My current dm did that in a fantasy high campaign but with a Manticore kitten. We had to put a tennis ball on its scorpion tail because it kept attacking other students
Mine happens to be a frog. And every campaign I run, there is a frog. There is nothing special about this frog, except for the fact that no matter how many times they hit it they can't do enough damage to kill it. They are very suspicious of the frog. It just keeps showing up at random moments.. it'll be a nice quiet scenario. They're in a place where a frog would probably not be seen. It suddenly they hear the clear sound of a frog croaking. In the first campaign that the frog came about, I had the frog signal danger. All the rest of them, he's just there.
I ran a module I created for the spoiled forest in Dragonlance. Every time the party moved they’d hear the corrupted beasties. Crows, squirrels, etc. The toads were what got to them, with the very humanlike deep bass croaking of “YerDead. YerDead…”
As a bit of hilarious addon to the frog bit.... I read a short story way.... Back in highschool about a group of immortals who had a hidden water source that if a mortal drank it they would no longer age. No longer need food, Could take damage and there body would just ignore that it occured. The protagonist.... A mortal was given the chance to have immorality. But after seeing these 2 young men who got not only stuck in there young body but there minds and general perspectives didn't change either.... They were stuck in time. She decided she wanted the ability to change and stayed mortal. ...... She had a pet frog She was having trouble remembering to feed it. And she was moving to a place where she could no longer keep it. She fed her bottle of immortality spring water to the frog.........
I have several troll items: a mask of invisibility but you're blind while wearing it, a ring of attunement it increases the attunement slot by 1 but requires attunement, ect. By far the most fun trolling players is having them hunt a white dragon only for it to be an albino red dragon.
My uncle created the Doinker Bag. When opened, a finger reaches out and pokes whoever opened the bag in the eye, dealing a single point of automatic damage. Doesn't matter how you open the bag, if you opened it away from you, mage hand etc. You open it, you get doinked. The only way to catch it is by rolling a couple nat 20s in a row. And when caught, the finger disappears and you can look in the bag! Only to find.... A few copper coins and maybe a trinket.
I once had my players find a full bag of holding. It was filled with dirt, bones, viscera, etc. The ogres had goblin cleaners who used it as a dustpan. Also, a trench coat of holding where each pocket was a pocket dimension. They found a whale in one pocket that was filled with water.
One of the rules I have for my homebrew campaign, all mimics are grand pianos. They'll be in taverns, abandonned manors, and in a dungeon room after a room littered with treasure chests to make them suspicious of those instead. Also all the random NPCs having plain names (Kyle, Dylan, Fred, etc.) as if the party are the ones with weird names.
My favorite one is the "Squirrel night encounter". One night, while the players are sleeping in the forest, one of them on guard duty at a time, pick the one with the less nature affinity, and during their guard, have them hear something in the bushes next to the camp. If they alert everyone, wake up the mages/clerics, it's all the better. When they go to investigate, the only thing they find is a squirrel nut storage and a fleeing squirrel...
A cloak that makes it impossible to see the wearer, not because you go invisible, but because it makes you glow as bright as the sun and no one can physically stand to look at you.
Oh, I’ve got a few. My three favorites: First trick is when the players enter a room in a dungeon and I describe to them how everything looks normal, except for one or more chests that are out of place, lying on their sides or even showing damage from weapons. They aren’t mimics until about the fifth time I pull this trick on them. It’s usually the goblins trying to scare them off. The second ace up my sleeve is just how many monsters I have homebrewed based on similar-looking monsters in the Monster Manual or other popular sources. Best example of this is my stash of chromatic dragons. I love to trick players into thinking that they’re going to fight a white dragon, then reveal when they meet it face-to-face that it’s actually a grey dragon- which has a lot more cunning and deadly magic than your typical white dragon. My true favorite use of this trick was having an NPC tell the heroes about a monstrous green dragon hunting people in the swamps near the town. Thing is, the NPC was colorblind. It was an orange dragon. They breathe exploding sodium. The final, simplest troll is when a player does something, I randomly flip through the pages of the Monster Manual or another book filled with monster stat blocks, leave the book open behind my DM screen and then have nothing happen.
Have the word "Overthinking" in a completely empty room. Some groups take it at face value and move on, and others stay in the room trying to find any little thing possible. It really is just an empty room.
I used to play Hackmaster, a D&D parody game where messing with your players is highly encouraged, and needless to say I've picked up plenty of tricks over the years. The easiest way to mess with players is to have their skill and stat bonuses copied down on a reference sheet so you can ask for rolls without your players knowing what is being rolled for, this also gives you the option of asking for rolls for absolutely no reason so you can give the ones who roll high/low a worried look before before you make a note and continue like nothing happened, it drives players nuts not knowing what the roll was for. It's also pretty fun to make a roll then ask to see a players character sheet, act worried, then hand it back to them and write something down. I'm usually not to bothered by a bit of meta gaming, but a really good way to screw with players who do so is to have a particular NPC designed with the power to hear the players themselves, particularly a villain or a God or a high ranking noble of some sort, then have the NPC act according to the table chatter rather than how the characters themselves behave. You can do this with cursed items as well, design an item that has a negative affect and one or more trigger words that activate the item when spoken by the player rather than the character, if done right you can go several sessions before it finally dawns on them what has been causing minor magical calamity to befall them. I often get groups that seem to think every town in existence has some sort of library they can go to that will just magically have whatever knowledge they need. My favorite way to deal with this with groups that haven't encountered it is to actually have there be a library, membership required, and then you make the application process and fees needed be absolutely back breakingly tedious. The first time I sprung it on the players I had a full 20 page application printed out for them each to fill out, alongside a 50 question test they needed to score at least a 70 on, and then there was a 100 gold deposit and 6 week waiting period for approval. Naturally when they gave up after an hour and tried to brute force their way in they found out that every single one of the library staff was an extremely competent monk, with the librarian being the head of their monastic order.
then comes a dungeon made entirely of carrot cake. everything, the dungeon it's self, the monsters in the dungeon, the decorative future (hope spellcheck got the word right) and the loot.
The first Campain I was ever in the DM described a room with a locked door. Every other door in the building had been unlocked. After many many perception checks by the party we decide its safe for the Rouge to lockpick the door. Inside is a barrel suspended in the middle of the room by chains with more chains and locks wrapped around it. We spend nearly 2 hours in this room rolling checks, checking for traps and picking locks with some in party fighting about "Everything in This building has tried to kill us so maybe we don't open the barrel that they CHOSE to lock up?" The Rouge finally gets the last lock and we gingerly lower it to the ground. The lid is opened and the DM says "it's full of fish" the party confused does some detect magic. Nope not magic fish. We check the barrel only fish in there. The dm gently suggests a knowlege nature check "nat 20" he smiled and said "you recognize them to be red herring"
Maybe Brian can have some fun with this one. I enjoy planning or improvising stories to be told by the players' favorite NPCs in a very /specific/ way. They initially seem (or are) plot-relevant; like the following: "Y'know, the carnival comes through on it's circular about every ninemonth or so. When I was a lad, I remember the whole city seemed to raise up its hackles just 'afore they'd come through, and most folk seemed... relieved afterwards. As I got older, I figured it was as much to do with spending so much time in the fields or mines; cooped up in a shop or stable or what-have-you. Just work, you know--it wears a body down, and folks need to blow off a little steam ev'ry now an' then. But I know better now. "Y'see, I had this friend--Larkin Potts, and a solid man if ever there was one. Round about twenty winters back, Larkin and me figure we'll see the dancin' girls, have a bit too much to drink, eat some fritters, and generally make a nuisance of our young selves--and we did! Near the time the lights on the carnival start going out, we're both feelin' the drink pretty well, and I figure nothin' sounds better in the world than sugar-bread soft-boiled in lard, but Larkin's more interested in fillin' his eyes than his gut, y'know. So we part fer a minute. Next time I saw 'im was in a shallow, open grave out back of the clearing where the carnival folk were camped. They do it ev'ry time they come through, and... gods above! We. Let. 'Em. We're relived because it isn't us, or our kin, and we let 'em keep going. I don't know why, but we let 'em... "I only know... "If it hadn't been for sodden fried dough, I'd have been buried a long time ago." It's Cotton Eyed Joe. It's ALWAYS Cotton Eyed Joe.
lol, I like useing the odd "pspspspsp" whisper in the head randomly, if they bothered to check for anything, they find a seemingly friendly random black cat. In the end, it turned out to be the big baddie they had been looking for! XD
"as far as you know" is one of my favorite phrases. Most the time I say that to mess with them. 6:32 I did something like this. Magic tower and one of the floors had an empty room where there were some tiles on the floor, walls and ceiling that were red. They spent almost an hour investigating every inch of that room. Next session the player who missed the previous session Nat20'd the investigation roll and I told him "the longer you stare at the red tiles it becomes increasingly apparent that the walls, floor and ceiling are almost identical to each other except for which tiles are red. And you realize that if you put all the red tiles on one wall it creates the vague shape of a fish."
4:25 I've seen this talked about a lot, where people always go there appears to be nothing there despite the roll. Heres my twist on it: Flip the script. Since most DM's typically use phrases like "it appears" or "there seems to be" to cloak a trap, and tend to not use such phrases and just go "you see nothing" if there truely is nothing there, exploit this known fact. For a session or two, without telling anybody, anytime there is truely nothing there, state "you appear to see nothing there". This will put them on edge for the entirety they make perception checks. Then, should somebody fail to notice something (works best if the first thing they fail to notice with a perception check is a hostile enemy), simply state that nothing is there. No phrases like mentioned prior. The player, likely excited for the ease of mind knowing for almost certain nothing is there, after all the uncertainty of the past rolls, they will continue on, and that is when the player gets attacked by the hostile enemy. Throw in useless perception checks, and you have a recipe for a highly paranoid party, that will keep players on their toes the entire session. And after you've utilized this for a small handful of sessions (1-3), revert back to the typical tropes of using "it appears" to conceal an obvious trap. This way, any players who figured out the first part of the plan are thrown completely off guard, as their knowledge of these opposite days shenanigans will no longer save them. From there, flip between the two modes of describing perception checks whenever you feel you want to keep the party on their toes.
i get very excited for my players to see my story and characters, so i just start tossing dice down as a fidget. it’s funny to hear them all hold their breath with anticipation when I notice I’m doing it!
One time I gave my players a Luck Blade, except I changed the wish effect to a curse, so it couldn't be identified. To them, it was just a +1 sword. The idea was that the sword would trigger it's wish effect whenever someone started a sentence with "I wish.." I thought it would be really funny for them to realize they just wasted their wish unknowingly. Sadly this never happened.
I once trolled my players over the course of a half dozen sessions, just for a dad joke The party barbarian was wanting some new kit, and so I rolled up some random gear, and found a necklace that once a day summoned x creature...I forget the original, but I ran with that - reskinned and fidgeted it into a +1 loincloth, that gave a +1 morale bonus (made him feel more manly and capable to wear) Well, he finds it, and not being the brightest, slaps it on without thinking twice (actually failed a will save to resist the compulsion) and immediately falls in love with it - great fit, doesn't chafe, etc. Well, at midnight, the curse kicks in (interrupting everyone's rest) by the sudden appearance of 1d4+2 shrieking, screaming birdwomen... reasonable battle and for all they know.. random Until it happens again...and again... 3..4..5 nights in a row. Well, they start suspecting something, and start 'detecting curse' all over the place. Yep. The barbarian's crotch. So they go to have the curse removed, and leave the loincloth to be de-hexed (hopefully without breaking the armor bonus, etc) They check into an inn, settle in for the night, and as the church bell peals midnight 'squawk scream doom destruction chaos' breaks out in the inn as the foes appear. The party is angry, tired, frustrated, haven't been able to long rest properly (3.5, so a full 8 is important) and they go back to the priest working on the item, get another remove curse cast on the barbarian, this time by an elder of the church. Midnight - you guessed it. 😏 Next day, they storm up to the temple and lose their shit at the bishop that cast the second remove curse, ranting about the whole thing and how long it's gone on. The bishop looks at them, shakes his head, and to the barbarian 'I'm very sorry, my son, but it appears that Harpies are forever.' A party of jolly players almost turned into murder hobos at that. (They did finally get the curse removed. It took a curse disease spell cast by a second priest at the same time. I might be mad, but I'm not evil...well...much)
This vid is a gold mine. I'm definitely going to use some of these in future sessions. The spontaneous-mimic sounds like a fun one as well as the harmless WIS save.
Our main DM purposely adds stuff that will 100% cause one of us to interact or over analyze and spend 30min making an over complicated plan (like how to open a door he implies leads a high level wizards study and is trapped.... 30 min later, it lead to essentially guest room and was not trapped) and his favorite phrase to mess with our heads when we ask if we can try something (doesnt even need to be remotely hard) is "you can certainly try......"
Legendary creatures and characters with class levels take 1 turn right before they die. Depending on the context, it's led to very cinematic moments, some full of passion, some full of spite, some full of revenge. Favorite house rule of mine.
Super subtle, but underrated, just simply going out of my way to be vague about the factual state of reality, and speaking from the characters' perception. like if someone rolls high for trap finding in a room with no traps, I ALWAYS look at my copy of the map, act like im doing something important, maybe make a bogus mark in my notes, and then say something like "It seems that there are no traps here" or "You don't find any traps in this area." rather than stating "there are no traps" keeps them on edge during dungeons. and in my current group, that kind of tension usually has them making more interesting and risky decisions rather than safe ones, due to the non-committal responses I give.
In a Dungeon or lair or hideout, put a door that is heavily and obviously locked. They will inevitably try to open it, and when they do, and incredibly powerful battering ram blasts the door open and hits whoever opened the door. You see, the door wasn't locked to keep people out, but to keep the battering ram in.
8:35 A door in the middle of the forest made me instantly think of the manga/anime "Restaurant to Another World". Doors appearing around a D&D type world that lead to a small restaurant in Japan. Your party could have taken a short/long rest and had a nice meal :)
As a real world rumor horror theme add on here. Look up stairs to know where in USA national parks........ Warning ⚠️ somewhat horror and night mare fodder if you dive into the rabbit hole.
I like to ask my players questions about their character mid combat. My favorite was during a high lvl one shot where I asked a character what their swim speed was, acknowledged it and moved on.
Haven't had a chance to do this yet but if I ever have a player with high passive perception (16+) they will have the ability to glimpse the device. At random points I'll ask what their passive is and they will notice a random animal nearby, just on the edge of their vision. Could be a bird circling overhead or a cat skulking out of a nearby alleyway. Turns out the party has caught the interest of a deity who regularly check in to see what they are up to. The deity has no interest in getting involved, just wants to watch them.
General monkey paw wishes or using chaotic situations to kill off an important NPC. I once had one of my players duel an errant knight, but they could only use piercing weapons. The knight had armor of vulnerability which gave him resistance to piercing damaging, but vulnerability to slashing and bludgeoning. When they found his armor was cursed they attempted to break the curse, but failed their check. So I got the party to burn the 2nd of 3 wishes they got from a wish blade.
I designed a trap where the players are locked in a room with an obelisk. When a player touches the obelisk their characters loses consciousness and I privately tell them a word. The way to solve this puzzle is to have 3 people touch it, get all three words, they'll then wake up and put the words in the right order to unlock the door. Only problem is as far as the party knows their friend just touched the obelisk and died so now they're afraid to touch it.
the box of dreams. On the box is enscribed "those who peer inside will so that which they desire" apon opening it releases a cloud of sleeping nerve gas that forces the player to roll at disadvantage and they have to keep rolling until they can leave the room or travel at least 120 feet. This roll is only to remain awake, the nerve agent forces you to walk so the player will have to roll 4 times at disadvantage. If the player fails the check they are unconscious for a whole day. The bright side......they do get to see that which they desire most.....only they don't remember it. I will occasionally leave these boxes in seriously dangerous dungeons or in NPC houses when the rogue starts stealing without concern.
Give the players two options: one obviously nice, charming route and one dangerous, spooky route. Players will almost always chose the dangerous looking one, suspicious of the nice looking one. And then they get attacked. Feel free to tell them that the nice looking path looks that nice because it's not invested by monsters, thus the locals are able to care for it.
Sometimes the party ends up with an npc porter. Sometimes the party over searches for loot and ends up with shiny stones that they eventually toss to the npc. Sometimes the stones were pre-noted as magical. One time the shiny stone they didn't check was actually housing the soul of a magical entity that would eventually teach the npc the basics of spellcasting, and they accidentally show up to camp early to sorcerer's apprentice magically cooking and cleaning while reading a book (2 years into the campaign).
party was entering a kobold camp, and was told to be wary of traps. one player entered a small cave with a bowl full of pinecones, and a sign written in poor common that said: "Not a pimecone. is -pi- -py- pie" of course the cave was trapped to collapse when someone walked over to the bowl. and somehow the player fell for this.
Give them a puzzle with an answer so obvious that the correct answer isn’t even considered because that wouldn’t be a puzzle. Case in point; a highly magic extremely detailed door I spent a minute describing. They had to knock. That’s it.
My players love to theorize, we also play online with me the dm using face cam. Whenever they theorize and ask me about their theories, I just do a small smile and cock my head. The fear they feel when they guess about an npc being super evil, or is a house is haunted, only to get my cold lifeless smile as an answer. I feed off of it
I personally am a fan of having added descriptions and drawing a quick map for environmental setpieces, seemingly for a random encounter, even if nothing is gonna happen (I just like the visual-spatial awareness of where everybody is, because our group frequently splits the part for short intervals. And has a knack for starting random fights I didn’t expect). Plays off of two frequent (and erroneous) player assumptions- “the DM is describing it, it must be important”, and “map=combat”. One of my best was a creepy and rather suspicious waystop (basically a small hotel out in the forest along the road. Main building with a very basic general store, kitchen/pantry, dining room, and owner’s quarters, surrounded by a five or six small cabins where guests would stay). Party rolls up late at night, during a massive thunderstorm, rather thoroughly drenched, and find the place completely abandoned. Just a burning lantern in the window of the central building. They were all so certain that there was something waiting for them, most of them barricaded themselves in one of the outlying cabins for their long rest (except the ranger, who was so convinced something awful would happen if he stepped foot inside that he wouldn’t even do that. He spent the night outside, soaking wet, in the mud under their wagon). In fairness to them, there WAS totally an encounter ready (I think some ghouls, who had killed the owners and any guests staying there), but when the party arrived, the dice determined the encounter wouldn’t happen and the ghouls were long gone (having dragged the bodies back to their nest to feast). Had the party investigated they could’ve found clues to find out what had happened, or had they spent more time in the central building they would have seen the ghosts of the late owner (who was just re-living their final hours, every night, and who would’ve had no awareness of the party), but the party was already so creeped out from the entire atmosphere, they were in and out like lightning, never even saw their ghost, didn’t try to look for any clues or hints for what went down, and then they happened to pick one of the two cabins that I’d randomly determined didn’t have occupants when the ghouls attacked (and thus, no ghosts there either). Still, despite having seen, heard, or experienced NOTHING concrete or dangerous during the night, the party took off the next morning as fast as they could. They only paused to grab the lantern (which the Arcane Trickster realized as they were leaving was an everburning lantern, and only took that because they could reach it through the window as they were hightailing it out of there). Didn’t take or even look for anything else. Nothing from the general store (although they easily could have tossed the lot of it in their wagon to take with them and sold it for a tidy sum), not the alcohol or food, they didn’t even look for any money (which they would’ve found easily, in the late owner’s cash box). I consider it one of my personal triumphs that with nothing more than description and ambiance, my players were psyched out so badly they left behind free loot.
Anything can be a mimic? Our DM sent us on a quest and the temple we found was a mimic. Our monk found healing potions. Turns out they were also mimics. We found out when he tried to use one and it decided to play tonsil hockey with him. Our party has ptsd from those two sessions.
I have this lich merchant who just happens to be travelling in the region of my custom world that the players are currently adventuring in. He's called Tom the Trusted and knows a lot more than he's letting on. He sells magic items for a living and 95% of them are genuine, priced somewhere between cost and default price (this is 3.5e so all magic items actually have prices). That other 5%? Cursed and joke items that are often just a little cheaper than anything else he happens to have. One time a player bought a sword of warning that happens to shout its warnings out instead of just in the wielder's head. Another bought an arrow of disintegration that disintegrated when he tried to fire it (I don't feel bad, it was only 7gp, what did he really expect?). Another bought this finely decorated belt that was... just a belt. Tom has a sense of humour and he's perfectly fine with missing the punchline, waiting for his customers to return and buy more because he's got the best deals around.
I play online with my players and use hero forge to take picks of models to use as tokens. Most of the time the real BBEG’s will have a singular connection that links them all together, red lenses on anything they where on their eyes perhaps or a similar color scheme. Only the really observant players notice but it’s always fun to make them double check. Also I give my players the guideline for my world, “you can do whatever you want to your abilities however what you do will always have consequences good or bad”.
I was running an offshoot of my main campaign at the time with players I hadn't met prior (friends of a friend, experienced players), and had them following the trail of a goblin turned troll (via The Trolling Stones) and described an obvious combat scene with a single plant left untouched in the middle of the chaos. After about fifteen minutes and various checks etc they determined...it was nothing. Just an "obvious plant". Groans all around. 🤣
i had my party on a steamboat conducting an investigation of the missing captain. my brother who is a warlock and is one of those players who says something that can turn things bad and then says oops that was out of character while in the middle of roleplay. 1 npc out of the whole crew was an asshole and after a series of events got his arm blown off by the cleric and because he was insufferable they had a shot of patching things up with the crew. Then my brother laughs and says *NO WITNESSES* then as i start to describe the panic he tries to say it was out of character. he's now wanted in 1 village, 3 towns, and 1 major city
The bag of holding thing reminds me that in my campaign, I set up an encounter where they find a whole bunch of bags of holding.. during an investigation into a series of missing persons, where each person missing was the former owner of the now up for grabs bags of holding. Before they get access to any of the bags, I have an npc tell them some spooky folklore about a creature that crawls out of bags of holding to abduct people. The npc tells them this because "they are wasting their time trying to find the missing people, or investigating at all! This HAS to be the work of that creature!". Long story short, the party can have free bags of holding but not before some spooky folklore and evidence supporting the idea that bags of holding are gateways for abducting creatures
That's how I number my monsters. They get worried when they encounter "black dragon 17" Which is a phantasm. The real black dragon is number 5. The mimic thing is a godsend, I had the entire party questioning whether coins and gems were tiny mimics. They weren't, that time.
Recently had my party sitting in front of a door for like 30 minutes. They tried a lot of things to open it, including running at it full speed trying to kick it down. The door was open. It just opened towards them. Cherry on top, it led to a room they were already in about 10 minutes before encountering the door. (Also they were like level one or something, so the one trying to kick it in litterally almost died- to a FUCKING normal wooden door.
I tell them that I plan on running Tomb of Horrors at some point this campaign. And I make sure they know it's not the one that's actually playable and/or Tomb of Annihilation, but the one where the source book itself outright says that it's intentionally made to piss the party off. And then I just never run it. If anyone asks me about it, I say, "Yeah it exists in this world somewhere..." and move on like nothing happened.
I ran a oneshot a couple weeks ago and it was all minecraft, but my players never knew until the last battle with the ender dragon. It was glorious. Had to change a few things as to not make it super obvious, but it was perfect
Honestly, the best way I have "trolled" my players is by making them talk about potential theories about what is going on in the story. The amounts of gold I have gotten out of that with the very light payment of "OMG I fucking called it remember?!" will always be worth it!
Players often meet in seedy taverns. Medieval health and safety standards are low. Asked then to roll multiple perception checks while at the tavern. Everyone was getting very nervous until I announce they feel a distinct rumble in their bowels. Entire party got food poisoning and the race for the toilet began. Poor fighter and paladin wearing armor stood no chance.
My favorite one is when a player says "i push the door", so i will answer with "the door doesnt budge". There is a chance they think its locked but its actually a pull door.
Or better. The door doesn't open isn't locked and has no handel. There is a grove down one side 1.5 inches wide. Can be obscured. The door is a sliding type.
I don't have many chances to troll mine as I only take over DM seat for Xmas oneshots, but I love to randomly throw a die and ask 'what was everyone's passive perception again?' and then just go 'huh... okay.' and write something down. And yes, if they ask I say 'nothing important, carry on'. It's 50% trolling and 50% forshadowing that all the one-shots actually are a part of a longer, overarching story and all their actions are going to be important in a session in 2 years, when my NPC homebrew god will claim them as their champion because they keep finding new ways of commiting warcrimes and killing either Santa or his wife or both.
I have a character who randomly pops up while my players are traveling he doesn't have a name and is insane. He plays a flute like a 4 year old and will sometimes give helpful or unhelpful advice
Another one I have pulled a few times, random saving throw while traveling. It means nothing. But if they roll low and inquire about it, I'll just say, "don't worry about it. There's nothing you can do anyway" and then continue narrating travel
A gold dish that once stolen from the house transform the thief in a statue of gold. A coin that is a gold parasite that eat money. Boots of flying that can only go up.
Similar to "can everyone roll a perception for me", you can also ask "is anyone's passive perception equal to or higher than [insert inpossible dc like 35]?"
Wow I do most of these, but always with precision, always with a reason. Even if I'm rolling a random die just to fuck with em, they know there's probably a reason they should be alert...
DM trolled me with counter spells. Wasted like sixth level slot. Next time I announced I was casting chromatic orb at something, he instantly says counter spell fifth level. I told him it was a first level chromatic orb. There goes his last spell slot. Caster got nuked the next turn because sorcerers can make more spell slots.
Not really trolling my players, but I had a bbeg my players encountered and the paladin went to smite. A few or my players are much more well versed in game mechanics so I confirm things with them. He crits and throws in a level 5 smite. So I confirm the smite is radiant damage, and then tell the paladin the smite appears to do nothing. So shrugging that off, the next turn he throws something up like spirit guardians but he can choose the damage type, and chooses necrotic. Pretty high spekk too. And I just describe how the necrotic energy just seems to flow over and around,leaving the bbeg unphased. That was when my players really started to panic.
One word: illusions.. well, maybe a few more: if I decide to throw in an illusionist once a blue moon, portray them as a coward, having a bunch of illusions that they can pass through.. until they get to the shadow magic stuff. Somehow they forget, every time, that some illusions can hit back.
8:36 oooo that reminds me of a part in a Pathfinder game I watched. Party was in a mansion filled with nobles for a party and accidents began happening making it into a classic murder mystery. Party eventually learned it was a Rakshasa with a grudge against the party using a mixture of disguising itself and whenever cornered it would go though a door and vanish. Turns out the Rakshasa was using a spell called Urban Step which is like Dimension Door only it has a limitation on it links 2 doors together, enter one door, exit any other door in range. His safe point he would escape to? Fucker built his own door in the woods next to the manor!
in cyberpunk I just flip the script with some classes. players always think rockerboys, medias, fixers, and nomads are always good guys, so I have them be the bad guy. players always think corpos, and cops are bad guys, have Arasaka and the SWAT be the good guys.
I wouldn't even call it a troll; just good atmosphere. PC's have just unlocked the basement of a mansion abandoned for 150yrs. Unlike the rest of this place (built of wood & absolutely trashed), down here it's all stone, and surprisingly clean. The first thing they find, is a dressing-room with a mirror basically taking up the far wall. The spook-vibes set in, and most of the party listens from the dressing-room as the two rogues scout ahead. As they cautiously maneuver the halls, they find nothing. Seriously; everything at the entrance of that floor is basically set-dressing for narrative reasons later. IDK if I just did a killer job of describing everything or what; party proceeded with absolute fear & complete caution. Honestly, good on them; was a fun bit, and they handled it perfectly. The REAL fun started next session, but that's a story for another time.
I make characters be entirely honest, but sound a bit shady, so when the players insight check no matter the roll, "they seem to be trustworthy" I also try to have a few super detailed descriptions of things that don't matter at all for when someone desides to investigate in a placeholder area or an area they are just supposed to pass through. this once lead to a session where they examined and took apart a clock for 2 hours in a room where there was just a small encounter before the main encounter in the next room. it ended with the "bad guy" escaping and them having to track him down in the sewers in a later session.
I have this one DM who does this all the time, and is something I picked up. Basically something mundane now like opening a door or waking up, and he’ll call at one player and say something like, “Dan you wake up and see the rest of your party members and build in their sleep.” He then immediately whiplashes us back with a “no you wake up normally, that doesn’t happen”
Our Dm trolled us by giving us some, interesting magical items, our barbarian got shoes that when you said a set phrase it would result in teleportation to the chosen free spot on a ground, our rouge got a horn that if you blown rhe horn makes you invisible, and I cleric got a hat that once a day can change looks. Whats the catch? 1st, only the shoes teleport without the person having them, 2nd not only the invisibility granted by horn last only as long as you actually use it, the horn is not making itself invisible making you super loud levitating horn, and the hat? It once a day changes it's own appirance without me being able to choose what it is, yes it's random. Those magical items were gifts in our "christmas special session", end the best part is that with the exepction of horn we learnd about their true abilites after the session couse even thou he never lied he left the desceiptions open to interpretation (as we aren't english speakers it was hard to me to find translations that would work and not make it obvious but at the time we all thought that those were legit magical items, also sorry for mistakes not only my english probably suck but it's late and I'm kinda tired, hope you can understand what I'm saying)
My DM liked to keep mentioning about all these catches of gold and loot we missed each adventure because we didn’t look in this one nearby spot. Coincidentally we haven’t gotten much loot so this has made us a bit sensitive to the point where we have npc helpers search the areas we are in after each event… And No.. we still can’t find our precious loot.. 😅
Supplying them with cursed items that aren't actually harmful, just annoying. My favorite is giving a paladin who wanted to be a Gary Stu a +1 longsword that would cause a fish to jump out of the nearest water source (even a single drop) and smack into his face for 1d4 nonlethal damage whenever it was drawn.
My friend who's playing a ranger in my game wanted to search the beach they washed up on for a sharp rock. I let them find one. At the end of the campaign, after the bbeg, I plan to throw a modified tarrasque at them. It will be unkillable, unless it's stabbed by that sharp rock.
I think my favorite is asking the players to describe what they're doing and following it up with "Is that all you do?" Taught one of my groups a lesson in that when doing Phandelver and one of the players got caught in the goblin snare trap and another player used his dragonborn breath attack to burn the rope without holding the rope to let them down easily. The level of confidence in his "Yes" was hilarious.
I keep a secret chest of handouts,trinkets and monster miniatures. I generally leave the chest off to the side with the lid open allowing my players occational glimpses of the horrors within when I go digging for a particular item. Like while Im digging out a paper scroll I simultaneously take a beholder or other distinct looking monster and moves it to behind my dm screen. Also I regularly make ghost dicerolls behind my screen and pretend to move tokens, make notes or check lists as a result of those ghost rolls.
Let them go through every idea and ability under the sun to try and unlock a door. Except for checking to see if it's locked in the first place. Smirking the whole time knowing it's a normal unlocked door.
My personal best is a fancy sword with a pile of severed hands next to it. Any curious player would pick it up to find it as a completely normal sword... until they try to put it down. Turns out the only property of the sword is to be stuck on the hand of whoever is holding it, and the only way to get it off is to cut of their hand. Soon, another severed hand joins the collection.
I have a particular way to do this. Run a campaign like a regular one. Once they have reached a certain level give them alot of simple combat encounters. Make them feel strong and cocky. Then throw something at them that will fully make them shit themselves. Im talking about creature with haste, invisibility, action surge, dominate spells. My group is always a group that wants to simply hit things. I would dominate a player, haste them and then go invisible for example. And watch while they rip eachother to pieces. Id only do this if they annoy me alot.
I also posted this on the long con video but I wanted to share it here cause it's also very troll-y. I have a dm that kept adding kermit in as a shop keep and he just keep reappearing. So I added my own shop keep that'll keep popping up. Eyesac(Isaac) who runs the Eyesee where you can buy anything the eyes can see. He appears like a little kid around eight years old and is a total prankster and loves messing with his customers. Now his shop is not normal appearing in every town that the party goes to. They don't know this yet as they haven't been out of the starting town and I just introduced him but he'll pop everwhere. Eyesac says he just moves shops but the inside of his shop is always the same. The inside of the first shop was wood for instant and the next time they see him he'll be set up in a tent but when they walk in it'll be the same wooden walls that the players have seen before. If they cast detect magic the two doors(the front door and the employee only door) will glow with magical energy. Now if they investigate the back of the shop(the employee's only part) there is a whole mini dimension that's basically an open flea market where people from the multiverse can come and trade their wares. 'How does a child have access to such a thing?' I hear you ask. Excellent question, traveler! He's a god. Yup straight up a god. No one knows this yet. Like I said they've only been in his shop in the first town and and a couple of times but I am so excited for them to find out. Think of his domain similar to Hermes where he's a friendly trickster merchant god.He also a twin brother that is the god of black markets, thieves and harmful tricks who desperately wants to kill him and steal his domain. I'm thinking of running a few campaigns with Eyesaac popping up to get the players used to him then running a one shot where they save him from his from his brother to reveal the truth about him, but really I have no idea how I'm going to reveal this to my players. Honestly I can't wait for their reactions to it. It's going to be hilarious.
I like to make my players role perception checks for literally no reason. 😂 I also like to include meme references through NPC’s. There’s a reoccurring traveling fisherman who can only sing, and his favorite song is Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.
Make a room with an abundance of items that could conceivably be mimics. Make one of them very obvious. Near that item place other items in calculated positions around it so that those items could be used as cover or just restrict where the PCs could stand. The obvious item is innocent and the cover is mimics. Have proof that this was planned in advance though or people might get mad lol
My last campaign we had a warlock with a ring that he used to get the whole party into a pocket dimension. He forgot that the ring stayed on our plain of existence. I had a beholder destroy the ring, and bring the party back.
I start to read the effects of abilities then stop right before the damage or effects. Our rogue failed a con save last week and still doesn’t know what the effect is. The players are all begging to make medicine checks. Failed. Begging to make knowledge checks about the monster. Failed. “As far as you all know, it was just a scratch. You don’t even know there was a con save.” Oh, and the campaign is taking 2 weeks off for the holiday break. If there’s an ability with a cooldown, I say out loud “should he use his cool thing this turn?” I let them anticipate a big ability on another turn. Our kobold hates gnomes. In our Spelljammer campaign, we stopped at a planet where kobolds and gnomes live in harmony. Finally, my favorite, is if an enemy is at 1 hp, I say “don’t get mad…”
Lol, the ad at the end. Thought that was one of them. Like, DM suddenly plays boss music from Metal Gear Revengeance. Then just turns it off and goes, "oops, misclick."
Regarding the story about the DM who retaliates on puns with more puns, that sounds glorious! One time my friends and I were playing a campaign where we had come to a village and had to meet with the local leader, a khan. Three of of, myself included, promptly started dropping every last "khan" pun we could think of. "We must CONsult with each other" "Let's do some reCONnaissance" "What does the CONsul say?" All of that and more. Eventually our DM got so annoyed he told us all to roll, and while I passed by rolling a 1 (this was Call of Cthulu), the other two who had been cracking puns with me were marked for death because we "pissed off the gods." I have no regrets.
turtle shells are made of keratin, and keratin is a very useful material and can also be used in the creation of glue, could also be used to get the keratin for gelatin, which with enough ingenuity could lead to napalm... everything has a use if you know HOW to use it~
sometimes I draw out battle maps for locations where there is y going to be combat where I think a visual would be useful to better convey what I want the party to know. It makes them think there’s gonna be combat every time
Mimic island. It is exactly what it sounds like but not everything is a mimic. That's the fun pt. One of my players has a mimic paranoia and the other has a trap fear. They haven't gotten to the island yet. I'm just really excited. Its a cliques ik bit still fun. Rn my favorite way is getting them to do the dirty work of the village bad guys. I don't plan it that way they just fall into it. It's happened 3 times now. They only know of 2 tines tho. The other one is the cat toy on a string. Drop an annoying NPC and give them a magic item that makes them impossible to catch. Then make said NPC a reoccurring thing. One of players inparticular gets sooooo angry. It's great. They catch things often tho so it evens out.
Favorite troll method... Prankster Pixies. Fail your Watch check twice in a row? I mean, Nat 0's, nothing less. And you will likely find yourself waking up a different color, gender, or even race. It's all cosmetic, though. Just wash it off with a bit water, or wait an hour for whatever illusion spell they used to wear off. If the characters are good sports about it, they should be able to find a few nifty things in the remains of their campfire in a fire/heat-proof pouch. Bad sports.. well, these pixies were basically inspired by the old tales of Hop o' My Thumb, so those people can expect anything from tacs in their shoes to bees in their hair. My players always made sure to have characters with a good sense of humor after the first instance of feeling the pixie's displeasure. I wonder why? *Innocent face* EDIT: I only do this on occasion near a forest.
I usually only do this in call of cuthulu. There is a cat. Her name is Ms. Beans. She has a terrible habit of stealing cans of food and returning them only for a price. My players always adopt her out of love
