Dirty DM plot twists

[dither]

Others are built to be very socially savvy so secretly giving them that chance is good.

Rest assured, I'm a fair DM. If I *ever* had a player invest in Sense Motive or Insight (or any social skills at all), I'd let them roll for it.

In my experience as both a player and a DM, I build most of my characters to be socially-savvy because that's where my own strengths lie at the table, and I've run into far too many DMs who scoff at a bit of roleplayed wise-cracking, bluffing, etc, so I *always* make sure to back up whatever shenanigans I'm pulling with massive skill bonuses, if only so I don't get screwed over by an unimaginative or uncooperative DM.

[Hallack]

Others are built to be very socially savvy so secretly giving them that chance is good.

Rest assured, I'm a fair DM. If I *ever* had a player invest in Sense Motive or Insight (or any social skills at all), I'd let them roll for it.

In my experience as both a player and a DM, I build most of my characters to be socially-savvy because that's where my own strengths lie at the table, and I've run into far too many DMs who scoff at a bit of roleplayed wise-cracking, bluffing, etc, so I *always* make sure to back up whatever shenanigans I'm pulling with massive skill bonuses, if only so I don't get screwed over by an unimaginative or uncooperative DM.

[Mixster]

At the moment I'm thinking of having a character that has two Personaes annoy the party. A 10th Level paladin in one of his personaes, perfectly good and orderly, a nice chap who lends his healing for free and helps the PCs a good deal, one odd day he asks them to return the favor, since they know the guy from a few encounters, they probably wont mind with detecting either thoughts or evil, he asks them to bring back a powerful evil item for it's destruction, they'll find the item guarded by a bunch of good critters who doesn't want random PCs to dig it up.
Here's the catch though, the goody two-shoes paladin has an evil personae as well, actually it's his main personae, the good guy just takes over a few too many times, the evil personae is a Thrall of Demogorgon, who are wack-jobs, and although his two personaes started out both being chaotic evil, he picked up a helm of opposite alignment in one of the alternatives, and is now retrained into a paladin. The bad side is probably well that he has a good side messing with his plans, but he uses it for his own good anyway or attempts to.

I'll give the PCs a few heads up though, like wanted posters in several towns featuring their friend the paladin and similar stuff. And he is often covered in blood when they meet him, trying to help dying victims that he just attempted to slice up a few minutes ago. How would you think that'd work?

[veekie]

Hmm, depending on how you handle paladins getting their powers of course, since anything that checks inherent goodness or a power source with a sense of judgement(a deity perhaps) would make the paladin thing a bit thin.

Better to avoid having a direct, blatant holy warrior(particularly one as polar opposites). Instead, try hooking them up to an NG Crusader/CN Psychic Warrior or the like(that is to say functionally similar, but with a strong hint of bipolar).
This way, the actions are still possibly within bounds of ordinary, and is more likely to throw them off in a topspin, especially if there really IS an evil doppleganger out there doing the deeds, disguised as a mentally unstable do gooder to try and pin it on the poor guy. Make it so he needs therapy more than stabbity.

[Amechra]

Used a variant on this one in one of my games once.

Basically, have the PCs enter a town and receive free healing. If any of the PCs ask why they are getting free healing (maybe even ressurection, at the expense of the town...). Have them say that it's the local lord's law to make sure all visitors are to be given all the aid they can be given. However, make sure you show that the townsfolk are in poor health.

At night. have the lord visit. Have him get along and be really cordial. Have him be a vampire.

You see where I'm going with this...

[RealMarkP]

Used a variant on this one in one of my games once.

Basically, have the PCs enter a town and receive free healing. If any of the PCs ask why they are getting free healing (maybe even ressurection, at the expense of the town...). Have them say that it's the local lord's law to make sure all visitors are to be given all the aid they can be given. However, make sure you show that the townsfolk are in poor health.

At night. have the lord visit. Have him get along and be really cordial. Have him be a vampire.

You see where I'm going with this...

OOoohh that is absolutely devilish. I'm stealing this idea.

[Amechra]

Thanks.

In my version (Probably wouldn't work for your campaign), the town itself healed you when you stepped inside. I kind of forced the players to run in, seeing that they had a gargantuan creature (Seriously, it had trees growing in cracks in its back. They weren't supposed to fight it, and they knew it.) hot on their tail. The thing is, after dark, the village develops one very creepy ghost lady, and the sun doesn't come up unless you die (The healing stayed on constantly). THing is, you could only leave when the sun was up...

[RealMarkP]

Thanks.

In my version (Probably wouldn't work for your campaign), the town itself healed you when you stepped inside. I kind of forced the players to run in, seeing that they had a gargantuan creature (Seriously, it had trees growing in cracks in its back. They weren't supposed to fight it, and they knew it.) hot on their tail. The thing is, after dark, the village develops one very creepy ghost lady, and the sun doesn't come up unless you die (The healing stayed on constantly). THing is, you could only leave when the sun was up...

I can always modify it. I'm a sucker for sneaking in political encounters. For example, the people in the town are under-nourished, poor, and in bad condition, while the lord of the land is rich and always has a few whores at arms reach. He treats his town poorly, except when adventurers arrive. The party is greeted warmly and they get first class treatment at the expense of others. This only works if your party is good aligned because they will want to intervene and fix the town. Just a thought.

[veekie]

Another trick, demon possessed currency.
No players ever look twice at their bag of gp.

[Amechra]

Screw that, have paper money be the only crrency allowed in a certain city.



And remember, Secret Page, Sepia Snake Sigel, and Explosive runes are your villain's friends...

Also, earlier on in that adventure, I had an entire illusionary town. My players visited the local wizard, who had built her tower out of walls of force, which she cancelled along with the illusion when they were several stories up...

[veekie]

Well, in a less direct sense, the players will find themselves beset by various apparently mind controlled innocent bystanders, never realizing the problem was some hidden fiend in their gold pieces. Less dickish than exploding runes paper money anyway.

[Amechra]

The idea is that you set up illusory page, so you can compel them to do something... using money.

More than usual anyway.

Besides, a canny villain can use the sudden rise in explosions to harm the PCs reputation (Secret Page a part of it as itself; addd on the compulsion "Read the rune on the back of this page; say that it was the PCs who did it.")

In other words, the innocent bystanders come to attack them much more naturally.

(Seriously though, think about what a dictator with the ability to mind control people through money could do...)

[archangel.arcanis]

One that i did to my group recently was have them find out an ally was a bad guy. In our case early on they met an older (ok stupid powerful, Khellendros DL Age of Mortals p215)blue dragon and his kobold town. They got shelter and supplies in trade for adamantine, the party just killed some creatures made of it but were is a wasteland and needed supplies. They essentually made this dragon's lair a base of operations and the dragon was fine with that as his kobolds were getting trained by the Warbland and Wizard while the other PCs help out with the labor and gave a cut of profits to the dragon.

I used the power of the dragon as a way to keep the party behaved as well since the BBEG came by to discuss a business arrangement with the dragon. Party wanted to kill BBEG and vice versa but dragon wouldn't let them and was strong enough to kill them all if the disobeyed. Party continues on and BBEG leaves to go his own way.

Later on BBEG arranges to have a princess kidnapped and held by a dragon. The princess was held in a tower the party had to go through backwards, stepping through the door on the ground floor teleported you to the top and you had to work your way down. Once they get to the dungeon below the tower the party finds a message written on the wall "sorry Mario but the princess is in another tower" and a teleportation circle. The party rests up and heads through the teleporter only to end up in the dragon's lair where he is holding the princess as a guest, that was the deal he made with BBEG.

The party eventually convinces him to let them do something to get him to break his deal with BBEG. He agrees for them to kill a few dragon upstarts who have annoyed him. So they get to fight a few red dragons and a pyroclastic dragon at a castle in the middle of a lake of lava.


It was good times all around. The party considered fighting the Khell until i reminded him of his size and they began asking what their chances were anyway. I answered honestly just because i wanted them to consider tactics beyond 'kill it a lot.'

[altpersona]

dirty plots:

good vs good : will the pc's become embroiled in the good kings war against the good clerics subversiveness? will the clerics righteous revolt defeat the heathen king?

very often in a game, or anything with a plot we focus on good v evil. or evil v the world type stories.

hows your party of lg/cg/ng/ln/tn's gonna handle the fight against goods?

the party stumbles on to random hamlet and finds the town in chaos, the church has been torn down by the kings men, the only cleric for miles has been taken to trial for high crimes. will you help save the town

does that fact that two gods are lg mean they arnt competing for followers? is the paladin of torm going to hesitate to kill other non tormish paladins? if your not with us your agin us, right?


the evil v evil can be equally dirty..

the evil cult kidnapped the children, once they are returned to the people for the reward, they are sacrificed to the 'right' god..

[skydragonknight]

The hireling who lugs your gear around, calls you "sir" and quivers in fear of your strength, is the final boss.

[McPoyo]

I found that, if you have post-its or spare pieces of paper, you can write down "give me a will save" on it, have them roll, and write down the result on the paper. It could mean something, it could be completely bogus so the roller doesn't know what he is rolling for. The rest of the party are even more clueless (was it initiative? was it a reflex save? was it a skill check?). Using this is way better than rolling for them, IMO.

Similarly in these veins but not quite, the rest of the party and I did something similar one time, but it was to mess with another player who metagamed a lot. I'd ask for will save mods, sense motive mods, spot mods, etc, from various players during the session, then roll dice. He never knew the die roll was irrelevant to the mod I asked for, as I already had the mod I needed written down from before. The look on his face the entire session was priceless, trying to figure out what was happening to his character that he wasn't saving against. We let him in on the joke afterward. He had worked out some elaborate scheme to explain all the rolls that I ended up using against a different party in another game.

[skydragonknight]

I once had a DM that would every so often make us roll a d20 and then look at our character sheet. Really made the players paranoid, because we never knew when the checks were real.

[RealMarkP]

I had a thought (which was provoked by talking to another DM) about the availability of cash to the PCs. The way the other DM manages the campaign is to give them below average amount of items/gold from an encounter. In turn, the PC that need gear to be effective, such as a fighter that needs plate and a shield would get the bulk of the gold at first (unless party members are stingy). Magic items are scarce. Loot is thin. The party is forced to come up with new strategies when overcoming encounters, such as running away when things don't go their way (rather than the DM optimizing encounters to be more challenging). In the spirit of things, this is a very dirty trick.

I would like to get your opinion on this, because I'm thinking of doing something like this in my campaign. Since the party has an above average amount of gear and enhancements, I was thinking an encounter with a green dragon (or similar), whom spews acid (or casts acid cloud), would dissolve their gear and force them to start anew. Dissolving portable hols and bags of holding might be an issue.

[Bozwevial]

I would recommend against this. PCs typically get upset about the loss of their gear, because it feels like a punishment--and in a way, it is. Besides, gear is part of their expected power level. I'd cut back on treasure and up the challenges slightly for a while to compensate, but use things like rust monsters and acid sparingly, because it often creates bad feelings in the group (for instance, a PC who gets screwed may feel that the DM has it out for him, especially if other players escape unscathed).

[veekie]

I concur, unless they're ridiculously out of whack and crushinate anything of their CR, just reduce the loot per encounter and give them more enemies with Treasure: None to fight.

Nonhumanoid monsters in general help, but Called outsiders work well too.