From: jjonsson@alexandria.lib.utah.edu
Subject: Re: More Stupid Player Tricks
Organization: Marriott Library, University of Utah
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 16:20:52 GMT


>       About a year ago, whilst DM'ing a group of people in the military,
>I had encountered enough "Stupid Player tricks" that I decided to compile a
>list for the group to enjoy.  These were all accomplished by this group of
>players, and they brought back a few fun memories of things and events that
>had happened. Onward:

This thread is perfect for me to tell my story. Last Saturday a group of 
compadres and I were playing another in a series of ongoing games. It was 
the strangest and often times funniest game we've played in a long time.

We're in Damara in the Forgotten Realms. Our Mage/Cleric, Fascinator Pietas, 
had received a vision that we must go to a waterfall at Bloodstone Pass, and 
in the cave behind it, he will find a holy relic, a book of great power. So 
our party gets on our horses and ride out on the trail. 
	On the way, we run into a band of Stone Giants, who pretty much kick 
our asses. My character was an 11th level thief, who had just decided to 
turn fighter, so he was playing as a 1st level fighter. MISTAKE #1. We 
managed to make the stone giants lose morale and run. In opening their 
treasure chests, our remaining thief checked all of the locks but one for 
traps, and I, not wanting to lose experience as a fighter opened the last 
box and was poisoned by a dart trap. I died. No one around could ressurrect 
me, therefore I sat around until one of the players left, and said I could 
play his 7th level fighter. 
	In the fight against the giants, our chaotic mage uses his wand of 
wonder, and finds himself 5" tall. He gets on his familiar (a raven) and 
flies at one of the giants, and uses his wand of wonder again. An 
anvil appears over his head, and crushes him and his familiar to the 
ground. The familiar dies. He's pissed.
	We limp into the waterfall area and go into a tunnel behind it. We 
are walking when our thief leading the way finds a pressure plate in the 
floor. So we back up a ways, and he trips it with his sword. MISTAKE #2. Two 
stone doors slammed shut behind and in front of us, and the ceiling opens up 
dumping a ton of oil soaked rags and tinder on us. My lantern sets the whole 
mess off, and we realize that if we don't get out, we're going to suffocate. 
My companion the Psionicist/Fighter, Egral Mutcer, who had a girdle of Frost 
Giant Strength begins to pound on one of the doors. and the thief climbs up 
into the hole the rags came out of. Meanwhile we are burning up, and our 
strength is going down. (Actually the character I was playing, Skrepnak 
Wisnewski, had a Frost Brand and was immune to normal fire.) Finally Egral 
pounds a hole in the door, just as the fire is dying. MISTAKE #3. Guess what 
happened next... Backdraft. We were all exploded with great force through 
the hole in the door, causing us great damage. So, we're all really pissed, 
and my fighter has taken about 48 out of 73 hit points damage with no way to 
heal it in sight. 	
	We meet with our Mage who had polymorphed into a giant spider and 
gone on ahead. He says there is a door up ahead, which we proceed to go 
through. Oops, there is a man sitting on a throne like affair, and our Mage/
Cleric casts an Augury on whether or not we should attack him. "Ok boys, 
lets rock!" is the cry that goes up, and we attack. The evil cleric casts a 
Hold Person, which only catches our thief. Egral and Skrepnak attack while 
Fascinator begins to cast. the evil cleric casts a silence on our mage, and 
we two fighters get in a blow each, causing him about 16 points damage. Then 
the cleric casts a flame strike on the two fighters hacking him. Egral dies, 
and Skrepnak with his frost brand saves, and takes 1/4 damage. Our mage 
exits the cone of silence and is about ready to cast a lightning bolt which 
will surely kill me as well as the cleric. "Don't cast it till I'm dead." I 
say, and continue to hack the cleric causing great damage. He shouts DIE! in 
my face, I save, and flip him my wand of defiance and hit him again. So I've 
caused him about 45 pts damage, and he Word of Recalls out of there, Pissing 
me off. It pisses the Mage off too, but there's the treasure chest, 
presumably with the sacred book in it.	Unbeknownst to the Mage, a book our 
thief had found earlier and read, (the runes disappearing off the page) was 
THE book. It raised our thief's intelligence to 17. It would have upped the 
Mage's to 19. (He's pissed.)	
	So we heal the psionicist back to a couple of hit points (our DM 
allows us to heal from anywhere above -10 hp.) and within two rounds he's 
healed himself totally from his Cell Adjustment discipline. We go to open 
the chest and the psionicist decides the easiest thing to do is rot away the 
box with his Cause Decay discipline. He touches the chest and it rots 
allright with everything inside it! Inside we find a disintegrated 
spellbook, about six burnt out Ioun Stones, and a handfull of gold which isn'
t actually hurt. So we're all pissed.
	My character is actually dead. The wizard lost his familiar, and a 
chance to have 19 intelligence, the two fighters don't have much to show for 
the adventure,in fact, Egral Mutcer's girdle of giant strength failed its 
save, and burned up due to the flame strike spell. And our thief (who is 
actually a Ranger/thief) is on the verge of losing his rangerhood, and is a 
little bit smarter.

	Sorry to ramble, but I think this whole adventure seems like one 
giant stupid player trick. 

Jeff Jonsson
Marriott Library System Support, University of Utah.
==============================================================================
--"It's the sound of the secret--  jjonsson@alexandria.lib.utah.edu
-- machinery at the center of  --  jjonsson@utahlib.bitnet
-- the world." -Cliff Steele   --  "You talkin' to me?"
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