Fake War Stories

(This was submitted by a group of gaming fans of our site who go by The Zoo. Thanks guys!)

Continuing from where mrevand6 left off from the giant demon turnip, the soulknife ran ahead and was promptly swallowed, ne’er to return. My cleric of JUSTICE AND VALOUR watched in mute horror as his comrade was devoured by this foul creature, and recompense for his life was demanded.

I drew my blade and said “Now we shall slay this fiend and avenge the life of our comrade!”.

My fellow cleric stated, “We need to run.”

The local bandito said “Naw.”

And the warlock simply looked on.

This turned into a 5 minute break, where we reconnoitered outside to plan/argue, as we were wont to.

Now, as you faithful readers may know, our DM was not the best one our group had played with. He railroaded like a fiend, refused to do his bookwork, and had a very rigid idea of how D&D was “supposed” to be like. To wit, my cleric had turned into a plot device, and I endured it with grace and serenity borne of patience (until he broke my master’s sword, but that is a rage story not fit for here).

Outside, I repeated my demand that we do battle in the name of our fallen friend and scrub this blight from the land! The other cleric, a weak, weedy fellow of perhaps questionable faith, again repeated that we could not win, we were exhausted from many battles up to this point, including a very bad run-in with 2 shambling mounds (we will never look down on plant monsters ever again), and I challenged his courage and made a discouraging remark about his testicles or lack thereoff (or something of the sort).

The bandito said it wasn’t his problem (it’s never his problem until shambling mounds show up ::grumble::) and the warlock continued to look.

I repeated that we will fight this beast or I will stand alone to fell it.

What I did not say was that due to my armor and the presentation I saw before, of the soulknife, the single fastest thing I had ever seen getting snapped up mid-run by this burrowing monster, I could not under any means functionally outrun it, and I could not fly. I literally had no choice but to stand and fight, or die fleeing.

The cleric finally relented, saying he had some ideas left, and with him, the bandito grudgingly agreed. With the majority rules, the warlock followed suit. I bounded back into the house, sat at the table, looked over my charater sheet, took stock of my spells, and waited.

What I didn’t know was that the rest of the group was still plotting outside…

Everyone comes back in, and sits down. The first thing the cleric does is cast the spell needed to give you wings on himself, then offers to hit me with it. I defer to giving it to the bandito, as he had some decent ranged ability (that never worked [OHHH NOOO~]), and the warlock again takes to the air.

I then sorta realized just how buggered I was.

Well, hell. I hit myself with some buffs, hulk the hell up, summoned 5 celestial badgers (love these guys, 1d4+1 baby), spread them out in a circle, and had them rage, stamping their feet to draw in the turnip.

It burrowed down, and the DM rolled a d6 to determine who got nommed. A badger got hit (thankfully), the group made some cursory attempts to pelt it from the air, while I activated my plan. I walked over to it, and grappled the damn thing, with all the badgers assisting. I proceed to then pin the creature, my grapple check sky high with the buff bonuses, keep it down for its round, release my part of the grapple, quick draw my longsword with both hands, and full bore power attack it.

Rolled to hit, rolled damage.

“30 damage,” I say, “is it dead?”.

“No”, replies the DM.

Rolled again, hit again, 36 damage, still alive. Quick Strike bracers, go. Attack again, hit again. “40 damage, is it dead?”.

“Yes, it’s dead…”.

“Good”.

I de-summon the badgers and sheath my sword as my comrades float down from the skies. I cut open the beast with my knife, hoping to recover my comrade’s remains for burial, and am told there is nothing inside, not even his metal/magic gear.

Taking this situation in silent stride, I quietly build a small shrine and pray for his soul to find salvation before looking towards a small hut that contained a gnawed upon corpse, the corpse’s journal detailing the creation of the monstrous plant we had slain and a few small baubles.

We burned the creature’s body, burned the ashes, then I called down divine fire to burn them once more just in case.

With the situation solved, we returned to the tree people, told them the creature that was killing their folk was dealt with, received their word they would leave the human settlements be, then got on our damn ship and left that accursed island behind.

This was about the time I came to realize that 3.5 D&D clerics are sorta busted.

Last weekend I attended Ghengis Con in Denver. During a game one of the other participants told me of his experience at a previous convention. He’d signed up as Gamemaster for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl and drew the morning slot. Only one person showed up at the time of the game, but they decided to play anyway.

Talking to the player, the GM learned that the gentleman was unfamiliar with the game. In fact he’d never roleplayed before and had no idea what the hobby was about. He and his wife lived in one of the small mountain towns of the Rockies, and every few months they’d drive into Denver to see what was happening. He’d discovered the game convention while his wife was at a doll show and, thinking it sounded fun, decided to drop in.

The GM handed the player a character sheet for a stalwart Ranger, gave him a brief overview of play, and they were off. When the player ran into his first monster, the Gamemaster helpfully pointed out the Ranger’s skill in archery and swordplay.

“So what do you want to do?” the GM asked.

The player studied his character sheet. “It says I can do bird calls,” he noted.

“That’s right,” the GM replied, somewhat puzzled.

“OK. I do a bird call to distract the monster, and then sneak past him.”

The fellow rolled the dice and successfully evaded the monster. In fact, over the course of the game, the player cleverly avoided every monster in the dungeon, with nary an arrow fired or sword unsheathed.

(found on defective yeti)

I was twelve and had just started a campaign with a couple of guys playing 2nd Edition AD&D. The group was looking for new blood. I found out that if a player had to move or something and wasn’t able to play with the group anymore, the DM was in the habit of killing them off in spectacular, save-the-whole-party-with-your-sacrifice kinda ways.

“You shall not pass” kinda ways.

Fast forward a few months, and I have to move to another province and need to quit. I do and I lose touch with the players.

A few years later I’m back in Montreal and I come across my old gaming buddy. We get talking and I remember the game and excitedly ask how my character died.

“Oh, your mage? A wall fell on him.”

(submitted by haplesslad)

Another time we were playing AD&D (2nd edition) and the characters were summoned before the infamous Lord of the North (whom the PCs had heard a lot about but had never met, he was a serious badass in our world’s meta-geopolitical game).

So as the Lord of the North is basically acknowledging that the PCs could be somewhat useful to him, our ranger decides to get lippy with him: 

Ranger: “Screw off you over-important prick, we will not work for you.”

Lord: “YOU WILL BOW TO ME AND SHOW YOUR RESPECT, MORTAL.”

Ranger: “Bite me.”

Lord: “DIE” ::casts Power Word: Kill::

Ranger: ::fails save, dies::

Rest of the group: “What the fuck were you thinking, Ranger?!”

Ranger: “Well, I didn’t think he was going to kill me! And besides I might have made my save…”

(submitted by Vindaloo via MeFi)

(This is a follow-up to the Wandering Plot Hook story)

The players had arranged to help a rich and somewhat crooked merchant family (the Buoanottis) takeover a black onyx mine that had been occupied by a company of hobgoblins. The deal was that the adventurers were interested in loot and riches but not necessarily operations, whereas the Buoanottis were interested in riches and operations but not in getting them or their people killed.

So, the PCs agreed to escort a small mining crew with a supplementary squad of redshirts mercenaries back to the cove, attack the mine, clear out the hobgoblins, ???, and PROFIT!

What ensued was a fairly typical bug hunt\dungeon crawl, and, in the end, the PCs discovered a cache of correspondence between the hobgoblin chieftain\death priest and his superiors.

Turns out that this was also just a prospecting party sent out to test the vein for potential on behalf of an evil monster empire run by a rakshasa with a more than passing interest in necromancy. Since black onyx is a vital spell component in animate dead spells, it is needless to say that the rakshasa emperor was very interested in sending out a full-fledged war party to help secure the mine.

The PCs did the math between when the letters were sent, how far the known borders of the rakshasa empire were, and how long it might take a goblinoid war party to march through the terrain, and figured that they only had about a week.

Cue preparation and logistics montage as the party sets up pit traps and avalanche zones and digs some trenches and fortifications all A-Team style. The goblins show up a day early and the PCs scramble to man their defenses with their mercenary allies. Drums can be heard and everyone gets tense.

Traps go off, attackers impale themselves on stakes planted in front of the trenches, and generally it seems like a plan is coming together.

Then, a boulder flies out of the darkness and hurtles over the fortifications. Drums change their beat ever so slightly, and another boulder comes out and slams into the ramshackle wall, splintering it. Drum tempo changes again and a third boulder flies and shatters the wall.

Then the hill giant shows up, roaring and hefting a new boulder to hurl at someone.

The party is, like, 4th level and a hill giant, by itself, is a 7th level encounter. Backed up by 20 wounded and murderous hobgoblins, it’s TPK territory. So the party retreats and sets off their avalanche failsafe to buy themselves some time.

Over the next couple of sessions as the PCs fight a series of running battles with the hobgoblins, they piece together a couple of things. The giant itself appears to be a juvenile and not a full adult, and it dotes on the hobgoblin drummer (2nd lvl bard, btw) who also appears to be acting as a forward observer (essentially using his drumbeats to guide the giant’s rock hurling).

So, fast forward to the last stand where the PCs have been cutoff from their beach exit and have withdrawn to the mouth of their mine and the remains of the hobgoblins show up with their hill giant artillery. The players figure out fairly quickly that they need to take down the bard and so concentrate all of their efforts on him. The person who kills the bard?

The party wizard.

One hit from the hill giant’s pinky would’ve turned him into paste.

The hill giant loses his shit and starts chasing the wizard around. The wizard has spent most of his firepower on the battle already and is exhausted (we use a spell point system where you can cast more spells in a day but a lot of casting in an encounter will make you fatigued and exhausted).

So he uses a scroll of Expeditious Retreat to essentially kite the giant, interposing squads of goblins between the giant and him and letting the giant trample them on its way to killing him, while the rest of the party does their best to use ranged weapons to whittle away at the mountain of HP that is a hill giant with 8 HD.

The remaining mercenaries try their best to just survive.

The wizard also realizes that once he runs out of goblins to sucker, the giant can very likely charge and kill him.  

Eventually, after five rounds of this hilarity, the hill giant finally goes down and the player running the wizard just collapses in his chair, exhausted and weakly high fiving everyone, like he just spent that last hour running around himself and not just moving a piece of plastic across a table.

(submitted by spokenword)

One of my very first campaigns took place in a small town— a humble location with little more than an inn, blacksmith, and church. One day, upon returning to town after a small skirmish, one of our fighters was taken to the local church for curing and healing.

After making the appropriately large donation and waiting for the services to be performed we “split the party” and wandered around the church halls admiring the paintings, stained glass, and other works of art. Once our fighter was back to himself we took him to the inn and spent the rest of the evening drinking and telling stories.

The next morning before heading out our halfling (thief), who decided to use the outhouse before leaving, began to inquire about how to value some items while I waited for him just outside the door.

It became apparent that the items he was asking about were of religious origin and, right before I was able to put two and two together, a substantial group of armored riders from the church crested the hill.

“What have you done!” I yelled and, before he could answer, I instructed him to run.

He flung open the door and told the DM that he was running down the hill towards the creak, heading under the bridge. The ever-creative DM told him that was fine but, because he took action in such haste, and he was hung over from drinking, and was reasonably in fear of his life, that he forgot to pull up his pants and therefore began to tumble out of the outhouse and was rolling down the hill.

It was chaos from there on out and I don’t recall much of the rest other than we were all in tears and our sides hurting from laughter the rest of the evening.

The thief (Noose) was from then on known as Noose Tumblefoot.

Our group, the Heroes of Vindale, had just rid the countryside of—not one—but several goblin tribes. With our hearts bolstered by our success, we set forth in our crusade against evil. When we discovered that a large tribe of Orcs had a slave-powered mining operation in the hills we decided to bring the fight to them.

The setup was elaborate: terrain depicting the hillside, decorated with tents, buildings, and towers.

And lots of Orcs.

Our party was set up on an overlook to size up the situation and form a plan of attack. Being the party’s magic-user, I was to lob fireballs from the overlook. I would be accompanied by Narn the Blade, a thief armed with a Wand of Lightning. Meanwhile the warriors would rush in from another direction to put the Orcs to the sword.

A viable plan. Save for Narn’s wand.

As experienced gamers we all knew that the wand’s command phrase:

“Wand of wonder, wand of light, smite my enemies within my sight.”

…means the wand is not what it appeared to be.

Of course our characters didn’t know that, so when it spit out a Lightning Bolt the first time it was used, our characters assumed it was a Wand of Lightning.

We prepared for battle, and Narn the Blade took up his position and recited the words.

The DM rolled the dice and…

Narn the Blade was surprised by the sudden appearance of the huge grey ass-end of an elephant right before it tumbled off the cliff. The fall only injured the beast, sending it into a rampage throughout the compound. It destroyed many tents, several more permanent structures, and drew the attention of the three ballistae crew that did their utmost to bring the damned thing down.

That distraction did far more damage than a couple of fireballs could ever have managed.

(Submitted by mikebrendan)

If you guys read my previous story—Magic Items save the day!—you heard something about an evil turnip killing me.

This is what happened.

So I was out the week before (or not paying attention) and we were on a small boat on the way to some desert where the final stereotypical Lich wizard was waiting for us. We decided to be good little trains and follow the railroad to the front door of the boss.

Upon leaving the boat our party followed a trail to a large 60 ft diameter clearing in the trees. Directly in the center of this clearing was a giant turnip/parsnip. It didn’t seem very active so I decided to slowly advance towards it.

(Editors note: this is why knowing about the deadly Gazebo is so important! Never underestimate your inanimate foes!)

After moving in a good 10 ft the turnip burrowed underground! My character had reached pretty much his max speed at this point and decided to take evasive maneuvers. He ran around the outside of the circle and reached the direct opposite side.

Upon reaching the other side of the circle the ground under my character’s feet erupted and I got swallowed by the turnip.

The next few minutes go as follows:

Me: “I get swallowed by the turnip?”

DM: “Yep.”

Me: ::Thinks back to previous situations:: “Ok I’ll use my cape next round and escape!”

DM: “Hold on there. You take swallowing damage first!”

Me: “Doesn’t that take effect next round?”

DM: “No.” (Yes, but I don’t like you foiling my plots)

Me: “Whatever.” (Has about 40 HP and 15 CON)

DM: “You take 37 damage and 4 Constitution drain.”

Me: ::math, math, math:: ”Ok. I’m still alive!”

DM: Great!

Me: “Wait………” ::math, math:: ”Nope. I’m Dead. Constitution drain killed me. -11.”

So my character was digested and sat in this turnip’s stomach waiting to be rescued by the party. Which again will be another story. (Yay series of stories?)

After the other characters killed said turnip and cut him open to rescue my body… (Did I say body? I meant magic items…) They discovered that all the virtually indestructible magic items I had on my person had been destroyed by the turnip’s stomach acid.

So remember kiddies: if you piss the DM off, don’t be surprised when a giant turnip eats you and steals your magic items.

(Submitted by mrevand6, submitter of Magic item saves the day!)

Early in my first experience with D&D, our party was looking for a particular mine where orcs were doing some bad things.

I don’t know, who cares.

Anyway we came across two of the guards but kept our distance to stay noticed. We decided our best chance of finding the place was to listen in on their conversation. Unfortunately, all our Orcish speaking characters were too big and armored and terrible at espionage-related tasks to pull this off.

We debated a while until I had an idea: I asked our DM if I—a gnome bard (shut up)—could sneak over to them, listen extremely carefully, and come back and repeat the sounds I’d heard to the rest of the party for them to translate.

He glared a DM-glare at me and said simply: “I’m thinking of a number.”

I took the die in my hand and calmly rolled a natural 20 of pure destiny.

(submitted by brennathings)

We had a party (D&D 3.5 campaign) that was working directly for the king of the country. The two main party members, as far as the kingdom story line was concerned were:

• Lord Hek, Captain of the Guards (lvl 12 fighter), and;
• Mobius, High Inquisitor (lvl 11 Diviner, with no offensive spells, to this day one of my favourite D&D characters)

Anyway, the PCs were following up on a series of murders and the trail led them to one of the large noble houses. After breaking into the house the party found its way to the 3rd floor and were faced with a massacre: body parts and blood of the house guards were everywhere. We were stunned.

With this evidence we were sure that the lord of the house was the guilty party. Then, out of an adjacent room came streaming a bunch of royal guards along with the lady of the house (who had an evil snarl on her lips).

She shouted out: “Guards! These men have come to my house and killed my men as you can plainly see. In the name of House Raven, arrest them at once!” 

Just as Mobius starts to speak to try and Diplomacy his way out of the predicament, Lord Hek yelled: “Off with ‘er head!” and picks up the die.

Rolls a natural 20… With his Vorpal Blade.

With the mage still at a loss for words and Lady Raven’s head falling from her severed neck, Lord Hek declares: 

“I am Lord Captain Hek, and this is Mobius, the High Inquisitor! By order of His Majesty the King we have tracked and found the instigator of the serial killings, Lady Raven who is now dead at our hands. You will secure these premises and await further orders while we report back to His Majesty.” 

…pause, gaping maws all around… 

Lord Hek: “IS THAT CLEAR?”

All the guards, in unison: “YES SIR!”

And that is how Lord Captain Hek saved the entire party from a long series of adventures focused on imprisonment, false accusations, and fall from grace.

All hail Hek!

(Submitted by Vindaloo on MetaFilter)