[Channel Teaser] How I Justifiably Led A Devious Player To
Be Devoured By Spiders This one is kinda old, but one of my favorite
moments as a DM, because it is eye-rolling, hilarious, and I feel demonstrates my skills
as a GameMaster. We were playing Pathfinder, re-booting a previous
game with some new PC's at about level 6. We have a Fire Wizard, a Rogue, a Two-Hand
Fighter, a Life Cleric, and a Gunslinger. The Gunslinger ended up being the big problem. He started the game with a created magic item
that let him use the Blink spell three times a day. In Pathfinder, Blink makes you flicker back
and forth between the Material and Ethereal plane for the duration. This, understandably, does a bunch of stuff. It makes all physical attacks have a flat
50% chance to miss, makes all of your attacks have a 20% chance to miss, lets you move through
solid objects that are less than 5 feet thick, reduces damage you take from area of effect
damage. It's a strong spell, to say the least. This immediately starts causing problems. First fight is against a marauding pack of
gnolls on their way to the real objective. From the get go, he's running into the middle
of combat, blasting both pistols, heedless of danger due to his Blink item. The way he checks for it, he rolls a D10,
saying nothing, looks at it, and then informs me whether it missed because of the Blink. And wouldn't you know it, almost every single
attack against him is consumed by the Blink spell, but not a single one of his is. Imagine that. I asked him what the system he's using is,
whether it's high or low, odds or evens, what numbers he's using for his own attacks, etc. He says, "Highs -- I'm missed, -- lows I miss." I tell him that's a little confusing, and
ask to see his next roll. He rolls his eyes but agrees. The next attack against him hits, he rolls
immediately, picks it up before I can see, and tells me it's a miss. I remind him that I said to let me see his
roll, and he informs me, "You need to be quicker. Just get the next one." Now, I'm a pretty permissive DM, but when
crap like that happens, the gloves come off. I told him to re-roll it, and from now on
any concealment/displacement/BS miss chance rolls that I don't see, don't count. I informed the rest of the party about this;
they agreed, all except for Gunslinger. He argues that combat already takes long enough,
that he feels targeted, blah blah blah. I told him that the only other option is I
roll everyone's miss chance myself and he shuts up immediately. I have him re-roll the Blink chance. It comes up a 2, and he says, "See? The thing missed me." I looked at him, almost glaring, "Dude, what
did you say to me before? About how your system works?" He rolls his eyes, again, and says "Highs
I miss, lows I'm missed." I inform him that that is wrong, I confer
with the other players who confirm what they heard, that he literally just said the opposite
a few seconds ago. He immediately goes on the offensive, "You're
all ganging up on me! This isn't fair!" I told him that, from now on, any attack on
him that scores low, misses. Any attack he makes that checks low, also
misses. That we're going to be consistent and easy,
no more of this shifting goalposts BS. He argues for a second, but I move on. Sometimes, as a GM, you just have to put your
foot down and move on. Right near the end of the fight, someone shoots
an arrow at him and he throws his D10. It comes up 0 and he says, "Missed. Nice try." I say to him, "Dude, that hits. The hell is wrong with you." He looks at me with this kinda tired anger,
"You said lows miss, that's a zero, that's low, you idiot." "No, that's a D10. 0 on a D10 is a 10, as
in one more than 9, as in high. Are you messing with me right now?" He tries to appeal to the rest of the group
to back him up, but that just does not happen, though he is able to waste ten minutes of
my life arguing that 10 is less than 5… so, that's a thing. So at this point, I am super done with this. We just started and already I have cheating,
players challenging my calls, a dumbass attempt at gaslighting, and we're maybe two hours
in. I don't want to ban him for various out of
game reasons, but I need to do something about this. So, I decide to alter the adventure to make
things a bit more… interesting. Their adventure was to go and look into a
village that had to be abandoned due to, what they were told were, a bunch of ghosts. They talked to a few escaped villagers who
spoke of monsters appearing out of thin air and attacking them. They got a few pairs of goggles that would
let them see immaterial things from a local Witch. They then set off to look into it. They get in town and start poking around. They make some perception and checks to look
around, find some odd husks. One of them finds a locked bathroom with a
dead guy in it and no window someone could have attacked from. They look around with the goggles, see no
ghosts, and assume the spirits must come out at night. They rest until nightfall and follow after
some movement they see in the square. As they approach, something monstrous attacks
Fire Wizard. They all roll initiative, Gunslinger pops
his item, and then it all comes together. Originally, I was planning on playing the
adventure straight, just having a bunch of ghosts infesting a village that the PC's had
to clear out. I replaced those ghosts with spiders. Specifically a mating pair of Phase Spiders,
an ambush predator that weaves the smoky stuff of the ethereal plane into tangled nests and
a jaunt through the planes to attack their prey. Sort of like a trap-door spider, except instead
of springing out of an obscured hole in the ground, they pop out of thin air and are the
size of a horse. So the party is getting attacked by a couple
of these things shifting in and out of the Ethereal plane. Fire Wizard is hitting them with magic missile;
Two-Hand Fighter and Rogue are holding actions and landing strong attacks on the things when
they shift back in to attack; and Life Cleric is healing up anyone who gets ambushed. As for Gunslinger? Well, Gunslinger is dying. Remember how Blink works? It causes a target to bounce back and forth
between the Material and Ethereal plane. The Ethereal plane is where these things live,
and that's where their young are. The baby spiders are smaller, but still the
size of a large dog. Since he's the only one on the Ethereal plane,
he's the only one they can attack. By round 2, Gunslinger is being mobbed by
a horde of ravenous spiderlings and nobody can help him. He rips off the item that lets him Blink,
but I tell him the item lets him cast the spell, not that the item is the source of
the ongoing effect. He starts demanding that Fire Wizard or Life
Cleric cast Dispel Magic on him, but they're too busy fighting the mature spiders. They keep attacking him for the whole fight,
eight of these things constantly surrounding him, around 4 hitting every round on account
of the Blink spell still halting 50% of their attacks. I have a wonderful opportunity to describe
Gunslinger popping around the battlefield, gradually growing more and more haggard as
the smaller spiders are ripping him to pieces. One of them managed to crit him. It was latched onto his face when he shifted
back to the material plane. After a few rounds he dies and I have great
fun describing his flickering body gradually losing mass as the baby spiders start eating
him and I actually get compliments on how evocative I managed to make it. Gunslinger's player is pissed and sits there
fuming with rage for a good portion of the fight until he rather abruptly grabs his stuff
and leaves, taking Life Cleric with him because they rode together. I ask Life Cleric's player if I can control
his character for the rest of the fight, and Gunslinger's player answers, "No!" I get a text about ten minutes after they
leave from Life Cleric's player that tells me I can and the fight finishes out with the
players victorious. We finish the session with the remaining players
actually using Gunslinger's magic item on the entire party over a few rounds so they
can clear out the baby spiders and burn their nest. Everyone says it was a fun adventure and we
go home. Later that week I get a call from Gunslinger's
player and he demands that I retcon his death because he feels he was targeted unfairly. This is absolutely true of course, but I tell
him that I will do no such thing. He quits and the game is better for it. My favorite part about this story is that
the spiders hitting the village ended up being an interesting twist that I managed to foreshadow
effectively despite pulling it out from nowhere literally minutes before they encountered
it. This still gets talked about sometimes and
it was conceived entirely outll of punitive bitterness. Come on, don’t be that guy! Be honest with your DM and be honest with
yourself. If you be cheatin’ you gon’ get eaten. Please let us know what you think and comment
below! Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel,
All Things DnD. Our next video will be posted in 2 days, so
stay tuned for more amazing Dungeons & Dragons content!
