Dm makes a mine of doom where any action could mean instant evisceration
Hello everyone! So I wanted to post the next section of the campaign that went... so-so. This next section I call "The kobold mines of doom", because of the sheer absurdity of deadlyness. Dont mind my terrible grammer or spelling, Im dumb. TLDR at the end
After following the quest marker we had been given by the king, we found ourselves at an abandoned mine, a point of interest along the way of the main quest, though it turned out to be a mandatory stop along the way. We all kind of guessed it was a classic dungeon crawl, and we were all interested in exploring a bit. So, we lit our torches, and we entered.
Things went wrong almost immediately. The barbarian, who was leading the party, failed on his perception check, and had stepped on a single caltrop. We all kind of laughed that the barbarian stepped on a lego. Our eyes widened when we heard the dm rolling several dice, then scooped them up and rolled them again. "Barbarian, you take 16 points of damage". Pur jaws dropped and there was an audible "HOLY SH*T" from the party. Stepping on a nail dealt more damage than getting gutted by a claymore. Being level 1, the barbarian was downed instantly. We used 2 potions to get him back up, but from then on we were extremely careful, knowing that if the wrong party member stepped on another caltrop it could mean instant death. Had we known each individual caltrop did so much damage, we would have stocked up! And it wasnt even poisoned or anything, we checked!
Anyways, we started to see signs of life, hearing hushed whispers in the tunnels, and seeing make-shift camp supplies and mining equipment scattered throughout. We all entered a tunnel, rolling a perception check, and some of us passed, some failed. Turns out there was a band of kobolds standing 10 feet in front of us and we hadnt seen them, even with darkvision. They opened fire immediately. How we didn't see them when they were in an empty tunnel and not even hiding is a mystery. Luckily they missed most of their shots, and completely vanished. We asked if we could give chase, roll initiative, anything. The dm said "Nope, they are too small and too fast, they are gone". This was already kind of annoying, saying they were within arms reach and they can all just book it fast enough none of us can do anything. This repeated several times throughout the mine, and even with setting traps, readied actions, everything we could think of, the kobolds always shot first, then disappeared as a free action. In one instance the wizard had managed to sneak up on a group, and when within range said he was going to cast a spell, burning hands to hit the entire group. The dm said "okay, you try to cast burning hands, but they all turn around, shoot 4 times (3 misses) and then they run away, they are gone before your spell can leave your fingertips".
We even tried setting up a trap. There was a section of the tunnel that was perfect, a large room with multiple pillars and stones between them that made navigating it a bit confusing, and we had seen the kobolds run into a crack in the wall on the far end of the room. So, we made a plan. I used minor illusion to make it look like a large stone and a pillar were actually connected, like a cave wall and we all piled behind it. The other wizard used the same spell to make it sound like a kobold was calling for help, and we waited. The idea was to lure out the kobolds, and when they were in front of or past my illusion, we would jump them. This didnt work. "When the kobolds hear one of their own calling for help, one pokes its head out of the crack, looks in your direction, makes an 'eep!' Sound and retreats". We all wondered if it saw us or had seen through my illusion, but realized the dm never rolled or anything, so he explained. "No no, it didnt see you, but they've been living in this cave for almost 2 days now, so they know there was a supposed to be a tunnel where you were hiding. They've memorized this place right down to the last stone, so theres no way they would be fooled by something like this". So, we completely gave up on dealing with them and just let then shoot arrows at us whenever they wanted, sort of like an environmental hazard. They were so fast, we were told their base walking speed was more than double our running speed. These little lizard bastards were fast enough to trigger a quicksilver "sweet dreams" scene whenever they saw us. They were so aware of their surroundings they were near omnipresent. They had memorized this cave that even disturbing a single grain of sand was enough to alert them to intruders. So, we just lost interest in dealing with them. Funny enough we even contemplated convincing the king to take the kobolds and free us. If he could convince them to work for him (or even just enslave them like he did us), they could find the prince in a few days, since they were so fast they could move over 500 feet as a free action. But the DM shut this down too.
Eventually, we were told to make a perception check, which I passed! I was expecting what would have been the 4th or 5th pelting of arrows by kobolds, but instead we had stumbled across some ore in the tunnel walls! We excitedly tried to get it out, the DM describing veins of gold and silver we could see shining in the torch light. The Barbarian excitedly ran to the wall, using his muscles and fists to knock free the loose ore. He rolled... low. "You try to knock free the ore, but accidentally break your arm and take 18 points of damage". So this is more of a personal dm tip, remember that flavor is free. If the barbarian had said "I want to pry it loose with strength" there wouldnt be any punishment, at least not one this severe. So, for that same strength check, there shouldnt be a penalty for him wanting to describe it as "I hulk smash the wall", but thats personally just my own tastes. And if you DO want to have consequences, they shouldnt be to this degree. If he really wanted to deal damage, 1 or 2 would have been plenty. Or breaking the wall down and burying the ore, anything. But the barbarian effectively Evel Knievel'd himself for failing a basic strength check. Luckily we had 1 more potion, so we used it to get him back on his feet. From there we asked about tools, but they were too rusted to were missing handles. He wouldnt allow other strength checks wither. So I got an idea, and asked if I could use chromatic orb to knock the ore free from the wall, which the DM allowed. He told me to roll, and I ended up hitting. I dealt enough damage to knock it free, the dm telling is there was a large pocket of even more ore underneath the rubble I had knocked loose!
We were all pretty excited, so I asked if I could use my last spell slot to try to get the rest free. He allowed it, but then I was hit with some FUCKERY. After I rolled for damage, the DM rolled what must have been at least 10 dice, counting up damage. "Okay, since youre in a cave, the sound is amplified, so you take 15 thunder damage". I paused. That was almost enough to kill me outright, since my character only had 8 HP. "Wait, seriously? Why do I take 12? That would down me instantly, and I was like 20 feet away". He tried to explain, "well yeah but you're in a cave, so sound is going to travel easier. It makes sense if you think about it. Oh, and hold on..." he counted the remaining dice. "Okay, so at the same time, you also take another 18 damage as shrapnel blasts back". Okay, I was sick of this. "Dude, thats not even fair! That would instantly kill me, and why didnt it do that the first time?" I asked. "Because, the first time it just loosened the rubble, so it makes sense that it would cause some recoil if you did it again. Oh, was anyone else there? Anyone in a 60 foot cone is gonna take this damage too". He looked at the party, who all quickly said they were behind the corner. "Dude, why does it do so much damage from recoil? Thats basically me casting a level 1 spell and being punished by having a level 3 spell explode in my face, stronger in fact since its 10d6 in a 60 foot cone. If I used it on an enemy, would it do the same thing?" "No, thats just because I think the spell is really strong so I need to balance it out". Ive never heard someone call chromatic orb overpowered, but whatever. "Okay, but NO WHERE in the spell does it mention doing recoil damage at all, let alone THIS much! If you had a problem with the spell, or i knew this would be a side effect of casting it, i wouldn't have taken it". He looked at me, maybe a bit smug and said "yeah, well it also doesn't mention anything about being able to be used for mining. So I'll let you take back the action, but if you try that again, you're taking the damage. So, we decided to just leave this huge vein of gold in the wall, knowing whatever we tried would end in a catastrophic death.
From here, the entire party was pretty sick of this. We all just decided to leave the mine and forget about whatever else the dm had planned. Whatever was down here, it wasnt worth it, and we were all pretty vocal about it, which is definitely petty on our part, but we had all been sick of this for a while now. On the way out we started joking with comments like "C'mon guys, lets just go. This place is clearly cursed or something. If we fail a "drink a glass of water check", our intestines will explode out of our kneecaps or something". Once the DM realized we were serious about leaving, a random kobold ran up to us and said "Hey! You guys were looking for the prince right? If you help us, we can show you where he went, its on the way!". We had ZERO idea why this kobold wanted to help us, why he knew who we were, or why he only approached us once we wanted to leave and we had already been attacked by his tribe multiple times. Clearly the DM didnt want us to leave the mine yet, and we knew better than to "disobey". We just wanted this to be over, so we just went with it, killed a monster and left the mine. That was literally it, after all that frustration and what felt like DM vs player, it ended with the DM basically giving us the "solution" for free via a random kobold. Honestly this whole thing was so exhausting, everything we tried to do was undermined by devastating consequences until the DM decided we had endured enough torture and had given our pound of flesh. This was probably the worse session of the entire game, the last one was a TPK, which I was actually glad about. I might write about it if anyone is curious. I definitely want to talk about why the dm was like this though, and what a game of DCC was like with this guy as the DM. If you made it this far, thanks for reading <3
TLDR: We entered a mine, the barbarian almost exploded when he stepped on a lego. He almost exploded again when he tried to punch free some ore in a wall. I almost exploded when I tried to use a level 1 spell to knock that same ore loose. Also quicksilver kobolds kept harassing us before vanishing in a "sweet dreams" montage then gave away the plot in a dm intervention when we tried to rage quit the dungeon.