Things My Character/I Can No Longer Do In RPGs

[Wolfie]

Apparently Saadi (Gnome Rogue/Fighter) is no longer allowed to bullrush the larger characters in her group. She always wins... and they end up holding their junk and singing soprano for several rounds.

This is including against the half-orc barbarian.

Also, when the going gets tough, the gnome rogue is not allowed to use spider climb to get up into a corner of the room and simply shoot everything with CON and STR damage crossbow bolts. (Freaking Ice Demons vs a gnome w/ half hitpoints... she was not fighting on the ground. She ended up being the only group member that didn't get hurt the whole fight.) However, those bolts allowed the rest of the group to kill said demons and the big baddie... so

[Amara]

That sounds like my party's ranger, in my game.
His wolf fails every single normal trip check that she SHOULD be able to make with ease.
Give her something stupid to even try against, like a PHASE SPIDER, and the dog then chooses to roll a 20. Every time.

[Wolfie]

We aren't allowed normal plans. Example: Walk into that Church and talk to So&So. Something will go wrong. We'll get into a fight, get sidetracked, person will get killed, or leave, or something will go wrong.

However, everytime we come up with something stupid (that's said with a reaaaaaaally Southern accent btw) it works out every time. EVERY TIME. Much to our DM's amusement.

[Amara]

This sort of behavior, however, is perfectly acceptable in my Girl Genius based Surviving Castle Heterodyne....

Our barbarian would have some rather choice words.
:b I've since gotten the poor guy zapped with (thankfully a MINUTE amount of) spellfire.

We aren't allowed normal plans. Example: Walk into that Church and talk to So&So. Something will go wrong. We'll get into a fight, get sidetracked, person will get killed, or leave, or something will go wrong.

However, everytime we come up with something stupid (that's said with a reaaaaaaally Southern accent btw) it works out every time. EVERY TIME. Much to our DM's amusement.

Now that sounds familiar. In our most recent adventure, spelunking on the plane of metal, we were effectively on a timer.

► Show Spoiler

The other half of the party accidentally
released a very powerful old mage that had souljar'd himself in to the body of a flesh + clockwork red dragon golem he'd created to beat the clock. We knew he was after a Valalani (homebrew otherplanar race from our campaign,) he'd captured and studied (...tortured,) during his lifetime, and we were trying to figure out where this poor Valalani had escaped to in the interim, and effectively find this mage's other labs and loot them before he could get to them.

The DM expected for us to browse the closest rooms, find the one that led underground quickly (Imagine 6 main buildings set up as so;
1 2 3
4 5 6)
From there, he expected us to struggle a bit with finding the trap door that would lead to the secret entrance/shaft to what was a recreation of the man's manor on the material plane; we were expected to check out the other buildings quickly before returning, knowing we were missing something.

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Instead, while the rogue-bird kept rolling 1's on her spot check (plane of metal = distracting shinies, I guess?) Elevar then chose to roll a nat 20 on spot...right by the trap door. I'd like to note that despite having elf for perception, he has a really, really poor perception as wisdom is literally the boy's lowest stat.
Well, this trap door had effectively metallized and fused with the floor around it, so he EXPECTED us to try to find a safe way of getting it open.
Nah. Cue me rolling knowledge: engineering, getting a cumulative near 40, (loooooooooremaster,) and Elevar crawling around on his hands and knees knocking on the floor to determine the exact size of the shaft below, where the hinges were, and where the weak points were.
Elevar then instructed the barbarian to hit the floor really really hard and where to do so. "I can do that!"
And that was how I set off a 10d6 shock trap on the barbarian...
Who literally just shrugged it off and didn't care. The knight, however, lit up like a Christmas tree and squealed loud enough to be heard for miles.

So we got down the shaft, managed to knowledge: engineering our way past eeevery trap we located with the bird rogue only needing to disable one thing, managed to find literally everything from the underground "manor," he'd set up for us, spent way too long playing with portals to different planes (an adventure on its own, practically,) and then headed out to check the other buildings.

Well, while screwing around with the portals we accidentally set off a defense golem, which we thoroughly pounded in to the ground, which set off an alarm spell when it "died." So we now knew we were on a timer. In one of the remaining buildings, we found a clone of the Valalani we were looking for, submersed in some kind of fluid chamber.
We promptly set the clone free, and wound up escaping with the clone, an army of mindlessly loyal reprogrammed adamantine golems, and literally escaped the way we came in just as the big bad dragonmagegolem started to portal in. We're pretty sure we escaped without being seen.

► Show Spoiler

As for the portals... The DM made the mistake of giving us access to unmelting snow via the plane of ice. Naturally Elevar now has two bags full, and a box he fashioned out of unmelting snow to use for containing everburning stones from the plane of fire...

The DM is also amazed that Elevar decided it was a brilliant idea to stick his arm (the one with the scar) through every single portal after testing if they were safe. This was after he ruled that the lightning incident left Elevar technically "spellscarred" and ruled the resultant scar as an arm slotted spell storing tattoo.
Which was then promptly charged with energy of every single plane we were given.
And that was how I accidently smacked the poor barbarian with spellfire...

[spiderwrangler]

Sometimes you just plain scare me.

[BadgeAddict]

wow, you make my DM seem like a totally dickbag...typically when i catch him in an F-up that he didn't plan on me thinking of, he pulls out the "DM is right card" gets really pissy and then threatens to kill off my character....

needless to say he's a D-bag and we don't get along very well.

[Amara]

What I feel is that some DMs are simply too attached to their idea of a story; as a result, they strangle out creativity and the entire game loses out on what could have happened. People often get defensive of "their" creative content, and DMs are no different.
By far the more interesting games are the ones where things are allowed to go astray. In most games, they often will. I've had plenty of that in my own campaign that I'm running. (Such as my players accidentally creating a Curst out of a murder victim,) and in games I've played in. (Such as us escaping with a ton of documents we weren't meant to have time to grab, because the DM didn't' count on us simply mage handing everything in to our bags when it was too delicate to just grab.) ..or from that same campaign I played in by the third session, when the DM didn't expect the (up to that point) fairly mild-mannered "awkward" Wizard to suddenly leap from passive and cautious "think it through don't be too hasty" to "let's just blow it up."

I can also say my typical method of handling oppressively railroading and aggressive DMs is...not advised. Last time that happened to me I just deliberately started out-maneuvering and out-utilitying everything he tried to road us in to. It led to the absolute destruction of the campaign.
It also led to some of the most fun the other players had in the campaign before it went nuclear, however, because the DM finally was forced to start improvising and some really cool stuff happened.

[kurik]

One of my friends is running a game, and I've been playing in it as an NPC from one faction working with the PC's faction

► Show Spoiler

basically every era there's a contest among the fey to choose the new archfey, basically god, and it's done in a ten year competition to enact the greatest change in the world. there's a faction for each alignment, and the fey in the running can't directly interfere with other teams. Each fey chooses a champion, and others to round out their teams, they have to have at least 5 people alive at the end to qualify, if the fey or their champion dies they're out, and they can swear themselves to another faction, which gives that faction all the "points" they've earned so far

my faction was lawful/evil, the party's is chaotic/good. you'd think that wouldn't work, except the big bad is a psychotic death fey who started a zombie plague and unleashed an army of tyranid-esk horrors on the world, and wiped out most of the human race in under a year

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the party didn't know i was with L/E for 2 or 3 sessions, thanks to my kickass bluff skill. my job, as it was, was to determine if they're group was strong enough to warrant allying with. (official report: they're strong but freakin' stupid) once I revealed myself I was kept at arms length from most sensitive information, which I found out anyway because I that good. and have a power that can crap out people's mental stats. also they made me promise not to tell my faction anything I learned while with them-I sent daily reports via mental link anyway

the party survived (along with most surviving humans) on a flotilla of salvaged navy ships, going around the world collecting survivors where they could and fighting back how they could.

They knew where the big bad's champion was, but refused to go after him because he was mostly a confused kid, which is stupid because just kill the little f*er and you take out the biggest threat to winning the competition, not to mention the dude who's trying to end life as we know it

► Show Spoiler

here's the important part: I was actually trying to get my faction to win. not because the DM wanted me to, he was planning to merge the factions, but because I wanted it. I had plans to wait until the other threats were dealt with and then kill the party's champion and steal the win out from under them

so, after about 4 months in game time, I got bored. I got into their records (1 stealth check) and found out where the kid was, and promptly sent this information to my group. and they went there in force, 50 of the strongest people on the planet. the DM rolls for how well they do, and I learned a few things. 1. the big bad was in the same place as his champion.
2. he apparently ate nuclear energy, and had quite a bit undigested
3. 50 badasses is enough to kill the big bad, and almost derail the entire rest of the campaign if there wasn't one other faction left

the bad news: he exploded in his death throes, taking out arizona, parts of utah and nevada, setting souther california on fire, the explosion set off the yellowstone super volcano, which set off the ring of fire
the good news: they captured the kid alive, and with everything blowing up like that, they racked up so many "points" they effectively solidified their standing in first place
bad news: only the fey and champion survived, plus me, so there weren't enough people to qualify, and those two were being chased my a horde of monsters basically the entire length of south america
good news: I secretly managed to recruit about 500 people from the survivors, so if they lived we totally could pull it off
bad news: the party rescued them and the fey decided to swear allegiance to the party's faction, effectively ending my dream of total victory

[Wolfie]

We are no longer allowed to break the NPC's.

When we thought we were off to all get killed and there was a massive Time Stop over the whole city, we looted a local odds and ends shop for supplies and got lots of nice magical gear and left an IOU from the King (someone rolled a 25 on a Forgery check and we're all mostly chaotic neutral/good characters). We figured he wouldn't miss some of the stuff since the place was a mess. We only found the really magical stuff through use of a spell. Said magical gear kept us alive long enough to come back and save the city, which was still under a Time Stop but now infested with demons, gore, and other nasty bits of crap.

We save the city and everything goes back to normal. We head back to the shop to see if the shopkeeper is ok and to possibly return some of the things we took that we didn't use. The shop is now immaculate. Everything is clean and organized according to color, size, shape, use, age, and other forms of organization only that halfling knows exists. He also has a twitch and mumbles under his breath.

We broke him. (Don't ask him if anything is missing.... )

[Dlover]

Well if I suddenly had an IOU letter from my sovereign, I'd probably freak out too.

[Amara]

That's... great. xD Oh God, that sounds like some of the wonderfully horrible things we inadvertently did to the poor NPCs in the campaign I was playing Elevar.
More recently, most of the stupid in games I've been involved with has been self caused. Oops.

- No longer allowed to drink suspicious liquids to determine what they are. Even if I do have a freakishly high fort save against poison for level 3.
- This includes drug tainted booze.
- Yes Sasha, that means you.

- Stern Gaze is not meant to be used on party members.
- If I promised to wake the paladin for her watch, I am required to wake the paladin for her watch, even if I don't need the extra sleep.
- "But I was drawing her and she makes a better model when she isn't moving" is not a good excuse.
- "But I don't want her to know that I accidentally oh by the way we have a puppy" is worse.
- I am not allowed to start grand conspiracies to hide things from the paladin.

- I am forbidden from trying to tame strange wildlife.
- ESPECIALLY infected wildlife.
- We did not need a wolf pup THAT ACCIDENTALLY SHADOW STEPS.
- Dammit Sasha, you fed it. It's yours now.

- "It seemed like a good idea at the time" are not words an inquisitor should ever say.

[Amara]

My players, everyone...

- Walking through rifts that tear open due to chaotic magic is not considered part of asking the dwarves of Kigh Fohldur for information.
- Walking through rifts that lead to the plane of faerie / feywilds without preparation is not advised at all.
- Deciding to walk through a rift that leads to the underdark of the plane of faerie without preparation is an even more stupid idea.

- At no point is the appropriate protocol upon entering a rift to the fey plane's underdark walking in unprepared--OH GOD A SCARY THING--fleeing immediately at spotting a Fomorian, and deciding to return with a small dwarven army.
- If I am expected to prepare a small dwarven army with a single hour of prep, congratulations, I'm just going to start naming them after Hobbit characters.
- You now have a small army of dwarves excitedly running around with the decapitated heads of two fomorians. I hope you're pleased with yourselves.
- The local Fomorians now think you're acting on behalf of the Seelie court. You have no idea what you've done...

- The proper reaction to a magically shielded wall is not "let's just throw enchanted bullfrogs at it to determine if it's a protection from arrow's spell."
- The proper reaction to the bullfrogs bouncing off and going flying is not "ok, let's throw more bullfrogs at it that we didn't enchant with arcane mark."
- While we have ruled that projectiles that enter the feywild from the current location will typically speed up on arrival (due to the flow of time altering,) this in no way means firing musket balls traveling approximately 17 493mph just to "see how fast it can go" is a good idea.
- Lightning does not have a mass.
- LIGHTNING DOES NOT HAVE A MASS.
- LIGHTNING DOES NOT HAVE A MASS. YOU CANNOT ACCELERATE IT.
- Please just stop playing with rifts.
- No I am not giving you XP if you accidentally kill something on the other side of the rift with an accelerated musket ball.

[Quarg]

Actually lightening does have mass...since it is a column of ionic plasma...
and only travels at 96,000 miles per second versus light at 183,000 miles per second...

Of course I'd roll until one of the party members is hit with the burst of subatomic particles moving near the speed of light and cutting off some vital body part...

[Amara]

Well okay, yes, it's a channel of electrical charge, so its mass would be the sum of all the electrons and the plasma within the electrical charge channel...
But for all intents and purposes, it does not have sufficient mass for me to even bother with a calculation regarding acceleration through the rift in any way other than to have something violently explode and take the PCs with it, if the artificer really wants to start firing his lightning device through them.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Even if I am playing a gnome I really shouldn't use presigitation to put bullcrap on the floor, even if the spell does say you can spoil an area.

This goes for putting bullcrap in guard's pants.

No, no matter how funny it is, using presigitation for bullcrap is probably not the best way to use it. Even if the guards step in it.

Yes, you are a ninja. Going into stealth mode in a bright pink dress shouldn't be possible, but somehow it works even if you are not usig the ability to go invisible.

Using barbarian/warrior to lockpick is not the best way to open a door. Espessially if the door is unlocked and you just want to smash it open anyways. This espessially go for stone doors.

Charisma is not smashing one in the face. Even if it does work and that guy was a necromancer.

No you cannot hide in place pretending as a statue if you have no skill in it and are a bloody mess. Even if you wre made of stone.

With all that gear you have on you, you cannot pretend to be a normal flying cat. Espessiallysince you have wings. Andcan talk. Espessilly if you do not make an acting/bluff check.

If you are a priest of chaos, going around healing people and helping them meansyou are probably doing it wrog. Even if you are trying to prove a point that chaos does not mean evil and want to show that there could be good priests of your god. Espessially when you have to drain energy to stay alive. Even if you only drain it from animals. Espessially if you are a demon, even if you got magiced to a demon.

[Wolfie]

We finished the campaign last night, and we added to our No Longer list

So...

The Gnome is no longer allowed to romp around with dwarves... as there are unintended side effects. Everyone, meet Bresaoron.

The half-orc and elf fighter are not allowed to agree on killing the end bad guy this time
Especially since it means killing off 10 parallel worlds full of people
And they don't care...

The Bard is no longer allowed to play a song to taunt the things in the dark to come into the light to kill us.
- She rolled her perform check so well, the DM had to roll Will saves for GROUPS of creatures. The came in and attacked the half-orc by exploding when they got w/in 5 feet, doing 1D6 damage EACH. That individual, not group. He was not happy. (We were all laughing hysterically).

The Bard is no longer allowed to pick epic gifts for the group
- The half-orc disliked the bonus to his strength since he only has another 20 years to live
- The gnome, however, loves her gift. She can tumble through enemy squares w/o having to make the check...she teleports through them automatically w/o provoking an AoO.

The group is no longer allowed to let the gnome make major power decisions as she picked her best friend (the druid) to receive the bad guys's power so the worlds wouldn't collapse and kill millions of people - but she (the druid) is probably going to go crazy within the next millenia from all the power anyway
-The bard is adventuring with the druid though to help her out, as will the gnome when she's done raising her kid(s)
- The gnome is raising her children to be the druid's companions through time so she has friends to help stave off the power hungry madness that ruined the bad guy in the first place

[Amara]

oh my. o-o
Yeah kids in campaigns never end well. Coughs at Quorren And any time parallel worlds get involved it NEVER ends well xD

No you cannot hide in place pretending as a statue if you have no skill in it and are a bloody mess. Even if you wre made of stone.

We had a warforged gunslinger try this once. It didn't end well, and wound up with him being in jail for the rest of that arc while the party had to free him. Fun times.


Let's see
- The party's druid is no longer allowed to make decisions for the party while high
- Offering drugs to Elevar is punishable by being turned strange colors and/or being suspended upside down for hours at a time.
- Continuing to offer drugs, and deciding to instead offer magefoil may be punishable by chain lightning.
- Stop offering drugs to the ascended extraplanar being, please.

- If the dwarven taxidermist and ethologist says it is a terrible idea to try to bring back one of the abominations attacking the city alive... DO NOT IMMEDIATELY GO AND BUY A LARGE SIZED CAGE.
- The party is not even allowed to feign surprise at learning Elevar lied about the worm thralls dying on their own once the master died.
- This goes double for surprise/shock regarding finding out that he accidentally blew them up.
- The party should simply not be surprised in general if bad and/or inhumane things happen to creatures they gave to the wizard to study.
- It is probably not a good thing that the NG Druid is more willing to capture monstrous creatures to deliver them to a man who will probably torture them than the CN ranger.
- But at least you're going to learn more about them, I suppose.

[Dlover]

- Stop offering drugs to the ascended extraplanar being, please.

But what if it makes you super ascended?

[Arch Lich Burns]

If the gm is trying to give my character motivation to go against an cult/goddess by killing my sorcerer's mother, laughing about mother's death is considered to be evil. Even if your character thinks thatis not her real mom because she believes herself to be a majestic white dragon baleful polymorphed into a human.

Just because you have dragon blood does not mean you need a wagon for 'shinies' and many treasure chests.

If the party warns you to not earthquake inside a cave, do not proceed to do it. Espessially if the gm gives you a look of warning. And if you do proceed it is your fault and should be thankful the party jas a way to revese time.

No matter how much you want to play one, the party will never allow you to play a necromancer, anythig evil, or a paladin.

[Dlover]

Just because you have dragon blood does not mean you need a wagon for 'shinies' and many treasure chests.

What? Every good adventurer should have a wagon for shinies, dragon blood or not.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Apparently they wanted room for themselves.

Even if everyone ooc tells you to attack by slam attack, it is considered evil and in bad taste to attack a surrendering dragon, that just surrendered before my turn. And since they are paladins they will hold a grudge. And will killyou when you are vulnerable in your coffin after the gm decides to use a ridiculous weapon to one shot you. And since one of the paladins has super diplomacy he will convince your followers to not save you and let you die to be ressurected. No, they don't care that your character basically could not sleep for three days and say that is even a good thing. And they find that you still have the habit of drinking blood to be terrible. Even though you did just get rezed 3 days ago and you were a vamp for a couple centuries.


^Me trying to play a gaztalt CN half fey vampire/sorcerer with no alignment restriction, which by the way I said I wanted to be vamp before they decide to make broken paladin characters and apparently were going to try to kill me anyways just because i was a vampire. We stopped the game a few game sessions after she got killed.

It went so fast i could not even think of a way to stop it. I had a tragic backstory but i was too caught up woth everything going on to say it...

[Wolfie]

Apparently, I'm no longer allowed to have my character under massive illusion spells

Evil DM is eeeevil.

My characters started their campaign like a normal adventuring party could: as guards for an overland goods caravan. On the second day they go to sleep. They wake up in "new" bodies in a different town halfway across the continent and 2 weeks later.

Three days of roleplay and 5 days of in game hi-jinx and clue finding later, they finally figure out they they are under an illusion spell, abetted by the choker/collar on their necks that they cannot remove. Any tampering with it gives them a shock. It knocked one character out cold after he yanked on it.

- I'm also not allowed to change their races while under the illusion spell.
One elf woke up as a 16 year old human male, one elf woke up as a 65 year old human male, one gold elf woke up as a moon elf, and the other elf also woke up as a human, but as a 24 year old woman.

They finally broke half the illusion last night as they are back in their own bodies but have no memories past the night they fell asleep (they should.... ).

I got this from my players: ... I feel so proud.

[Theonewhoisodd]

I'm no longer allowed to cackle evilly to myself while DM.
Or as a player...
Or ever.....