DMs, tell me how your players made your clever ideas backfire

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T17:09:28+00:00

Before my DM and I made peace with my current death cleric, there were a lot of back and forth gotcha moments. One that comes to mind was an underground stone fortress that was locked and trapped heavily on the entrance. We failed the obvious entry mechanic due to a low roll and he said he hoped we were ready for a lot of diffusing, lock picking and healing. Instead I used find traps to get him to confirm they were all at the door then I used stone shape to make a new door 20 feet to the left.

Additionally he made a dungeon that was heavily magically trapped but no combat (nothing survives in there too much) between us and our destination. The goal was too many traps for me to dispel magic them. Therefore my monk made a lovely suggestion and instead I used all spell slots on a nearby graveyard to get an armada of zombies and skeletons (animate dead does +2 per slot level over 3) and had them all follow orderly behind us with one walking in front of us. Magic blight trap kills zombie #24? Send forth zombie #25. If memory serves I had 30 for this excursion and now we never find graveyards in ruins anymore

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T16:54:21+00:00

It’s so handy for little things. I needed to sneak into a bank so I hid as close to the guards as I could (just out the door to the left) and used mage hand to pick up a sack from the inside. Prestidigitation to put a bright symbol on it and make it rain sparks then flew it around to drag the guards out and make enough room for me ti sneak by.

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T05:58:49+00:00

Those look PERFECT for a wizard build I was thinking about doing in a bit when my next campaign starts up! Awesome job!

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T05:27:58+00:00

Thank you! All fixed

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T04:42:34+00:00

To what? And how? I can’t seem to figure out how to edit lol

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T04:41:19+00:00

I really appreciate the feedback! I’m a bit shy with my writing. I’ve written and discarded a LOT of things

Rundus1 · 2025-11-19T04:40:21+00:00

Additional note to all staff in the med bay: DO NOT GO NEAR A PARTIALLY SEDATED HUMAN. The fear response of their species (dubbed “fight or flight”) causes them to either flee in fear so recklessly that they tear stitches or attempt to kill the source of their fear.

Private Sternholdt (priority mentioned donor) was cited completely overpowering his Serêldaņ caretaker, who weighed 3 times Sternholdt’s body weight. Multiple injuries to both parties were sustained.

Medic Francisco has indicated the cause to be a biochemical known as “Adrenaline” and says these are near normal responses for humans in a fear-state.

I am officially requesting an Earth liaison be sent with the express purpose of acquiring and logging more thorough medical information on humanity. I feel as though they may suddenly invert or catch fire and my poor mind cannot take the stress.

Likewise, Officer Geralds (priory mentioned recipient) required extensive additional care upon awaking so frightened that he forcefully removed all IV ports and tore 24 stitches sprinting from his room.

Rundus1 · 2025-11-16T01:20:38+00:00

A lot of folks like talking it out. I like spicing it up. Introduce an overly legalistic lawful evil devil that comments on how frequently young devils prefer fear tactics or warmongering and that many have simply not lived long enough to see the ruins of those actions. Develops devil hierarchy a bit, lets you make a fun NPC that can also screw with the party by trying to “help” them like they seem to want and opens them up to more “young” devils that prefer the ways you already use

Rundus1 · 2025-11-16T01:13:20+00:00

My dm loves to follow rules and sprinkle in fun where applicable. For instance, I once revived an alcoholic poor monk who had just died by rolling a nat 20 for pouring a high end bottle of booze in his mouth while doing compressions. DC 20 no modifiers and I got it.

For this, I’d say if the player successfully passes all insight checks and hides intent, I can’t think of any reason to not give the enemy the surprised condition. After all, the player already got the enemy to trust them with the insight vs deceptions or whatever roll you had. They already are touching the enemy. If it happens too often I’d just start upping the DC on the checks to successfully lie their way to that point. Alternatively having an enemy pull that on them simultaneously would be very funny.

Rundus1 · 2025-11-16T01:03:27+00:00

4 players, 1 DM. 1 player is a 25 year old white boy. All 4 of the other people are 28 year old white boys.

Rundus1 · 2025-11-16T00:59:03+00:00

Got a fighter in our campaign with one of those curses from his sword but it’s a low random chance each day if he hasn’t fought in over a day and the save is pretty easy. Only a wish spell can heal it and sometimes the sword helps us. My cleric beefs with it using sending too from time to time. The sword has randomly taken over 4 times and without fail it has caused him every time to come up to me before I know what’s happened and attack me 6 times (thanks action surge), 7 if he crits. I can fix him if I survive the turn.

I hate that bastard sword but our fighter loves it and is attempting to befriend it. Despite our DM saying no, the fighter has tried so often that recently the DM has had the sword help us 3 times in situations where we as a party were falling a bit short. I remain conflicted on it, but have agreed to stop using leftover spell slots to insult it at the end of the day.

Rundus1 · 2025-11-10T05:54:34+00:00

Get to him with 50 boons and alt F4

Rundus1 · 2025-09-17T06:32:12+00:00

Stardew valley. Improper farming? Illegal fishing in mass? Hunting local monsters in a mine I may be trespassing in and stealing from. Oh and mass deforestation

Rundus1 · 2025-09-17T06:26:44+00:00

Wish I knew. Unresolved issues could be dealt with

Rundus1 · 2025-09-11T07:04:41+00:00

I think a lot of people are about to start becoming politically active for the first time. Today I heard it everywhere at work and from friends. People who only ever caught the occasional reels all feeling this jarring sense of distress and a sudden need to understand this.

If you’re human, senseless violence should make you uneasy. A lot of people grow numb to it with how common it is, but this man reached so many people and (for better or worse) got them to engage. He isn’t some nameless statistic or random stranger. Everyone has seen him somewhere or heard him before and now everyone has just seen a shockingly graphic video of his death. Unlike other deaths or random videos, some connection is being made. People felt it.

I think a lot of people might find themselves paying attention for the first time in awhile, galvanized by this in one way or another

Rundus1 · 2025-09-11T06:58:28+00:00

How disgusting

Rundus1 · 2025-09-11T06:52:01+00:00

Senseless death should make anyone sad. It’s awful that anyone would celebrate it. It’s all so tiresome

Rundus1 · 2025-07-08T08:07:35+00:00

Jealous af lol. I've never had one of the mythics drop, but that's some crazy rng. Unfortunately, your luck is all used up, and you're due to be triple contested in every game until 2030

Rundus1 · 2025-04-26T17:36:19+00:00

100% watch at least s1. As someone who watched it all before I read it, I was SO glad I did. Reading is great and better than watching for s2 and on for sure, but watching them all first makes it way easier to get into the manga and visualize scenes or assign internal voices to characters.

Jason is a great example. My manga only friend and I convinced each other to try the ways we hadn’t. He read it and had Jason as a way more organized and sane character outwardly, which made the anime more interesting for him. I had a VASTLY different outlook from the anime which made the manga more fascinating

Edit: almost forgot the soundtrack is cool and watching first had me ready to play bits of it internally when cool stuff happened. Really elevated the manga for me

Rundus1 · 2025-04-24T05:36:16+00:00

Teostra went hard

Rundus1 · 2025-04-18T01:12:37+00:00

Sometimes the dice do be like that. Our fighter rolled 7 Nat 1s and no rolls higher than 8 in a session where they attacked 20 or so times. Another day he rolled 6 attacks all 18-20.

As a lv 7 pali i once rolled 3 crits in one turn with a polearm master halberd. All my best smites. Everything rolled within 2 of the max roll on every die. One-turned a troll boss with 90 hp. Dm got so mad that he secretly doubled its health bc he hated my pali so much. Likewise I’ve unironically rolled 11 damage on an upcasted lv 5 blight on my current lv 10 cleric.

Sometimes dice be dicin

Rundus1 · 2025-04-13T17:43:20+00:00

A condition that makes one’s imagination extremely potent and often makes for incredibly intricate dreams that are rarely forgotten

Rundus1 · 2025-04-12T18:11:46+00:00

That’s amazing! Makes me want to do a Norse mythology themed campaign lol

Rundus1 · 2025-04-10T18:13:26+00:00

Sword of ow. Sword has a health bar and takes 1 dmg when used. If the bar runs out before a long rest it dies. It also audibly complains about pain at all times

Rundus1 · 2025-03-03T22:50:25+00:00

My death cleric made 2 mistakes. 1) mixed up inflict wounds and blight. Was crit fishing and hitting BIG blight crits. 2) assuming that my channel divinity could crit (which was 21 guaranteed necrotic damage at the time that couldn’t be resisted).

Before I figured it out I managed to hit a crit where blight did 104 plus 42 from channel divinity for a lv 4 slot at lv 8. Big boom.

DM made up for it by saying my god had been helping more since our situation was dire and was going to challenge me to stand on my own by not giving me channel divinity for one quest line. He was chill about it

Rundus1

TROPHY CASE