You don't need to be a Dungeons & Dragons expert to appreciate savage game play when you see it. But to the people who play in these digital worlds, do you ever think - could *we* be nothing more than someone's avatar, existing only for entertainment?
IllGandalf73 asked DnD players of Reddit: What's the most awesome or evil thing you've ever accomplished?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
10. I want an elephant.
One of my party members bought an elephant, but we needed to travel by boat and needed to sell it. Elephants weren't exactly common in the city we were in, but they also weren't in demand. So I (Bard w/ Disguise Self and Actor feat) went to the local stable posing as a noble's servant desperately looking for an elephant for his master's son's birthday. I told him money was no object. He told us that he heard of an elephant in another city, so I told him that I would go there, but would be in town for a few days while arranging travel.
A couple of days later, we had the owner of the elephant go to the stable looking to sell. The stable master saw the opportunity for profit and tried to buy at cost. I was in another disguise, pretending to be someone who had heard of the noble's search, and started a bidding war with the stablemaster. Once the price reached 500, I told him that I would buy it for that price, but I would need a day to gather the money. Stablemaster offered to buy it for 480 right now, and he agreed. And then we got on the boat and left.
Stablemaster latered hired some mercenaries to try to track us down when he figured out he'd been swindled, but I used another disguise self to make them think they were following the wrong group.
9. Defeated at your own game.
A few years ago, I played in a Pathfinder campaign as a lawful good sorceror with a long story arc in which I fully intended he would fall into evil. I used his bloodline (Infernal? Can't remember the name) as the basis for this. I played for several months, becoming a little more evil and unpredictable every session, until I had to quit the game due to some other commitments. The GM and I agreed that my character suddenly just vanished without a word to the rest of the party, under suspicious circumstances.
Several months later they were winding up the campaign and the GM invited me back to play in the final session. They were up against an evil spellcaster who was terrorizing the frontier area they were trying to settle/civilize. GM didn't tell the other players I was coming back - he had the (never seen before) NPC lure them into a trap, while I waited outside the room. On his signal, I strolled casually into the room, in character, and revealed myself as the bad guy they'd been hunting. And then proceeded to try to murder the sh*t out of them. It almost worked, too. But they got in a couple opportune crits and, well, good prevailed in the end. Too bad, really.
Best one I've read so far.
On his signal, I strolled casually into the room, in character, and revealed myself as the bad guy they'd been hunting. And then proceeded to try to murder the sh*t out of them.
Never played any DnD or Pathfinder, but I love this.
We just did this to our players! A player had to leave but we brought her back electronically for the final session as a villain. She had got her powers from the BBEG initially (unknown to her) and we played it off that. The players ended up redeeming her, it was super fun!
8. Strike!
This was waaaay back in college. We were a low level party, most of us were new to the game, and we were attacked by ogres. The battle went on forever, but things were looking grim for us once the cleric went down. A few rounds later and the ogres were dead, but everyone but one character was down. I was playing this character for a guy who ended up leaving for an emergency. He had no healing magic.
After everyone was bandaged, I looked to the nearby cave for shelter. We realized there were likely ogre children in there. Nobody could figure out how to tell if anyone was still in there, and how to get them out if they were. I had 2 hit points, and any real fighting would likely end the whole adventure.
I told the DM that I cut off the head of one of the dead female ogres, rolled it in like a bowling ball, and braced myself at the mouth of the cave for back-stabbing bonuses. They ran out screaming, and were killed quickly.
The DM looked at me chuckling as others (new to the game) were shocked by this. "You are a cold motherf*cker," he said.
7. The perfect crime.
I stole from and killed a smith, blamed it on another smith in town, and then stole his stuff while he was being hanged.
That's pretty f*cked up 😂
6. Methodical madness.
I think one of my favorite moments was what I've come to call the Rat Swarm Meat Grinder story.
We were a relatively high-ish level party (low teens or so) and were exploring a dungeon. I forget exactly what class I was playing (it was out of one of the weird side books, gotta love 3.5e having hundreds of those) but it was a sort of Ranger/Rogue hybrid so I was generally leading the pack. We hit the end of a corridor and opened the door, revealing a massive Dire Rat Swarm. The intent of the encounter would be us fighting it off while it chased us back down the corridor we'd come from, lest we be entirely... well, swarmed.
I should take a moment here to explain a quirk of basically every character I play. I make a point to always, always buy a small Bag of Holding and fill it with caltrops. It's relatively cheap and infinitely useful to have on hand in those kind of quantities.
I instantly declare I want to roll a reflex save to chuck my Bag of Holding into the room and shut the door, which the DM has me do two rolls for. Nailed the roll for chucking the bag, and hit a 20 on the door-shut part of the action. My argument being that the swarm is a constantly moving entity, so the caltrops were basically going to turn that room into a giant meat grinder, since the swarm was always shifting or moving and would always be taking damage from the caltrops.
We avoided a pretty major encounter in the dungeon with full credit... though opening the door still resulted in my character basically getting bathed in a mix of ground up rats and caltrops, since we still had to move forward in the dungeon.
Less elaborate but still awesome was the time I nailed a triple-crit on a boss during an attack of opportunity. While blind.
Well, I know what's going in my next character's inventory.
I always made sure to have a bunch of random adventuring stuff with me. I actually made sure to go through the tools section and have a good spread of just generic useful sh*t with me. DM's love when you pay attention to detail like that.
5. Oops.
I'll try to keep this short.
We were a low level party. I was playing a rogue, David was playing a warlock, and Michael was a fighter. The quest was to get a spellbook from a wizards tower.
We broke in and the fighter failed the stealth check. The warlock was killed by magical rugs that smothered him. David was pretty upset because it was our FIRST session, so he and the DM stepped outside for a few minutes after combat.
When they came in, the DM said that the wizard was walking downstairs. I hid around the corner and used sneak attack to hit him for like 30 points of damage. Insta kill.
Turns out, while outside, the DM said that David could play the wizard as his character had just died. Until I killed him. Whoops.
4. Now it's stuck in my head.
My friend was introduced to DnD while he was away for school. His roommate was an avid player who taught him the ropes.
When he came back, our friend group got together to start a campaign. So we have a mildly experienced DM and four PC's who have no idea what they are doing. However, we are all having a great time, especially me.
Since I was playing a bard, I decided to step it up by bringing an instrument to our second session but the only thing I could find was a finger piano.
So fast forward to the middle of our session, we are fighting some zombies and I use bardic inspiration for one of my party members. Now, everyone was expecting me to sing (It's the way I am and they know me very well ) so I have everyone's eyes on me. I reach into my bag under the table, whip out my finger piano, and play the chord progression to 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' while singing a totally improvised song consisting of the lyrics: "Please don't die."
Later in that session, we were at a bar and there was a fight-cage where a bear was fighting a dwarf. The betting odds were something like 100:1 for the dwarf to win so, naturally, we all placed bets on the dwarf. When the fight started, the bear was kicking some dwarf butt so our warlock used mage hand and a successful stealth roll to rig the fight and make us all very rich.
3. Rabblerousing.
I'm part of a live improvised D&D stage show in Milwaukee. (Not a traditional D&D campaign but close enough). Each show is it's own story, audience chooses names, classes, etc. for each improviser, as well as a location and villain. Our GM/host and I split NPC duties and he narrates/guides, while I improvise background music on keyboard.
So this particular show, the audience designates one of our players as a cleric who serves a thunder god. The plot gets to a point where the party is defending a small village against a horde of oncoming enemies, who are due to arrive the next day. So our GM gives everyone a chance to do a training/prep montage, sharpening weapons, preparing potions, etc. Our thunder cleric decides to go a cliff on a nearby mountain to commune with his god. Our GM sets him up. "What is your prayer?"
Now, normally I keep the music atmospheric- slow and creepy for suspense, fast paced battle music, etc. But once in a while, when the moment's right (and if I know the chords) I'll throw in a pop song reference. This was one such moment. As the player begins his prayer, I softly begin to play the opening riff of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." Thunder cleric goes on, building in volume and intensity, and ends up delivering an epic f*cking speech about how much ass we were going to kick in the thunder god's name. All the while I stick with that same riff, and everyone in the audience is chanting "THUNDER!" and stomping their feet along to the beat. I was getting goosebumps, it was f*cking METAL.
We won the battle, of course, but it was the lead-up that was the height of the show for all of us.
TLDR; friends and I brought the house down with an epic speech set to "Thunderstruck" in a live D&D show.
2.
Appearently, in hob-goblin culture, if you kill a women's husband, she becomes your wife. Well, one time my party was attacked by a group of hob-goblins. I killed one (not knowing it at the time) I killed one, and it turns out he had a wife... who was pregnant. Yeah. I had a set of hob-goblin triplets whose mom died in childbirth. But I turned them into a trio of bards, so it was cool.
Was their band called 'Feed after midnight'?
No, we ended up just quitting the campaign before the lives of my "children" went into detail, because our DM constantly wants to switch campeigns, basically every session is a new campaign, and it's annoying because yhe one I mentioned, was my first, and favorite session/campaign
1. Poison most foul.
Had a rogue in our party. Every person we met and needed something from kept dying. Everywhere we went, NPCs dropped like flies. DM kept having us roll at random times, so we knew something was up.
Turned out finally the rolls were to see if any of us noticed the rogue poisoning everyone. I mean EVERYONE. He had worked out a signal with the DM for when he wanted to kill someone, and he got away with it forever. We didn't realize his rolls were for if the poison worked, ours were for if we noticed. He finally rolled a one, the NPC noticed what he was doing, and the plot was exposed.
Turned out he was a spy working for the main bad NPC. When we asked why he didn't just try to kill us and not just those helping us, he said "what makes you think I haven't tried?" Lol
