D&D Shenanigans

[TDK]

So lately I've been playing a character in a solo campaign, with a friend DMing whom I taught to play DnD fairly recently. This is just practice because he's been asked to DM a game and he hasn't DMed before.

I've had this idea for a character based around summoning swarms for a while, so I made Joe, a gnome warlock with the Summon Swarm invocation. He has ranks in Profession (Beekeeper) and only ever summons swarms of bees. Later he branched into Druid, getting a giant bee animal companion.

Part of the point in this campaign was to show him just how far off track games often get from what the DM has planned.

I won't go into what he had planned, but so far this is what happened:

My character's motivation was to get an investment as a starter fund so he could start a honey business (he made some awesome honey. I later realized, given that I could summon bees at will, I could have them collect pollen and make honey, basically making honey through sheer force of will). The king was offering 5 gp each for goblin scalps (goblins had been killing livestock), so I headed out to collect some. I killed an injured one I found (stung it to death with bees) when Chyme, god of petty creatures, appears. (This is a creation of the DM's, he's actually a pretty interesting NPC. He's a demigod.)

He scolds me for brutally killing the 'innocent' goblin and casts a geas on me that will turn me into a rabbit if I don't go on a quest for him. The quest is to go stop some gnomes from tunneling under the forest and collapsing it.

I go up to the gnome tunnel and murder the guards*, immediately turning into a rabbit. Chyme shows up and yells at me and says I can live out my days as a rabbit.

*"Have you ever considered beekeeping?" "How do I do that?" "Here, hold this hive..."

With a newfound craving for carrots, I wonder into the farm of an old wizard who had grown weary of adventuring and took up agriculture. He was about to throw me out of his garden when he recognized a spark of intelligence in my bunny eyes and proceeded to break the spell on me. But in regaining my former size, I stumbled and accidentally broke his crystal ball.

He got real mad and sent me on a quest to get a new one, threatening that he would be scrying on me, etc.

Up to this point, this was according to the DM's plan. It was at this point everything tht happened afterward completely departed from his plans. As I told him, it was good improv experience.

At this point I went to the nearest town and found a jewelry shop (where I sold some honey to the owner), where I bought a crystal door knob. I had the bottom part cut off and sanded down, leaving me with a small ball of crystal. I took it back to the wizard, but that just made him mad. =P

So I went back to the town and asked the local mage (sold him some honey too) where I might acquire a crystal ball. He says some local goblins stole a crystal ball from him. So I head off to the goblin village. The guards raise their spears as I approach, but I show them I'm not armed and offer them honey. They fucking LOVE it and start fighting over the jar, so I walk in and talk to the chief, who speaks common. Basically I trade them all the honey I have (ten jars or so) for the crystal ball. All of the goblins are completely addicted to the honey at this point.

This was actually one of few parts where I was actually SUPPOSED to engage in combat in this campaign, and I solved it peacefully.

So I took the crystal ball back to the wizard and squared everything with him. From there I went back to the starting town, where I went to town hall looking for a loan. The accountant I talked to didn't like honey, but I demonstrated how much everyone loved it and got my loan. I set up a shop in the town, and went and gathered some bee hives and set up a deal with the goblins I talked to before. They would handle the beekeeping and I would pay them in honey.

Given how good the honey was, this quickly became a successful business. It was at this point that I heard about hives of giant bees in some valley to the north.

I had recently gained my first druid level, and my giant bee animal companion, so I took to the skies on Mike the Bee and flew to where the giant bee hive supposedly was. There was an illusion over the valley, but I saw through it and found the place. There were hives of ridiculous size and tons of flowers. I went into one of the hives, using wild empathy to make sure the bees didn't think I was a threat.

The bees all seemed very frightened, and as I got deeper, I found some dwarves. Long story short, the dwarves were subjugating the bees to use the honey to make mead. I freed the captive soldier bees and took back the hives with my new army of giant bees (and a few swarms of summoned bees, and maybe an eldritch blast or two).

It was at the beginning of this rebellion that I made the best reference ever.

Joe, you see, was raised by bees (silly backstory for a silly campaign). So when all the bees divebombed and killed all the dwarf guards but one, Joe floated slowly down on Mike. He looked the last dwarf straight in the eye and said. "LET. MY. PEOPLE. GO!"

(Yes, in this story, Joe is Moses but for Bees.)

I integrated this hive, with its preposterous amounts of honey, into my store. I now basically had an unlimited amount of honey. I acquired a bag of holding, using that to ferry huge amounts of honey back and forth.

When I got back to the small hives in the goblin village, though, I found it in ruins. The goblins were so entranced with the honey they neglected to defend their village. And the honey attracted bears, who killed the goblins. The hives themselves had collapsed into the earth because of the unchecked digging of the gnomes. But it appeared that once the hives fell into the tunnel, they had killed all of the gnomes, to my satisfaction. At this point Chyme appeared again, blaming me for all this.

I used my gnome spell like ability to speak with burrowing animals to ask a nearby mole where he had seen gnomes digging. I used this information to track down all the other gnome groups in the area. I was GOING to murder them but Chyme wouldn't leave me alone so I settled it peacefully.

After all of that, I moved my small hives (the small hives produced finer honey, so I sold that at an elevated price as the Top Shelf honey, whereas the less refined giant bee honey I sold as the normal, bottom shelf honey. The former was 10 gp a jar, the latter 3.)

I had a few more adventures starting honey shops in other cities, and a few more encounters with gnomes (Joe is really starting to hate gnomes), but that's basically where we stopped. For now.


During all of this, I did not once enter melee combat. Or even direct combat, really. I only actually killed anyone with bees, either summoned swarms or giant ones.

My new goal for this character is to ascend to godhood.

Joe, God of BEES.

This is partly because I want to kick Chyme's ass.

[Viridis]

(Yes, in this story, Joe is Moses but for Bees.)
[..]
Joe, God of BEES.

I love this and wish to hear more.

[Terisse]

Oi. Last campaign we got into was the beginning of epic level. To begin with, I was a Fire Gnome Evoker 23 (CL 25 with fire spells) . Barring that, we had each a half silver dragon cleric 24 and a fighter 23 (two different players, brother and sister in the campaign) and a Kenku Ranger 14/Shadowdancer 10, and just for backups a Changeling Rogue 13/Fatemaker 10. This is just background information.

We ended up taking some time off to go and visit the Plains of Ida in Ysgard, one of my personal favorite places to be, ever. Namely the fact that it's like a constant ren faire with at least 1 of every 3 days being an epic mass battlefield, with a guaranteed True Resurrection at sunrise each day. Needless to say, it's a gathering place of "We're gonna die!".

Sometime into the battle on the first day, I had a stupid, but funny idea. I set myself up with Levitate, got onto a large catapult and told them to lauch me, preparing my Rod of Burning Might (Fireball, Twin Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, Meteor Swarm, used at CL 23). In my other hand, simply a wand of fireball.

I spent a full minute flying across the battlefield and launching fireballs with my left hand and meteor swarms with my right. The phalanx of Dwarves took it the hardest being so close together. Unfortunately, a pyro evoker is of little use against the githyanki and the effing red dragons they work with... We barely got out alive, leaving the fatemaker to drag what was left off the field after bluffing them down with Ego Manifestation.

And that was just the first day.

[Odjn]

Originally Posted by Terisse

Oi. Last campaign we got into was the beginning of epic level. To begin with, I was a Fire Gnome Evoker 23 (CL 25 with fire spells) . Barring that, we had each a half silver dragon cleric 24 and a fighter 23 (two different players, brother and sister in the campaign) and a Kenku Ranger 14/Shadowdancer 10, and just for backups a Changeling Rogue 13/Fatemaker 10. This is just background information.

We ended up taking some time off to go and visit the Plains of Ida in Ysgard, one of my personal favorite places to be, ever. Namely the fact that it's like a constant ren faire with at least 1 of every 3 days being an epic mass battlefield, with a guaranteed True Resurrection at sunrise each day. Needless to say, it's a gathering place of "We're gonna die!".

Sometime into the battle on the first day, I had a stupid, but funny idea. I set myself up with Levitate, got onto a large catapult and told them to lauch me, preparing my Rod of Burning Might (Fireball, Twin Fireball, Delayed Blast Fireball, Meteor Swarm, used at CL 23). In my other hand, simply a wand of fireball.

I spent a full minute flying across the battlefield and launching fireballs with my left hand and meteor swarms with my right. The phalanx of Dwarves took it the hardest being so close together. Unfortunately, a pyro evoker is of little use against the githyanki and the effing red dragons they work with... We barely got out alive, leaving the fatemaker to drag what was left off the field after bluffing them down with Ego Manifestation.

And that was just the first day.

EYE PAIN

[RobinStarwing]

Originally Posted by TDK

So lately I've been playing a character in a solo campaign, with a friend DMing whom I taught to play DnD fairly recently. This is just practice because he's been asked to DM a game and he hasn't DMed before.

I've had this idea for a character based around summoning swarms for a while, so I made Joe, a gnome warlock with the Summon Swarm invocation. He has ranks in Profession (Beekeeper) and only ever summons swarms of bees. Later he branched into Druid, getting a giant bee animal companion.

Part of the point in this campaign was to show him just how far off track games often get from what the DM has planned.

I won't go into what he had planned, but so far this is what happened:

My character's motivation was to get an investment as a starter fund so he could start a honey business (he made some awesome honey. I later realized, given that I could summon bees at will, I could have them collect pollen and make honey, basically making honey through sheer force of will). The king was offering 5 gp each for goblin scalps (goblins had been killing livestock), so I headed out to collect some. I killed an injured one I found (stung it to death with bees) when Chyme, god of petty creatures, appears. (This is a creation of the DM's, he's actually a pretty interesting NPC. He's a demigod.)

He scolds me for brutally killing the 'innocent' goblin and casts a geas on me that will turn me into a rabbit if I don't go on a quest for him. The quest is to go stop some gnomes from tunneling under the forest and collapsing it.

I go up to the gnome tunnel and murder the guards*, immediately turning into a rabbit. Chyme shows up and yells at me and says I can live out my days as a rabbit.

*"Have you ever considered beekeeping?" "How do I do that?" "Here, hold this hive..."

With a newfound craving for carrots, I wonder into the farm of an old wizard who had grown weary of adventuring and took up agriculture. He was about to throw me out of his garden when he recognized a spark of intelligence in my bunny eyes and proceeded to break the spell on me. But in regaining my former size, I stumbled and accidentally broke his crystal ball.

He got real mad and sent me on a quest to get a new one, threatening that he would be scrying on me, etc.

Up to this point, this was according to the DM's plan. It was at this point everything tht happened afterward completely departed from his plans. As I told him, it was good improv experience.

At this point I went to the nearest town and found a jewelry shop (where I sold some honey to the owner), where I bought a crystal door knob. I had the bottom part cut off and sanded down, leaving me with a small ball of crystal. I took it back to the wizard, but that just made him mad. =P

So I went back to the town and asked the local mage (sold him some honey too) where I might acquire a crystal ball. He says some local goblins stole a crystal ball from him. So I head off to the goblin village. The guards raise their spears as I approach, but I show them I'm not armed and offer them honey. They fucking LOVE it and start fighting over the jar, so I walk in and talk to the chief, who speaks common. Basically I trade them all the honey I have (ten jars or so) for the crystal ball. All of the goblins are completely addicted to the honey at this point.

This was actually one of few parts where I was actually SUPPOSED to engage in combat in this campaign, and I solved it peacefully.

So I took the crystal ball back to the wizard and squared everything with him. From there I went back to the starting town, where I went to town hall looking for a loan. The accountant I talked to didn't like honey, but I demonstrated how much everyone loved it and got my loan. I set up a shop in the town, and went and gathered some bee hives and set up a deal with the goblins I talked to before. They would handle the beekeeping and I would pay them in honey.

Given how good the honey was, this quickly became a successful business. It was at this point that I heard about hives of giant bees in some valley to the north.

I had recently gained my first druid level, and my giant bee animal companion, so I took to the skies on Mike the Bee and flew to where the giant bee hive supposedly was. There was an illusion over the valley, but I saw through it and found the place. There were hives of ridiculous size and tons of flowers. I went into one of the hives, using wild empathy to make sure the bees didn't think I was a threat.

The bees all seemed very frightened, and as I got deeper, I found some dwarves. Long story short, the dwarves were subjugating the bees to use the honey to make mead. I freed the captive soldier bees and took back the hives with my new army of giant bees (and a few swarms of summoned bees, and maybe an eldritch blast or two).

It was at the beginning of this rebellion that I made the best reference ever.

Joe, you see, was raised by bees (silly backstory for a silly campaign). So when all the bees divebombed and killed all the dwarf guards but one, Joe floated slowly down on Mike. He looked the last dwarf straight in the eye and said. "LET. MY. PEOPLE. GO!"

(Yes, in this story, Joe is Moses but for Bees.)

I integrated this hive, with its preposterous amounts of honey, into my store. I now basically had an unlimited amount of honey. I acquired a bag of holding, using that to ferry huge amounts of honey back and forth.

When I got back to the small hives in the goblin village, though, I found it in ruins. The goblins were so entranced with the honey they neglected to defend their village. And the honey attracted bears, who killed the goblins. The hives themselves had collapsed into the earth because of the unchecked digging of the gnomes. But it appeared that once the hives fell into the tunnel, they had killed all of the gnomes, to my satisfaction. At this point Chyme appeared again, blaming me for all this.

I used my gnome spell like ability to speak with burrowing animals to ask a nearby mole where he had seen gnomes digging. I used this information to track down all the other gnome groups in the area. I was GOING to murder them but Chyme wouldn't leave me alone so I settled it peacefully.

After all of that, I moved my small hives (the small hives produced finer honey, so I sold that at an elevated price as the Top Shelf honey, whereas the less refined giant bee honey I sold as the normal, bottom shelf honey. The former was 10 gp a jar, the latter 3.)

I had a few more adventures starting honey shops in other cities, and a few more encounters with gnomes (Joe is really starting to hate gnomes), but that's basically where we stopped. For now.


During all of this, I did not once enter melee combat. Or even direct combat, really. I only actually killed anyone with bees, either summoned swarms or giant ones.

My new goal for this character is to ascend to godhood.

Joe, God of BEES.

This is partly because I want to kick Chyme's ass.

This whole thing is just something straight out of Slayers...*facepalms and Dragon Slaves*

[Pip Boy]

Recently played in a D&D campaign in which I played a monk. I used a lot of grappling attacks with this monk, taking advantage of my many powerful unarmed attacks on a grappled opponent (3.5 rules). At some point, we angered some druid in the forest because we killed so many of the poor forest animals, so he cast a curse on me that would cause me to permanently become the next animal I killed and live out the rest of my days as one of them. I immediately sought and killed a grizzly bear.

Not going to throw down all the numbers, but a grappling monk turned into a grizzly bear (getting all those size mod bonuses, str bonuses, and even Improved Grapple) was kind of a scary concept. Nearly every enemy we fought was pinned to the ground and viciously mauled by an intelligent ninja bear.

Eventually the rest of the party got frustrated that they couldn't understand me and got me a collar that let me communicate with other players within range, making me a telepathic ninja bear. Hilarity ensued.

[walkertexasdruid]

Originally Posted by Megaman FTW

Recently played in a D&D campaign in which I played a monk. I used a lot of grappling attacks with this monk, taking advantage of my many powerful unarmed attacks on a grappled opponent (3.5 rules). At some point, we angered some druid in the forest because we killed so many of the poor forest animals, so he cast a curse on me that would cause me to permanently become the next animal I killed and live out the rest of my days as one of them. I immediately sought and killed a grizzly bear.

Not going to throw down all the numbers, but a grappling monk turned into a grizzly bear (getting all those size mod bonuses, str bonuses, and even Improved Grapple) was kind of a scary concept. Nearly every enemy we fought was pinned to the ground and viciously mauled by an intelligent ninja bear.

Eventually the rest of the party got frustrated that they couldn't understand me and got me a collar that let me communicate with other players within range, making me a telepathic ninja bear. Hilarity ensued.

That is sooooooooo cool!

[tacticslion]

So I have this mage, with all 10's in his physical attributes. I have (of course) pulled weird and terrible rules to make him awkwardly awesome, so he ended up a bit of a better tracker than the ranger.

We were hunting a deadly boar. Since my guy had scent, could track well, and was so fast it's kind of silly (he's got a land speed of 45 - that's 5 less than a horse) I convinced the rest of the crew to hole up while I hunted the boar down (we were on a clock and didn't know if we could afford to wait for him to wander back on his own). I tracked that thing for two hours (game-time, not real time), until I finally smelled him. That, of course, meant it could smell me.

Now, we'd heard it was bad and deadly, but we didn't know what that meant, exactly. I figured it could smell me, but, I could still use a mind-blast like effect to hamper it somewhat. It made it's save. The save DC was 26. A boar - not a dire boar, not an awakened boar, not a were-boar, just an advanced friggin' boar - made a will DC of 26. I rolled initiative. It won. My character was a second level mage - granted a second level mage with lots of excess powers, seemingly nearly limitless spells per day, and other special features, but in hit points, merely a second level mage with a constitution of 10. It was prevented from running or charging me only because it couldn't see me, but came right up next to me. It was bigger than I was. I fled, trusting my excessive speed to save me. It had the same speed I did. And a better constitution. And thus proceeds The Chase.

And the constitution checks.

The GM ruled that since we were both taking two move actions per round over forested terrain, we'd have to make constitution checks as if we were running. The entire party knew I was dead. I knew I was dead. I couldn't survive an attack from this thing, and couldn't outrun it, and couldn't stop long enough to hit it with anything, otherwise I'd provoke attacks of opportunity...

So I rolled my first constitution check. It was a 20. The boar rolled... a 2. I rolled my second check. It was also a 20. The boar: 3. I rolled my third: 20. Boar: 2. And so on it went, until I outran the boar (barely) all the way to the trap my allies had stationed themselves at. I had tracked this thing for two hours, and my character rolled twenties all the way back to the forest clearing. Every check was a twenty. I tried three different dice.

I ran into the clearing shouting "booooaaaar! biiiiiiiiig!", with one round space between me and the boar, and dared to use a standard action to fly. The boar jumped with a natural twenty and attacked me with a natural one. It slammed into the tree I was headed towards (incidentally knocking that one down), and proceeded to make every will save I foisted upon it. We eventually brought it down, but we all agreed that I was destined to survive that fight. One of the frailest mages I've ever dared play, managed to survive an attack by the biggest, meanest boar I've ever fought. Without ever once succeeding with one of his spells.

It was hilarious.

EDIT:incidentally, he's only been hit three times in this campaign. Once was by a mite with a dart (1 damage). The second time was by some thorn trees he was scraping by (2 damage). The third time was by the bandit boss we just fought, with an arrow for 10 damage, meaning I almost died. He missed his first shot, and my character wasn't (by technicality) human, and it was the last round of a special thing that didn't let me be affected as if flat-footed, even when I was. Had any of those things been different, I'd be dead!

Also...

Originally Posted by Megaman FTW

a grizzly bear

This is brilliant. A grizzly is second best animal to become in DnD stat wise, only being eclipsed by the polar bear, and, if I remember correctly, that might be only because the latter gets hide bonuses in the snow. Really, it's got tremendous strength and constitution, fair dexterity, excellent natural hit dice, natural armor, attacks, and specials: it's the lycanthrope (edit: or, in this case, Polymorph-like effect) of choice! (especially for paladins, monks, and samurai, as it nets an auto-LG alignment!)

[TDK]

Oh, one more thing about Joe, god of bees. We did the most basic possible stat rolling method. 4d6 drop the lowest for each stat, rolling them in order. First thing I roll is str, second thing I roll is dex, etc, I don't get to rearrange them.

My highest was a 12. My stats were 9, 9, 14, 8, 10, 10, including the modifiers for my being a gnome.

And I STILL owned.

Fuck yeah Bees.

[Nikose Tyris]

My group has been up to nefarious hijinks again.

Previously the paladin had 'captured' (read as: kidnapped) an enemy soldier, where we dragged him to our lair to question him. The paladin in question has touch of golden ice, and promptly iced the guy to 0 Dex.

Upon getting him there, the Half-Elf Cleric played 'good cop' while the Drow Warmage and the Imaskari Wizard played 'bad cop.' At one point, the wizard force-fed sand into the thirsty soldier's mouth.

we eventually set him up so that it would appear we expected him to die, only to make a narrow escape and flee back to his army- missing a foot, and with faked information we'd dropped to him 'accidentally'. "Let me kill him, or I swear I won't have House Dhuurniv turn on the Banites!" being one of them.

Then they went to rally the support of the local circle of druids, and the fey of the woodlands. Ended up having to defeat an Advanced Winter Wolf of Legend, with 280 HP.

The Paladin expected to tank it, since they recognized it just as 'A very big winter wolf.'

2 Rounds later the paladin was pinned to the ground and nearly dead, when the drow dropped a darkness sphere on the fight, then a dancing lights to distract other wolves nearby observing the dominance struggle, while the wizard and shadowcaster threw scorching rays into the melee, weakening the winter wolf.

Then the Paladin remembered he was a grey guard, and let loose a Lay on Hands to deal 50 damage to the wolf, killing it.

He then went over and strictly lectured us regarding cheating, while declaring a moon dog the leader of the pack of wolves.

The Moonshadow Pack.

A veritable army of wolves, 150 count strong. Containing 4 legendary wolves, and a large assortment of Dire Wolves.

This fight is beginning to get interesting.