What are some DM shenanigans you pull on your players?

What are some DM shenanigans you pull on your players?

>make a huge description and detail about the host of a house pouring drinks
>"she grabs the kettle and lightly pours in in to black clay cups. she reaches for a small jar and adds a yellowish gelatin to the cups and mixes the drinks swiftly. she then reaches for one of the plants inside the house, tears off a piece of a leaf, and adds it on top of the drinks. she hands each of you cups and motions for you to drink."
>nobody in the room fucking dares to drink honey herbal tea

>the bar is loud and noisy. the people are dancing, drinking, and smoking in joy with loud raucous music being played by the elves
>roll perception
>players are looking at each other like they're about to be assassinated or mugged
>some of them roll low
>a barmaid manages to sneak up on you and she swiftly takes a seat next to you. her race is slightly red, and she talks in a bit of slur. "Who might you be strangers!?"
>players looking at each other awkwardly. "W-We're doing fine..."
>also I make sure to count my coins and hide my purse inside my shirt

>you're walking across the street as evening comes and everything seems ordinary. you see shops closing, children heading home, and from a block away you can see the light of an inn. three Orcs outside are talking among themselves
>I specified on the very start of my campaign that Orcs are not evil and they are similar to Elder Scrolls/Skyrim Orcs
>"...we head to the inn and we keep a close watch on the Orcs. we do a Stealth check if possible and have our arms readied on our weapons."

You've a private circle in hell.

Two first are fine, last one is silly. Remind them that orcs are not strictly lawless.

>Remove the spell "Identify" (and a bunch of other spells that flatout replace skill checks) from the game.
>Tell players they can still identify the properties of magical items with the Arcana and a little research
>Literally put a wizard NPC in the starting city who can perform the service for a small fee as well
>Players suddenly think every magic item they come across is cursed and are afraid to use them, despite me giving them alternative ways to check this.
>"Identify" RAW never identified cursed items anyway.

>Always give players a "home base" to upgrade over time, whether it's a guild hall or warehouse or tavern or whatever.
>Allow the players to hire NPCs who provide services and items at a reduced rate.
>Players always hire a ton of them just to have them.
>Players never actually buy items or services from them and instead pay full-price at other shops
>There's always that one smart player who does though.
>Everyone else bitches about how he has more money than the rest of the party.

>Make Enchanting magic illegal in most civilized areas because it's literally magic that influences someone's mind and takes away their agency.
>The sorcerer with 18 charisma and proficiency in persuasion still goes around trying to use charm person.
>"What's the big deal?! It's not like I'm not practicing necromancy or summoning demons!"

>I've suddenly decided in my description that none of your characters know what honey is, possibly also mint. Because fuck you.
It's not like the characters have all lived in this world for fucking years, do you also obfuscate the very ground they walk on?
>Hey I made people roll perception for no reason, despite there being no meaningful chance of failure, against the advice of literally every rulebook published in recent memory.
Yeah that will sure fool them.
>I've got nothing against the last one other than you bringing specific attention to more things that do not matter, of course people are going to focus on the thing the world itself gave them tunnel vision on.
Cunt.

I wouldn't play with you because you think you're actually clever/10

Last time, our GM had our group wander in a bad part of town at a very late hour in the night after we were done looking for a plot-relevant NPC

>As you go through the middle of the place, you come across a completely white house, one story tall, with no windows and impressive marble columns at the sides of the big front door. There are no windows coming from it. What do you do?
One of our group decided to investigate this and knocked on the door.
>The door opens without a sound and from the second floor windows you can now see light comibg out. What do you do.
He went in, still thinking about investigating.
>the door slams closed behind you. Roll a new character.

If I had not been playing Warhammer Fantasy RP with the three of them for a few weeks prior, I would have called bull, but as we all know Warhammer is unforgiving, so I was not surprised at this very casual death-sentence.

Pic related was the house btw.

How were they seeing light coming out of second floor windows on a one story building?

Yes.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the interior of the house was pitch black- the PC that went in didn't even turn on a candle or a torch. And the rest of the group was noping as hard as they could, recognizing the typical horror setup.

The GM explained OoC that we don't know what it was since the rest of the party stomped off without giving the house a second look. So it is most probably warp fuckery- anyhow, for me the moral of the story is that you shouldn't play overly curious characters unless you're planning on rerolling and that not everything is there to move the plot forwars. We're in a maze trying to get out and sometimes there are walls in the way. Other times, gigantic pitfalls of certain death. The light out the second story window was supposed to be setting off alarm bells in the player's head that something is not right and go away.

I once had my players get ganked by some bandits in their travels.
Two of the four bandits was orcs
Later the party is walking along the road when 3 massive orcs are walking towards them from down the road.
I'm very specific in that the orcs are just being peaceful and keeping their weapons on their backs.
Players start to draw weapons as they get closer.
Make sure to tell them the orcs arnt being aggressive in anyway. (Was planning to have the orcs talking about the next plot area)
We where using a new crit system. Roll a D30 die and use a chart to see results. (That system got cut after 2 rolls. This is one of the rolls).
They attack the orcs out of nowhere as I begin to describe the orc conversation.
MFW one of my peaceful orcs looses his arm.

You have to add the occasional die roll so they don't "know" the results of a roll even when they fail.
>I roll to trap check the door.
You don't have to it's not trapped.
>I roll to trap check this different door.
Go ahead, you rolled a 3, you don't think it's trapped.

Now the player dose know it is trapped because I did make him roll.

Not a very good trap if they know that it is there.

I got my players to accidentally kidnap someone who doesn't speak their language. Currently they're entering the first week of keeping him captive, and they still haven't realized that something is off.

Sadly some of my players read Veeky Forums so I can't reveal the details or even much context.

>Orcs are not evil

This is the thing OP. If you told me this blatant lie, I would have watched those greenskins twice as closely. Not pulling a fast one on me.

>Depending on the setting.
But I do understand your feels.

The players head to a village, and they find a beautiful woman tied to a stake. A mob of superstitious zealots are about to burn her.

When the players rescue her, surprise, she IS a witch. She bides her time, and then unleashes her unholy powers on all who have wronged her.

She should be friendly towards the players though, and having a friendly witch is always nice

A devil disguised himself as a tiefling and tried to exploit his position as a minority member to divert suspicion from him. The half-orc didn't buy it for a second, but was never able to prove he actually did anything wrong. I can't believe the Paladin never pulled a Divine Sense around him.
This is the same devil who disguised himself as a drunk (who never gave his name to the party) to spy on the party. The 'tiefling' and the drunk were never in the same room, and the drunk never rolled saves against alcohol poisoning.

>play 5e
>players want a higher level, harder campaign since they breezed through the last one
>3 level 7s, 2 druids and 1 range
>first dungeon room has 3x skeletons
>get ambushed by a banshee (CR 4), wailing ensues
>ranger and 1 druid fail and instantly drop to 0
>remaining druid didnt prep healing spells
>druid has to search druid 2 for healing potions
>finally get the upper hand
>ranger gets lowkey salty that he lost to con save and banshee fled.

They wanted higher level, they should just be glad this wasnt 3.5 because "death attack" literally insta-murdered you back then. And its not skyrim, monsters generally have a degree of self preservation.

Yo dawg I like to play games in my games.

>Roll a d4 for absolutely no reason while a player is talking.
>"Roll Perception!" when they walk through a random door.
>When they do a thing, not important, I giggle and start flipping pages in the DMG.
>They kill a monster. I say "And then, the second one you didn't notice appears!" Sometimes I'm kidding, sometimes I'm not, but they always fall for it; it's downright Pavlovian by now.
>Ask them who brought a blank character sheet.

>playing Only War
>first session is where PCs fend off combat servitors
>lmao GM, they have no armor and only crude melee weapons
>squad finds ded Tech-Priest that fucked up an awakening ritual of a machine inside a temple
>second wave of combat servitors
>oh yea, the first wave was actually servent servitors
>combat servitors have Flak armor and are armed with both melee weapon and heavy bolter
>stupid husks missed mostly
>one unlucky PC get hit in the right arm with a shell
>almost ripped off his arm too
>he was the medic too
>I give a smirk at the players for charging headfirst into combat instead of taking cover
>half the squad either fights in melee or fires from cover while the other half flanks the enemy
>squad wins with only 3/5 wounded
>wow guys, didn’t think you would understand basic tactics
I know I sound like a smug cunt.

>"And then, the second one you didn't notice appears!"
>Sometimes I'm not kidding
Fuck outta here with that bullshit

I never add anything that isn't in the encounter table. If anything I'm making it easier by not spawning every enemy at once. I have some players that joined late, so their level is lower.

Put a Flying Sword in a first-level dungeon, but left in impaled in the last adventurer it had killed. Players desecrated the corpse so it wouldn't come back as a zombie, and pulled out the sword. How often does a animated item get to be in a grapple?

>Remove the spell "Identify" (and a bunch of other spells that flatout replace skill checks) from the game.
Glad im not the only one that does this. Also fuck take 20.

He outright said they're like Elder Scrolls orcs, which are far from lawless. Barbarians, yes, but they are very strict followers of the law that keeps their society together

I feel bad for not having to do shenanigans. My players have been great, and intentionally taken bait and avoided in character warnings at every opportunity.

It's like they jump on the rails and refuse to get off.

If the player wouldn't know if he failed, it's you that makes the roll.

Here's a variant on take 20. You roll 1d20, add their modifiers, and they repeatedly perform the action adding 1 to the d20 until they meet the target number.

>Mornard told us about an early D&D tournament game – possibly in the first Gen Con in Parkside in 1978? Gary Gygax was DMing nine tournament teams successively through the same module, and whoever got the furthest in the dungeon would win. You’d expect this to take all day, and so Mike was surprised to see Gary, looking shaken, wandering through the hallways at about 2 PM. Mike bought Gary a beer and asked him what had happened – wasn’t he supposed to be DMing right now?

>“It’s over!” replied a stunned Gary Gygax.

>Gary described how the first group had fared. Walking down the first staircase into the dungeon, the first rank of fighters suddenly disappeared through a black wall. There was a quiet whoosh, and a quiet thud. The players conferred, and then they sent the second rank forward, who disappeared too. The rest of the players followed.

>The same thing happened to the next tournament team, and the next. Players filed into the unknown, one after another. And they were all killed. The wall was an illusion, and behind it was a pit. Eight out of the nine groups had thrown themselves like lemmings over a cliff; only one group had thought to tap around with a ten foot pole. That group passed the first obstacle, so they won the tournament.

>Gary and his players couldn’t believe that the tournament players had been so incautious. But, to be fair, none of those tournament groups had played in Gary Gygax’s game. They had learned the rules of D&D, but they had no experience of the milieu in which the book was written. Of those nine groups that had learned D&D from a book, only one played sufficiently like Gary’s group to survive thirty seconds in his dungeon.

>chuckling_bears.png
This pisses me off more than the post itself.

Take 20 is a good mechanics if used correctly. Just remember that it can be used only if two conditions are met: there is no downside or risk when you fail and you have time for a shitton of attempts (e.g. throwing pebbles at a can or trying to get a piece of code work)

Next you'll tell me the dwarves in your setting drink, the elves are beautiful but aloof and the halflings are cheery.

>"You don't find any traps."

Said after the party used a take 20 to examine the dungeon room for traps. They were stuck there for 20 real-world minutes panicking before one of them had the bright idea of asking if there were any traps to find in the first place.