. Can confirm. So many challenges skipped thanks to fiery teleportation and animal shenanigans. It's fun for sure, but after DMing this module 5 times with different tables, this one has challenged me more than my others. Even my homebrew. Lol
@@mandolorian1176 I mean, it's the Tomb of Annihilation. If you don't cheese it as hard as you can, it will leave players grumpy... Or was that Tomb of Horrors?
@@bthsr7113 I think that's tomb of horrors. Though ToA will certainly do the same lol. I run it with the meat grinder rules so gotta have players who're ok with losing characters on the reg.
Our DM decided to challenge us with a big, epic ship battle at relatively low levels. A squad of fish people, led by a fish person cleric riding on a hydra, rose out of the water behind us. My bard won the initiative, cast Enemies Abound on the hydra, and went to go hide in the cabin to maintain concentration. The rest of the party watched the water turn red and foamy as we sailed onward.
The rules of creating a campaign 1) create a basic story 2) create some fight scenes 3) create some epic plot twist your players will never see coming 4) prep your players with some backstory and lore 5) burn all of your dm sheets in a garbage can cause none of it matters to your players and they will do everything they can get away with I once had my BBEG animate a tavern “Monster House” style...AND MY BARD F***ING MARRIED IT AND HAD LITTLE COTTAGES
I once had two groups fighting each other at a pulley-trolley system to enter a city. I wanted the players to side with one group or the other and use those new allies as a way to enter the city or retreat safely, but siding with one group would cause the other group's leader to spawn as a miniboss. Instead, the players threw a baby as a distraction, and proceeded to fight absolutely no one as they booked it for the trolley.
I relate to this so hard. When I was dm'ing, I had my players go to this ruined, undead city for a magic item. In the center of the city was a magic tower. I had planned different levels, hidden lore, and puzzles that increased in difficulty as you climb the tower before reaching the boss. Well, players skipped over half the dungeon, because they figured out an exploit to the spell levitate and flew up the tower. I had to quickly create a monster to force them inside the tower, just so all that work wouldn't be completely for nothing. I'm still salty about it.
That's pretty bad DM'ing. You should be proud on your players if they find a creative way around your puzzles, not forcing your ideas onto them or even punishing them for being creative. Such stuff discourages players even trying to solve a puzzle. After such a dick move i would annoy the DM with searching for some hidden made-up monsters for hours at every puzzle before i quit and never look back to such a session. If i want to be railroaded that hard, i watch a movie or read a book.
@@delqyrus2619the OP just said they got frustrated because their players found a solution to all the prep work they did. Their players got to a place were they weren't expecting them to get to yet, so they had to scamble for something the players can encounter. They never said they never let the players not do it. You can be both proud of your players and frustrated that you wasted all that time, at the same time. You, however, seems to be the type of player the ends up as a story in r/rpghorrorstories.
I wouldn't say this is bad gming, that's kind of unfair. Not only should the game be fun for both parties, the gm puts in a lot of effort and work and most of the time their planned material is what they are looking forward to. They also still gave them the ability to bypass a good deal of the tower, which is a just reward for being unique and thinking outside the box, or using spells in fun ways. They could have been a jerk gm and say "oh well the tower has anti magic but only on the outside and grease on the walls and it's perfectly solid and as strong as steel so if you try to use anything to climb it, it can't pierce it." But no, they gave the players a reward, even at the cost of losing out on what they wanted. Hell they didn't even need a monster and could say a storm that's blowing wind hard enough to force the levitate forces them into a window. OR could have said it pushes them away from the tower, could even make it a luck based roll, and now they might risk fall damage. Which are things i have done at my table before and my players enjoyed.
@@coooldude245 It is basically the job of the DM to think about ways the players can interact with the game. If the players find a way to skip some parts of the story, the DM didn't do his job right. I am DMing for a group which prides itself for trying to derail my campaigns. If they are successful i sometimes had to end a session early, what is sad, but completely my fault. If they try some action i am not prepared for, which destroys my campaign i have to think about the stuff i did wrong and find a way to reorder my campaign so it still makes sense and doesn't force the player to do whatever i want. That's the point on DMing. Everything else is just storytelling. So the problem isn't that there is a monster. The problem is, if the monster appears out of nowhere. The players put a lot of effort into thinking about ways to play your game too. If you tell them "there is the tower and no monster/wall/storm/whatever in sight" and they work hard on a way to fly up there, maybe waste some spellslots and... "Oh, suddenly there is a monster which btw. will kill you if you try that.". So you wasted the time of your players - which also put a lot of effort into it and didn't made any mistake. You punish them for your mistake. Also: Where is the line? Are you allowed to snap some monsters/walls/storms/whatever into existence if they skip your whole story? Half of the story? A single puzzle? Maybe if they attack a monster not in exactly the way you intended them to do so? Maybe if they don't ask the right question to some NPC? Or they simply use a single word that you haven't scripted? DnD is about players taking their own descisions. But they can't take qualified descisions if you simply change the rules to your liking just because you haven't thought about how this might impact your campaign. So yes, there actually is no problem with a monster hindering the player to do something. I mean: That's basically the whole point of monsters in these games. But it has to be there in the first place. Otherwise the players have to consider a monster snapping into existence at every action. I don't see how this can be fun. And yes, it is about both sides having fun. But if you want to tell a story where players do exactly what you have planned, DMing isn't what you want to do - you might want to write a book or sit down at a campfire and tell a story. But - at least in my opinion - this is not what DnD is about.
@@delqyrus2619 I get what you're saying. Players thinking outside of the boss is my favorite part of DM'ing. I once had to make a whole new dungeon on the fly, because my players jumped into someone's mind. I had not seen that coming. LOL To be fair, I phrased my original comment pretty badly, because I was trying to give a small snippet of my experience without drowning in unnecessary detail and I didn't put that much thought into my first comment. I also missed a word in this sentence: "I had to quickly create a monster to force them inside the tower." I didn't create a monster. I created a monster encounter. Also, "force" was probably the wrong word to use. Technically, the players had the option to fight the monster instead of going into the tower. However, they chose not to, because I had previously foreshadowed how the boss of the tower would fly around on the outside of the tower. Thus, the monster was the boss. When they first entered the city, I wanted to give them a sneak peek at the boss. It was a giant sentient swarm flying around the top of the tower, like a cloud of death. (Trust me, it was cool.) So it wasn't completely unexpected that they would run into the boss like that. I just was not expecting them to do that and did not have a random encounter with the boss prepared. I did have a short monologue the boss was going to say and some banter, but that didn't really fit with a random encounter and I threw it out the window since it was not necessary after they had already met the boss. Anyway, with all the side quests they did, they could have beaten the boss and skipped the whole dungeon, if they wanted, but the boss had field advantage and the team was limited in movement since someone had to spent their turn maintaining the levitate spell. I did reward them for this and me being salty about it was supposed to be a joke. My players tease me with this every time they approach a dungeon. So, I hope that does clear up the misunderstanding.
I did it to myself as a DM. Party was going into a vampire den, accompanying a vampire hunter NPC who had hired them. The NPC, who I was controlling, managed to crit the master of the den. Twice. With a special anti-vampire weapon of my own design. Severely wounding the master vampire so that they could be finished off with relative ease two turns into combat. The plan was for the physically frail 'hunter' to go down early in the fight, but the dice said NO.
Because of stuff like that I have so much random shit in my back pocket. And because my mouth has a mind of its own I somehow said "You can ignore the dungeon, but be prepared for it to follow you." And now I just HAVE to put a moving dungeon somewhere. I mean, just imagine the party seeing the dungeon, going nope, and two days later and 30 miles further they find that dungeon again. And it keeps happening!
I did that to my dm because he was planning a ambush but I decided to pet the the creature which deactivated The ambush entirely and I got a new pet out of it
I feel for him lol. "oh yeah, I got the whole session planned out" *player avoids the problem entirely* "I didn't have anything planned after that, see you guys next week"
This is my favorite part of the show😂😂 he was so surprised at them being able to fix this without any violence that he couldn't actually get mad at them. He was laughing the whole time in surprise. I honestly wish that they just made a separate episode where they went ahead and reenact it the Navy ship battle just to see how it would have gone or if he had railroaded them a little bit so that they would have to be forced to do it. But I think it's cool that they were able to subvert that so easily
I once played in a campaign where a weeks worth of planning got thrown out because we found the bbeg during an elevator ride with a casting of detect magic. It was truly a time.
There was a whole gorgon battle planned today, the DM had planned for us every possible thing we could have done except for the entire party just killing themself
Oh my God… this is so true. I was playing D&D in the 80’s with my older brother and his friends, and I had a ninja character. While our camp was sleeping, the DM had my character awaken and notice someone was stealing food from the camp. I followed him into a large town, where down the alley was a halfling sized tunnel. I started down the tunnel… then thought, “I didn’t leave a note to let the party know where I was.. besides, what if something bad happened to me? They’d never know.” So I turned around and went back to camp. When it was time to go home, Russell (the DM) pulled me aside and said “I developed an _entire mission_ for your character.. and you just walked away.” I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how to react, but later I thought “then why didn’t you just have my character kidnapped?” Sometimes you have to force the issue or create a clever way to get your characters to do what you want.
My Dnd character's backstory was basically 'They decided to leave their home once they were old enough to explore, came across a group of bards, liked what they were doing enough to aso if they could be a bard. And also they're a huge history/myth nerd.'
This is ultimate dnd:make a map,full skyrim type stuff,follow the main story or do your own stuff.Have tons of locations,dungeons,monsters,characters,quests and side ones.Add mini bosses that can be encountered anywhere.With several bosses with enough small lore bits to make sense of their actions.Add different land types and biomes,small plots that are connected to an area,like a town always attacked by dragons. Then give the map a name,and due to its massive variety,several campaigns on that map can take place there. Only draw back this map will take months if not a year or 2 to make,but then you have a make your own story journey that the players can't ruin the planning of.
Welcome to D&D, where the DM plans something awesome and difficult for the players and the players go, "I'M A DO A THING!!" and you sit there and weep. 😅
I still remember "The Trebuchet Incident" from a campaign I was in. The DM needed a few minutes and a drink. Well that and killing the undead bride in Curse of Strahd because my character was a Grave Cleric of Kelemvor. DM should have seen that coming.
After our final boss battle, I was looting these tombs. Inside a sarcophagus was a mummy. My DM asked if I wanted to do anything before touching it, so I cast Gentle Repose, which prevents things from becoming undead. He slammed the monster manual closed, and I got to loot a mummy lord and get awesome stuff, lmao.
Fun story, i'm the "guest dm" for my group that comes up with 1-shots if we know several people will be unavailable for a week. During my second 1-shot i had prepared a tower filled with traps and puzzles for the 2 players to solve. As i describe the tower and the evil energy vortex that can be seen at the top the druid (aka the regular dm) says "i wildshape into a giant spider and carry the gnome on my back to the top of the tower". There went an entire afternoon of planning down the drain. Couldn't have been more proud.
This is when the DM throws papers up in the air and is like... "NO THAT’S FINE, I DIDN'T SPEND WEEKS PLANNING THIS. BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT DINOSAUR!!!!11!!1!" LOL
My DM once had a villain. He was a young kid and the son of the goddess of death. But he was adorable! And he needed a hug. So I simply romanced him to the good side.
I am so for water based wild shapes being able to fill the verbal components of spells while underwater, that’s incredible and so niche that I’m sure the druid would have a field day anytime they went even remotely close to water
I accidentally ruined two starting towns. First one I blame myself but was and wasn’t my fault. My Kobold cleric got paranoid and didn’t want to check out a basement by themselves (IE the DM was asking questions that wigged me out) so started to back out when our warforgged party member offered to come along. But the way to the basement was a old wooden ladder. The ladder broke. Then the wooden floor beneath it broke. Ending up with our party member landing in a giant ant nest, squishing several larva by accident. We somehow got him out. Don’t remember how. Blocked off the basement and eventually ran for the hills cause we weren’t gonna survive that. Second town was a town of shapeshifters I think. Or they stole faces. Don’t remember which. We were at a execution with the town sherif and the party wasn’t 100% sure the criminal deserved it so I decided “know what, I’m gonna pray for guidance”…. A little tidbit is due to a misunderstanding between me and the DM my kobold cleric actually isn’t a follower of any of the real gods of this realm. So my prayer got answered by a random god… and I rolled a nat 20. Actually summoning them… said god apparently didn’t like this town for some reason I’ve partially forgotten. Stalt is glorious and I feel so bad for our DM.
I ended up in a naval battle once, playing an artillerist lizardfolk. Jumped in the water and crippled two ships from below before we closed with one of them and started a boarding action.
My mom, the dm for a Pathfinder 2e campaign she’s running for me and my dad, keeps trying to start bar fights between us and the NPCs in order to entertain my dad, who loves the fighting aspect of TTRPGs. My character is a champion of Cayden Cailean. I’m morally obliged to prevent bar fights and I keep ruining her plans.
I was playing a cleric in one campaign, and while the party was making our way through the dungeon, we passed by a room with a deep pit filled with corpses, a mass grave. My cleric, being lawful good, wanted to bury the bodies and perform last rites, but the party (and the DM) all insisted that we didn't have time. Not wanting to move on without doing anything, my cleric decided to bless the remains and consecrate the ground they were in. I would later find out that the reason why the DM whispered "f**k!" at this time was because my character's actions completely ruined the zombie horde boss battle he had planned 😅
our DM had a plan for us to save an entire city from demons. but then one of us who owned the bar was a little evil plant and the next then you know, all our characters were evil and we just started working for the demons. our DM was so mad that he had to throw out the entire plan and just make stuff on the go.
My group wasted a whole encounter with a Beastmaster and it’s pet tonight by have one party member hold down the Beastmaster whilst the rest of the party tried to tempt the pet into joining the party.
My response to the DM saying naval battle would be." I realize I forgot something on the ship and my wild shape drops while we're there" I'm all about the naval battle!
I think my design professor's words of advice ring true here "don't fall in love with your art" because clients will probably want changes or you'll have to erase something as you build up your drawing. Or because your players will completely circumvent your carefully planned out naval battle
As a DM, I'm honestly happy when players find cheeky bypasses. It means they're engrossed in the game enough to think outside the box rather than "just being here and playing along"
Spent about four weeks creating this really intricate frontier town with a complex web of rival gangs, weird miners and duplicitous traders and such. Really lovingly crafted and meant to occupy the party for multiple sessions as they untangle the web of intrigue and how it connects to the overarching plot. It was amazing. The party burned the entire town to the ground on the first night, because one of them thought someone in the saloon looked suspicious.
Two things you should always remember as a DM. Never get too attached to any idea, chances are your players will find a way to ruin it. And the second thing is to try and plan for that, make there be some other obstacle for them to overcome. In this case have them come across some sea mines or something.
My friends have done things like this more than once in my brother's campaigns. He doesn't get mad that we foiled his plans, just a little sad that he didn't get to show off the well crafted monsters he made.
Honestly I love when my players come up with something I never even thought about and wipe or bypass a problem. It's not super often, fortunately, so the work I put into planning doesn't often go to waste. Of course depending on how they bypass I can actually just reuse something later.
My group once skipped 1-2 sessions worth of content by combining spells, some teamwork and the rule of cool. It was a huge spiral staircase that was trapped and goblins were hiding everywhere. We scaled a wall instead. Made the biggest guy even bigger, gave him spider climb and used rope for the smaller guy and one of us could turn into a giant bat.
One time, I planned out an encounter with a priest who lived in a forest who'd give them a really good side quest that would give them a bunch of lore on a plot-relevent demon. He got set on fire and hidden in a ditch because he was in a Bush when they found him... I am still not over it.
@@FrostyTheeSnowmann XD my humanoid bird name jear has a thing with exploding things I wonder if we would along or have a argument for which thing is better
Notes for the DM. Always have contingencies. Some people will rush right in to every battle even if they don't need to others will try to avoid every battle even if you don't want them to. So here would be a great way to have that character turn into a plesiosaur and successfully sneak his way past the blockade... But did the rest of the team pass a successful check to see if they could hold their breath that long? Did any of them bother to try to cast any water breathing spells? Did any of them even hop onto the back of the plesiosaur before he performed his stuff check? Maybe the pleasures were made it past the blockade but he left everyone else on the ship. And if people didn't pass their check for breathing underwater or holding their breath underwater then they're going to be losing lots of health or die while he carries them underwater... And if they have to break off halfway through the trip in order to resurface then it's an opportunity to have them resurface right in the middle of the blockade.
Motivation is a figment of our imaginations. Expect for DMs. They have a whole story set up. For us to crush it along with all their hopes and dreams 😊
"Suddenly you bump into a fleshy wall under the water, you swim backwards to see a giant sleeping octopus, it opens it's eyes and stares at you and stretches out it's 8 arms, role for initiative." 😂😂😂
My Old DM had a very similar experience years back where me and one of my friends were in a two person D&D one shot, and managed to skip the entirety of the one shot. We were on a ship, and being attacked by a ocean monster, The term 'kaiju' comes to mind but that could just be because I'm obsessed with Pacific Rim. The intended path was for us to abandon ship, but they wanted the captain to have this steely determination, so they wanted it to be our idea... We decided to fight the sea beast because I'd built my character around the idea of fighting giant monsters that eclipsed my size and stocked up on throwables that had rules where they needed to be washed off with soap. Whenever the captain eventually snapped and ordered a retreat we remained behind to fight the beast and give everyone enough time to escape. After that, because the point of the one-shot was to find out where the Sea Monsters were coming from and I was a race that didn't need to breath (An Artifact race as I recall, I was a 3 ft tall Mech-Crab) I used my Grappling Hook to impale the beast's hide and then climbed aboard when it left. At that point we just completely left the story behind. Later the DM tried to regain control by having us be thrown off, and meeting up with the captain in a rowboat behind enemy lines where the intended path was for us to go to land, and sneak past several enemy positions, However we also had an enchanted blanket that was big enough to be put over the entire rowboat that disguised it as a sea rock, and a rope that we tied around my character who walked along the bottom of the ocean, pulling the boat directly toward where we were going instead of going to land. This worked because my 3 ft tall Mech-Crab was a strength-based character, with an okay sneak stat. We were only told how royally we screwed over every aspect of the one-shot after the one-shot.
Rule Number One: Never get attached to anything, because the players WILL ruin it
And they might break in ways you might not be able to think about
This is VERY true.
Was in a session where we were playing a small bit of World's Largest dungeon....
Found a room with a forest....
We sent a fireball into the forest and closed the door.
only thing thats a nono is pilling stuff out from nowhere.
Had an rp theme was survival battle royale type stuff.
Were all basically wearing nothing and have no magic either.
All of a sudden a person pulled out a knife.
I said: How can you have a knife when we agreed on no tools at all?
The DM was like "Lets just have fun whatever"
This pissed me off because the rp rules clearly state that you cant bring anything with you.
Needless to say I left the group chat and shortly after the whole group disbanded due to people arguing over what DM said vs what was stated in the chat page notes.
@@johnynoway9127 About two or three sessions ago, a group I'm in had something similar.
I'm a druid, my magic was restricted, and our weapons were taken away.
But the fight was in a make-shift arena in the middle of a tavern. Furniture broke so we had clubs and make-shift shields...
Our strongest character actually PICKED UP a gnome (I think, it might've been another small race) by the heels and swung him around like a flail.
@@eviljbrian still better then pulling a knife out your ass.
The gnome could have wandered in by accident or punted into the arena haha.
“Were you prepared for dinosaur?”
Nobody. Nobody is prepared for dinosaur
Um, actually a plesiosaurus isn't a dinosaur, it's a marine reptile! MWAHAHAHAHAHA
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition Dinosaur!
NOBODY EXPECTS THE PLESIOSAURUS
@@Pindeckoo1nah its nessie
Not even dinosaurs are prepared for dinosaurs.
"Ok, fine."
That's when you know you made the DM mad.
I like to smite my players to keep them in line
"We had a whole Naval battle planned out"
* DM furiously scratching out notes *
@@aydingreen3536 until they retaliate with a full cleric tortle team.
That's where you can start to expect a run in with a horde of random stray dragons that are in a bad mood and want to kill stuff.
It’s the same as “I sure hope this NPC doesn’t betray as DM, since we don’t trust them”, and you just hear the crumpling or paper and the DMs forced smile “nope… they won’t be now” thought gritted teeth.
And thus, the Naval Battle goes in the archive to be whipped out at another, more unexpected time.
Now all of those boats, which were supposed to be destroyed, are not...
It's been over 2 years, 2 campaigns, and 3 mini campaigns. still no sign of it yet
@@Griefer_Jesusno one expects the Spanish Armada
If you are a DM and DON'T expect the druid to bypass your puzzles with Wildshape... I don't know what to tell you.
I played a Wizard with a few levels in Druid to prestiege class of Master of Many Forms....
When you can turn into virtually anything, some things can become trivial.
Not exactly a puzzle, but i had a prisoner they werent supposed to get to until after they beat the boss of the area, but my moon druid as a bear nat 20ed the iron bars and I just said fuck it, have fun bringing a little girl in the middle of combat.
@@Aeivious😂😂😂
@@Aeivious DM: "Congratulations, you have earned the achievement: _Escort Mission"_
Druid can become elementals. Need I say more.
As in, like that villain from “The Flash” can turn into a sentient cloud of toxic gas, among other things.
Never underestimate the players' ability to bypass everything you've planned and then burn down an entire village they were supposed to be helping.
And never underestimate a party getting stuck at a normal door for 50 minutes...
I swear, D&D is the place that makes easy things hard and hard things easy.
Lol thats so my groupe 😂
I love how there's a trace of a smile in the DM's voice. "This is stupid. This ruins everything. This is ridiculous. I love these guys."
I think the gurgling to use the spell sold him on it.
It's more fun as a DM to let the players come up with ways to ruin your plans anyway. When I was DM'ing I always had an idea of what the different factions would do and how it might affect the players but I never plan anything long-term to avoid subconsciously railroading the players. DM's job is to come up with ways to create conflict, drama and humor in the story. It's up to the players how they deal with it.
HOT DUNGEON MASTER SHREKS
“Um, akchewally, plesiosaurs aren’t dinosaurs!”
"Shut up, nerd" _Also shuts his own mouth, because he's a nerd, too. Now thinks_ "I should not have said that..." /S
🤓
I was looking for a comment like that
As a DM, I feel this to my core. But as a viewer, lol.
"Ok fine. You pass the stealth check." Hilarious from outside view, but painful as him
@@angelnavarro553 Always expect the encounter to come running after you in some way. I didn't prepare that stuff for nothing!
this almost same scenario happened in critical role where Matt had a naval ship battle set up but talisen did a single spell that avoided it in one fell swoop.
@@Schilani"Ok fine..." *Next time in the shore*
*ROLL FOR INITIATIVE FUCKERS*
Froppy!!
"Ok FINE you pass the stealth check." hes to fed up at this point. XD
Poor DM. Our DM had a huge plan where we went to find a poison cure after a party member foolishly fell for the poison trap... he set the DC at 40 to do a heal check. The cleric, with someone aiding her and the bard buffing her, managed to beat it. He had no words for just how unexpected that was. On the plus side, my cleric gained the title Surgeon General on that day.
That is so crazy!!! A 40 check is massive it must have actually been super impressive to see happen!!!
Damn usually a 30 is the Impossible DC, your DM must've /really/ wanted you to not be able to do that! And yet! The power of player nonsense lives on!
@@internetdragon7624 At our level, I could roll a DC 30 if I rolled above a 15. House rule was aiding someone gives a +2 to skill rolls per person helping, and I believe the bardic inspiration gave a 1d6.
I rolled a 19, bard rolled a 6. The total of the skill roll ended up being a 42. DM only set a skill check because the players were insisting that since I reacted immediately after the poisoning I should be able to get 1 chance to administer a cure before we had to do the DM's mission for the cure.
That DM put up with a lot of player nonsense. It was probably cute when we were low level, but I'm sure we caused a heavy sanity loss for him.
I don't play D&D, but I remember my friend telling me about this one time that another party member pissed off the DM so the DM wrote a massive dragon to attack and wipe the party to teach this player a lesson.
What he didn't count on was my friend rolling a bunch of nat 20s in a row. In the DMs words "Ok... so initially I wanted to teach Murphy a lesson because he pissed me off last session, but you somehow picked up your wooden sword and omnislashed the crap out of that dragon, lopping off its head. Your character goes up 2 levels, your now the only surviving party member. Everyone else reroll characters."
As a DM myself... holy shit, i wouldn't be mad, just... impressed holy shit
It’s hilarious how leniency with the rules leads to so many great moments.
I like how the DM says, "this spell requires a verbal component," and they let the player do it as a dinosaur underwater with the explanation of "he can go BLBBLLBLBLLRBL!"
That's the sign of a good DM. The players thought of something fun and he fudged the rules a little to let it happen.
In the rules you can use a verbal component underwater but it takes your last breath of air and hastens Drowning. So if you can breathe underwater there's no reason you can't do verbal components underwater.
@@quinnsinclair7028 I was thinking the same. Gills for the win baybeeee.
@quinnsinclair7028 Unless level 20, druids can't cast soells while Wildshaped, only before. As long as there's no concentration check the spell may persist.
Indeed. Plus druids can't talk in their wild shape form. A level 20 druid can only cast spells that way because they ignore verbal components. Also, as you alluded to, pass without trace is a concentration spell. So this straight up isn't possible according to the rules, but I get not everyone can remember all this stuff at the table. @@exosuite
“Let’s see where this goes” is the core of what makes DND what it is 😂😂😂
I laughed so hard at the party bypassing the ENTIRE battle by John going "but what if, plesiosaurus"
*Dm making the most epic battle in existence*
Bard: what if... *Nat 20 in flirting*
Not a fucking stupid DM: “but what if, sharks”
@@jonathanwells223 With a high enough roll? fuck em
DO NOT fuck the sharks @@GhaniKSW
Best part is if the Dinos Mouth is big enough the rest of the party can just be chillin in there the whole time he’s underwater
As someone who had an entire section of a campaign skipped because of a druid, I feel your pain. But still cool solution I 've got to say
I singlehandedly killed the final boss because of a perk for fighter where I get a critical on an 18 or more and the sword I was using decapitate's on a crit
@@foxwolf2346 in my case the druid completely skipped over a combat where I had planned to introduce the main antagonist.
He never used wildform outside fights, since they were only level 6, but suddenly during that section he said: "Can I distract some enemies?"
I asked what he wanted to do and there I realized how I missed it. "Wildshape into a bird, like a falcon or a predatory bird, and distract a sentinel" I asked him to roll on impersonation and Knowledge Nature and he rolled a 20 for both, add the modifiers and my entire battle was avoided by a fucking bird.
That's so funny but cool solution. And such luck
@@alessandrodecarlo4913
technically, if this was 5e, you cant wildshape into anything with a flying speed until 8th level
@@jolkert_ it was 3.5 and I let him do it because the idea had value so I was like "Just roll those 2 checks"
To tell you the truth I was kinda happy he started reasoning like this because it meant he was engaging in the game
At a D&D session I was in, we "accidently" killed the big bad (we were definitely trying to, and the DM was trying very hard to keep her alive) all because my plan of running up and grabbing a mystical object from them not only did not get me killed but lead to them chasing me out into an arena where the rest of the players had just finished fighting in a tournament and were more than ready to continue. The DM had to develop a plan for the last session. They did great! It was a really good story.
How frustrating. I mean, it's nice to see the players thinking outside the box and using their skills at their fullest, but damn all the time spent to plan the fight flushed into the ocean
Nah. No problem. You just archive the plans and use them in some other campaign or much later in current one.
@Juhno the thought didn't pass my mind. Thanks for enlightening me
My party once bypassed a massive fight our dm had planned with a whole army and massive drill tank. All we did was parlay with them lol
@@sadness2620Remember. Everything the players haven't seen. Can be moved to somewhere else!
@@braedenmclean5304my players had a potential TPK event with a final boss (munchkins vs campaign, they knew the risks) but then for the FIRST TIME IN THE CAMPAIGN they used diplomacy and rolled 19-20 for the next three dip rolls. In Pathfinder, so at like a +16
The plight of every DM but honesty, you just have to love it!
one time, the dm made us fight a big kraken on a ship, we didnt know at first what to do but then the cannons were mentioned so we used them, and got d20 twice and did 400 dmg with the cannons, it was then killed by the bard using vicious mockery
Kraken: *kraken screeching and noises*
Bard: ugly
@@alexotlthegreat4450Kraken: *eyes tear up, and it dies from mockery*
Is vicious mockery like some special well known DnD move or just legit a person going "yes I shall heavly mock the enemy to death as my attack"
Cause I have been listening to Tom cardys "perception check" song so much today and there's no way the vicious mockery thing there and here Is a coincidence xD (would check out the song, it's great lol)
@@Pantherpick You basically insult someone so bad they die.
@@Pantherpick A psychic attack and the verbal spell component is an insult.
I love the animation of Gus breaking the deck, it’s hilarious
Man, i swear that having a druid in your party is a guarantee that they will skip some part of the campaign like nothing
This was even the second time in this campaign. He once skipped a entire tower battle by turning in to a giant spider and just climb the outside wall.
Running tomb of Annihilation currently. Have a wildfire druid in the party. Can confirm. So many challenges skipped thanks to fiery teleportation and animal shenanigans. It's fun for sure, but after DMing this module 5 times with different tables, this one has challenged me more than my others. Even my homebrew. Lol
@@mandolorian1176 I mean, it's the Tomb of Annihilation. If you don't cheese it as hard as you can, it will leave players grumpy...
Or was that Tomb of Horrors?
@@bthsr7113 I think that's tomb of horrors. Though ToA will certainly do the same lol. I run it with the meat grinder rules so gotta have players who're ok with losing characters on the reg.
It's almost like people who play Druids do so just to break the campaign with the wildest moon logic that no sane DM would have ever considered.
Not including an underwater net as part of the blockade was a massive oversight
My party managed to bypass an entire armed fortress escape by peacefully negotiating with the captain of the guard.
Debatehobos
Now THAT is good roleplay. Not just walking around throwing dice at stuff and being murder hobos.
Did that once to a DM in high school and I came out with money and an allies 😂
"Nice argument, however..."
**Turns into a Plesiosaur**
"In front of you is a warship blockade."
"Fine! I'll take the submarine!"
"There seems to be spiked metal balls in front of you."
"NO, WAIT, DRUID! DON'T TOUCH THEM- and... We blew up. F*&k.
@@St4rbreakerI shape shift into a Terrasque.
That's a Matt Mercer moment! Glad you two experienced the same pain.
Our DM decided to challenge us with a big, epic ship battle at relatively low levels. A squad of fish people, led by a fish person cleric riding on a hydra, rose out of the water behind us. My bard won the initiative, cast Enemies Abound on the hydra, and went to go hide in the cabin to maintain concentration. The rest of the party watched the water turn red and foamy as we sailed onward.
Kuo-Toa?
@dubuyajay9964 I believe so, yes. Though he cribbed some material from other sources so they were tougher due to magical flesh crafting shenanigans
300ft? That's within my range!
There's a moon Druid in the party. All of your plans were doomed to fail.
The animator made the pleaiosaur so cute oml
The rules of creating a campaign
1) create a basic story
2) create some fight scenes
3) create some epic plot twist your players will never see coming
4) prep your players with some backstory and lore
5) burn all of your dm sheets in a garbage can cause none of it matters to your players and they will do everything they can get away with
I once had my BBEG animate a tavern “Monster House” style...AND MY BARD F***ING MARRIED IT AND HAD LITTLE COTTAGES
H... I know it's a Bard, but, HOW DO YOU *F*CK* A *HOUSE?!*
If theres a hole theres a goal@@courier6640
Someone hasn't read Love and Hex two houses had a baby there, it was raised by the monk to be a dojo...
@@courier6640ok so theres this gta 5 rp character called James Randal..
@@foxthefox1594 STOP. I have heard enough.
This is the curse of being a DM, where you plan for something HUGE just for the players to cheese pass it
To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke, "No campaign survives contact with the players."
And that's why DM Napoleon III got fired after the players by-passed his fort puzzle
@@atticussanders7394 At least he wasn't exiled to a small island in the middle of nowhere like his uncle.
I once had two groups fighting each other at a pulley-trolley system to enter a city. I wanted the players to side with one group or the other and use those new allies as a way to enter the city or retreat safely, but siding with one group would cause the other group's leader to spawn as a miniboss. Instead, the players threw a baby as a distraction, and proceeded to fight absolutely no one as they booked it for the trolley.
I relate to this so hard. When I was dm'ing, I had my players go to this ruined, undead city for a magic item. In the center of the city was a magic tower. I had planned different levels, hidden lore, and puzzles that increased in difficulty as you climb the tower before reaching the boss. Well, players skipped over half the dungeon, because they figured out an exploit to the spell levitate and flew up the tower. I had to quickly create a monster to force them inside the tower, just so all that work wouldn't be completely for nothing. I'm still salty about it.
That's pretty bad DM'ing. You should be proud on your players if they find a creative way around your puzzles, not forcing your ideas onto them or even punishing them for being creative. Such stuff discourages players even trying to solve a puzzle.
After such a dick move i would annoy the DM with searching for some hidden made-up monsters for hours at every puzzle before i quit and never look back to such a session.
If i want to be railroaded that hard, i watch a movie or read a book.
@@delqyrus2619the OP just said they got frustrated because their players found a solution to all the prep work they did. Their players got to a place were they weren't expecting them to get to yet, so they had to scamble for something the players can encounter. They never said they never let the players not do it. You can be both proud of your players and frustrated that you wasted all that time, at the same time.
You, however, seems to be the type of player the ends up as a story in r/rpghorrorstories.
I wouldn't say this is bad gming, that's kind of unfair. Not only should the game be fun for both parties, the gm puts in a lot of effort and work and most of the time their planned material is what they are looking forward to.
They also still gave them the ability to bypass a good deal of the tower, which is a just reward for being unique and thinking outside the box, or using spells in fun ways.
They could have been a jerk gm and say "oh well the tower has anti magic but only on the outside and grease on the walls and it's perfectly solid and as strong as steel so if you try to use anything to climb it, it can't pierce it."
But no, they gave the players a reward, even at the cost of losing out on what they wanted.
Hell they didn't even need a monster and could say a storm that's blowing wind hard enough to force the levitate forces them into a window. OR could have said it pushes them away from the tower, could even make it a luck based roll, and now they might risk fall damage.
Which are things i have done at my table before and my players enjoyed.
@@coooldude245 It is basically the job of the DM to think about ways the players can interact with the game. If the players find a way to skip some parts of the story, the DM didn't do his job right.
I am DMing for a group which prides itself for trying to derail my campaigns. If they are successful i sometimes had to end a session early, what is sad, but completely my fault. If they try some action i am not prepared for, which destroys my campaign i have to think about the stuff i did wrong and find a way to reorder my campaign so it still makes sense and doesn't force the player to do whatever i want. That's the point on DMing. Everything else is just storytelling.
So the problem isn't that there is a monster. The problem is, if the monster appears out of nowhere. The players put a lot of effort into thinking about ways to play your game too. If you tell them "there is the tower and no monster/wall/storm/whatever in sight" and they work hard on a way to fly up there, maybe waste some spellslots and... "Oh, suddenly there is a monster which btw. will kill you if you try that.". So you wasted the time of your players - which also put a lot of effort into it and didn't made any mistake. You punish them for your mistake.
Also: Where is the line? Are you allowed to snap some monsters/walls/storms/whatever into existence if they skip your whole story? Half of the story? A single puzzle? Maybe if they attack a monster not in exactly the way you intended them to do so? Maybe if they don't ask the right question to some NPC? Or they simply use a single word that you haven't scripted?
DnD is about players taking their own descisions. But they can't take qualified descisions if you simply change the rules to your liking just because you haven't thought about how this might impact your campaign.
So yes, there actually is no problem with a monster hindering the player to do something. I mean: That's basically the whole point of monsters in these games. But it has to be there in the first place. Otherwise the players have to consider a monster snapping into existence at every action. I don't see how this can be fun.
And yes, it is about both sides having fun. But if you want to tell a story where players do exactly what you have planned, DMing isn't what you want to do - you might want to write a book or sit down at a campfire and tell a story. But - at least in my opinion - this is not what DnD is about.
@@delqyrus2619 I get what you're saying. Players thinking outside of the boss is my favorite part of DM'ing. I once had to make a whole new dungeon on the fly, because my players jumped into someone's mind. I had not seen that coming. LOL
To be fair, I phrased my original comment pretty badly, because I was trying to give a small snippet of my experience without drowning in unnecessary detail and I didn't put that much thought into my first comment. I also missed a word in this sentence: "I had to quickly create a monster to force them inside the tower." I didn't create a monster. I created a monster encounter. Also, "force" was probably the wrong word to use. Technically, the players had the option to fight the monster instead of going into the tower. However, they chose not to, because I had previously foreshadowed how the boss of the tower would fly around on the outside of the tower. Thus, the monster was the boss. When they first entered the city, I wanted to give them a sneak peek at the boss. It was a giant sentient swarm flying around the top of the tower, like a cloud of death. (Trust me, it was cool.) So it wasn't completely unexpected that they would run into the boss like that. I just was not expecting them to do that and did not have a random encounter with the boss prepared. I did have a short monologue the boss was going to say and some banter, but that didn't really fit with a random encounter and I threw it out the window since it was not necessary after they had already met the boss. Anyway, with all the side quests they did, they could have beaten the boss and skipped the whole dungeon, if they wanted, but the boss had field advantage and the team was limited in movement since someone had to spent their turn maintaining the levitate spell. I did reward them for this and me being salty about it was supposed to be a joke. My players tease me with this every time they approach a dungeon. So, I hope that does clear up the misunderstanding.
"It say Pass without a trace" has a verbal component. (wonders if it has somatic or material components)
"Bllrrrbbble"
🤣🤣🤣
That was my favourite moment! It was the only time I audibly giggled at my workplace and my colleagues were concerned
The *only* time?
All I'm going to say is cow damage. If you know, you know.
NEVER expect your players to do something, always have the brute force plan, the stealth plan, and the strategic plan ready for all situations.
I did that to my dm once… I ended up skipping everything they had planned for the session by accident. They were not impressed
I did it to myself as a DM.
Party was going into a vampire den, accompanying a vampire hunter NPC who had hired them. The NPC, who I was controlling, managed to crit the master of the den. Twice. With a special anti-vampire weapon of my own design. Severely wounding the master vampire so that they could be finished off with relative ease two turns into combat.
The plan was for the physically frail 'hunter' to go down early in the fight, but the dice said NO.
@@Taolan8472 we really live to the whim of the dice huh. Also that’s really funny lol
@@Taolan8472Who did you hire, Jamie Lee Curtis?
Because of stuff like that I have so much random shit in my back pocket. And because my mouth has a mind of its own I somehow said "You can ignore the dungeon, but be prepared for it to follow you." And now I just HAVE to put a moving dungeon somewhere. I mean, just imagine the party seeing the dungeon, going nope, and two days later and 30 miles further they find that dungeon again. And it keeps happening!
I did that to my dm because he was planning a ambush but I decided to pet the the creature which deactivated The ambush entirely and I got a new pet out of it
Player: "I'm gonna do this"
DM: (sigh) 'blood pressure increases'
I feel for him lol. "oh yeah, I got the whole session planned out"
*player avoids the problem entirely*
"I didn't have anything planned after that, see you guys next week"
This happened to my dad once. He had this whole space adventure planned out and his party just shoved a nuke through the portal into the danger zone.
This is my favorite part of the show😂😂 he was so surprised at them being able to fix this without any violence that he couldn't actually get mad at them. He was laughing the whole time in surprise. I honestly wish that they just made a separate episode where they went ahead and reenact it the Navy ship battle just to see how it would have gone or if he had railroaded them a little bit so that they would have to be forced to do it. But I think it's cool that they were able to subvert that so easily
"You will loose control over the situation as soon as you stop speaking" -(My DM)
Imagine Matt’s plan getting capsized by Caduce’s waterbending xD
Could never occur, no way, that ship combat was airtight!
Unfortunately, the enemy ship was not water tight! 😂
I ❤ the super adorable plesiosaurus design!
I once played in a campaign where a weeks worth of planning got thrown out because we found the bbeg during an elevator ride with a casting of detect magic. It was truly a time.
There was a whole gorgon battle planned today, the DM had planned for us every possible thing we could have done except for the entire party just killing themself
Oh my God… this is so true.
I was playing D&D in the 80’s with my older brother and his friends, and I had a ninja character. While our camp was sleeping, the DM had my character awaken and notice someone was stealing food from the camp. I followed him into a large town, where down the alley was a halfling sized tunnel. I started down the tunnel… then thought, “I didn’t leave a note to let the party know where I was.. besides, what if something bad happened to me? They’d never know.”
So I turned around and went back to camp. When it was time to go home, Russell (the DM) pulled me aside and said “I developed an _entire mission_ for your character.. and you just walked away.” I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how to react, but later I thought “then why didn’t you just have my character kidnapped?”
Sometimes you have to force the issue or create a clever way to get your characters to do what you want.
My Dnd character's backstory was basically 'They decided to leave their home once they were old enough to explore, came across a group of bards, liked what they were doing enough to aso if they could be a bard. And also they're a huge history/myth nerd.'
Mudd as dinosaur is so cute. I want a plushie now.
Yes cute but not dinosaur
@@avouleance Look... It's called Plesiosaurus, so misnomers are inevitable.
They could have said “how will the others breathe?”
It’s not unreasonable given the 300 foot distance, and could still let you use your fight
Leave it to a party to find a very funny way to avoid a encounter
As long as it's not a door.
@@sirBrouwerand if they find a door, they will do everything in their power to go around it
This is ultimate dnd:make a map,full skyrim type stuff,follow the main story or do your own stuff.Have tons of locations,dungeons,monsters,characters,quests and side ones.Add mini bosses that can be encountered anywhere.With several bosses with enough small lore bits to make sense of their actions.Add different land types and biomes,small plots that are connected to an area,like a town always attacked by dragons.
Then give the map a name,and due to its massive variety,several campaigns on that map can take place there.
Only draw back this map will take months if not a year or 2 to make,but then you have a make your own story journey that the players can't ruin the planning of.
Welcome to D&D, where the DM plans something awesome and difficult for the players and the players go, "I'M A DO A THING!!" and you sit there and weep. 😅
I still remember "The Trebuchet Incident" from a campaign I was in. The DM needed a few minutes and a drink. Well that and killing the undead bride in Curse of Strahd because my character was a Grave Cleric of Kelemvor. DM should have seen that coming.
The mark of a true dm is seeing how the players change the story and adapting to it well.
After our final boss battle, I was looting these tombs. Inside a sarcophagus was a mummy. My DM asked if I wanted to do anything before touching it, so I cast Gentle Repose, which prevents things from becoming undead. He slammed the monster manual closed, and I got to loot a mummy lord and get awesome stuff, lmao.
Fun story, i'm the "guest dm" for my group that comes up with 1-shots if we know several people will be unavailable for a week. During my second 1-shot i had prepared a tower filled with traps and puzzles for the 2 players to solve. As i describe the tower and the evil energy vortex that can be seen at the top the druid (aka the regular dm) says "i wildshape into a giant spider and carry the gnome on my back to the top of the tower". There went an entire afternoon of planning down the drain. Couldn't have been more proud.
The more effort you put into planning out a big setpiece encounter, the more likely the players are to completely DINOSAURING bypass it.
"All right i'm going to swim under the blockade with everyone on my back"
Dm: "are you sure?"
"yes"
"well everyone drowns"
This is when the DM throws papers up in the air and is like...
"NO THAT’S FINE, I DIDN'T SPEND WEEKS PLANNING THIS. BUT I DIDN'T EXPECT DINOSAUR!!!!11!!1!"
LOL
My DM once had a villain.
He was a young kid and the son of the goddess of death.
But he was adorable! And he needed a hug. So I simply romanced him to the good side.
I am so for water based wild shapes being able to fill the verbal components of spells while underwater, that’s incredible and so niche that I’m sure the druid would have a field day anytime they went even remotely close to water
I accidentally ruined two starting towns. First one I blame myself but was and wasn’t my fault. My Kobold cleric got paranoid and didn’t want to check out a basement by themselves (IE the DM was asking questions that wigged me out) so started to back out when our warforgged party member offered to come along. But the way to the basement was a old wooden ladder. The ladder broke. Then the wooden floor beneath it broke. Ending up with our party member landing in a giant ant nest, squishing several larva by accident. We somehow got him out. Don’t remember how. Blocked off the basement and eventually ran for the hills cause we weren’t gonna survive that.
Second town was a town of shapeshifters I think. Or they stole faces. Don’t remember which. We were at a execution with the town sherif and the party wasn’t 100% sure the criminal deserved it so I decided “know what, I’m gonna pray for guidance”…. A little tidbit is due to a misunderstanding between me and the DM my kobold cleric actually isn’t a follower of any of the real gods of this realm. So my prayer got answered by a random god… and I rolled a nat 20. Actually summoning them… said god apparently didn’t like this town for some reason I’ve partially forgotten.
Stalt is glorious and I feel so bad for our DM.
Now there's a mad fisherman who claims he saw a water monster and the party has to chase their own tail until they realize it's them.
This is the second time I’ve seen a naval battle get ruined and bypassed on a TTRPG show.
If I had a nickel...
I ended up in a naval battle once, playing an artillerist lizardfolk. Jumped in the water and crippled two ships from below before we closed with one of them and started a boarding action.
My mom, the dm for a Pathfinder 2e campaign she’s running for me and my dad, keeps trying to start bar fights between us and the NPCs in order to entertain my dad, who loves the fighting aspect of TTRPGs. My character is a champion of Cayden Cailean. I’m morally obliged to prevent bar fights and I keep ruining her plans.
I was playing a cleric in one campaign, and while the party was making our way through the dungeon, we passed by a room with a deep pit filled with corpses, a mass grave. My cleric, being lawful good, wanted to bury the bodies and perform last rites, but the party (and the DM) all insisted that we didn't have time. Not wanting to move on without doing anything, my cleric decided to bless the remains and consecrate the ground they were in.
I would later find out that the reason why the DM whispered "f**k!" at this time was because my character's actions completely ruined the zombie horde boss battle he had planned 😅
Honestly as a DM i would secretly be glad not to have to roll combat 😂
our DM had a plan for us to save an entire city from demons. but then one of us who owned the bar was a little evil plant and the next then you know, all our characters were evil and we just started working for the demons. our DM was so mad that he had to throw out the entire plan and just make stuff on the go.
My group wasted a whole encounter with a Beastmaster and it’s pet tonight by have one party member hold down the Beastmaster whilst the rest of the party tried to tempt the pet into joining the party.
My response to the DM saying naval battle would be." I realize I forgot something on the ship and my wild shape drops while we're there" I'm all about the naval battle!
I think my design professor's words of advice ring true here "don't fall in love with your art" because clients will probably want changes or you'll have to erase something as you build up your drawing. Or because your players will completely circumvent your carefully planned out naval battle
As a DM, I'm honestly happy when players find cheeky bypasses. It means they're engrossed in the game enough to think outside the box rather than "just being here and playing along"
RIP 5 hours of this mans life planning that battle just for someone to go RAR underneath
Spent about four weeks creating this really intricate frontier town with a complex web of rival gangs, weird miners and duplicitous traders and such. Really lovingly crafted and meant to occupy the party for multiple sessions as they untangle the web of intrigue and how it connects to the overarching plot. It was amazing.
The party burned the entire town to the ground on the first night, because one of them thought someone in the saloon looked suspicious.
To be fair, if my players have fun going around my idea, that's still fun.
Two things you should always remember as a DM. Never get too attached to any idea, chances are your players will find a way to ruin it. And the second thing is to try and plan for that, make there be some other obstacle for them to overcome. In this case have them come across some sea mines or something.
DM: 23? How did you get 23?
Druid: 9 + 4+10!
Smart ass joke XD
My friends have done things like this more than once in my brother's campaigns. He doesn't get mad that we foiled his plans, just a little sad that he didn't get to show off the well crafted monsters he made.
Gotta love out of the box play.
Unless you're a DM. 😂
Honestly I love when my players come up with something I never even thought about and wipe or bypass a problem. It's not super often, fortunately, so the work I put into planning doesn't often go to waste. Of course depending on how they bypass I can actually just reuse something later.
Naval combat in DnD and getting canceled out by magical shenanigans.
Name a more iconic duo.
My group once skipped 1-2 sessions worth of content by combining spells, some teamwork and the rule of cool. It was a huge spiral staircase that was trapped and goblins were hiding everywhere. We scaled a wall instead. Made the biggest guy even bigger, gave him spider climb and used rope for the smaller guy and one of us could turn into a giant bat.
One time, I planned out an encounter with a priest who lived in a forest who'd give them a really good side quest that would give them a bunch of lore on a plot-relevent demon. He got set on fire and hidden in a ditch because he was in a Bush when they found him... I am still not over it.
So one of the party members set his on fire
@@scullstationstudio8511 Yes. One of my players character has a running history of arson. I am so close to killing them, but they're having fun.
@@FrostyTheeSnowmann XD my humanoid bird name jear has a thing with exploding things I wonder if we would along or have a argument for which thing is better
You know, he's been wanting to do that dinosaur thing the whole time?
And you.
Absolutely absolutely fell for it.
Blurble gurble everyone!!
Fairly rare instance of players working smarter not harder, using their brain and avoiding the conflict
I love how annoyed the dm was😂
Notes for the DM. Always have contingencies. Some people will rush right in to every battle even if they don't need to others will try to avoid every battle even if you don't want them to. So here would be a great way to have that character turn into a plesiosaur and successfully sneak his way past the blockade... But did the rest of the team pass a successful check to see if they could hold their breath that long? Did any of them bother to try to cast any water breathing spells? Did any of them even hop onto the back of the plesiosaur before he performed his stuff check? Maybe the pleasures were made it past the blockade but he left everyone else on the ship. And if people didn't pass their check for breathing underwater or holding their breath underwater then they're going to be losing lots of health or die while he carries them underwater... And if they have to break off halfway through the trip in order to resurface then it's an opportunity to have them resurface right in the middle of the blockade.
not a dinosaur, it’s a prehistoric aquatic reptile
Thank you. I felt so alone reading these comments.
correct
prehistoric creature nerds unite!
*NEVER* underestimate the players ability to f*ck up your plan.
This is where that rule that Druids can only turn into beasts they have seen (in person) before becomes super important.
But he had seen it in an earlier fight.
Without even seeing his face you can tell how much of his power he's using not to flip that table over
The amount of times players have skipped a ship battle in DnD history is an anomaly to behold
Motivation is a figment of our imaginations. Expect for DMs. They have a whole story set up. For us to crush it along with all their hopes and dreams 😊
"Suddenly you bump into a fleshy wall under the water, you swim backwards to see a giant sleeping octopus, it opens it's eyes and stares at you and stretches out it's 8 arms, role for initiative." 😂😂😂
Ooooooor, “I summon. Giant eagles for everyone to ride and fly over the encounter”
My Old DM had a very similar experience years back where me and one of my friends were in a two person D&D one shot, and managed to skip the entirety of the one shot.
We were on a ship, and being attacked by a ocean monster, The term 'kaiju' comes to mind but that could just be because I'm obsessed with Pacific Rim. The intended path was for us to abandon ship, but they wanted the captain to have this steely determination, so they wanted it to be our idea... We decided to fight the sea beast because I'd built my character around the idea of fighting giant monsters that eclipsed my size and stocked up on throwables that had rules where they needed to be washed off with soap.
Whenever the captain eventually snapped and ordered a retreat we remained behind to fight the beast and give everyone enough time to escape. After that, because the point of the one-shot was to find out where the Sea Monsters were coming from and I was a race that didn't need to breath (An Artifact race as I recall, I was a 3 ft tall Mech-Crab) I used my Grappling Hook to impale the beast's hide and then climbed aboard when it left.
At that point we just completely left the story behind. Later the DM tried to regain control by having us be thrown off, and meeting up with the captain in a rowboat behind enemy lines where the intended path was for us to go to land, and sneak past several enemy positions, However we also had an enchanted blanket that was big enough to be put over the entire rowboat that disguised it as a sea rock, and a rope that we tied around my character who walked along the bottom of the ocean, pulling the boat directly toward where we were going instead of going to land. This worked because my 3 ft tall Mech-Crab was a strength-based character, with an okay sneak stat.
We were only told how royally we screwed over every aspect of the one-shot after the one-shot.
This is the biggest "suck it" to Gustavo/Micha and it was glorious!