So, /tg/, I feel like telling the tale of how I derailed a friend's campaign. To start with, there were 5 players, including myself. We were all told to be arcane/divine spell casters because psionics are disgustingly broken half the time.
We end up getting the usual balance crap of a team, having a CE Pyromancer, a LE Warlock, a CN Sorceror, a TN Druid, and me, a CG Wizard.
To be continued shortly.
>>43768612 CONT.
So, our goals were separate but together in an academy of mages sort of setting. We were all told to focus on certain aspects and fields of magic, and were occasionally sent on missions. While the others took very boring and foreseeable options, I decided to be strange and somewhat creative and work on anti-magic research.
Nothing was too unexpected, I learned that anti-magic fields existed, that basically all spells can be dispelled when done correctly, and I learned a key amount of fluff from DM.
The difference between 'spells', 'curses' and 'hexes' were fairly closely knitted, but separated by a definition that would make a lawyer cringe.
Apparently, aside from costs, the difference between the three category was a minor mechanic of application.
-Spells were short lived, and mostly harmless single target spells.
-Curses, despite having a negative connotation, were multiple targets or contagious spells and nothing more. Like Mass X spell. Usually used for harm, sometimes good. Depends on intent and who you ask, yada yada.
-Hexes were malicious spells period. If it's kill, disruptive, destructive, doesn't matter. It's a hex. This leads to minorly blurred lines between curses and hexes, and generally leads to a bad rep.
>>43768706
>strange and somewhat creative and work on anti-magic research.
>>43768706 CONT.
>Begin "HMMMM..."-ing as any good player should
>Begin to start burring the lines with half-breed spells and applications with casting
>DM lets me get away with this shit
>Begin making ranged/AoE Mass Sanctuary spells that needed insanely high Will saves to negate
>This happens on missions for hilarity as we captured now harmless creatures
>Begin making more volatile spells
>Color Spray working on 10HD+ Creatures
>DM doesn't police me [Read, AT ALL], just sorta watches at my wonders and tinkering
>Begin selling recipes and stuff for resources
>With a patent, because the dangerous shit is expensive and out of normal academic resources
>Eventually get enough misc resources to get the more dangerous stuff from shady student who delved into pocket dimensions. Not even gonna go into that guy.
>Gives me creeps just thinking about him and his godforsaken backstory.
>Begin concocting plan for something that'll get me a military contract or better
>Tell the DM only the costs and that it's within reason
>Doesn't even question me, just says "As long as you document costs, buddy."
>Promise to do so whilst rubbing my hands and cackling
>>43768738 CONT.
>Decide to make a test that used all three spell types.
>It works successfully, made a short burst contagion spell that rapidly went through the school.
>Every student gets the Shakes, but everyone recovers well enough
>Doesn't get traced back to me for some reason
>Aight.png
>Begin moving onto bigger guns
>Actually involve my field as I make AoE Dispel Magic [Note; Not anti-magic fields]
>Start getting lucrative offers, as this is several months into the campaign and i'm by far the richest student on campus at this point
>Get military grade contract
>From 8 different warring countries
>They want a hex that dispels magic for a few hours. Nothing more, nothing less.
>Do so for all of them at once, get paid stupidly well
>Enough to get me a subplane of my own with a ring of Gate hotwired to it
>That's just one of the contract payments
>Literally swimming in mountains of loot
>Field test goes extraordinarily well on the battlefield over the next couple months
>Gets feedback from the countries
>Perfect, but one small problem;
>It only works on those casting spells when it's applied
>Just cumbersome enough to need an improvement
>New contracts roll in
>>43768821 CONT.
>Note that it's been literal years of study and spellcrafting for me
>Rest of the party is useless and plebian in comparison every since I got paid from original military contracts
>Try not to make it too much about me and my exploits in the arcane
>Tried helping party members rise to fortune
>They're just too dumb, man.
>In come the new military contracts one after another
>It's literally every country on the godforsaken planet
>They want the newest in anti-magic warfare
>Begin thinking, making the weapon to end magical warfare altogether
>Still might want to keep getting paid
>Throw permanency addition out for multiple reasons
>Decide to make it all three categories
>Spell based hex-curses of personal levels of anti-magic
>Realized it would have to last for a while
>Decide to add a parasitic feature
>Eats afflicted person's mana for extra duration and contagion factor
>Decide it's good enough, not even worth testing.
>I'm a world famous spellcrafter now, after all.
I once ended an entire campaign with a joke
I was playing a fighter with low int, and so I decided that he spoke with malapropisms (accidently saying words close to the word intended, like saying pepper instead of prepare).
The group had finally come to this bridge underground and at the other end was a door guarded by kobolds. Naturally they said to let them through immediately, to which they responded they could not, not while their master Gargarox was sleeping.
The party didn't like that naturally, and shoved them aside before slamming the door open. What they found inside however was no kobold chieftain or shaman but a dragon who was woken up from his nap in an untimely manner.
"Who dares wake the magnificent Gargarox," he bellowed eyes narrowing. "I'll destroy you, and for your insolence I will destroy the entire town above you."
I just popped into my head, I had to do it, the perfect malapropism. I had my fighter walk to the front of the group pounding his chest. "Stop right there, you'll never get away with this Gargle Cocks!!"
The campaign ended right there.
>>43768887 CONT.
>All goes well and the dough rolls in by the mountain.
>Feel like Scrooge McDuck as I don't share a fucking penny of it with my party
>Call it funding for future R&D
>Party shrugs it off, we continue campaign and missions
>What I do seems pretty tame compared to their overly destructive and rampant magic
>Apparently they did military contracts of their own
>Larger, more volatile and effective spells in their own categories
>What they got was a pebble in my bucket by comparison
>Don't say a word about it, let them have their ego while they could
>We continue this for months IRC
>News from the fronts start coming back to me saying essentially the same thing from each small country
>The spell I made was too potent, was affecting the battlefront in unexpected ways.
>No further details for months
>Begin to panic, wondering what the hell my moonshine of anti-magic was doing to all those countries
>IRC half a year passes, and then receive a notice that I got mail
>There's a goddamn mountain of it when i get back into my subplane.
>Begin sifting through the mail, give up, open random letter
>It's hate mail
>>43768937 CONT.
>Apparently, she blames me for what she called 'magical impotence'
>Apparently her boyfriend was a high ranking mage
>Suddenly can't cast magic, period
>Says he was on the front for a day and only shook hands with a guy
>Left hours later
>He's been impotent [magically] for two weeks
>Begin looking through letters
>It's the same wherever I look
>It's all the fucking same problem
>"Magical impotence" is apparently a cover-up term for mages suddenly not being able to do any magic at all
>Reports of it affecting citizens who were never near the battlefront.
>Lasting way too fucking long even if they were initial targets
>Realize it's affecting the entire globe
>>43768983 END
>Look over spell, try to figure out what went wrong
>Looks fine until I note what I did with the parasite function
>Begin doing research
>Apparently it's a microscopic parasite that feeds off of any magical resource and replicates itself to continue growing
>Medicine literally can't do a thing about it
>Put two and two together
>Realize I accidentally made a magical plague of anti-magic
>Literally unnoticeable and untraceable with modern science
>GM sets us all aside and tells us it's game over
>Party initially confused, asks why
>GM forces me to explain what I made and how well it got distributed
>Tell them exactly what I made
>GM continues, saying soldiers and diplomats went home
>Brought it to populace without any notice
>Explains that magic dies out almost entirely within a year because plague with no real symptoms
>Not even scrolls work
>People wonder what the hell was going on
>Only my character knows the full truth
>Doesn't tell anyone, just picks up a few harem chicks and goes to live out a life of ecstasy in loot-filled subplane
>It eventually reached the academy and all the other rare nooks and crannies of the world
>Now magic is effectively extinct across the globe
>I'm to blame for a now permanently magic-less world, since people still have mana from birth, fueling the parasites further
>Magic is forgotten about entirely within three generations
>Becomes rumor and myth within five
>Becomes a legend after seven, and is treated as a fantasy tale from then on.
>Life moves on in dumb fashion, armor, arrows and all that junk
>Technology now fuels the world
>Magical creatures and threats go extinct rapidly
>We parallel it to our world
>All the blame goes to my characterI'm the reason you can't have a fantasy filled life with dragons, magic and adventure IRL.
Wizards: No sense of right or wrong.
>GM with "anything goes" policy toward casters
>Oops, end of the world as we know it
I don't think it's an actual derailment. GM just added some complications to your became rich quick plan, like some passive aggressive jerk.
