Water Weird Fun

[Captnq]

So a water weird can cast Contact other plane as a supernatural ability once a round.

When I mentioned this to my players, one of them turned into one to gain that supernatural ability then started crank calling the gods. Such questions as:

What do I want for desert?
What does my girlfriend want for her birthday?
What's the answer to number fourteen on this test?
WHAT'S THAT???
What should I name my next baby?
Who should the father for my next baby be?
What time is it?
What time is it now?
Is it much longer?
How much longer is this meeting going to be?
Come here often?

You get the idea.

So, how do you handle a crank contact other plane?

[sirpercival]

Lots and lots of ethergaunts.

[Keldar]

Crank answers to legitimate questions.  Your choice of insulting answers or insidiously misleading answers.  The Powers have long memories and work in subtle, but dickish, ways.

[brujon]

"You must succeed on an Intelligence check against this DC to avoid a decrease in Intelligence and Charisma. If the check fails, your Intelligence and Charisma scores each fall to 8 for the stated duration, and you become unable to cast arcane spells. If you lose Intelligence and Charisma, the effect strikes as soon as the first question is asked, and no answer is received. (The entries in parentheses are for questions that pertain to the appropriate Elemental Plane.)"

Why are you not applying this? 8 cha and int for 5 weeks, should stop them from being dicks. Make them at DC 16/5 weeks, since they're asking Greater Deities.

Really, the spell has built in contingencies for these sort of problems...

[Captnq]

"You must succeed on an Intelligence check against this DC to avoid a decrease in Intelligence and Charisma. If the check fails, your Intelligence and Charisma scores each fall to 8 for the stated duration, and you become unable to cast arcane spells. If you lose Intelligence and Charisma, the effect strikes as soon as the first question is asked, and no answer is received. (The entries in parentheses are for questions that pertain to the appropriate Elemental Plane.)"

Why are you not applying this? 8 cha and int for 5 weeks, should stop them from being dicks. Make them at DC 16/5 weeks, since they're asking Greater Deities.

Really, the spell has built in contingencies for these sort of problems...

That's the first thing I thought of. Trust me, they didn't roll a one. Yer talking an epic level campaign here. We're been playing for... every week... let me check. Wow. Almost up to session number 200. I'll have to plan something special for Halloween! Wow, session 200 is going to be around halloween and we play on thursdays, so good chance I'll be running on halloween. Huh.

What goes good for a halloween session? Tentacles? Ooo, they rescued a creepy kid with 17's in Chr, Dex, Int, Wis and 12's in str and con. (I roll 3d6 for all NPCs and let the dice fall where they may.) He was rescued from some freaky Thayian wizard. Maybe I'll have him do something unspeakable. He was some demonic experiment or something.

Anyone got any unspeakable things one could run on halloween? I usually run the next installment of the Hissing Goat Skull Saga, but I'm running out of ideas. Night of the hissing goat skull, Return of the HGS, Attack of the HGS, Death of the HSG, Son of the HGS, Resurrection of the HGS, Rise of the HGS, and the last one was DIE, HISSING GOAT SKULL, DIE!

That last one was a homage to Vecna.

I'm not sure how to top that last one.

[linklord231]

"You must succeed on an Intelligence check against this DC to avoid a decrease in Intelligence and Charisma. If the check fails, your Intelligence and Charisma scores each fall to 8 for the stated duration, and you become unable to cast arcane spells. If you lose Intelligence and Charisma, the effect strikes as soon as the first question is asked, and no answer is received. (The entries in parentheses are for questions that pertain to the appropriate Elemental Plane.)"

Why are you not applying this? 8 cha and int for 5 weeks, should stop them from being dicks. Make them at DC 16/5 weeks, since they're asking Greater Deities.

Really, the spell has built in contingencies for these sort of problems...

If they're high enough level to be able to Shapechange, they ought not have a problem with making a DC 16 Int check - especially since you can take 10 on it. 

[brujon]

"You must succeed on an Intelligence check against this DC to avoid a decrease in Intelligence and Charisma. If the check fails, your Intelligence and Charisma scores each fall to 8 for the stated duration, and you become unable to cast arcane spells. If you lose Intelligence and Charisma, the effect strikes as soon as the first question is asked, and no answer is received. (The entries in parentheses are for questions that pertain to the appropriate Elemental Plane.)"

Why are you not applying this? 8 cha and int for 5 weeks, should stop them from being dicks. Make them at DC 16/5 weeks, since they're asking Greater Deities.

Really, the spell has built in contingencies for these sort of problems...

That's the first thing I thought of. Trust me, they didn't roll a one. Yer talking an epic level campaign here. We're been playing for... every week... let me check. Wow. Almost up to session number 200. I'll have to plan something special for Halloween! Wow, session 200 is going to be around halloween and we play on thursdays, so good chance I'll be running on halloween. Huh.

What goes good for a halloween session? Tentacles? Ooo, they rescued a creepy kid with 17's in Chr, Dex, Int, Wis and 12's in str and con. (I roll 3d6 for all NPCs and let the dice fall where they may.) He was rescued from some freaky Thayian wizard. Maybe I'll have him do something unspeakable. He was some demonic experiment or something.

Anyone got any unspeakable things one could run on halloween? I usually run the next installment of the Hissing Goat Skull Saga, but I'm running out of ideas. Night of the hissing goat skull, Return of the HGS, Attack of the HGS, Death of the HSG, Son of the HGS, Resurrection of the HGS, Rise of the HGS, and the last one was DIE, HISSING GOAT SKULL, DIE!

That last one was a homage to Vecna.

I'm not sure how to top that last one.

Do you want creepy, or do you want mind-scarring?

[Captnq]

Do you want creepy, or do you want mind-scarring?

I'm good with either, but lets avoid the cheap shots. Killing/kidnaping/mangling the friends and relatives is unlikely to be taken in stride. Railroading is also a bad choice. Trust me, trying stuff like that brings out the "mean" in my players. Kill the BBEG, his friends, his family, people he passed on the street, skin them with their own teeth sort of "mean". They're kinda jaded, but piss them off and they'll get their Jihad on.

Oh, nothing that involves killing kittens. Did that once. They went from Jihad to diabolical. Technically, the NPC in question is still screaming, because the status field only allows one second to pass each year.

Otherwise, yeah, creepy or mind-scaring. Both are good. Just to let you know, these guys don't think like normal people. They once figured out that the locks on the doors in Rapan Athak were worth, I think, 150 gp each. So they stole all the doors. I mean these guys take dungeon demolishing seriously. They put the L in Looting. If there's a human skull in the corner, you'd better have a story because they are going to speak with dead that sucker and wring every drop of info they can out of it.

On the other hand, they also are easily distracted by side adventures so it's not that hard to keep them amused. That was the problem with Rapan Athak, I had to make up the life stories of all the dead bodies in the descriptions and they kept track and when I came up with a background that sounded neat they would try to figure out how to help the skull and actually brought back to life about a dozen of them.

Orcus never stood a chance.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

Here's what you do for halloween...
Get in the players heads.

Let them find that skull, but you dig into your notes from the past 200 games for the story.  Everything is familiar and nothing is quite right.  Things get wierder and wierder until they find themselves plopped in the middle of the iron siege, unprepared, except its in the middle of Dal Quor.  Also archons, devils and demons (a la Shavarath) are having a nice battle over the iron tower.  And they all have the pseudonatural template. 

Play on their individual, real life fears.  Maybe Dis is replaced by .... something
Reality changes for a few rounds at a time, perhaps liquids begin to float up, water, potions , blood
maybe for a couple rounds the whole scene is in the middle of a large city and only the PCs are/were killing people, now during those rounds, the battle is still going and the demons or whatever attacking the PCs are seen a people 'talking' instead of melee, 'dancing' instead of casting a spell etc...  then the PCs are whisked back to hell to discover that the 'nice npcs' were actually beating the crap out of them in the 'real' demonic dream/flashback world
Have you ever had a nightmare where you are fighting people, but you cant punch hard enough to hurt anyone? Have a few god-mode enemies that are unexplainably tough(invincible to anything the pcs can come up with)
end the session with pcs in deep crap
during the following session, pick up as though the halloween session never happened.  In game and in real life.  If you can keep a straight face,...
EDIT: dis is replaced by an innocent, invulnerable collossal kitten, pouncing on combatants as though they were tiny insects, including the pcs

[awaken_D_M_golem]

auto-fail on a natural 1 ... because the deities are semi 3.0e un-updated.


Gods of X get torqued off and start F-ing with that roll.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

"You must succeed on an Intelligence check against this DC to avoid a decrease in Intelligence and Charisma. If the check fails, your Intelligence and Charisma scores each fall to 8 for the stated duration, and you become unable to cast arcane spells. If you lose Intelligence and Charisma, the effect strikes as soon as the first question is asked, and no answer is received. (The entries in parentheses are for questions that pertain to the appropriate Elemental Plane.)"

Why are you not applying this? 8 cha and int for 5 weeks, should stop them from being dicks. Make them at DC 16/5 weeks, since they're asking Greater Deities.

Really, the spell has built in contingencies for these sort of problems...

That's the first thing I thought of. Trust me, they didn't roll a one. Yer talking an epic level campaign here. We're been playing for... every week... let me check. Wow. Almost up to session number 200. I'll have to plan something special for Halloween! Wow, session 200 is going to be around halloween and we play on thursdays, so good chance I'll be running on halloween. Huh.

What goes good for a halloween session? Tentacles? Ooo, they rescued a creepy kid with 17's in Chr, Dex, Int, Wis and 12's in str and con. (I roll 3d6 for all NPCs and let the dice fall where they may.) He was rescued from some freaky Thayian wizard. Maybe I'll have him do something unspeakable. He was some demonic experiment or something.

Anyone got any unspeakable things one could run on halloween? I usually run the next installment of the Hissing Goat Skull Saga, but I'm running out of ideas. Night of the hissing goat skull, Return of the HGS, Attack of the HGS, Death of the HSG, Son of the HGS, Resurrection of the HGS, Rise of the HGS, and the last one was DIE, HISSING GOAT SKULL, DIE!

That last one was a homage to Vecna.

I'm not sure how to top that last one.

The right answer is always Maid RPG.



Let the Terror Begin

[Demelain]

But Maid RPG was fun...
I mean, it's not the sort of thing I want to play regularly, but it's good relaxation every once in a while.

[Kethrian]

Heh, a simple, yet likely annoying to the players, way of handling it is in how the deity chooses to respond.  Sure, the spell says they answer in the same round as the question, but it doesn't say that they have to deliver the answer directly.  Maybe each answer is etched on the back of a tiny immortal snail that will take literally eons to crawl through the planes to reach the PC?  Maybe it's contained in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma held within a mystery?  Maybe the answer can be found in a treasure chest, and the god gives the PC a map to the location, a map which conveniently has markers such as "the big tree", "the finger-shaped rock", and "the ancient tower", but has no mention of any city, kingdom, continent, world, or even plane.  What about if each answer is carved into the PC's heart, literally?  I'm sure you could come up with a far more interesting batch of ways to do this, and have fun letting the gods troll the players back!

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

But Maid RPG was fun...
I mean, it's not the sort of thing I want to play regularly, but it's good relaxation every once in a while.

Oh it is, but it is also mind scarring.

[nijineko]

hmmm, groundhog day might be fun to pull on them. time loop them repeatedly through a single day until they figure out the casual gate.