What’s your funniest Dungeon_Master.exe has crashed moment? #3

[@axios4702]

Never understimate new players. They have unskewed, fresh views and ideas, and there is nothing more dangerous (nor more exciting) to a veteran DM than someone thinking outside the box.

[@artembannick8017]

I can confirm. I (a warlock and new player) knocked my new friend(a dwarf other palyer) out cold, because he was afraid to get onto a Ship. He was extremely afraid if water. Long story short I derailed the campaign by having to save him. Because I hit too hard and he was out cold with 2 HP left.

[@nobodyimportant2470]

@@artembannick8017 That is why it is better to drug their milk. Be sure to also serve food so they will think it is the food you keep spiking when they start to catch on.

[@davemakesnoises]

as a once new player i can attest to the value of this statement.

[@piethefloof]

my first DM learned this message the hardest way possible because i desided to play a lv 2 kobold bloodhunter druid with a greatsword it was a chaotic 4 hour session of me absolutely abusing the way the DM set everything up i had tamed 3 dragons and one of them was a girl this caused me to have 14 dragon most of which were children heh i also made myself quite strong allowing me to hold 2 greatswords i forgot almost everything else it happened years ago

[@a_wolf8889]

@@piethefloof your stronk

[@cosmoniums5990]

I had a moment where my character’s grandfather was developing cataracts resulting in his vision slowly worsening, and I simply asked the DM if it was considered a disease. When the DM responded with an affirmative, I then immediately declared that I was utilizing my lay on hands to cure his cataracts and restore his vision.

[@axios4702]

You probably ruined the DMs storyline, but then again that kind of thing should have easy fixes in realistic high fantasy stories.

[@cosmoniums5990]

@@axios4702 he made it immediately clear to me that’s exactly what I did, but to be fair he should have expected it since it’s not the first time I’ve used my lay on hands to cure a disease (although technically it wasn’t exactly a disease but more so someone having been physically stretched and warped by a magical calamity which I was able to treat as a disease)

[@robertyocum7200]

Oh that reminds me of the time that my life cleric/shepherd druid shifter used lesser restoration and an amazing medicine check to perform a 6 hour surgery on one of the party members fathers, who had developed skin cancer. I distinctly remember the sounds of papers being torn up from behind the dm screen right after that one xD

[@cosmoniums5990]

@@robertyocum7200 my paladin would’ve just used a lay on hands to remove the cancer. Much cheaper than paying for lesser restoration

[@robertyocum7200]

@@cosmoniums5990 I agree but we dont have a paladin, also it was on her spell list so there was no payment involved. Also also, it made for (at least imo) a more fun rp moment than just "I touch them and the cancer goes away as my hand lights up".

[@toothlessthedragon5100]

This happened about a month or two ago. We were in town trying to sell some items. DM: “You come across a beggar looking forlorn.” Player: “who’s Lorn?” The table was stunned by this comment for about a minute then spent the next 15 minutes laugh as the player continued to struggle to understand what forlorn means.

[@davemakesnoises]

i lol'd

[@hitfran4644]

everyone asks who is Lorn but not how is Lorn

[@saphiriathebluedragonknight375]

I can't breath!

[@IceMetalPunk]

@@hitfran4644 Or WHY is Lorn.

[@justseffstuff3308]

Oh man, that reminds me of Eric and the Dread Gazebo.

[@fabiansuckfull9446]

How a Nat 1 made me (the DM) crash Bit of backstory: At my table we always had a thing called "Quicktime events" that I would announce as such, tell the player what was happening and then he got 5 seconds to give me an answer of what he was going to do. Our table also had a homebrew item I called the tunderbluss (basically a shotgun that took 2 actions to load). On our last adventure, I treated them to the semi-auto version of that since they were assaulting a whole battallion of enemies. Player carrying said weapon was busy picking a lock at the fort where everything was going down (the players had not yet been discovered). Unbeknownst to him, he had failed his sneak check. Me: "Quicktime event: As you work the lock the door handle suddenly comes down. You have enough time to grab the lead hose (what we called the thunderbluss) and before you stands a soldier with a bewildered look, 10 more are in the room behind him. What is your one-liner before you paint this room red?" Player: "Look they brought their red shirts (we made lots of red shirt/brown pants jokes)" Me: "Ok roll for attack" *Rolls a Nat1* Click. Click.Click. Weapon jam. I had a 5 minute laughing fit before I was able to continue

[@csmead209]

Why stop at celestial warlocks, when a Cleric/Celestial Warlock unicorn could try to establish a Church of Twilight Sparkle.

[@DJROCKSTAZ]

OH. GOODNESS. GRACIOUS! LOVE IT!

[@unluckycatfish6866]

By Celestia..

[@arcanethearcanewing8037]

this is amazing. totally making this if dm allows us to multiclass in a future campaign

[@enterusername4650]

Lol

[@goldenreflection2811]

Knowledge Cleric for sure.

[@Regunes]

2:30 the guy showed a war veteran DM the Xanathar guide to everything and expected him to not melt down before the sheer power creep this and the cauldron one brought lol.

[@lockwoan01]

Well, as the player in question - I thought it was funny to see the look on this dude's face as he went "This invalidates the reason to play Paladin", as at the time he was playing as a paladin in LMoP.

[@artembannick8017]

Player: "Is the Table the Enemy's take cover behind under 5Kilos?" DM: "Sure" Player: uses spell (I don't know which one it was) and flips the table into the enemy's behind it. Basically with a useless move object spell, he knocked two of the three enemy's down two half health with this dumb spell. I laughed my ass off and our DM was a bit broken for a Moment.

[@mefit8725]

How would a 5kg table knock down two people?

[@singularity1130]

​@@mefit8725 Sounds like a misreading of Mage Hand or interesting use of Catapult. Mage Hand can lift anything up too 10lbs or 4.5 kilo's rounded down while Catapult lets you launch something that weighs 1lbs to 5lbs (The table weight probably swapped pounds for kilos instead of proper conversions). My guess is the DM didn't think to factor in the weight of the people on the table for mage hand or didn't count people sitting on a table as being "worn or carried" for the purposes of Catapult. Either way weird to use Metric over Imperial units in a game that hasn't properly made conversations. Must make balancing hell or the world insanely large.

[@Asderuki]

@@singularity1130 well for my language you have everything in metric :D

[@andrejkatic633]

@@Asderuki where do you have metric? I live in europe and never understood imperial

[@Asderuki]

@@andrejkatic633 for polish translation they changed imperial for metric. We don't use it thow as it does not have even numbers. For example 5 feet are 1,5m so having 25ft movement you have 7,5m movement. We really just take take it as abstract value so this 5ft could be 5whatever and we would use it because it is easy math.

[@LocalMaple]

Can’t confirm if DM . exe crashed, but he definitely expected to kill us. DM’s plan: Adult White Dragon will flee when bloodied. DM: Introduces Adult White Dragon to party of 5, level 9. We have an Orc army ally with a Ballista. Tells us that aside from said Ballista, the Orcs can’t injure the dragon, and don’t want to risk their men for close combat. Party, after huddle: We will fight it inside the arena! DM: The Ballista isn’t easy to carry. Orcs would prefer to fight in the open. Party: We will fight in the arena without their support. _DM . exe crashes once._ DM: How will you goad him down? Me, Rogue-Ranger: I cast Disguise self to seem like the guy she made a deal with, step out into his private box over the arena, and try to persuade the dragon down. DM: It falls for your illusion, but doesn’t come down. It threatens to kill the person you’re disguised as. Me: “Good thing I already killed him.” Drop disguise self and fly-bolt for the tunnel inside the arena, opposite the box. DM: The dragon chases after you, firing its breath weapon… Sorcerer: As soon as it’s below the lip of the stands, I cast Wall of Force. It’s trapped below, while [Me] can fly back up. _DM . exe crashes again._ A few rounds later… DM: The Sorcerer lost concentration, and the dragon is going to try and flee, flying low over the arena top and into the city. Monk Dwarf: “Oh no ye don’t!” Running leap after it, 15’ upwards into the air, Eldritch Claw adds 15’ reach to grab the dragon’s neck, and pulls himself in (after grapple) for a drop kick. _DM . exe is lagging._ That was the last of its hit points. You drop kicked behind its skull while grappling, so it falls head first. You, a dwarf, have successfully Piledrived a Dragon.

[@flameofmage1099]

Amazing

[@LordZipThe3rd]

Brilliant

[@haileyturner3309]

Glorious

[@jackgarcia3399]

New DM here, nervous and excited

[@cmykrgb1469]

Just finished my first campaign as a new DM. You'll do just fine, as long as you remember that it's about fun. Go get em.

[@brodyestes2376]

The most important thing to remember is that your plans will almost never go according to plan so don't try and strongarm the party into doing something. let the campaign be fluid and give your players THE ILLUSION of control over the campaign

[@Xonides]

@@brodyestes2376 this part. You don’t have to ACTUALLY know what’s going on to convince your players you have them in your hand. Feel free to take breaks if you need time to think and work on your Furrowed Brow look. I can’t tell you how many times a good Furrowed Brow was able to scare my players into taking their time on their turns, in turn giving me more time to figure out what the hell was going on.

[@eros5420]

Good luck and have fun! Honestly best advice is avoid rigid thinking. If the players do something like steal the artifact holding up the city... Roll with it. Your players would more enjoy a tpk after a few rounds in free fall than you saying they cant steal something. :p

[@agustingarcia6448]

Cheers! My advice is for you is to know your world, in a way that you can improvise given unexpected circumstances. Also, have fun! If it's fun, it'll never be wrong. Good luck!

[@funnyblog100]

Probably the time the gm had his villain monologuing and I asked if I could make a grapple check since the villain was just standing there talking. Rolled something like a 20 and my barbarian manhandled the big bad in the middle of his speech. The villain escaped barely but the gm made sure the big bad stood a good distance away from my barbarian when giving his speeches from then on.

[@alvarox951]

i can just imagine a typical villain in middle of it's monolog, a barbarian aproaching from behind and doing a german suplex on them

[@funnyblog100]

@@alvarox951 Actually I grabbed his throat. I pointed out most spells require verbal components. Meaning I had effectively crippled his spellcasting ability by grabbing his windpipe. I did this because he charmed one of our party members so I reduced the amount of commands he could give her. If he didn't have teleport as a racial ability the villain would have died then and there. If the villain wasn't able to teleport away in time the barbarian would have won. The big bad isn't that strong he mostly hides behind illusions and plays tricks on the mind.

[@alvarox951]

@@funnyblog100 that's....actually pretty brillant, huh, i'll have it in mind if i ever get to play again with a martial class againts a spellcaster thanks for the info

[@funnyblog100]

@@alvarox951 Yeah the whole table laughed except the gm who was just like well shit.

[@alvarox951]

@@funnyblog100 now that i remember i actually make my dm stay in shock when i revealed him what was my character build going to be and that it was viable, basically it was going to be a 2 weapon fighter with a dex build and a greatswords on each hand Long story short there is a exotic one handed longsword in pathfinder that if you have weapon prophiciency it counts as a light handed weapon, and there are 2 feats that allow a person to use a weapon as a cathegory smaller, so by combining those feats and crafting 2 giant version of the weapon i could in theory use 2 light handed greatswords on each hand

[@robertsissco2439]

I was the DM, D&D 3.5. Group gets a Deck of Many things and decided to draw from it in a tavern. One player draws 3 cards. First one, get a title and land, second one, 1d3 wishes, roles a 1, decides to save it, last draw, lose all material wealth. All of his items, his land (but not title) and coin gone. Without pausing goes, "I want to use my wish. I wish for all my shit back!" Tavern closes as they have several decades of dwarf excrement to clean out, and the group is perma-banned from the tavern.

[@seannemo8076]

Just because they didn't have "panties doesn't mean they don't have underwear. Underwear has been around for a _very_ long time.

[@alexanderthegreat6682]

The mountain was a double genocide, because both the dwarves and the storm giants were wiped out.

[@skell6134]

I guess giants actually can survice such fall

[@topi1607]

Bridge 4!

[@fabiansuckfull9446]

I also have a really nice player.exe crashed moment: My players had to put up with the antics of a pre-teen hag for story reasons. You know, having tea with an actual bear, hopscotch that could kill you if you mis-stepped etc. At some point she demands to paint the fingernails of the barbarian and the paladin. They go along, knowing they can just get rid of it later. Some time passes and they no longer have to babysit. So the mage goes to prestidigitate their fingernails. Nothing happens. As our chat errupts with laughter, both players fall silent, realising that the hag had painted them with permanent color that will never wash out. And we were playing a military campaign, so the other soldiers would never let them hear the end of it.

[@zrabanynick3]

That's evil right there.

[@PoldaranOfDalaran]

My DM.exe crashed once during our first campaign when one of my players asked me "Hey, where are all these half-demon orcs coming from, anyway?" Inexperienced DM me was using classed orcs with the half-fiend template slapped on them for a lot of encounters because, quite frankly, it was easier. Well, I hadn't considered where they were coming from. So I had me a sit down, and thought of many things. And none of them worked, clashing with the various things I'd already worked up. So, maybe a month later, my PCs managed to locate the dungeon where the incubi had all those captured orc villagers tied up. And the less I say about what was going on in there, the better.

[@aidankeys8534]

Oh...

[@supernukey419]

Oh no...

[@zubwayz3345]

This happened a few days ago myself, I spent a long time writing out the final "boss" for session one, to get my player to understand fighting, as he was new. His NPC buddy casts comprehend languages for him so he can go into the goblin camp to get a bunch of goblin blood from the goblin king. (as this was the quest) He proceeds to tell the goblins nobody is with him, so he enters alone. Me, knowing he's already down a few hp and could really use his NPC for this "boss fight;" starts planning on how the NPC gets in. Player right before he unknowingly enters the fight, asks me something. P: "can I try something real quick?" Me: "uhm... sure? what is it?" P:"can I yell out for five goblins to come join me and work for me for the rest of their lives; while I pay them all Five gold each?" Me:"That's not a lot, nobody's falling for that, but uhm... give me a persuasion check, i'll roll for five goblins" P: *rolls nat 20* Me: *Goblins all fail* Me: *sigh* "Five goblins run up to you" P: "I point at them" Me:"ok?" P:" you're Timmy, Tommy, Johnny, Jimmy, and you're sacrifice- I mean Jesus Christ!" Me: "you're giving one away? what are you doing with the other four?" P: "They're my sons now, they're joining my party" Me: "ok so there's no point to stay here since you have Jesus?" P: "mmh lets go" The player walks out of the goblin camp with five goblins following behind, puts on some shades and looks over to the NPC and smirks with some finger guns pointed at the NPC. They go back and give Jesus to the quest giver, who wanted blood from either a alive or dead goblin, not a goblin handed to him. So my player avoided the final battle of session one by adopting four sons.

[@daemonwolf1]

5e, pretty deep into the Rise of Tiamat campaign. Fairly new DM so I'll cut him some slack for these but his reactions were priceless. Both involve my minotaur barbarian (bear totem, of course!). Not to give spoilers but there's a point in the campaign where you fight a adult blue dragon by itself. DM was playing it pretty smart but we still ended up thrashing it after a few rounds. Being intelligent, it attempted to escape. DM said the dragon was 30' up and 180' away, but, we weren't about to let this beast get away! Previous rounds the dragon had been flying and the fight had drifted away faster than my character could move so I had pulled out my Ivory Goat figurine (movement stat of a light riding horse so 60' a round) and mounted it to try and catch up. So in an awesome display of unplanned teamwork, the warlock handed me their broom of flying (no attunement required) and the sorcerer cast haste on my mount. Full sprint means I 240' of movement per round. I zoom under the dragon like I'm Speedy Gonzales (using the mount's movement), hopped onto the broom and use it's movement to fly up, and whack the dragon. Not enough to kill it, I was the party tank not the DPS. But what I did have was the Sentinel feat and I was damn lucky with it. (In fact, we named our party the Sentinel Retaliation Group because of it. So that the DM could say 'God damn Sentinel' both in character and out.) DM was rather stunned at the turn of events where his dragon went from 'clearly free of combat there's no way they can catch up' to 'movement locked by the flying barbarian' in under 6 seconds. So dragon couldn't move away and the rest of the party caught up and finished it off. Second item was related to how he decided resistance worked. RAW, resistance doesn't stack. He let it stack: If you had to items/features that gave you resistance, you had immunity. If you had three items, you actually healed from that type of damage. He would also use a random magic item shop generator to determine what was available (which lead to the creation of the Wifu Shield but that's another story). One time we visited such a shop and there among the items listed was one little gem: a potion of invulnerability. This gives resistance to all damage for one minute. We were on discord so we couldn't see each other's faces, but I know we all had the same slow dawning 'oh hell yeah' expression. Needless to say we scraped up every single gold piece we could to pay the 40k price tag, then promptly gave it to my barbarian for safe keeping. Come the boss battle, as soon as Tiamat started showing up, I drank that potion and charged straight in. Potion plus bear totem means full immunity to all damage except psychic for a full minute. Yeah, you could hear the DM's 'I dun messed up' face when we purchased that potion. As I said he was a pretty new DM but we were all having fun (including him) so I don't think we abused him too badly.

[@Razael0f0ld]

Why a DM really needs to review all the spells a caster has: So we were running what was suppose to be a 5e one shot with level 5 characters. The DM told us at the start of the session that it would be a TPK dungeon. The dungeon used one way portals to shift you from one isolated section of a random world to another. We fought through several worlds into the depths of this dungeon before we finally hit some bad luck and really took a beating. After barely scraping by a win on the floor, the party took a moment to gauge their remaining abilities and items. We were almost completely spent, having only a scroll of hideous laughter, one healing potion, and the cleric down to 2 spell slots. The DM couldn't help but smirk as he was sure the next floor would kill us. That was until I turned to the DM and had told him that my bard was ritual casting Tiny Hut. The look of sheer confusion as he realized that our party now had a way to get a long rest on demand was priceless. Once the DM actually managed to regain his composure and get the rest of the table to stop laughing we had to call the session as he had to restructure the remaining worlds, as well as create more, to try and kill us, unsuccessfully. After another 2 sessions we cleared the dungeon, as he didn't realize the bottom of the hut was susceptible to attacks through the ground.

[@Archon3960]

The best laid plans and all... xD

[@braddalrymple8615]

I really just loved the "way" that first story was great and of course the way you read it. Failed the 2 saves and tiamat for tea got me 😁

[@notbob555]

I dont understand how a dm of 20 years experience only has knowledge from the 5th edition players handbook. You'd think he would remember that most of this stuff had already existed in earlier editions of the game.

[@davemakesnoises]

@@notbob555 easy to forget stuff from 20 years ago once you've been doing something a certain way for long enough. I had to un-teach myself from anchoring my pinky down to the body of my guitar when fingerpicking because it was causing tendinitis and i still catch myself in the act on occasion. been playing almost 20 yrs now?

[@notbob555]

@@davemakesnoises I don't think you understood my comment. My point was that none of that was new in 5th edition. If they had been DMing for 20 years, then they were using prior editions as 5th edition isn't that old. Prior editions already had all that stuff.

[@lockwoan01]

@@notbob555 Okay, let me explain it to you simple - as I was the guy with the Veteran DM. The DM had played D&D 3.5 (and had learned from a guy who had played 2nd edition - iirc) but when it came to 5th edition - in late 2019 - all he had was the three core rule books (PHB, MM, DMG). He didn't have access to Xanathar's, Volo's, Mordenkien, or any of the supplements available, because he wanted to support the shop we played in and, like many folks, couldn't necessarily afford all the extra books (personally, it took me a couple of years to get caught up, and I still don't have Strixhaven - got to wait a few more days). The Warlock wasn't in 3.5, from what I can find. Also, the DM didn't allow homebrewed/third-party races or subclasses (no Blood Hunter for instance), and only wanted Official sources - books or PDFs. Basically, given that the only warlocks he knew were the Fey, Fiend, and GOO, me saying a Celestial was a patron was like saying "Fish fall from the sky", which most don't believe in - then a tornado occurs, goes over a lake, sucks up a bunch of fish, and drops them on land - which was what Xanathar's did - sucked the fish up, and dropped them on him. Xanathar's revealed a lot to him - enough to get his own copy. Don't know what he's up to at the moment, don't know if he's playing in person, as his wife is one of those At-Risk sorts.

[@notbob555]

@@lockwoan01 ​ The warlock was in 3.5. And 3. Which was the newest edition in 2000. With 3.5 coming out in 2003. I was talking more everything, not specifically the celestial warlock. Like the Tabaxi. Which as a concept shouldn't have been anything new. Unless he had only been using 3rd edition core books for 20 years. Which might actually explain his reaction to other books existing.

[@gloriabeaudry7629]

DM: here’s a list of 4 things you need to finish the campaign. One a goristro heart, two- My rouge: oh I have that! DM: …you have that?! My rogue: yeah remember I took the heart outta that one we fought like a year ago? DM: *says nothing for like 2 minutes* ok well I guess you guys don’t have to do that whole part of the campaign!!

[@markuskeler758]

Out of the abyss? I also have that Heart

[@nef36]

My one and only DM.exe had crashed moment in my short, one year DnD career: The DM introduced this silver dragon NPC named Silvera. When she introduced herself as such, my first instinct was to ask "Is it because you're silver?" The DM looked at me, dumbfounded for a solid five seconds before having dragon reply "You look tasty."

[@Nukestarmaster]

That seems out of character for a silver.

[@lukediehl1210]

When rolling stats, I did pretty well, aside from a single 5, which I dumped into charisma. Having a -3 to performance, I thought it would be hilarious to enter a poetry contest. My DM surprised me by offering an option, the easy way or the fun way. Easy way, we make rolls. Fun way, we actually trade poems back and forth. He didn't know what he was getting into. He felt pretty cocky reading off some Robert Frost that he prepared. Then I started reciting The Raven from memory. I wasn't even a quarter of the way through when he said "Screw it, we're rolling, and you have advantage."

[@weoweom1612]

I actually remember a time where I was playing in a mostly story based 5th edition game. During this game I was playing a reborn great old one warlock named Zekhum, due to his affiliation and friendship with a literal goddess I was sent to find their consciousness that was sealed during the 2700 years of slumber I was in. While looking for it in another dimension (homebrew world btw, doesn't follow the rules on normal 5e.) I was supposed to be sent through flashback lane since my character lost all of his memories to his patron in exchange for his reanimation. Essentially when I touched what was believed to be the key to unsealing the goddess the magic item cast a spell that was meant to teleport me to another location to throw his entire backstory at him because story reasons. The way I destroyed my DM was because I had counterspell and deactivated it. My DM went silent for a few minutes and spent 2 days trying to rewrite how I was supposed to regain my memories, which involved me going to the ruins of my old home that was spooky af. TL:DR - My DM attempted to teleport me to another location to give my character a memory jog, used counterspell, and absolute chaos from the great old one warlock

[@ninjabreadman8166]

That is an amazing thumbnail lmao

[@flyoutfate7462]

The Scorp's Note sound effect broke me

[@roguejacket]

It was me, I set up an island with a tribe sacrificing people to a demon, the party after exploring the island found the demon and before combat started two players spoke and the same time and thru dice down. I said wait and ask for them to repeat what they said one at a time. One said I cast a spell to calm the demon and the other said to befriend him, both rolled nat 20s. I said take a break and chugged jagermeister.

[@GrimmundusRex]

I've got a couple good ones. My favorite was a dungeon bypass moment. So, there's this spell in 5e called "Teleport". Does exactly what it says, with varying levels of accuracy, depending on how you target it. You can get 'perfect' accuracy by using an item associated with the target location. The party was being sent to rescue a kidnapped ship captain, who'd been yoinked out of her ships cabin in the night. Now, we _could_ have followed environmental clues or rumors to figure out where she got taken. My main man Fenex? He has _better_ things to do, a cunning plan, and a magical helmet that let him cast Teleport 3 times a day. So, he immediately asks the crew if they can bring him the captain's hairbrush, and tells the party to gather round. Cue baffled DM frantically flipping to the page with the cellblock encounter on it, and we basically get to do the entire dungeon in reverse. Also, once the very surprised jailer spellcaster and his skeleton naga minions were dealt with, Fenex sent a water elemental out ahead with instructions to seek and destroy, as one does. The other was a bit simpler. Party and I had been sent into a haunted farmstead to retrieve a painting. Bonus rewards for how intact the painting is on retrieval. My character? Mimic Druid (using the tortle statblock, as one does) named Chest. As in *treasure* chest. Something not many players pay attention to? Weight. Tortles have very large shells. Tortles are _very heavy_ . I was using the tortle statblock; this includes characteristics _such as weight_ . So, we're in the final confrontation, and the enemy ghost/shade thingie is using telekenesis to throw the painting (and the players) around. Chest pounces past a minion (making a bite as he goes, thank you Primal Savagery), catches the painting, and stuffs it in his bag. The shade can't target the painting, since it's stowed and out of sight, so instead DM decides to have the shade toss around Chest. Cue this inquiry, "Question: is there a weight limit on how much he can lift?" DM.exe has crashed, wait for reboot. "Uhhhh... maybe? How much do you weigh?!" "Over 400 lbs" "Huh... I guess he _doesn't_ toss you..."

[@Ramsey276one]

4:33 that’s The Force leaking out INTO IRL XD

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

PANR has tuned in.

[@codymarshall587]

Eyy, I know you!

[@coledibiase1777]

Glad to see you, daddy.

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

@@coledibiase1777 glad to see you too big cat!

[@postapocalypticnewsradio]

@@codymarshall587 oh heck! Been a minute. Let's catch up over some pizza

[@Yojimbo16]

There was a night were some of the players were running late so to pass the time until they showed up the DM planned a simple "Catch the Bandits" quest for me and the only other player there and what followed was said-player convincing the bandits group that they should form a circus troupe together and they all agreed and the DM's reaction was just priceless. He looked like he was trying to blow up someone's head with his mind he looked so mad.

[@flamewave000]

9:08 technically DM's own fault for allowing the Home rule "Crit Success/Fail for Skills Challenges" into his game. Standard D&D would not have allowed that to happen lol

[@jonathanbugarin3746]

My very first TTRPG as a player was Starfinder, playing as an Operator (kinda like the Rogue of starfinder) with a primary focus in Dex. Our veteran DM had me start off with a weapon called the Operator's Knife which not only scaled with my Dex Stat, but also had a rule where if I rolled the highest number on damage (1d4), I could roll again for more damage, up to 3 times. The very first attack I ever made in my history of DND, I rolled a nat 20, and the proceeded to roll 3 straight 4's in a row. The DM simply stood there for a second, as he processed how a level one new character just did 18 damage on his very first turn to an enemy with 10 health who didn't even know he was coming. The DM then looked at me to make sure I wasn't using rigged dice, then he realized I was using the dice HE had let me borrow. And then just decided to try and forget the state of godhood that I had been placed into for my first ever turn.

[@agent3051]

I’m playing a Human Gunslinger in 5E, and we were Level 6 at the time that I broke my DM. We’re in an Eberron campaign, and were going after an artifact that was in a place infected by Xoriat, so dream monsters. When combat initiated, our Paladin went down in a single attack action due to some lucky crits on the dm’s side. Then, the turns progress and not much happens until it gets to my turn. I was new to the group, but not new to dnd, so I knew how to make some interesting things. My dm had never seen a gunslinger before, so he wasn’t too sure how effective in combat I’d be. At the start of my turn, there were 3 Starspawn Manglers on the field and one other enemy that I forget the name of. For my first attack of the turn, I use two Grit Points to add two more damage dice to my first attack, and crit it. Now this character also has some interesting gear, specifically the Hunter’s Coat from Critical Roll. I crit, dealing 63 points of damage to one of the Manglers, killing it. And then I reloaded for my second attack, and then Action Surged to shoot once more. I crit again after using two more Grit Points on even more Violent Shot, doing 70 points of damage to the second Mangler. My dm muted himself on Discord as the rest of the group erupted into laughter and cheers at my damage.

[@kramerfortuna7228]

There have been A LOT of those. Trying to solve a mystery by threatening/beating confessions out of an entire village. Pretending to be an elder god. Holding their breath and smashing the glass on the observation deck of a space station. Brainwashing and legally adopting the BBEG's child in an attempt to lure him out of hiding. But the most recent one was when one of the players actually tried to hit on arguably the most despicable character I've ever made... and through a series of rolls that were nothing short of miraculous, it (sort of) worked. She had enslaved, beaten, degraded, and tricked the party into killing an innocent man. I had been building towards a final battle where the players could rise up against this slave driver and serve her a well-deserved, 5 course meal of justice. Defeated, shamed, and with a horde of angry prisoners breaking down the door to tear her limb from limb, she begged the players to kill her quickly. It seemed like the stage was set... and then one of my players got curious about WHY she did those horrible things. To be fair, they roleplayed the hell out of that, so I decided to play along with it. She divulged her story- a sad tale of desperation and bad decisions that spiraled out of control. A story that she didn't even care to change, as she'd grown complacent and accepted the monster that she had become. The PC argued that everyone is a hero in their own eyes, to which she responded that there are no heroes in her story. No heroes. No escape. And no place to go even if she could. Her failure brought shame to the empire, and that failure wouldn't go unpunished. Again, she asked for a merciful death. The PC drew his dagger hesitantly. So far, so good. And THEN he went in for the kiss. I didn't know what to do. This character had committed ATROCITIES. I never expected anyone to react to her like that, so I never considered how SHE would've handled that. The other players seemed interested to see how it would play out, so after a few seconds of staring blankly, I said that she blushed, though the PC couldn't tell if it was out of attraction or embarrassment. PC then goes on to say that the world has no place for anyone. It's up to "US" to carve out our own place. Together. He rolled a d100 to charm/convince her, but with disadvantage (homebrew game system), and got DOUBLE 100'S. The other players started to crack up when they saw the roll, so I suspected that the dice might have been loaded. I had him roll again with my own dice, and he joked "okay, but double or nothing" or something like that. BOOM. A 99 AND ANOTHER 100. I decided to play it off as the NPC breaking down into tears, feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and confused at being shown kindness for the first time in years. No, she wasn't immediately swept off her feet or anything, but with some villain-reforming therapy, some quality time together, and a couple more charisma rolls, they're somehow well on their way to being the world's most unlikely power couple. Sure, my players have done far more outlandish things, but this one probably caught me off guard more than anything else they've done.

[@guyman9655]

As a DM, my players last session broke me. One player, lets call him Max, now max has a habit of being a pain in my ass. Max likes to not be hit, playing an eldritch knight fighter with a shield, heavy armor, and the defense fighting style, he has 19 AC currently. During RP Max is an arrogant SOB, to the point where he couldn't let a more seasoned commander who was commanding armies since Max's character was a fetus, now Max pushed this commander (and by extension me) to far causing the campaign to derail. His ship was obliterated, the dark god that was empowering them and the commanders army left them and the party left much more than they remembered aboard their ship. Including a lot of gold and a lot of weapons.

[@pulsefel9210]

that first one sounds like the dm was a stick in the mud, but now he sees the potential plots and stories that were waiting to be played out he was preventing and regrets it.

[@lockwoan01]

No, more like he only had access to the basic stuff. Trust me - I'm the player who posted the story. He tended to homebrew the stories anyways. As it was, I was a Champion Fighter - though I had planned to swap to Eldritch Knight, but we never got to that.

[@MrGreensweightHist]

Not a stick int he mud. Just lacking access to expanded content. A LOT of DMs are leery about homebrew and for good reason. While there are balanced homebrews, most aren't, to the point that "Homebrew" is almost synonymous with "Power gaming"

[@lockwoan01]

@@MrGreensweightHist That was basically his issue - he didn't have the extra stuff. Also, he only allowed Official WotC material, book or PDF - hence why when I showed him Xanathar's, he was like, "Whoa!" Dude even got his own copy soon after. Also, in case I forgot to mention it in the story, dude is a wounded veteran, and his wife has her own health issues (and then there was the messed up truck, that they were trying to repair, that was in Texas - funny how things turned out there), and given that the books are $50 each, and he liked to support the local comic shop we played in, it wasn't like he could just plunk down $1,000 to get everything..... funny how I myself now own all the 5e stuff that's in a book or starter set (but a large chunk of that that was due to getting a lump sum of back-owed unemployment money). Funny thing is, I've sent him pictures of my stuff - after one set of 6+ photos, he was like, "You need to start up a group. You have literally all the resources to learn how to DM."

[@MrGreensweightHist]

@@lockwoan01 I can relate. I only own the basic 3 box set myself...for anything else I look it up online until I can afford to get them. Electronic age. As much as I want hard copies, it is nice that everything is out there while still building up the collection

[@lockwoan01]

@@MrGreensweightHist I've mentioned one helpful site to folks in my group - one used it to build an Orc Paladin.

[@Chazz_K]

Warhammer 40K, Rogue Trader. Rag-tag group of xenos, one cog-las, and a freaking Sister of Battle. Me, the GM: Okay, there's a pair of autocannon-mounted servitors guarding the entryway to the facility. You don't even have to roll, the Battle Sister and the Techpriest can tell what they are from here. Tau sniper: They are well within my rail-rifle's range, I should be able to take at least one out. Battle Sister: You are also in THEIR range; you'll get one shot off before the other one tears you to shreds. Tau: Then it will be an honorable death, to ensure we--- **Ork Freebooter:** Oi, how much does dis big trailer thing weigh? Cue me checking the weight listings in the book, as well as the carrying/pushing rules, and GM.exe putting in a crash report to the Emperor as one Ork proto-nob pushes an entire shuttlecraft unloader through the kill-box directly into the servitors.

[@somewhereelse1235]

I was the broken DM in this situation. Players have been known to typically fight in one of two parties I run, although one of the players is in my other party, which has managed to diplomacy their way out of no less than 2 boss encounters. Expecting the party to either fight or flee, I had an adult deep dragon (Fizban's) come across a party of 4 level 7 players. A touch strong, but I know they're strong enough to kill it without a death if they're smart. Instead they do something weird. One player shit talks it, and before I can say to roll initiative, the shared player starts kink shaming it. He goes on for close to 10 minutes as I try to regain my composure to suddenly having this gruff and old dragonborn near the end of his life kink shaming this hungry ass underdark creature out of trying to eat him. The next session that party decided to help mindflayers get a shadow dragon to be converted into an elder brain dragon and also get Medusa drunk and have a player seduce and bang her. The shit my players get up to...

[@whisperinwind87]

I've got two instances where we broke the DM, all in the same campaign. The first was when going through a hag coven lair we came across a summoning circle trap summoning a powerful demon. Lucky my bard was sneaking around and got surprise attack on the demon; in which he cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter. The powerful demon who was supposed to be a hard fight never stood a chance only getting one turn because he couldn't make his saves. The DM now hates Tasha's Hideous Laughter and put in what he calls "Tasha's Hideous Laughter counter measures" to any fight he wants to be hard, aka legendary reistanses. The next time was when fighting the Night Hag herself, we had just defeated the rest of her coven and was on our way to the boss fight. We knew that the area for the fight contained an ancient and dangerous source of power that was corrupting the land, (our mission was to disable the power) and we figured the hag was going to use this source of power in some way. Which was sorta true, The DM had planed a two part boss fight, the first being against said power which was a sentient and had materialized a physically form of wires and energy, while the hag equipped magically items that powered her up significantly. How it went however was after tricking the power source into revealing the location of the hag, the other player had his artificer and warlock Dimension Door down to the hag started both battles at once, not given the hag time to powerup. To add insult to injury that artificer took the hag eye that we looted of a gargolye minon earlier and shattered it, blinding her and doing 3 d10 damage with high rolls. so that whole fight ended up being the artificer and warlock taking potshots at the poor hag while she keep on blindly running into acid pools which was supposed to be stage harzzards for us. The other half of the fight didn't go as well. With one-third of the party humiliating the hag, both of which were the long-range fighters, the power source was destorying the rest of the party, with it teleporting ability. My Monk/rogue was dishing out most the damage and nearly died four times in the process. The other close-range fighter, the paladin, couldn't get close enough to hit the boss and could barely get close enough to heal my monk leaving him as well my bard and druid stuck as healers. The DM was flabbergasted at the whole ordeal, the fight against the power source was suposed to be easier with the long-range fighters helping output damage and thus making the power target more than the monk/rogue, while the hag was suppose to be a REALLY tough fight. We all had a good laugh about it, and now my monk/rogue has PTSD. p.s. if your wondering about me having multiple characters, there is two players each with three characters, was two characters at first but my bard is squishy and has really bad luck... thus we needed a healer or two

[@AnemoneMeer]

One from the 5e playtest. I was playing a tiefling bard. We got some paralysis poison. Playtest tieflings had an effect that when they took damage, they could get advantage or impose disadvantage. The DM did not expect my tiefling to dual wield by shooting themselves with a hand crossbow, throwing the paralysis poison, and then forcing disadvantage on the save. Neither did the BBEG, who was now unable to move.

[@bomk1680]

The Australian one was funny af lmao he got dragged to the Australian dimension

[@gotyouchip1179]

I also played a RWBY tabletop campaign and while I haven't watched RWBY and don't plan on it, it was still crazy fun. At one point, us being (mostly) innocent teens were supposed to intercept a van and take out the goons for a quest... yeah we took them out... but not in a good way. It was supposed to be mostly pacifist especially because one of the PCs background was about how mad she gets when evil is about or annoying things etc. And she had never seen a dead person, and very much didn't want to. So one PC uses his power to summon fog to cloud the streets so this van wouldn't see our ambush. He stood in the road waiting for them and when they came through he rolled SO HIGH that he stopped the car basically by punching it. Now with the car busted my character activated their part of the plan, which was summoning a random gun (basically a roulette on good guns to bad guns) and got a handheld medieval cannon. Instantly fired, and the entire group of goons got blown to smithereens. The car was nothing but a bit of frame and there were no identifiable remains of the goons. Somehow the guy who punched the car didn't die because he rolled a crazy save too, but needless to say, the pacifist character wasn't happy and almost went berserk which would not end well at all. DM was quite surprised at the good (but also bad because everyone died) luck and so we continued on. My character didn't care because he was a psychopathic vigilante serial killer with a whole backstory of revenge buuuut apparently that's not really feasible in the real universe of the game so... it kind of sucked. I wanted to be this terrifying freak and hide my life as much as possible while dismantling, figuratively and literally, a racist organization that lynched my adopted parents but instead I just ended up being a sketchy dude who had no remorse. It was still fun, just a little bit of a let down on that front.

[@gecko2.617]

The Jedi and his Padawan... ripping a ship appart, well I am pretty sure that is considered dark side what you guys did ... 🤣👌 But very forcefully evil way to go, I like it!

[@oz_jones]

Yeah, that is 100% a dark side act. Killing thousands of sentient beings in one fell swoop, Palpatine would be proud.

[@liamoneill8971]

There was a session when the townhall keeper Maisy comforted a player after their first real fight as an adevtuter. This player proclaimed "yeah! Girls helping girls!" This was pretty funny because I, the DM, (playing the NPC) am 6ft 4, 270 lbs man. Later on I described how the Eldritch God of Entropy in my campaign (a queen bee style praying mantis) had cultists followers who helped channeled her influence. One of the players then said "girls helping girls" about the cultists helping the eldritch being.

[@Razor773_YT]

My favorite D&D moment was the time I stumped my DM on session one of a brand new campaign. We were brand new level three characters in a fresh campaign after our last one had “dried out” my character was an extremely nerdy dwarves wizard named Rumlin Stormwind. So it’s session one and I have just met the other two PCs after they challenged each other to a wrestling match in the fighting pit I was checking out to find new party members. We all agreed to tag along with each other to the next town over where I had heard of an adventurer contracts that was open. So we proceeded and stopped halfway to make camp. When asked if we stand watch we all just shrugged and said “nah it’ll be fine.” Well our DM woke us up in the middle of the night to the voices of three bandits telling us to drop our weapons and they’ll let us go. In response to this, my character did the only logical thing he could think of: insult them with the most creative taunt he could come up with. I looked at my DM and said “Suck my toes you brigands!” I then immediately asked if I could roll intimidation (my character had a -1 charisma modifier mind you) before my DM could even finish saying roll for it I looked up and proclaimed “nat 20.” The look of shock on his face and our party howled in laughter was priceless. He then told us they make wisdom saving throws. The first roll? Natural 1. This was followed by even more laughter. In frustration he literally stood up and took like 5 minutes to figure out what to do next, as the three of us continued giggling like children. Finally he just said that the two other bandits run off but the bigger one stays to fight us, where he was promptly annihilated in a single turn. TLDR: DM tried to ambush us with bandits but my wizard successfully intimidated them with quite the unusual taunt.

[@sevrono]

last session, yesterday, in our ffg swrpg game, we were attacking a mining base, and happened to have a captured interdictor in our modestly numbered fleet, and we caught a super star destroyer, we rolled really well in the first few rounds of combat, to the point that 3 rounds in the crit that destroyed the vessel had a +70 and vaporized it, and our interdictor wasn't even in range with its own weapons, i personally was on board a gozanti

[@alvarox951]

the one about of the accent reminded me that our DM somehow in one session managed to make a perfect combination between a jamaican accent and a french accent by accident. NONE OF US have any idea how did he made it, even himself doesn't know how he made it, unfortunatly it was a one session only trick, he never managed to repeat that feat again, but it was glorious while it lasted

[@justfreakingdye]

Level 15 - fighting a Rokh (idk how to spell it, giant bird thing). At this point it's attempting to escape but half our party can fly and are chasing it down. I am a Rogue/Monk and the only one with enough movement speed to catch up. We'd damaged it some but it was mostly fine. It was more a pride thing to kill it. Our Wizard starts fretting it's gonna get away but I assure him - I am going to kill on my next turn. DM playfully scoffed at that one. On my turn I arrive to the Rokh and speed to the front. I ask the DM "is its beak open?" DM says yes "Okay - for my action I am going to put my Rod of Immovable Objects in its mouth and activate it." The look of stark terror disgust and horror on my DMs face was the single best thing I've felt in DnD. As he say there, stunned, I turned to our Wizard and simply repeated myself. "I am going to kill it on my next turn."

[@ignisshadowflame1027]

It's spelled Rok.

[@idiotgaming6376]

When I told my dm that conjure animals summons 8 velociraptors so 1 dead bear later we all had a laugh

[@Everyone9z9]

Just defeated the Curse of Strahd campaign after only about 10 sessions, at the end of which, we were lvl 5. For context, Strahd is a CR 15. Lesgooo! If you wanna know how, our party cast silence and daylight when the dm tried fucking with us. (the fucking was quite common, we just chose violence on this instance) Our rogue then proceeded to use inspiration to roll a 30 on a persuasion check gaining him 2 magical items. Dm called his dm (from another campaign where he is a character) and complained. Unfortunately, we kinda missed the entire story to the module, but a dm breakdown was fun to see either way.

[@Daniel_Coffman]

Those D&D metaphors in the first story were hilarious!

[@8wing73]

I've never heard something so relatable as this title.

[@jiupeper6204]

The first story was actually kinda wholesome :)

[@lockwoan01]

It was my story.

[@lewisbarclay9113]

A Shadowrun 4th Ed game I was running in a modified 'Artifacts Unbound' campaign. I don't remember exactly what caused me to blank. But my response was to walk away from the table for about a minute (always a good sign when the DM has to do that). I come back and.....well 'I' called them vampire that had been turned by a strain of the HMHVV virus so quickly that their cell there breaking down...but my player shorthanded it to 'melting vampires' or 'goo zombies'. The lesson there is be careful of breaking the DM, or the DM might break you.....with vampire goo zombies

[@peytonstanfield2703]

Thank you for doing mine! Boyfriend is still shocked to this day

[@robertsissco2439]

When playing Shadowrun, I was playing a street samurai. We were hired by a bar to get rid of this gang that was trying to take it over for a gang HQ. My PC is an explosives nut, and I rig the all entrances, and rig the front bar into a death trap, and give everyone in my party a detinator and let them know what channels are for what door.. The gang drives an armors pickup into the front bar (not knowing it was rigged) and I tell the group "Lets see if they want to talk." The gang throws open all the truck doors with weapons at the ready. As the ST was getting ready to setup what was supposed to be the boss battle from this story arc, I just look at hi and say "Click". The ST looks at me for a moment then it dawns on him that he parked his bad guys in the middle on a mine field, and we ended the battle with a push of a button. We never did get paid for that job, he bar keep kept it to cover repairs.

[@VenatDax]

“Peter the Stockholm Spider” Yeah, that’s got RWBY fan base written all over it.

[@ericb3157]

"he thought Enlightenment was a person"... reminds me of a silly short story i read in one of the "sword and sorceress" books, where a dragon NAMED Armageddon attacked a town, and someone accidentally sent the Four Horsemen after it...

[@MasterTMO]

I have two, one from when I was DM, one from where I'm a player: * 5E - party tracks a couple of thieves across the desert, the ranger picks up 1 level of exhaustion. They find the cave where the thieves have holed up, dispatched the two guard beasts, then ... "we'll back up 30 minutes and take a long rest" I was not prepared for that. * 2E - I wasn't there this session, but the party was exploring an inn stuck in a time loop. The cause was a wizard using a custom hourglass artifact to travel in time and 'fix' the timestream, but got backstabbed just before activating, so each day was him arriving in the inn and dying. As the party was getting ready to leave, the cleric decided to take action, and cast Holy Weapon (I think) and attacked the hourglass, rolling a Nat 20. The DM had to go for a walk for 15 minutes to figure out what would happen when a magic weapon crit hit an artifact.

[@BlackRainRising]

Last week in star-wars d20 I broke the DM, all I did was go to the bounty office and ask what's on the boards. He was frozen for a few moments because even though he stated the bounty office was nearby among other things, he didn't actually have anything for the bounty office, so finally after saying he wasn't expecting me to go there, he had to throw together a list of names to push the story line and throw a new curveball into his progression (apparently the list of names was part of the story just... not yet, oops)

[@franbh94]

I think I kinda broke my DM in a Ravnica campaign. The first one was against a Drider. He had this encounter with the spiderwebs, the Drider attacking from range, Darkness onto the party, you know the jizz. "Darkness?", I asked. "This is fine, I got this". My Centaur Druid of the Land was pretty chill, maintaining composture even during the final battle, he couldnt be broken. I waited for my turn and said "I cast Daylight". "How come you have Daylight prepared?!" "It's a Grassland Circle spell :D" The turn after I casted Conjure Animals to surround the Drider with 8 Blood Hawks, it didnt last long. The other time was during another Ravnica game. I was a Rogue Mastermind/Diviner, my goal was to be support. So, enter the final battle, we are against this plant-like op spellcaster. I look at the Evoker and he looks at the Cleric. The Cleric, Grave Domain, uses her curse thing to give vulnerability. The Evoker uses Blight. Then, I look at the DM and say "Oh, he rolled a 4 in his save" One-shotting a boss through teamwork. GJ team.

[@jconnolly2715]

I recently crashed while running a Fallout DnD game. The party was resting before heading into a city in the morning, and after all the other party members had fallen asleep, (minus the robots) one player decided to get up to some shenanigans (with a nat 20 stealth check as to be expected). His characters name is Dunno, and he's a ghoul scientist with chronic memory issues. So he asks me if Dunno can look for deathclaw tracks. I wasn't expecting a good enough survival check from him to eventually find deathclaw tracks, but he rolled a 24 and after 2 hours he was following deathclaw tracks. An hour later he was close enough to where the deathclaw was for it to start hunting him. So now Dunno is face to face with a deathclaw and initiative is rolled, Dunno rolls a 12 and the deathclaw gets a 16. I crashed here for about 10 mins because Dunno is one of the best role played characters I've had in any of my games, and I wasn't mentally ready for him to die. After that, the combat began, and the deathclaw approaches Dunno, hits him 3 times leaving him with 2 hit points. At this point the deathclaw could have attacked him again, which definitely would have hit, and killed him, but I faltered. I decided to let Dunno get at least 1 turn because of his max luck stat, so the deathclaw prepares for it's next turn and we move to Dunno. Dunno pulls a super sledge from his back, makes a targeted attack at the deathclaws head, and rolls a nat 20. In this system if you crit on a targeted attack you get to choose the effect that happens instead of rolling for it. 'I knock it unconscious'. I crashed here again for another 10 mins before we could carry on the session. TL;DR- Ghoul sneaks away from the party, hunts a deathclaw, almost died, and then knocked the deathclaw unconscious with a big hammer, causing the DM to crash twice.

[@swattofficer6624]

In a hex crawl with chances for random changes to distance and direction (layer of Hell), party had no idea what to do next, as they had a few options- there was one I hoped they would go for but it was technically sandbox so I wasn’t gonna force it. They end up spinning a dagger to decide random direction, roll max on the random change and end up travelling to a completely random hex. The hex they rolled randomly, out of 60 possible destinations, after randomly deciding direction via dagger, was the one I had hoped they would aim for.

[@benthomason3307]

The entire party had managed to both A) sneak up to a door undetected, and B) determine that there were goblins on the other side. What do I say? "I stick my wand of wonder under the door."

[@Alex-cp6mq]

Made my DM.exe crash once . We fighting a manticore (at level 3) as part of a dream sequence, we were getting mauled, both my team members were down, I held my action for the manticore to attack a downed player...which it did ( DM is brutal), stuck a rod of collapsing right where the sun don't shine, rolled nat 20.

[@pis4brains4843]

I love that thumbnail. :)

[@comradecat3629]

So we’re doing a game where you rebuild a town over the course of a year, drawing a card every week (in game) and then making a discovery or starting a project. Our Ranger discovered what wildlife we had around at the very beginning of the game and the dm said “ the forest has some magically larger creatures but it’s mostly normal. You do have a lot of marmots though.” Next week Ranger creates a hunting party to kill some marmots and afterwards the DM says “your hunting somehow only raised the population of marmots. You now have a median of food and a fuckton of marmots.” A few weeks later, we pull a card that reads (paraphrasing here) “your oldest party member dies or your oldest party member is gravely wounded.” Now the thing is, we have a paladin, divine whatchamafuckit sorcerer, and potion artificer so we take the gravely wounded option. “How did this happen?” And everyone but one player said “MARMOTS!”. That one player was zoned out and thought we said mormons. we have a Mormon friend so he goes “wait Noah (not the actual name) attacked *ranger* (oldest because half elf)?” We sell start laughing before the dm clarifies. “no, no, it was a grizzly bear sized marmot named Noah” Now noah irl is an avid martial arts practitioner so now we have a grizzly bear sized marmot that knows tae-kwan do. Pretty fucking confusing but a good early boss for us to hunt down eventually, right? Wrong. The Ranger (who rolled a nat20 on his death save) “I start a war with the marmots.” Complete. Fucking. Silence. (And a wide eyed dm) He had to take 5 before silently writing down “Marmot war -6 weeks” The next two sessions went by and we gained crab person troops, a nudist 6/10 Druid started a marmot cult that killed all religious fervour in town, and it all lead up to my favourite line in the campaign. “You watch as the marmots gather at the edge of the forest. The marmots have battle lines.” We all had a good chuckle at that and are now at war with marmots, outnumbered 8 to 1. Still fighting the marmot war but some more great quotes came out of the last session. “I cast speak with animals” “The marmots are all yelling cunt” And “You hear the clattering of hooves and see the distant outline of deer charging through the steam cloud. There are marmots on deer. Marmots. On. Deer. Ok sessions over see you next week” For my first game to make it past 1 session this is amazing.

[@cosmoniums5990]

How have you not gotten any likes

[@sam9975]

Gotta get this one of my chest I was running a 5e campaign last year It was supposed to be a kinda serious campaign somewhat based on lovecraft stories. Early on the campaign they reach a city (totaly not insmouth). To progress they had to win a bet against a city noble, the game? A monster fighting arena where the player controlled a cr 1/2 creature and had to defeat another one I controlled, on the second round I was controlling a giant frog and the player was controlling a flying sword, the flying sword was losing and then the player said: "I want to use animal handling to give the frog a command" Oook what do you want the frog to do? "I want to tell it to explode" ...roll? He rolled a nat 20 and had EXPERTISE in animal handling he ended up with like a 30 or something ridiculous. Of course I'm not letting him get away with something like that so I roll a 1d100 to determine the effect, godamn 100 because WHY NOT so I describe how APARENTLY the frogs in this world have a dormant gene that makes them EXPLODE when spoken to softly, the explosion made the bar they were in burst into flames, killing the noble. This little accident led to to a little event infamously named "El santo imperio de las ranas y la inquisicion amfibia" (the holy frog empire and the amphibian inquisition) but that is a story for another day

[@noticeme6412]

Didnt expect how it ended

[@sleepinghermit7778]

Something to remember, a nat 20 is a critical success, but that success doesn't have to be exactly what they want or expect to happen. Example you could have had the frog have explosive diarrhea.

[@albusvoltavern4500]

As a DM there are two types of crashes. There is the very real “oh shit everything is ruined” and then there is the much more common “recalculating route. Take left at next right. Recalculating”

[@777Looper]

The star destroyer story is what I'm here for.

[@austinsisland4777]

I played in a small non-serious campaign, and I was a mage or wizard or something (it’s a very simplistic version of the game), and the party was fighting a boss inside a volcano, seeing the opportunity, I casted an ice spell on the lava to turn it into obsidian, had our buff fairy build it into the shape of a Nether Portal, I light it with a fire spell, and then push the boss inside.

[@NXTangl]

Free fall would make you weightless. Only falling faster than free fall could pin you to the ceiling.

[@shuvelstone1331]

Mr. Ripper is the best dnd reddit channel.

[@IceMetalPunk]

I've not had this happen in any of my real-life games, but my favorite instance of this that I've seen is on Dimension 20's "Escape from the Bloodkeep". In what was essentially the final battle of this one-series campaign, the DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, had an NPC act as basically the boatman of death, trapped in the middle of this ancient room. He was there for story reasons and atmosphere until a hoard of enemies that had followed the party burst in and began combat. After awhile into the combat, one of the players was like, "Can I kill the boatman and then, you know, become the new boatman?" At this point, the boatman had just become set dressing, and no one expected the attempt. Brennan fully short-circuited for a good 20-30 seconds, trying to find a reason why she *couldn't* do that, and failing. Finally he was just like, "...sure. Sure, why not?" From that point until the (relatively soon) end of the series, she was the new boatman, trapped in the room, because she decided she wanted to be 😂

[@mercuriogrimmalkyne2291]

While dming a homebrew involving horrors and Native American folklore, I had a major puzzle that had massive story implications. A nat20 investigation roll later, one of the PCs solved it with out much fuss, releasing a much to tough for the party baddy. Same player rolls another nat20 on what is essentially a wild magick/random evocation. ...dm.exe has crashed... "You hit the beast with such force that it is a smear on the floor and walls. You're now magick, you level up." The player characters are not supposed to be able to use magick at all in this game!

[@sevrono]

i had a fellow player announce "i cast fireball" and i leaned over to the gm and whispered "what kind of mill is this?" i knew what kind, but the reminder made the gm's eyes go wide, and he paused before telling the player to roll damage, theres no sign of a building there anymore, it was a flour mill

[@ala5530]

I was running a WFRP 2e game, and had set an optional challenge mode: 100% random character creation (turns out, if you dig enough, there's enough demographic information on the setting that you can build the random tables, meaning between deciding to play and session 1, the only choices a player needs to make are for any skills or talents their starting race/career gives them the option of picking between). They didn't need to do this, I would have been fine with any or all of them generating a character the normal way, but everyone chose the challenge mode. Two of my players wound up rolling elves, with the same birthplace, and an age difference *just* about right for one to be the (elven equivalent of) teen daughter of the other, assuming she had been a teen mother (again, elven equivalent of, given their race matures at a different rate to humans). To make matters more extreme, the random name generator wound up assigning the same name to the mother of the first elf as the second elf rolled for her name. Everyone's fine with it, so yeah, M has his elf being B's teenaged daughter. So much for the set-up. The two players are bouncing off each other in both elven (which for our table means in a Welsh accent of varying quality) and common. M is playing up the bratty rebellious daughter leading B to bring up the classic "As long as you live under my roof, you'll obey my rules..." M's immediate response? "Ma, we're *Wood Elves* . You don't *have* a roof. We live in the trees!" Unfortunately, he came out with that just as I was taking a drink. I bit through the rim of my whiskey glass.

[@eros5420]

Poor DM, hope he never finds out about Tasha's.

[@lockwoan01]

Oh, I've mentioned it to the guy, showed him pictures of the books too.

[@magh1996]

I myself was the DM that chrashed. The players fought an aboleth in the loot they found on some old bodies there was a marvelous pigments. 1 cup of paint. At the end of this dungeon there was a door and riddle. Meant as a story piece to come back to later. Wizard asks if he could create a door too the other side. This was a 100 feet long wall of stone. So i did the math and sure enough he had enough paint to create it. So now i had too think up what happens when they met a empyrean they wasnt suposed to meet til lategame when they look for info for the BBEG. In the end i had the empyrean banish them and magicaly lock the entrance with 3 keys. So now they need to find those 3.

[@shinrafugitives3880]

10:18 I thought my smoke alarm was going off

[@chrisb9143]

Last character went commando

[@MasterOfTheBrood]

Scorp's Note ~Scorp's nooote~ Get over here!

[@postomnis6134]

Oooo I have a good one from very recently! “The ancient red dragon has performed a ritual with a fiend and a powerful undead in order to shapeshifter themselves into one monster” “Shapeshift you said?” “Yes, shapeshift” “I cast moon beam :)” *cue dial up modem noises*

[@alsenddrake7764]

Not quite a break but did get a "I hate you" from the DM AND think I caused the ability to be nerfed. We ended up fighting some Sharks in a little secret pirate alcove. I'm playing a Demi-Dragon Metamorph (class/Race from UA Reddit's Currated list) As we were in a water area I had an ability called Drowning Terror active (Metamorph's mechanic is on a rest they can shift around abilities. Think Beast Barbarian's Level 6 thing but with a LOT more options, even if a number are kind of Niche) This ability gave me a swim speed and let me breathe water, but it also gave a grapple based mechanic. I can move at full speed when dragging people and if I'm grappling someone they have to save or be frightened of me until they can. I proceeded to drag the sharks onto land, and stand between them and the water so they just suffocated in terror. I later told this story on Reddit and the creator of the class has seen at least a few of my stories of my Demi-Dragon. The most recent release made them just frightened of suffocating to prevent this cheese. This story may have shown them the ability has that cheese in it so they changed it XD

[@its_sisha_not_chair505]

"HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU ALIVE???! UR ENTIRE PARTY IS DEAD" Me, with 200 knifes, 10 bombs, 30 small bombs, lots of explosive chemicals, poisons and lots of different weapons: hehe big booom goo

[@CM421]

Aight, i got one. Running a campaign where the BBEG summoned a bunch of horror movie villains and monsters to take over the world, with the heroes being protagonists from made-up horror movies that we ran through as each player's session 0. Had a Robert Muldoon-type from a Jurassic Park ripoff, and the Cameraman from a found-footage slasher type film. The moment that crashed me was when- After discovering a drow elf child [who was recently made an orphan by a Deadite] the Muldoon-type *immediately* proposed killing the orphan and eating him for health. This is how i learned that it is perfectly acceptable to say *No* as a DM.

[@timothymonk1356]

New DM here. I was running Curse of Strahd, and after defeating the vampire spawn in town* and interrogating their unwitting keeper, they decided to kill him and stage it to look like he hanged himself... took me a while to figure out what to do with that. *They faced the vampire spawn way earlier than I should have let them, and they only survived because I actively used poor tactics. I learned a valuable lesson on checking the CR of creatures before I describe their options.

[@The_Forge_Master]

Recently, my wizard spent ten minutes carefully excavating a mountainside with Mold Earth, then having the other wizard cast shatter. The way we excavated the mountainside was meant to cause a landslide, and that's exactly what happened, sealing a cave down below with undead inside which were unheard of in this world, and also killing a ton of cultists who wanted to get into the cave to eventually kill the Celestials.

[@millatalonhand9242]

I just finished a year long campaign where the big climactic final boss fight was finished second round. We had to push this statue into a volcano in which an elder god was coming out to stop it. So our druid had made himself an elephant and had pushed the statue to the edge. When the boss went to attack him however, the GM rolled a nat 1. Everyone went silent, we all know what had to happen. The god missed the druid and sent the statue careening into the volcano. So less of a boss fight more of an assisted suicide lol.

[@pavelZhd]

I can't say that broke the DM.exe, but that was definitely a move the DM didn't expect. So we were a small group tasked to investigate a surge of undead activity near a town. We do some tracking and arrive to an ancient crypt. The DM descripes the entrance having 2 large stones with some inscriptions being broken. I as a cleric try to read them, and while the language is archaic and not directly readable with high enough religion check I get the gist of it. The stones were warding so the dead would not be disturbed by the living. So just for RP purposes I ask the fighter to help me put the stone pieces back together and use mending to restore the ward stones. The DM acknowledges that the stones are now restored, but thd magic that was in them is not. To which my cleric pulls a pouch of silver powder and perform a consecrate ritual, hoping that this spell is similar enough in nature to whatever the enchantment was on the stones, so it would fuse with it and maybe restore a fraction of its power... The DM is silent for a moment. Than makes some notes and we proceed. We still had to fight a moderately pissed off necromancer at the end of the crypt, but all the undead servants he raised were now dormant - pacified by the restored ward stones... And a solo spellcaster is not really a big threat to us.

[@disableddragonborn]

After learning about the combat wheelchair, I decided to make my character (originally an NPC married to my first PC) who is an in-game me be an exact version of me, but I had to check one thing first. I wanted to make sure the spell Heat Metal requires being able to see the metal, as I have titanium rods with cobalt screws fused to my spine. I know that MRIs can be dangerous for people with metal in them, so I knew I would have to check that. I now realize I have another issue I have to cover. Shock damage. If I get struck by a lightning bolt, I'm fried.

[@TheDragonshunter]

Man they made the poor DM in the first story go bankrupt having to buy all DnD books x_x

[@lockwoan01]

No - didn't do that. Trust me on that one - I was the player.

[@MachineMan-mj4gj]

Two separate instances; once, I found The Deck of Many Things due to a random loot table. On another, I used a rod of wonder to turn an important NPC we were trying to kidnap into a squirrel.

[@silverglovegaming5391]

Playing an Artificer. In the middle of a fight the barbarian and I retreat from the clearing that a boss is in. While the barbarian was chopping down and hollowing a tree trunk I'm cooking up a mixture of wood chips, charcoal, and sugar and basically praying that our DM doesn't know enough about gunpowder to want us to use an oxidiser component like nitrate. So we fill the tree trunk with the mixture, force a boulder into it, and our dm tells us to roll for Dex and luck. Both are nat 20s. As our shocked DM described how a boulder came flying into the clearing, nearly punching a hole through the boss (we were doing it in discord because covid, so the barbarian and I were in our own chat away from the others) And the whole time he's speaking you can just see him go from confused with a hint of shock to utter trauma. So that's why our group now has a "No cannons near Silver" rule

[@synashilp]

I was in a party once that had a hunter (druid/ranger hybrid from Pathfinder 1e). He had bought a buffalo at a town to haul our wagon, but was convinced that it would make an excellent ally in exploring a necromancer's cave. So, he unyoked it and brought it with us. It basically annihilated everything in the cave. Before we rounded the final corner into what was obviously the necromancer's laboratory, the hunter had us stand back and he spooked the buffalo into trampling into the lab. We heard glass shattering, dwarven curses, and then it was followed by silence. We all turn the corner. The dwarven necromancer (quite reasonably) gave us the stink-eye. All at once, in-character, we attempted to defuse the situation. Excuses ranged from "sorry, didn't mean to park our buffalo in your lab" to "oh, man, isn't it terrible when a totally wild and untrained buffalo destroys your army and your home?" The GM had to contemplate how the dwarf would react to the sheer display of uncoordinated audacity that was before him. Fortunately, he had merely paralyzed M. Bison, and promised to let us go unharmed if we agreed to help him brew a potion for reincarnation. Of course we agreed, since we were feeling guilty. We got ingredients that he wanted. He made his potion and got consumed by a glowing light.

[@archellothewolf2083]

Oh god. Due to a Random Encounter on our GM's Encounter Table we ran into the Deck of Many things, the location of which was also in the same place as part of my character's personal quest. As always with the DoMT shennanigans happened and through a very strange order of opperations our warlock ended up with a level 9 knight with 2 magic items, and 50k in jewels. I also got 50k in Jewels as well as the Comet, which was awesome since I'd challeneged an NPC to a 1v1 duel as part of my quest. Since we were in basically a casino, players were allowed to bet on the fight, which allowed the Warlock to double his money because there was no way in hell my character would lose 1v1. Well, my opponent descided to double or nothing our personal wager and if I managed to beat him again I'd gain him as a companion. Que following conversation: Warlock: So if they're fighting again we get to gamble again right? GM: Sure Warlock: ok, I- GM realizing what he'd just allowed: There's a limit! There's a limit! There's a limit! There's a limit! There's a limit! We were all dying as the GM broke. Sadd;y, our warlock was limited to a bet of 5k gold instead of 100k.

[@torinnbalasar6774]

I'm a fairly inexperienced player and DM, my current playgroup has never played before, and I'm running Murder in Baldur's Gate in 5e with a party I expect to be typical murder-hobos. Second session in and playing out stage 1, the paladin sides with Ravenguard and goes to shut down some gambling dens. The 1st one was supposed to be peacefully resolved by just presenting the notice to the proprietor... Instead the paladin immediately smashed his face in when they were welcomed outside the door, and charges into the room. Que 5 minutes of me flipping through the book trying to figure out how to punish him for a combat encounter I wasn't expecting, then 20 minutes of setting up the brawl with pannicked patrons and burlier than usual staff.

[@blockhead134]

My party asked for the list of over 20 names and addresses of people that disappeared in a certain alleyway

[@MindOfGenius]

Me, when the players spent 30 REAL WORLD MINUTES discussing the best way to dig up the Mayor's dead wife so they can guilt trip him into giving them more information.

[@lightningeyes100]

Oh my god that Star Wars moment was fucking amazing. Especially considering that in the Obi Wan series Vader literally does that and it was cool as balls.