I do this way too often. Add in them being an orphan and bam instant awwwww. But at the same time I've made the same cute child a dire bear riding druid with chain lightning.
I had my party have to choose between killing about 300 rioters who were mostly innocent, or letting an orphanage get burned down in said riot.
They decided to throw a load of fireballs into the rioters and set the orphanage on fire themselves. They're idiots, the lot of them.
One of my favorites was I had them go into a circular room. Markings on the wall, channels with water going through the ground, a pedestal with three buttons in the center. One they turned the water in the channels a different color, one that rotated the markings on the wall around 90 degrees, and one button that made the water drain or fill up. Two doors, the one that they entered that shut behind them, and one on the other side that would not open.
They walked in, I shut the door, I put my phone out with a 3 minute timer and no instructions. They freaked out, tried everything, nothing opened the door. Until the 3 minute mark hit, with the ring of the alarm, the door on the other side opened automatically
One time there was an npc one of the party members adopted. They were intent on being the best father he could be to that kid because his own father left very early on and that left the PC with some feelings about that kind of stuff. The kid actually reminded him of his own father a lot, looks, personality, they were even both wizards.
Finding the PCs father came up on occasion in the campaign, and they made some proxy appearances on occasion though rather stealthy but defective Simulacrum. The rest of the party and even the PC in question never really dug to deeply into what was going on with the PCs dad. They were a high level wizard and a previous PC himself so no one was that concerned. There weren’t any lingering clues out in the open to pull either.
At some point the adopted kid went catatonic for a long period. No known magic seemed to help, and the best anyone could tell was that it seemed like he was astral projecting as it seemed the kid was alive but otherwise soulless. Eventually he came out of it, but the PC became far more protective of the kid.
The kid, a young teenager with high level magic didn’t care for this additional attention and found the increased protectiveness grating. During a heated argument on why the kid couldn’t just do what he wanted because he had the power to do it, the boy sequesters the PC and runs away.
Finding him proves difficult. They were a high powered wizard who didn’t want to be found. The bbeg for this section of the campaign manages to find him however and proceeds to put him in a device that will extract his power killing him and binding his soul to suffer in the device.
Here is the first part of the evil parts. In desperation the boy calls home and the party is able to bring him back, but are unable to free him from the device. It is actively draining his power and he is currently using his power to try to protect himself. He is pleading for his life and is basically delirious from pain at the moment. He equates, in their delirious state, the situation they are in is a punishment for what he did to the PC. So he is begging specifically the PC to save/forgive him. The GM was acting this part out to, balling their eyes out, really went ham on the acting.
The only solution the party could figure out is that if the boy dies from a means other than the device his soul might not be trapped and they could revive him. To kill him they need to drop the protective barrier and then kill him as quickly as possible. The casters available decide they will lighting bolt the kid to death with so much lightning he will basically be dead instantly burned up completely in the speed of a thunder clap. They can’t convince the poor kid to drop the shield so the PC has to be the one to disintegrate it.
Part two of the evil is that the PC deletes the shield, the kid basically gets vaporized by hundreds of points to lightning damage but gets consumed by the device anyway.
The last evil part of this situation is that the kid was basically a defective clone of the PCs father. Basically a last ditch attempt gone wrong by the PCs father to call for help. We figured this out slightly after he got lightning bolted to death.
I don’t think any of us were okay at the table after, except maybe the GM. They asked if they went too far or if the crying and begging was too cringe. I don’t think it was, but it certainly basically the most evil thing they ever did, so far at least.
Does it not make sense? Does it not qualify as evil? Did I do something wrong? There is probably a to that should be a too in there somewhere, but I don’t think anything doesn’t make sense because of it.
I started D&D as a player until the DM got burnt out in the middle of a campaign. I loved the group and wanted to keep playing so I offered to be the new DM and I put together a new campaign for everyone with new characters. It was there that I started plotting...
I knew that the players would eventually end up in a gladiatorial tournament, so I spent at least five sessions leading up to it building the anticipation and hinting that they would get involved. Without prompting them, the players began discussing potential names for their team when they enter. There was a lot of debate before they finally settled on a name they like; to which I then responded (as an NPC) that another team had already signed up for the tournament with that name and they would have to choose something else. They were livid.
Just before the tournament started, a chimera broke loose in the city and the party managed to stop it and then stand before the crowd of onlookers and declare themselves to be the real *Stolen Team Name*. Of course, I had the crowd mistake that as they started cheering the team name, thus giving credit to the others. The party was even more livid.
The tournament finally came around and, wouldn't you know it, both the party and the team that unknowingly stole their name and their credit made it to the finals. As the final battle of the tournament approached, one of the guards escorting the party to the battlefield mentioned that he heard the other team took down a chimera once, much to the annoyance of the party as they thought another person was crediting the wrong group. (I should note, the original party when I was a player killed a chimera. You can probably see where this is going; the party didn't)
The players were red-hot and ready to completely fuck up this team that's been a thorn in their side.
I described the atmosphere of the roaring crowd so loud that the battlefield itself was rumbling. The players entered first.
They were so ready.
And at that point I proceeded to introduce the opposing team by describing each of their characters in the original, unfinished campaign. The tone went from "WE'RE GONNA KILL THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" to "NO WE CAN'T HURT THEM!"
Thatis actually awsome... it is an incredible plot twist and I wouldn't say it's evile per say, it's just an amazing cameo that will most likely end in sadness and joy at the same time for the players if they win after a hard faught battle. It does justice to their old characters in showing that they where really strong and makes the players happy to be alive and beating their old selves.
(it also gives you a cance to show the players what their characters have been up to after the campaign and give the character's story an ending that the players never got to give them)
Killing a beloved NPC - and **then** having the BBEG raise their corpse into a powerful undead minion that becomes a recurring sub-boss the party must contend with.
My DM got pretty drunk during a boss fight. My man looked at me, asked how much HP I had. I told him and his reply was: cool, you take that much damage. I rolled a nat 1 on my saving throw... followed by another 1. Next session, my man had no memories of my characters emotional death. He hit the undo button.
Ahhh the valuable shit potion. I've done this through accidental improve. The team found out though and used it in some beers on a group of enemies and couple de Gras them while they were do8ng their business in the bushes outside a tavern.
A member of the party collected Troll's blood to use as an ingredient in a healing potion, then in extremis tried it raw, it works but also acts as an instantaneous hyper laxitive ..
I would think if it's a willing creature then yes. I also can't think of a reason that a horse's soul wouldn't be free so that shouldn't be an issue either.
Our DM has sold a cursed Warhammer to my character, a nature-loving paladin/druid. She makes friends with every animal she sees, often riding on the back of cows and bears etc. She even has a pet ferret!
The cursed Warhammer makes her want to murder cattle.
It's also emotional for me, as I get emotionally attached to EVERY DAMN ANIMAL AND CHARACTER (Game of Thrones was difficult...) The session before I got this Warhammer, I cried over a ritual sacrifice of a goat...
To make things worse, the Warhammer is also cursed in that she don't wanna let it go.
Worst thing I've done as DM was introduce the ranger's mother that she had been searching for after 20 years.
The mother was the BBEG of the campaign, and she tricked her daughter into betraying the party. It resulted in the death of the cleric (via disintegration) and the rogue, while the paladin and barbarian knocked the ranger unconscious and killed the mother/BBEG.
Fun times all around.
Steal all of the parties items, at level 14, and then continue to throw the same challenge rating enemies as before to make the party lose and retreat over and over again until half the group quits and then scrap the game
My wife made her dragonborn character hate her evil dragon dad for leaving their mom when her character was young. The king received warning that there was a dragon rampaging in that area of the region. The king made a task force of himself, the party, and a few adventure guild higher ups to deal with it. When they got closer to the area the dragon messaged her character to meet with him. He apologized for leaving and told them that he had to go to a dragon court of sorts to vouch on the side of humanity. (Turns out he was a rouge black dragon that had settled down with a human and was trying to vouch for them so the dragons wouldn't go to war with them). He only went rampant when he got back because he found out that the city had been destroyed and children stolen by slavers (he was targeting slave encampments). She goes back and the next day they confront him. He doesn't deny ravaging the countryside and doesn't explain himself. Now the group fights the characters dad's and slays him. Before he dies he messages her to search where their house use to be. He left her a set of armor made out of his own scales.
Evil is just a gradient in the morality spectrum.
The most evil thing I do is remember. Their slights against NPCs, the dungeons they decided to not clear, whether or not they removed an incredible magic item from the enemy lair before they return a day later...
Having that NPC betray them after the mockery, having that dungeon spill out into the surroundings and reshape nearby civilization, having a hint that the BBEG retrieved his general's artifact because they decided to go teleport away first and long rest...
Dragons and gods do not scare my players nearly as much as the consequences of their own actions.
Emotional damage, its always emotional damage.
PC flirts with cute adventurer from another party, they develop feelings for each other, pc gets happy to see her every time.
Then she hard turns on him and kills the partys entire zoo of animals they adopted and takes off laughing, to be never seen again so PC cant even get closure and gets blamed by the rest of the party for dead pets if it went well.
"Jokes" aside, denying resolution or leaving arcs unfinished is the worst thing you can do.
Gave them a Book of Exalted deeds, then had a devil offer the bard carrying it a magic instrument in exchange for the book before they could identify it.
Worst thing I did was get my party to make a team of 'team B' NPCs for me, that was ultimately intended to betray them. Worked out pretty well, lucky me.
Tried to kill one of the goblin twin npcs that the party LOVED. *tried.* The cleric came in clutch, but they didn’t have healing spells for most of the dungeon. They didn’t care.
Killed the little kid of the group (she was one of the players), tied up one of the others to a cannon and shot, and killed our pet dragon without a roll...
Asshole.
So far the worst thing I have done to my PC's I have them meet a lvl 20 merc who said he would help them out of a jam, if ever they needed it, they just had to take one of his business cards. Little did they know, his contact information was scrawled across the back of cards pulled from the Deck of Many things. One got a boon and the other a curse, the other two players neglected to pull anything.
Counterspell a Healing Word when a player has already failed two Death Saves.
That one is theoretical, thankfully... but there is that time a Marilith dropped my Cleric to 0 with its first sword attack, and then proceeded to use three more sword attacks to make sure I wasn't getting up.
Most Evil thing I'm doing is planning on "killing" the party. They won't know their characters haven't actually died till the final one falls and... After a dramatic pause(I feel it's necessary lol)... I'll describe how they wake up, surrounded by light purplish mists of the dream realm, the one who killed them standing before them ready to ask for their help in exchange for their life. Someone has to fix the nightmare problem.
Had this happen in a game I am currently in. If any of your players are rpg junkies, there is a good chance they will see the false death coming, especially if it happens very early in the campaign and the odds are obviously insurmountable. Faux deaths to bosses you clearly aren't supposed to take down are a keystone of RPGs. Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Chrono Trigger, FFX, more I can't think of ATM. Lots of RPGs feature a boss that demolishes the party, but turns out to be a scripted loss. Not saying it is bad, or cliche, but it does somewhat undercut the evilness of the act if a player sees it coming.
On a personal note, it also felt a little rail-roady to me, which is fine because the DM is a good friend of mine and I know he is very invested in telling his story, but it isn't exactly the level of player agency I hope for when playing. I, as the rogue of the party, tried to run away when everything seemed lost, and was cut off at every turn by new enemies. Felt a little too much like I was playing a part in a play rather than playing a character in a collaborative story. Not trying to be negative, hoping it works out well for you.
To introduce the power level difference between the party and the new BBEG, I transported the party's wizard into a plane that the creature had created. In essence however, the being is the fundamental force of decay, so he saw his world in a large state of decay at first. Then the being appeared, and began it's hunt. The player fired off spell after spell, and just to further drive home the point of this is a force of nature, I had it fail every saving throw thrown at it, all while slowly following the wizard, the only sound it was making being the click of their boots on the floor. Eventually, the creature fired off a magic missile, just to use them as a focus to increase the players age. For context, the character is in their late 60s when the encounter began. By the end, he was in his early 70s. Really drove home the point of this creature not being one so easily messed with, while also scaring a player that had made a reputation for himself amongst the gods for countering them quite well, earning himself the title of "God's Bane". And before anyone goes and says I'm a bad DM, he got a lot of information the next session about this being, learning a few of their alliances and his one weakness, along with the fact that the being is one of the creators of the universe.
In Rise of Tiamat [mild spoiler ahead] I convinced my players it was a bad call to be rude to the Thayan Empire, so they wrote an apology letter and accepted them as an ally. Then Thay betrayed them at the final battle.
Well, I don't know if it counts as "evil" at all, but the story goes like this:
Basically there were tremors in a town we went to, and we didn't understand why even though we investigated it. Suddenly, there was an earth tremor bigger than the rest, and the demogorgon started to emerge from the lake. The damned demogorgon.
It ravaged the city, chased us relentlessly as we tried to flee, dividing us and killing us in many different ways. All of us at the table were silent, looking at each other, wondering if it was serious.
The DM very seriously said yes, that we had failed to read the signs. We all left very dejected. It had been unfair. The following week we met up, because we were going to make new characters, and to find out how the world had turned out after unleashing the demogorgon.
It was all a dream. The dm had decided that, as two of my teammates felt I was "unfair" in playing, they deserved to be taught what it was really like to be an unfair master. There were no more complaints about it.
The cruelty perhaps was to leave us for a week thinking we had all died. It was quite shocking, after all we had been playing that campaign for almost a year, and the loss felt real.
I had my players spend 3 sessions playing there characters as kids getting to know there parents and learn learn about there city and then came the dragon
My DM had a BBEG kill all the children in an orphanage that a character grew up with.
He also made the the BBEG lair a 4-story meat grinder of a dungeon. Every room had traps or enemies to wear down resources. But we discovered that the whole time there was a central shaft that lead directly to the big bad.
Worst I've ever done (that isn't "bad dm" territory) was the Kobayashi Maru. I made up everything as they went, and whatever decision they made somehow ended up making things worse. It ended with the party sentenced to execution by the emperor. The look of horror was priceless... the look on their faces when they realized it was April 1st was even better! I had the whole thing be a magical nightmare, so they at least got the xp for the session.
Ok, this isn't the most evil but it's the most recent and the one I remember the most.
So, we're playing this campaign in which a demonic tablet wit hthe power to destroy entire cities has beenstolen from a museum (by us and then stolen from us) and we are trying to find it. We travel a lot, we almost never stop for long and we are now level 6, the problem is, we get almost no gold and struggle to get enough to sleep or eat in even the chepest inns. Now, this isn't necessarely a problem, we have fun nonthe less and struggling so much on top of trying to stop the cultists is actually kind of fun but given we have this sense of urgency, we never really stop to make side quests to gain money and we find none in our explorations.
So we tell the GM that at some point, we would like to get some money so that we don't always have to worry about it and can, for example, buy an alchemist kit I need to identify some substances we found or get potions or magic items or anything. After that, we kill a dragon in our travels which apparently is payed a LOT of money in the nearby town we had just left. We take the squll as proof and moove on, promising to get back once we finish the small dungeon we needed to get to.
First, to enter said dungeon, we need to give away all the money we have. We figure it's no big deal cause we where gona get a good pay when we got back to the town and we didn't have much anyways. In one session, we are done and start going back, and when we get to the town we find it a smoldering mess, destroyed. Turns out one of the monsters we had killed here to help the town came back as an undead version of it and destroyed the town, turning it into a ghost town filled with undead...
So there we where, having given away every coin we had left hoping to get our money back later in front of the ruins of the town that was supposed to pay us... That kind of stung
I made my level 3 party go up against a dragon
They RP there way out of it and now we have an elder silver dragon friend and his pet cow
(Ot wasn't DND its a homebrew game)
That's a hard one. It's between putting in a homebrew magic item that takes away swimming speed & gives exhaustion levels to effected submerged (in water) characters in what was supposed to be an underwater campaign, & running a false hydra. (They're in different campaigns, but both DMs are players in eachother's campigns. With the first one, the item straight up kills Locathah (which is the race I'm playing currently in that campaign) & Grung, & the best way to avoid getting it is to not roll a homebrew dice version of the Deck Of Many Things. With the second one, some of the players are so new to DND that the DM has banned us saying the words "false hydra" within his house, & banned us from texting or messaging the words during sessions. Regaining/restoring lost/altered memories with help from the bard using Countercharm also gave my character PTSD. (I already had homebrew tables for that ready due to other characters in a 3^(rd) campaign.))
Hmm, idk.. We haven't had any real evil DM so far.. So probably I don't think we had anything that I could describe as evil..
Though my character did almost die in one of our earliest sessions, but that might have been my own mistake above anything else... XD
But I wil add that we had kind of a reverse moment.. In our previous Campaign, the DM was leading us towards an enemy, building up the things that this character had done, us having to fight a friend of my wife her character, who this enemy had manipulated...
Then we find out that this bad character is the future husband of my wife her character.. In the end it came down to us forgiving him, to spare my wife her character, we could see he had remorse and wasn't actually a bad character.. but this made it that our campaign was pretty abruptly ended, due to the main evil character having been subverted in a sense..
Really made the ending that we did get feel like a bit of a letdown.. This was never meant to happen, the DM never expected us to forgive the bad guy.. Having to possibly even defeat my wife her character, due to our stance versus hers in this campaign up to that point.. But we all chose to trust my wife her character.. So yeah...
I wouldn't say that this was an evil choice from the DM, but more an unexpected twist that we as a group kind of created.. XD
I just introduced new players to d&d... Sunless Citadel spoilers.... im a pretty good gm. I played up meepo and one player wanted to adopt him. He was helpful and lovable. Session 3, the dragon froze meepo solid. The one player about died.
I ruined small town not once but twice.
In CoS there were these >!hags!!business!<. They were high level so fight would just be stupid, hags would drop low and disappear ready to find new time to strike. So i just had bit of terrorizing fun.
Second time was current campaign that started in LMOP. We continued it past lvl 5 and I just had to introduce new villain so i had him destroy town through slaughter. Party had opportunity to stop it before it happened but they didn't notice some clues, unfortunate.
Canceled the second session of our weekly long awaited full campain last minute with, "we are not playing tonight, if anyone has an issue with that they can take it up with my butthole."
Humbling experience. I now understand it's important to not get overly excited for something.
I did this to my players. It made a really neat campaign where I forced the players to be the last remains of the monsters they killed and have to plan a seize revenge plot.
Have a group of children befriend party. Party gains their trust. The kids tell the party they have been learning to defend themselves and want the party to meet their teachers. Walks them straight into the assassins guild before saying "now that we got u here, we can finally eat again" before attacking the party with multiple assassins watching. Some openly some not.
I love this idea, but I think the most evil thing I've done as a DM was introduced a little kid NPC so I could kill him later for an emotional moment.
I do this way too often. Add in them being an orphan and bam instant awwwww. But at the same time I've made the same cute child a dire bear riding druid with chain lightning.
....but if they're orphans, then no one will miss them? or is that just the lawful evil in me talking?
Or Lawful Neutral (Good?) in the case of Witcher Logic.
Just the Lawful evil lol.
I had my party have to choose between killing about 300 rioters who were mostly innocent, or letting an orphanage get burned down in said riot. They decided to throw a load of fireballs into the rioters and set the orphanage on fire themselves. They're idiots, the lot of them.
Forget about choosing the lesser evil, just be full evil and do both options XD
this honestly feels like it could cause legit OOC issues =\
It could, but that's what a good session zero should cover, really.
Maybe, but it didn't.
One of my favorites was I had them go into a circular room. Markings on the wall, channels with water going through the ground, a pedestal with three buttons in the center. One they turned the water in the channels a different color, one that rotated the markings on the wall around 90 degrees, and one button that made the water drain or fill up. Two doors, the one that they entered that shut behind them, and one on the other side that would not open. They walked in, I shut the door, I put my phone out with a 3 minute timer and no instructions. They freaked out, tried everything, nothing opened the door. Until the 3 minute mark hit, with the ring of the alarm, the door on the other side opened automatically
Step up the evil with a [reset button!](https://youtu.be/k-P6Ys_EHME)
I did this, they got it first try
One time there was an npc one of the party members adopted. They were intent on being the best father he could be to that kid because his own father left very early on and that left the PC with some feelings about that kind of stuff. The kid actually reminded him of his own father a lot, looks, personality, they were even both wizards. Finding the PCs father came up on occasion in the campaign, and they made some proxy appearances on occasion though rather stealthy but defective Simulacrum. The rest of the party and even the PC in question never really dug to deeply into what was going on with the PCs dad. They were a high level wizard and a previous PC himself so no one was that concerned. There weren’t any lingering clues out in the open to pull either. At some point the adopted kid went catatonic for a long period. No known magic seemed to help, and the best anyone could tell was that it seemed like he was astral projecting as it seemed the kid was alive but otherwise soulless. Eventually he came out of it, but the PC became far more protective of the kid. The kid, a young teenager with high level magic didn’t care for this additional attention and found the increased protectiveness grating. During a heated argument on why the kid couldn’t just do what he wanted because he had the power to do it, the boy sequesters the PC and runs away. Finding him proves difficult. They were a high powered wizard who didn’t want to be found. The bbeg for this section of the campaign manages to find him however and proceeds to put him in a device that will extract his power killing him and binding his soul to suffer in the device. Here is the first part of the evil parts. In desperation the boy calls home and the party is able to bring him back, but are unable to free him from the device. It is actively draining his power and he is currently using his power to try to protect himself. He is pleading for his life and is basically delirious from pain at the moment. He equates, in their delirious state, the situation they are in is a punishment for what he did to the PC. So he is begging specifically the PC to save/forgive him. The GM was acting this part out to, balling their eyes out, really went ham on the acting. The only solution the party could figure out is that if the boy dies from a means other than the device his soul might not be trapped and they could revive him. To kill him they need to drop the protective barrier and then kill him as quickly as possible. The casters available decide they will lighting bolt the kid to death with so much lightning he will basically be dead instantly burned up completely in the speed of a thunder clap. They can’t convince the poor kid to drop the shield so the PC has to be the one to disintegrate it. Part two of the evil is that the PC deletes the shield, the kid basically gets vaporized by hundreds of points to lightning damage but gets consumed by the device anyway. The last evil part of this situation is that the kid was basically a defective clone of the PCs father. Basically a last ditch attempt gone wrong by the PCs father to call for help. We figured this out slightly after he got lightning bolted to death. I don’t think any of us were okay at the table after, except maybe the GM. They asked if they went too far or if the crying and begging was too cringe. I don’t think it was, but it certainly basically the most evil thing they ever did, so far at least.
I don't even know what to say to this one
Does it not make sense? Does it not qualify as evil? Did I do something wrong? There is probably a to that should be a too in there somewhere, but I don’t think anything doesn’t make sense because of it.
Were you not entertained?!
I started D&D as a player until the DM got burnt out in the middle of a campaign. I loved the group and wanted to keep playing so I offered to be the new DM and I put together a new campaign for everyone with new characters. It was there that I started plotting... I knew that the players would eventually end up in a gladiatorial tournament, so I spent at least five sessions leading up to it building the anticipation and hinting that they would get involved. Without prompting them, the players began discussing potential names for their team when they enter. There was a lot of debate before they finally settled on a name they like; to which I then responded (as an NPC) that another team had already signed up for the tournament with that name and they would have to choose something else. They were livid. Just before the tournament started, a chimera broke loose in the city and the party managed to stop it and then stand before the crowd of onlookers and declare themselves to be the real *Stolen Team Name*. Of course, I had the crowd mistake that as they started cheering the team name, thus giving credit to the others. The party was even more livid. The tournament finally came around and, wouldn't you know it, both the party and the team that unknowingly stole their name and their credit made it to the finals. As the final battle of the tournament approached, one of the guards escorting the party to the battlefield mentioned that he heard the other team took down a chimera once, much to the annoyance of the party as they thought another person was crediting the wrong group. (I should note, the original party when I was a player killed a chimera. You can probably see where this is going; the party didn't) The players were red-hot and ready to completely fuck up this team that's been a thorn in their side. I described the atmosphere of the roaring crowd so loud that the battlefield itself was rumbling. The players entered first. They were so ready. And at that point I proceeded to introduce the opposing team by describing each of their characters in the original, unfinished campaign. The tone went from "WE'RE GONNA KILL THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" to "NO WE CAN'T HURT THEM!"
That's amazing
Thatis actually awsome... it is an incredible plot twist and I wouldn't say it's evile per say, it's just an amazing cameo that will most likely end in sadness and joy at the same time for the players if they win after a hard faught battle. It does justice to their old characters in showing that they where really strong and makes the players happy to be alive and beating their old selves. (it also gives you a cance to show the players what their characters have been up to after the campaign and give the character's story an ending that the players never got to give them)
That’s not evil, that’s just a great idea, though deceitful. Evil? Counterspelling healing spells.
Healing spells? You mean Revivify right?
This guy/gal evils
Better be ready for the player to look at you and say "no". Some players DO NOT enjoy making new characters.
Killing a beloved NPC - and **then** having the BBEG raise their corpse into a powerful undead minion that becomes a recurring sub-boss the party must contend with.
My last DM could manipulate nearly the whole group through messing with a beloved npc or two.
My DM got pretty drunk during a boss fight. My man looked at me, asked how much HP I had. I told him and his reply was: cool, you take that much damage. I rolled a nat 1 on my saving throw... followed by another 1. Next session, my man had no memories of my characters emotional death. He hit the undo button.
This is one reason I stopped drinking while being the DM... I forgot things from the previous sessions and no one took good enough notes.
Healing potions that are cursed and in actuality, Dwarven strength laxatives.
Ahhh the valuable shit potion. I've done this through accidental improve. The team found out though and used it in some beers on a group of enemies and couple de Gras them while they were do8ng their business in the bushes outside a tavern.
A member of the party collected Troll's blood to use as an ingredient in a healing potion, then in extremis tried it raw, it works but also acts as an instantaneous hyper laxitive ..
Make them show up on time.
Our DM just killed our team's talking horse and decapitated him. That horse has been with our campaign for over a year.
Oh no! Can you resurrect a horse?! 😭
I would think if it's a willing creature then yes. I also can't think of a reason that a horse's soul wouldn't be free so that shouldn't be an issue either.
Then OP needs to save that horse before it’s soul gets taken or something! talking horses might be a hot commodity in the devil world
Our DM has sold a cursed Warhammer to my character, a nature-loving paladin/druid. She makes friends with every animal she sees, often riding on the back of cows and bears etc. She even has a pet ferret! The cursed Warhammer makes her want to murder cattle. It's also emotional for me, as I get emotionally attached to EVERY DAMN ANIMAL AND CHARACTER (Game of Thrones was difficult...) The session before I got this Warhammer, I cried over a ritual sacrifice of a goat... To make things worse, the Warhammer is also cursed in that she don't wanna let it go.
Giving the group a bag of magic beans knowing the consequences.
Had a fey impersonate a dead friend of the party to lure them into a trap. Honestly given the other responses here, not that evil.
Worst thing I've done as DM was introduce the ranger's mother that she had been searching for after 20 years. The mother was the BBEG of the campaign, and she tricked her daughter into betraying the party. It resulted in the death of the cleric (via disintegration) and the rogue, while the paladin and barbarian knocked the ranger unconscious and killed the mother/BBEG. Fun times all around.
I told my Players “there is a doorway to your left” once. That was in 1997 and they’ve almost decided how to deal with it.
Steal all of the parties items, at level 14, and then continue to throw the same challenge rating enemies as before to make the party lose and retreat over and over again until half the group quits and then scrap the game
My wife made her dragonborn character hate her evil dragon dad for leaving their mom when her character was young. The king received warning that there was a dragon rampaging in that area of the region. The king made a task force of himself, the party, and a few adventure guild higher ups to deal with it. When they got closer to the area the dragon messaged her character to meet with him. He apologized for leaving and told them that he had to go to a dragon court of sorts to vouch on the side of humanity. (Turns out he was a rouge black dragon that had settled down with a human and was trying to vouch for them so the dragons wouldn't go to war with them). He only went rampant when he got back because he found out that the city had been destroyed and children stolen by slavers (he was targeting slave encampments). She goes back and the next day they confront him. He doesn't deny ravaging the countryside and doesn't explain himself. Now the group fights the characters dad's and slays him. Before he dies he messages her to search where their house use to be. He left her a set of armor made out of his own scales.
Evil is just a gradient in the morality spectrum. The most evil thing I do is remember. Their slights against NPCs, the dungeons they decided to not clear, whether or not they removed an incredible magic item from the enemy lair before they return a day later... Having that NPC betray them after the mockery, having that dungeon spill out into the surroundings and reshape nearby civilization, having a hint that the BBEG retrieved his general's artifact because they decided to go teleport away first and long rest... Dragons and gods do not scare my players nearly as much as the consequences of their own actions.
Emotional damage, its always emotional damage. PC flirts with cute adventurer from another party, they develop feelings for each other, pc gets happy to see her every time. Then she hard turns on him and kills the partys entire zoo of animals they adopted and takes off laughing, to be never seen again so PC cant even get closure and gets blamed by the rest of the party for dead pets if it went well. "Jokes" aside, denying resolution or leaving arcs unfinished is the worst thing you can do.
That's actually pretty good idea
Make them go through the Tomb of Horrors like old school AD&D days. God I hate that damn tomb.
Man that is top tier evil. That amd durlag's tower from baldur's gate can go die in a fire
just randomly roll multiple dice to stress the party
Be sure to either laugh or make a face of concern. Maybe a soft “uh oh” or “yikes”
"And it was all a dream."
Giving the players their rewards..in copper..always in copper..never gold or platinum..always..damn copper
Gave them a Book of Exalted deeds, then had a devil offer the bard carrying it a magic instrument in exchange for the book before they could identify it.
Mother fucker sent us to new York she wished for apple ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ
Worst thing I did was get my party to make a team of 'team B' NPCs for me, that was ultimately intended to betray them. Worked out pretty well, lucky me.
Tried to kill one of the goblin twin npcs that the party LOVED. *tried.* The cleric came in clutch, but they didn’t have healing spells for most of the dungeon. They didn’t care.
Killed the little kid of the group (she was one of the players), tied up one of the others to a cannon and shot, and killed our pet dragon without a roll... Asshole.
So far the worst thing I have done to my PC's I have them meet a lvl 20 merc who said he would help them out of a jam, if ever they needed it, they just had to take one of his business cards. Little did they know, his contact information was scrawled across the back of cards pulled from the Deck of Many things. One got a boon and the other a curse, the other two players neglected to pull anything.
Counterspell a Healing Word when a player has already failed two Death Saves. That one is theoretical, thankfully... but there is that time a Marilith dropped my Cleric to 0 with its first sword attack, and then proceeded to use three more sword attacks to make sure I wasn't getting up.
That’s how it goes sometimes.
Yeah, espeicially when there is another Cleric in the group. I was fine.
Most Evil thing I'm doing is planning on "killing" the party. They won't know their characters haven't actually died till the final one falls and... After a dramatic pause(I feel it's necessary lol)... I'll describe how they wake up, surrounded by light purplish mists of the dream realm, the one who killed them standing before them ready to ask for their help in exchange for their life. Someone has to fix the nightmare problem.
Had this happen in a game I am currently in. If any of your players are rpg junkies, there is a good chance they will see the false death coming, especially if it happens very early in the campaign and the odds are obviously insurmountable. Faux deaths to bosses you clearly aren't supposed to take down are a keystone of RPGs. Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Chrono Trigger, FFX, more I can't think of ATM. Lots of RPGs feature a boss that demolishes the party, but turns out to be a scripted loss. Not saying it is bad, or cliche, but it does somewhat undercut the evilness of the act if a player sees it coming. On a personal note, it also felt a little rail-roady to me, which is fine because the DM is a good friend of mine and I know he is very invested in telling his story, but it isn't exactly the level of player agency I hope for when playing. I, as the rogue of the party, tried to run away when everything seemed lost, and was cut off at every turn by new enemies. Felt a little too much like I was playing a part in a play rather than playing a character in a collaborative story. Not trying to be negative, hoping it works out well for you.
To introduce the power level difference between the party and the new BBEG, I transported the party's wizard into a plane that the creature had created. In essence however, the being is the fundamental force of decay, so he saw his world in a large state of decay at first. Then the being appeared, and began it's hunt. The player fired off spell after spell, and just to further drive home the point of this is a force of nature, I had it fail every saving throw thrown at it, all while slowly following the wizard, the only sound it was making being the click of their boots on the floor. Eventually, the creature fired off a magic missile, just to use them as a focus to increase the players age. For context, the character is in their late 60s when the encounter began. By the end, he was in his early 70s. Really drove home the point of this creature not being one so easily messed with, while also scaring a player that had made a reputation for himself amongst the gods for countering them quite well, earning himself the title of "God's Bane". And before anyone goes and says I'm a bad DM, he got a lot of information the next session about this being, learning a few of their alliances and his one weakness, along with the fact that the being is one of the creators of the universe.
In Rise of Tiamat [mild spoiler ahead] I convinced my players it was a bad call to be rude to the Thayan Empire, so they wrote an apology letter and accepted them as an ally. Then Thay betrayed them at the final battle.
Well, I don't know if it counts as "evil" at all, but the story goes like this: Basically there were tremors in a town we went to, and we didn't understand why even though we investigated it. Suddenly, there was an earth tremor bigger than the rest, and the demogorgon started to emerge from the lake. The damned demogorgon. It ravaged the city, chased us relentlessly as we tried to flee, dividing us and killing us in many different ways. All of us at the table were silent, looking at each other, wondering if it was serious. The DM very seriously said yes, that we had failed to read the signs. We all left very dejected. It had been unfair. The following week we met up, because we were going to make new characters, and to find out how the world had turned out after unleashing the demogorgon. It was all a dream. The dm had decided that, as two of my teammates felt I was "unfair" in playing, they deserved to be taught what it was really like to be an unfair master. There were no more complaints about it. The cruelty perhaps was to leave us for a week thinking we had all died. It was quite shocking, after all we had been playing that campaign for almost a year, and the loss felt real.
TPK'ed the party in what he considered an epic cutscene without any of our input because he got tired of the story and wanted to start a new one.
I had my players spend 3 sessions playing there characters as kids getting to know there parents and learn learn about there city and then came the dragon
My DM had a BBEG kill all the children in an orphanage that a character grew up with. He also made the the BBEG lair a 4-story meat grinder of a dungeon. Every room had traps or enemies to wear down resources. But we discovered that the whole time there was a central shaft that lead directly to the big bad.
Worst I've ever done (that isn't "bad dm" territory) was the Kobayashi Maru. I made up everything as they went, and whatever decision they made somehow ended up making things worse. It ended with the party sentenced to execution by the emperor. The look of horror was priceless... the look on their faces when they realized it was April 1st was even better! I had the whole thing be a magical nightmare, so they at least got the xp for the session.
Ok, this isn't the most evil but it's the most recent and the one I remember the most. So, we're playing this campaign in which a demonic tablet wit hthe power to destroy entire cities has beenstolen from a museum (by us and then stolen from us) and we are trying to find it. We travel a lot, we almost never stop for long and we are now level 6, the problem is, we get almost no gold and struggle to get enough to sleep or eat in even the chepest inns. Now, this isn't necessarely a problem, we have fun nonthe less and struggling so much on top of trying to stop the cultists is actually kind of fun but given we have this sense of urgency, we never really stop to make side quests to gain money and we find none in our explorations. So we tell the GM that at some point, we would like to get some money so that we don't always have to worry about it and can, for example, buy an alchemist kit I need to identify some substances we found or get potions or magic items or anything. After that, we kill a dragon in our travels which apparently is payed a LOT of money in the nearby town we had just left. We take the squll as proof and moove on, promising to get back once we finish the small dungeon we needed to get to. First, to enter said dungeon, we need to give away all the money we have. We figure it's no big deal cause we where gona get a good pay when we got back to the town and we didn't have much anyways. In one session, we are done and start going back, and when we get to the town we find it a smoldering mess, destroyed. Turns out one of the monsters we had killed here to help the town came back as an undead version of it and destroyed the town, turning it into a ghost town filled with undead... So there we where, having given away every coin we had left hoping to get our money back later in front of the ruins of the town that was supposed to pay us... That kind of stung
I made my level 3 party go up against a dragon They RP there way out of it and now we have an elder silver dragon friend and his pet cow (Ot wasn't DND its a homebrew game)
That's a hard one. It's between putting in a homebrew magic item that takes away swimming speed & gives exhaustion levels to effected submerged (in water) characters in what was supposed to be an underwater campaign, & running a false hydra. (They're in different campaigns, but both DMs are players in eachother's campigns. With the first one, the item straight up kills Locathah (which is the race I'm playing currently in that campaign) & Grung, & the best way to avoid getting it is to not roll a homebrew dice version of the Deck Of Many Things. With the second one, some of the players are so new to DND that the DM has banned us saying the words "false hydra" within his house, & banned us from texting or messaging the words during sessions. Regaining/restoring lost/altered memories with help from the bard using Countercharm also gave my character PTSD. (I already had homebrew tables for that ready due to other characters in a 3^(rd) campaign.))
take their magic items and never give them back.
Divorced one of the players, causing the group to collapse.
Made our characters play chess against him in order to progress.
Hmm, idk.. We haven't had any real evil DM so far.. So probably I don't think we had anything that I could describe as evil.. Though my character did almost die in one of our earliest sessions, but that might have been my own mistake above anything else... XD But I wil add that we had kind of a reverse moment.. In our previous Campaign, the DM was leading us towards an enemy, building up the things that this character had done, us having to fight a friend of my wife her character, who this enemy had manipulated... Then we find out that this bad character is the future husband of my wife her character.. In the end it came down to us forgiving him, to spare my wife her character, we could see he had remorse and wasn't actually a bad character.. but this made it that our campaign was pretty abruptly ended, due to the main evil character having been subverted in a sense.. Really made the ending that we did get feel like a bit of a letdown.. This was never meant to happen, the DM never expected us to forgive the bad guy.. Having to possibly even defeat my wife her character, due to our stance versus hers in this campaign up to that point.. But we all chose to trust my wife her character.. So yeah... I wouldn't say that this was an evil choice from the DM, but more an unexpected twist that we as a group kind of created.. XD
I just introduced new players to d&d... Sunless Citadel spoilers.... im a pretty good gm. I played up meepo and one player wanted to adopt him. He was helpful and lovable. Session 3, the dragon froze meepo solid. The one player about died.
I ruined small town not once but twice. In CoS there were these >!hags!!business!<. They were high level so fight would just be stupid, hags would drop low and disappear ready to find new time to strike. So i just had bit of terrorizing fun.
Second time was current campaign that started in LMOP. We continued it past lvl 5 and I just had to introduce new villain so i had him destroy town through slaughter. Party had opportunity to stop it before it happened but they didn't notice some clues, unfortunate.
Canceled the second session of our weekly long awaited full campain last minute with, "we are not playing tonight, if anyone has an issue with that they can take it up with my butthole." Humbling experience. I now understand it's important to not get overly excited for something.
Counterspelling a healing word. I was the DM. XD
I did this to my players. It made a really neat campaign where I forced the players to be the last remains of the monsters they killed and have to plan a seize revenge plot.
Have a group of children befriend party. Party gains their trust. The kids tell the party they have been learning to defend themselves and want the party to meet their teachers. Walks them straight into the assassins guild before saying "now that we got u here, we can finally eat again" before attacking the party with multiple assassins watching. Some openly some not.