So I'm running a 5e D&D campaign and the players are essentially trying to break the game. Me...

So I'm running a 5e D&D campaign and the players are essentially trying to break the game. Me, being the merciful DM I am, want to troll then back. Any ideas?

Elaborate.

I want to mess with them discretely. But if it's funny and justifiable enough, I'd do that too.

no elaborate on the entire situation, whats the campaign and how are they fucking with it

Houserule shit.

Just do all of this
Every time they ask to do anything.

They will get so paranoid they won't get anything done.

Where's that image of the forever-GM punishing the party with the most annoying Lich ever?

Exploding frogs, stealing every third lamp post, etc etc?

Bit of a long one but this is how I dealt with a guy constantly acting up in a 5e campaign.

Had a player recently who thought he was hot shit, thought he could get away with anything

Party found a locket belonging to a cult leader, who so happens to be a really high up member of the city council. Understandably guards are aware of him

Party ran into the cultists wandering the streets doing the whole preaching thing, 1 cultist recognised the locket and grabbed it. Party asshat makes to attack cultist and guards sided with the cult cause "It's their leader's property"

Asshat throws the "but we found it so its ours"

He's forced by guards to back the shit up as the cultists walk away.

Time passes, they run into the big cheese himself rocking his locket again. Leader attempts to be civil and offers a hand shake.

Party asshat grabs the locket, leader calls tons of guards on him. Guards side with cult AGAIN. Asshat thinks hes hot shit AGAIN and takes a stab at the leader and hits, BUT oh no le twist!

Cult Leader was a Max level warlock, designed to be a possible endgame antagonist, didn't think the asshat would ACTUALLY attack but oh well

Leader uses hellish rebuke on the asshat, who fails the save. Asshat goes up in a blast of atomic fire. #RIPINPieces

Leader walks away scot free cause self defence, and guards are scared shitless of him.

TL;DR if a player acts up drop a nuclear bomb localised on them.

I was asked to explain, so here is basically the run down. Two of the five are the problem characters. They are a wizard and a rouge. The other three are a bard, druid/warlock, and a barbarian.

The problem players
-Insult the king who is giving them quests and all their good shit
-Decide to try and rob banks instead and other places and are rolling ridiculously well
-Literally shoving the ancient relic up their ass "just because"
-Antagonize the other PCs
-Rule sharking the shit out of eveything

And those are just the ones off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure (98 percent) most of it is on purpose just to mess with us.

That's why I want to try mess with them back.

This.

I ran a game one time where I just winged all the stats on everything, how monster abilities worked, etc.

Anything out of the PHB was untouched, but anything in a "DM only" book was completely twisted around.

They hated it at first, because they were just butthurt they didn't know what to do, but after a few session they enjoyed the mystery of things again.

You are facing problems not because you have bad players, but because you are a bad DM.

...

Sorry, let me try again. tl;dr comes after the second post because I've written too much shit apparently

>-Insult the king who is giving them quests and all their good shit
Consequences. Characters rot in jail, out of character discussion like real life adults with the players.

>-Decide to try and rob banks instead and other places
Consequences. Characters should rot in jail (alternatively, it just so happens that every well stocked facility in the world is insufficiently guarded, which sounds like a great start for worldbuilding for an evil campaign...which presumably you don't want to be hosting here) and have a talk with the players about team expectations like adults.

>...and are rolling ridiculously well
You are literally the rules arbiter here. You decide if a roll is necessary (which is when there's A. a chance of success. B. a chance of failure and C. a consequence for failure, otherwise there's no dice necessary. But it seems like you're struggling with part A.) and exactly what that roll means. "A 23 stealth that you rolled without me calling for it doesn't mean you pass by undetected, it means that the magic ass guards just saw you walking towards the vault acting suspicious, you absolute jester"
>-Literally shoving the ancient relic up their ass "just because"
Unless this is the type of silly ass game you want to foster (I suspect it's not because it's in the "the problem players" list), A. have an adult conversation with your players about the game you're trying to play, the tone of the campaign, and how player bullshit shouldn't interfere with in game cool stuff. or B. be an ass and give them consequences for this bullshit and tomfoolery.

Make tons of encounters just them in an average place getting attacked by some very sneaky creature or something that can mimic humans, make them all have slight quirks relating to what they are like a scent or something and then give those quirks to random NPCs that seem important and act like they just killed a major quest killer whenever they kill them

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll do just that. One way or another I'll get my point across to them.

Cont.

>-Antagonize the other PCs
(once again dependent on the kind of campaign you want to run be we all already know you don't want this shit) Completely unnaceptble. Depending on level of severity (with a low threshold for "too much") the consequence is being forced from the campaign entirely. That shit is not cool in any sort of semblance of a cooperative storytelling game. This (like a bunch of the shit you're dealing with here) is an out of game problem primarily and you're going to best solve it out of game by talking to every like adults about what pieces of shit they're being. Alternatively, be an ass and encourage your other three players to kill the problem PCs (this is a short term solution that doesn't work. at all. mmmaybe if it's immediately followed by a proper adult discussion about what shits they were being but proper adulting is always the first step.
>-Rule sharking the shit out of eveything
If you mean "rules lawyering", only possible if they know the rules better than you (you should also know the rules) and even then that should mean little.
If you mean "Abusing your leniency, niceness and lack of assertiveness to do fuck all they want in your world" that sounds a lot more believable. Take agency over your world campaign and friend group as a proper GM should and have actual conversations like adults.

tl;dr funny how I end up basically giving you the same pieces of advice 5 times. I suggest following them.

I gotcha

An Ancient Good in the form of a Flumpish diety is going around transforming people in flumphs who subsist on emotions and thus are free of most earthly desires while they're near each other.

Are they a bad enough bunch of hombres to fuck up the Great Community of PHHHHHhhhht and its benevolent unity?

Peasants didn't rot in jail in feudal times.

If the chaotic neutral rogue tries to rob the royal treasury have him strung up in public while a guy in a hood pulls off pieces of him with red hot tongs.

so you gave em something, then just took it away, in a gm fiat sorta way, threw in their face that it's too bad. then dangled it in front of them absolutely expecting them to be disinterested in it and didn't think they would react. then nuked them. sounds more like asshat gm than asshat player.

That's usually what happens when a GM decides to purposefully make it a "me vs. them" game rather than a collaborative one.

lead them onto a time sensitive quest that starts minor and dominoes into larger events until they would have stopped something major from happening.

They derail it but that clock is still ticking down until a cult summons Hastur or some other lovecraftian horror that destroys the world.

It sounds like he showed them an item and then hoped they wouldn't try to steal it in broad daylight in front of guards from a high-ranking councilman.
I....I don't see the problem with asking the party to find a more creative way to gain the locket, or whatever.

well, he didn't "ask em to find a more creative way", he also didn't give em an out against a max level warlock(which was probably completely out of the blue), he just dangled their stolen treasure/trinket in front of em, and was "surprised" by their actions, then nuked em.
asshat gm.
he wanted to kill that character, because he didn't like the player. not because he was surprised be his actions(he knew). it is that gm baiting that guy plain and simple. but hey you don't have to see the problem.