Author Topic: Epic Moments in D&D  (Read 11382 times)

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Irthos Levethix

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Epic Moments in D&D
« on: November 18, 2008, 01:22:51 AM »
  This thread is for those times when you just plain spank your DM.  I'm not talking NI loops, or 1-shotting an entire encounter because your CL is 47.  I'm talking about using ingenuity, something the DM didn't think of that saves the freakin' day.  There's the interactions thread, which could win the day, but that's not what I'm thinking of here.  As is the rule, I'll go first.

  So, without a whole lot of lead-up, a group of about 9 of us had been arguing about who was the best/smartest player/s in the group (there was alot of drama), so to resolve it, one of us (regarded as the most un-biased and rulesy) devised a tournament.  Groups could be 1-3 players, level 1, and we were using Core only.  It was on a timer, in-game, (We had to recover something for some king in 14 days) and all that. 

  Well, we were the 2nd group in, and after having torched a room full of brown mold with wolverines immune to it, and the subsequent long hallways filled with pit traps, we found a supply box (Exellently described as 5x5ft).  Neato.  When we entered the next room, it was completely filled with fog.  Cant see your hand a few feet from your face type of fog.  After some testing, it was determined that we were on top of a stone pillar, and about 20 feet down was boiling water.  With a DC 15 spot check we made out another pillar about 5 feet away.  I let the other two guys discuss ideas, we tossed a grappling hook around a bit, and once the topic turned to actually jumping there, I had to intervene. 
  "Look guys, I'm a wizard.  With an 8 Str.  I'm not fucking jumping.  Howbout we go back to that box, and make a bridge.  Its 5x5, right?  We can turn that into a 15-25 ft bridge, easy."

  Pure joy as I watched the DM go "Ah, shit.  *sigh* Okay, let me figure out the craft DC."
« Last Edit: November 21, 2008, 04:42:53 AM by Irthos Levethix »
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Endarire

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2008, 02:11:42 AM »
As a DM, two of my players thwarted one of my well-planned level designs.  The area was a tower meant to test rogues wanting to join the local guild.  Most rogues lack detect magic.  I made many illusionary walls.  The characters had 10 minutes to locate something in the tower and return it to someone outside; they did it in about 2.5.

After that, I more frequently used Nystul's magic aura to prevent such great success with a level 0 spell.
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Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

Orion

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #2 on: November 18, 2008, 04:59:36 AM »
I'd like to say two things.

First, as a DM/GM, I love the moments when my players say "but wait, I can just do this, right?" That's mondo XP day. That's me smacking myself in the forehead and going "Of course!" That's a Big Damn Hero moment. There's no thwarting going on at all. For instance, I once had a game where the players had hitched a ride on a sailing ship as part of the big world-spanning adventure to find the Ancient lands of the yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, one of my game hooks was that the ship is out of money, so they had to go on a side-quest to get some cash to hire back the crew who had all wandered off. My wizard, who had made himself far too much money off of my stupidity (lesson learned there) said, "How much?" and bought the ship. It worked beautifully because I'd already decided that the captain didn't really care about owning anything. He just wanted to sail. Sailing for someone else didn't bother him in the slightest. Now, since the side-quest was all I'd prepped for the day, they decided to go on it too, which I appreciated, and from then on, they owned the ship. It was great. I loved it. It solved many, many problems, both for me and for them.

Second, the whole idea of "thwarting" the DM/GM is kind of... misguided. I realise you're speaking in jest. I don't want to sound like I'm getting on your case. I do love the idea of the thread. Those head-smacking moments are worth reminiscing about. But my point is that if the players think it's their job to "beat" the DM, or the DM thinks it's her job to "beat" the players, then your game is likely to seriously suck. The players can't ever really beat the DM/GM, and the DM/GM will have to watch the players win, over and over again, because they're the heroes, damnit, and if they just die multiple times, nobody's going to come back to that game. The DM/GM's job is not to "win." It's to, as it were, manage the fun. Create the atmosphere and act as a neutral judge of the rules. Throw a little storytelling in there, and you've got the idea. Anyone who runs games with an adversarial attitude has entirely missed the point. I don't design tough-as-balls NPCs because I want to "beat" the players. I design tough-as-balls NPCs because I want the players to get a genuine feeling of accomplishment when they wipe the flour with those NPCs. Big difference.

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #3 on: November 18, 2008, 05:45:44 AM »
This isn't D&D, but during one of my SWSE Dawn of Defiance sessions, one of my players just completely negated a conflict with a swoop bike gang trying to extort the PCs with a well-used application of the Jedi Mind Trick.

That encounter was printed out on THREE SHEETS OF PAPER which ended up in the recycle pile without even being used!  :o
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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #4 on: November 18, 2008, 08:00:08 AM »
This isn't D&D, but during one of my SWSE Dawn of Defiance sessions, one of my players just completely negated a conflict with a swoop bike gang trying to extort the PCs with a well-used application of the Jedi Mind Trick.

That encounter was printed out on THREE SHEETS OF PAPER which ended up in the recycle pile without even being used!  :o
Jedi Mind Trick > Diplomancy.

A DM of mine had us squaring off against a gang of Kobolds.  Now, normally Kobolds aren't dangerous, but these kobolds were up 20' on a cliff face and had crossbows while the rest of the party had virtually no cover against their attacks.  And there was a lot of them.

...so I cast my Protection from Arrows spell (OMG, it was useful!) and proceeded to summon a swarm of bats to shred the kobolds.  The bat swarm was almost utterly immune to the attacks of the kobolds (there was a Sorcerer up there with Burning Hands, but the swarm made the save and he got nauseated after one blast).
« Last Edit: November 18, 2008, 08:01:44 AM by X-Codes »

Irthos Levethix

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #5 on: November 18, 2008, 11:21:12 AM »
Orion-
 
  I respectfully disagree.  Now, I'll be the first to call bullshit on a DM thats obviously acting as God and purposely smiting you, but I'm also the one to make a bridge when everyone else wants to jump.  Maybe its because the game that I enjoyed the most was run by a DM who was constantly set at the "Ultra Hard" setting.  You launch a fireball in the woods?  Well, its autumn, and it hasn't rained in a while.... 10% (made up statistic) chance for a forest fire.... *evil gleam in DM's eye*.  Yeah, that happened.  Wand of Summon Monster IV got me a giant owl for 7 rounds..... 42 charges later I was out of the forest.  I don't play games because I don't have anything else to do, I play games because I want to win.  How do you "win" in D&D?  By surviving, and prospering.  By retiring as an Archmage in a tower somewhere, or whatever. 

  Here's another one - After making it through the forest fire, and the hellacious magical swamp of doom, and then the undead city of doom, we had found a doorway leading into a mountain.  Said gigantic doorway was guarded by 6, count 'em, 6 Helmed Horrors.  Our party had a Wizard/Loremaster, an Arcane Trickster, and a Fighter.  We'd already fought one of those things, and it nearly TPK'ed us.  How the hell were we gonna get through that?  Well, there happened to be a Collosal Gorgonhydra (I think thats the name, its outta FR) living in the City of Hellish Doom, too.  One of the other players (The DM from the tourney game) came up with a brilliant idea.  He went invisible, flew near the creature's nest, and Major Imaged a big freaking cow.  (Moo, moo moo.  Moo?)  Led that fucker straight back to the Helmed Horrors.  We had set up 4 rooms in buildings around the courtyard that we could teleport to, in case things got kinda hairy.  After an epic battle, all the Horrors and the Hydrathing lay dead, and we were all 5k XP richer. =)  That was when the adventure really took off.

  One more thing, Orion.  I named the thread "Twarting your DM" in jest, yes.  But I still think thats effectively what you're doing.  When j0lt tosses three pages of notes into the trash, thats twarted.  It doesn't mean the DM has to be upset, quite the opposite, s/he should be thrilled to have players that actually think instead of just blast/bash/roll their way through things.  I'm juss' sayin~
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Orion

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #6 on: November 18, 2008, 01:59:51 PM »
into trouble so that you can claw your way back out of it. From that perspective, like I said, it's just not a battle between GM and players. It's a symbiotic relationship. I design games (not just run store-bought material, mind you) because I like giving my friends a good time. I like seeing them slump back into their chairs after driving the Rampaging Beast of Many Phallic Tentacles back into the dimension from whence it came, and then grinning like five-year-olds for the next hour. Beating the monster is a huge part of that, of course, but fighting the monster in the mean time is the bulk of the experience (beating it is just one roll, just one moment). So, again, I realise the title's in jest and I do want to see these stories but... I still don't think there's any such thing as "thwarting" the GM, because I don't think the players and the GM are in competition.

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #7 on: November 18, 2008, 02:20:52 PM »
Perhaps a more precise title would be Thwarting your DM's plans. The best laid plans meeting creative players tend to go poof, which is fun for everyone involved, provided the DM is good at improvisation(I find that most maps and prepared monster stats are reusable, even if the PCs go off on insane tangents).
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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2008, 03:30:14 PM »

Perhaps Derailing the Failroad would also be a good title. I hate ironclad railroading, especially when IT'S STUPID!!!  :bash

Lost count of the times when the GM has Gary Stu DMPC 'save us', because we were locked into no win scenarios.
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Irthos Levethix

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2008, 03:40:00 PM »
Orion, man.  I said that winning is "Surviving, and prospering".  Retiring rich and famous could be one possible scenario, yes, but there are many.  I don't think we disagree, really.  Making a 20th level character and calling it done is pretty lame.  Yes, getting there IS the joy of the game.  I want to hear stories about how you got there, the really good ones that made your DM/GM smack his forehead, as you say.  I too enjoy the thrill of of killing off a particularly nasty bad guy, in an epic battle or through player ingenuity, or somehow making it through the Tomb of Horrors.  Yes, you're all gathered around the table to have fun, but if you don't think you're in a competition against the Hordes of the Abyss or the giant freaking Orc Army, you're dead wrong.  Survival of the fittest and all that.

Agreed on the title change, I mainly dubbed this thread Thwarting your DM because I knew that it would get people to look at it. =)

Straw, I think thats a bit different.  These are the stories of the games you loved, the moments when you felt all shiny because you saved the day somehow, or a party member did, not the times when you kicked the DM in the nuts because he's railroading you.  See half of Josh's posts about that subject.
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Orion

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Re: Thwarting your DM
« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2008, 06:37:15 PM »
Yes, you're all gathered around the table to have fun, but if you don't think you're in a competition against the Hordes of the Abyss or the giant freaking Orc Army, you're dead wrong.  Survival of the fittest and all that.

I think you're right. We do basically agree. But there's a big, big difference between "I'm in competition with the Hordes" and "I'm in competition with my GM." The adversarial attitude towards the GM, as opposed to the monsters, has ruined many a game I have been part of, either as player or GM.

I just remembered another cool story.

We're chasing after El Badguy. He's stolen something that we have to deliver (a big trunk, if I recall). He runs into something that might as well have had a sign over the door that said "dungeon." The DM's assumption was that we'd run in after him and have a merry chase through the dungeon, which would have been fun as hell! But instead, since we were on a mission, we decided to camp out in front of the entrance to the dungeon and wait for El Badguy to come out, which he did... with about 1/10th his HPs and no spells left because he'd just spend a day in a deadly dungeon. Jay, the DM, was extremely impressed with our lateral thinking, but he said he had to really scramble to come up with something else to do with the game that day. And of course, he recycled the dungeon, because he's no fool.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2008, 06:42:42 PM by Orion »

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #11 on: November 18, 2008, 07:03:14 PM »
In a d20 Future campaign I GMed, one of my players displayed his drastic luck.  Most of the time, he'd roll less than half max on any die.  The group went through a space station 'maze' and found a hacker they'd been sent to find.  They killed him quickly, but I planned for that.  The group's Smartie- the maxed INT 'grease monkey'- managed to roll a 19 to disable security on the hacker's laptop, then a 20 to hack the station's security via the laptop, spending an action point each time for a massive number.  The party also aided him, and he hacked for over a 40.

This was an inhabited civilian space station, and the group's face made his Diplomacy check to, over the PA system, make most people Helpful.  The group then proceeded to blow up the station while they made a break for it.  That ended the campaign.

Earlier in the campaign, however, the group's sniper started killing foes with an electrified katana since it did significantly more damage and people had enough trouble noticing him.  When the group was talking with a mob boss who looked like a modern Buddha in the above station, the sniper tumbled and lept across the room, struck 'Buddha' with his katana, crit, rendered him unconscious with one hit, then gained control of the black market.  Whoa.
Hood - My first answer to all your build questions; past, present, and future.

Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #12 on: November 18, 2008, 07:15:59 PM »
I got a couple recent ones from a campaign we have wrapped up.  Actually part of the fun of these 'thwartings' has to do with the DM's plans for wrapping up the game.  He probably is thankful I do not play a caster in more of his games :)

Anyways first one is this, our heroic band was sent to defend a pass against armies looking to pass.  We were supposed to hold out for a matter of days for reinforcements to arrive.  We had a Paladin, a Cleric, a thief, and then my Swiftblade wizard :).  I was told em this would be a piece of cake.  So I memorized some wonderful control spells amongst some horde smashers to make use of the limiting terrain but there was more to the pass than was understood.  Magics did not work right there or more correctly they did not last nomral amounts of time.  Spells were absorbed by the earth in the area in short order so most my control spells were not quite as useful as preferred.  

So there we are in the pass, I play nice and leave some baddies for the rest of the party to fight after I have destroyed MANY via spells.  So I go on out the other side of the pass to scout out the armies arrayed against us.  I discover that there are 3 armies each with some sort of magic banner (it absorbs area affect spells around it).  It's shortly after this time that the DM gets that evil gleam in his eyes as he starts describing the earth rumbling and shaking... then the damn mountains on each side of the pass stand up!!  Our DM is planning on killing us it seems hehe.  Well, my movement provokes and AOO from the freakin mountain which misses thanks to my swiftblade concealment.  So I Run into the middle of the first army with it's magic banner provoking another AOO from the Mountain Titan thing which promptly smashed the damned army :)  DM was quite amused but realized he was trapped into action by his earlier AOO.  :)

So instead of what was probably intended to be a heroic death we smashed the armies (or provoked the titans into doing it) though some simply routed hehe.  Then we proceeded to smack the mountains (well, most the party was already on them smacking them).  After doing X amount of damage ( I think some formula related to blood and magic used in the pass) they settled back into being mountains again.  

The next one was same campaign when the DM figured he would use a bunch of Beholders to kills us hehe.  I saw them and just teleported the party away.  Then cast mass fly and took us back where we began to smack them some.  But being Beholders they soon brought down the fly magics which left us fighting on the ground in their anti-magic fields (which he had them overlapping on us as they surrounded us.) I then proceeded to use my (Ex) haste speed and abilities to maneuver on individual beholders breaking their control.  DM was like.... 'you still have haste and concealment?'  Hehe, yep... eat steel and magic stupid beholders.  

So what was intended to wrap up did but instead of us being dead (or some of us) we got more of a happy ever after ending.  It was grand and I got to drive home the point that he really should be careful what he allows from the AEG FEAT book.  My swiftblade effectively had unlimited casting due to some feat combos lol.
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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #13 on: November 18, 2008, 08:07:00 PM »

I made the guy talk after the party's talkers failed their diplomacy & gather information checks by describing what I was going to do to the barkeeper with my knife. Then explaining how his wife would feel finding the mess afterwards, and how what I'd do to her at the end would be an act of mercy. We got our quest information. However, I am lazy at times. so instead of gaining reputation in the town to visit the queen for her quest I just tried to walk in. A guard stopped me and I belittled his rank and got pissed off that he was stopping me from going in. I commented something about making sure his superiors found out about this as I turned to leave and I was let in. At some point in a hallway where there was no where to hide at all, we heard the guards coming to get us. Arrest the you-are-not-supposed-to-be-there-right-now intruder thing. I stood to the side and hid instead my armor. Srsly, I stood rock still and pretended I was a armor display when the guards came around and arrested the rest of the party for sneaking into the castle. ...Guess who freed the party and went right back to storming the castle that night. :)

What was planned.
Spend a few days in town looking for information. Go on a side quest or two. Visit the queen for some secret mission. Walk to Poler knows where and kill the BBEG. Get quest rewards.

What happened.
Made a guy talk, walked into the castle though the front door, looted everything, got hired to find the thief.
Yeah, the DM threw in the towel at that point.
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Talen Lee

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #14 on: November 18, 2008, 09:14:19 PM »
My DMs tend to thwartease.

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #15 on: November 18, 2008, 11:26:30 PM »
First, as a DM/GM, I love the moments when my players say "but wait, I can just do this, right?" That's mondo XP day. That's me smacking myself in the forehead and going "Of course!" That's a Big Damn Hero moment. There's no thwarting going on at all. For instance, I once had a game where the players had hitched a ride on a sailing ship as part of the big world-spanning adventure to find the Ancient lands of the yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, one of my game hooks was that the ship is out of money, so they had to go on a side-quest to get some cash to hire back the crew who had all wandered off. My wizard, who had made himself far too much money off of my stupidity (lesson learned there) said, "How much?" and bought the ship. It worked beautifully because I'd already decided that the captain didn't really care about owning anything. He just wanted to sail. Sailing for someone else didn't bother him in the slightest. Now, since the side-quest was all I'd prepped for the day, they decided to go on it too, which I appreciated, and from then on, they owned the ship. It was great. I loved it. It solved many, many problems, both for me and for them.
I think that's absoluetly fucking awesome, and I agree with the rest of your post. I think you made a great point there.

Quote from: Irthos Levethix
I don't play games because I don't have anything else to do, I play games because I want to win.  How do you "win" in D&D?  By surviving, and prospering.  By retiring as an Archmage in a tower somewhere, or whatever.
I must object to that, just to say that it's subjective and hardly universally true. I "win" in D&D by making my character an awesome (and therefore satisfying) part of a larger story. Even surviving is not that big a deal, provided that the death is totally cool and works for the story. Don't get me wrong, I normally dislike D&D death, but that's because "normally", in my experience, it's shallow and unfulfilling. You die by a bad dice roll, or because the GM forgot that the NPC's weapon deals a x4 crit and you're level one, or some crap like that. OTOH, dying because you are "Programmed to Protect, and Sacrifice If Necessary" can be awesome, and therefore can also be "winning".

I think that the objective way to phrase this is that you win D&D by meeting your goals. Your goal for your character might be to live long and prosper, but somebody else's goal might be to die in glorious battle, or save their lover at any cost, or to be unmasked as a spy by the rest of the party. It's only about what you want for your character, which is not necessarily retiring in wealth and renown.

Now for my response to the OP: We once played a Ravenloft module (note, we were a horrible group to play in Ravenloft, because we took nothing seriously) which involved a little girl with a haunted puppet. The final showdown was to be in an abandoned theatre, which our bumbling mage accidentally burned down the first time we entered it. We also, upon meeting the wide-eyed, adorably innocent girl with a cute toy, assumed that the toy was evil and instantly destroyed it. To his credit, the GM talked us out of that (somehow - I can't remember how) and salvaged the final encounter by setting up an ad-hoc theatre in the street... but still. That was the game where I learned that no matter what you plan, expect the players to screw it :p

[Edit: Sorry, fixed quote attribution XP]
« Last Edit: November 19, 2008, 02:10:24 AM by Fox Lee »

Orion

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #16 on: November 19, 2008, 01:44:40 AM »
Like I said, I don't perceive D&D as a game you "win." It's a game you experience, or an experience you enjoy. It's more like theatre than anything else, for me. It's performance. Sure, we keep track of HPs and all that jazz, but that's ultimately just a framework around which to build a storytelling experience. I realise and fully respect that a lot of people are focused very much on the numbers and on achieving set goals. That's cool. Just don't assume it's what everyone does. All I'm saying.

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #17 on: November 19, 2008, 03:43:00 PM »
low level party in an arena fight.  We are fighting some sort of adamantine constructs and are in a bad spot since we have almost no way of dealing damage to them.  My cleric of Pelor has the great idea of using heat metal, they can't take off their armor.  The Bard then breaks his water skin on the heated construct.  Since there aren't exactly rules on this kinda thing the DM goes with what he knows about hot metal getting hit with cold water, we cracked open the construct and the warrior finished it off by gabbing in the newly formed crack.  We repeated with create water for the second one.

In another game i had a character which had achieved perfect manueverablity in flight.  While my max speed wasn't that good it did allow me to make a fool of the collosal dragon we ended up fighting.  I would just sit still and change directions quickly to get out of reach when it would try and attack me.  its clumsy fly was killing it, i eventually got it to run into a mountain that we illusioned to look lower than it was.
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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #18 on: November 19, 2008, 05:23:20 PM »
Moderately high-level encounter. We were tracking down this evil doppleganger wizard and, long story short, the climactic scene had us atop one 30' tower, the mage atop another about 60' away, and the ground between full of Huge umberhulks and dustwights. We were a melee-focused party, so the Gm obviously expected us to fight our way through the oversized bugs and petrifying dead things while the mage gleefully rained death on our heads.

The Monk player turns to me and says, "I can dimension door...can I bring people along?"

(check rules)

Me: "At your level...yeah, up to three."

Wizard/Rogue player: "Hey, I have that spell too."

Melee players, all of whom went before the monk and wizard/rogue: "We hold our actions."

GM: "%$^%&$&**&$$@"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This led directly to the house rule that, if you're a dimension door passenger, dimdooring counts as your move action. Too late to save the doppleganger...
It should've been you, Bendo!

Sunic_Flames

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Re: Thwarting Your DM's Plans
« Reply #19 on: November 19, 2008, 06:00:46 PM »
That's awesome.
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[spoiler]
Sunic may be more abrasive than sandpaper coated in chainsaws (not that its a bad thing, he really does know what he's talking about), but just posting in this thread without warning and telling him he's an asshole which, if you knew his past experiences on WotC and Paizo is flat-out uncalled for. Never mind the insults (which are clearly 4Chan-level childish). You say people like Sunic are the bane of the internet? Try looking at your own post and telling me you are better than him.

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[/spoiler]