The Evil DM Thread.

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(Inspired by a thread on a different forum)

That's right, this is a thread for the dark side of dungeonmastering. This is a thread about cunning traps, lethal doublecrosses and generally nifty ideas that have made roleplayers all over the world realize that yes, there is a god, and he hates them.

So...share any stories you have, any evil ideas, or simply get educated on the evils that lurk within the dark recesses of your game master's mind...

Like having the dwarven cleric find a Dwarven Thrower Warhammer. First encounter he uses the hammer, the hammer remains floating in the air, while we see a baffled dwarf fly through the corridor, hitting the foe standing there.

The combination of a glass 'double ceiling' filled with alchemist's fire and a glyph of warding set to sonic damage (guaranteed to shatter the glass) is bound to lighten up your characters' day...

On the way to getting a powerfull artifact to finish a temple's quest, have the characters rescue a NPC tiefling from a couple of farmers armed with pitchforks or the like. Make it seem clear that the tiefling is innocent. He speaks common very poorly, and seems to be your basic stuttering coward, simply being chased out of town out of racial prejudice. He travels with the goodytwoshoes party for a while, gaining their trust. "Gobby good, Gobby no hurt" *puppydog eyes*
After retreiving the artifact with much trouble, the party encounters a couple of powerfull foes which you know the players fear. Have poor old gobby crush them before the PC's have any clue of what's happening. (Mass concussion power for example) While the PC's begin to rejoice, have Gobby turn around after demonstrating his omnipotence and dictate his demands "hand over the artifact or die, maybe both" in fluent common.

Or have the Book of Vile Darkness lying around on the table, just to spook the players

 

I personally like the 'in a long round tunnel while a massive boulder rolls down and squashes them all schtick'.

 

How about a room where there's a Trapper on the floor and a Lurker Above on the ceiling?

 

Check out "Grimtooths book of tricks and traps" if you can score a copy.

I think that an intelligent enemy is much more powerful than loads of weak ones could every be, play a fast game where every player has only 30 seconds to act and you plan your turn like a chess game (not kidding).

Another good idea was from a martial arts supplement that Wizards released a while ago with the main boss for the campain having complete immunity to all types of attack except physical, 3000hp, regeneration, every skill in the book and 5 attacks per round.

 

Hehe, that made me laughing out loud in classearlier today, and I were banned from the computers in school for miss-using the access and going on to banned websites.

 

Ouch. My condolences.

I already am banned from extracurricular use, and my teachers keep telling me to "work, not play"...

How about this one: Kill the entire party off. Then, reveal that it was naught but an illusion/hallucination/dream.

Possibly repeat a few times... make them complacent...

Again, scenario 1´... but this time, it is not a dream/illusion/hallucination

 

Ooh, very nice Arabwel, but you could make it even worse! How about a temporal shift, which causes them to die over and over again? (get to point A go to point B, die horribly. Warp, you're back at point A. repeat ad infinitum.) Sort of like in IWD2.

 

1) Ignore the CR system. It's there for a reason! What kinda moron DM would pit five level 9 adventurers against "OMGtehl33tM@ge" Elminster??


2)Include FR canon NPCs. My previous DM got Drizzt and his posse to attack my group because 'we're evil'. We won by the way, at level 8. The half-orc barbarian had a hell of a time violating Catti-Brie before strangling her. My Wizardslayer wore a nice drow necklace for the rest of his exploits. Burenor's axe and Wulfgar's hammer were real neat toys to carry around too. And the whole party had Guen to abuse at will. Said DM then got mad that at the way his 'beloved' Drizzt got treated and sicced Alustriel on us. Somehow we won out, escaped and came back later to bring down the whore. Then the infamous tavern scene which I described earlier with Elminster and 1000 Solars descending on us while we were level 11.

Point: He should not have agreed to an evil campaign if he wanted to pull off something like that!

3) Use Deus Ex Machina like hell. In our madness, we let him DM again and again he placed no alignment restrictions and made no protest when the entire group was evil except for the Chaotic Neutral Barbarian. We asked him whether it was ok and he said yes. So now we have a DM PC, an almighty 'chaotic good' drow mage. We go through the dungeons and overcome many challenges only to meet the main villian whom the drow mage wipes out with a twitch of his finger! Once is fine. Twice, thrice? He gets all the loot, credit and praise while the rest of the party is relegated to being pack mules and trap springers for him. Why the hell would a level 80 wizard travel with a bunch of level 5 guys anyway?

3)That DM said that all classes except Wizard and Sorcerer 'SHOULD' suck and brought down all their HDs by one category while cranking the Wizard and Sorcerer HDs to d12. They also gained levels at twice the speed because 'they rightfully are that powerful'. He doubled their spell slots per day and turned their BAB to one better than a fighter's! WTF! Crafting wands and scribing scrolls are free-of-charge if you were a wizard or sorcerer but any fighter, rogue or cleric had to make a FORT save each time they swung a magic weapon or lose a level. Reason? Magic is not for such lowly classes.

4)Race Favoritism: Elves get +4 to all stats and start at Level 4 in any character class they want with no penalty! Half-Orcs get 1 skill point a level no matter how high their intelligence is or what their class is! Dwarves can only be Fighters! Humans must always obey the commands of elves! That brought about my eternal elf hatred.

 

Shura, your DM isn't just evil, he seems like a dick.

What I'm looking for is evil yet fair tricks against players. Not changing the rules, but finding clever ways to make things harder for the players, while keeping the game fun. Sending a 1000 solars under the command of Elminster towards a lvl 11 party is not keeping it fun, it's being a manipulative jerk who gets a kick out of trying to kill players. That's not the kind of person I'd want as a DM.

Oh, another: "Polyform Other: Cow and then put the target in a pen with a bull." Seems too good to pass up.

 

Faragon!

Your party is in a desert and dire need of water, or at least something to drink.
But all you can find is gold, gems, oil, adamant, magic items and riches.

 

I would. Maybe not Elminster, but I sometimes give my players creatures to fight who are much stronger than them. It teaches them how to be diplomatic, and that running from a fight is sometimes the best thing to do. They could of course decide to stay and fight, but that can lead to their deaths, and unlike some other DM, I will kill my players. It is their joice to fight, so they must live with the consequences.

But a thousand solars is even to extreme for me, I want to give my players at least a chance to escape or get out of a fight some other way.

 

One of the char get killed by a trap but the border of this country are heavily guard because of the war and the only cleric who can raise him doesn't want to give healing to neutral or evil char. BTW The war ended after 3 months, the char? well he's a skeleton under the control of the opposite army...

 

Off topic:

I play with that DM no more. And I don't think any of that group ever did as well.

After that, I ran a short, low level campaign that took a bunch of PCs from level 4 to 8 and got a much better reception.

Anyway, back to you guys.

 

I have always been under the impression that the players (and characters) are much more evil.

 

*hugs Shura*

There, there.... One day you will get over tyour hatered of elves, I am sure of that...

 

*Plots with Ara in the corner* Right, how can we get him out of his crazed loon elf hating stage?

Ambushes are always good, have them walking down the street when suddenly several crossbow bolts fly out of no where, specifically the rooves above them

 

Sometimes the players themselves are their own worst enemy. Secretly allowing one evil character in a group of good characters is a sure fire way to generate chaos, especially if the evil character is working behind the scenes to bring the others to failure, death, and ruin.

A good resource for DM's is Dragon Magazine issue #239 pg.14, 101 Dirty Orc Tricks. I have used it in conjunction with an eversmoking bottle to great effect at scattering and confusing a party.

 

Last week I granted one of the players in my all-paladin party a wish after helping a gold dragon and he wished to fight some great evil.

I tranferred the entire party to Ravenloft

He wished it, but I was not quite what the party expected...

 

Heh! Players say the stupidist things

I once captured the players using a drow fortress with a large field in front of them, and no way to avoid confrontation. Twelve leveld fighters with crossbows and drow sleep poison they did last two rounds!

Anyway it was all needed to further the plot and I gave them the chance to take the fortress out, after escaping. Well, they decided that they all were that strong that anyone of them could hould of the drow singlehandedly. WRONG! drow can have levels too, in 2e and they had a angry group of qually leveled drows hunting for them. I calculated it that they could win after a though fight, but they just split up, leaving each other vunrable to attack. Needless to say I had to do some very creative DMing to keep them in the campaign. They ended up in a mine, and three of them got out alive (and the pretty druid chick was sacrifised too Lolth

Just as someone said, players are their own worst enemy!