What is the biggest "fuck you" encounter you have set up so far?

Take the Paragon option, don't be a murderhobo.

5e Vampire.

He mind controlled the hardest hitting character and it was downhill from there.

You don't invest in Paragon if you are going Renegate, and Renegate failed.

I'd love some ideas how to fuck my Pathfinder party's shit. They are high on their own asses and there are 6 of them so they are already better than their CR. They're level 7 now and about to bust an enemy cult hideout, trying to think of stuff an evil demon cult would have that would fuck them hard. Also this demon cult has fought them a lot and knows a shitton about them so would be able to tailor stuff to their abilities.

>pathfinder
An army of monstergirls.

Probably a social encounter. Like, any social encounter.

Not DM, but our guy sent us Genghis Khan armed with a soul destroying sword, mounted on a giant dragon plus his entire mongol army.

Music related:
youtube.com/watch?v=BAklb6X5Ttw

primate murder- also known as "fuck you and die"

The Party itself against That Guy. It wasn't much of a set up, so much as allowing things to follow natural order.

>Friend's alcoholic room mate asks to join.
>Be nice and let him.
>Him: "I run in and throw a fireball at the owner of the bar! Lol"
>Me: "I don't think this is going to work. Go."
>Him: "Oh, come on!"
>Me: "... Roll initiative."
>My campaigns actually have meaningful NPCs.
>That bar owner was a good friend to the party and basically a brother to one.
>The healer goes to assist the owner and literally everyone else just beats him to death.

Pretty strong fuck you is having players with investment that are willing to fuck you up in game over doing stupid shit. No murderhobos. Needless to say he left mid-way through dying.

Not gonna lie, vamps in 5e are hardcore. CR13 for just a regular fucking vampire, god help you if you encounter more than one at pretty much any level.

>End of SKT
>Walk down a flight of stairs
>Blue dragon suddenly right next to us, takes 2 actions, two legendary actions and 2 lair actions in a row.

Yeah ok. Thanks.

How were the characters supposed to know that the boogeyman was too much for them to handle?

>They're level 7 now and about to bust an enemy cult hideout, trying to think of stuff an evil demon cult would have that would fuck them hard. Also this demon cult has fought them a lot and knows a shitton about them so would be able to tailor stuff to their abilities.
Save-or-dies. Save-or-dies EVERYWHERE.

Vampire Antipaladin, minmaxed for Charisma. Very high AC, HP and saves, and it can Dominate Person every round. Take their characters away and use them against the rest of the party.

I have a set of sellswords that are challenging the PCs even though they (the sellswords) are outnumbered. Is there any way to make it clear that these guys are serious buisiness without making my players go 'WTF DM why are they killing us'?
One of them has a hunting rifle (which as I recall deals 2d10+dex piercing damage), which is a rare item in-setting, but the PCs seem to be under the impression the sellswords are suicidal for challenging them 7 to 12.

Oh, and to clarify, there are NPCs traveling with the party for plot reasons, which is why the numbers are the way they are.

Optional boss fight coming up against a knight who is just designed to completely fuck 'em up by being nigh-immune to their usual barrage of crowd control and afflictions, combined with being extremely, retardedly aggressive and having an ability set designed to heavily punish any attempt to move away from her.

I'm sick of every boss going down like chumps to just an endless barrage of bullshit, and this character in particular has been paying close attention to the party almost since the start of the campaign.

If they don't trigger the fight I'm not going to be too broken up, but knowing my players and their characters it's almost a surefire thing.

I gave them a disease with very obvious physical symptons but it was completely benign.
They didn't know this and spent 4 different sessions trying to cure themselves of this mystery disease that didn't actually do anything.

Early in the campaign they fought a bunch of Morlocks. They found a pit in the Morlock den that had their young in it and put one of those rolling fireballs in to burn the young.

This wasn't a bad thing, mind you. I put the pit there to serve as a hazard. Depending on how the fight went one of the PCs could have been pushed in and swarmed by young, feral Morlocks. Killing them wasn't a moral issue in the slightest.

One of the young Morlocks got out of the pit, badly burned, and tried to flee. They let it go, making jokes about him being Morlock Batman.

A long while later I was getting pretty sick of their bullshit builds and began my plan. They would face off against an NPC with a bullshit build. A Morlock rogue of their level (actually a fantastic race/class combo) with See in Darkness and several potions of Deeper Darkness.

He attacked at night, shrouded by supernatural darkness. They couldn't see through it, the wizard failed to dispell it and drew Morlocks mans focus. He died first.

In the end they won, but three of the six were dead.

A former player's character. With her permission, of course. In fact her words to me after the last sesh she was in were "I want to kill the others, eventually."

So her character has shown up once or twice since, usually to check and see how they're doing, usually beating one of them to a pulp in the process.
She has also befriended the families of the player characters while leaving behind incredibly subtle hints that now she could easily slay them if she felt like it, just to troll them.
The families, ofc, believe she's a really nice girl, and why don't you guys ever hang out any more? You're always complaining about getting injured, and she seems like a phenomenal living wall.

What the players don't know is that she, her dragon, and her army of Oni are showing up next session to crash the fuckoff-massive battle that the PCs are going to be taking part in, and she will be making a beeline for the WarSum, partly out of spite, partly because she wants to see the power of someone who can incarnate Holst, King of Heroes at Real Affinity.

Maybe literally everyone (including the PCs) being fucking terrified of it kinda gives it away

Attacking the party with their own loot isn't the most horrendous thing, but it is good fun.

I made a touch attack cleric specifically to fuck with a player who had like 35 AC. Was only supposed to hit him for the first time ever and maybe give him a scare, but he decided to abandon his teammates while fighting a boss and fun down a hall into the room with the cleric, thdn try to solo him. He lost.

>Also, just give Cambrimen the reproductive habits of really slutty bacteria to replace their losses.
I figured the Radiolarian were the slutty ones. They want those precious genes, after all. Why not get them in a convenient package?
falsemachine.blogspot.ca/2012/12/radiolarian-and-trogloraptor.html

Evil idea

Got way ahead of myself an planned a real big adventure with an epic level dragon at the end.

Party used cheese to bypass things and skip to his lair where he was going be seen leaving later. The attacked it immediately with no warning, got level drained 10+ what they had.

Bittersweet moment but i learned to no longer allow that shit to work.

Just happened today:
Party of three has one chaotic neutral, one neural good and one chaotic evil. Everyone is role playing properly to their alignment, so chaotic evil barbarian is constantly killing people, taking extra gold, and lying to people With little to no consequences. The party encounters a friendly high level paladin who is gravely wounded. The chaotic evil barbarian pretends to offer him water (not knowing the paladin has incredibly high sense motive and truth related abilities) while reaching for a flask of acid. The paladin sees it coming before he can take the cork off and baseball bat swings at him with the hilt of his greatsword knocking him out. He then reclaims all the stolen supplies for the greater good as the other two players salute him while he walks off. The travel time is cut in half as none of the party members can carry him and drag him across the plains.

Pro tip: boss fights should never be one guy. It gets boring as fuck with everyone taking turns hitting a D.C. That's way too high. Make henchman, clones, deputies, something to add more characters

You could easily have 2, 3 or however many stat blocks representing a boss fight as a single character with multiple actions and multiple hp pools.

That's kinda bullshit since they did try diplomacy first

If all goes right in the next session or two, the PCs have two major boss fights almost back-to-back. The first is a fight against evil versions of themselves who must be purged in order to lift a curse the PCs got cast on them; the second three-way fight between the PCs, the guy that cursed them, and the lesser demon that's been secretly following the party around and relishing in the chaos they've been inadvertently causing.

>Well I told the Jews they needed to leave country "before" I put them in the ovens. That makes it okay, we did a diplomacy first!

Really, that's the analogy you're going with?

>tried diplomacy
>openly says they failed
>they then provoke the people with a grisly trophy taken from one of their own

They didn't know the other mercs were with the village though

They were kind of justified though due to the Jewish involvement of the earlier tries of rebellion, and their involvement in turning Soviet russia to shit. I mean, suspicion and even dislike/hatred was kind of understandable.

UMM I'M GOING TO LOCK THE THREAD NOW BECAUSE I'M A LITTLE BITCH ;.;

Don't forget to purge all wrongthink ideas first! Remember, we are the good guys!

They also clearly didn't ask.
Murderhobos got fucked by their own murderhobo'ing, oh shit.

Then again, if a group of thugs is able to take the town hero's head as a trophy, why would the villagers think they stood a chance? If she was so loved that people were willing to throw their lives away for her, you would think someone would have told the PCs about that. After all, they wouldn't have sent another adventuring team unless they thought their beloved hero was in danger, so someone probably would have said something in order to emphasize the importance of the mission.

And why the fuck was the merc leader alone in a bath anyway?

you're the ones who take the slightest possible opportunity to bring your political bullshit and conspiracy theories up

checked

Hardly a conspiracy theory since the names of the actual conspirators in the november revolution (and Soviet bs) are up on wikipedia, just check it out.

Could have just had a powerful terror ability and nothing else, that would fit with the Boogie man theme come to think of it

Unless they did no leg work for info you sound like controll freak bitch.

Eh, I use a houserule thing similar to Legendary Actions which lets unique characters act out of turn in limited fashions. Besides, I fully expect everybody is going to be too busy panicking to be bored.

>Unintentional
D&D 3.5. Party is 17th level but, in defiance of all the memes, fairly balanced and mostly able to take at-level encounters out of the MMs for a good time. An enemy army is using powerful summoning magic and has called multiple Hellfire Engines (CR 19) into battle. There are two of them at the head of the force busily torching the countryside. As the PCs, on a hill overlooking the scene, make plans to engage the engines directly, I realize they haven't gotten the hint to go after the (comparatively weak) summoner, so as they watch, a third engine materializes and lumbers up to the front. At which point they decide to charge in and take in all three of the massive walking fire robots. One of them would be a tough encounter, and two fairly lethal. The only reason the PCs dropped the engines and got out with even one alive to get the others resurrected was because I played the stupid robots as, well, stupid robots and they managed to set it up so the massively destructive death explosion of one took out a second which finished off the third.

>Intentional
Same campaign, the shattered front gate of an enemy-captured castle was guarded against any attempt to push in with an army by an undead monstrosity in a fairly wide magic circle that cast Harm on anything inside the circle every round. The monstrosity would have been tough on its own and of course restored to full health every round. It couldn't be engaged in melee as anything living would basically melt in that circle. Why this dick move? Well, there was another entrance to the castle that the foes who had taken it over and set the undead at the gate didn't know about. It was kind of long and involved, though, so the party schemed for some time about ways to negate the circle or one-shot the monster. Fortunately for them, they never did engage it, and decided that the back door was a wee bit more practical than blowing miracles and disjunctions every which way.

>able to take the town hero's head as a trophy, why would the villagers think they stood a chance?

If someone murdered my dog and showed me the head, I don't think logic would enter the equation. And that's just a dog.

>And why the fuck was the merc leader alone in a bath anyway?

Because it was obviously not a hot springs episode.

CR 40 unbeatable monster with enough damage resistance and infinite regeneration to make killing it impossible. Immune to pretty much anything, and one shots anything.
It wasn't even my fault.

Why is throwing the Terrasque at the party not your fault?

because i didnt expect a player to befriend an incredibly powerful archdemon and then on top of that teach it to fight like a human

i didnt expect the same player to basically leave the demon in the ruling seat of the entire paladin order with near infinite resources accumulated over time

i didnt expect players wanting to start a 2nd campaign after finishing that one, in the same setting, thousands of years later.

the demon...got strong

I agree with , it could very easily have just been a kind of fear aura which it sounds like they prepared for. But it sounds like the game is still going so it couldn't have been that bad.

Well, okay, I'll admit it's not your fault this setting HAS a Terrasque.

I'm pretty sure my players circle of Essence 3 Solars is going to try to prevent the conquest of Thorns.

I don't want to drop the fuck you hammer, but they may drop it on themselves

Not me but one of the guys in my usual group.
>System: D&D 5e
>Party: Dwarvish Nature Cleric, Tabaxi Way of the Shadow Monk, Kenku Rogue, and Human Berserker Barbarian (me)
>Due to some unfortunate events (the orcish and goblinoid pantheons allying and going on a continent raid) we are in a refugee party resting in a town with a horde about two days away.
>Things have been rough but bearable in no small part due to a few NPCs who were originally on a mission to scout the area we left to assess the unified orc/goblinoid threat.
>Two of the NPCs though are dickish mercenary types: beats on prisoners, harass the defenseless in the party, resorted to violence and posturing the moment I told them they should stop the former two activities.
>I go tell the Captain (a Goliath Fighter and very proper officer and a gentleman type).
>They try to show me a lesson in the streets when, after an emergency, I am looking for the other PCs.
>We fight for a few rounds.
>Suddenly zombies start shambling out of the close by buildings.
>A lot of zombies.
>32 ZOMBIES.
>The preceding fight was suspended and with both sides bloodied all involved tried to flee.
>I got downed and only thanks to a combination of teamwork and decent rolls while raging did I escape alive.

I almost thought it was time to roll-up a new character and now regret giving my PC a very balanced spread of stats.

It wasn't on purpose but I was one hit away from a tpk when three third level pcs fought four giant rats in a sewer.

Yeah. iirc I don't even think people get to save against his mind control and that shit recharges or something. It was horrifying.

>the ovens
Never existed.

So many boners

So little time

It didn't happen in the canon of the story, but basically there were two NPCs designed to be a "fuck you" type fight if they provoked them into combat instead of trying to talk things out. Thankfully, the players never actually did, but one day we did a what-if scenario of if they decided to fight these NPCs instead.

They lost very, very hard. One NPC was a unarmed brawler, and the other was an archer. The unarmed brawler preferred using swords (REad: most of his abilities weren't in use when he was using it) and would only drop it when the fight got serious (They lost too fast for this) and the archer had access to spells he used in a similar way to the unarmed brawler actually using his fists. That is to say, not at all in this fight.

For some reason, they decided to gang up on the brawler and just let the archer shoot at them with no one trying to stop him until the party was half dead, at which point one of the players gave a token effort in trying to fight him.

There were multiple ways they could have beaten them, but none of them were the way they tried: stand still and just (effectively) mash the attack button on the controller until it or they die. This was after being told multiple times that doing that won't work in a good portion of combat in my games. Part of the reason it was a "fuck you" fight was to give the players a practical example of that fact because some people won't get it until you beat it forcefully into their brains.

They still fucking do it and still almost die on fights that aren't "Fuck you!"

In Age of Rebellion, my players severely fucked up an Intel gathering mission and to put it simply accidentally gave Emperor Palpatine himself the precise location of their rebel cell's home base, which was home to no less than seven force sensitives and one Jedi Master.

They and their two Nebulon-B frigates and four starfighter squadrons ended up face to face with twelve Imperial Star Destroyers commanded by Darth Vader himself, with half a dozen Sith Inquisitors in tow. They rolled so badly they would have lost within ten minutes of the Imps entering combat with them, so I had to fudge a miracle where Rogue Squadron caught wind of their location too, and jumped in with the Rebel Fleet behind them for the biggest fight in the entire campaign, while at the same time the PC's personal nemesis, a Dark Jedi called the Emperor's Wrath, turned traitor and commandeered two of the ISDs to attack Vader.

It turned out pretty incredible, and ended up with a duel on the bridge of a crashing Rebel ship between the party, the Emperor's Wrath, Wedge Antilles and Jedi Master Echuu Shen-Jon versus Vader and the Inquisitors. Two of the six PCs died. Good times.

DM threw a group of fire elementals at the party where the mages damage came almost entirely from fire spells and none of the martials had magic weapons.

That seems like horrible balance.

The easiest way to deal with this is ape an old 3.5 homebrew class designed specifically to fuck up casters. He gets to break the action economy when spells are being cast, doing stuff like aiming for the throat or mouth to silence spells.

a dm fiat pure bullshit arcane simulacrum guarding a mcguffin that the pcs were never intended to obtain. they didn't learn, despite the dmpc insisting that it was impossible to defeat through martial or magical means and that they would, if fact, 'all perish in flames' and they did just that.

Book of the Damned just came out, lots of good things for demons and cults. Open a literal hole in the floor to the abyss to chew the fuckers, or just trying to let a shadow demon claw them apart and possess their bodies, that kind of thing.

That's solid. Thank you.

Okay ,second reply to this. Started making one, found a vamp sorcerer level 8 with high Charisma (26), replaced Blind-Fighting with Ability Focus (dominate) to raise the DC to 24. Figured since 5 HD is prerequisite to become a vampire, she could have become a vampire as a level 6 sorcerer then leveled up to level 7 and 8 and taken ability focus as her 7th level feat.

So basically, gonna have one room be vampire spawn, 6 or 7, not a hard encounter at all. They'll start fighting them, and little miss vampire sorcerer will be lurking around under Greater Invsibility, dominating people. She can do it 5/day so she can stay invisible for 35 rounds if she overlaps it. Make the party beat on each other while the vampire spawn gnaw on them, then blast the survivors with fireball. That shit should kill off one or two of 'em. Thanks user. I hate being a killer DM but I really need to make this cultist stronghold a tough nut to crack if it's gonna have any effect.

I too know that feel.

>shuffles through old sheets of discarded legal pad

>be me, running LMOP D&D 5e
>party is a Battlemaster, munchkin EKnight, Monk/Cleric multiclass, and Death Cleric
>playing long-distance via Hangouts, pissed with the EKnight, pretty sure he's cheating on dicerolls
>"I totally rolled 3 nat20s in a row for saving throws guys"
>no way to police him tho, fuck
>him and the Death Cleric pissing me off the whole campaign, fucking around and being dicks
>they make it halfway through Wave Echo Cave and decide to long rest
>um_wat
>camp in the middle of the enemy base? okay
>they'd failed to catch Glasstaff the first time they crossed paths with him and thought he was the BBEG
>no idea at all that Nezznar is coming
>lol um okay
>lay plans
>Glasstaff and Nezznar set up a trap
>scaled them both up a few levels, Glasstaff to a 6th level caster with all his usual items
>Nezznar to a 7th level caster with his usual items
>tailored spell lists
>cast spells around the room (area 19)when they realize they're under attack
>Glyph of Warding (Explosive Runes) on the statue of Moradin
>Arcane Lock and Alarm on the door to 19
>(also ruled that the second entrance to area 19, coming from the East, did not exist)
>Darkness on the area in front of the main door
>Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum on the whole room
>y'all gon get it now
>once inside, party can't get in or out (especially out) unless Nezznar wanted them to, can't sneak in, can't divine anything inside the room with magic, & can't see anything inside the room without coming inside fully
>Glasstaff is the bait with half of the minions, gives the party a hell of a fight for what they thought was the actual boss fight
>they tried to move into area 20
>LIGHTNING BOLT
>enter Nezznar
>enter Giant Spiders
>3/4 TPK
>EKnight had never heard of Counterspell, got rekt
>Death Cleric is last man standing, murders Nezznar w/ 2nd level Inflict Wounds

good times

I made a group of gnolls specifically for sundering weapons for an all martial group

It's exalted.
If they want to try and stop Gem from blowing up, power to them.

Just remember, NRTTT.
No Resurrection, Teleportation, or Time Travel.

A group of mercenaries that the PCs had met before, and understood to be about equal with the party, in a surprise attack. They were on good terms with the party, until they heard about what the party had done recently.

Led by the man hiring them, a boss who had nearly killed the entire party himself before, and escaped when he was defeated because the party didn't question why 'The Phoenix' had that title.

Let's just say that the party bailed as hard as they could.

It's the entire campaign. For every good turn they do someone, they gain an enemy. For every crime, they gain three. The peaceful province they once inhabited is now war torn, and men and women of power on all sides want the party dead. There are not one, not two, but four separate organisations working towards a different apocalypse scenario and worst of all I keep telling them they have the power to win. I have no idea if they do, but they surprise me game after game so I have hope.

noob here. what is a social encounter and why are they so terrible?

One each of andro/gynophinxes in a nest. In the nest were a bunch of cockatrices that immediately tore into the weakened party.