Post/Author/DateTime	Post
mikeymichaelmike 07-16-07, 10:48 AM	Okay kiddies, Time to fess up! What is the biggest mistake you made as a DM that still haunts you to this day? I'll go first. Allowed a player to create a character with the awesome beauty ability. Stinker used it on every thing in site and really screwed up my game flow! Second, during a random encounter I actualy rolled for an attack by dire tiger, in a grass plains environment, while three people were on watch, was able to creep up to the camp unseen, attack a sleeping dwarf and run off with him! To this day the group always says, "okay I'll take first watch on the look out for any dire tigers" It has been about 5 years and I still hear this every week! Mikey:embarrass
Misfit815 07-16-07, 11:10 AM	My guess is that you're going to get a combination of snide remarks like "signing up to be the DM" and balance-throwing noob blunders like "I gave a Rog1 a vorpal shortsword +5". Here's my snide remark: Blowing my money on the 3E books right before I found out there'd be a 3.5E. And my noob blunder: Getting my hands on the Expert D&D rules (the old blue boxed set) for the first time and giving away a bunch of nifty toys to my 3rd-level party.
uglykitten 07-16-07, 11:14 AM	My first session ever: Created a Two-Headed Dire Wolf with Hydra capabilities, and its heart moved. My FIRST LEVEL PARTY continued to try and CdG and called shots on it before realizing that its heart was too fast and started trying to end the thing's life normally, only to find it had nine heads and two stumps before they finally figured THAT out. It then killed one party member, and turned to the other two. They came up with a system of behead-fire-behead-fire and managed to kill it without suffering another fatality. The day I learned what a Challenge Rating was. ^-^ Good times.
Drag0nUL 07-16-07, 11:19 AM	Honestly, so far there is only one thing I think it was a big DM-ing mistake (of course there were many smalllr ones) of my part: For storyline reasons, I deicided to elt one of my players (fighter/ranger) to take a modified advanced blink dog as an animal companion (he could use dimension door on both him and his rider, instead of only him). At first I thought it would be an welcome power boost to a weaker character (all the other characters were some form or another of spellcaster), but in truth it opened up a whole lot of tactical opportunities I wasn't quite ready for. The move in-full attack-dimension door out routine made most encounters signifcantly easier. Honestly, the only way I could challenge this player was to engineer something designed specifically to counter him (most obvous benig dimensional anchor, but I used other strategies as well-ambushes, save-or-dies on the dog etc.). He finally met his end when I got really ****** off (I had asked him to give up this char because I found it hard to handle it; he was reluctant to do so and the rest of the players stood with him) and served him a taste of his own medicine in the form of a githyanki chrono-legionnaire; actually this followed after a night ou with a few of my players (we also are good friends outside the game) when they said something like 'If you can't handle the game tactically anymore maybe it's time to quit'. It was intended as a little joke, since I kind of proud myself with a good grasp on optimization, both as builds and battlefield tactics(by no means the greatest optimizer, but still better than all my players with one exception); well I didn't take it too well back then so the following game day I was like 'they want tactics...I'll give them more tactics than they can carry'; I managed with ony 3 characters (the aforementioned githyanki, a whisper gnome elocator and a human Ruby Knight Vindicator) that were each the same level as the party to give them an almost-TPK...only the tiefling wiz/ek/abj champ escaped due to greater teleport as SLA.
MethaneGranola 07-16-07, 11:37 AM	3 words, vow of poverty, worst blunder ever for more reasons than one, im sure i dont need to tell you why, just do a search for it wait... how did they survive that at lvl 1? (the dire wolf)
mikeymichaelmike 07-16-07, 11:52 AM	Umm yeah, I 've gone after my party, only after they have erked me..though. Not kill them but make em lose thier favorite item or weapon. I usualy drop em in deep water and catch em off gaurd so, since the average player (at least in my group) never keeps up thier swim ranks, they either drop what they have or drown. Done this two times over the years so now they are very suspicious when all of a sudden I say oh an Island adventure! :D Mikey
uglykitten 07-16-07, 11:58 AM	wait... how did they survive that at lvl 1? (the dire wolf) They were gestalt characters (ha, like that helps) and apparently I wasn't too good at adding numbers, because it had a BAB of +2, and the AC wasn't very high (like a 15, I think). I didn't know what natural armor was. This is what happens when someone who's only been playing for a couple months starts attempting to DM. It was still at least a CR 10 monster, though, for three level 1 characters. The one who died, by the way, was a cleric rogue. ^^; The other two were ranger monk (the composite longbow was her main attack method) and a sorcerer fighter (he had blown all his money on a wand or a staff of produce flame or something, sorry, this was a while ago). So he'd been using the fire thing for a while before we got to the doggy. Unfortunately, he ran out of fire on the last head, but the ranger monk got two natural 20s and confirmed, and since the thing had dragged on for so long, I ruled that she had somehow pierced the heart. We then went back to the DM I'd been playing with and started asking a loooooooot of questions...
PsychicKid 07-16-07, 12:01 PM	Allowed Ali to make a melee PC. If you knew Ali, you would understand.
Anaxander 07-16-07, 12:21 PM	We were having this great, epic (not in levels) campaign in a home-brewed world of mine. At a certain point, however, I was experiencing some DM 'bloc' and was growing weary with the campaign. The final confrontation with the BBEG was still many game sessions ahead. In the middle of our last session, I couldn't think or improvise an adventure to fill 'the gap' and made the mistake to not inform my players about it. My players didn't had any clear clues for side-paths, but they did know the location of the BBEG, so they headed to her stronghold, where they were all brutally slaughtered by her disciples. Perhaps it turned out for the best, since we started new campaigns and played new characters, but then again, it was the greatest campaign we ever had and it was my pride which made an end to it. This experience has learnt me the value of honest communication to my players about the sometime difficulties of being a DM. When I grow bored with a campaign, or when I know they are going towards their doom, I tell them now, because it's their game too.
T_Baggins 07-16-07, 12:34 PM	I home brewed a PrC for a shaper which gave him an almost all day duration for one construct a day. Seemed reasonable at the time, but it turned into a huge problem, considering how powerful constructs are, and he could heal it
Forfeit 07-16-07, 01:00 PM	I gave one of the players a mask that could be used once/day at nights to totaly control one target, with unlimited range. The guy used it in all kinds of schemes and plots.
Identitystolen 07-16-07, 01:24 PM	My first few outings as a DM I got ECL and CR all mixed up and had some really lethal encounters for the party... Also, I allowed the players to roam and do what they liked for a few adventures, trying to get a GTA III feel, but the planning and effort involved on my part almost killed any will I had to DM. They loved it and wanted to keep with it, but it was a giant headache for me
JohnJohn 07-16-07, 02:13 PM	Hmm the 2 biggest mistakes that I remember and which my players never let me forget about to this day all had to do with me getting bored and just winging it. My group has been together for years so we know each other pretty well... Each of us has DM'd a few times for our group but I seem to get the job more often then most. I tend to throw things in sometimes as "dungeon dressing" as going through yet another empty 20 x 30 room with a door on either side, well that gets boring. The things I still shudder about 1) Going through empty room after empty room gets boring but having a monster waiting in every room gets silly. In 1st. ed. AD&D just about every room in a module had boxed text to be read aloud to PC's with a monster in there doing something till the PC's showed up. Anyways I got bored and on spur of the moment put a well in a large room. It was a fairly large well about oh 15' wide but had no bucket or any way to get water... Needless to say for whatever reason the PC's found this dungeon dressing fascinating. They spent 2 real world hours searching it, exploring it, looking for secret doors inside it, looking for secret levers to open some place else in the dungeon. When ever they reached a dead end somewhere in the dungeon they came back to it in the belief that there was something in that well (which turned out to be a 30' hole till they excavated down another 15' in the search for..something). Anyways they were just convinced that the well had something to do with the rest of the dungeon. They went on to finish the dungeon but then came back to it. They were convinced there was some secret passage that led to some big bad evil bad guy even though they had already killed the dungeons big bad evil bad guy... Finally I had enough and just yelled out "its just a stupid well that ran dry, I threw it in as dungeon dressing, it has nothing to do with anything!!!!!!! It was quiet for a moment.. then player 1 looked at player 4 and said "Now I know there's something in there he got mad and he never gets mad... there's something in there he don't want us to find. Players 2, 3 and 4 dutifully nodded their heads and spent another real hour searching the well... Finally I gave up, told them they found a secret door they went in it and after a short passageway they found a goblin. I used the stats I had used on the dungeons big bad bad guy on it and after a short fight they killed it. The PC's were like "wow that goblin was tough to hit and did you see how much damage he took? He must have ruled this dungeon." I threw in a secret hidey hole with some quickly thought up treasure and they basked in their victory and marched off back to town... with me on the point of tears because I was bored to death and wondering what the heck I did wrong:) 2) second mistake was something of a repeat of the first. The PC's were trying to track down some monster that was making the local farmers lives miserable.. it was eating the livestock but no one had been killed yet. PC's idea was to buy a bunch of chickens and set them out as bait then set up something like a hunting blind so they could watch and lay ambush. Make a long story short after a bunch of dead and missing chickens... One chicken actually survived its brush with death and the monster was killed. I had given the chicken a low % chance of surviving and would've just killed it but one of the PC's asked about it so I rolled a % and some how the chicken lived. I thought oh well no biggie... But the PC's kept it... and it kept surviving... I am serious if I gave this thing a 1% chance of surviving something I would roll a 01. I went so far as to thinking about fudging the die roll and killing the thing off... but the PC's for some reason grew attached to it. Next thing I know there are theories being circulated as to how this thing stays alive. One PC thinks its some twisted curse and the chicken is really some handsome prince. Another is claiming its the avatar of some deity. Do you know they actually took that thing to a sage to get it checked out????? Then they kind of adopted it as the party mascot. They put all sorts of spells on it and buffed it up. That chicken became one buffed poultry. Anything you can think of to put on a chicken to help its AC/saves/hps well it was put on it. One PC even went so far as to ask me if they could get a magic ring or some other kind of magic item to fit on the chicken. The rallying cry of some of the PC's became "Don't worry about me save the chicken"!!!!!!!!!! One of the players driving me home one night asked me point blank "hey what is up with that chicken? You can tell me I wont tell anyone I promise. It has to lead to something important." AAAAARRRRGGGGG The chicken had nothing to do with anything it just got lucky on its dice rolls... or at least I did... My players still talk about "the chicken campaign". And yes it survived many of the PCs though I didn't want it to but I played it fair and that chicken rolled more 01% or 100%s to stay alive then anything I have ever seen. Seriously the words "well and "chicken" now have whole new meanings in our playing group. It started with me throwing something out there on the spur of the moment and it taking a life of its own.....
gurullamen 07-16-07, 02:30 PM	I'd tried DMing once before (lvl 10 gestalt--horrible way to begin as a DM) and got frustrated because I kept trying to predict exactly what I'd need to prepare ahead of time leaving little leeway for PC choice. (Unfortunately, I also refused to railroad, leading to situations where literally nothing happened.) Also, the encounters I did settle on ended up very underpowered next to my half-optimizing, half-roleplaying-oriented-with-characters-optimized-by-their-optimizing-companions group. What did I do in response to this for the next thing I DM'd? Gave the PCs choices out the wazoo (which they missed about half of the time) and CRs above normal with NPCs who fought like they had both a brain and something to fight for. After okaying a +3 LA PC. Needless to say, one entangle + arc of lightning later, I killed ol' +3 LA and laid an inadvertant smackdown on the other two members. Ah, but wait, there's more. Not wanting to have the other PC just sit around doing nothing while the group continued playing, I had her roll up a new character, which I introduced as the other PCs came out of the dungeon. Unfortunately for the two of us, I underestimated the zeal and paranoia of one of the other two PCs as he then proceeded to interrogate her on why she was in the vicinity of a blue dragon's lair and, when he didn't get sufficient answers, used her as a body sheild and potential bargaining chip while investigating the remainder of the lair. After all was said and done, she was released and fled from those two as quickly as possible. Two characters from the same player nullified in one session. Ouch.
megeddo 07-16-07, 03:22 PM	Kudos to Johnjohn LOL. That sounds like a Monty Python group if you ask me.
T_Baggins 07-16-07, 03:28 PM	Hmm the 2 biggest mistakes that I remember and which my players never let me forget about to this day all had to do with me getting bored and just winging it. My group has been together for years so we know each other pretty well... Each of us has DM'd a few times for our group but I seem to get the job more often then most. I tend to throw things in sometimes as "dungeon dressing" as going through yet another empty 20 x 30 room with a door on either side, well that gets boring. The things I still shudder about 1) Going through empty room after empty room gets boring but having a monster waiting in every room gets silly. In 1st. ed. AD&D just about every room in a module had boxed text to be read aloud to PC's with a monster in there doing something till the PC's showed up. Anyways I got bored and on spur of the moment put a well in a large room. It was a fairly large well about oh 15' wide but had no bucket or any way to get water... Needless to say for whatever reason the PC's found this dungeon dressing fascinating. They spent 2 real world hours searching it, exploring it, looking for secret doors inside it, looking for secret levers to open some place else in the dungeon. When ever they reached a dead end somewhere in the dungeon they came back to it in the belief that there was something in that well (which turned out to be a 30' hole till they excavated down another 15' in the search for..something). Anyways they were just convinced that the well had something to do with the rest of the dungeon. They went on to finish the dungeon but then came back to it. They were convinced there was some secret passage that led to some big bad evil bad guy even though they had already killed the dungeons big bad evil bad guy... Finally I had enough and just yelled out "its just a stupid well that ran dry, I threw it in as dungeon dressing, it has nothing to do with anything!!!!!!! It was quiet for a moment.. then player 1 looked at player 4 and said "Now I know there's something in there he got mad and he never gets mad... there's something in there he don't want us to find. Players 2, 3 and 4 dutifully nodded their heads and spent another real hour searching the well... Finally I gave up, told them they found a secret door they went in it and after a short passageway they found a goblin. I used the stats I had used on the dungeons big bad bad guy on it and after a short fight they killed it. The PC's were like "wow that goblin was tough to hit and did you see how much damage he took? He must have ruled this dungeon." I threw in a secret hidey hole with some quickly thought up treasure and they basked in their victory and marched off back to town... with me on the point of tears because I was bored to death and wondering what the heck I did wrong:) 2) second mistake was something of a repeat of the first. The PC's were trying to track down some monster that was making the local farmers lives miserable.. it was eating the livestock but no one had been killed yet. PC's idea was to buy a bunch of chickens and set them out as bait then set up something like a hunting blind so they could watch and lay ambush. Make a long story short after a bunch of dead and missing chickens... One chicken actually survived its brush with death and the monster was killed. I had given the chicken a low % chance of surviving and would've just killed it but one of the PC's asked about it so I rolled a % and some how the chicken lived. I thought oh well no biggie... But the PC's kept it... and it kept surviving... I am serious if I gave this thing a 1% chance of surviving something I would roll a 01. I went so far as to thinking about fudging the die roll and killing the thing off... but the PC's for some reason grew attached to it. Next thing I know there are theories being circulated as to how this thing stays alive. One PC thinks its some twisted curse and the chicken is really some handsome prince. Another is claiming its the avatar of some deity. Do you know they actually took that thing to a sage to get it checked out????? Then they kind of adopted it as the party mascot. They put all sorts of spells on it and buffed it up. That chicken became one buffed poultry. Anything you can think of to put on a chicken to help its AC/saves/hps well it was put on it. One PC even went so far as to ask me if they could get a magic ring or some other kind of magic item to fit on the chicken. The rallying cry of some of the PC's became "Don't worry about me save the chicken"!!!!!!!!!! One of the players driving me home one night asked me point blank "hey what is up with that chicken? You can tell me I wont tell anyone I promise. It has to lead to something important." AAAAARRRRGGGGG The chicken had nothing to do with anything it just got lucky on its dice rolls... or at least I did... My players still talk about "the chicken campaign". And yes it survived many of the PCs though I didn't want it to but I played it fair and that chicken rolled more 01% or 100%s to stay alive then anything I have ever seen. Seriously the words "well and "chicken" now have whole new meanings in our playing group. It started with me throwing something out there on the spur of the moment and it taking a life of its own..... WAY too much knights of the dinner table for him. Hoody Hoo.
CCS 07-16-07, 03:29 PM	This error was made by a well & truely experienced DM. It should illistrate that anyone can make a mistake..... I think the worst error that I've ever made was in allowing the 1ST ed. Wu-Jen out of the original Oriental Adventures to be combined with the kit of the same name found in the 2nd ed complete Wizards book (the brown soft-cover). Mostly it was a combo of the kit + the 2st ed spells. I read them over & didn't notice anything too out of place. There were a few wrinkles that had to be smoothed over prior to play, but as we'd always had a habit of combining stuff from various editions (basic/expert + 1st ed AD&D, various 1st ed stuff + 2nd ed, etc) I didn't anticipate anything too terrible happening.... HAH! Turns out that one of the two versions (the 2nd ed kit if I recall) had an ability to allow you to cast a spell at it's max level. And a few of the old spells had no max level..... And as the character gained levels the effect got worse. Of course I'd completely missed this detail. I don't know if the player had noticed it originally or latter on when he gained one of the more potent spells. I've never asked. Anyways, when I discovered it (the hard way) it was far too late in the campaign to do anything about it. So for the next 6months or so all I could really do was grit my teeth & always bear it in mind when designing adventures. Eventually the campaign reached a natural climax and we started something new. Though I wasn't really happy with the effects the character could pull I simply ran with it. Afterall, it was MY error for not catching it to begin with. To this day though the player has no idea exactly how I'd come to despise his characters very broken ability. Or how much extra work went into keeping it's potential in check. He just remembers "that really cool OA campaign we played that one time". And who knows, maybe, despite the enormous pain in the ass to the DM, those adventures turned out better for all the extra effort I had to invest in them.
Optimized_Commoner 07-16-07, 03:46 PM	The biggest two. 1) Having everyone in the party affected by a spell that made them too weak to do anything and leaving only one member of the party (the one immune to magic) unaffected to save them while everyone else got to do nothing. 2) Putting a puzzle in at the end of the dungeon with only one solution and resisting all other solutions.
RobbyPants 07-16-07, 04:00 PM	I've made all kinds of mistakes in letting something seeminly innocuous into my game. One time, when two of my friends (with whom I game) and I were drinking (most of the point of this get together), they had the brilliant idea to play D&D too. They spent a long time making the PCs (as usual), so I got quite drunk. I don't even think we made it through one encounter before I told them that this was going to be a waste of all of our time. :P
nightside_samurai 07-16-07, 04:19 PM	I remember in my first campaign, I had the PCs play ex-cons working for the evil warden doing missions to find artifacts and such. To get them from island to island, I made 2 NPC: Captain Spack Jarrow (yeah I know) and his first mate, Garbage Man. They were basically supposed to be unimportant as they were just a taxi, but this group was very fond of killing anyone and everyone... So I ended up having to stat out the Captain as a level 10 Half-Kender Mariner, and Garbage Man turned into a level 10 Half-Green Dragon Half-Earth Elemental Sorceror. Long story short, it was a horrible waste of time to have to stat out NPCs because they always got killed. So I said, "I'm not having fun DM-ing for you guys so someone else can take over."
Femme_Undead_Lover 07-16-07, 04:41 PM	It would be 50 bags of liquid soap... each one with .5 gallons... U can't imagine what a player can do with soap.. Even a leviathan suffered with that..... its a loooong story... but believe me... since then I've realized that a character CAN'T have more than 300 mls of soap....
pres_man 07-16-07, 04:41 PM	Worst blunder: A hydra attacks the party, the hydra had 7 heads. Pretty much all of the party was within range to be attacked (it had been underwater when they approached the chamber). So did I roll for each individual head to see who they attacked? No, of course not that would make too much sense. Instead I started with the first PC and said to myself, "They could get attacked by 0-7 heads, I will roll a d8, 8=0". Who's PC was the first one, my wife's, what did I roll, 7. Yeah, her druid was ripped to shreads before she even got to act in that encounter. Luckily she was not too attached to that character, or it would have been the couch for me. Another blunder: A player wasn't present, and I wanted to remove her charater quickly. So during the first fight, the group hears her scream and they turn to see she has disappeared. After the fight they spend alot of time poking around where she had been, eventually they discover a secret door and a steep shaft. Ok, well they will explore around and find the other end, next session when the player is back right? No, they start binding ropes and start trying to climb down the shaft. Eventually I just decide to let them have their fun. They have to let go of their ropes and slide, the passage splits, they go down the right tunnel (she had gone down the left, I guess). And fall into a pool of water in an underground mushroom forest. They find a were-badger gnome who aids them ... Next time, just have the PC, of the player not there, go into dumbie mode and drool on themselves.
soulnova 07-16-07, 04:55 PM	I gave the cleric a legendary item. It was not suposse to do anything than "daylight" until the stars were in the right position and someone activate it... It would summon a huge angel (Godzilla size) to fight a demon (chtulhy type).... After that campaign we decided to make a 2nd Part. Then the cleric asked me about the item. "Well, you still have it" he then started to work on it and give it other magical propieties... (in those moments I didnt have the DMG or the PHB... we actually had home rules). Everytime someone saw the light from the Daylight spell.. they would turn Lawful Good. The rest of the party almost killed him for doing such an item. They did the dirty work for me and buried the item in the deeps of an abyss. They couldnt stand to imagine a world full of LG. (most of them CG).
Optimized_Commoner 07-16-07, 05:02 PM	Next time, just have the PC, of the player not there, go into dumbie mode and drool on themselves. I once built an entire campaign around the a player not being there one session and having their character just not being found the next session when they all wake up... and their missing friend was an important noble and had to be there to sponsor them to see the king, which is why they were adventuring to this place together... Anyway, long story short a lot of things happened just because a player didn't make it to the key session where his character was the most needed.
nlentz88 07-16-07, 05:04 PM	My worst blunder: an undeserved TPK. I created a dragon of appropriate CR for the party, but failed to remember a couple of important elements: 1) the party was on a sea-going vessel and therefore the PCs were sitting ducks, and 2) I neglected to use the dragon's manueverability rating in the encounter. The result was that the dragon continued strafing the ship with breath weapon and spells until the party of four perished. Oops.
StruckingFuggle 07-16-07, 05:26 PM	Three words... Rod. Of. Wonder. :x
Ubasrawr 07-16-07, 05:37 PM	kudos to john john that was totally monthy phython ...
mikeymichaelmike 07-16-07, 05:46 PM	Next time, just have the PC, of the player not there, go into dumbie mode and drool on themselves so say it the sheppard, so say it the flock! Mikey:D
Millenia 07-16-07, 06:10 PM	My biggest blunder (in an online game) would be having my character (a healer-type) examine a sick katane (half-vampire) in her clinic thing and leaving the rest of the party in the lobby to RP.... They just sat there in awkward silence, despite my attempts to have the other patients talk to them. The players got rather ticked at me due to that and my character being hit on by the katane... despite my attempts to cut the flirting short.
Aryxbez 07-16-07, 06:33 PM	Biggest mistakes I think to have been made are as follows: 1. Allow a new player to the group to use material I was not familiar with, such as AEG Feat book, Ninja class in Complete Adventurer. Mix with the fact the person was not that nice, and ended up wasting 6 or so sessions to get his character back with the group. Thankfully that person is no longer in the group, I will never let someone like him back. There is more to it, but I would prefer not to tell. 2. Being a little to repetitive with my adventures when I have the only player in the group with High standards/ expectations. Of course the said player didn't truly give me enough tries to improve myself. 3. Accidentally making bad ruling/judgements on things like Spring attack, and once again accidentally having some PCs more powerful than others. 4. Trying to Wing a session without any ideas, so I couldn't really swiftly make adventures and such. I guess this is all my Big mistakes that I have ever made. Of course the first and second I have solutions to, such as if 2 gives me these problems I will just simply boot the player out. 3 and 4 should never happen again.
Voran 07-16-07, 06:50 PM	Inadvertantly blurting out the 'true name' of the masked villian during a combat. Great....now everyone knows its the shapechanged Princess.
borninshadow 07-16-07, 07:01 PM	The rallying cry of some of the PC's became "Don't worry about me save the chicken"!!!!!!!!!! I know everyone else has said it, but nice :D Anyway, my worst moments...hmm... Well, there was the time I threw a Drowned at the party. I remember the whole party drowning before even getting him to half -.- (damn meleers!) And I suppose the other was looking at the Tomb of Horrors and saying (I'm sure the purists will skin me alive for this) "yeah, this looks ok for my party. I'll just tone a few of the traps down! My party can definitely get through this!" I believe they've spent two days in the dungeon and aren't even half way through... And then there was that Ettin's Riddle quest I used as a sidequest...and some other published adventure... Seems most of my troubles are tied to using published adventures :P -Aaron, wishes he could find a good published adventure
vectorvanguard 07-16-07, 07:34 PM	JohnJohn the chicken episode brilliant. Being noob the blunders are still fresh in my mind :( I had a chained and very depressed dragon living in a large cavern.I knew the druid would insist on its freedom, I was right. The idea was that it was going to be a task for the rogue to unpick the lock, when he failed as Im sure he would the PCs would go find the key, this was like a side quest but in finding the key they would also find the captured townsfolk. As expected the rogue threw a bad roll, but so bad in fact that at the time I blurted out" the tool snaps off inside the keyhole" now surely they will have to find the key rather than try again....oops....The druid realised straight away, chastised the rogue for being such a clumsy oaf. "Even if we find the key now its no good cause you busted it". Id previously discouraged an attempt at a fighter breaking the lock (cause i wanted them to go find the key remember) saying that it was very heavy chain etc etc. after her third swing she rolled so bad I had her sword break..I mean really swinging a sword against a chain,, someone had to teach her about metalwork.....Of course now, with the lock damaged, and no one in the party wanting to risk their gear on trying to break it.. I had snookered myself. But it gets worse... I had them find a vial of rust potion. I was winging it well and truly now and just wanted them to get back on with finding the captives. They had become obsessed with saving the blastd dragon! Id done to good an acting job on the poor depressed dragon at the begining. They had forgotten about the key and the captives. So they get the dragon free,with the potion, but that wasnt enough, was it. No they had to get the dragon out of the cavern system, when the fighter turned and said "hang on it wont fit thru the passage ways, how are we going to get it out". doh doh doh I called a munchies break in an effort to give myself time to think something up. I never contemplated what would happen to the dragon itself, I had been blinkered to the key aspect :embarrass It was weak... but the dragon said "the captives are more important, Ill be ok here go save them first".. Off they went, and I wiped my brow.
EyeHunter 07-16-07, 08:52 PM	Killing PC's too often. I understood CR, but I created a series of encounters that were long. Also, I was sometimes unforgiving. Running too many one-shots adventures. I didn't have many other options at the time, but I still think this was a mistake. Changing my rules on "Exotic" PC's. I changed to allowing LA only in new characters, instead of leveling up into it.
thrallmaster 07-16-07, 10:59 PM	well the biggest mistake i've made is made a trap so simple I thought they would defeaft it, it was a minor illusion of a copper dragon, but in the illusion their was a gnome throwing flasks of acid, my 3rd lvl party died agasint this... :weep:
ShadowcatX 07-17-07, 12:44 AM	My worst mistakes usually revolve around the climatic moments falling flat. Having a first level pc realize (through about 2 minutes of roleplaying) the "person" he's talking to is a vampire (my planned bbeg) and watching him roll a nat 20 and a nat 20 to confirm the crit with a broken (piercing) table leg. . . Also, a really bad ruling about great cleave, a reach weapon, and a hydra (non-regenerating). On the opposite side it's watching the pcs bad luck cause what's meant to be a climatic moment turn into (what should've been) a TPK as they (all) roll below a 3 for their saving throws (party of 4). I absolutely hate the undeserved TPKs but I hate deus ex machina almost as much.
Thanuir 07-17-07, 04:36 AM	Filling the setting with far too many far too powerful NPCs/monsters. Players had little influence in the way thing developed. They didn't mind, too much, but I grew tired of creating the game story by myself.
Ayra 07-17-07, 07:34 AM	My worst blunder was at my first session. My friends and I were eager to play as I bought the books a couple days ago.I read some things through but not really in detail, so I improvised most of the session. The rogue shot an arrow, which missed. However, I had no clue where the arrow would end up when it missed so I made up this weird degree calculation that would decide the missing trajectory of the arrow. Then I realized that arrows can bounce, bent arrows can turn 180 degrees and added another risk factor to the calculation. In the end, the rogue tried to shoot a monster that was about 30 ft. in front of him. It hit the cleric who was standing to his right. I still get to hear of that to this day. The worst mistake a DM of mine made was to allow an astral deva monk with vow of poverty in a campaign with normal un-optimized characters. Only one of the other players was actually prestige classed (into alienist), the rest were all from the players handbook, not multiclassed. Needless to say that astral deva monk with vow of poverty was way too strong for us. Luckily the player who played it was kind of stupid by playing a more chaotic neutral alignment than the required lawful good, so he lost pretty much everything and got killed after attempting a fairly stupid action. After that character was killed off, one of the other players suddenly became a half-dragon and it started all over again.
Steely_Dan 07-17-07, 07:48 AM	Implementing the 5d6 drop the lowest two ability score generation method in my current campaign.
snakeman830 07-17-07, 11:25 AM	I'm running a campaign where each character will recieve a homebrew artifact weapon. Despite this, I've had no problems at all with the power of the weapons. Instead, it's a different aspect of them that's becoming interesting. When the catfolk rogue was knocked unconcious, she was left for dead (there went the good alignments). The elf wizard decided he wanted her daggers (her artifact). I simply said that for some reason, nobody in the party could pick them up. Only their owner could pick them up. (naturally, that should have been the first clue she was still alive). The next session, the rogue had snuck up behind the party and swiped the wizard's wand of implosion (had 5 charges when they found it, they used one on a hydra). She got all of her stuff back. Little did I know that my little ruling would make her start challenging people to strength contests in every town they went through, using her daggers as the weight. Others could not pick them up and she would do so effortlessly, thus winning small amounts of cash (that turned into larger amounts thanks to Sleight of Hand).
megeddo 07-17-07, 02:24 PM	This is all from my first game ever run: 1.) Trying to inject humor into my game and finding out the hard way that I am really not that funny. My DMPC was an idiot and lost all credibility. 2.) Creating this huge, complex, plot ridden, secret choked, political campaign that spanned an entire world, and completely losing track of everything. 3.) Allowing a player to have a Moonblade with five generations worth of powers, in a world where Moonblades shouldn't exist, there by completely unbalancing the party. 4.) All of my NPCs were magic deprived, making it so that the PCs could stomp all over them. This led to the PCs literally *****slapping any NPC that gave them the slightest bit of resistance. 5.) Letting the PCs get away with murder, out talk my NPCs, and cause all manner of trouble without the slightest consequence. I quit the game after five months, when I realized that after all the things they had killed, out of all the places they had been to, they were still completely ignorant as to what was going on around them, and they had completely lost interest. It was heartbreaking, but I learned from it.
Malruhn 07-17-07, 04:18 PM	When I first started... The FIRST level paladin walks into his FIRST dungeon - and sees a dead kobold with a bastard sword wrapped in a sheet - with a note. Take this to the Shaman - we don't want this Holy Avenger getting into the wrong hands! It still shames me to this day... and it was almost 30 years ago!!! But, I had nowhere else to go but up!!
greatamericanfolkhero 07-17-07, 06:45 PM	I’m running a campaign at my FLGS that’s winding down, and I’ve learned a few things: 1) I’m never letting players keep two “pools” of action points ever again. In the early days there were players who couldn’t make it to every game, so I decided that I would keep xp the same for every one and award action points, and the awarded action points were in a separate pool so they didn’t reset when the group leveled up. They horded them, they would only use their “level” action points. It wasn’t so bad until the last adventure that they ran through, where they just started spending them like candy. I’m never doing that again! 2) I’m never running an “open” game again. The same campaign, the store that I’m running the game at had a rule that if you were running a game you “were encouraged” to let anyone join. This is the reason that my game had nine players at one time. That was the game session where the party was going up against a major antagonist. Usually there were only at most five players present (a core group of four and one or two of the others that made up the nine) so I balanced the fight for five people. Everybody showed up for that one, and just wiped the floor with everything. Those were the worst two that I can think of.
MacrossSD 07-17-07, 06:55 PM	My own biggest DM blunder was a campaign that fell apart from a nice idea but lousy execution. I had this idea of running the PCs through the Tomb of Horrors. Around that time, Dungeon had just started the Savage Tide Adventure Path, and I really fell in love with the idea of the sea voyage (of "the Sea Wyvern's Wake") and the Isle of Dread locale. So, I decided to put the Tomb of Horrors on the Isle's central plateau. This also gave me a built-in antagonist group, as the seas in the area were pretty much owned by the Scarlet Brotherhood. To sweeten the deal, I also placed in the Tomb a powerful artifact that the PCs had to grab before the Brotherhood -- the Fire Wand of Sueloise, an artifact that the long-dead Suel Mage Acererak (yes, I know the actual story of Acererak and how he was a chum of Vecna's and very much not a Suel, but changing the story fit in more with the tale I wanted to tell) that was an attempt to replicate the Rain of Colorless Fire on a smaller scale. Problem the first: I started the players at 5th level. The Tomb, even in its 3rd-edition form is for a much higher level. But since I was running the Sea Wyvern adventure, I needed them at 5th for the balance of the module. Not much I could do about that, so I decided to try and have them run into adventure to level them up. They found some by themselves by getting themselves captured by the Brotherhood -- and then returning to tear the Brotherhood encampment down to the ground, piece by piece through gaining the aid of some locals and instituting good (and maddening to the DM) guerilla tactics. Problem the second, that did not crop up until the campaign was under way: The Brotherhood, revering Wee Jas and therefore not too willing to impinge on the tomb of a famous Suel mage, would have no reason to actually want to go into the tomb and risk torquing off the Stern Lady herself. Game-wrecking solution: I introduced the Black Brotherhood (from The Scarlet Brotherhood sourcebook, IIRC), a Tharizdun-worshippin'-Demon-summonin' band of renegade Suel who would have means, motive and opportunity to go after the Wand. When the PCs saw that someone was summoning Bar-llurgas against them (and seeing the possibility of even worse things coming down the pike), they decided to say "screw it" and left for other parts of the Flanaess. At that point the campaign slid out from under me like a motorcycle in a tsunami, and I had no choice but to pull the plug. Two smaller but related boners -- letting players play characters from World of Warcraft and Magic the Gathering in a Greyhawk game. After numerous arguments meant to have more and more of the extravagantly broken WoW or MtG (from a D&D point of view) mythology intrude on Greyhawk (including a scenario I'm running right now where a character [a WoW Night Elf] came home to find his entire small village captured by the drow, only to have him OOC exclaim "but they're all warriors!" with the implication that every man, woman and infant carries a sword and should have turned any aggressor into mincemeat) I have two words. Never. Again. No more MtG or WoW in my D&D.
Matthais777 07-17-07, 07:14 PM	Okay promise not to laugh... I let my first group make 10th level characters, and told them that anything was allowed... a Tauric Gnome Blink Dog Rouge ... a 10th level Chaos Mage.. the other two characters where not important, but i finally called said it was to much after the chaos mage teleported the antaginist away from his minions, time froze him, and proceded to beet the living crap out of him.:weep: While i didn't do this, i had a friend who thought that a ring of wizardry level 2 was for level two characters, and so on....:confused:
MacrossSD 07-18-07, 05:55 PM	Three words... Rod. Of. Wonder. :x Only if they get good rolls. Otherwise, it's pure comedy gold. In a 2E game I'm running now, one of the PCs (a wild mage, naturally) has one. Well, they were fighting drow, and he decided he was going to use the rod (I forget for exactly what) on the party's paladin and thief. He rolled that they randoly changed races, and I got to roll on the reincarnation chart. The human thief became an elven thief (not too bad, and actually useful), but their human paladin is now an Orcish paladin. What's even funniner, the paladin's horse was affected too -- it became (wait for it...) ...a Kobold. That was now being sat upon by an orc in plate mail. Needless to say, the ex-horse did not last long. We had to clean up the nose-propelled beverages from everyone at the table after that image. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Of course this was the same session that saw the same wild mage surge and turn a Wall of Fire female... (really! he had rolled on the wild surge table after casting Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, and rolled "target changes sex.")