The D&D 3.5 campaign I've been playing in has been one long stream of fuck-ups, so I guess I'll start from the beginning.
It's an "open-table" campaign, meaning that anyone who wants to can just show up and play, and we're not all expected to be there for every session. The game is held at a local game store, and usually has a large group of players, of which maybe half will only show up for a week or two before disappearing forever. Aside from my character, the most consistently present are:
The Barely-There Barbarian: A barbarian who dual-wields, because I guess he wants to waste feats in order to do less damage and hit less often than a two-handed weapon user. The player doesn't pay much attention and never says anything except to describe what his character is doing, in a voice barely above a whisper. Has been absent for weeks at a time without anyone really noticing.
The Ranger Who Isn't: An elf fighter, who focuses entirely on archery due to a low constitution and consistently poor HP rolls. So, he's like a ranger, but without any useful skills. Also, the DM likes to fuck with him by having his bowstring break every time he rolls a 1.
The Healbot: a cleric who doesn't do much except cast spontaneous
cure spells. Uses all his spell slots to prepare anti-caster spells like
Dispel Magic and
Silence, despite the fact that we've fought magic-using enemies exactly once.
The Useful Cleric: this guy's been playing D&D since before I was born, and is the only one beside myself who actually knows what he's doing.
The Useless Wizard: D&D wizards have the most versatile and useful spell set, able to turn the tide of battle with their buffs and control spells as well as having considerable out-of-combat utility. Unfortunately, this one only casts
Magic Missile,
Scorching Ray and
Fireball. Also, he's a Biodrone.
And then there's the DM.
The DM is an old grognard who never seems to be entirely sure what edition we're playing, and makes rules up as he goes along. I've never seen him reference the books, the SRD, or any sort of paperwork, as he claims to have the whole game memorized (he doesn't). He also doesn't let us buy magic items, because apparently D&D doesn't fuck noncasters enough to begin with. The magic items he does give us tend to either be completely useless, or situationally useful and likely to backfire.
Chapter I: House of Suck
I showed up after the campaign had been going for a few months, and was told to make a character whose level was the same as the lowest character currently in the campaign. So, level 4, even though other characters were mostly 6 and 7. I chose a Conjurer wizard.
In addition to the players mentioned above, there were four other players there:
The Rotund Rogues: a pair of large individuals who played rogues; one was a very whipped man, the other his bossy and unattractive wife or girlfriend.
The Kid: a high school kid, thin and sort of effeminate. Played a sorcerer who specialized in summoning dogs.
The Other Kid, the Kid's friend. Played a ranger. Extremely ADD, wandered off to play Magic halfway through the session.
Our adventure began with a senile old man, who was nonetheless in charge of the area, sending us off to find a magic item he called "Cassandra." He was unable to give us any details about the object. So we went off to town, the rogues used Gather Information, and we ended up learning that there was a wizard who had lived in a manor nearby, and he might know something about this Cassandra.
So, we set off to the wizard's manor. Outside of it, we were attacked by two "cambions", one from the north and one from the south. The one from the north resembled a fairy dragon for some reason. It used an ability that caused the male rogue to roll on the ground laughing, completely useless. The one from the south resembled a squid, and used
Evard's Black Tentacles, trapping the Kid's sorcerer. I cast
Glitterdust to blind the first cambion, and
Grease to trip the second. The DM made a very inappropriate remark about the greased tentacles and the Kid's character
and also made reference to a previous event, involving the female rogue and a greased stick.
The Useful Cleric cast
Dispel Magic on the male rogue, also hitting the Useless Wizard in the blast. The DM then announced that
Dispel Magic disenchanted potions and scrolls, destroying all of those carried by the Useless Wizard, including some seventh and eighth level spell scrolls that he had for some reason. Meanwhile, the Barbarian, Healbot and female rogue decided for some reason that it would be a good idea to split the party, running into the ruined manor and removing themselves from the fight.
After the rest of us had killed the cambions, the DM went off with the players whose characters had run into the house. Apparently the area inside was filled with magical darkness, where the characters were attacked by wisps for the five rounds it took for the cambions to be defeated. Wisps can only be hit by magic weapons, and none of us had any of those. When the rest of us entered the house, we were attacked by them too. It was shaping up to be a TPK, until the Useless Wizard activated the amulet he'd obtained on a previous adventure.
The amulet, apparently, was a single-use item that created an antimagic field in a 50-ft radius sphere. The DM ruled that this negated the darkness, killed the wisps (as they were inherently magical creatures), destroyed the magical traps and skeletons waiting for us upstairs - and destroyed the vast supply of scrolls and potions in the house. There was only one magic item left: a swan boat, with apparently programmed to take us to a specific destination. So, we piled into the boat and set off. Would we find honor and glory across the sea? Spoiler alert: no.