Due to party absences, I ran this as a one-shot for two PCs, but also used it as an opportunity to drop some surprise clues for the campaign. Everything (well, most everything) was scaled for 2 PCs, and they did well (mostly) since they were fighting undead and both had radiant attacks.
On the first level of the dungeon, the PCs found some old urns. So the sorcerer proceeded to pop the lids. These urns were filled with what was once wine, but was now a noxious vinegar. The sorcerer fell unconscious from the vapors.
While the cleric laughed as he woke the sorcerer, the sorcerer was obviously frightened by a horrible vision that he had had while unconscious.
Then on the next level, the party found another, larger wine celler. This one had two tuns of wine. The cleric laid into one of these barrels and ran. This broke the tun and sloshed the contents all over the floor... which also sloshed the PCs down the hall.
Then the sorcerer (probably on another vision quest) entered the room alone. He made a beeline for the urns on the wall. But then the cleric turned around to see his friend levitating. And the sunrod, no longer in the sorcerer's hand, was also strangely suspended, and quite dim.
The cleric was confused and waited. But then he saw the sorcerer, seemingly suspended in the air, float towards him backwards. The cleric was then attacked by a wall of acidic jelly and sucked into a gelatinous cube.
This cube had been in that tun the cleric broke open. So this cube had been steeped in bad wine for a few years. Not only were the PCs having to deal with acid damage, they were quickly becoming inebreated. This monster was basically a giant jello-shot.
The first half of the battle had both the PCs stuck in this cube. I could see a 2-PC TPK coming quickly. And witnessing healing surges and heal spells inside the cube, and the poorest save-rolls I have ever seen, only made matters worse. And, of course, the light source went out -- eaten by the acid.
But the PCs somehow finally managed to escape. In the end, they stumbled blind and drunk back through the dungeon corridors with the hungry wine-cube in pursuit.
At that point it was determined that for them to get back to safety on the upper level, they would have to circle around through the corridors as the cube slowly pursued after them through the dungeon.
This tactic became known as the "Benny Hill Chase".
In all the years I've DM'd that was the first gelatinous cube I've ever used, and they really hate it. I found that it's a very dangerous monster -- you don't really fight it (at least not with 2 PCs), you just have to try and escape it.
Back in a 2nd edition game I was acting as the DM. The players were around 10th level, and were facing a mage that had been controlling a village of pixies...anyway they were pretty ****** by this point because the pixies had setup a whole town complete with illusionary people, that just constantly f'ed with the PC's. At one point the PCs were so fed up with the people(illusions) that they were running down the street slaughtering everyone they saw, until the halfing rogue figured out that the pixies were controlling these illusions. They finally tracked down the mage that had been controlling the pixies and without giving him a chance to speak attacked him. The Elven rogue (Letina the naked dancing snake princess of snakes, the name coming from a situation where she ended up naked in a temple of the snake gods wearing a cursed set of boots), anyway Letina ran straight up to the wizard, who had watched them approach from his front doorway, as soon as she ran up he cast a powerful spell at her (lance of force or something along those lines) knocking her back about 50 feet and landing her in the middle of the street. The damage was not bad, what was bad that she had rolled a 1 on her saving throw for the spell, so one her items(random) had to make a saving throw or be destroyed. I rolled for it and it came out as her wand of earth (held about 25 charges of the dig spell). Well this released all the charges at one time, quickly digging a 100 foot hole in the street beneath her. The walls of the pit, being unstable, then collapsed right on top of Letina, leaving a 20 foot pit with the Naked Dancing Snake Princess of Snakes buried 80 feet below the surface of the street.
"The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I've posted this elsewhere, but it remains one of the funniest things in any game of DnD we've played.
Back in college, a friend was running a 1e AD&D game. My character was a bard (from the Best of Dragon III.) He had a [i]luck blade[/i] which had one wish left.
Another gamer was playing a thief (when it was okay to call them that.) The player was a notorious cheater. When he attacked, he would roll the die, and before anyone could confirm, he'd pick it up and say, "Natch!" (you know, the common vernacular for rolling a natural 20 on a to-hit roll.) Well, this character had a dagger of venom, which triggers (injects poison into the victim) on a natural 20. So, this thing was deadly in the hands of this cheater.
For flavor, the DM said that when the last of the poison was expended, there was a process to refill it. You break open the pommel, pour in the poison, and then cast the spell mending to rejoin it.
So, this guy asks me if my Bard could do it. I said, "sure, what kind of poision is it?" He said, "oh, it's only sleep poison." So, I did my own investigating and found out it was "save or die" poison. Given that he was such a cheater, I couldn't take it any more.
I did the work for him, then withdraw the luck blade and said,
"I wish that no matter what liquid or substance is placed in here, instead of being poisoned, the target is healed as if by a potion of extra healing."
(The player had left the room prior to this to get a drink.)
The DM, happy that I had solved a problem for him, allowed it to happen.
The next fight, during the first round, the player makes his attack roll and screams, "natch!" and picks up the dice before anyone can see it. He says, "save or die!"
The DM rolls a die and says, roll your damage. The player says, "4!" (he only did 1d4). The DM says, "okay, he takes 4 points, but his wounds immediately heal!"
The player NEVER knew what happened, but everyone else at the table howled - especially when it continued to happen game after game.
I don't like screwing over other players, but I don't like playing with cheaters.
I'm the DM for our group, and it's been a long night of gaming. We decide to go for one more encounter and call it a night, so the group comes down the stairs and into a large room. From above, 2 grells attack the party.
What I had wanted to say: "The grell lashes out at you with a poisonous tentacle!"
What came out: "The grell lashes out at you with a poisonous testicle!"
The game came to a screeching halt for the next half hour... :D
A monkey joined the player group. At this point, we had no clue It happened to swallow a magical artifact which allowed it to teleport objects. And the player group needed their ship back.
So, first, This monkey jumped on the pirate's (Hawk) shoulder. The hunter (Mulan) and the spellsword (Deimos) were also there. Here's what went down:
Mulan: "This monkey is definitely a familiar." *draws weapons and starts heading to the monkey* Hawk: "N-no its just a monkey. Get away."
The monkey also kind of noticed Mulan walking towards it with her weapons and tried to avoid her.
While this was happening, Deimos cast swift invisibility to catch the defensive monkey flat-footed. He also happened to crit it with his greatsword. The monkey was no more.
The DM was speechless and stunned for literally 5 minutes because the monkey was actually a very important piece to his Plot. I wish we could have took a picture of his face after that happened.
2) 3.5 game;
We had a dex based fighter named Jake who used a halberd (funny in itself). He kept saying "all I need is a better halberd then I'll be more useful."
Fortunately, the next treasure roll happened to include a +2 halberd.
The party gave it to Jake and the Player was real happy.
The first encounter Jake faces with his new halberd is Gray Oozes. He successfully strikes the ooze. His halberd fails its reflex save. The halberd disintegrated.
I am both selfish and chaotic. I value self-gratification and control; I want to have things my way, preferably now. At best, I'm entertaining and surprising; at worst, I'm hedonistic and violent.
"Ever battle offers an opportunity of victory. It's up to you to summon the courage to grasp that moment!" -- Kurando (Shadowhearts: Covenant)
our party was resting for the night somwhere in the forests. and it was turn for my elven ranger to keep watch for a fiew hours. suddenly, he was hearing something moving in the bushes nearby, so he alarmed the party.
then he heared that the creature, that caused the noises, startet to ran away, so he tried to track it.
our dm: "the tracks seem to lead a short distance into the bushes and then they end abruptly at the foot of a tree."
so i then tried to climb the tree to pursue my pray, horribly failing my climb check and falling to the ground.
then our half-orc babarian stepped in and tried to climb it for himself. naturally, he failed his check with a 1 an fell on my ranger.
so after wie stood up, i tired it again, this time with success... just to hear the following sentence from my dm:
dm: "so, after several tries, you finally managed to climb up there. you now realize, that the deer you have been following, probably didnt run up that 6 foot tall tree, youre currently sitting in."
turned out, that i also failed my tracking check. XD
forgot one story. one of the most hilarious things happened in one of our old 3.5 sessions.
our party encountered a huge t-rex. our groups monk won initiative and foolishly charged it, with the result of being completely swallowed.
after the rest of us managed to kill it within 3 rounds, we ran over to the huge corpse, to cut our monk out of there.
now you have to imagine a wizard with a quaterstaff, a cleric with a mace and a druid with a staff, standing next to a huge dead t-rex, and simultaneously looking at each other.
"so... does anybody have a sword?"
figured, until the druid in bear form managed to bite a hole into the corpse, that was big enough, our monk was already dead from suffocation.
I found some old notes from an old game tucked into my 1e "Greyhawk Adventures". There was a creature in that book called a Changecat. It was an ordinary housecat with a curious morphing quality to it. The houserule we were using allowed a nat 20 not only to score a crit, but to grant you a second attack.
I had decided that, since the wizard player was a cat-lover, that a friendly little tabby was following him around. He shared his rations with his new little buddy, scritched his ears, made cat toys, etc.
One day out in the wilderness, the tabby was riding comfortably on the wizard's shoulder when they stumbled on an ogre. The party was still very low level, and the group had rolling poorly since it's creation. I gave them the cat just in case I needed to tip things, which I did. The ogre took out the fighter in the first shot, which in 1e could mean certain doom for a party with poor dice ju-ju. The wizard's magic missile barely had an effect, the rogue missed wildly, and the cleric was trying to revive the fighter. That left the cat, who was frantically trying to scramble free from the wizard, who thought that "Mister Whiskers" was frightened.
The cat got free and the wizard feared for his little friend. As soon as the cat hit the ground, however, it morphed into something that looked like a cheetah with a tabby pattern. With a sprint of what in 4e would be over 20 squares, the cat was at the ogre's throat, scoring a nat 20. Right at the jugular! Rolling for the second attack, 20! The hind legs raked furiously, tearing flesh and muscle from the ogre's throwing arm. The ogre failed to get a good enough grip to throw the cat off, but he was left open to attacks from the rest of the party. In a whirling, frenzied bloodbath, the ogre finally went down for the count.
When the ogre died, they immediately looked for the cheetah, who was back in tabby form and calmly licking his paws on a warm, sunny rock not far from the action.
Arriving in town, they entered a store to replenish their supplies, which included rations, oil, spell components, a stuffed mouse, catnip, some dried fish, a fluffy pillow with a warmth spell cast on it, a plush ball with a jingle bell on it, some coarse material for a scratching post, more catnip, more fish, a fish hook and line so they could catch more fish, a fine comb with soft teeth so as not to hurt kitty...
