Cheezburger
I was so proud of my players. It was my last session of PAX Unplugged 2023. I was running yet another round of Slumbering Titan for AAW Games, and it was yet another opening scene. Being a bit of a bore, His Majesty intoned the following to the assembled adventurers:
In ancient times the gods placed titans to live among men and guard their kingdoms from primordial demonic hordes. As the demons were driven from the Material Plane, the titans stood guard over the rift locations to ensure they did not return. Centuries have passed, and Our lands have prospered. Yet we grew complacent. So did the titans. They have fallen into a deep, dreamless slumber. But now a new rift has opened. A vanguard of lesser demons spreads terror and suffering throughout the land. Will you brave heroes awaken one of the titans before more horrors descend upon the land?
I must have run this sucker a dozen times now. It’s a great con adventure, with Level 8 heroes facing off against a freaking balor. Big minis, big damage, and set piece combat encounters. But usually (presumably because it’s a con game), players will skip right past the, “Is there anything you wish to do before you set out?” part of the adventure. That isn’t what happened this time.
“What can you tell us about our foes?” said the warlock.
“Any advice for this ritual of Titan Awakening?” asked the bard.
“Do you have any weapons or magics that might aid us in this quest?” said the rogue.
The heroes were rewarded for their perspicacity. They learned that demons have magic resistance. They learned that they could roll Perform (dance) instead of Arcana during the wakening ritual. And they got the king’s own flametongue to borrow for the battle. In other words, they took the time to research the foe and the encounter. They got the info they needed to succeed. And I wonder if you’d have done the same?
For today’s discussion, tell us your own encounters with monsters’ weaknesses. It’s likely not something so esoteric as “break the CRYPTic Transceiver™ so that your enemies succumb to their internet addition distractibility,” but I’m guessing you’ve got some good ones. So hit us with all your finest silver bullets down in the comments!
Made this cursed, abandoned castle once. In one of the towers was a banshee whose body turned out to be the bundle of rags seen fluttering beneath the window; hung there by her father on the eve of her wedding, rather than share any of his power. She could only be calmed if the party promised to (and then did) inter her remains in the family crypt, and followed them down as her own weeping funeral procession.
These are the moments that I want Haunts to deliver:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/haunts/
The problem is that the info needed to uncover the correct ritual is often impossible to discover. So how did you convey to your players that “inter her remains in the family crypt” was the thing to do?
I had her mistake the party for her groom-to-be (the classic confused ghost stuff) then slightly re-flavored her wail ability to have her ranting about her fate; and when she got to the part where she still hung there, “un-burried, un-mourned, un-remembered,” the light clicked on, at least for the two groups I ran the encounter for.
I also did run her more like a haunt; having her only stand there and wail, and relying on my party’s lack of knowledge of 5e to not know she could only use the wail once.
I was running one of my favorite well-worn missions for a new group of players. In one particular spot, the PCs can choose one of three paths through a dungeon currently being ransacked by other groups also searching for the macguffin. Unbeknownst to them, A) leads to gnolls, B) leads to ogres, and C) leads to bugbears. The gnome bard (who also spoke Goblin) made his Stealth and Perception rolls to sneak up on the bugbear door and listen in while the monsters spoke to each other in Goblin, complained about their lousy jobs, and delivered a ton of exposition about the other “incompetent” monsters they had to work with. Skip ahead to the whole party trying (and failing) to sneak up on the door and attack with surprise. They can hear that the bugbears have fallen silent and likely know that someone is approaching. I’d run this mission many times and had seen similar scenarios play out with one side or the other sometimes gaining advantage in the fight (usually the bugbears).
That’s when the bard had another moment of genius.
Bard: “Ghost Sound can mimic any sound, up to the level of twenty men, right?”
DM: “RAW, yes. How does making even more noise help you.”
Bard: “Can twenty men equal two or three ogres stomping and talking loudly on their way back from the kitchen?”
DM: “I suppose so. Do you speak Giantish?” (I already knew the answer was “no.”)
Bard: “Do bugbears speak Giantish?”
DM: (admiring her cleverness) “Point taken. Make a Bluff check.”
Bard: (rolls a NAT 20)
DM: “Okay, you hear the monsters relax, start complaining again, and brainstorming new ways to trick the ogres into wandering to another part of the dungeon.” (The bugbears suspected nothing until the PCs burst through the door in a surprise round.)
TLDR: The party actually listened to the monsters’ gripe session, then made a helluva lotta noise to actually catch them by surprise.
That’s so good. I love when players stop playing their mechanics and start playing like clever heroes. My current GM self-improvement project is trying to figure out how to evoke more of that in my games.
A short encounter with a (secretly) injured bear. Healing its wounded paw would calm its anger, ending the encounter peacefully and instantly. Ironically, the party with a healing obsessed cleric, who literally went around healing his enemies regularly, was *not* the one to figure this out.
Now hit us with the all-important detail: How *did* the party figure it out?
Nothing too exciting, I’m afraid. Clues in the descriptions of its actions, combined with the fact that they could probably tell I was reluctant to have them fight to the death with an innocent animal.
You bet your…ahem. Yes, I have done the same. Skill use, NPC interaction, roleplaying, and planning are *ALWAYS* rewarded. The reward might be Sheer Terror! ™, but it’s a reward.
I DM an on-and-off 2E Al-Qadim campaign for the Friday Night Gaming Group. The cleric defused the big fight scene with an enslaved dao genie by evangelizing. It worked. It worked so well, so often, he’s created a religious movement, in campaign.
Oh I love that. Letting the world respond to the players…
Ya know, that flametongue in today’s rant didn’t exist until the players ask. I think that’s the advantage of TRPGs. You’re allowed to “glitch the matrix” and change the world at the service of player agency.
A long running villain/henchwoman in one of my campaigns were a high ranking devil. She was cunning and clever, as well as brutal in battle. Even at high levels, her presence in a battle could be a game changer for the party.
So they exploited her greatest weakness. The fact that she utterly, utterly loathed the party bard, and would enter an almost berserker rage whenever she saw her. Due to said bard utterly humiliating her the first time the party met her (By having a Looney Tunes style chase scene with her). So whenever they knew they were going to run into her, they basically just made the Bard bait her around, while she got angrier and angrier at it.
I cannot tell you how hard I’m picturing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcWxQUMLsLA
I’m reminded of the time my party exploited a 10ft deep pool of water while fighting two paladins in heavy metal armor. Lots of drowning checks were made and lightning spells cast. Our poor DM didn’t expect this and ended up mourning the fate of his cool encounter while simultaneously trying to keep that in mind for other encounters.
It didn’t help, later on the party fought a black dracolich in its lair and we weaponised lightning again to make a chemical reaction with the very acid it spawned around it.
I am reminded of my favorite Genshin tactic:
https://upload-os-bbs.mihoyo.com/upload/2021/01/20/82446591/1d58385fb640fa526f06cdbb9a3e52ed_5349809269051996245.png
If I’ve got the correct person and campaign, I actually remember the first time the lightning trick was used! We were playing the 5e starter adventure and killed a green dragon in a similar way, using a lighting bolt spell scroll and our waterskins.
Was it an instant TKO for cleverness?
DM ruled that since it came from a spell, the lightning stuck around in the water. So every time the dragon’s front legs hit the ground, ZAP! It took a couple rounds to kill it like that iirc, so not quite instant. Surprisingly, I can’t recall anyone getting hit with its breath weapon; the dm was still pretty new at it so they might have just forgotten.
Nah, you have the right person. Dragon died cause it stood up on hide legs for a better angle, missed with the breath weapon, and hit the water again when it went bach down on four legs. I had been hoping to get at least one of you guys but you all rolled too well XD
I never had a character say “I can haz cheezburger”
but I did have one who’d make supper in camp and call out “Cheebugah-Cheebugah-Cheebugah !!” when it was ready 😉
As is tradition. 😀
No Coke, Pepski !! 😉
Oh, one subversion in a character I made for a contest. Futility was made for the Nope! round of Villainous Competition, where the special ingredient for the round was that your villain had to be capable of shutting the PCs down, negating what they were trying to do, or otherwise saying “Nope!” to them.
Futility had undead immunities, plant immunities, and worst of all, swarm immunities, and at the end of the day was immune to basically everything but fire and cold damage. The catch was, if she ever did take damage (presumably fire or cold), she would enter a Rage… and she had the Blazing Berserker and Frozen Berserker feats, which made her immune to fire and cold while raging. And she stayed in Rage until she or the person who damaged her was dead. The actual ‘silver bullet’ was trapping her with force cage or cave-ins and escaping to figure out a better plan.
In the story section, this ended up being an ubercharger with a custom lance that dealt fire damage instead of piercing, letting him do hundreds of damage in a single strike. They also unintentionally utilized the other method of dealing with her: let her kill the person who most recently damaged her, ending her Rage so the next in line can take a chunk out of her HP, rinse and repeat until victory or TPK.
I’ll also note that I screwed up. You can’t put Regeneration on a character with no Con score. The build does not work as written. I still like the story sections and character concept, though (it’s not often you get to see an enemy made out of a swarm of vampiric roses, like a plant-based T-1000). Maybe I’ll revamp it some day.
http://bit.ly/2XGBURC
Oh, I forgot that link is from my free trial of bit.ly. It leads to a single post version of the contest entry, but I know no-one want’s to click on a mysterious/unidentifiable link; here’s the full version:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23920484&postcount=63
“I’m a distraction”
Not “I can haz distraction”?! I’m disappointed in you.
I actually roleplay my Tabaxi as cats: CE psychotic killers who love torturing their enemies to death and see killing as a game.
Not to worry. I’m disappointed in myself all the time. 😀
…
:'(
In a D&D game, we were out to get a baron who we suspected / were guided by a communal patron entity that they were doing some bad ritual things to prolong their life and had to be dealt with.
We snuck into their mansion and found a room, guarded by a deadly trap spread a super potent cloud of Dust of Dryness, one that could petrify and dessicate living creatures. After disarming the trap we found the barons room of evil ritual stuff, complete with an altar and a bowl of blood in it. Our warlock experimentally cast Sacred Flame on it and we figured out that it was linked somehow to the baron, and hurt him remotely, leaving only a tiny bit of blood in the bowl.
My character then, on a hunch, carefully scooped some of the dust of dryness and poured it into what little blood was left in the bowl. The result was a ‘vortex-like effect that left behind a clumped bead’. We then ran away through a window as guards tried to break in after us, making sure to steal whatever ritual documents there were, steal the bowl and destroy his altar before jumping out a window into the night.
Our DM told us after the session ‘I know I like giving you stuff and that you often work with things in your environment, but I didn’t expect you to drain a 5ft. square of blood out of the baron.
I’ve yet to find out what the consequences of this stunt will be / have been. Did I mention my character is also Chaotic Good?
A, a Positive encounter with weakness, and the apocryphal event that made me love playing clerics, which I’m all but sure I’ve mentioned on this site before)
The GM has dropped my light cleric and a defensively built paladin into a room while the rest of the party is trying to break through the door, expecting us to make a desperate stand against the hordes of the dead while the party fought to reach us. Unfortunately for the GM, I am playing a Light domain cleric, not a Life cleric. The channel divinity’s bonus versus undead swept through the room, obliterating most, if not all, of the weak undead in the room, leaving a low enough population of enemies that me and the paladin could easily handle them.
B, a negative encounter with weaknesses)
The party is a small group of new guards, exploring a serial killer’s hideout. We enter a room, and a swarm of strange creatures spill out to attack us. I, seeing that they seem to be coated in a flammable substance, have the brilliant idea to summon a fire mephit into the room.
I was correct, they WERE flammable.
Extremely flammable. They exploded. All of them, creating a chain reaction of explosions that tore through our entire party, leaving us heavily damaged (The mephit, who was immune to fire damage, was entirely unharmed, and very amused.)
That mephit surely won the “Funniest Summoning Story” contest back in its own plane…
On the one hand I’d probably *think* “We should at least do some knowledge checks on these kinds of foes before we fight them.” But in the moment I’d probably push the thought to the side because I’ve practically been trained that this is an unrewarded behavior. The majority of my experiences in the past involving trying to roll for monster knowledge have been met with one form or another of “that’s a waste of time” either by the response I’d get or just the basically useless information I’d get.
Even more because as a GM I’ve often tried a variety of ways to include monster knowledge checks as part of my custom rules, sometimes making them just so I can put them in front of the players so they know it’s a thing that exists and I encourage, only to be met with them largely completely ignoring those things even when I build in a mechanical advantage to doing so on top of the useful tactical information (and hopefully enjoyable monster lore).
They got told to break into dance at the ritual, and got given a sword with flame effect on it.. when Balors are notoriously known as fire demons, and pretty much immune to fire
I’m not entirely sure the king wasn’t in on it, tbh
I had a rather fun one with my Beast barbarian when we faced some kidn of angel. I immediately opened up with a salvo of blows, using my Infectious Rage for bonus psychic damage. Turns out he was like, 3x weak to psychic damage as I burned through all his legendary resistances in a single turn, leaving him wide open for caster shenanigans
I was running a campaign a while back, and I as the DM didn’t realize one of my characters had taken the spell “sense weakness.” I was caught completely off guard when they used it on an early skeleton encounter.
The book I was working off of didn’t have anything useful to go off of, but I still wanted to reward them for actually trying to engage beyond just stabbing. Mercifully, that spell just says “the vulnerability of a single opponent” without clarifying it has to be, you know, a stat, so they learned that particular skeleton had a deathly fear of cats.
Did that come up much in the actual fight? No
Did it cause them to bond with that skeleton and remember it? Absolutely.
And now they really lean into exploring the world and finding those potentially useful details! Probably too much, actually. Never had to pull out the Mohs hardness scale as a reference chart until that group came along…