Literal Magic
Way back in Throw Anything, we talked about willfully obtuse rules readings. When Cleric and Sorcerer were having a staff-measuring contest in In-Your-End-O!, we talked about in-game innuendo. But today we’re talking about something truly special. We’re talking about those times when the puns are so bad, so groan-inducing, and yet so maddeningly on-point, that (rules be damned!) you can’t help but insert them into your game. And if you’re anything like me, these moments are designed expressly to torment your players.
So there they were, lost in a maze of slot canyons with only a kobold sherpa for a guide. The little fellow wasn’t much for Common, and the party wizard had only half-learned the local pidgin. The only solution was to rely upon pantomime and guesswork.
“Danger,” hazarded the wizard.
The kobold nodded.
“Death?” he asked.
The kobold licked its own eye in affirmation.
“You’re saying that there are traps.”
This was a kobold after all, so it stood to reason that he would be an expert on trapsmithing. After a bit more of the charades game, the party deduced that there was a specific kind of trap in store. There were a number of deadfalls up ahead, and so everyone started looking out for tripwires and precariously balanced stones.
They managed to avoid the first couple of pressure plates, and I was beginning to fear that they might make it out unscathed. Probability is a fickle mistress though, and the natural 1 finally came around. The rocks, when they started falling, weren’t exactly rocks though. They were skeletons woven together into dense balls of bone, and these misshapen things crawled their way toward the party even after the initial falling-object damage.
“Deadfalls?” asked the party.
I could only giggle in reply. I believe they threw a coaster at me.
So what about the rest of you guys? Have you ever given into temptation and thrown a pun-based encounter at your party? Can you top mine? Let’s hear all about your vilest wordplay down in the comments!
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Changeling is ripe for such riffing. My general rule for players attempting to obtain Goblin Fruit is that the hedge always has it, and it generally requires two to three skill checks of middling difficulty. But I have found a lot of ways to dress that system up. The most punny follows.
The player comes to a small clearing in the thorns where they can see a fountain of beautiful crystal water at the other end of. In the thorns, they can hear almost frenzied muttering in Latin, though they do not see what is causing it. Deciding to be safe, they attempt to quietly sneak to a rock near the center of the clearing. Dice are rolled and the player ties the hidden beast. Just as he reaches the rock, a large human like eye opens in what looked like a vine, sweeping the clearing as the muttering stops. After a moment, the eye closes and the muttering resumes. Following the eye, the player can make out what appears to be a giant mantis. A praying mantis.
Had a GM who turned the tables on me by using hobgoblins with clocks on their chests that ran up and exploded on people. That’s right, Time bombs. Bonus points because the explosions didn’t do damage, but instead acted as the Contract Flickering Hours and threw the target 12 hours forward in time.
Love the image of a mantis in Franciscan friars’s robes. It feels straight out of Xanth.
Y’know, I wasn’t sure what it was that hooked me about this particular comic until you mentioned Xanth. It’s clearly that you are a man of taste! And probably taste much like a man!
And then there’s Demon, where reality-altering puns are an actual Exploit.
Brilliant. I need to find a way to use some of the spells from the rollover in a game.
My group started with “prestidigitation” and “lighting bolt,” then continued riffing for a solid 10 minutes while Strahd impatiently waited for us to resume the combat. Some of the funniest mess I’ve experienced at the table in years.
It’s not so much of pun-based encounters, more like constantly punning around so much that when my character died and I rolled a nonpunning character, they actually mentioned that the lack of puns is disturbing. (I think I played well on the irritable yet lovable halfling with a Charisma score of 19…)
On the other hand, we renamed Prestidigitation to Press The Vegetation, because that makes more sense and easier to pronounce. I’ve yet to convince the DM that its effects should also be updated…
DRUIDS HATE HIM! CLICK HERE TO UPDATE YOUR SPELL EFFECT!
Someone played a paladin. I really wanted to make a “The paladin falls” pun, so I pulled out a plethora of enemies who wanted to knock the PCs off of things, throw them out of high windows, fly them up into the air and drop them, and so on. To be fair, of course, I targeted them all equally.
I took me 8 or 9 levels of trying, but I finally got to make my pun when a white dragon smacked the lucky fool (who’d miraculously dodged every other attempt on his footing up to that point) into a 200 ft. deep chasm at a moment when the sorcerer (who’d caught on to the fact that enemies seemed strangely too keen on knocking them off of things) was slightly too unconscious to cast father fall.
I hope that there were a suitable amount of groans all ’round the table. And also that you successfully dodged the objects that they threw at you.
Yes, and no. In that order.
Someone on r/DMDadJokes made an adventure called “The Pungeon” at some point, and I really want to run it one day! Mechanics include that whenever a player groans at a pun their character has to make a will/WIS save or take a point of madness (you don’t reveal this to the players though, so they aren’t aware what’s causing the will saves or what the consequence is initially).
I also really want to run Madness of the Rat King for the final pun of that adventure. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s free on DriveThruRPG if you want to take a look.
Nice! Looks like I’ve got some reading to do. My group includes a punster and a pun-hater, so I think it could be good fun in my group especially.
Not puns per say, but one of my friends is playing in a 5E campaign where the DM has gifted him with a homebrew magic item called the Ring of the Grammarian. Once per day, it allows him to add, remove, or replace one letter in the name of a spell and change its effects accordingly. Every time he levels up enough to unlock a new spell level, we sit down with Microsoft Word and write up a list of every modified spell we can think of for his new spells. My favorite so far has to be changing Beacon of Hope to Bacon of Hope.
I bet it tastes of maple syrup and unbridled optimism.
How do you determine the effects though? Do you just wing it?
A combination of Hero’s Feast and Beacon of Hope for Bacon of Hope I assume.
I’m not in that campaign myself, so I’m not entirely sure. However, I’m good friends with both the mentioned player and the DM and discuss the campaign with them often, so from what I understand, when he uses a new effect, he and the DM determine what exactly it does and the DM works out the specific mechanics. Thereafter, the effect remains the same if he decides to cast the same modified spell again. In the rare case that he turns one spell into another already existent one (such as my friend’s favorite trick of turning the cantrip Light into the 6th-level spell Blight), the spell just functions as it does normally.
After the first Magic Missal (prayer book to the face!) I think I’d be tempted to glue an oversized paperclip to a miniatures base, stick some googly eyes on it and attach a speech balloon that says “It looks like you’re trying to be funny, would you like some help with that?”
I realise this seems meaner than I hoped, but I like the joke enough to post it anyway. No insult to your friends is intended, I swear.
Any chance you could give a link to it? I kinda want to see the pungeon now lol
I think you meant to reply to Jarric. I found this thread, but I’m not sure it’s the one he’s talking about:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DMDadJokes/comments/5kkbz1/pun_based_dungeon/
This was the one I was talking about: https://imgur.com/gallery/r7uEu
No pun-related plot-points, but my Paladin (being a father of 3) absolutely loved puns. His steed hated puns. I guess he was too busy horsing around to appreciate them.
What was your steed?
Warhorse. His name was Diamond. He was your stereotypical majestic steed with a shiny white coat. He at one point managed to help me win a Fey dance-off through dressage. (Horse ballet. It’s an Olympic sport for some reason)
Heh. Imagine if you needed a resurrection spell. I bet that noble and self-sacrificing steed is worth at least 1,000 gp.
He’s a Paladin Steed, so he doesn’t die, merely poofs. He can be brought back with a 2nd level paladin spell and 10 minutes. He’s been poof’d many times.
Oh, that was right over my head.
Once, we were introduced by a bunch of enthusiastic villagers to the legends of the Straw Knight. The villagers had a tradition of building a dragon made out of straw for the knight to valiantly take down every year.
We sat around for the event, as we have a party member who’s particularly enthusiastic about knighthood. In typical D&D fashion, the straw dragon came to life and we helped take it down.
So we got to meet the Straw Knight from up close. It was actually a lifeless suit of armor filled with straw, riding on an intelligent donkey. The valiant steed was, in reality, the actual knight.
His name was Hote.
Hote, the donkey. Donkey Hote.
It was a great session.
Nice! Dig the dragon in any way resemble a windmill?
In Vietnamese, Straw Hero is the euphemism for Bully.
I do enjoy pun-ishing players with jokes; fortunately, my martial arts skills prevents them from interrupting with a punch-line. I think that the cause of groan-worthy puns is some sort of infection in the Humorous, as ever since our serious player’s broken arm healed, he’s become quite hand-y with puns.
One such example of my DM-puns: I needed to create a dwarven necromancer with some undead servants, and so I created Snow Dwarf and the Seven Wights. He had a “soul as black as ebony, hands as red as the rose (due to all the blood), and skin as white as snow”.
I hope the wights whistled while they worked.
Hmmmm, I may have to do a necromantic take on the Ziegfriend & Roy shows where they use Wight Tigers….
One of my campaigns that fell apart had a king who at his coronation took the throne name “The King Formerly Known As Prince”
Was the king’s father resurrected and the monarch then needed to abdicated and take the name “The Prince Formerly Known As The King Formerly Known As Prince”?
Sorry i can’t resist 🙂
There is no GM on Earth that can make that coronation announcement with a straight face.
Oh, and I also made this thing, the Blaster Wyrm:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23544950&postcount=27
Though it hasn’t been playtested and I think the spell-like abilities need some tweaking
Make sure to note the damage type on the breath weapon. Right now we’ve got “fire and storm force winds,” but i don’t know if that’s game rules or fluff. I’d think that it would be bludgeoning damage if we’re talking about winds.
The strengths of wind noted on the breath weapon table (which is on the beneath the rest of the dragon’s stats because the GITP forum ate half of the post the first time) correspond to the different forces of wind noted in severe winds table in the “Wilderness Adventures” section of the Dungeon Master’s Guide (page 95 in the 3.5e DMG; I don’t know where it would be in the Pathfinder rulebook). Basically it can cause creatures up to a given size (determined by wind severity) to be knocked over or blown away.
Here’s the corresponding table in the SRD
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/weather.htm#winds
I figured out what you meant, but it takes a minute to process as-is. The problem is in the word “force,” which is also a damage type. Consider using the copper dragon rule as a reference to increase clarity:
By the same token, I would consider making them two separate effects. There’s plenty of precedent of “two types of breath weapon,” but getting an add-on in addition to the damage seems very strong.
Cool critter in general though! I quite like the concept, as it reminds me of the “divine wind” from the Temeraire series.
Also these:
Figurine of Wondrous Power (Paper Tiger): When activated this paper-mache figurine becomes a tiger that prows around and defends a person or area designated by the user. It is only for show or intimidation however; it deals damage as a housecat, flees from water (rain or the brandishing of buckets at it cause it to automatically become panicked) and fire (will not come within 5 feet of an open flame; brandishing a torch at it or casting fire spells where it can see cause it to become panicked), and is returned to statue form and must stay that way for a full week if even a single point of damage is dealt to it (even nonlethal damage) or if it is immersed or drenched in water. It can stay in tiger form for no more than 2 hours per day and no more than 9 hours per week. (Moderate Transmutation; CL 9th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate objects OR fabricate + unseen servant + cat’s grace; price ??? 900??)
Un-brella- This magical parasol converts sunlight into water, which drips down from its inner surface. In 12 hours it creates about six gallons
Faint transmutation; cl1; 500gp; Craft Wondrous Item, Create Water or Obscuring Mist
from
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?479547-1001-Cheap-Magic-Items-(Let-s-come-up-with-some)
Paper tiger is basically just a card from the deck of illusions, but I love him to pieces.
Well, this is problematic to me. Since in my group we speak non-Spanish Spanish that means lots of things lost in the thinsglation. Still since we know some English, to read rules, watch series, post rants on the web and all that, so sometimes we make some puns in English, not so good as the other ones. Vampires in the senator’s chamber is not the same if not in Spanish. Once in a campaign there was some guy that make his living making scrolls, magic and really powerful scrolls. The thing was that this guy was able to inscribe any spell in a scroll, even without knowing it, not matter the level, epic spells, divine or arcane, any kind of magic he could make it in a scroll. The bad guy was after him and his empowered goat skins. During the raid to the workshop that bad guy stole a lot of scrolls, in a later encounter he try to use some high level scrolls against the party, as you can guess the big bad evil guy crack the seal of the scrolls start reading and summon a mighty, terrifying, yellow like desease, lemon. The BBEG, his minion and the party were all a little confused, then the villain try to use a scroll of disintegration that hit the cleric of the party, he was no longer a member of the party anymore, he was des-integrated from the heroes. That was only the first two scrolls, what the scroll-maker have in power he lack in calligraphy. In the final battle after being defeated the dying bad try to use one scroll called “Bestow the gift of eternal life” that does exactly that, it bestow the gift of eternal life, on things that lacked life, like the villain clothes that gain life sentience and start complaining to be tied to a dying bloodied man. All of this inspired by my own awful calligraphy 🙂
Ima need you to explain the one about the senator’s chamber. My only languages are English and bad English.
The “Vampires in the senator’s chamber” one? In Spanish senators is senadores, that sounds the same that cenadores, which mean those who dinner in Spanish. So “vampiros en la cámara de cenadores” means something like “Vampires in the dinner’s chamber”, now guess the dinner they serve. As bad as it sounds as bad is the pun in the original Spanish. In any case a little political humor with a incredible lame pun is always welcome.
Ima need you to explain the one about the explosives ruins thing in the comic, it has something to do with the running gag of a certain elf wizard?
Explosive runes is a spell:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/explosiveRunes.htm
In some American accents, “runes” (letters or symbols in a magical alphabet) and “ruins” (old and crumbling buildings) are pronounced the same. Magus is worried about exploding buildings, because she’s dumb as a post. Inquisitor is worried about exploding buildings because it’s exactly the sort of nonsense adventurers encounter when dealing with a capricious GM.
I wanted to know if it was a joke and/or a reference. Good to know that Magus is being careful. You know what people says about cats and curiosity 😛
Explosive ruins is as hilarious to me as it is terrifying. Since in order to earn the name this means either most surfaces are covered in explosive runes or alternative the entire ruins will explode at once if you look at the wrong thing. Either way, no party is coming out of that whole.
No part is coming out of that *hole.* Craters everywhere!
I dunno, man, I routinely get muted on Discord by my DM when I pull out the puns. It’s really got to be in the moment, though.
Since I don’t have anything on hand (I’ll add a comment when I do), I’ll stopgap by sharing this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBHkIWAJitg
No need to thank me.
Well I’ll thank you anyway! How do you like that!?
Well that was a long way to go for an awful joke. I love it and hate it and ought to ban you. 😛
You ought to, but I think you won’t 😀
Today! Something rammed the bottom of our ship, and we spent the encounter getting the crewmembers that fell overboard back on board, while others went down to the hold to try and effect repairs. 3 or so rounds in, we realized that among our supplies was a quantity of tar, meant for sealing the hull.
My dude, Kakapo: The crew should know how to apply it, maybe we should pitch the idea to them?
Discord mute.
#worth
I absolutely laughed out loud when I saw this one. When my [now] wife and I joined our first college D&D game, my wizard used exploding runes all the time (carry them around on coins, flip them to your enemy, as they will instinctively catch and/or look). It was a few sessions in before she had a big “Oooooh” moment, and I understood why she’d been so confused about my character creating exploding ruins all the time…
Nice! If I can’t be original, at least I can be entertaining!
Also, grats on the gamer spouse. Those things are handy to keep around. They sometimes even make webcomics with you! 🙂
Some of those spell puns were absolutely painful. More please.
Augury is a great way to drill for oil. Blink is a good substitute for Visine. Chill touch has a somatic component of “your wife’s feet.” Animate dead produces a YouTube link for The Skeleton Dance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOGhAV-84iI
Aaaaah, now I get it! Explosive RUNES.
Yes, English is not my first language.
lol. Yeah man, that’s the joke. Legit cracking up over here.