Fake War Stories

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)

A number of years back my regular D&D friends and I teamed up with a classmate we hadn’t played with before. He had arrogantly said something about kicking our asses with the kingdom he’d developed, so naturally, challenge accepted. One of our friends agreed to be the impartial DM.

I was playing a super-powerful anti-paladin at the time, and, in a reconnaissance foray, he was promptly killed when we discovered the entire kingdom was protected by an anti-magic shield.

My buddies strategized and attacked using a high-level druid and his acolytes. First the druids summoned a hurricane, which made short work of the kingdom’s anti-magic shield using tornados and non-magical lightning strikes.

After weakening his kingdom’s defenses, the DM revealed to us the kingdom’s power source for the shield was tapping the soul energy of prisoners – and this was long before the Matrix movies.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is don’t challenge a druid without a clear understanding of their capabilities.

I had a character in D&D 3.5 named Marek. It wasn’t intentional at the time, but he was largely designed around completely fucking with the DM’s plans. 

Basically he was a psion who specialised in creating things. He also had a bag of holding filled with lots of random magic items, and a special magic item with the ability to create a large supply of mundane items (it was limited to something like 10gp worth a day, but other than that I was able to pull 10’ poles and climbing gear out of it to my heart’s content).

One of his most valuable skills, between his psionic powers and his decanter of endless water, was the ability to produce hot baths on demand whilst out in the field.

It was that decanter of endless water that first tipped off the DM that Marek might be a bit of a problem. We were doing a dungeon crawl (Marek’s first I believe) when we came across a problem: a closed room with a single point of entrance—a thing which we really needed in it—and two giant fire breathing plants. 

The plants looked pretty scary. I mean, sure Marek could throw lightning bolts if he had to, but he’d rather not. He was more into creatively overcoming problems in bizarre ways beyond boring applications of extreme force (I know, I know, what was he doing in a D&D game?).

So I had the following conversation:

“So, these are plants, right?”

“Yep.”

“And they’re rooted in place as far as I can see? Not mobile?”

“Definitely potted.”

“Ok then…”

At this point Marek proceeds to build a nice little brick wall across the entrance to the room with a slot for his decanter of endless water. He puts the decanter in there on full flow (not geyser mode - we didn’t have the keywords for it yet). Then the party sat back and waited.

At some point later we removed the wall, flood the dungeon slightly, and trot merrily past the now very drowned plants to our goal.

(Submitted by drmaciver)

I was playing in a campaign where the GM was very new to the system and was running a 2e campaign in a 4e setting with 3.5e rules.

As you can see its a recipe for disaster, but moving on from that.

Our DM decided to give each individual player 200k in gold. Fatal mistake. Everyone went out and bought stat tomes, major magic items that supplemented their powers, etc.

I went out and bought about 20 minor magic items and still had enough gold to buy an armada of ships, arm them with golden cannons, and take over the world. DM doesn’t like this. (He kills my character and takes my magic items with a giant evil turnip later. But that’s a different story.)

We were sent to investigate a tomb in some necro town where the graveyard was 3/4 of the city. We entered the tomb and generally found nothing. We were on our way out when we noticed something strange.

“Guys, where’d the front door go?”

Fireball explodes 10 feet away from us. We all turn around and look at the wizard standing on the other side of the room. We lose sight of him as smoke fills the room in a thick cloud.

INITIATIVE! I go first because of high dex and a nat 20.

Me: “I use my cape of mounteback.”

DM: “You can only use it on yourself.”

Me: “Actually…”

Effect of a 9th lv caster casting dimension door

(Dimension door: you can transport a number of creatures with you equal to 1/3 your CL)

Me: “I touch the other 3 members of my party and teleport them 500 ft towards town.”

The DM was mad that I’d foiled his plot so he decided to get the town mad at us, arrest us, then let us go because there was no real reason to hold us captive.

You know its a good day when your magic item saves the entire party.

(Submitted by mrevand6)

My Eldar Rangers crouched low in a ruined building, a relic of a past age. We had been hit hard by an Imperial Guard assault from the right while Orcs had rushed us from the left. With my main (if small) army locked in hand to hand combat, it was up to my two Camouflaged Rangers to do the dirty ranged work.

In the distance, an Imperial Sentinel Walker was hammering a squad of space marines as they tried their best to hold ground against a wall of laser fire. With little else to attack, I sent my orders in.

“Attack the Sentinel”.

My allies gave me a surprised look; one pointed out that I’d never hit the damn thing as it was too far away.

I ordered my commander into the relic when a haze—almost too light to be noticeable—surrounded the Rangers, granting them a steadier hand and a sharper eye.

I gave the nod and rolled two dice.

It was a 6. Got it first try. I’d landed a hit at the max range (almost the width of the entire map). The other flinched it and missed.

Next I had to get the shot to wound. Another six.

Finally the roll to see what my shot would do. Even with a six I could only get a normal explosion, not the ball of fire that killed everyone in the surrounding area that I wanted.

I rolled… and landed my 3^rd six in a row.

From across the map, my Ranger fired a shot that arced above the battlefield, over the heads of Orcs—Imperial and Marine alike—before hitting the Sentinel’s fuel tank dead on. It wasn’t enough to make it explode violently, but the tanks ruptured, melting the metal around it and sending the driver running off the battlefield with a slightly incinerated ass.

The Sentinel dropped to its mechanical knees in defeat and slouched to the floor where its body sat as cover for the rest of the match.

My allies and the enemy team stared at me, half with surprise and half with amazement, and I knew that down on the battlefield, my Ranger had just pulled out the Eldar equivalent of a Cuban, and was now sitting happily, smoking and admiring his fine, incredibly lucky, smouldering handy work.

(Submitted by penguin5465)

My friends and I were playing a Dark Heresy game. The group was two Guardsmen, an Arbite, an Adept, an Assassin, and a Psyker posing as a Cleric. In the second session of the game our Feral World Guard decides he wants more money, so he strolls into the nearest bar and proceeds to pick a fight with the local PDF’s (Planetary Defense Force)(essentially police officers).

He wins the fist fight and gets away Scott free with a pocket full of thrones… for now. We go off on a mission and return to the town the next session. I had lost my right leg to a firebomb so everyone’s dragging my sorry ass to the nearest transport to take us back to the Inquisitor.

Through the crowd we hear, “Hey you, in the Guard Flak!”

Garm turns and sees some PDF’s armed with sub-machine guns in a crowded street. This is the point where everyone starts hauling me faster down the road.

But not Garm.

Garm pulls a “Come at me Bro!” and pulls out his sword. Garm’s feral beliefs says that he must now draw blood because he drew his sword. The PDF’s are a good 20m away…

The PDF’s open fire, ONE PDF hits his mark.

Roll for damage. Garm takes huge damage.

The crowd goes into a frenzy, some people are wounded by gunfire and many are trying to leave the area. All of a sudden Garm thinks it’s a good idea to run away, draws blood on himself, and proceeds to try and get the fuck out.

On the other side of the city we make it to the Valkyrie gun ship and decide that it’s a bad idea to leave someone who knows about an Inquisitor behind. The group decides to do an air drop to save Garm, but pop a cap in his ass for being a huge liability. We rush into a crowded city with a Valkyrie gun ship and do just that, causing much panic and fear from the locals who are already terrified because the police have just opened fire in a crowded street to try and kill some lunatic with a sword.

This does not bode well for when we see our Inquisitor next.

When Garm reached the top of the rope ladder, we were all standing there, guns in hand, except our beloved Psyker/Cleric.

The bay doors close behind Garm. We are all ready to fill him full of lead. The only reason we didn’t kill him right then and there was because our Psyker jammed our weapons believing it was wrong for us to kill Garm.

So after being offered a forced Olive Branch (we all begrudgingly agreed that killing him would be too much trouble, especially with no weapons to shoot at him) Garm decides to draw his sword so he can try and take a few of us down while he had the chance.

Cue DM intervention! The Valkyrie hits some major turbulence (Thank the Great God Emperor). Garm was the only one standing not strapped in.

-20 agility check. Fail.

Our dear Garm smashed his head against the wall and was rendered helpless. Our Psyker played Kindergarten teacher and told him that he could have his weapons back after he has learned to be nice.

After a brief chat with our Inquisitor and a small check-up procedure by the Inquisitor’s Tech-Priest, Garm was turned into a Servitor programmed to clean for the Emperor. 

Pathfinder campaign, running for a few months, and we’re on the final session plowing our way through the final few rooms until we get to the boss (the Carrion King.) I’ve got a Barbarian who was planned out to be a lot more interesting than he ended up being in practice. Our rogue is a multiclassed Barbarian as well with an INT score that doesn’t really break the bank, but he’d always done a good job of finding traps for us.

So we’re descending this long, Guggenheim-style staircase-room with no railings and a deep chasm in the center when we’re all hit with complicated, DM-created trap that opens with a blinding spell.

Everyone saves except for the gnome sorcerer, but no one has evasion, so while most of us are blind for three rounds, the sorcerer is blind for nine minutes.

The blinded party (along with the fifteen meat-shields we had just rescued) is then hit with the second part of the trap: a wire which yanks us all together like in a Looney Tunes short.

Being in the center of the uncomfortable heap (and with the sorcerer wedged up against my buttcheeks) I roll a great strength check to break our bonds from the inside, unwittingly sending several meat shields over the edge of the staircase and onto the waiting up-turned spears of the pair of gnolls waiting below.

As the blind sorcerer starts clambering up my barbarian’s back for safety, the rest of us regain our sight and realize the third part of the trap: a magical-fire type of “fuse” flaring up in a spiral along the wall, and a sort of gunpowder showering down on everything from above. We have only a couple of rounds before the explosion hits, and the remaining NPCs we rescued are ignoring all fire safety and crowding the door we came through so that no one can get out.

The rogue jumps for it with his ring of featherfall, and my friend playing the sorcerer mentions that he, too, has a ring of featherfall, but no way of understanding what’s going on in his blinded and confused state.

In my first feeling of creative problem solving I’ve felt with my character in ages, I hatch a plan.

I run as far up the staircase as I can and ready an action to jump into the chasm while holding the sorcerer as soon as the fuse reaches its end, thus doing the action-movie thing and saving us from the explosion. The DM, who is a huge fan of this kind of playing, heartily approves. We wait…

And as soon as the fuse ends, I make my acrobatics roll.

1

The barbarian, holding onto the sorcerer, gets tangled in the aforementioned wire and slams them both into the side of the staircase as it explodes, the force of which blasts them across the room into another wall of fire on the other side, knocking the sorcerer into negative HP. At this point we reconvene a discussion of whether a gnome wearing a featherfall ring could sustain the barbarian carrying him, and the DM decides to make it a CON roll on the sorcerer’s part. The sorcerer’s player is a DM himself and knows to never take CON as a dump stat, so this should be ewasy enough.

1

The unconscious sorcerer dislocates his shoulder and the barbarian tumbles, barely catching himself on a flaming staircase, as the gnome drifts lazilly down, bleeding out and hanging from a sickeningly dislocated arm wearing the crucial ring. Once he lands, the rogue (who had dispactched the two gnolls at the bottom in this time) does a little bit of roleplaying and shouts that he attempts to heal the sorcerer, despite having no ranks in heal.

1

“The rogue attempts to kick the shoulder back into place. 3 damage.”

Thankfully the party cleric had made her own way down there by that point and saved the sorcerer at the last possible moment, but at this point we all turn to the DM, “What was the DC on that trap?”

“It was only 23! I didn’t want to make it to cruel, but he rolled a 21.”

“Oh shit,” says the rogue. “I forgot my +2 to trapfinding.”

I have a bit of a problem with characters. It’s not an unusual one, but I think I have it to an unusual degree. It’s that I create characters with an extremely high power-to-common-sense ratio. It’s not that I can’t do common sense, it’s just much funnier if I don’t.

Probably my favourite example of this was Nicky. The backstory for Nicky was that his family had some sort of father-to-son power assumption ritual. The father dies, the son then inherits his powers. Not in a lump sum, but it results in them pumping out a good few levels of sorcerer much more rapidly than one might reasonably expect. 

Unfortunately Nicky’s dad waited till late in life to have kids and popped his clogs early. The result was a sorceror with more levels than years. I think when I started playing him Nicky was level 15 and 10 years old. 

Nicky really played up to his powers, although he didn’t get it quite right. He wandered around in a big robe, wore a floppy wizard’s hat and carried a wand with a giant star on the end and a minor enchantment to make it sparkle. 

Nicky had almost no combat spells. Fireball? Nah. Lighting bolts? Boorrring. Really there were only three spells he cared about. Flight, Telekinesis and, well, we’ll get to the third one in a moment.

The party had been sent to help out a wizard who was having some monster trouble. We arrived at his house and while the rest of the party were still sorting out precedence Nicky walks up to the door and bangs on it. Wizard opens the door, sees this adorable little tyke in a ridiculous costume at his door. Goes into full patronising-adult-talking-to-small-child mode. 

Conversation goes something like this:

Wizard: Well, hello there. Who are you?

Nicky: Hi! I’m Nicky! I’m a sorceror!

Wizard: Oh, are you really? I’m not a sorceror, I’m a wizard. Do you know what that is?

Nicky: Yes, it means you need books! That’s silly! I don’t need books, I just cast spells!

Wizard: Oh, um. Yes, that’s right. Do you know a lot of spells?

Nicky: Well… I do know *one* spell…

(At this point a giant “Oh fuck” look dawns on the rest of the party’s face. GM knows exactly what’s coming but bravely refuses to break narrative)

Wizard: That’s very good, Nicky. Can you show  me?

Nicky: Ok!

Nicky steps back, brandishes his giant sparkly wand and points it at the wizard.

Nicky: FROGGY! YOU’RE A FROG!

(DM rolls saving throw for Wizard and flubs it)

Wizard: *ribbit*

The next 10 minutes of gameplay were spent with the rest of the party trying to persuade Nicky to turn the nice wizard back into a human being. Nicky behaves like a typically stubborn child and refuses to play nice. 

Eventually they managed to persuade him to turn the wizard back. Nicky totally shouldn’t have listened to them - the wizard turned out to be the villain of the piece and was nowhere as easy to turn into a frog the second time (Nicky tried, but I don’t think he succeeded so I think our party fighters just beat him to death).

I alas no longer play with the group in question, so Nicky is lost to the mists of time. I’ve no idea what happened to him, but one thing I do know: I’ve done the maths and he’ll be hitting epic levels and puberty at about the same time.

In one of the most fun campaigns I ever played, a friend of mine was that particular breed of D&Der: the pack rat.

Anything that wasn’t nailed down - and quite a few things that were - ended up in a bag of holding. He was carrying around the most useless pile of miscellaneous shit for most of the campaign.

My character - Baron Ovaries - was a bard and, as the most charismatic of the group, was generally the one having conversations with NPCs when we needed information. At one point we had to deal with a recalcitrant dwarf who had an amulet we needed. After downing a potion of dubious provenance I was hoping to persuade him to give it to us.

But after an astonishing series of just terrible, terrible rolls - like four ones in a row - it was determined that,

a) The potion wasn’t charisma-boosting, per se, instead it was a love potion;

b) The dwarf was not giving me the amulet, but;

c) He was growing increasingly amorous, and… uh… increasingly insistent.

Every damned roll I made exacerbated the situation.

My fellow PCs thought it was hilarious that my bard was on the cusp of being raped by a dwarf. I was at a loss and had no idea what to do next. My rolls were so bad that I was determined not to touch the dice again.

As the dwarf leaned over, grunting sweet nothings and making a grab for my nether regions, my pack-rat comrade quickly shouted, “I place the giant serpent’s eyeballs into his hands!”

Such inventive improvisation with something so seemingly useless he had been carting around for weeks evoked a spontaneous applause from the group. The natural 20 he rolled certainly helped, as the dwarf screamed in horror and fainted.

We stole the amulet and got the hell out, all due to the most uncharismatic member of the team, half-orc barbarian Fangula Bastardo.

(contributed by anonymous)