Not a DM, but I received a Nat 20 inspiration for singing Hello My Baby when a chest burster came out of a dwarf. One of the other players joked that it started to break out into song and dance like the Warner Bros. cartoon frog (if you know the reference), and I started singing. The player who was joking was referencing Space Balls.
My evoker gnome did not like a ruling, and she said "I cast fireball on the DM". I flew out of my chair dramatically and made people help me put out the flame, gave her inspiration and held fast to the "no fireballs in the bedroom" rule.
I was the player of the halfling bard. The funny bit about Brian saying "A good dad joke", is that the bard is actually a parent and that particular mission was trying to save their daughter.
Not a DM (or the player who came up with this idea): Our party was following the trail of the Cult of the Dragon and we had to stop at an inn for the night. As I remember, one of our other party members wasn't satisfied with the selection of food, so he and another player spoke to the innkeeper and step by step, they taught him how to make pizza. The DM ended up giving everyone inspiration for bringing pizza to the Forgotten Realms.
That first story reminded me of one time I was playing 3rd edition and the party got deputized the DM was describing it and offhandedly mentioned the things that we would get. Within two words of him saying badges the entire table cut him off in unison and screamed badges we don't need no stinking badges and broke into helpless laughter. The DM stared at us silently for a second then gave each of us a negative level
not the GM, not the player. The party's other rogue had started a cult to "The Lizard Pope". It was a completely ordinary geko our warlock found and put a tiny hat on that the rogue descided to venerate until it became a god. This was his first ever D&D game and he had a hard time RPing for the longest time, but when it was revealed that one of our allies was actually part of a cult to a great old one he said "By Lizard Pope..." completely nonchalant, without any hesitation, and in the exact awestruck tone one might say "Oh my god..." We all paused for a moment to register what was said before bursting out laughing. The GM gave him inspiration for finally getting fully immersed in the game. We're all very proud of how far he's come as a player.
@oliverhendrix8176 oh yeah. What started as a joke, worship of the Lizard Pope is now a main religion in my GM's world. Took some serious adventuring but we did it.
We actually have a rule for "uninspiration". If you do something uncharacteristic, the inspiration slot is filled with unispiration instead. 1. When used, it gives disadvantage. 2. The unlucky player cannot get inspiration until the uninspiration gets used. 3. The DM decides when to use it instead of the player. Players with plans for character development tell the DM beforehand to avoid getting punished for it.
@@talia1628 The trick is not to do it over every petty things. It is meant to be a karma agent for special situations. When the good character leaves an npc to die in order to get a treasure or something that betrays their traits, this will represent sudden guilt they feel when they try to do something else. As long as it's not abused and used on impactful moments, it's fine.
Ok I goto say thank you. I got covid about a week ago right arround when I discovered your stories and they have helped me so much keeping my mind off of covid as I take different things to help with the sinus and such from it your awesome and again I just need to say thank you for haveing such awesome videos the stories make being stuck in my room actually bearable ... Also sorry for any misspellings I'm mostly blind
Hey Athren. I'm sorry you have so much going on all at once, but I'm glad that we here in some small way can help you through your recovery. I know cabin fever can be a bitch for some people, I personally don't mind as I'm a bit of a home body heh. If I'm not inside playing games or wanting to "Netflix and Chill" - I'm outside at a park or in the yard, nothing fancy here. No problems on the mostly blind spelling either, you're a-okay mate. All the love, please be safe.
A character decided to explore the city while the rest of the party stayed at a meeting. That Goliath warlock’s events were played out _after_ the party did their thing and was nearly killed, but instead captured, by some baddies. When we swapped back to the main party the first question was, “DM, how common are goliaths in this city?” “Um… pretty rare I’d say, most live out in the wilderne-“ “Great, I’d like to use my cobblers tools to roll and look for Goliath sized footprints in the snow.” …. “That’s utterly insane… roll with advantage.” *2 nat20’s*
I got an inspiration when half the party was attacked by a banshee. When the other half of the party rejoined the banshee had vanished. We were clearly panicked and the members uninvolved in the combat asked what's going on. My 7 ft lizardfolk barbarian said in my best shaggy voice " G g g g ghost". Party burst into laughing I got my first inspiration of the campaign.
If a player makes me crack up laughing, I give inspiration. Setup: Parties fighter says ooc that despite his characters actions, he does in fact have average intelligence (an INT score of 10) A bit later, the fighter does something extraordinarily stupid in character and immediately the barbarian quips: "I thought you had average intelligence"
I do my best Henry. I don't know how long I have left in this world and if I'm going to be alone or with a woman, but I know I have a gift. As a voice actor I'm small-time now, as a streamer I'm growing too, so hopefully I can spread some love round the world before the end. Also - just for you because I know a good gamer meme related to your name. "JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED, HENRY HAS COME TO VISIT!"
So this one needs some context. I mainly play DnD in a small server mostly focused on one shots (though there are a few true campaigns). There's certain "special" one-shot types that occur sometimes, and one of these is the roulette-shot. Basically, the players all must make brand new characters, but you don't actually end up playing the character you built. Instead, everyone randomly gets a character made by someone else, and it becomes theirs to keep. It's kind of like a massive mystery gift exchange, but with characters. Anyhow, so I'm in a roulette-shot game that's coming up. This DM decided she was going to use the most non-biased, third party source possible to randomize who got what sheet - her dad. After the assignments were determined, but before any of us knew what we got, the DM decided to have us all guess how many times her dad accidentally gave someone their own character with the person(s) who gets it right earning themselves a point of inspiration. Me and another player both guessed it right - it was 3 times. I originally put down 5, but I realized that wouldn't make much sense unless the DM's dad somehow forgot after he was already corrected, which I typed in that game's channel. Turns out, that joke was actually right - 2/3 of the assignment mistakes were with the same exact player. The best part was the DM commenting "The faith y'all have in my father to remember is accurate" in response to all our guesses. Haven't actually gotten the chance to use the inspiration because while we did have that session, we ended up interacting so much in character we had to schedule a Part Two. Definitely planning too though.
Oh, I have a nice one here, I was awarded inspiration due to the sheer naivety of Crock, my lizard folk paladin (oath of the ancients) during Rhine of the frost maiden, here's what happened: we were exploring the ruins of an ancient Netheril city and, when we approached a tower, four big magic hands came to stop us from entering, even signing the universal hand motion for stop. What did my character do? He approached the hands fast and with a serious face, almost like he was going to charge at them and... He just made the motion of rock, paper, scissors at the magic hands. Long story short, after winning three to one with the hands, they granted us entry and a very amused DM said: "just take an inspiration point before I regret it, this was supposed to be a combat encounter!" while laughing.
That first one with Aerin is hilarious. His player's reaction reminds me of my own experience. I only very recently was able to start playing D&D again after my first 2 campaigns were just terrible (sexism and a creepy DM with a thing for me lmao) so I never knew how fun it could be. I've done text-based RP before but doing it in person was different. So I knew what it meant to let your character take the reins - but never vocally. I'd chosen to play a version of a character I already had made for other projects, since he was familiar to me. I'm a rather small, meek, incredibly anxious girl but this character is a huge, boisterous, extroverted male half-aaracokra bard who needs to be the center of attention. I guess it never occurred to me I was going to be his voice and everything, not just typing things out quietly. It took some getting used to but since I already had experience with the character I found myself falling into the game pretty easy after a few sessions. The first time I was able to fully embody my chronic dumbass I was very very surprised! It sort of takes you over in the moment for just one line. I delivered this rather witty one liner in his booming voice (or my best approximation, lmao) As someone with severe anxiety, getting my character's courage for just a moment felt nice. Almost like he was telling me I was doing a good job! So yeah. TTRP is fun and I'm glad I gave it another chance :)
The first time I gave one of my players inspiration (a group of complete newbies) is about 3-4 sessions in. Because we didn't play regularly and my players were pretty shy to roleplay, even though everyone's friends with each other, it was a struggle for them to stay in character or roleplay; even building any character traits or gimmicks. However, one of my players decided that his character would have a crush on the local herbalist (and aunt of my other player). He decided to buy a flower, paid way too much since he didn't have any idea what kind of flower to get a HERBALIST, and went on his way when he was alone. By coincidence he ran into my other player who randomly said that her aunt was allergic to that specific one. I already was happy that they just randomly started making up things and going with it and was happy to not having to direct everything. But when the loverboy heard that he let out the saddest "really?" I've ever heard, 10 out of 10 voice actor quality. No one expected that and everyone just started to laugh over this silly, random build up and that climax and I just decided that should be rewarded :D
I think my best case of getting inspiration was that time I connected the dots of a time travel plot where a small mistake we'd made 3 sessions and 400 years ago resulted in the bbeg we'd just run in to. The DM hadn't even put those dots together themselves, and gave me inspiration for the reasoning of it. But the really impressive bit is that we weren't actually playing d&d, he just smooshed the inspiration mechanic into our game on the fly.
Gave my Paladin inspiration for playing his character coming back from the dead as an Oathbreaker. You see, one of the affects of the resurrection spell is that it restores all missing body parts. This proceeded to “un-circumcise” the paladin, therefore breaking his covenant with his god.
This might not be obvious to people who don't live in snowy areas, but having light during a snowstorm sometimes actually makes it harder to see because the light reflects of off the snowflakes making it difficult to see beyond them in the dark.
5:18 reminds me of how they put a reflective spray on reindeer antlers in Finland to keep them from getting hit by cars. Not the exact same thing obviously but some of the pictures online sure look like it.
I was once given inspiration for using control water to cause a targeted tidal wave against a war party of orcs invading a coastal village. It didn't kill the orcs but it gave the village a fighting chance and considering we had no intention of saving the village(we were already leaving via boat and were already underway), it was the best the townsfolk were going to get as far as divine intervention.
No no Sloth, take your inspiration points back and use'm on yourself and those you love. I just want to do something right for those who need it, anyone out there who needs it. Love ya mate.
In a campaign i was DMing, the party had found a kobold hideout under town, they got to the boss battle and during it they discovered that the kobolds were preparing for the arrival of their "master". Afterwards, they went to clear out the rest of the dungeon and rescue the kidnapped people. They found themselves at a higher ground in front of a number of kobolds. The paladin stood in the front, being the only one visible, and started declaring himself their master, quickly, the monk (who was the only one who spoke draconic) started listening to their reaction. The wizard used minor illlusion to create flaming wings behind the paladin and the tiefling sorcerer used thaumaturgy to make the ground shake and the paladin's voice thunder (which I allowed cause it was very cool). I allowed the roll with advantage for performance and persuasion to convince the kobolds as the paladin commanded the kobolds to present the prisoners to him, followed by commanding the kobolds to go "increase their numbers". They rolled very high, closing the whole thing with a nat 20. Needless to say i gave a round of inspiration to the whole party. Next session they went and killed a kobold orgy (everyone prone, unarmored and unarmed)
Love seeing the stories, have had some fun characters I've Dm'd for, plus this is first time I've gotten to a video this quickly. Keep up the great work
Probably my favorite one was in Tomb of Annihilation as a player. I was playing two characters because we desperately needed a tank so on top of my Ranger I had a Totem Warrior barbarian brick sh*t house of a tabaxi named Lox, like 7ft 385 big ol lady, who was a tribal and didn't understand a lot. We ran into an invisible beholder and the Arcane Trickster rogue freaks out yelling "Be-beholder!" Lox just looked at him confused "Why should we be afraid of someone holding bees?" Broke the party for five minutes and got inspiration I used to survive spiking a full necklace of fireballs at Acererak's feet later on
ah yes... mouth to mouth... reminded of an online exchange. There were three of us in the chat room, and one of the group went silent. The other two noticed, and someone remarked on it, wondering if the missing chatter "needs mouth to mouth recreation"
I gave inspiration twice to one of my players (a paladin dwarf) when they were exploring an abandoned mine...including for speaking only in JAVA for 5 minutes... First time they'ed reached a dead end where their patron god had told them to go that they could get through to a cut off section, the dwarf started saying 'melon' repeatedly and walking round the walls...when I asked what he was doing he said he was looking for a secret door, and that he'd read it in a book once where a wizard got through a cave by saying 'melon' (referencing LOTR)... Second, a little while later he'd got hurt in an explosion (they'd used an exploding barrel to blow a wall down) and another player (his girlfriend) decided to use cure wounds on him BUT the mine contained a magical accelerant mineral which caused magic to do weird things, the roll was halved and he was healed a bit so she asked how his character felt? Out of character I asked him if he spoke any foreign languages? He said he only had a D in French but his girlfriend pointed out he knew Java (the programming language) so with a devilish laugh I told him his character could only speak in Java for the next five minutes (feeling very pleased with myself)...what followed was one of the most incredible five minutes I've ever DM'd: (copied from the recording I make of the games) 'oh heck... public static main method, open curly bracket, next line, system dot i dot print L m, bracket quotation mark what the f***s going on, close quotation marks, close bracket semi colon...' ua-cam.com/users/clipUgkxp-8pVZdmLYzWQzBbEGQ_iWRs8IeJQmXF He kept this up for the full five minutes, I gave him inspiration and let him level up just for that!
The horse story: "As darkness encroaches your vision, you feel a surge of ungodly strength coursing through your veins you slowly start lifting the horse off your leg, and in a minute, your leg is free"
My bard searching for ship cat. Didn't manage to lure any cat in the whole fricking freeport, ended up creating familiar from scroll. DM decided that captain who cares about rodent problem on his ship is a good captain. Newer used it, but it still was funny.
I’ve managed to get inspiration for being so derpy with my Goliath, Alethea the blood hunter. She’s a happy go lucky person despite her tragic backstory. Her first actual breakdown happened with her first flashback. (Just like irl has ptsd) she called one of npcs (nilbog) dad (just in universe thing) and my dm decided to give me inspiration not for this but the funny crap I pulled after this and the attempts of making the npc protected by me even though she’d be normally be terrified of goblins. This interaction got my character out of her fear of goblins and I got inspiration. Also this character managed to piss off the luck goddess who Alethea now calls Grammy. (She’s married to the god who created the Goliath race.) and then managed to get into the astral plane to attempt to ask Grammy for stories about how her and grampy got together! (This might’ve been the reason I got the inspiration I forgot because I’ve had the inspiration for a while lol) Final edit (hopefully) I just woke up about an hour ago from a ptsd attack and this video made me feel so much better about myself and helped ground me so thanks. It’s part of why I’m subbed. You always make it funnier.
Not a DM, but in a campaign I was playing Kistrya (pyromaniac elf wizard) I got inspiration for inventing Molotov cocktails *and* napalm in his homebrew world. That led to many a fun shenanigan.
The warlock in my party is a tabaxi who speaks in a Russian accent. He was introduced to my campaign of Dragon of Icespire Peak by immediately encountering Cryovain the white dragon. He tells me he wants to cast command and tell the dragon to "fuck off". I tell him that command is one word so if he could find a way to do so in one word I would allow it. He looks up the Russian translation and says it. It's one word, so I allowed it and rolled for the save... One crit fail later Cryovain promptly fucked off and the warlock got his inspiration. The whole party also got inspiration for their excellent role play before, during and after that interaction, but the warlock's reason was the funniest.
I was in a motorcycle accident a few days ago and I have to get surgery done on my arm to get it straight again. I really love these videos and I plan on having them play while I go under for the surgery. Thanks, Brian, for being the voice of these videos and being so positive. It's inspiring and I hope you continue with this well into the future. 🙂
I once got inspiration for using my keen mind feat in real life. The DM was doing the recap at the top of the session, and struggled to remember something, so I reminded everyone what we were doing, and why we were doing it.
I got inspiration for making a good pun. My character is a criminal and while making some Better Call Saul jokes after a session wrapped up, someone said I’d start my own law firm after we finished the story. I busted out the slogan “Legal trouble? Call Richter to tip the scales.” The DM just said “gain inspiration” and started chuckling like a dad who’d met his match in the pun department.
My unspoken rule is that if a player makes me laugh hard enough that they've almost killed me, I give them inspiration. Incidents I remember best: - a player in my run through of Tomb of Annihilation joked at the idea that flying snakes in Port Nyanzaru are treated similarly to pigeons in any city older than 200 years. He painted such a vivid image of the snakes going about their day as if they were pigeons and it made me laugh so hard I gave him (and anyone who added to the banter) inspiration. - some rp between the triton fighter and the human bard where the bard tried to explain to the fighter the concept of marriage. Fighter's widower father never remarried, so he assumed it to be a weird land dweller custom, and was worried he'd be pressured in participating. Bard was trying to reassure him it wasn't the case. It was a very hilarious back and forth worthy of a Monty Python sketch, I had to reward them both with an inspiration. - In a playthrough I ran of Curse of Strahd, the party spotted Escher (one of Strahd's consorts) acting extra sketchy, so they followed him to this abandoned building. While the party speculated what he was up to, the bard's player made a joke that "maybe he's secretly taking DJ lessons. Its something he does to get himself out of the house and away from Strahd. You see, Escher is no longer Strahd's boytoy when he's on stage, losing himself in the music he mixes. He's gonna make something of himself. Gonna become Barovia's first DJ, MC Escher." The way the player spoke of this hypothetical like it was a prophecy with a punchline to the gut that made me laugh so hard, and I was having such a bad day before the session started, that I felt an inspiration was in order.
My DM gives us inspiration for recapping the last session at the beginning of a new one in character, i thinks it's pretty neat and helps us get up to speed, also, great use of our notes
My DM gave my inspiration when I straight faced suggested using my want of mending to repair a broken bridge. One of my players continued in character, when I referenced a major city near me and how hot it was. He asked "what is this place you speak of?" And without missing a bear, I responded, it's a city located on the plane of fire.
Ooh!!! I got one! Obligatory Not a DM, but the player. My character is a druggie Wood Elf Circle of Dreams druid that talks with your stereotypical surfer dude accent with as many "dude"s and "like"s thrown in as I can manage while stalling for time to say what I want. During one particularly substantive backstory reveal, I managed to get inspiration for using about 30 "like"s over the course of about 3 minutes.
not a dm, but my first ever game. I was playing a halfling rogue in a one-shot at a convention, and we were fighting a bug-bear. At one point the dm describes an attack with "so he swings at you with his mace..." and one of the other players off-handedly says "huh, normally you would spray people with that, right?" then I jumped in with "no, you're thinking of 'Axe.'" Everyone started laughing and the dm told me "I don't care if that was out of character, you're getting inspiration for that!" and I've been chasing that high ever since
This happened just last saturday. I play a fighter in 5e with a small but fun group. This fighter is a quite odd one, as he refuses to use normal weapons and shields. He's a chef, and therefore his weapon of choice is frying pans. His mission in life is to find the legendary frying pan called Excalipan which is basically just a sword handle attached to a pan. In any case, this saturday, the stars aligned. While we were having some downtime in a city, he describes how the sky opens up, and rain starts to pour like crazy. As soon as he said that, I felt all like: "My moment has come!" So then I proceed to tell them how my character, puts his frying pan over his head, using it as a drying pan. My DM really liked that. He gave me an inspiration instantly. But more than anything, I felt fulfilled, that I had finally made that reference with that character.
About lifting the horse, there is this tradition in Mongolia where in order to be seen as a right horse rider the person has to lift their horse on their back and carry it a certain distance/number of steps. This is seen as a proof that such person can take care of the herd in case that for example the horse falls into a ditch and it needs to be rescued and such. And while yes, mongolian horses are generally on the smaller, almost pony size, we are still talking about like 300kg+ of weight. Then again, 18 in strenght is a damn buff character so yeah, if you squint and say that their horses are kinda smallish, like many east asian horse breeds, i can totally see it working.
Here is a short one for you. Was playing an apocalyptic ttrpg where inspiration was called Karma. Pvp or rather bad choices, as well as the choices of others and the dice could alter it. Someone had died due to pvp of a villain and one of the girls on the dead players side was trying to rez him. He had been bitten, so him coming back without being an infected was impossible. However, him coming back as her old pal in an altered state was not completely impossible, she would just have to use her 'luck' (which is what we called positive karma) and she would have to role high on a six sided die. Her first role was the initial rez to bring life into him. She rolled a six. The second role was for his cognitive recognition. This girl rolled a six in front of all our eyes AGAIN. With the rules in this game doubles give you an extra die and she used it to ask if he could grow wings to (per his joking request). Me the DM thought it was not likely so I said if she roles another 6 then yes. And guess what? This Lucky as crud rolled another six!!!! Safe to say they survived that underground zombie maze and at one point actually called lighting down to strike the villain player. All in all the game was hilarious. Another guy turned into a Hulking intelligent zombie from high karma roles and made it out to, but that is a whole other sandwich and biscuit!
I was the player in this situation, i forget the exact context but i believe we were in character talking about how one of the pcs looked. I made the comment that "my mom thinks im handsome" the dm and everyone else lost it and i got inspiration lol
not a dm but player, it was actually kinda cool, my character named Promesheus the Inquisitor got an inspiration from my dm, the story is : it was our first combat there were people bleeding out and lying on the ground, when i had the brilliant idea to use a torch sealing their wounds(medicine) but they were zombies and the fight broke out one of us were constantly munched on and healed while i a rune knight put fire rune on my sword and burned 2 zombies to death , meanwhile our elf druid constantly bonked the other zombies to death with a mace, after the battle we gathered the corpses and burned them to give them an honorable death, me with a glimpse of fire on the tip of my sword set the pile alight and prayed that the people infected will find the light of their god Pelor again and see the sun one last time(their souls). made a Religion check with a nat 20, dm said at least you need 18 to have something because you have nothing in common whole party was petrified that pelor came down gave me a blessing (inspiration) and left with a smile on his face, and thats how im on my way to become a demi-god in our campaign of pelor or my favourite chosen god if i cooperate enough with pelor to gain his favor. Best DM btw hes a true chad keeps us company^^
As I player my character was a level 10 loxodon war cleric. None of our characters had experienced boats before. So our characters couldn't figure it out. We were shit outta luck in a new watery world that we were transported to. It was hilarious watching our characters fumble about and the rowboat wasn't going anywhere. I casted water walk, got out and pushed the boat. Dm killed himself laughing and then gave me inspiration.
One more player-not-DM: Starting a 5e game in Eberron (I think... it was a while ago), I was making my character and filling out her sheet. Among all the other items, she also had a shovel. Regular old tool, nothing special about it. When filling out the weight slot on the (digital) sheet, on a whim I decided to skip the actual weight and wrote instead "Can you dig this, Daddy-O?" The DM laughed hard enough for me to start the very first session of the campaign with inspiration.
One of my players has the mizzium apparatus magic item. It basically allows you to cast certain spells that aren't on your spell list out of it, but you have to make an arcana check to do so successfully. My player tried to use it to cast fireball on a bunch of plant monsters. They failed the check, meaning they cast a random other 3rd level spell instead by rolling a 1d6 to determine which one from the list. We rolled... feign death. I think rolled a dice to see who they targeted in range. In universe, the sorcerer went "Don't worry guys, I got this!" and then the fighter's horse just falls down dead with *no* explanation. Anyways, once we were done laughing I gave the sorcerer inspiration for the whole debacle.
Player in Curse of Strad campaign. I had a grand idea for making a bard that was inspired by Kvothe from KKC and Thom Marilen from Wheel of Time. The character was not going well, was just not a good fit for the campaign and I was getting bored playing him. So at this point I was just doing anything risky because I was not attached to him. At one point, our paladin, artificer and I are follow the spirit up the stairs and are confronted by a dragon spirit as we reach the top of the stairs. DM: roll a will save to see if you are stricken with fear. Pally and artificer both fail and basically shit their pants. I roll a nat 20. While the other two are cowering I proudly bow to the dragon spirit and say, “my lord Argovar?” The dragon spirit is impressed with my bravery. DM gave me inspiration for role playing it well and it was a turning point for the character. We then took on the death night in the basement and one because my character was still just like Fuck it. We were able to join the order of the silver dragon, my character received the death knights sword for me bravery and my whole character arc changed as I bonded to the sword.
I was the player who got the inspiration. The DM had a dragon assault the town we were in, and we a bunch of lv4-5s were supposed to run. However, the party decided to fight it and I was like okay fine (mind you that was my second session joining that campaign). So I, a half orc fighter, just basically LEEROY JENKINS'd the dragon that most of our party's attacks could not even scratch, and I landed a critical hit, wounding the dragon. I then proceed to survive his first attack and nat 20'd his roar of fear saving throw, and after numerous help from the town guard harpoons and a mage launching our minotaur like a bazooka at the dragon, we wounded it enough that it fled. Due to my contribution towards the fight the Dm gave me inspiration. By the way I also got an inspiration the session before because I leeroy Jenkins'd a kraken, latched onto it by stabbing 1 of my swords in its skin, and then survived his strongest attack with 1HP while the party dealt with it swiftly as I bought time catching its attention. We had to abandon the campaign due to Dm having IRL commitments but I had a blast being the MVP twice in a row during big fights while also managing to always survive on a sliver of health. This also pretty much made me always create characters that had some form of melee combat proficiency, even if he was running an INT build.
I have a monk who always roll high on animal handling checks. not once did he roll under a 15 and there were at least 6 times where it was useful. the monk had gloves of swimming and climbing so his MS was 90 while swimming. The monk and the fighter were exploring sunken ships when they were attacked by reef sharks. They slaughtered a few most of the sharks and remaining sharks fled, Then some dolphins showed up to to help slow the fleeing sharks. The monk was able to catch up to them to finish off the fight. Afterwards, he does animal handling with the dolphins and rolls a nat 20. I honestly forgot inspiration was a thing as I'm a new DM, but I just remembered it so I gave him inspiration just for being so consistent.
Not a DM but a player. In our campaign my party and I are currently in a castle underground. One of my fellow party members is my brother in game and I asked him for help investigating some cracks in a wall so I would have advantage and he being a smart ass refused. I ended up crit failing and with a homebrew system we have crit fails can have a multitude of other bad side effects. I rolled a d12 and ended up getting disadvantage on all intelligence related checks until our next long rest. So fast forward underground we come upon some fog that is 3 feet tall which happens to be the same height as the gnome in our party. I whispered (we play on roll 20) to the gnome that we should table top my brother and then the dm. The way everyone got nervous when our dm asked my brother what his passive perception was followed by asking for a dexterity save only for us to be pranking him gave everyone a great laugh and earned both myself and my gnome friend inspiration
A simple and obvious one, but stilla good one. bard in final confrontation of CoS, makes a Sick Burn on Strahd. So much so, that he had the whole table rolling in tears, gave him the use of ONE Bardic Inspiration back( he was out of it)
I was not the DM, but a player, and I believe it was Dungeon World, not DND. We were just starting in a campaign and we were all level 1, and I was playing a Bard, as I tend to do. We got into the intro dungeon and we entered combat, when it came around to my turn, the DM asked me what I wanted to do, and I got into character and said that I would like to narrate what was going on in combat with song. I rolled performance and rolled decently high. My DM gave me inspiration for it because I was the only one who was totally playing into my character that session. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to ever use it because I was only there for that session because it was an after school game club thing and I just got caught up with homework and such.
Player in a campaign. The general idea is that our characters were Isekai'd into this world via a MASSIVE accident (caused by one of the other PC's). My character was a literal five-year-old child, named Timothy, whose mind is put into the body of a warforged in this new world. So Timmytron (as he calls himself) and party are looking for undead that have been plaguing a nearby settlement. Timmy, a monk, and the party druid in weasel form are moving ahead to try and pick up a trail. Timmy botches his perception checks, while the druid manages to catch sight of the skeletal minotaur before it sees us. The Druid attempts to communicate this and the fact that we should probably warn the rest of the party in the only way that he can, being unable to talk in this form.. pantomime. After a few poor rolls, Timmy has no clue what the druid is actually saying and just kind of guesses as to what he might be trying to say. "What's that? I've fallen into a well?" The group all bursts out laughing. The Druid asks if the psychic damage from that was enough to knock him out of wildshape. The DM says that yes, he can be stunned out of weasel form (thankfully for no actual damage) and awards me inspiration.
Not DM, but I shall introduce my incredibly original human fighter, Norman Leon Mahn. When I was describing him to the party, I said that he "Was a hero of his land, known by name for miles around. When there was trouble, the people would shout 'Help me, Leon!', and when in peace, I would be greeted by roars of 'NORM!'" By simply making two references to two franchises the DM liked a lot, I was inspired. Later in the session, the whole group got inspiration when the rogue artificer kobold rewrote and performed Sk8er Boi, replacing with our bard trying to seduce a dragon.
My DM lets us players, at the start of every session roll a 1d69, and a 1d420. If we roll a 69, we get an inspiration, if we roll a 420, we get 10 inspirations as we use the stacking inspiration. It's definitely a meme, but I love it so much. Our DM rolls too, and we also get a pity inspiration if we roll below his d69 on both of our rolls. He also hands out an inspiration to the player that writes a recap of the last session. (An incentive to keep us on track with what is currently happening in the campaign.)
Not D&D but Mutants and Masterminds. I was doing a one shot where the Justice League were taken out by the BBEG's Henchman. Batman had broken legs, and muttered Wayne Manor to get the heroes to The Batcave to get power ups to fight the BBEG. The player was playing a strong stupid Hulk like character. The player immediately, in character, told the others "We have to go kill Bruce Wayne because he hurt Batman." Yes, my players (who all knew Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person) decided Bruce Wayne was the BBEG. I gave the equivalent of inspiration because I nearly fell out of my chair from laughing so hard.
Not a DM, but I got inspiration for a wonderful pun. My character, a fairy named Faena (fae-na) was bitten by a bear, (tried feeing it a good berry to leave her magic cobbler alone.) After failing to keep their lunch I said in character “These past few days has has been, Un-BEAR-able.” Too keep the mood light for herself. Got inspiration for being a pun.
Not 5e, but Pathfinder, which uses the hero point system. The party was working on a way to free a bunch of captives from some gnoll slavers. A shaman was killed, as well as some martial combatants, but a witch and druid ran away. Talking with the surviving gnoll that surrendered (only one of us could even roughly translate), we find that they witch had slain the gnoll chief. After a while, I finally decided to talk with the gnoll again. I can't. So I start drawing in the sand, and managed to figure that he really did want to have the witch killed and, supposedly, wanted peace. So, being a tiefling gunslinger, I cut my hand, got him to do the same, and we shook on it. I gained a hero point for becoming the temporary chief to this gnoll.
Sea Elf artificer/wizard. Grumpy, small girl named Lia. She just picked up the Elemental Adept feat, focusing on acid damage. We entered a desert ruins full of ghosts. Not wanting to deal with this, Lia decided to nuke the room via Vitriolic Sphere. Surprisingly, these ghosts did not resist acid. Neither did the non-magical structure of the room. While the other spellcasters panic and try to make sure the ruins aren't about to collapse on us, Lia was far more interested in the reaction between the ghosts' ectoplasm and her new acid formula and was actively taking notes on how said ectoplasm was rapidly dissolving, oblivious to chunks of debris falling around her. Party and DM agreed I deserved the Inspiration. They didn't agree to me finding one of the few safe spaces to stand by dumb luck.
Im very new to dnd, so new I have literally only gotten to have one session and have never played again, so im sorry i cant remember the class I was. It was a bird person that starts with an A. After our first, and only battle, we went into a tavern where my character went to talk to another player. As we sat, we were offered food. The dm, as a waitress, offered me a variety of different bird, such as chicken or quail, and I quickly went "How dare you offer me my kin to eat!" The dm gave me inspiration once he stopped laughing.
Haven't been a DM yet, but I've gotten inspiration for knowing the mythology one of mine was referencing....and once I made a sarcastic comment that made another DM lose his shit laughing.
Pathfinder has something called fate chips that are basically the same thing: My character ended up sleeping through a small skirmish the party had with goblins. After the fight, because I was still sleeping. I asked both of my other party members to make perception checks. they got a 15 and 17, I think. Because of their good rolls, I told them "You both notice my morning wood." DM started laughing and tossed me a fate chip.
Not the dm, but I got inspiration the during the first dnd session I ever played. I was playing a Warlock wood elf named Val and had just met up with the party. I came into the campaign a few sessions in. An elf ranger mentioned he was looking for a rabbit. I asked about the rabbit in character and was told "He's an ass hole." My comeback was very sarcastic and sassy because that didn't really give me any information about it and the dm cracked up and gave both of us inspiration. I have a history of creative writing and theater arts so playing the character isn't new but it was my first ever session so that was memorable.
That Simpsons story... I am such a massive nerd that if I ever DM, I'll probably have some NPCs inspired by stuff I like and if a player mentions it, I'll likely do the same thing and give them inspiration.
When a new player came up with a interesting mechanic that being she could cast Shileighle on a torch so i gave her inspiration for it and also a d6 fire damage when attacking.
Not a DM, and didn't received inspiration but my DM almost gave it to me. Basically i was playing a giant mouse artificer with the battle smith subclass, my steel defender also a shaped mouse named Sleepy because my character went into a deep sleep for years in a laboratory before just waking up and making it to escape, Sleepy walked in two legs and was a medium size, while me being a small size, just in the first session i managed to basically turn myself into a knight mounted in a horse, my weapon a pickaxe and i also wielded a shield while using heavy armor, all of that because my DM actually found it a very cool ideia and let me use the mount rules for my metalic friend, i just didn't received a inspiration because that was the very first session according to my DM. Also Sleepy crited fist a guard in the face after he defended me from his attack, which was the best moment i had with him.
So, I'm not the DM, but I still find this kinda funny. A lot had happened in our campaign, and there was a hell portal with Imps infinitely flying out and causing havoc in the Dwarven kingdom, as well as a similar one in the human kingdom, but with pit fiends instead. Then, we found out there is no gate at all to the 9 hells and we need to figure out how to make one (especially ironic that our party is named "deaths door") We decided the best course of action would be to ask one of the gods of the world how to create it, and eventually landed on an Elven god, the goddess of life and death (home-brew if I'm not mistaken. It's my first campaign, so I'm not 100%) that being said, no one had a reliable way of contacting her. Our high elf paladin was not being answered or acknowledged by her (she was his patron) and me, a wood elf warlock, wouldn't be able to reliably speak with my gods considering my patron being a great old one, so we decided to use the cleric to get in touch with her. She wasn't his paragon though, so we basically had to stack as many religion rolls and buffs together to even try to contact her. Turns out, we failed the spell despite passing 2 different impossible checks, but she appeared in front of us anyways. My DM described it as "You failed the spell, but you essentially rang a doorbell to a door she didn't know existed, and was so impressed that she just came here." And we got to talk to her directly (which was also a big character moment for a lot of us.) Dm gave us inspiration for managing to pass impossible checks, and we also got the answer to our questions.
a player at my table got inspiration because she was stuck dazed and drooling for 5 full rounds. While the other players either couldn't help or wouldn't. My character was despairing (homebrew) and crying in the corner with a repurposed sentient cat cannon turned emotional support pet (gave half cover too). Those 5 rounds of combat lasted 90 minutes irl...
Not a DM, but I was fighting a cursed Daniel Kraig as James Bond from hell with an elemental gun and I was underequipped with a 60+foot room as a bard, so I cast Vicious Mockery, and instead of insulting him directly, I did a Rickroll. Still only got four because the dice gods don't like Rickrolls apparently
So got inspiration for role-playing out and natural one with a real life event that occurred within the party. Real life event: my friend and I went out on a hike, she pointed out a “pretty plant” I immediately recognized that as poison oak. I literally said facing her back towards plant, pointing at said poison oak “ don’t touch that that’s poison oak” followed by me immediately turning around and running into the poison oak with my exposed bare arm. Cue a long, unmoving silent pause from the both of us. I stated I’m fine. This is fine. I can wait till we get back to the car. Mind you I have a very specific set of allergies so I’m a little bit more sensitive when it comes to poison oak. A couple steps forward I said nope it burns it burns. It’s bad. It’s bad. Natural one situation with my character: we were preparing ant poisons in preparation to face of poison, green dragon, and preparing the villagers so that they can survive potential onslaught of poison reaching them. as my character has a little bit of knowledge, making medicine from plants is explaining to the town folk how to make ant poison, roll a natural one. Immediately, I decided to role-play it out like my real life memory that happened to me. Party could not stop laughing for more than five minutes. Worth the inspiration, it has also become a running gag whenever we fail a natural one against poison.
Gave inspiration to one of my players for the main campaign during a oneshot. In character she said "if you need to find me just cast locate object." "Huh?" "Because I'm a woman." All the girls laughed, all the guys were like WOAAAH! xD
I was not the DM of this game. I don't remember this scene particularly well but it went about like this: Our party was heading towards a mage's mansion to make him inspect a powerful magic artifact and ask him if he knew something about it. Along the road, in a forest, we met this hunter. Just basic, normal, human hunter (ranger), with not much to tell. He was looking for a prey and wasn't finding it. He asked were we came from. And my group told him we were part of the JOE ORGANIZATION, cause they are dumb and love "Joe mama" jokes lmao. And so the hunter is clearly curious and confused. I, as the member of the party with the Highest Charisma (I'm a Halfling Warlock) and proficiency in deception, rolled good over 20 and told him that I, our Human Fighter, and our Tabaxi Bard are escorting our other two party members, a Human Wizard and an Elf with an homebrew class which is basically a waterbender to a location Called New York, which does NOT exist but it should theoretically be an Island VERY far in which giant rats live, and our Tabaxi Bard told us its story. Everybody invents names for themselves along the lines of "Joe Ligma" "Balls Mama" lmfao and the NPC is confused since we have all similar names that kinda resonate within each other but I rolled like 30 in deception so ✨he doesn't know✨. So we tell him about new York and how it's really far and we tell him that the Elf and the Wizard are nobles and then the NPC out of NOWHERE says: "Do you know Candice?" And I go: "Oh yes, Candice, goddes of Hunt. Yes, in the landa far East from where we come it has various names, like CANDEEZNUTSFITINYOURMOUTH. You haven't found a prey yet. Well You shall pray to CANDEEZNUTSFITINYOURMOUTH!" and we run away with our horses. He thanks us and we then met him again after he successfully hunted a Deer. Inspiration. Memorable.
Long story but pretty hard homebrewed campaign. To put it simply I disguised myself as the main antagonist of the current arc and convinced his son (using deception +9) that his entire life was a lie. (He was raised in a murder cult but everyone thought it was great). It worked too, well. Ended up making the arc 2 sessions shorter than planned.
Player here. One of my first sessions ever. Level 2 half elf bard. We sneak upon a goblin hideout to find that the entrance is guarded by a half-ogre who was standing there, humming to himself. When I heard that my bard brain decided "Hey, he likes music! He can't be bad" So I went out of hiding playing my lute to the surprise of half ogre. After great performance check and persuasion we menaged to hire him for the local woodcutters in exchange for mead. I got inspiration for that one.
I gave a player inspiration because he tamed a mimic by getting him balls high on magic mushrooms (which he grew himself using spores and druidcraft). So these literally magic mushrooms were highly hallucinogenic. The dude pops this mushroom in the mimic's mouth, and it quickly turns into a mushroom in response. The mushroom gets this giant toothy grin and starts doing the quiet version of the Courage the Cowardly dog laugh. That was all it did for the rest of the campaign, usually bumping or nudging his supplier whenever he needed a hit. Eventually he did get... erm... "incentivized" to turn into weapons for the party (mostly his supplier) to use. I've never seen someone dope up a mimic, and I will be damned if I ever see it again! lol No one else would have ever thought of that.
Playing second edition I had a elven fighter/wizard duleclass. We had beaten the temple of elemental evil and had decided to build a temple of our own to the gods we followed. About two years after the construction, and more adventures, we had found the hand of vecna. While at the temple I was walking to the bathroom, in my underwear of course, when I felt (as the dm described it) "A sharp pain ripping through your chest. You look down and see the tip of a dagger sticking out." The dm rolled damage and did a total of 10hp. We rolled initiatives and I went first. I turn my head around, look at the attacker and cock an eyebrow "Ow?". The dm asked if that was all I did. I said ya he just ran a blade through me and im not even hurt. How brave is the hit man? The dm rolled a nat 1 and made him run blade still stuck in my character. Turns out he was working for a cult following vecna so we had a new quest.
Not a DM, but I received a Nat 20 inspiration for singing Hello My Baby when a chest burster came out of a dwarf. One of the other players joked that it started to break out into song and dance like the Warner Bros. cartoon frog (if you know the reference), and I started singing. The player who was joking was referencing Space Balls.
I remember that Warner Bros reference. Every time the curtain went up the frog just croaked.
Fun fact it was the same guy in both movies, hence the line.
"OH no, not again."
Good ole John Hurt.
i can't wait till my favorite dnd campaign to be reference NACL DND
Croak-aine's a hell of a drug!
First thing I thought when i read Hello my baby was the Chordettes (Yes the ones who sang lollipop), same song apparently
My evoker gnome did not like a ruling, and she said "I cast fireball on the DM". I flew out of my chair dramatically and made people help me put out the flame, gave her inspiration and held fast to the "no fireballs in the bedroom" rule.
I was the player of the halfling bard. The funny bit about Brian saying "A good dad joke", is that the bard is actually a parent and that particular mission was trying to save their daughter.
Not a DM (or the player who came up with this idea):
Our party was following the trail of the Cult of the Dragon and we had to stop at an inn for the night. As I remember, one of our other party members wasn't satisfied with the selection of food, so he and another player spoke to the innkeeper and step by step, they taught him how to make pizza. The DM ended up giving everyone inspiration for bringing pizza to the Forgotten Realms.
That first story reminded me of one time I was playing 3rd edition and the party got deputized the DM was describing it and offhandedly mentioned the things that we would get. Within two words of him saying badges the entire table cut him off in unison and screamed badges we don't need no stinking badges and broke into helpless laughter. The DM stared at us silently for a second then gave each of us a negative level
not the GM, not the player.
The party's other rogue had started a cult to "The Lizard Pope". It was a completely ordinary geko our warlock found and put a tiny hat on that the rogue descided to venerate until it became a god. This was his first ever D&D game and he had a hard time RPing for the longest time, but when it was revealed that one of our allies was actually part of a cult to a great old one he said "By Lizard Pope..." completely nonchalant, without any hesitation, and in the exact awestruck tone one might say "Oh my god..." We all paused for a moment to register what was said before bursting out laughing. The GM gave him inspiration for finally getting fully immersed in the game. We're all very proud of how far he's come as a player.
I want to know if the Lizard Pope ever actually became a god.
@oliverhendrix8176 oh yeah. What started as a joke, worship of the Lizard Pope is now a main religion in my GM's world. Took some serious adventuring but we did it.
We actually have a rule for "uninspiration". If you do something uncharacteristic, the inspiration slot is filled with unispiration instead.
1. When used, it gives disadvantage.
2. The unlucky player cannot get inspiration until the uninspiration gets used.
3. The DM decides when to use it instead of the player.
Players with plans for character development tell the DM beforehand to avoid getting punished for it.
This seems kinda antagonistic, why would you use this
@@magixazog exactly
@@magixazog It's mainly for murder hobo situations. My players do love it, though.
does it play well
@@talia1628 The trick is not to do it over every petty things. It is meant to be a karma agent for special situations. When the good character leaves an npc to die in order to get a treasure or something that betrays their traits, this will represent sudden guilt they feel when they try to do something else. As long as it's not abused and used on impactful moments, it's fine.
Ok I goto say thank you. I got covid about a week ago right arround when I discovered your stories and they have helped me so much keeping my mind off of covid as I take different things to help with the sinus and such from it your awesome and again I just need to say thank you for haveing such awesome videos the stories make being stuck in my room actually bearable ... Also sorry for any misspellings I'm mostly blind
Hey Athren.
I'm sorry you have so much going on all at once, but I'm glad that we here in some small way can help you through your recovery. I know cabin fever can be a bitch for some people, I personally don't mind as I'm a bit of a home body heh. If I'm not inside playing games or wanting to "Netflix and Chill" - I'm outside at a park or in the yard, nothing fancy here.
No problems on the mostly blind spelling either, you're a-okay mate.
All the love, please be safe.
A character decided to explore the city while the rest of the party stayed at a meeting.
That Goliath warlock’s events were played out _after_ the party did their thing and was nearly killed, but instead captured, by some baddies.
When we swapped back to the main party the first question was, “DM, how common are goliaths in this city?”
“Um… pretty rare I’d say, most live out in the wilderne-“
“Great, I’d like to use my cobblers tools to roll and look for Goliath sized footprints in the snow.”
….
“That’s utterly insane… roll with advantage.”
*2 nat20’s*
I got an inspiration when half the party was attacked by a banshee. When the other half of the party rejoined the banshee had vanished. We were clearly panicked and the members uninvolved in the combat asked what's going on. My 7 ft lizardfolk barbarian said in my best shaggy voice " G g g g ghost". Party burst into laughing I got my first inspiration of the campaign.
If a player makes me crack up laughing, I give inspiration.
Setup: Parties fighter says ooc that despite his characters actions, he does in fact have average intelligence (an INT score of 10)
A bit later, the fighter does something extraordinarily stupid in character and immediately the barbarian quips: "I thought you had average intelligence"
because int and wis are two different things
@@CodaBlairLucarioEmperor Fighters Wis is even higher.
Just found this channel two days ago and I love it! The best part is the positive messages at the end from Brian
I do my best Henry. I don't know how long I have left in this world and if I'm going to be alone or with a woman, but I know I have a gift. As a voice actor I'm small-time now, as a streamer I'm growing too, so hopefully I can spread some love round the world before the end.
Also - just for you because I know a good gamer meme related to your name.
"JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED, HENRY HAS COME TO VISIT!"
@@BrianVaughnVA A comment from the man himself! Dude, I really appreciate this. ❤️
So this one needs some context. I mainly play DnD in a small server mostly focused on one shots (though there are a few true campaigns). There's certain "special" one-shot types that occur sometimes, and one of these is the roulette-shot. Basically, the players all must make brand new characters, but you don't actually end up playing the character you built. Instead, everyone randomly gets a character made by someone else, and it becomes theirs to keep. It's kind of like a massive mystery gift exchange, but with characters.
Anyhow, so I'm in a roulette-shot game that's coming up. This DM decided she was going to use the most non-biased, third party source possible to randomize who got what sheet - her dad. After the assignments were determined, but before any of us knew what we got, the DM decided to have us all guess how many times her dad accidentally gave someone their own character with the person(s) who gets it right earning themselves a point of inspiration. Me and another player both guessed it right - it was 3 times. I originally put down 5, but I realized that wouldn't make much sense unless the DM's dad somehow forgot after he was already corrected, which I typed in that game's channel. Turns out, that joke was actually right - 2/3 of the assignment mistakes were with the same exact player.
The best part was the DM commenting "The faith y'all have in my father to remember is accurate" in response to all our guesses.
Haven't actually gotten the chance to use the inspiration because while we did have that session, we ended up interacting so much in character we had to schedule a Part Two. Definitely planning too though.
Oh, I have a nice one here, I was awarded inspiration due to the sheer naivety of Crock, my lizard folk paladin (oath of the ancients) during Rhine of the frost maiden, here's what happened: we were exploring the ruins of an ancient Netheril city and, when we approached a tower, four big magic hands came to stop us from entering, even signing the universal hand motion for stop. What did my character do? He approached the hands fast and with a serious face, almost like he was going to charge at them and... He just made the motion of rock, paper, scissors at the magic hands. Long story short, after winning three to one with the hands, they granted us entry and a very amused DM said: "just take an inspiration point before I regret it, this was supposed to be a combat encounter!" while laughing.
That first one with Aerin is hilarious. His player's reaction reminds me of my own experience. I only very recently was able to start playing D&D again after my first 2 campaigns were just terrible (sexism and a creepy DM with a thing for me lmao) so I never knew how fun it could be. I've done text-based RP before but doing it in person was different. So I knew what it meant to let your character take the reins - but never vocally.
I'd chosen to play a version of a character I already had made for other projects, since he was familiar to me. I'm a rather small, meek, incredibly anxious girl but this character is a huge, boisterous, extroverted male half-aaracokra bard who needs to be the center of attention. I guess it never occurred to me I was going to be his voice and everything, not just typing things out quietly. It took some getting used to but since I already had experience with the character I found myself falling into the game pretty easy after a few sessions.
The first time I was able to fully embody my chronic dumbass I was very very surprised! It sort of takes you over in the moment for just one line. I delivered this rather witty one liner in his booming voice (or my best approximation, lmao)
As someone with severe anxiety, getting my character's courage for just a moment felt nice. Almost like he was telling me I was doing a good job! So yeah. TTRP is fun and I'm glad I gave it another chance :)
The first time I gave one of my players inspiration (a group of complete newbies) is about 3-4 sessions in. Because we didn't play regularly and my players were pretty shy to roleplay, even though everyone's friends with each other, it was a struggle for them to stay in character or roleplay; even building any character traits or gimmicks.
However, one of my players decided that his character would have a crush on the local herbalist (and aunt of my other player).
He decided to buy a flower, paid way too much since he didn't have any idea what kind of flower to get a HERBALIST, and went on his way when he was alone. By coincidence he ran into my other player who randomly said that her aunt was allergic to that specific one.
I already was happy that they just randomly started making up things and going with it and was happy to not having to direct everything. But when the loverboy heard that he let out the saddest "really?" I've ever heard, 10 out of 10 voice actor quality. No one expected that and everyone just started to laugh over this silly, random build up and that climax and I just decided that should be rewarded :D
I think my best case of getting inspiration was that time I connected the dots of a time travel plot where a small mistake we'd made 3 sessions and 400 years ago resulted in the bbeg we'd just run in to. The DM hadn't even put those dots together themselves, and gave me inspiration for the reasoning of it.
But the really impressive bit is that we weren't actually playing d&d, he just smooshed the inspiration mechanic into our game on the fly.
Gave my Paladin inspiration for playing his character coming back from the dead as an Oathbreaker. You see, one of the affects of the resurrection spell is that it restores all missing body parts. This proceeded to “un-circumcise” the paladin, therefore breaking his covenant with his god.
This might not be obvious to people who don't live in snowy areas, but having light during a snowstorm sometimes actually makes it harder to see because the light reflects of off the snowflakes making it difficult to see beyond them in the dark.
9:59 That gives a whole new meaning to "kiss of life."
Also, Magic Mammoth Headlights for the win.
12:57 Good one.
5:18 reminds me of how they put a reflective spray on reindeer antlers in Finland to keep them from getting hit by cars. Not the exact same thing obviously but some of the pictures online sure look like it.
I was once given inspiration for using control water to cause a targeted tidal wave against a war party of orcs invading a coastal village. It didn't kill the orcs but it gave the village a fighting chance and considering we had no intention of saving the village(we were already leaving via boat and were already underway), it was the best the townsfolk were going to get as far as divine intervention.
Geez lad, are you trying to make me cry with that ending segment? Because you succeeded.
+5 Inspiration for you.
No no Sloth, take your inspiration points back and use'm on yourself and those you love.
I just want to do something right for those who need it, anyone out there who needs it.
Love ya mate.
In a campaign i was DMing, the party had found a kobold hideout under town, they got to the boss battle and during it they discovered that the kobolds were preparing for the arrival of their "master". Afterwards, they went to clear out the rest of the dungeon and rescue the kidnapped people. They found themselves at a higher ground in front of a number of kobolds. The paladin stood in the front, being the only one visible, and started declaring himself their master, quickly, the monk (who was the only one who spoke draconic) started listening to their reaction. The wizard used minor illlusion to create flaming wings behind the paladin and the tiefling sorcerer used thaumaturgy to make the ground shake and the paladin's voice thunder (which I allowed cause it was very cool). I allowed the roll with advantage for performance and persuasion to convince the kobolds as the paladin commanded the kobolds to present the prisoners to him, followed by commanding the kobolds to go "increase their numbers". They rolled very high, closing the whole thing with a nat 20. Needless to say i gave a round of inspiration to the whole party. Next session they went and killed a kobold orgy (everyone prone, unarmored and unarmed)
Minotaur druid: surprisingly no
I’ve listened to you for over a years when I wasn’t able to go to school during Covid
Hopefully life has gotten easier now that COVID is slowly fading away.
Thanks for being here John, I'm glad I can help pass the time.
Love seeing the stories, have had some fun characters I've Dm'd for, plus this is first time I've gotten to a video this quickly. Keep up the great work
Thank ya Wolf!!
Probably my favorite one was in Tomb of Annihilation as a player. I was playing two characters because we desperately needed a tank so on top of my Ranger I had a Totem Warrior barbarian brick sh*t house of a tabaxi named Lox, like 7ft 385 big ol lady, who was a tribal and didn't understand a lot. We ran into an invisible beholder and the Arcane Trickster rogue freaks out yelling "Be-beholder!"
Lox just looked at him confused "Why should we be afraid of someone holding bees?" Broke the party for five minutes and got inspiration I used to survive spiking a full necklace of fireballs at Acererak's feet later on
ah yes... mouth to mouth... reminded of an online exchange. There were three of us in the chat room, and one of the group went silent. The other two noticed, and someone remarked on it, wondering if the missing chatter "needs mouth to mouth recreation"
I gave inspiration twice to one of my players (a paladin dwarf) when they were exploring an abandoned mine...including for speaking only in JAVA for 5 minutes...
First time they'ed reached a dead end where their patron god had told them to go that they could get through to a cut off section, the dwarf started saying 'melon' repeatedly and walking round the walls...when I asked what he was doing he said he was looking for a secret door, and that he'd read it in a book once where a wizard got through a cave by saying 'melon' (referencing LOTR)...
Second, a little while later he'd got hurt in an explosion (they'd used an exploding barrel to blow a wall down) and another player (his girlfriend) decided to use cure wounds on him BUT the mine contained a magical accelerant mineral which caused magic to do weird things, the roll was halved and he was healed a bit so she asked how his character felt? Out of character I asked him if he spoke any foreign languages? He said he only had a D in French but his girlfriend pointed out he knew Java (the programming language) so with a devilish laugh I told him his character could only speak in Java for the next five minutes (feeling very pleased with myself)...what followed was one of the most incredible five minutes I've ever DM'd: (copied from the recording I make of the games)
'oh heck... public static main method, open curly bracket, next line, system dot i dot print L m, bracket quotation mark what the f***s going on, close quotation marks, close bracket semi colon...'
ua-cam.com/users/clipUgkxp-8pVZdmLYzWQzBbEGQ_iWRs8IeJQmXF
He kept this up for the full five minutes, I gave him inspiration and let him level up just for that!
The horse story:
"As darkness encroaches your vision, you feel a surge of ungodly strength coursing through your veins
you slowly start lifting the horse off your leg, and in a minute, your leg is free"
My bard searching for ship cat. Didn't manage to lure any cat in the whole fricking freeport, ended up creating familiar from scroll. DM decided that captain who cares about rodent problem on his ship is a good captain. Newer used it, but it still was funny.
I’ve managed to get inspiration for being so derpy with my Goliath, Alethea the blood hunter. She’s a happy go lucky person despite her tragic backstory. Her first actual breakdown happened with her first flashback. (Just like irl has ptsd) she called one of npcs (nilbog) dad (just in universe thing) and my dm decided to give me inspiration not for this but the funny crap I pulled after this and the attempts of making the npc protected by me even though she’d be normally be terrified of goblins. This interaction got my character out of her fear of goblins and I got inspiration.
Also this character managed to piss off the luck goddess who Alethea now calls Grammy. (She’s married to the god who created the Goliath race.) and then managed to get into the astral plane to attempt to ask Grammy for stories about how her and grampy got together! (This might’ve been the reason I got the inspiration I forgot because I’ve had the inspiration for a while lol)
Final edit (hopefully) I just woke up about an hour ago from a ptsd attack and this video made me feel so much better about myself and helped ground me so thanks. It’s part of why I’m subbed. You always make it funnier.
I wish you (and your character :p) well!
Not a DM, but in a campaign I was playing Kistrya (pyromaniac elf wizard) I got inspiration for inventing Molotov cocktails *and* napalm in his homebrew world. That led to many a fun shenanigan.
"What should I roll for mouth to mouth"
"I dunno"
This is why all y'all think medicine is worthless.
I pay homage to that time when Bane broke Batman's back with a skeleton. DM found that really funny.
The warlock in my party is a tabaxi who speaks in a Russian accent. He was introduced to my campaign of Dragon of Icespire Peak by immediately encountering Cryovain the white dragon. He tells me he wants to cast command and tell the dragon to "fuck off". I tell him that command is one word so if he could find a way to do so in one word I would allow it. He looks up the Russian translation and says it. It's one word, so I allowed it and rolled for the save... One crit fail later Cryovain promptly fucked off and the warlock got his inspiration. The whole party also got inspiration for their excellent role play before, during and after that interaction, but the warlock's reason was the funniest.
I was in a motorcycle accident a few days ago and I have to get surgery done on my arm to get it straight again. I really love these videos and I plan on having them play while I go under for the surgery. Thanks, Brian, for being the voice of these videos and being so positive. It's inspiring and I hope you continue with this well into the future. 🙂
I love the ending 😊
It made my day. I’m happy you are in a great place in life.
I once got inspiration for using my keen mind feat in real life. The DM was doing the recap at the top of the session, and struggled to remember something, so I reminded everyone what we were doing, and why we were doing it.
Aerin’s player just pulled the absolute best Greg House impression ever
I got inspiration for making a good pun. My character is a criminal and while making some Better Call Saul jokes after a session wrapped up, someone said I’d start my own law firm after we finished the story. I busted out the slogan “Legal trouble? Call Richter to tip the scales.”
The DM just said “gain inspiration” and started chuckling like a dad who’d met his match in the pun department.
That's amazing xD
Hell yeah, my dude! Glad to hear you're doing so well. Much love!
My unspoken rule is that if a player makes me laugh hard enough that they've almost killed me, I give them inspiration. Incidents I remember best:
- a player in my run through of Tomb of Annihilation joked at the idea that flying snakes in Port Nyanzaru are treated similarly to pigeons in any city older than 200 years. He painted such a vivid image of the snakes going about their day as if they were pigeons and it made me laugh so hard I gave him (and anyone who added to the banter) inspiration.
- some rp between the triton fighter and the human bard where the bard tried to explain to the fighter the concept of marriage. Fighter's widower father never remarried, so he assumed it to be a weird land dweller custom, and was worried he'd be pressured in participating. Bard was trying to reassure him it wasn't the case. It was a very hilarious back and forth worthy of a Monty Python sketch, I had to reward them both with an inspiration.
- In a playthrough I ran of Curse of Strahd, the party spotted Escher (one of Strahd's consorts) acting extra sketchy, so they followed him to this abandoned building. While the party speculated what he was up to, the bard's player made a joke that "maybe he's secretly taking DJ lessons. Its something he does to get himself out of the house and away from Strahd. You see, Escher is no longer Strahd's boytoy when he's on stage, losing himself in the music he mixes. He's gonna make something of himself. Gonna become Barovia's first DJ, MC Escher." The way the player spoke of this hypothetical like it was a prophecy with a punchline to the gut that made me laugh so hard, and I was having such a bad day before the session started, that I felt an inspiration was in order.
Awesome video.
It was 'inspiring' xD
My DM gives us inspiration for recapping the last session at the beginning of a new one in character, i thinks it's pretty neat and helps us get up to speed, also, great use of our notes
PANR has tuned in.
Still here Panr? njnj
@@buddhapoquan5859 always!
Welcome PANR!
@@BrianVaughnVA Many mini tanks! You holding up ok?
This is my first time early to one of the vids, happy to hear the stories while enjoying my tea.
If you're English: What are ya eatin?
If you're American or anyone else: What tea ya drinkin?
@@BrianVaughnVA The tea at the time was darjeeling.
My DM gave my inspiration when I straight faced suggested using my want of mending to repair a broken bridge.
One of my players continued in character, when I referenced a major city near me and how hot it was. He asked "what is this place you speak of?" And without missing a bear, I responded, it's a city located on the plane of fire.
Ooh!!! I got one! Obligatory Not a DM, but the player. My character is a druggie Wood Elf Circle of Dreams druid that talks with your stereotypical surfer dude accent with as many "dude"s and "like"s thrown in as I can manage while stalling for time to say what I want. During one particularly substantive backstory reveal, I managed to get inspiration for using about 30 "like"s over the course of about 3 minutes.
not a dm, but my first ever game. I was playing a halfling rogue in a one-shot at a convention, and we were fighting a bug-bear. At one point the dm describes an attack with "so he swings at you with his mace..." and one of the other players off-handedly says "huh, normally you would spray people with that, right?" then I jumped in with "no, you're thinking of 'Axe.'" Everyone started laughing and the dm told me "I don't care if that was out of character, you're getting inspiration for that!" and I've been chasing that high ever since
This happened just last saturday. I play a fighter in 5e with a small but fun group. This fighter is a quite odd one, as he refuses to use normal weapons and shields. He's a chef, and therefore his weapon of choice is frying pans. His mission in life is to find the legendary frying pan called Excalipan which is basically just a sword handle attached to a pan. In any case, this saturday, the stars aligned. While we were having some downtime in a city, he describes how the sky opens up, and rain starts to pour like crazy. As soon as he said that, I felt all like: "My moment has come!" So then I proceed to tell them how my character, puts his frying pan over his head, using it as a drying pan. My DM really liked that. He gave me an inspiration instantly. But more than anything, I felt fulfilled, that I had finally made that reference with that character.
You`r such a nice person. Im watching your awesome vids for like 2 weeks on a daily base and im looking foreword to post my first dnd story hear.
About lifting the horse, there is this tradition in Mongolia where in order to be seen as a right horse rider the person has to lift their horse on their back and carry it a certain distance/number of steps. This is seen as a proof that such person can take care of the herd in case that for example the horse falls into a ditch and it needs to be rescued and such. And while yes, mongolian horses are generally on the smaller, almost pony size, we are still talking about like 300kg+ of weight. Then again, 18 in strenght is a damn buff character so yeah, if you squint and say that their horses are kinda smallish, like many east asian horse breeds, i can totally see it working.
I once got some inspiration for proving we wouldn’t notice a player missing
Last week: the tabaxi blacksmith mentioned his brother, head of the local druids, looked just like him, and I said "it's a Nurse Joy scenario".
Here is a short one for you. Was playing an apocalyptic ttrpg where inspiration was called Karma. Pvp or rather bad choices, as well as the choices of others and the dice could alter it. Someone had died due to pvp of a villain and one of the girls on the dead players side was trying to rez him. He had been bitten, so him coming back without being an infected was impossible. However, him coming back as her old pal in an altered state was not completely impossible, she would just have to use her 'luck' (which is what we called positive karma) and she would have to role high on a six sided die. Her first role was the initial rez to bring life into him. She rolled a six. The second role was for his cognitive recognition. This girl rolled a six in front of all our eyes AGAIN. With the rules in this game doubles give you an extra die and she used it to ask if he could grow wings to (per his joking request). Me the DM thought it was not likely so I said if she roles another 6 then yes. And guess what? This Lucky as crud rolled another six!!!! Safe to say they survived that underground zombie maze and at one point actually called lighting down to strike the villain player. All in all the game was hilarious. Another guy turned into a Hulking intelligent zombie from high karma roles and made it out to, but that is a whole other sandwich and biscuit!
I was the player in this situation, i forget the exact context but i believe we were in character talking about how one of the pcs looked. I made the comment that "my mom thinks im handsome" the dm and everyone else lost it and i got inspiration lol
not a dm but player, it was actually kinda cool, my character named Promesheus the Inquisitor got an inspiration from my dm, the story is : it was our first combat there were people bleeding out and lying on the ground, when i had the brilliant idea to use a torch sealing their wounds(medicine) but they were zombies and the fight broke out one of us were constantly munched on and healed while i a rune knight put fire rune on my sword and burned 2 zombies to death , meanwhile our elf druid constantly bonked the other zombies to death with a mace, after the battle we gathered the corpses and burned them to give them an honorable death, me with a glimpse of fire on the tip of my sword set the pile alight and prayed that the people infected will find the light of their god Pelor again and see the sun one last time(their souls). made a Religion check with a nat 20, dm said at least you need 18 to have something because you have nothing in common whole party was petrified that pelor came down gave me a blessing (inspiration) and left with a smile on his face, and thats how im on my way to become a demi-god in our campaign of pelor or my favourite chosen god if i cooperate enough with pelor to gain his favor. Best DM btw hes a true chad keeps us company^^
As I player my character was a level 10 loxodon war cleric. None of our characters had experienced boats before. So our characters couldn't figure it out. We were shit outta luck in a new watery world that we were transported to. It was hilarious watching our characters fumble about and the rowboat wasn't going anywhere.
I casted water walk, got out and pushed the boat.
Dm killed himself laughing and then gave me inspiration.
One more player-not-DM: Starting a 5e game in Eberron (I think... it was a while ago), I was making my character and filling out her sheet. Among all the other items, she also had a shovel. Regular old tool, nothing special about it. When filling out the weight slot on the (digital) sheet, on a whim I decided to skip the actual weight and wrote instead "Can you dig this, Daddy-O?"
The DM laughed hard enough for me to start the very first session of the campaign with inspiration.
One of my players has the mizzium apparatus magic item. It basically allows you to cast certain spells that aren't on your spell list out of it, but you have to make an arcana check to do so successfully. My player tried to use it to cast fireball on a bunch of plant monsters. They failed the check, meaning they cast a random other 3rd level spell instead by rolling a 1d6 to determine which one from the list. We rolled... feign death. I think rolled a dice to see who they targeted in range.
In universe, the sorcerer went "Don't worry guys, I got this!" and then the fighter's horse just falls down dead with *no* explanation.
Anyways, once we were done laughing I gave the sorcerer inspiration for the whole debacle.
Player in Curse of Strad campaign. I had a grand idea for making a bard that was inspired by Kvothe from KKC and Thom Marilen from Wheel of Time. The character was not going well, was just not a good fit for the campaign and I was getting bored playing him. So at this point I was just doing anything risky because I was not attached to him.
At one point, our paladin, artificer and I are follow the spirit up the stairs and are confronted by a dragon spirit as we reach the top of the stairs.
DM: roll a will save to see if you are stricken with fear.
Pally and artificer both fail and basically shit their pants. I roll a nat 20. While the other two are cowering I proudly bow to the dragon spirit and say, “my lord Argovar?” The dragon spirit is impressed with my bravery. DM gave me inspiration for role playing it well and it was a turning point for the character. We then took on the death night in the basement and one because my character was still just like Fuck it. We were able to join the order of the silver dragon, my character received the death knights sword for me bravery and my whole character arc changed as I bonded to the sword.
Little does the halfling bard know, black pudding exists and it's made with blood
I was the player who got the inspiration.
The DM had a dragon assault the town we were in, and we a bunch of lv4-5s were supposed to run. However, the party decided to fight it and I was like okay fine (mind you that was my second session joining that campaign). So I, a half orc fighter, just basically LEEROY JENKINS'd the dragon that most of our party's attacks could not even scratch, and I landed a critical hit, wounding the dragon. I then proceed to survive his first attack and nat 20'd his roar of fear saving throw, and after numerous help from the town guard harpoons and a mage launching our minotaur like a bazooka at the dragon, we wounded it enough that it fled. Due to my contribution towards the fight the Dm gave me inspiration. By the way I also got an inspiration the session before because I leeroy Jenkins'd a kraken, latched onto it by stabbing 1 of my swords in its skin, and then survived his strongest attack with 1HP while the party dealt with it swiftly as I bought time catching its attention. We had to abandon the campaign due to Dm having IRL commitments but I had a blast being the MVP twice in a row during big fights while also managing to always survive on a sliver of health. This also pretty much made me always create characters that had some form of melee combat proficiency, even if he was running an INT build.
I have a monk who always roll high on animal handling checks. not once did he roll under a 15 and there were at least 6 times where it was useful. the monk had gloves of swimming and climbing so his MS was 90 while swimming. The monk and the fighter were exploring sunken ships when they were attacked by reef sharks. They slaughtered a few most of the sharks and remaining sharks fled, Then some dolphins showed up to to help slow the fleeing sharks. The monk was able to catch up to them to finish off the fight. Afterwards, he does animal handling with the dolphins and rolls a nat 20. I honestly forgot inspiration was a thing as I'm a new DM, but I just remembered it so I gave him inspiration just for being so consistent.
Not a DM but a player. In our campaign my party and I are currently in a castle underground. One of my fellow party members is my brother in game and I asked him for help investigating some cracks in a wall so I would have advantage and he being a smart ass refused. I ended up crit failing and with a homebrew system we have crit fails can have a multitude of other bad side effects. I rolled a d12 and ended up getting disadvantage on all intelligence related checks until our next long rest. So fast forward underground we come upon some fog that is 3 feet tall which happens to be the same height as the gnome in our party. I whispered (we play on roll 20) to the gnome that we should table top my brother and then the dm. The way everyone got nervous when our dm asked my brother what his passive perception was followed by asking for a dexterity save only for us to be pranking him gave everyone a great laugh and earned both myself and my gnome friend inspiration
A simple and obvious one, but stilla good one.
bard in final confrontation of CoS, makes a Sick Burn on Strahd.
So much so, that he had the whole table rolling in tears, gave him the use of ONE Bardic Inspiration back( he was out of it)
My dm gave us inspiration for how much we roleplayed in her first ever full campaign, that was a week ago.
I was not the DM, but a player, and I believe it was Dungeon World, not DND. We were just starting in a campaign and we were all level 1, and I was playing a Bard, as I tend to do. We got into the intro dungeon and we entered combat, when it came around to my turn, the DM asked me what I wanted to do, and I got into character and said that I would like to narrate what was going on in combat with song. I rolled performance and rolled decently high. My DM gave me inspiration for it because I was the only one who was totally playing into my character that session. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to ever use it because I was only there for that session because it was an after school game club thing and I just got caught up with homework and such.
Player in a campaign. The general idea is that our characters were Isekai'd into this world via a MASSIVE accident (caused by one of the other PC's). My character was a literal five-year-old child, named Timothy, whose mind is put into the body of a warforged in this new world.
So Timmytron (as he calls himself) and party are looking for undead that have been plaguing a nearby settlement. Timmy, a monk, and the party druid in weasel form are moving ahead to try and pick up a trail. Timmy botches his perception checks, while the druid manages to catch sight of the skeletal minotaur before it sees us.
The Druid attempts to communicate this and the fact that we should probably warn the rest of the party in the only way that he can, being unable to talk in this form.. pantomime. After a few poor rolls, Timmy has no clue what the druid is actually saying and just kind of guesses as to what he might be trying to say. "What's that? I've fallen into a well?"
The group all bursts out laughing. The Druid asks if the psychic damage from that was enough to knock him out of wildshape. The DM says that yes, he can be stunned out of weasel form (thankfully for no actual damage) and awards me inspiration.
I'm sending this video to my players, if they stay to the end and say they got inspiration then they 100% get it
Not DM, but I shall introduce my incredibly original human fighter, Norman Leon Mahn. When I was describing him to the party, I said that he "Was a hero of his land, known by name for miles around. When there was trouble, the people would shout 'Help me, Leon!', and when in peace, I would be greeted by roars of 'NORM!'"
By simply making two references to two franchises the DM liked a lot, I was inspired.
Later in the session, the whole group got inspiration when the rogue artificer kobold rewrote and performed Sk8er Boi, replacing with our bard trying to seduce a dragon.
My DM lets us players, at the start of every session roll a 1d69, and a 1d420. If we roll a 69, we get an inspiration, if we roll a 420, we get 10 inspirations as we use the stacking inspiration. It's definitely a meme, but I love it so much. Our DM rolls too, and we also get a pity inspiration if we roll below his d69 on both of our rolls. He also hands out an inspiration to the player that writes a recap of the last session. (An incentive to keep us on track with what is currently happening in the campaign.)
I remember Dr Bones in Star Trek “ What’s wrong with you? Here take this”
Not D&D but Mutants and Masterminds. I was doing a one shot where the Justice League were taken out by the BBEG's Henchman. Batman had broken legs, and muttered Wayne Manor to get the heroes to The Batcave to get power ups to fight the BBEG. The player was playing a strong stupid Hulk like character. The player immediately, in character, told the others "We have to go kill Bruce Wayne because he hurt Batman." Yes, my players (who all knew Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person) decided Bruce Wayne was the BBEG. I gave the equivalent of inspiration because I nearly fell out of my chair from laughing so hard.
Not a DM, but I got inspiration for a wonderful pun. My character, a fairy named Faena (fae-na) was bitten by a bear, (tried feeing it a good berry to leave her magic cobbler alone.) After failing to keep their lunch I said in character “These past few days has has been, Un-BEAR-able.” Too keep the mood light for herself. Got inspiration for being a pun.
Not 5e, but Pathfinder, which uses the hero point system.
The party was working on a way to free a bunch of captives from some gnoll slavers.
A shaman was killed, as well as some martial combatants, but a witch and druid ran away.
Talking with the surviving gnoll that surrendered (only one of us could even roughly translate), we find that they witch had slain the gnoll chief.
After a while, I finally decided to talk with the gnoll again. I can't.
So I start drawing in the sand, and managed to figure that he really did want to have the witch killed and, supposedly, wanted peace.
So, being a tiefling gunslinger, I cut my hand, got him to do the same, and we shook on it.
I gained a hero point for becoming the temporary chief to this gnoll.
Sea Elf artificer/wizard. Grumpy, small girl named Lia. She just picked up the Elemental Adept feat, focusing on acid damage. We entered a desert ruins full of ghosts. Not wanting to deal with this, Lia decided to nuke the room via Vitriolic Sphere. Surprisingly, these ghosts did not resist acid. Neither did the non-magical structure of the room. While the other spellcasters panic and try to make sure the ruins aren't about to collapse on us, Lia was far more interested in the reaction between the ghosts' ectoplasm and her new acid formula and was actively taking notes on how said ectoplasm was rapidly dissolving, oblivious to chunks of debris falling around her. Party and DM agreed I deserved the Inspiration. They didn't agree to me finding one of the few safe spaces to stand by dumb luck.
Im very new to dnd, so new I have literally only gotten to have one session and have never played again, so im sorry i cant remember the class I was. It was a bird person that starts with an A. After our first, and only battle, we went into a tavern where my character went to talk to another player. As we sat, we were offered food. The dm, as a waitress, offered me a variety of different bird, such as chicken or quail, and I quickly went "How dare you offer me my kin to eat!" The dm gave me inspiration once he stopped laughing.
Haven't been a DM yet, but I've gotten inspiration for knowing the mythology one of mine was referencing....and once I made a sarcastic comment that made another DM lose his shit laughing.
Pathfinder has something called fate chips that are basically the same thing: My character ended up sleeping through a small skirmish the party had with goblins. After the fight, because I was still sleeping. I asked both of my other party members to make perception checks. they got a 15 and 17, I think. Because of their good rolls, I told them "You both notice my morning wood." DM started laughing and tossed me a fate chip.
Not the dm, but I got inspiration the during the first dnd session I ever played. I was playing a Warlock wood elf named Val and had just met up with the party. I came into the campaign a few sessions in. An elf ranger mentioned he was looking for a rabbit. I asked about the rabbit in character and was told "He's an ass hole." My comeback was very sarcastic and sassy because that didn't really give me any information about it and the dm cracked up and gave both of us inspiration. I have a history of creative writing and theater arts so playing the character isn't new but it was my first ever session so that was memorable.
That Simpsons story... I am such a massive nerd that if I ever DM, I'll probably have some NPCs inspired by stuff I like and if a player mentions it, I'll likely do the same thing and give them inspiration.
When a new player came up with a interesting mechanic that being she could cast Shileighle on a torch so i gave her inspiration for it and also a d6 fire damage when attacking.
Dad Joke from story #1 gets an OHHHHHHH! from me!
Not a DM, and didn't received inspiration but my DM almost gave it to me.
Basically i was playing a giant mouse artificer with the battle smith subclass, my steel defender also a shaped mouse named Sleepy because my character went into a deep sleep for years in a laboratory before just waking up and making it to escape, Sleepy walked in two legs and was a medium size, while me being a small size, just in the first session i managed to basically turn myself into a knight mounted in a horse, my weapon a pickaxe and i also wielded a shield while using heavy armor, all of that because my DM actually found it a very cool ideia and let me use the mount rules for my metalic friend, i just didn't received a inspiration because that was the very first session according to my DM.
Also Sleepy crited fist a guard in the face after he defended me from his attack, which was the best moment i had with him.
So, I'm not the DM, but I still find this kinda funny.
A lot had happened in our campaign, and there was a hell portal with Imps infinitely flying out and causing havoc in the Dwarven kingdom, as well as a similar one in the human kingdom, but with pit fiends instead. Then, we found out there is no gate at all to the 9 hells and we need to figure out how to make one (especially ironic that our party is named "deaths door")
We decided the best course of action would be to ask one of the gods of the world how to create it, and eventually landed on an Elven god, the goddess of life and death (home-brew if I'm not mistaken. It's my first campaign, so I'm not 100%) that being said, no one had a reliable way of contacting her. Our high elf paladin was not being answered or acknowledged by her (she was his patron) and me, a wood elf warlock, wouldn't be able to reliably speak with my gods considering my patron being a great old one, so we decided to use the cleric to get in touch with her.
She wasn't his paragon though, so we basically had to stack as many religion rolls and buffs together to even try to contact her.
Turns out, we failed the spell despite passing 2 different impossible checks, but she appeared in front of us anyways. My DM described it as "You failed the spell, but you essentially rang a doorbell to a door she didn't know existed, and was so impressed that she just came here." And we got to talk to her directly (which was also a big character moment for a lot of us.) Dm gave us inspiration for managing to pass impossible checks, and we also got the answer to our questions.
a player at my table got inspiration because she was stuck dazed and drooling for 5 full rounds. While the other players either couldn't help or wouldn't. My character was despairing (homebrew) and crying in the corner with a repurposed sentient cat cannon turned emotional support pet (gave half cover too). Those 5 rounds of combat lasted 90 minutes irl...
My kobold sorcerer got inspiration for using message to growl at the goblins attacking the party
Not a DM, but I was fighting a cursed Daniel Kraig as James Bond from hell with an elemental gun and I was underequipped with a 60+foot room as a bard, so I cast Vicious Mockery, and instead of insulting him directly, I did a Rickroll. Still only got four because the dice gods don't like Rickrolls apparently
So got inspiration for role-playing out and natural one with a real life event that occurred within the party. Real life event: my friend and I went out on a hike, she pointed out a “pretty plant” I immediately recognized that as poison oak. I literally said facing her back towards plant, pointing at said poison oak “ don’t touch that that’s poison oak” followed by me immediately turning around and running into the poison oak with my exposed bare arm. Cue a long, unmoving silent pause from the both of us. I stated I’m fine. This is fine. I can wait till we get back to the car. Mind you I have a very specific set of allergies so I’m a little bit more sensitive when it comes to poison oak. A couple steps forward I said nope it burns it burns. It’s bad. It’s bad.
Natural one situation with my character: we were preparing ant poisons in preparation to face of poison, green dragon, and preparing the villagers so that they can survive potential onslaught of poison reaching them. as my character has a little bit of knowledge, making medicine from plants is explaining to the town folk how to make ant poison, roll a natural one. Immediately, I decided to role-play it out like my real life memory that happened to me. Party could not stop laughing for more than five minutes. Worth the inspiration, it has also become a running gag whenever we fail a natural one against poison.
Gave inspiration to one of my players for the main campaign during a oneshot.
In character she said
"if you need to find me just cast locate object."
"Huh?"
"Because I'm a woman."
All the girls laughed, all the guys were like WOAAAH! xD
I was not the DM of this game.
I don't remember this scene particularly well but it went about like this:
Our party was heading towards a mage's mansion to make him inspect a powerful magic artifact and ask him if he knew something about it. Along the road, in a forest, we met this hunter. Just basic, normal, human hunter (ranger), with not much to tell. He was looking for a prey and wasn't finding it. He asked were we came from. And my group told him we were part of the JOE ORGANIZATION, cause they are dumb and love "Joe mama" jokes lmao. And so the hunter is clearly curious and confused. I, as the member of the party with the Highest Charisma (I'm a Halfling Warlock) and proficiency in deception, rolled good over 20 and told him that I, our Human Fighter, and our Tabaxi Bard are escorting our other two party members, a Human Wizard and an Elf with an homebrew class which is basically a waterbender to a location Called New York, which does NOT exist but it should theoretically be an Island VERY far in which giant rats live, and our Tabaxi Bard told us its story.
Everybody invents names for themselves along the lines of "Joe Ligma" "Balls Mama" lmfao and the NPC is confused since we have all similar names that kinda resonate within each other but I rolled like 30 in deception so ✨he doesn't know✨.
So we tell him about new York and how it's really far and we tell him that the Elf and the Wizard are nobles and then the NPC out of NOWHERE says: "Do you know Candice?"
And I go: "Oh yes, Candice, goddes of Hunt. Yes, in the landa far East from where we come it has various names, like CANDEEZNUTSFITINYOURMOUTH.
You haven't found a prey yet. Well You shall pray to CANDEEZNUTSFITINYOURMOUTH!" and we run away with our horses. He thanks us and we then met him again after he successfully hunted a Deer. Inspiration. Memorable.
Not a DM; I got awarded a point of inspiration once for playing “All Might’s Theme” during a fellow player’s victory speech 😆
Long story but pretty hard homebrewed campaign. To put it simply I disguised myself as the main antagonist of the current arc and convinced his son (using deception +9) that his entire life was a lie. (He was raised in a murder cult but everyone thought it was great). It worked too, well. Ended up making the arc 2 sessions shorter than planned.
Player here. One of my first sessions ever. Level 2 half elf bard.
We sneak upon a goblin hideout to find that the entrance is guarded by a half-ogre who was standing there, humming to himself. When I heard that my bard brain decided "Hey, he likes music! He can't be bad"
So I went out of hiding playing my lute to the surprise of half ogre. After great performance check and persuasion we menaged to hire him for the local woodcutters in exchange for mead.
I got inspiration for that one.
I gave a player inspiration because he tamed a mimic by getting him balls high on magic mushrooms (which he grew himself using spores and druidcraft). So these literally magic mushrooms were highly hallucinogenic. The dude pops this mushroom in the mimic's mouth, and it quickly turns into a mushroom in response. The mushroom gets this giant toothy grin and starts doing the quiet version of the Courage the Cowardly dog laugh. That was all it did for the rest of the campaign, usually bumping or nudging his supplier whenever he needed a hit. Eventually he did get... erm... "incentivized" to turn into weapons for the party (mostly his supplier) to use. I've never seen someone dope up a mimic, and I will be damned if I ever see it again! lol No one else would have ever thought of that.
Playing second edition I had a elven fighter/wizard duleclass. We had beaten the temple of elemental evil and had decided to build a temple of our own to the gods we followed. About two years after the construction, and more adventures, we had found the hand of vecna. While at the temple I was walking to the bathroom, in my underwear of course, when I felt (as the dm described it) "A sharp pain ripping through your chest. You look down and see the tip of a dagger sticking out." The dm rolled damage and did a total of 10hp. We rolled initiatives and I went first. I turn my head around, look at the attacker and cock an eyebrow "Ow?". The dm asked if that was all I did. I said ya he just ran a blade through me and im not even hurt. How brave is the hit man? The dm rolled a nat 1 and made him run blade still stuck in my character. Turns out he was working for a cult following vecna so we had a new quest.
9:25
This story made me laugh so hard I started to dry heave