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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.
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