DM's, What is the meanest thing you've ever done to your players?
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- Опубліковано 29 лис 2023
- DM's, What is the meanest thing you've ever done to your players?
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I've mentioned this in a different post a couple of years ago, but it fits here.
Back in my first group my brother and I were the main DMs (we'd trade off whenever needed) and occasionally one of the others would ask to try running something for a while (usually a one shot or short arc). This happened shortly after 3e came out and we were still learning the rules. One I'll call N said he had an idea for a campaign he wanted to try. He told us all to create evil level 15 characters as op as we wanted. No restrictions on races, classes, magic items (except no artifacts), etc. and come up with whatever extra side info for them we could (such as base, goals, etc). We spent a month brainstorming, researching, and finally building these characters, trying to find not just op stuff, but stuff that'd be fun to play and make some kind of sense as to why we're working together. We didn't just build our character, we built out stronghold, came up with notes on out kingdom, long term goals, and so on. They were pretty damn cool characters, and since we were all learning the rules we made several mistakes (such as completely missing the effective character levels rule when making monsters into pcs) making them even more powerful than they should be.
The day finally comes, we get together and hand it all over to N for approval. He took the big stack of papers, gave us a smile, and said: "Thanks for making the BBEGs for me, now you all need to make level 1 characters to actually play." My brother just sat there staring at him, one of the others started screaming at him, and I just laughed helplessly, completely awestruck by the twist.
That is brilliant, and I'm stealing this idea. Thank you for the laugh.
Glad you liked it, and feel free. :)@@Riddlewizard
now i got to know though, DID you ever suceed in this fighting ya self?@@Xarestrill
Sadly, no. While N had that wonderful twit idea, he didn't have much else planned out for the campaign. We kind of meandered around without much happening for 3-4 sessions before he gave up and had one of us start something. @@lechking941
Did you guys ever win against your own creations?
Counterspell an healing word on a downed charater while forgetting he was on the last save
The BBEG after realising what he did:
"Oh gods, I... He was... You.. He was supposed to still have a few seconds! He always recovers...
I'M SO SORRY!
@@DDann99 the dm looked at the bard as he was next on the chain, he nooded, after he used healing word he got an inspiration.
*Made the Boss of the fight use his Second attack on the downed paladin*
The group was level 14 and during the fight the players went on death savingthrows and were healed back-up to keep fighting.
The Boss of the fight notices that and takes no chances. As soon as I declared he attacked the downed paladin and gave him 2 fails on his death saves, I could see the fear in the eyes and silence of the Paladin player.
He survived, but barely...
I've only run a oneshot, but I had my party travel with a 'Lizardfolk' and right as they were about to defeat the Boss, this 'Lizardfolk' turned out to actually be a Yuan-Ti Malison more powerful than the boss they were fighting.
This is a concept I used on my last game. (Sorta).
I put the Boss of the Dungeon at the entrance. Being the First enemy. Everything else in the Dungeon will be less powerfull than the First enemy. Just to switch a bit of the "the final enemy is always the Boss fight".
3 words: healing potion mimic
Often when a new player in one of my games opens a door, I ask if they push or pull it.
They usually get nervous and say one of the options. Then I tell them the door doesn't open. They often panic as their mind races thinking what that would mean then they or another party member will try doing the opposite and the door opens lol.
now thats just a good way to get people to start being really discriptive
besides the usual, counterspelling healing/revivify etc, my current group have a minion NPC named Reginald, who was the servant of a powerful family, he's well known, respected etc, the players are convinced that he's a dupe, just levelling up with them to be the BBEG or ultimately be untrustworthy. He, in fact is 100% legit and hasnt acted any other way and it's killing them
basicly your killing them by their own anxity now THATS a proper evil
Large group of mixed gaming experience levels and ages. Three sessions in a row four of the players degraded into a “my character sheet is better than yours” argument. Ready just to call the game dead, two players approached me with their solution. We were waiting for the BBEG henchman to arrive. On the first day they began constructing their spell (Mage the Awakening) at dusk the following day, they implemented it. They crafted a virtual world and when the party went to sleep they began inserting the rest of the party into it. There they killed one another off in that realm with glee. Next day everyone is alive and well. Round two commenced, and then round three, etc. There were other external dangers introduced to accompany their infighting and speed up the process. The only way out was to do a completely selfless act to save another party member. The spells creators decided that the last person left would simply be left behind and their body destroyed. Thus for three games I, the storyteller, had absolutely nothing to do because in that pocket dimension they created the only game mechanics that applied were decided upon by them. You see, my players characters had in game become the storytellers!
now thats a nice breack from dealing with the party. *also means you can just be a sly fuck and steel things going on like weaknesses to each pc and later weaponize it.
I was usually quite a forgiving DM back in the day, though one of my last games had me swarm the final dungeon with Mimics as a way to whittle down their spells and potions before facing one of my villains who made himself a living armor using a Bone Golem. Unfortunately, the Monk of the party went "One-Punch Man" on that necromancer and made his head explode with double Nat 20 (I had implemented a rule that a Critical Hit gave a small chance to cause a Fatal Blow... I guess I should have thought it over.)
I trolled them in my first dungeon
All I had to do was put three locked doors in a row inside a corridor and watch as they opened all three of them (every one was a trap that pushed the opener into an oubliette, while the real passage was in the wall next to them). I even put an engraving of a man laughing at them as a kind of "calling card" from the engineer that made this trap.
Now I have many project for when they'll have to fight the Trap-Troller (name still under construction) inside his own house! 😈
Tl,dr: if you want to mess with your player, start with a locked door: no matter the clues given, they WILL open it.
Two sessions ago, I hinted at a plague that was going on outside of a nearby city. Last session, I finally got to unveil it. As the party flew overhead on some dragons they had borrowed, they noticed the streets of a small farming village lined with zombified corpses. Upon landing, their perception check told them what they already knew; the village was filled with corpses. The Paladin, being immune to disease, went into the village to investigate further. After expending a use of Divine Sense, I asked him to make another perception check. Being satisfied with his roll I told him. "With your Divine Sense, you can tell that there are no actual undead here, but as you look around, you realize that there aren't any dead either. They aren't corpses, they're alive."
The Paladin then went on to one of the villagers that was lying on the ground, unable to move due to the infection, and used some of his Lay on Hands to cure the disease. I explained how the woman smiled and softly raised her arm towards the Paladin's face, before collapsing on the ground, dead.
Long story short, it was too late to save the village, since there was a magical effect on the plague that kept the infected alive longer than they should have been. Removing the plague removes the effect, killing them almost instantly. The party decided to mercy kill every single villager by making a huge pile of bodies and casting burning hands on it.
Im stealing this
@@MajorHickEI'm with you there
I'm sorry Arthas.. I can't watch you do this..
now thats both evil and cool. if i remember im stealing as well
Might have to use this plot one day, but uh... I don't think you can call Burning Hands a "mercy" kill. Lol
For the orc who ran an orphanage, to me there's only 2 real options.
1. You assume responsibility of the orphanage
2. You immediately start trying to bring the orc back to life
It was with a bunch of first time players. They were in the dungeon of a castle and I put an innocuous lever near the door out. All it did was open said door albeit kind of noisy but all the same, they spent an hour and a half debating whether to pull it or not.
Allowed a character to use a powerful consumable item to turn back time slightly. They triggered a different trigger for the trap they were trying to avoid and watched their mother die again, this time much closer.
"brilliant, terrible... but brilliant" - Olivander
I once jump scared my players with a “abandoned pantheon” zombie campaign
During session 0 eluded to maybe making back up characters just in case, and that I wouldn’t recommend making a paladin or cleric as this is going to be a “not strictly good campaign but not an evil party campaign” (technically lying, but not really)
The first mission and session started with normal dnd escapades
Rogue bne’d, Barbarian murdered, artificer exploded stuff, the warlock was there Vibing
And then suddenly, after retrieving a weird idol thing for the arch mage that hired them for the first session everything was overcast and slightly ominous, and the wizard disappeared the party broke into his Tower and found out everything was gone.
carpets ripped up walls, repainted, etc.
And they thought that this was going to be one of those classic murder mysteries, especially since they were hearing rumors of disappearances and weird sounds at night and after an additional session of investigation hearing about how the clerics we’re having problems healing people recently, and the hospitals were starting to receive reports of a strange illness they finally realize that the sky was slightly green and overcast the entire time the wizard has been disappeared
Only then did they realize to start asking questions about the wizard and the weird idol, figuring out that it was an important relic and the wizard wasn’t even the official arch mage of the town, his office was mainly illusionary (it was a vacant apartment essentially and some bad roles covered up that fact) and he was a fanatic obsessed with the abyss, and he knew one of the few things keeping the abyss from climbing up to the material plane was the deities, so he used a forbidden spell written on the idol to sever the prime material plane from the upper realms, unfortunately severing the lower realms as well
And with nowhere for dead souls to go when they die, *They Don’t*
They simply reanimate with little to no remnants of humanity and an eternal hunger
Party panics
warlock still has magic because patron banished to material plan
Patron of warlock panics, because he has further separated from his brothers and sisters
Rogue worries for his sister who is in the mountains tending to those displaced from recent war
Barbarian is horrified by his victims not staying dead
Artificer dreading the ramifications of aiding a world ending madman
Q horde from stage left
Even more panic
Needless to say, that was one of my favorite campaigns
Usually I get my players to screw themselves over, but these probably count.
• The party enters this large rectangular area, about the size of a football field. Upon getting to the main floor of it, lights and music start playing as thousands of naked, sweaty goblins fall from the sky safely atop of the party and all around, making it difficult terrain, and either smacking or pulling them into the dancing goblin night club. Upon getting away from all the naked dancers is a narrow hallway where a line of goblins is formed for the checkout process, testing their patience even more.
Once they finally get to the boss room, they get to a green, fleshy orb that absorbs any corpses into its body. It's hit points are 100 + (100 times the number of goblins killed in the dungeon)
• In my Italian-themed reskin to Curse of Sthrad, there's an armory in Castle Ravioli, which is a 10 x 10 room covered wall to wall in various non-magical weapons with one sword floating in the middle of the room (the sword isn't magical, just the pedastal making it float), and a mirror covering the entire opposite wall. The party doesn't see anything enter through the mirror, but Sthradboli enters and casts Shatter on the sword in the center of the room, so everyone has to make a Con Save for the spell.
Then all the weapons explode...
So now they have to make a Dex Save to avoid the shrapnel and mirror shards flying everywhere, which could result in a TPK if their level is not high enough.
But they don't die, not on the island of Socily.
My second dungeon crawl I put my players through. My first one was a little straight forward and a bit of a railroad (in that it took place on a train and the train robbers did not have a home field advantage. )
This second dungeon they were on the goblins turf. There were two rope bridges in this dungeon. The first they walked onto a trap halfway across which was a rotted plank which would cause the PC who crossed it to lose balance and make a Dex save to avoid falling prone. This part of the bridge becomes a difficult terrain. And since he screamed and the cavern echoed, the player who triggered the trap alerted 4 goblins to the party’s presence. The goblins start trying to shoot the party while they crossed. Not mean on its own. But we have a second bridge. The players proceed cautiously and try to look for the planks that would. The first player across the bridge’s halfway point, they trigger another trap. Because rope bridges wobble the goblins attached a loud bell that alerts them. They rush to the edge of the party where the party is trying to cross too and the first one stops, pulls his sword, and swings for the rope holding the bridge to the goblin side. Before I can roll to hit the 3 of 5 players on the bridge realize what is going on and the lead yells “go back go back” like they were Joe Pesci realizing Kevin is holding a match to the kerosine rope in Home Alone 2. I started to consider a running gag of booby trapping every rope bridge in the campaign in a different way… and when I realized I might not be creative enough to do this one of my players pointed to a chest in the treasure room and asked if that was a mimic. It wasn’t. But the next rope bridge they have to cross… that’ll be interesting.
XD god just make some rope bridges just annoying, like its just a old ass bridge that dont take kindly to say the paladen crossing it, so occasional fall but never breack. or the odd villager mentions a rope bridge they hate crossing because of the bats that live in the cave and come out at dusk and if your crossing you gonna suffer or so forth. aka not alaways a big problem but just make em fear the bridge XD.
Finished DMing CoS a year ago [an 18 month ordeal]. Worst thing done by a Player.
PC was a Slayer [Rogue+Ranger archetype] who became utterly corrupted by the Dark Powers from the Amber Temple. Became very NE. In Vallaki, the govt cheated him out of a prize (burned down his target for robbing). His revenge? He freed some ghouls into the town and kept directing people towards them into a slaughterhouse & ghoul "nursery". He effectively killed or ghoulified the entire town of Vallaki: 1500 new undead roaming the land. The most supremely evil thing I've ever seen a PC do. Brilliant!
That mountain climb was tough😂
I ran an Astral Sea pirate campaign. The very first fight was against a weretiger pirate captain for his Astral sea worthy ship. The party kills him after a hard fight.
Later the party runs into an NPC tied with one of the party member's backstories. The entire party loves this character and each has their own moments with them.
After a big fight with a guy called the Necrodancer and his hordes of groovy undead, the party wakes up to find a cut on each of them, no effects of a long rest, and a note.
The weretiger captain became a rakshasa and kidnapped several important NPCs and demanded the party meet them with an exorbitant amount of gold as revenge for killing them. The party leaves their hub city, and gets ambushed.
In the intervening hours, the rakshasa had been casting detect thoughts and discovered how beloved the NPC was. He takes the party down, doesn't kill them, but makes them watch him kill the NPC and Plane Shift the body away so they can't rez her. Then he looks and says "I wanted you dead until I realized how much more this would hurt." Then flies away.
You monster 😭😂
Counter spelled a heal to a downed ally
I let my characters get through a dungeon and to the end of the arc, when they woke up, still in the dungeon, from failing a save vs a lichs spell.
thats cruel but lol
"Doorknob mimic"
Christ
Turned a grappler-build character into swiss cheese when he tried to grapple a Howler demon (think giant evil porcupine).
Whenever I was running a difficult dungeon crawling campaign, I would spam coup de grace whenever a character went unconscious.
In a dungeon corridor ended with a shaft. On the other side was a pretty door with only a small ledge to step on. PC jumps over the shaft on that ledge. Door shuts open, punching them down the shaft. What other characters saw behind the door? A brick wall.
Calling bossa nova elevator music triggered me a little bit xD
Campaign Setting is Hardcore Evil.
One player wanted to play a torturer.
Another was a minor noble, who's actions had ran her afoul of several BBEGs.
The BBEGs invited both of those players for a private party. Where they forced the torture-enthusiast to torture the noble.
To Death!
As part of a live mummification ritual!
The now-undead noble is trying to get by with some serious trauma, barely tolerating the torturer's presence in the party.
The party had defeated a Cambion, causing it to planeshift away. The party eventually left the area, leaving the building in the hands of the paladin’s cousin and some people they rescued. Several days later the party returns with an interesting artifact that the cousin was very interested in. Turns out the Cambion returned, killed the cousin and took his place. The party fairly quickly found out and completely curb-stomped the Cambion.
in our previous campaign (which is part 1 of mine) we had the labyrinth, a monster filled maze that could be changed by any of the levers that would move a row or column.
in part 2 though i have a plan to bring back the 2 dead party members as the direct subordinate(s) of the bbeg, " the ashen rider" is an arachne necromancer with the ash-like remains of the former paladin.
I’m going to have so much fun with this when I’m a dm-
the meanest thing i have done was make a encounter specifically tailored to match the party strengths with a small sized velvet worm. it had high ac and touch ac, webbing like a spider [arachnid phobia party member this was the work around]. and two decent hitting attacks with bite and tail slap. it worked well enough to have the party run away once they hit one quarter their hp and it barely reached half. their second bout with this outsider was going to be fun, but that is later.
Ran a one-shot for my friends a while back, partly to get me more used to dming, and partly for fun. Only a few of them were actually able to show up which sucked, but they let me know in advance so I could balance the encounters. Long story short, they got to the boss battle, where they had to fight themselves(party was actually the dopplegangers, which was the big twist), and they ended up winning, and by a fair amount. There was a small conversation between the gods of the universe, and then I did the thing of legends. Rocks fall. You all die
The best part was that we had made that joke several times throughout the session, so everyone(except the warlock, who's patron tipped him off about what was going to happen, saying "you're not gonna like this") thought I was once again fucking with them. When I didn't laugh, they realised what happened, which made it even funnier, and then I broke into laughter myself. Great times
the your playing your own doupple gangers is always a fun time. i remember a even more evil twist were, some of the party died some got their "other" selves, aka some douples some not, but the DM never told em anything, so the party continued but forever wondering if they killed the real self or not.
The meanest thing I've done was semi-accidental in that it was completely avoidable but the players kind of took a sledgehammer to a matter that would have benefitted from a scalpel. Marching toward level 4 in 3.5, party is providing guard duty for a caravan and they get ambushed by kobolds. Fight ensues and the kobolds retreat. The party decides that the best approach is to follow the kobolds and try to finish them off. I don't remember the specifics, but what proceeds is a long, drawn out hit and run campaign against numerically superior kobolds who are also playing smart because I've studied the teachings of "Tucker's kobolds", and this small party of six manages to grind its way through about 40 kobolds. It was a hard fight, especially since they accidentally aggro'd all of the kobolds in their base largely at once, but the party prevailed.
Those players all have kobold induced PTSD though. You can see the light fade from their eyes when they encounter kobolds now.
It was all good fun though
I ran a gladiator style one shot where one of the encounters was a group of 4 bears. The bears were released, the fight happened, the bears were slaughtered (it was their first encounter and my first time running combat)
After a concerningly brutal HDYWTDT the announcer for the collusseum revealed "ladies and gentlemen, the first group has slain the Pandas, what a heroic effort"
Had the blue dragon attack PC's while they were making their death saving throws, they all died. She brought them back to torture them. They are all still alive, but now they know not to mess with a dragon.
Not D&D, but I have Door Mimics in my RPG Maker game. They aren't crazy mechanically, but if they catch Brill by surprise, they get a head start on their Action Meter and basically get a free Slam in.
Oh i got one from last night XD
Now in my defense I warned my players many times and they still broke rule number one of these scenarios… but I digress.
They were hunting a monster through an abandoned mine at the behest of some dwarves. They knew the monster was huge, had never been seen directly by a living dwarf, and was more than a clan of dwarves could handle. So they know this thing is deadly and sneaky. So what do they do? The rouge GOES OFF ON HIS OWN violating rule number one of horror movies. While this is happening I’m also moving the monster in the DM layer. And as this dude rounds the first corner he walks right past it. Now i play by the rule that you have to call what your character is doing if you don’t want to use passives. He never called perception so I went off his passive of 9. The Remorahz rolled a 16. So the squishy rogue (lvl9) was ambushed by a remoraz and promptly lost sixty of his sixty-six health. Luckily he’s still a rogue and managed to escape but barely. He tried to lure the worm into a trap but it didn’t work because he actually just lost the thing. So instead the worm went back to moving around its lair underground. The rest of the party actually passed it but the worm decided four footsteps (one being a stone golem) was not something it wanted to mess with. So it waited. Until the rogue caught up. And got jumped again. And then the worm crit on his sneak attack and one shot the rogue
I haven't really done things that are too mean in practice; I put a lot of brutal-on-paper stuff in my games, but it's usually way tamer or easier to escape than it seems on the surface.
Probably the biggest ones I can think of were all in the first dungeon (it's pretty a high-level game, the party of of 5 started at lvl 13; and this is PF1 for reference), which was infiltrating the lair of a lvl 20+, highly optimized, witch while she was away.
Amongst the encounters were lots swarms (in PF1, swarms have no attack roll, and so they automatically hit, and are immune to non-AOE damage) and several rather vicious traps (my favorites being a hallway full of hanging prisoners being slightly healed just as they were about to die, but all rigged to explode if anyone tried to rescue or help them; and a suspicious bit of floor that looked trapped, but was actually right in front of the real trap, so when the players saw it they hopped over it and landed directly on the real trigger).
There were a few other encounters with some fun gimmicks (they had to kill several hag covens that were guarding things, and each fight was kind of nuts) but the worst to deal with was probably that the bulk of the dungeon was in a swamp, and the witch had a Vampire Kraken patrolling the lair. So there was a LOT of panicking and running from that. It actually worked out very much in their favor too; as the players learned that caution and cowardice are often wise choices, and with the heavily random-encounter nature of most of the campaign so far (they're mostly traveling through the plane of Chaos), they've avoided some real nasty stuff before it got too bad (granted, they've missed a few real cool things too).
The other meanest encounter they had was probably later in the campaign when a mercenary was sent after them; it was only a single lvl 17 Barbarian against a party of 7 level 13-14 characters; but PF1 Barbarians are insane (and my favorite class); he had tons of retributive damage (demonic thorns, cold spells/magic items, and 13 attacks of opportunity per round that he could make in response to any incoming melee attack), and auto-revived 3 times (each time he went down, the one who did the final blow, even if it was via spells, had to make 7, DC28 saves against his death-curses, with disadvantage; and PF curses are MUCH harder to remove than D&D ones). The party came pretty close to TPK, but got pretty lucky with the curses, only taking about an in-game week or two to remove them all, and avoiding/quickly removing the worst ones (such as being unable to heal or aging 1 year/day). Also, this guy had no home-brew, it was all RAW.
I actually love making over-powered player-builds into bosses; with a little bit of work and running them fairly the guy above (and some even worse ones I have for the future) can actually still be balanced for the players to fight; and figuring that part out is an extra fun layer to the puzzle of the build.
Im just imagining the in game aprty just hearing the elevator music and slowly going mad, especially the dwarf for some reason
Made the loot in a chest be the mimic once, that threw the players off for a while
Was running Candlekeep mysteries as a series. In one of the stories the players can get launched into space. Our warforged druid was outside of the tower, now turned rocket shop, fighting a tentacle monster. They got into a strength contest and he lost. I had the monster toss him into the rocket flames.
Not reminding them of the food and fuel supplies they probably should have taken after they got disctracted by the airship pirate's loot stash and left with it on said pirate's airship.
Floor-tile mimic. It was also standing on top of a hole.
was dming a space themed campaign when the one book came out, and I setup this area with cultists, and had the party interupt the summoning of zariel. Well, the issues started when the head cultist used greater invisibility and there was darkness around so nobody knew anything, somehow the main cultist got to the final summoning spot AND DIED ON IT. because someone threw an AOE spell and they failed, well the party was a little lost when I said u notice the center begins to glow, and a portal begins to open. you just hear "oh shit..." as the entire party is now face to face with zariel... at like lv 6... they were not happy and I was hysterical because it was the single greatest on the spot decision of my life, and Zariel proceeded to grant them *powers* without mentioning drawbacks yet, one of them wanted wings. So he got them... but wasnt taught how to use them. so when he tried to *flex* his wings over a 2 foot gap between rocks, he failed a d20 roll and plummeted down to his death.
1:05 - Not to mention that character losing all their gear because lava melts most things.
1:45 - He dies in 5 minutes, doesn't he?
2:10 - Now you have me thinking of Home Alone.
4:50 - This was amazing.
5:40 - Ever see a group want to wipe out Avernus?
My DM once had a wizard sell cards from the deck of many things. I was the only one in our party who decided not to draw a card.
Anyway, two characters were tossed into the void, while a third one drew a card that made the wizard (who was lvl 18) go berserk and attacked us. He casted just one spell and he targetted me: finger of death... WE WERE LVL3
One of my players was a changeling who impersonated a high ranking cultist to get his party past a difficult rearguard. Once in the cult's camp, however, he was taken to the head of the camp. He told the head that although he was captured, he managed to not only escape but also to turn some troublesome adventurers over to his side. The head of the camp was fooled, but I decided that her supervisor was not. The supervisor walked over to the disguised player, put a hand on his shoulder, and asked "What's your name?"
The player didn't know the name of who he was impersonating, so he said "We have no need of names. Our blood oath is strong." This was, of course, blatantly false, so all the players were promptly captured and beaten unconscious.
They eventually escaped, but I decided a fight with the rearguard would be more climactic. Since they needed to use their very strained resources to get their health back up before running into the rearguard again, this was very mean in hindsight. It would likely have been a TPK had I not nerfed the rearguard before they met them again (it was now night and the enemies didn't have darkvision, and I placed the most dangerous enemy so that it had to waste actions to enter melee).
Party goes to meet a powerful aristocrat, who had enhanced hearing and was known to quietly hold grudges. Anyway a party member made a joke about their physical appearance thinking the guy couldn't hear it. Anyway this moderate lord 'hired' them to resolve a 'minor issue' that actually turned out to be a near complete TPK at the hands of some uber liche. The lord sent in a proper force later to gather the loot and ensure the bodies were not available for res.
For the final confrontation of my first campaign they had enlisted the help of an artificer NPC to create a _magic item deconstructor_ for destroying the big MacGuffin. The artificer said at first "I'll make the thing, I'm not coming with to use it." but upon some middling attempts at persuasion "Fine, I'll come, but I keep the deconstructor."
Long Story Short, the MacGuffin was a divine relic that was used by some netherese wizards to override Mystra's spellban because god's love having their little exemptions to the rules. But it became increasingly apparent that destroying it is becoming a worse and worse idea given that it was the only thing keeping aloft an island in the sky by sustaining the mythallar that powers the Move Mountain spell. But now they left the deconstructor in the hands of an NPC, with a low wisdom score, and none of the info they had. Suffice it to say it was a pyrrhic victory.
I recreated the insect pit scene from Peter Jackson’s King Kong
As a small UA-camr you have a very good voice!!!! definitely subscribing
In a STALKER-inspired campaign I've been running, a bandit named Artyom Alekseyvich, armed with a sawn-off shotgun and clad in a leather jacket, gathered around a campfire with his friends. Meanwhile, the free STALKER party, typically at odds with bandits, approached their camp at the northern checkpoint in the Cordon. Artyom engaged them in conversation, offering drinks. Two bandits got intoxicated and dozed off. A hidden party member attacked, killing two bandits while another succumbs to alcohol poisoning. Artyom, left severely weakened at 1/14 hp, pleaded for mercy in Russian. The party spared him, and he expressed gratitude, playing his deceased friend Ivan's guitar. Artyom then buried Ivan, planted Ivan's shotgun in the ground with Ivan's gas mask hanging from it, and set the guitar ablaze next to the fresh grave.
My improvised voice acting during this scene almost made me cry. The players anticipate Artyom's return in the campaign, he will, but he'll appear as a corpse, a zombified stalker, or being beyond rescue behind a blast door. I haven't decided yet.
Damn,these stories escalated quickly!
One time when someone in the party critically failed a check to notice some posters, I had them misunderstand something badly enough to cause quite a problem. I described in a show don't tell style how 2 men walked with a woman, and how it looked like one of them streched out their arm, hit her and she fell unconcious to the ground, followed by them dragging her into an alley. This descriptioned happened just at the end of a session, so next session when the players were recapping what was happening, they would be jumping straight to the conclusions in the recap and forgetting the detailed nuances. They then went and beat up the 2 men, quite serverely and tried to rescue the girl. Eventually one of them cast a spell to get some more information, and found out that it had all been a misunderstanding the whole time; they weren't trying to kidnap her nor had they hit her, instead one of the males had been pointing to a shop sign when she got ill and fell unconcious, whereafter they tried to drag her to someone who could help her. In total the players can hurt the people who were trying to help, and had themselves become the bad guys. When it was revealed, the players looked back and saw all the riding on the edge of the descriptions and information they had gotten, and realised that it was all exactly playing out like they were indeed helping, but that all those descriptions had been put in such a way that there was just still some room for confirmation bias to keep them thinking it was all a kidnapping.
It's less the meanest thing I've done but more like the meanest thing I'm not doing. I was very forthcoming with my players who wanted a survival campaign about how I would go about it. A given area had a randomly generated table of encounters most of which were assorted wildlife. Whenever they embarked on travel I'd roll a D6 to see how many hours of travel they'd do before coming upon a significant encounter. So creatures would be easy kills. Others would certainly kill them if they tried to fight and they had to make the determination which is which. First encounter was a swarm of insects which I decided to flavor as a bee hive. They thought about trying to smoke the bees to steal their honey but thought better of it reasoning they always could come back to that location. The keep traveling and the next encounter for this level 1 party of 3 was...a Wyvern. Now sure I could have told them the encounter was something else and picked something more their level. But I am a man of my word and I sent the Wyvern after them. Now they escaped because as I reason the Wyvern 1) Had a slow landspeed. and 2) Couldn't fly after them due to the dense jungle. But I of course this was not before one bite attack which thankfully I didn't need to flub the miss on.
Party was about to be a TPK’d by BBEG.
One of the party members ran an orphanage (they grew up an orphan and wanted to give back)
So the BBEG made a deal to spare them for the lives of one boy and one girl from the orphanage.
After much deliberation the party member finally decided which two (whom were older and volunteered to save the younger ones) where the BBEG instead allowed those two to live and set the Orphanage on fire
The session then became a mad dash to save as many of the children as possible before the building collapsed
Windigo Shaman, a necromancer/druid caster, with an island of undead men and beasts, making direct eye-to-eye contact with is a save vs aging 1d4+1 years on a fail, or a single year on a success. Not to mention the deer he animated.. their necks and lower jaw seperate to reach out and grab people with the interstines.
Used pack tactics in Greenest in Flames.
Tooic idea: Most creative way a party cleaned up a mess they accidentally created?
We have a 2 year long campaign. We have this group of Fey’s who turn up at random points to start a pop up store to sell combat weapons in the midst of a fight at inflated prices. (They also sell weapons to the monsters) (I am not the DM)
I sent the party mascot to an inaccessible plane after one of them gave them a necklace that I had told them was connected to my settings version of Mechanus. I could’ve fudged the con save, but where’s the fun in that.
Several major enemies in my game are Rakshasa. The party are all some form of spellcaster.
Not only that, I intend for the final encounter to occur at Lv. 13. Just high enough for the full casters to have a single spell they can use.
The final boss also a fully-competent fighter, unlike most Rakshasa, who are more like conniving spellcasters.
I fully expect it to be a bloodbath and receive nothing but ire from my players; after all, a good villain knows how to leverage their strengths against their enemies, and to protect themselves from common threats.
I'm stealing that dream sequence and hag scenario for an upcoming campaign
The meanest thing I have done to my players was just to one. The party fought a succubus as their third adventure. They thought they killed it, but this succubus was as just possessing some poor victim it had taken over. It then went and possessed one of the PCs, who I got to have a lot of fun with things like “you wake up and are getting your clothes on but can’t find one of your gloves. You do finally find it, it was under the corpse of a man in sleeping bag with you. The other PCs haven’t noticed yet. What do you do?” Oddly enough, the player found this sort of thing funny.
I had a villain cast reverse gravity on the party had them hot the ceiling and then immediately dropped concentration.
one of my players was playing a pretty OP gnome necromancer(cleric/sorcerer), high level 3.5e campaign... (let's say the campaign was of somewhat dubious alignment by this point)
wanted a special creature for a new undead mount...
ok says i, you're in the city that has the mage guild HQ, each of the towers has their own 'side projects' and the enchanter's tower often uses monsters for various 'enhancement tests', you could see if any of them have something along the lines you want, what were you hoping for?
anything that's medium or larger and can fly...
player had a habit of quickening spells all the time, so okay... one of the enchanters has a manticore he's willing to let you fight, do you want to do this solo or as a party? there are a couple of other creatures available for testing...
solo says he...
Maybe i should have changed the enchantment i put on the manticore expecting a group encounter... but nope, he got the manticore... that had 100% spell turning against the first spell cast against it every round.
he won, but never did realise what it was doing. i explained it after the session when he asked, and he was impressed.
(the other creatures were a blade spider with up to 8 attacks of opportunity or parry attempts per turn and a replicating slime (every time it splits from a bladed attack or similar, it fully heals), those two were going to have a rather obvious synergy round if the battle was going too easily)
Im using that strahd thing in my campaign i really like that
10:05
I had a great DM back when I was playing RPG and he would always begin every campaign with an anonymous questionnaire about any possible triggers or topics that we wanted to be avoided. He never told anyone what was the result of it and he never knew himself which triggers were put in by who. It was great because everyone always knew that this is a safe space and also that their privacy will be respected. The questionnaire itself was great too because it provided us with suggestions and also asked for specifics like the severity of the issue so if for example you had a problem with homophobia being depicted in scenes or being a part of important npcs because of idk recent issues with homophobic family or sth but it was ok if it was just briefly mentioned then the questionnaire actually asked about that so there was a complete understanding of what is ok or isn't ok
The DM also said that if anything happens later or we remember something we forgot at the beginning then we can talk to him privately
However I think it would be also a good idea if there was a way to anonymously just add stuff there for only the dm to see but idk how to do that so it would work
I personally benefited greatly from it and I recommend that way of making sure everyone will be ok and will feel safe so everyone can just have fun
When the party stormed the BBEG's lair they saw two persons: the big baddie himself and a former PC/love interest as a hostage.
Noble fighter steps forward and demands to let himself be taken hostage when he frees their friend. BBEG smiles and agrees. Cuts the ropes and let's his hostage go. She runs up to the party. They all gather around to comfort her. Baddie smirks, snips his fingers. An amulet on her cloak start to shine, then a big explosion.
Basically everyone dropped to a third of their lives.
It was just a decoy made of sand, but boy. They were pissed. Pacifist monk completely kicked in the baddies head after that one ...
The first chest my party encountered was a mimic. They immediately called it out because of memes the moment they saw the chest, and they were right, which was somewhat annoying. So... later, after every chest they found after that was normal, they found a room with three chests. Sure one was a mimic, they opened them one at a time, carefully surrounding the chest to attack it the moment it revealed its true nature. They were all normal chests. One of the chests contained a map mimic.
As the campaign goes on, the players, and the player characters, are slowly coming to realize that the BBEG has always been a part of every one of their lives. I handpicked the most terrible choice background NPCs, the Bard's pirate girlfriend, the Fighter's cowboy boss, the Barbarian's fiancée's genocidal uncle, the Rogue's bastard father, and I had the BBEG magically transform them all into permanent trauma for the characters, infusing them all with malicious intent and 'hell powers'.
Early on in the story, before the Bard and Fighter even joined, the Rogue and the Monk (Barbarian's first character) found a goofy silly little red slime that they all loved, and kept around. They named him Charlie. The party escaped the tunnels, burned down the bad guys' base, met the Bard and Fighter, slept in a church, infiltrated a noble's house, found an elevator down to hell, destroyed hell's library, went back up, fought in a tournament, had some shenanigans in town, went back down to hell, went to the Deep Temple, a waterlogged temple in the center of a lava lake run by an Aboleth, and it's there that they found the Bard's long lost father. After a brief moment of joyful reunion... he turned back into the red slime.
Last but not least, the BBEG is one of the party NPCs and is corrupting all the other NPCs one by one. My players don't know this yet.
What will happen in this current campaign will far surpass this, but currently it was the betrayal scene in campaign 2. The party had been wondering who was making all these robots for a long time now, and they were storming the second factory to rescue one of a pair of NPC lovers, a staple pairing of my campaigns. Upon reaching the end and finding the testing room, they see her turned into a cyborg under the BBEG’s control. After a battle with a rather cliche “power of love overcomes all” moment, the cyborg NPC regains control of herself, but a bomb was planted near her heart and it begins to beep (this was a standard for the robots, the BBEG had a flair for the dramatic). She takes her mechanical hand and jabs it into her chest and tears out the bomb, chucking it away just before collapsing. As the healers rush to fix her up (they were high level and had access to regenerate and heal), the bomb blows up a mirrored window, revealing the BBEG behind it. It was none other than the dwarf who had been helping them fight the robots this whole time, supplying them with weapons to take advantage of weaknesses so that she could get field data in order to eliminate said weaknesses. Our Druid NPC, who was only 14, is livid. He lost his parents to the robots only a few weeks prior, and he had been helping the very person who did it
Nice episode.
My players were trying to track down an aboleth. Unknown to the rest of the party, I had two players make wisdoms saves and they both failed. Now the aboleth had two traitors inside the party. After being driven from its lair due to the challenging monsters within, they decided to head back to the village from where they came. They went to the tavern, had drinks, played games with a few village folks including a boy they bonded with.
Well, what they didn’t realize is that the suggestion to go back to the village came from the aboleth’s slaves. The aboleth was angry that humans dared to build a village on the shore of its home river. So that night, my slaves already having had their secret instructions delivered to them, the rest of the players sat in horror as the two slaves described waking up in the middle of the night, going house to house and killing every single person in the village. I described one of the players walking into a house to find the boy asleep, and my players were horrified as this slave of mine was forced to run the boy through with his sword. Afterwards, the slaves burned the village to the ground. Only after the devastation was over was the rest of the party able to break the charm. I laughed maniacally the entire time, watching gleefully as the players gasped in horror
Hey, like the stories.
Could you find some stories themed around winter or Christmas? That would be great :)
I’m doing it currently, but then the idiots did walk themselves into a fortress full of cultists with a level 20 warlock with the blade of levistus in there, the rangers panther is currently dead and the wizard is banished to stygia :)
A huge Boulder, Turned into a small gem by a Lich, who is actually a Gnome Archmage Trickster and a worshiper of Cyric. He is not a Necromancer but an illusionist and transmuter. Became a lich to extend his lifespan so he could keep tricking adventurers and have fun.
Short version; Party finds the Lich's throne room, stuffs it all into their Type V Bag of Holding and bails.
...
..
.
Timed transmutation spell runs out. Gem Expands. Bag of holding overloads and explodes, spilling into Astral Plane. Party losing all of the contents permanently.
I'm told I'm too nice, but that's probably because I haven't gotten to me mean ideas.
I used to run a campaign of the Fallout TTRPG, which we never finished due to scheduling problems. One thing I decided early on is that there are no Deathclaws at all in the campaign... until the very end, when they go to the lost pre-war lab and would then learn it was now a Deathclaw nest. They'd have to fend off waves of Deathclaws, and then after that they have to fend off waves of Legionnaires.
Currently we're playing the Transformers TTRPG. I've set it up into a series of smaller, episodic chapters each with their own BBEG. Throughout this, every major character that dies because of them (whether directly killed by the party or not) has a chance to be resurrected by Unicron as his heralds for the final chapter. We're only about to start chapter 2, but one of them killed the Deception skeletal samurai Bludgeon in a very close 1v1 duel so there's one.
I made a rest stop town the party loved so much they wanted to settle down and live in. So, I invented a vampire assassin who killed their pet T-Rex named Chihuahua (an inside joke for our group). The vampire assassin used the T-Rex blood as finger paint to decorate the stables. Long story short, they rode off on their legendary mounts (which they bribed me for) the next day leaving behind a mile wide, 55 story/level crater. Like a decade later I still don't think they've forgiven me.
I need this in a podcast!
I think a blue dragon is going to make an appearance to my players now. I love that idea
my party (lvl 5) was living in the starting town. it was session 2. after meeting the rouges criminal contact, the alarm is sounded. the party rushes to the gate. they see a horde of undead battling a group of men, half elfs and a orc or 2. the party sees a red robed figure commanding the undead horde. all party members with ranged attacks shoot at the red figure. warlock got a nat 20 repelling blast "aimed at his head" one rouge hits with the cross bow, the other hits the strongest of the undead. the necromancer is knocked prone, concentration broken. the undead fall and decay. the band of men, half elfs and orcs, charge the town. The guards draw their swords on the party. the necromance, is a lvl 20 lawful good wizard, who protects and takes care of the town. the band of humanoids, are a bandit horde.
Had a whole session in Waterdeep where the party ran errands, spent their hard earned cash, and even engaged in some night life activities. The paladin in particular got jumped by thieves after failing to intimidate the group, leaving him with 1 hp after the whole thing was said and done (thanks to some divine intervention at that).
After the fact, the party turned in to their tavern of choice to get their well deserved rest. And they did... until they awoke at 1 in the morning with only a short rest worth of recovery to the city being RAIDED by the bullywugs they had been dealing with all campaign. Suffice to say, that was probably the cruelest act as a DM I've ever commited, turning their once safe refuge into a bloodbath of civilians and guards alike. Even Merfolks weren't safe, as they had been enslaved by the army of frogs and were used as cannon fodder and mobile explosives with the collars attached to their necks.
Heres a story that I feel actually inflicted real emotional damage on my players (warning: Phandelver & Below spoilers ahead).
Now the players were aware of the Mind Flayers evil plot to turn the town and eventually the world into more Mind Players but they got sidetracked opening the worlds first IMAX cinema. They had acquired a magic crystal that worked similarly to a driftglobe where you could activate it and it would follow the party around and project light onto them, but also record video footage that could later be edited and projected. My campaign had suddenly become an episode of the Office with characters looking directly into the camera everytime something funny or stupid happened. After an epic epic encounter with a Young Dragon the party decided to show off their exploits and charge admission, they later also commissioned a seamstress to make plushies of each of them for sale as merch. Despite my best efforts to get them back on track, they were planning a world tour for their movie. However, they were completely unaware of the Mind Flayers progress during this time and the day they were going to set out to Neverwinter, one of the children, the 10 year old son of the local Farmer that the PC's formed a very close relationship with came rushing to the party for help, he informed the party that him and his twin sister were attacked by "A Beast he's never seen before" while playing in the forest. The PC's immediately drop everything to go rescue the little girl, as they rushed off into the forest to where the boy said they were attacked. As they got deeper in the forest, the party druid started noticing species of plants she had never seen before, some of it beautiful like a flower that look liked a mixture of a sunflower and a rose and others just strange. It was then that the party herd a blood curling cry for help a bit ways further into the forest , "HEEEELP MEE!". It sounds like the little girl. The party rushes into the clearing, only to find the little girl already mangled and mostly eaten. Confusion set it in for a moment, before they spotted it. An Owl bear attempting to sneak up on them, only this wasn't an ordinary owlbear. It's eyes gleamed if something unnatural and it's body was mutated with 4 tentacles protruding from it's back, as it makes eye contact with the party it rears back and then opens it's beak and screeches "HEEEELP ME!" in the little girls voice. The Corruption was causing the plant and wildlife to start to fuse together in unnatural ways, when the mutated owl bear consumed the little girl part of her consciousness fused with the Owlbear, creating an unholy abomination. The fight ended when the Party Paladin landed a critical hit, cutting the Owlbears last blood curling cry for help short. After the fight the party sat in complete silence, one player actually started to tear up in real life. The Paladin, Oath of Vengeance swore that he would not submit to any more detours, he could not rest until he had gotten vengeance for the little girl.
I think its safe to say that the experience they had that day amplified the gravity of their situation like they stepped into a Hyperbolic Time Chamber.
I do feel like I may have been a bit too diabolical though. 😅 Did I mention the Paladin's name was Edward and the Little girl was named Nina?
Mine: During a one shot. The Cleric wanted to save a NPC. He was ill and used an item that would kill him but, would give him the boost of power he would need to help the party reach the ritual room.
She wanted to use everything she had to save him. Even tryed a divine intervention. Instead of having her roll for something that wouldn't work. I instead had her god tell her he will have a place by their side. I even threw in th NPC's child becoming a cleric of her god as well in a time skip.
10:05 fierball
Players had good luck and were clowing on the plans of the current BBEG, who was a Fiend Warlock with really great plans and shitty luck. One of the players came face-to-face with him and was openly mocking him for being a loser. I said that the BBEG is going for a slap at you. The fighter said - I'll take it, let's see him bruise his little hand.
The BBEG used the slap to trigger Hurl Through Hell ability. It rolled 7 tens on the 10d10 psychic damage. The player was out and failed 3 death saves before the party came to his resque.
The meanest thing the dm did was roll 3 nat 20s in a row, we have a house rule that if a player or dm manages to hit 3 nat 20s in a row for checks they gain a permanent buff to that check, if its an attack, the enemy gets instantly killed (think guardsman killing a huge demon) if the dm however rolled it on a pc, they either die outright or must make a massive sacrifice.
Hope you're doing well Brian and the whole Mr Ripper team. ❤
I mentioned this on a different video, but TL;DR I traumatized 4 people to a genre of music.
So, a few years ago I started a campaign for my friends in a custom homebrew setting of my design. I let them use any official handbook or material on the market but prevented anyone from using the violin as an instrument. stating that it wasn't native to the campaign world.
they thought it was oddly specific, but we continued on several months in, the party met the antagonist; a deceptive bard who loved to harass the party; who played... the violin.
after his appearance, I selectively only played violin music when they fought him, when he was involved in what was happening, etc.
I also had him constantly break the 4th wall, with pranks. modifying the players' item names on their character sheets, even making and recording a video that automatically played to make it seem like the BBEG was sentient.
fast forward 2 years, and the campaign is over, and we're just gaming in my living room, when a classical violin song comes on the radio of my phone while I tell them the setting of the new campaign.
I then had 4 adult men panic and scream profanity at me as they interrogated me on if the previous BBEG was actually dead.
I... may have made a magic-eating dagger and basically gave it to the bbeg...
Oh and it gets stronger with each spell it eats
A lot of these make me think about a recent one-shot. We were solving a wolf problem and found a bunch of wolves in a cave. Looked like a typical combat encounter. We attacked and the fight was mostly going alright. Until the wolf hunting party came back with tons of wolves, some “armored” for some reason, and 2 elemental boss wolves. I’d just lost a large part of my combat effectiveness (beast master ranger animal companion) and made the executive decision to escape up a cliff (Tabaxi can escape “very” fast if there’s anything vertical nearby). Luckily everyone else had means of escaping up the cliff too. But campaign ended that way. (Well... sorta. Our rogue kicked the wizard off the cliff for character reasons. Good times.)
Anyways... whole thing makes me think of you’re going to have major conflicts that aren’t meant to be solved by normal combat, should probably not do it as a one-shot. Like, there were signs these wolves could be reasoned with. We’d witnessed them talking. And that encounter at the end was pretty hopeless. But by the time we encountered the wolves, there simply wasn’t enough time to try solving things any other way.
I have a 5e homebrew campaign where the gods of Order several thousand years ago had a war with the forces of Chaos. The gods won, but the war was deeply devastating for the Material Plane and left literal holes in it where things from other realms can crawl out and cause problems. My players (the Prophets) have been chosen by a triad of gods to look for the Champions, people that the gods blessed and designated to find and fix or defeat Anomalies, the holes for which close upon being fixed. Some Anomalies form because a monster crawled out, others because some event that wasn't supposed to happen has occured and they have to reverse it. One of these Champions is Squall, a water Genasi storm sorcereress pirate who's goal is to push the Marid (her mother) back into the Elemental Plane of Water, thus freeing her hundreds of siblings whom the Marid uses mind control to enslave. The PCs met and built a relationship with Squall, and the players themselves are big fans of hers. They get to the Marid's underwater temple where they find an Anomaly hole to the Elemental Plane of Water and, working with Squall, do a pretty good job of beating the Marid back. All the while making Wisdom checks to resist the mind control. Unfortunately, Squall fails one too many times and falls under the Marid's control, using her last bit of autonomy to plead with them to go back to her ship and sail away with her crew and save themselves. It was at that moment, the Anomaly closed. The hole in space-time sewed up, and the players learned with certainty that the gods do not have their best interests at heart as one of them announced "The Anomaly has been fixed. You have done your duty here, now leave her." The players were silent with horror and actual tears as they realized they assumed the Anomaly was the Marid having escaped the Elemental Plane of Water, when in fact it was actually Squall's freedom.
One of my characters at one point ended up stuck in an elder god's dimension after their death (unlucky rolls against shadows) because they'd been dragged through there in order to save them from early game shenanigans that happened while I was at work (meaning I had no control over this event happening, so even ending up in that dimension was out of my control in the first place), and they were doomed to basically lose their existence. Not fun, yeah. We managed to (barely) fix it later with a different party (who was working with the dead character's love interest) but I don't want to have that kind of bs happen to a character again.
Curse of Strahd story:
The party started a fight with the Abbot, they killed Vilsilka so he changed shape into a young blue dragon and dropped the barbarian with his breath attack. He allowed them the chance to scoop up their fallen ally under one condition: they had killed his offering of a wife to Strahd, they have a Ten-Day to find a suitable replacement. They had eventually came up with three plans, prepare to fight a dragon, deliver Ireena (Using Van Ricten's Guide I had already changed who Tatiana is) to the Abbot, or attempt to make a flesh golem. The third plan is off the table due to the cleric's hatred of the undead and he doesn't want to disrespect the dead like that. Throwing the party a bone for one of the tarrot cards, the warlock had a dream of the events that took place in Brez. In said dream they noticed two things, the woman Strahd had bite looked like the painting of Tatiana they saw as well as Ireana as well as Strahd noticing them (none of the other villagers could see her). They eventually make it to the ruins and find the tome of Strahd where I had altered it mentioning tidbits of their back stories at the end.
They didn't catch the hint, they all had their own dreams tailored to those moments. Everybody had one thing in common: Vistani. They know they're loyal to Strahd, then in town Ireena went missing, they found her with Vilsili and saved her. Later on they found out she was bitten, Rictavio and Ismark got into a heated arguement where Rictavio dropped part of his lore before throwing his journal at Ismark which the party recovered (that way they have more information on their fated ally). Rictavio was suggesting killing Ireena before she turned into a spawn, Ismark didn't want to lose his family. The party was split so random roll for Ireena to kill herself so she did. Strahd was able to figure out Ireena had died when they left the room (Rictavio placed glyphs of nondetection up prior to the talk), when they left the town they were caught in a thunderstorm and thick fog. The fog had seemed to break for them to see a figure in the road, one none of them wanted to see: Strahd.
He had confirmed that he was behind their tragic moments, he was pissed demanding to know what they did to Tatiana. Fight breaks out, they win (it was more so for me to judge them against RAW Strahd) and feel confident. The next time they encountered a group of NPCs que "One, two. Strahd's coming for you" followed by the rest of Freddy Krueger's poem. Eventually they'll have random NPCs asking what have they done to Tatiana before returning to normal. It's going to be a reminder to the party even though they bested Strahd ONCE when he was fueled by rage, they're in HIS domain.
Playing mind games with my players in that manner is pretty mean IMO, also I took away one of their options for the Abbot who will be out for blood and show up when they least expect it.
Dm stripped my gem dragonborn druid/cleric (the party healer)of ALL magical abilities with a ring I couldn't take off or tell the party about and when I attempted to cut off the finger he said the ring exerted so much control that he wasn't able to do so. After I picked a fight with the rest of the party (which we all planned and were prepared for) he kept dm inspiring my characters ac up and then ruled my girlfriend was only able to scratch my characters hand after a nat 20 called throw to sever the hand (again discussed and planned) because he didn't allow players to maime each other (funny cause we had a whole session dedicated to blood letting and possibly permanently weakening one of the characters to fake her death). Yea that campaign is shelved and I will be very hesitant to ever play a game he dms ever again
You like resolutions so much, you need to start a new line of videos about the best resolutions to complicated scenarios in a D&D game.
Charmed a 9th lvl fighter in 3rd edition with a succubus! She charmed him into taking off his armor and kissing him (negative levels) while the rest of the party was elsewhere. By time he was "saved" he was down to 3rd lvl and pretty much squishy to every other monster left in that quest. His recovery checks were all failed due to the -6 penalty on all saves from the negative levels.
Not a dm but a player
Our dm near the start of the campaign introduced a new character (npc) who was incredibly kind to us and let us stay in our manor he gave us a mission and let us stay the night at his fortress our dm asked if we wanted to look around and when we said no he said "are you sure" so of course we say yes in our next session we looked around the fortress and find some dead rotting body’s being eaten by giant rats then a player who missed the start of the session shows up and try’s to reach us gets caught and we get kicked out into the cold in the middle of a Full Moon while we are fully aware there is a large group of krampus nearby that we were nearly killed by