Video Game / Dungeons & Dragons Online

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Dungeons & Dragons Online (or DDO) is the MMORPG counterpart to the pen-and-paper game we all know and love (mostly based on edition 3.5). As such, it has all the dice-rolling, kobold-smacking goodness of Dungeons and Dragons, with all the button-mashing, leet-speaking addiction of an MMORPG.

It was launched by Turbine in 2006 as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. The game has since been renamed Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. (The latest update appears to have removed Eberron Unlimited from the logo, but is still referred to as such in reference materials and on the main website.) It is based in the campaign world of Eberron (yeah, the Magitek one) and is set on the fictional continent of Xen'drik. After years of being a pay-to-play game, it was rebranded as a free-to-play game with premium content that could be accessed by becoming a VIP (which is simply maintaining a paid subscription) or spending Turbine Points on it.

The player character is a migrant that survives a shipwreck in Korthos Island where they are thrust into a plot that involves an evil Devourer cult, Sahuagin, a dragon, and a lot of snow. After finishing the cult with the help of some adventurers, you are transported to the city of Stormreach which is having its own set of unrelated troubles with pirates, Giants, Cults of Old Gods, Ancient Evils and a coalition of monster races all trying to invade and conquer the city or even the whole world, and it's up to you and many other players to save the city and get some good loot out of it.

Unlike MMOs like World of Warcraft, DDO is not a sandbox MMORPG, with its gameplay revolving around the hub areas of Korthos Island and later Stormreach where players can accept quests that mostly revolve around completing short to large dungeons either solo (with a hired AI follower) or in co-op, or explore small sandbox areas that have their own quests to complete and landmarks to discover.

After years of fan requests, the fan-favorite setting of the Forgotten Realms was added to the game as a paid expansion (or VIP privilege) where players have to save the Kingdom of Cormyr from a Drow conspiracy, and that's just the first storyline as it has gotten new content following its release.

For the last 20 years (and going), steady updates have added an extensive amount of new content, including new classes, new races, epic levels, many adventures, new realms beyond Eberron, character progression revamps, and much, much more.

A successor MMORPG more-in-line with the story-driven Neverwinter Nights games just named Neverwinter was released in June 2013 for PC with ports later released for the Xbox One in 2015 and PlayStation 4 in 2016. However, it has nothing to do with DDO outside of the license.

For additional examples, see Eberron for the main setting, and the Dungeons & Dragons page for general gameplay tropes.

Contains examples of:

• Abled in the Adaptation: In the pre-U45 version of the Catacombs, Marguerite Dryden was interned in the Sanctuary due to being "touched", though her uncle Renau stated that she was still no raving madwoman even then. Her condition was a key part of her uncle Arkasic's plot to use her to unlock the secrets of the Duality: as a ward of the Sanctuary, she could move about the area unnoticed, and her claims of being experimented on by her "father" (in truth the ghost of her uncle Arkasic possessing her father) would be dismissed as the ravings of a madwoman by the guards. Post-update, Marguerite willingly took a vow of silence and was sent to the Sanctuary to pray for solace, as her father believed that the whispers she had begun to hear would herald her being the next Keeper of the Flame, which would redeem the Dryden family name. The whispers were neither a sign of the Voice of the Flame nor of madness, but rather the whispers of the Beast of Bel Shalor that was growing within her to possess and transform her into a vessel for the Shadow in the Flame.
• Absurd Altitude: If you're running the Vault of Night raid and have a newbie in group, tell them it's tradition to cast or put on an item with feather fall and jump off the side after you've finished. You're so high up you can see the curvature of Eberron itself. You invariably float down to the Marketplace, but about 10 feet off the ground - whether you're under the effects of feather fall or not - you die. Yes, this does make you a giant troll, but the view is incredible.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Vorpal weapons are sharp enough to sometimes get instant kills or deal massive damage against foes. In fact, the Vorpal prefix can apply to any melee or ranged weapon, even on minimum level 1, including blunt weapons like maces and handwraps, so your punch is so sharp it can literally cut someone's head off.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: ALL of them! Why else would there be monsters down there for you to kill? It helps that Stormreach is built on the ruins of a Giant civilisation.
• Actual Pacifist: You get bonus experience for completing a quest without killing anything. This is nearly impossible in many cases, but a select handful of quests are uniquely suited for evading all the mooks with Invisibility and/or Dimension Door, allowing a player to run them very quickly and collect that bonus. In particular, the quest called "Frame Work" will earn you compliments and extra loot for catapulting yourself straight to the end boss without setting off any alarms.
• Adaptational Badass: The Lord of Blades is much stronger than he is in the main setting.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • The Coin Lords of Stormreach have various Dark Secrets that can be attributed to them in the setting, with the more mundane being having unknowingly been an orphan of House Cannith or being wanted for the murder of a prince of Breland, and the darkest of them being a rakshasa sorcerer in disguise, a brainwashed Quori spy, or being associated with the Blood of Vol. As of yet, none of them have been true in DDO. This is doubly so for the Sel Shadras, who in the original setting are the fifth Coin Lord family that are deeply tied to criminal elements of the city and the true leaders of the Quickfoot gang. However, to say that the Sel Shadras were Demoted to Extra is an understatement, as Kirris Sel Shadra only appears alongside the other Coin Lords in the Anniversary Party challenges thus far; a one-off line from "Eyes of Stone" states that Kirris Sel Shadra is out of the city at the moment.
  • In the original setting, in addition to being a pole-dancer, Nat Gann is an information broker on the side and is implied to possibly be one of the most notorious cat burglars of Stormreach, the Stirge. In DDO, Nat Gann appears to be every bit the mundane acrobatic pole-dancer he is, and has been missing ever since the devil invasion - though a foray into the Chronoscope shows that the devils took an interest in him, as he'd been seen being interrogated by them in the Phoenix Tavern.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the pre-U45 version of the Catacombs, much of Archbishop Dryden's disposition was the result of being possessed by the ghost of his brother Arkasic. As a result, the situation that led to his daughter being put in the Sanctuary for years and experimented on for the secrets of the Duality were outside of his control, and he was fully conscious of Arkasic's actions with his body yet helpless to stop him. He still manages to pull off a Papa Wolf, breaking free of Arkasic's control and expelling him from his body when his daughter's life is threatened. In the updated version of the Catacombs, Archbishop Dryden is not possessed, and so he willingly left his daughter in the Sanctuary for four years out of blind ambition to restore his family's name after it had been tarnished by his uncle Gerard, believing that she was to be the next Keeper of the Flame. Having the forementioned uncle and his willing follower, Graylight, mastermind a plot to usurp the Church with their own foul demon worship just adds fuel to the fire and leaves the Dryden’s ruined
• Adaptational Location Change: The Wavecrest Tavern was originally in the city of Stormreach itself, as it is in the main setting. With the addition of Korthos Island as the new tutorial replacing Smuggler's Rest in October 2008, the Wavecrest Tavern was moved to Korthos Village to serve as the island's inn and rest area.
• Adaptational Name Change: Lady Paulo Omaren, one of the Coin Lords of Stormreach, is instead named Lady Delera Omaren IV.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Baudry Cartamon in the original "City of Stormreach" setting is described as a "smuggler and two-copper thief" with black market connections who fancies himself an underground kingpin and thinks of himself as more of an entrepreneur, and he attempts to hoodwink players when they try to sell treasures to him. Cartamon in the game is at most shown to be involved in a trade war with the bugbear smuggler Hazadill for the Coin Lords' favor, and is a Benevolent Boss to his employees and regrets turning them away while suspecting that they may be involved in foul play against him on the behalf of Hazadill, and rewards players fairly for their work for him.
  • While Toven d'Cannith is involved in the selling of low quality magefire cannons to a pirate crew and goes rogue to try and turn all the warforged in Stormreach into mindless automatons, he holds no apparent affiliations to the Blood of Vol as he does in the original setting.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the pre-U45 version of the Catacombs, Head Librarian Guillaume willingly offers to accompany the players to the first secret door holding a fragment of the book on the Duality with the knowledge that undead now roamed the halls. In the updated version, he unlocks the gates to the library and tells players how to access the hidden doors, but dares not venture further within the library himself, which is now infested with spiders and skeletons. In neither case does this save him - he ends up mauled to death by ghouls in the original version, and the shadows themselves take him in the updated version.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Amongst the Coin Lords, Yorrick Amanatu is portrayed as having a black beard in DDO while his "City of Stormreach" counterpart has a white beard, Varen Lassite is portrayed as clean-shaven and graying in DDO whereas he has a cropped dark beard in the original setting, and whereas Delara Omaren IV has short black hair, Paulo Omaren has long flowing brown hair.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Paulo Omaren and Greigur d'Deneith are in a secret relationship in the original setting. Thus far, no hint of a relationship was displayed in DDO between Greigur d'Deneith and Delara Omaren IV.
• Adapted Out: Mordenkainen, while still referenced through the spell "Mordenkainen's Disjunction", does not make an appearance as the Mad Mage of Mount Baratok in the Mists of Ravenloft expansion that is adapted from Curse of Strahd.
• Adjective Animal Alehouse: The Wayward Lobster and The One-Eared Bugbear Inn.
• Alien Sky: Xoriat, Dal Quor, and the Demonweb. Xoriat has red clouds everywhere, and space seems to be rippling. Dal Quor looks like space with a purple tint to it and with buildings floating around. The Demonweb is a purple void with occasional red "stars" and bits of rock connected by webbing.
• All the Other Reindeer: Amongst her family, Lily Hargrove was the only one without care of talent for music, eventually leading her to leave her home to become a druid and a member of the Gatekeepers. Resentment and jealousy for her sister Rosemary leaves Lily vulnerable to manipulation by a coven of hags from the Feywild, who use her to bring them a set of ritual components and compel her to kill her entire family.
• All Monks Know Kung-Fu: The Monk class can follow two prestige paths, both a type of Warrior Monk where you are a Whirling Dervish of punching destruction or a serious bane to undead or extra-planar creatures with some Cleric abilities. The Monks have it cool by using Ki Manipulation and not spellpoints (mana) to power their elemental and special attacks.
• All Trolls Are Different: These ones are tall, green, have tusks, and regenerate health rapidly unless doused with fire or acid.
• Allegedly Free Game: The game is officially free to play, but only a fraction of the many, many adventure packs are actually free. Your options are to subscribe monthly as a VIP, or to spend DP (premium currency) to unlock piecemeal content. You can get small amounts of DP just by playing, but the amount of grinding from this alone would be absurd.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Everything to the Kobolds. There is an early quest chain in the Stormreach where you have to deal with two Kobold clans infesting the waterworks and capturing people. Much later in the game you can return to the waterworks in a high level quest to fight a new infestation of Beholders and other various nasties. The first thing you see upon entering are all the Kobolds scurrying past you to the exit you just came from in sheer panic at the new tenants displacing them.
• Ambiguously Related:
  • Marius and Corin Dryden, the cleric trainer in the Harbor and a novice found entering the Lords of Dust's Cultist Base respectively, are part of the same Dryden family that is affiliated with the Church of the Silver Flame. Marius in particular intends to stand on his own virtue rather than use his family's connections to advance in the church's hierarchy, and Corin hopes that mentorship under Inquisitor Gnomon will let him leave behind the turbulent past of the Dryden family's service to the Church. What their exact relations to the Archbishop, his daughter Marguerite, his brother Arkasic and his uncle Gerard are is unknown.
  • Antigua Villuhne, the Favored Soul trainer in the Harbor, is related to the cleric Cellimas Villuhne in some fashion and mentions her in her dialogue, as well as spending time with Cellimas' companions Jeets and Talbron. However, while her being on a first-name basis implies a close relation, what that exact relation is with Cellimas is unknown.
• Ambition Is Evil: Bishop Thaddeus Graylight had hopes of taking Archbishop Dryden's position after the latter had been disgraced by the Church of the Silver Flame due to Graylight's plot. Due to the player's involvement, Graylight is killed and his scheme is put to an end, but his machinations still tarnished Dryden's name enough that his prospects of becoming a Cardinal disappeared and the Church is set to appoint a replacement for him.
• Amputative Sentencing: Laina d'Jorasco, better known as Laina the Excoriated, was cast out of House Jorasco and had her dragonmark of healing carved from her skin after she provided healing for a criminal from whom Jorasco preferred death.
• An Adventurer Is You: And everyone ELSE, too! Including several of the NPCs, apparently, but they're worse at it than you are.
• Annoying Arrows: Especially in lower level quests, most enemies with ranged attacks are pretty pathetic compared to enemy spellcasters, typically serving only to interrupt you when trying to use switches and buttons rather than doing meaningful damage.
• Another Dimension: Shavarath, Xoriat, Dal Quor, the Demonweb, and a couple of demiplanes are all accessible as part of quests.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Several.
  • Hirelings will automatically cast whatever they think is useful so you often don't need to micromanage them. They will also automatically use rest and resurrection shrines if they need to. They can also teleport directly to you if they get lost, and their deaths don't count against your experience bonus for flawless victory.
  • Most quests with one exception include a bow and a few arrows near the parts that require you to hit a ranged target lever to open a gate or lower a bridge just in case you don't have one.
  • Completing any quest chain that gives unique rewards three times will let you pick from all of the unique items instead of the usual random list.
  • When the Catacombs were overhauled in Update 45, Bishop Thaddeus Graylight was added as the Archbishop's right-hand man and the point of contact between the Archbishop and the party's ventures into the Catacombs' depths. Prior to this, almost every quest required going all the way back to Dryden's chambers at the top of the Catacombs to report to him, and then go back down the Catacombs to the next part of the story arc - though it is still possible to ignore Graylight and speak with the Archbishop directly to progress the story.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only fit 6 people into a typical party quest. For raids, you're allowed 12 heads.
  • The game justifies that in the Zawabi's Revenge raid, the Djinn that teleports you to the quest says he only has energy to transport 12 people into the Demon Queen's refuge.
• Arc Welding: "Hiding in Plain Sight" connects the harbor plots of "A Man Named Baudry Cartamon", "Information is Key" and "An Explosive Situation". The sewers that run beneath Stormreach Harbor are used by the bugbear smuggler Hazadill to steal from Cartamon's warehouse and smuggle stolen goods beneath the city; Osgood's home and hideout from "Information is Key" are part of this ring in some way as they're both occupied by Hazadill's cartel and associates during "Hiding in Plain Sight", though it's left to speculation by the Dungeon Master if Osgood himself is involved in Hazadill's cartel or if he was driven out of the city, as he is conspicuously absent. Hazadill's lair also contains a room filled with explosives stolen from Sharpwood's warehouse from "An Explosive Situation".
• Arm Cannon: The Artificers' Rune Arms.
• The Artifact: The area of the northern Harbor is named "Harbormaster's Plaza". Prior to changes to the layout of the Harbor, the office of Harbormaster Zin was located in the spot where the "Recovering the Lost Tome" quest now takes place; following the updates, Zin's office was removed and he was moved to the entrance to the Waterworks.
• Artifact of Doom: Several, but the most important by far is the Codex of the Infinite Planes, a sentient and evil giant book with an infinite number of lead pages containing magic relating to every plane of existence. Even a single page is a powerful magical artifact - the whole thing can be used to control entire planes. The Codex is sought after by numerous villains, connects several story arcs into a larger narrative, and is the main plot device used to introduce other campaign settings into the Eberron-based game.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Some of the battle themes in the Maleficent Cabal Chain. Most prominent in "Under The Big Top".
• Back Stab: Rogues get bonus sneak attack damage for attacking any monster not targeting them, even from the front. And everyone gets an extra +2 added to their accuracy roll for attacking a monster in the back.
• Bag of Holding: Including sew-on pockets that can hold fifteen sets of plate mail. And then you can get another inventory page by paying an NPC to craft a broken Portable Hole into a literal pocket dimension. There are also bags for holding crafting ingredients, gems, and collectables looted from mobs, so that you can save on inventory space.
• Ball of Light Transformation: The game features Ghaele Eladrin that can take the shape of a lantern archon.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Comes in the quests "Finding the Path" and "I Dream of Jeets", and also comes in the final boss battle of the Harbinger of Madness chain.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In the Catacombs, Fitzwood is the Sole Survivor in the Sanctuary because he was kind to Marguerite Dryden during her time there and tried to speak in her defense, knowing that she was not mad like him or the other wards of the Sanctuary. Unfortunately, his pleas fell upon the deaf ears of the guards, but Marguerite repaid his kindness by sparing him when she tapped into the dark powers of the Duality and purged all life from the Sanctuary.
• Bedlam House: The Sanctuary within the cathedral of the Silver Flame is ostensibly a place to go for meditation and healing, but its true purpose is as an asylum for the insane and the afflicted. Amongst its wards were Marguerite Dryden, who was hearing voices and was later possessed by a demon, and Fitzwood, who suffered from a hereditary (and therefore uncurable) lycanthropy curse.
• Beef Gate: Any NPC or trap found in a quest that's two or more levels above you, especially on Reaper mode. You can certainly join the quest, but you'll usually die in one hit from any mob that targets you. Likewise most traps will be instantly lethal as soon as you get too close to them. This doesn't stop low level players grouping with high levelers to somewhat bypass Level Grinding, which is especially helpful since all players are encouraged to reincarnate and try a different race or class, gaining a nice little cumulative boost to stats from each past life.
• Beneath Notice: In the Catacombs story arc, the Sanctuary is purged of all life without anyone being any wiser within the cathedral of the Silver Flame. Some of the corpses found in the north wing were days old, as the wards were kept so isolated from the rest of the cathedral that no one bothered to check in on them until Friar Renau asked your character to see if his niece Marguerite is fine, setting up the downfall of Gerard Dryden and Thaddeus Graylight's scheme to unlock the powers of Duality and oust the Archbishop.
• Benevolent Genie: Zawabi the Elder Djinn, guardian of his oasis refuge in the desert of Menechtarun, has become fond of the people living under his protection. Given the chance to finally break his bonds or rid the desert of the influence of the evil Queen Lailat, he chooses the latter; and when Miroc Thrice-Born attempted to subjugate him, Zawabi instead used the magical link between the two to show the man the true depths of his wisdom, which is enough to convince him to finally let go of his quest for immortality and let this body be his last.
  Zawabi: I spent too much of myself to trap Queen Lailat in the Circle of Eternity. Perhaps a magician of the Wizard-King's mettle will someday free me from my bonds. But even then... could I leave before Lailat's last servant spills its tainted blood into the dunes? I have enjoyed my greatest revenge, but there are lesser satisfactions to be found in the days to come. I remain here of my own will.
• Big Bad: There is no singular villain of the whole game, but there are adventure packs, quest chains, and story arcs with villains such as Horoth (Current ruler of Shavarath), the Black Abbot (A mad lich attempting to become a god), the Truthful One (being behind the return of the Stormreaver), the Devourer of Dreams (Quori deity seeking to restore his plane back alongside Eberron),and Lolth (Forgotten Realms deity whose long lost child, the Spinner of Shadows, helped bridge Faerun and Eberron together for conquest)
• The Big Guy: The melee classes: Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, and sometimes Monk. Clerics have a bunch of Hit Points and good armor, and shields, too.
• Blackout Basement: The quest "Rainbow in the Dark", where the only source of light is a scepter that you have to carry to the end of the dungeon. You can use certain attack spells and Runearm blasts to light the way.
• Body Horror: The Harbinger of Madness chain is centered around strange creatures called the Taken. While they look creepy enough on their own, it gets worse when you learn how they're made. They were created by a Mindflayer "Artist" who crafted them out of kidnapped Stormreach citizens.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Justified Trope as you do not fight her in her home base but in a place she invaded, but the room where you fight the Medusa Ambassador in a mid-level quest has a mirror in it, hidden behind a sliding panel, you can lure her there, with predictable results.
• Boss Subtitles: Most named enemies have a subtitle under their names, some of them quite funny.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Happens a few times.
  • The Cultists in the Korthos Island chain, and their dragon. Upon being freed, the dragon kills her controller and leaves.
  • Near the end of the Maleficent Cabal chain, Yewil d'Phiarlan and her troops are victim to this, and eventually Die As Themselves.
  • The Silver Flame agents who were sent into the Cursed Crypt. Also, if you linger too long in there, the player characters.
  • You find out that this is the case after picking up the first journal in Let Sleeping Dust Lie with regards to the Crimson Feet.
  • The cultists in Lords of Dust.
  • Silver Flame agents again in Wrath of the Flame. By the same person who brainwashed Yewil back in the Big Top.
  • Pretty much any and all Inspired.
  • And finally, in a late-game raid, the Lord of Blades himself, by quori. Though he likely would have tried to kill you on his own anyway.
• Breast Plate: Averted for the most part; armor for characters in general tends to look more or less the same whether you're playing a guy or a girl. The Armor Appearance kits, on the other hand...
  • After the update that turned the game into Eberron Unlimited, a number of these kind of armors have shown up for female characters. They even vary in... erm, "capacity" depending on race.
• Breath Weapon: Artificer Iron Defender pets have a fire and acid variation. Characters with the Draconic Incarnation Epic Destiny can also learn a Dragon Breath attack.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • The DDO Store has tomes that provide permanent boosts to a characters stats and skills, and they're generally quite expensive for what you are getting. Some tomes are available through normal gameplay or the auction house, but the highest numbers are only available for real money.
  • Some of the special classes, races, and other features like Veteran Status can be unlocked by raising your favor with various factions, but you can also buy them off the DDO Store or be a VIP (monthly subscriber).
• Busman's Holiday: Ataraxia's Haven is introduced to the players as a vacation resort island. Inevitably, adventurers are drawn into conflict when upon arriving the island has been overran by a duergar mining operation and the daughter of the resort's owner has been kidnapped.
• Call-Back: When Gnomon reveals his true intentions, he mentions causing damage by killing innocents and attacking other religions. Why is this a callback? One of the earlier quests involve him ordering you to kill a group of Sovereign Host followers, calling them heretics.
• The Caper: The events of the "Vault of Night" raid result in one, though on behalf of House Kundarak themselves. The Vault of Night, House Kundarak's most secure vault, has been compromised by opposing forces of the Aurum and the red dragon Velah, and its defenses turned against the Kundarak forces. House Kundarak hires the player and the Laughing Knives to break back into the Vault and eliminate the conspirators.
• Caper Crew: Two opposing crews are attempting to break into the Vault of Night: the Laughing Knives, and the Aurum.
  • The Laughing Knives: Backed by House Kundarak themselves as the Client to counter-break into the Vault after the Aurum infiltrate it, they include Marek Malcanus (Mastermind/Coordinator), Dirge (The Muscle), Orphne (Sorceress), Veil (Assassin), and Haywire (The Gadget Guy).
  • The Aurum: Backed by the Aurum, they include Velah (Mastermind) and Arach (The Gadget Guy/The Inside Man). Malachi the Breaker serves an unknown role, and the Vault's chief administrator Otto Knucklebones was Forced into Evil as the Muscle through a set of evil enchanted armor.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Big Bad of the Masterminds of Sharn saga is Lucian Vaunt, an entrepeneur with great vision who wants to put labor-saving Magitek devices into the hands of the common people. Vaunt claims to have invented wondrous devices that ordinary people with no magical ability can use, free of the need for any Power Source like the mana that casters have. The devices actually do work, however the Dark Secret that Vaunt doesn't want anyone to find out is that the devices use necromancy to draw power from the lifeforce of their users - which will slowly kill off all of Vaunt's customers.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Switching armor takes time but swapping between or to robes and outfits is instantaneous.
• Character Alignment: In-universe and part of character creation. In general, player characters are not allowed to be evil, and this only impacts a few things. Most obviously, some classes are alignment-restricted and therefore mutually exclusive. Some divine spells can only be cast by or damage certain alignments, but they're not particularly good spells. Some weapons can only be wielded by certain alignments or penalize you with a negative level, but many of these weapons are simply not optimal. For example, there are evil weapons that penalize good-aligned characters, but there are very, very few good-aligned enemies worth using those weapons on.
• Character Customization: Given the freedom to multiclass in up to three classes, the extensive enhancement trees, epic destinies, feats, stats, and skills, there are limitless directions to take any character, and the meta for "best builds" changes all the time.
• Circus of Fear: The Maleficent Cabal, antagonists of the Phiarlan Carnival story arc, are a cadre of tiefling assassins that masquerade as the Traveling Troubadours, a traveling show that has rented a venue in the House Phiarlan enclave from which they have struck at the Phiarlans to embarrass and weaken them.
• Class and Level System: Much like D&D 3.5 core.
• Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity:
  • Jumping (or getting thrown) off of the top of Tempest Spine while wearing a feather-falling item can make you float a really long way. Jumping (or getting thrown) off of the top of Tempest Spire while NOT wearing a feather-falling item can make you die from falling damage, and your teammates are going to be reluctant to come pick up your corpse so you can get your loot, because it is a long way back up, and likely involves running past fields of fire elementals.
  • The Coalescence Chamber in the Vale of Twilight, filled with several very deep shafts, will make the best of friends want to tear each other's throat out and pick-up groups wind up with squelching angry, inexperienced and frustrated players about 90% of the time.
• Comically Small Bribe: A corrupt harbor guard refuses to let refugees pass and enter the city without paying a "toll" - one platinum, a fortune. While the difficulty checks to intimidate (10), bluff (11) or persuade (12) the guard are fairly high, the haggle check to convince him to accept a single copper piece is a measly 5.
• Compelling Voice: Bards. Compelling enemies to sit still and listen to your lute, to compelling your allies to feats of Heroism. Also, the Charm/Dominate Person/Monster spells, and Suggestion.
• Compressed Adaptation: Mists of Ravenloft is an adaptation of the campaign Curse of Strahd, but focuses primarily on the key areas and objectives of the campaign, resulting in a significantly less deadly and bleak atmosphere than the original Gothic Horror it is adapting. The confrontation in "The Curse of Strahd" also takes place primarily in the Castle Ravenloft crypts rather than throughout the entirety of the castle as in the adventure.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: At least in terms of computer-controlled casters. They have no spellpoints bar and ignore the cooldown rules on spells that limit a player's spell use, especially obnoxious when the computer caster in question is a healer who can full-heal themselves repeatedly and quickly. Damage almost never interrupts their spells, either, as if enemies have all of their spells quickened.
  • In a somewhat related note, computer-controlled ally Hirelings have no metamagic feats and thus can't improve any of their spells in a pinch.
• Consulting Mister Puppet: Captain Michael Tew, leader of the Blood Tide pirates, travels nowhere without his faithful rat pet Ratty. "Ratty" is in fact an ogre mage named Ahraatz-Ri, who used Tew to build up the Blood Tide.
• Continuity Snarl: In the Forgotten Realms story arcs, Mystra is oft referred to as being missing or gone. Her temple in the King's Wood lies decrepit and abandoned, her former clergy is in anguish at her absence, and Elminster speaks of preserving her memory. However, at the point in time where the events of Menace of the Underdark takes place,^note Due to the references to the Darkening used by the Drow to commit to an invasion in broad daylight, it narrows down the time period to circa 1484-1485 DR Mystra would have been restored as the Goddess of Magic by Elminster already per The Elminster Series^note The events of Elminster Enraged, during which Mystra is restored, is set in 1479 DR.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Swimming IN lava causes a moderate amount of fire damage, but nothing serious. But walking right next to it (or on those metallic catwalks in the Firebrand Mines and Burning City) seems to have no ill effects.
• Corporate Conspiracy: The Aurum are publicly a group of rich philanthropists and patrons of the arts. In truth, the Shadow Cabinet seeks to pull the strings and their machinations reach even to Xen'drik, where they've shown interest in the ruins of Gianthold and aided the red dragon Velah in breaking into the Vault of Night. One of the high-ranking members of the Shadow Cabinet, Kalphan Riak, is a recurring character throughout the various Sharn quests and even has a cat on his lap when you meet him at the end of "Soul Survivor".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Lucian Vaunt, the primary antagonist of the Masterminds of Sharn campaign is a capital example of this. He created a forge with the assistance of necromancers and left the whole thing to go terribly wrong, leading to most of his workers dying and the last surviving Necromancer cursing him with their dying breath, creating the Forgewraiths. This led him to taking the Stormreach Harbor beacon, awakening a terrible curse turning everyone either insane with rage via a draconic magic infused fungus, buried the forge incident with said beacon to placate the undead all for the usage of an invention that slowly killed its users to collect a vast enough wealth to join the higher echelons of the Aurum Concordian. Thankfully, his business goes under and he himself is killed by the forgewraiths by the end of the questline.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons, are the DM/narrators in the Delara's Tomb and the Ruins of Threnal story arcs, respectively.
  • Keith Baker, creator of the Eberron campaign setting, narrates some of the quests in the Masterminds of Sharn expansion.
  • Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, narrates the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar story arc.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Being an adaptation of Curse of Strahd, the Mists of Ravenloft expansion has a predetermined outcome for several of the events of the original campaign:
  • No matter what you do, the Dragon Knights of Argynvostholt will always turn hostile to you. In the original campaign, it is possible to redeem them with a measure of Guide Dang It!.
  • At the end of the quest "Sunrise", Ireena Kolyana is freed from the curse of Barovia and joins Sergei's spirit when she reaches the waters of the Shrine of the White Sun at the Abbey of St. Markovia, to Strahd's fury as he arrives and engages the party to kill them for their interference.
  • While Vallaki can be dealt with in a number of ways in Curse of Strahd, the events in DDO are restricted to the feud between Baron Vargas Vallakovich and Lady Fiona Wachter, with Lady Wachter as the mandatory antagonist and betraying Baron Vargas as an optional objective, and it does not involve the events of the St. Andral's Church in any way.
• Death Is Cheap: Although many years old at this point, DDO has always had a much looser stance on death than tabletop D&D calls for. Every tavern has a spirit binder that offers to resurrect you for free if you should die and be without hope of rescue. Most dungeons also have multiple resurrection shrines that can infinitely revive you if your soul stone is within range or can be carried there. At higher levels, almost all player characters will be packing resurrection items or scrolls and it's not uncommon for multiple players to attempt rezzing you at the same time just seconds after you die.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Tharashk Arena typically bars entry to Stormreachers, with Grogan the Promoter citing the reason that there, "the strong are not enslaved by the laws of the weak". Not having the password to the arena results in the crowd turning hostile - which they do anyways after the party kills the reigning champion. Throughout the entire arena battle, the fight promoter treats the heroes' victories over the gladiator teams as a tragedy for the fallen fighters, and Grogan personally enters the arena after the champion's death in a last-ditch effort to stop them from claiming the axe Oath of Droaam.
• Detect Evil: Although the namesake ability is a staple of the paladin in 3.5, DDO forgoes it as part of the paladin's toolkit. However, there are instances where paladins will passively detect evil beings in disguise, such as the "Partycrashers" quest where they need no rolls to see through the tieflings' various disguises.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Of the twelve dragonmarked houses, only five hold major prominence in DDO: Deneith, Kundarak, Jorasco, Phiarlan and Cannith. Orien runs the mail and auction services and Lyrandar runs the guild airship, Ghallanda runs certain inns and Thuranni is an occasional foe, but the other dragonmarked houses have little relevancy.
  • There is a fifth Coin Lord family, the Sel Shadras, led by Kirris Sel Shadra. The Sel Shadras in the original setting run the magistrates of Stormreach, and Kirris is also the true leader of the Quickfoot gang. Kirris has only appeared in-game along the other Coin Lords in the Anniversary Party challenges, and her family's ties to the criminal underground are unclear beyond a mention from Coin Lord Amanatu during the "Sharn Syndicate" pack that Burgundy Tir, who has ties to the Sharn Syndicate, has connections with her. One of the five chairs in the Lordsmarch Plaza audience chamber is presumably hers, and her office can be visited during "Eyes of Stone". However, the Magic Mouth at the entrance to her office states that she is out of the city at the moment.
• Didn't Think This Through: In "Best Laid Plans", Victor Dabonaire attempts to teleport away when he finds himself trapped in a Vaunt sphere of force. In his panic, he evidently forgot about the Dimensional Anchor he had put into place. Suffice to say, he went nowhere.
• Double Entendre: Jeets Shimis (speaking to the female cleric Cellimas): "Ha, I still got plenty of stamina! I can go all night long!" Jeets in general has a lot of things to say similar to this, usually related to Cellimas. "Tell her to keep her knickers on." "Don't worry, Cellimas. I'm here to watch your behind, now."
• Dual Wielding: It's one option for melee characters, generally requiring high dexterity and the corresponding two-weapon fighting feats in order to be properly effective. Rangers get some of the feats for free, but Fighters also get plenty of free combat feats in general.
• Dump Stat: Most classes and builds will have at least one stat that offers marginal, if any benefit. However, that stat should never be constitution, which grants fortitude saves (useful), and hit points (your first and last defense against anything not an instant kill).
• Dungeon Crawling: Given that this is a D&D game, a large number of quests involve delving into sewers, mazes, caves, and labyrinths. Virtually all of them are infested with dozens of monsters.
• Dungeon Punk: With a late 2011 update, the world of Eberron reemphasized how Dungeon Punky it is by now filling it with gadgeteers of gears and magic: The Artificer class.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Fitzwood, the Sole Survivor in the Sanctuary, can be spotted early in "The Friar's Niece" beyond the locked doors in your first venture in search of Marguerite, just a few short quests before you need to locate him in the east ward. Similarly, the Beast of Bel Shalor can be spotted lurking behind a gate on the lower levels of the Sanctuary during "Return to the Sanctuary", long before you discover its link to what happened.
• Eldritch Location: Xoriat, Dal Quor and the Demonweb all have weird skies and lack a real surface.
• Elemental Powers: Sorcerers and Druids can specialize in an elemental power. Likewise, Monks can go at it "Avatar"-style through attacks and stances that channel Air, Earth, Wind and Fire.
• Elite Mooks: There seems to be a couple of these in every major dungeon. Commonly referred to by the players as "nameds," or "named monsters" because they have a name and a treasure box.
  • Can be more specifically referred to as "orange-" or, in higher levels, "red-names". Reds are normally "bosses," in the sense that they command the other enemies. Most of them are just Palette Swaps or regular Mooks.
  • Champion mooks, who are granted a random buff, all of them include extra damage. A random concentration of two or three champions can be more deadly than a Boss Battle. And may the Flame have mercy on you if you stumbled on an orange named Champion.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Pretty much the entire storyline in the Necropolis quests regarding The Emerald Claw and the Silver Flame.
  • The adventurers and the Aurum have likely clashed already by the time they reach Sharn. Yet still, representatives of the Aurum are willing to work with the players to facilitate the takedown of both Vaunt Arcanotechic and Fathom Endeavours.
• Escort Mission:
  • The crazed, ineffective magic attacks of Coyle, an NPC you must protect for 15 eternally-long minutes in a Ruins of Threnal quest chain, were once the stuff of legend. It used to be a quest failure if he died, which was very easy to have happen. The developers eventually added an option to give him a Tap on the Head as needed, and nowadays he is immortal and it's merely an optional objective to prevent him from ever suffering a Non-Lethal K.O..
  • Gladewatch Outpost Defense involves protecting the captain of a defense regiment while she defends the outpost from attacking goblinoids and ogres. Oh yeah, and she left her soldiers at home too, so it's just your team and her. She tends to run off to attack whenever a new enemy spawns. You can try to talk her out of it, but even then you have to make sure she doesn't see anything hostile on the way to wherever you're hiding her. It's also a quest failure if you let even a single enemy inside the outpost.
  • In many of the quests added after a certain point in time, the developers generally have escortees who can fight or make themselves invincible, but not both at once. Your character can even say in dialogue on one occasion, "I dislike escort missions. They always die too easily or fall off ledges and there's nothing I can do about it," to which the VIP makes it very clear that you don't need to worry about his safety.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Hargo Kimmare is a ruthless assassin, but he wouldn't go so far as to kill his target's wife and daughter. However, being a Slave to PR, he lied about having done so in order to save his reputation. This unfortunately earns him the ire of Delera Omaren, whose ghost would haunt him for months after her death for having allegedly gone against her orders not to kill the girl, unaware that Hargo let the wife and daughter flee to Khorvaire.
• Everyone Has Standards: Baudry Cartamon is not beneath taking underhanded actions to enrich himself, but he wishes to have nothing to do with the Aurum and willingly abandons whatever treasure his rival Hazadill found on the Restless Isles when he finds out that they were Hazadill's clients.
• Evil Counterpart: The Fallen are a group of NPC adventurers that become recurring characters during and following the Sharn saga, filling the role of opposing mercenaries hired by Lucian Vaunt. To further mirror their comparison to the player heroes, their Boss Subtitles are identical to that of a player's guild name and level. Irk Bord, the group's goblin assassin, even possesses a Cursed Blade of Jack Jibbers, a highly sought-after item from Three-Barrel Cove that resurrects him every time he's killed by the players.
• Evil vs. Evil: In the Tangleroot Gorge adventure pack, it's strongly implied that the players' Darguuni hobgoblin patrons are not actually morally better than the Splinterskull hobgoblins they're sending you against. It's just that Splinterskull is actively hostile to Stormreach and Darguun isn't.
• Eye Beams: Beholders have these, as per usual. The petrifying gaze of medusas is also portrayed this way, appearing as a conical blast of yellow light.
• Fanservice Pack: Game updates in late 2010 added armor kits, which allows a player to make their character's armor or clothing more cosmetically exciting, intimidating, or attractive. Female outfits and robes often (among other things), add a Cleavage Window, or grant a Leotard of Power.
• Fastball Special: During one quest to find the giant Brawnpits in a mountainous wilderness, you can meet two of his nephews. As long as you don't steal from them, they will be generally helpful. If you ask, they will even hurl you across the canyon to get back to Brawnpits' camp quickly.
• First-Episode Spoiler: "A Sharn Welcome", the first quest of the Masterminds of Sharn expansion, starts off with Issabet Tremont, your contact in Vaunt Arcanotechnic, arranging a meeting with her boss who may have information on the stolen Stormreach Beacon. Unbeknownst to her, Lucian Vaunt was the man behind the theft, having arranged through his contacts in the Boromar clan for the Beacon to be stolen from Stormreach.
• Five-Man Band: The Laughing Knives, one of the most notorious mercenary companies in Xen'drik known for their abilities to infiltrate any fortress and get past any security measure put in their way. However, their failure to break into the Vault of Night on behalf of House Kundarak to test its defenses resulted in them disbanding.
  • Marek Malcanus: The Leader; after their failure and disbanding, he ropes the adventurer in reorganizing them for One Last Job.
  • Orphene: The Smart Guy concerning magic and The Heart; notably, Marek attributes the group's disbanding to her vanishing after the Knives' failure to break into the Vault. She was in fact attacked by Dar Quat assassins who trapped her in her own mind.
  • Veil: The Lancer; the surly and cunning drow assassin contrasts Marek both in her role and demeanor. After the Knives' failure in the Vault she lost all her confidence, compounded by being forced on the run by a Marut attempting to kill her for being a vampire and thus cheating death.
  • Dirge of Karnath: The Big Guy; Dirge was the group's weapons master, specializing in axes. His original axe broke during the group's first foray into the Vault, but he found a perfect replacement for it - unfortunately for him, the Oath of Droaam axe is a prize for competing in the Tharask Arena, which discriminates against humans.
  • Phineas "Haywire" Hayward: The Smart Guy concerning arcanotech. After the Knives' failure in the Vault, he locked himself up in his factory, paranoid that the Houses were after him - having previously been on the run from House Cannith. However, his foundry was infected by Quori slugs brought in by an Inspired visitor, resulting in him losing control over the foundry and all of his (illegally-created) warforged.
  • The Player: The Sixth Ranger; made an honorary member when the Laughing Knives are reunited and hired by House Kundarak once more to break into the Vault of Night again after the Aurum subverted its defenses.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: The Spinner of Shadows immediately turns on the Lords of Dust and the Demon Overlords upon being freed, makes mention of the "stink of Eberron" on the adventuring party that confronts her, and calls for her "sister" to come to her. She turns out to be affiliated with the goddess Lolth from the Forgotten Realms.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the low-level quest "Partycrashers", Orphene of the Laughing Knives is one of the guests in the Phiarlan ballroom and is being courted by Barrow d'Kundarak for her group to test out the defenses of the Vault of Night. Similarly, a still-living Agatha Anviliron is discussing her upcoming expedition to the Caverns of Korromar, where she will meet her demise and return as a wight priest.
  • In the Bogwater Tavern in House Phiarlan, a dwarf and an elf are speaking privately about getting into a Vault. This is Velah and Arach d'Kundarak plotting out the heist on the Vault of Night, setting up the events of the raid's story arc.
  • Throughout "A Sharn Welcome", notes can be found throughout the Grandview Arms that hint at Vaunt being more nefarious than he seems and seeking a solution to "Forgewraiths" haunting him, and the experimental Vaunt washing device malfunctioning hints at Vaunt Arcanotechnic having troubles with its devices. The last note that can be found states outright that Vaunt was the one behind both the theft of the Stormreach Beacon and the invasion of the Grandview Arms, having planned to destroy all evidence linking him to the destruction of his factory in the Cogs and kill the intruding Stormreach adventurers in one fell swoop.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire:
  • Fred the Mind Flayer is your contact for feat retraining and pops up in several random quests as an innocent bystander or in need of rescue, and always responds to the player in a friendly or benign way. In the quest "Night Falls on Stormreach", he just happens to be nearby during a crisis and can be enlisted to save dozens of innocent lives just by asking him nicely. In "The Price of Freedom", the check to convince him to help the party in the mutiny is a very easy Diplomacy check.
  • Veil the drow assassin is an actual vampire, but no less a valued member of the Laughing Knives.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Artificer class.
• Game Master: While quests are managed entirely by scripted events and combat AI, each quest has a dungeon master providing narration and descriptions in the same way that a tabletop session would. The Delara's Tomb story arc is narrated by Gary Gygax himself, and the Ruins of Threnal story arc is narrated by fellow D&D creator Dave Arneson.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Arlos and Venn ar-Kerran, as well as presumably the other captives held by the kobolds in the Waterworks, are meant to be children per Harbormaster Zin. However, as there are no child models in the game, they both use an adult human model.
• Gentleman Adventurer: Oriphaun Huntsilver is a member of House Huntsilver, one of the Royal Houses of the kingdom of Cormyr. To his uncle's disappointment, Oriphaun became an adventurer and treasure hunter rather than, and was searching for relics and rare artifacts for his collection when he uncovered a Netherese plot to overthrow Cormyr from within the prison city of Wheloon. From then on he puts aside his more selfish motive and dedicates himself to protecting his nation, even joining the Harpers in his efforts to keep a Nether Scroll out of the hands of the forces of Netheril and stopping their invasion plans.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Lailat, ruler of the Demon Sands, is not called the Demon Queen for nothing. Lailat is a literal demon, an immortal monster from the plane of Shavarath, and she revels in pointless bloodshed and suffering. She reigns as a sort of God-Emperor over the various factions in her stretch of desert, pitting them against one another for fun and spurring them to commit heinous crimes, notably teaching the scorrow to practice Human Sacrifice and aiding the gnolls is subjecting numerous people to torturous slavery.
• Goggles Do Nothing: As of Update 22, you can visually show off goggles over your character's forehead. They still work, though.
• Golem: the Warforged race, a living construct that players can choose to use. Not-so-nice golems populate the dungeons as well.
• Good Is Dumb: In the case of the Catacombs, a crypt under the tower of the Silver Flame. You'd think a church dedicated to destroying the undead could deal with an undead infestation in their basement, but no, it's time to call in the adventurers. Adventurers who, by the way, are likely to destroy each and every sarcophagus they find so they get more experience points, and will expect you to pay them with expensive magic items when they're done.
  • The Silver Flame is a bit of a Corrupt Church in places, mired in their own bureaucracy that hobbles them from working as well or as effectively as they could.
  • The Good Is Dumb trope was actually once lampshaded by Archbishop Dryden, who prior to the overhaul of the Catacombs story arc referred to the guards as "quarter-wits." While he was possessed by the ghost of his brother Arkasic at the time of this quote, post-update he himself was shown to be so obsessed with restoring his family’s name because of his corrupt uncle that he ended up assisting said uncle unleash a shadow demon right in the Church’s backyard. The whole thing was orchestrated by his evil aide, Graylight.
  • They also had a rakshasa in their ranks for several years, and no one had a clue.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Collectibles, trade-able items, quests, favor... take your pick.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: While the Church of the Silver Flame has authorized a reward for adventurers that helped deal with the problem in the Catacombs, Friar Renau states that the Church will never publicly acknowledge the events that took place and will actively deny them should you speak of it to anyone. Archbishop Dryden having been manipulated by the ghost of his disgraced uncle and Bishop Graylight's treason resulted in an undead infestation that overtook the lower levels of the cathedral and the deaths of all the wards of the Church kept in the Sanctuary. While the Archbishop resolves to only do good in the name of the Silver Flame after his uncle's influence is purged, the Church is set to appoint someone to replace him over the entire incident.
• Heel–Face Turn: Miroc Thrice-Born is a man who has lived three lifetimes by performing a rite that would transfer his spirit into the body of a dying child. However, he is reaching the end of his third life finding that his aging mind has not been rejuvenated along with his body, and is seeking to compel the djinn Zawabi into giving him the power to perform the rite a fourth time. However, his attempt to bind the djinn failed, as Zawabi's mind was far too vast for "a thrice-old codger" like Miroc to subjugate. Zawabi instead showed Miroc true wisdom and convinced him to finally let go. By the time the player returns with the phylactery of the Wizard-King Raiyum, which Miroc had intended to use to study lichdom were he unable to bind Zawabi, Miroc is instead at peace with his fate and is grateful that Zawabi saved his soul by steering him away from "life-in-death".
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: The halfling rogue Jeets Shimis and the warforged sorcerer Talbron Tewn are an inseparable pair. Only once are they split up, when Talbron travels to his birth-forge in the Mournlands of Cyre, and Jeets is mentioned to not be pleased about it.
• Hit Points: Notably changed from the paper-and-pencil version in that every character starts with the Heroic Durability feat, granting 20 hit points. Toughness's effect is also increased from just 3 HP to 3 HP at 1st level and 1 HP every level thereafter, without losing the stacking ability of the original.
• Humanoid Abomination: Belashyrra, one of the daelkyr, appears as an Arc Villain. He looks like a man with long blond hair, but he's covered in chitin armor and speaks in a distorted double voice.
  • Most of the Quori are also this.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: All civilized areas make you regenerate health, but it's much faster to visit a tavern and eat food to recover from a near-death experience. Healing while questing is more often handled through rest shrines (representing an 8-hour rest) or magic, but there are some special food items that provide healing anytime, such as Tasty Ham.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Velah, former leader of the Agents of Argonnessen, is studying the Prophecy and believes that the key to deciphering the mystery of the Dragonshards is held in the Vault of Night. To that end, she made a bargain with the Aurum and seduced Arach d'Kundarak, the bank's chief architect, to break in and gain control of the Vault, and when confronted shows no regrets about what she did to achieve her goals.
• Infinity +1 Element: For damage-dealing casters, the four main elemental damage types are Fire, Cold, Acid and Electric - and there are always some monsters players will encounter regularly that are be immune to one or more of them. Then there's the "fifth" elemental damage type - Light. Practically nothing is immune to it. Light damage is mostly the province of divine casters like Clerics, however there are some arcane casters who can make use of it in Heroic levels, and all casters can use it if they max out the Exalted Angel epic destiny at level 20 and above.
• Interface Screw: Being affected by blindness also turns your view of the game world entirely black. You can still otherwise play normally and navigate with the minimap. In old versions many years back, blindness was permanent until magically cured, so you could occasionally find blinded adventurers stumbling around Stormreach. Nowadays, it lasts for well under a minute.
• Invisible Wall: There are some places in Stormreach harbor or marketplace that you just can't get your character to go, despite logic. This was made especially evident when Turbine released the Head In The Clouds festive buff; your character can jump insanely high, but if you jump too high you hit your head on Stormreach's invisible ceiling.
• Involuntary Dance: The Otto's dance line of spells: Resistible, Irresistible, and Sphere of Dancing. Nearly all creatures with minds (including the player characters) can be affected by it. Many monsters have unique and amusing dances, which completely locks them down while they are being hacked to bits.
• Kamehame Hadoken: An Epic Destiny allows powerful ranged Ki Manipulation. Later updates also allow a new Monk class tree, the Henshin Mystic, to weaponize ki this way (albeit not as dramatically as Son Goku).
• Killer Rabbit: Dogs and wolves are surprisingly deadly, and wolves are even cute furballs. More Hit Points than the average mook, hitting like trucks, and possessing a trip attack capable of causing you to Pratfall at which point you are helpless for a second or two. At equivalent levels, it means dogs and wolves are more dangerous than The Legions of Hell themselves.
• Kill It with Fire: Fire is generally one of the highest-damage elements and doesn't have too many opportunities for saving throws, tempered by having the largest list of enemies with immunity. Still, there are ways to bypass that immunity with the right build.
• Knights and Knaves: There's a quest that involves navigating a vertical labyrinth that presents this problem for the player. A pair of gargoyles are found guarding an extendable platform and a deadly trap with two levers controlling them; of course the gargoyles tell the player to ask them which is the correct lever, and claim one of them tells the truth and the other lies. Fortunately for the player, the gargoyles start to annoy each other with their banter until they break out into a fight between themselves. The player can just choose a lever and disable/avoid the trap while this goes on and walk right past the squabbling gargoyles.
• Knight Templar: Inquisitor Gnomon of the Silver Flame. He has characters wipe out a shrine to the Sovereign Host. Turns out that he's actually a powerful rakshasa working for the Lords of Dust who has been trying to ruin the Silver Flame from within.
• Large Ham: Lars Heyton coincidentally has the same initials as this trope. "Sahuagin SCUM! Keep coming, I won't die that easily!"
  • A certain rat from the Sentinels of Stormreach also does this. He was the true Founder of the Blood Tide and an Ogre mage to boot.
• The Legions of Hell: The Devil Legions. In fact, the same type of devil in that page's image appear here.
• Le Parkour:
  • Running around on top of the buildings in the Stormreach marketplace can be kinda fun, and it's an integral part of the Easter event's egg hunt.
  • Players with light or no armor and high Jump skills often use this way to get about town very quickly. For Monks, it fits their Wuxia style.
• Let's You and Him Fight: In "Time Flies", a special quest released for the 20th anniversary, the Quori have made an attempt to disrupt the timeline and interfere with events to achieve outcomes that better suit them. During the player's attempt to correct history, the Quori trick several of the player's allies from past quests into attacking them: notably Celimas, Jeets and Talbron during the revisit of "The Grotto", the Laughing Knives during the revisit of "Vault of Night", and Brawnpits during the revisit of "The Madness of Crowds". Notably, they're unable to directly manipulate Brawnpits, instead focusing their efforts on his club, Betty.
• Level Grinding: DDO discourages the type of level grinding that is common in similar games. You are rewarded the most for doing new quests, or at least a variety. Farming or grinding the same quest over and over will eventually stop granting any meaningful reward. However, equipment grind is a very big deal at high levels; some of the most powerful equipment is crafted from rare ingredients or is rarely dropped, so you may need to run a certain quest many times before you get the gear you want.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: This tends to be very inconsistent between updates. At any given point in time and for any given level, casters or melee can be the powerhouse of a group.
• Literally Shattered Lives: The common fate of enemies who die to a cold weapon or cold-related spell.
• The Lost Woods: Various examples exist in the game: in the Forgotten Realms there's the King's Forest. the Storm Horns and, minus a lot of woods, the Underdark. The majority of Barovia, the Feywild and the Isle of Dread also qualify.
• MacGuffin: The entire game is filled with enough of these for an adventurer to open their own shop. From the early-level Seal of Shan-to-Kor, to the three artifacts for the Demon Queen, to the ridiculous Sigil Frame of eight pieces in the last Necropolis quest, this game lives and breathes this stuff. Hell, you can probably count the Codex of Infinite planes and the elemental eyes too.
• Mad Artist: The main antagonist of the Harbinger of Madness series is a Mindflayer artist, Yaulthoon, who specializes in making sculptures...by turning kidnapped Stormreach citizens into monsters called the Taken. Despite being apparently defeated, Yaulthoon returns as the antagonist of the standalone quest "Fashion Madness", where he attacks a House Phiarlan fashion show in Lordsmarch Plaza to show off his own "art" made from runway models and guards that were kidnapped in the leadup to the show.
• Made of Explodium: Lots of stuff.
  • Trap boxes explode if you critically fail when trying to disarm them, certain barrels will explode if you hit them with anything (including but not limited to: your fists, swords or clubs, arrows, crossbow bolts, shurikens, and elemental magic (even ice magic), symbols of fire ignite if you go anywhere near them, and if you kill an enemy with a fire attack, its corpse will light on fire and burn away. Frozen enemies explode into ice fragments.
  • In the "Irestone Inlet" quest, you rig a boat with barrels of gunpowder and light the fuse. It's even possible to do this without the guards on board realizing you're there. If you're standing too close to the boat when it blows up, the shockwave pushes you away.
  • Players in the quest "Siegebreaker" encounter an entire room filled with explosive barrels that cascade their explosions. There are two huge super-barrels that will outright kill anyone on exploding if the player is on the same plane of the things. The Dungeon Master voice puts a light on this humorously.
  • Also the "Blown to Bits" quest. Even has an optional golem boss who offensively uses mines.
  • Or "Explosive Situation", in which a Too Stupid To Live merchant fills a warehouse with high explosives in Stormreach, a city with possibly the highest crime rate in... just about anywhere, really, and then acts surprised when it gets robbed.
• Magitek: The cranes in Stormreach Harbor in Eberron, for instance. Also pretty much every light source in the game, except the sun and a few fire pits.
• Mana Potion: The rather expensive Potions of Mnemonic Enhancement, which restore your Spell Points.
• The Man Behind the Man: Kalphan Riak, high priest of Kol Korran in Sharn and a member of the Platinum Concord, is the mysterious benefactor of both Vaunt Arcanotechic and Fathom Endeavours. As a result, while the primary villains of the "Masterminds of Sharn" and "The Soul-Splitter" packs are Lucian Vaunt and Doctor Theia Vulcana respectively, Riak occupies the position of Greater-Scope Villain as the backer for both - having then rescinded his backing and used the players to bring both down.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest:
  • The Slayer bonus, which gives you experience for killing X amount of enemies in a wilderness instance.
  • Certain dungeon quests, such as "The Butcher's Path," will also have you killing X amount of monsters as one of your objectives on the quest, either as a main objective, or as an optional objective for extra experience.
  • The later-released Monster Manual provides you with bonus EXP and Turbine Points for killing certain amounts of certain types of monsters.
• Master Poisoner: The Ninja Spy has its own brand of deadly damage-over-time poison that even works on bosses.
• Meat Moss: Shows up often in quests where the Plane of Xoriat is involved.
• Mechanical Lifeforms:
  • The Warforged, created and given souls by ancient and vaguely defined magic.
  • There's also the Iron Defenders, which Artificers get as pets, and which you fight every now and then.
• The Medic: Don't leave Stormreach without one. If an enemy comes with his own healer, he's first on your list to kill. You can also be the medic, and do a damn well good job at it.
• Min-Maxing: A staple of most any character build. Many skills — Search, Disarm Device, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff — are pretty much all-or-nothing and soon become useless if not maxed out. Every character should also be good at participating in combat. Some classes have virtually no use for some stats, such as intelligence for a cleric. Caster classes also get enough spell points that they scarcely ever have need to swing a weapon, even at low levels.
• Mind Screw: The quests "Delirium" and "Acute Delirium", both involve the forces of Xoriat in a local inn. All sorts of strange things happen, from a mini-boss fight with a kitchen key to constructing an airship out of furniture.
• Mr. Smith: In the quest "Missing", the prime suspect of a series of disappearances is a Warforged wearing a hat named Mister Smythe. He is actually a Beholder wearing a Warforged costume.
• Myth Arc: The Codex of the Infinite Planes. A powerful sentient artifact, it has been manipulating events since the beginning of the game and is all but stated to be behind the Devil invasion of Stormreach, and by extension a fair amount of the game's events. It was destroyed in an experiment gone wrong after the raid "The Shroud", but its power spread across the planes in the form of Mysterious Remnants and Codex Pages. The former turn monsters into stronger champions, and the latter are recurring MacGuffins that give the bearer power over one of the planes, and have a habit of falling in the wrong hands. The Codex Pages are used as the hook to tie-in various non-Eberron-related adventures (Keep on the Borderlands, Feywild, Scourge of the Slave Lords), and is eventually it is reassembled by the Gatekeepers for safekeeping and is held temporarily in Morgrave University in the city of Sharn. Its sentience was unwritten by the Gatekeepers, only for it to fall in the hands of Vecna, who seeks to claim dominion over Eberron.
• Naval Blockade: The monster nation of Droaam attempts to place a blockade on Stormreach during their attack on the city. Any ship that attempts Running the Blockade in or out of the harbor gets blown up by the mines that Droaam laid in the Stormreach waters. The player is tasked with destroying the mine-layer ships under the cover of darkness as the Droaam fleet is sleeping.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: The defeat of the Black Abbot (Necropolis Part Four) is what sets the events of The Thirteenth Eclipse story arc in motion. He is forced to try again by Erandis Vol, so that she can use her dragonmark.
  • The following counts, in a way. Inquisitor Gnomon urges you to kill followers of the Sovereign Host, calling them heretics. Then, in a later update, you accompany him on a trip to a cult base. Turns out that he's actually one of the "Lords of Dust", and that he used his position in the Silver Flame to distract them from the cult's actions, and to cause damage by attacking innocents and those of other religions.
  • Another example from the quest "Acute Delirium". After retrieving Belashyrra's Scepter, you must use it to close a Xoriat Portal that was opened earlier. However, it backfires and opens a portal to Belashyrra's prison in Khyber, allowing him to escape. The only way to complete the quest is to give him the Scepter so that he can wreak havoc upon Eberron.
• No OSHA Compliance: House Deneith's trash incinerator, "The Pit," is a multi-level subterranean building dug out around two Lava Pits, which are inhabited by man- and equipment-eating Oozes. The only way to move from one level to the other is to use a network of twisting, railing-less walkways that extend across the lava pits. In addition, the system's "Security System" is really just a series of deadly traps that blast said narrow walkways at 10-second intervals. The system is electrically powered, and the circuit breakers inexplicably channel the electricity through the room they're housed in. In addition, if you turn the trash incinerating furnaces on in the wrong order, you'll blow up half the city. (You can't do this because the rooms unlock in order, but it's stated in the quest introduction)
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Lieutenant Molin Kaine of the Redcloak Battalion can be utilized in such a way to help the player in "Reach for the Sky" by detaining four members of The Fallen that will otherwise attempt one last time to acquire the Stormreach Beacon after the players steal it back from Lucian Vaunt. Gish Helion and Rudus Caskrage, who aren't inside the theatre, aren't detained and still attempt to intercept the heroes.
• One-Hit Kill: Any of the dozen or so death effect spells, like Finger of Death, Destruction, and Implosion. The Grandmaster of Flowers epic destiny also has the power "Everything is Nothing," which allows you to quite literally rip your enemies out of the multiverse, killing them instantly. Should the save be made, they still take 1000 points of damage, and must save again in order to reduce that damage to 500. Bosses can't be blown out of reality, but they do take the damage.
  • There are also vorpal, slaying, banishing, smiting, and disruption weapons that kill most mooks of the appropriate type outright or deal a thousand bonus damage to strong foes.
• One Last Job: The Laughing Knives' failure to break into the Vault of Night while testing its defenses on behalf of House Kundarak has caused the group, once one of the most notorious mercenaries of Xen'drik, to break apart. Marek Malcanus, the group's leader, wants to rally everyone for one last job so that they can retire on a high note - and gets his chance when House Kundarak approaches them again due to the Vault of Night having been actually broken into and turned its defenses against them. However, Marek has to set aside his group's part in the glory when they find that the Aurum have infected the Vault's personnel with a nasty necrotic curse, holding the entrance to ensure that Stormreach remains safe from Zombie Apocalypse while the players track down those who subverted the Vault's defenses. After conquering the Vault of Night, the Laughing Knives do end up disbanding again with an unblemished record.
• Opening the Sandbox: You leave Korthos and get to Stormreach, and BAM! Look how many quests are suddenly available to you! Then, you play through all the free stuff, and if you decide to upgrade to a premium account, look at how many MORE dungeons you can buy!
• Optional Stealth: Some quests encourage you to take a stealthy approach, but it is pretty much never required. You would think a quest named "Stealty Repossession" might require stealth, but its requirement is based on kills, not the number of alarms you set off. Some quests can be completed very easily with clever use of Invisibility.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Short, bearded, gruff people who like beer and digging. Except perhaps for the Duergar, who will kill you on sight. Oddly, most NPC dwarves in Stormreach have no facial hair at all and are quite polite. The lore for them plays this straight, though.
• Out-Gambitted: Lokael, the tiefling in charge of the infiltration of the Phiarlan ball in "Partycrashers", can end up on the receiving end of this if you complete all the optional objectives. The cadre of assassins hiding in the private rooms? Dead. His Spellmaster and the mind controlled guards under his command? Dead. His Poisonmaster? Dead - and to add insult to injury, Cyan bluffs him into drinking his assassin's own poison, which had never made it to the Viceroy's cup.
• Outside-Context Problem: The heroes of Eberron end up being one to Netheril. While the Netherese take advantage of Cormyr being in chaos over the drow incursions, they made note of the influx of adventurers that apparently emerged out of thin air to protect the kingdom, threatening their own plans for conquest.
  Archwizard Amskar's Journal: On the one hand, we should thank the Drow for weakening Cormyr before our attack. However, a wounded animal draws many kinds of notice. Adventurers of all ilk have flocked to the kingdom's defense from I know not where.
• Oxygen Meter: Swimming underwater will display an oxygen meter based on your swim skill. The water breathing spell and "underwater action" items give you Super Not-Drowning Skills. Warforged do not need to breathe and inherently have no oxygen meter, nor do Necromancers or Pale masters. Because they can turn undead and don’t need oxygen.
• Palette Swap: Very common with monsters, who often use the same models but with different colors. Scrags, for example, are simply blue trolls. Mephits vary in color by type but use exactly the same model.
• Patient Zero: The Eveningstar War Hospital goes through two such occurrences:
  • In the quest "Outbreak", a local ranger and hero of Eveningstar named Peron Uthe was infected with a magical disease by the fallen druid Halsaime and sought medical attention from the clerics when he started feeling unwell. The red musk creeper that he was infected with turned him into a red musk zombie that proceeded to infect the rest of the hospital. Peron was unique in that he was the sole carrier of the disease, even as others succumbed and turned into red musk zombies themselves, and thus killing him ends the spread of the plague in Eveningstar.
  • In the quest "Murder by Night", a company of Purple Dragon knights were attacked in the King's Wood and are being treated in the hospital. They were infected with lycanthropy and proceed to turn into werewolves at night, having infected several other patients and some of the clerics.
• Poison Is Evil: The Spinner of Shadows has poison so deadly that death is certain without the help of an ethereal flame inside her prison. Other enemies have some nasty poison attacks. Averted with the Ninja Spy and some spell casters, who use their poison on the side of good.
• Power Creep: The game was released two decades ago (in 2006) and has multiple expansions, so this is inevitable. The quality of loot at any given level has increased massively, such that randomly generated loot is much better than the old quest chains with named items of same level. Epic destinies at level 20 can give your character an outrageous power boost.
• Physical God: Lolth, who managed to smash a hole in reality between Eberron and the Forgotten Realms, breaching Silver Flame wards in the process. Also, the top few members of the Devil Legions could qualify, since while not actually gods they are immortal beings of incredible power.
  • If you thought she was bad, then imagine having to deal with Vecna! Yes, that Vecna.
• Platform Hell:
  • "The Pit" quest, again. Two rooms involve platform puzzles. One involves running around on pipes while jets of steam push you backwards and fire elementals shoot at you, but is relatively easy if you are prepared for it. The other one involves co-ordinating at least four team members, two of whom must be simply ludicrous at platforming (jumping some 15 feet horizontally to catch some crosswise pipes and pull yourself up) while your friends on the ground deal with equipment-eating oozes that respawn indefinitely while manipulating the correct valves for the platforming team. Also, if you get hit while using a valve, your action stops. Oozes are immune to almost all status effects and most elemental magic (varies by color)? Oh, and watch out for the hobgoblins with bows, and the room at the top that's full of exploding barrels an ooze drops down in that room and tries to attack you, occasionally igniting the boxes.
  • As stated above, "The Coalescence Chamber." You have to navigate up a winding spiral of narrow ledges while being assaulted by troglodyte snipers and sorcerers. The real pain in the ass here is that jumping will sometimes cause you to be pushed away from the ledge, resulting in a hair-tearing plummet all the way back down to the bottom. Note that it's usually impossible to make your way back up without help from fellow party members because the monsters respawn.
  • "The Tear of Dhakaan" also has a couple platform sections... with most of the platforms trapped. Imagine the surprise of many players who, going in for the first time, realized that their first leap landed them in the middle of an acid spewer.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Gnomon, despite being a Rakasha Lord working to free the Lords of Dust and undermine the Silver Flame from within, is annoyed at the overt actions that resulted in the Silver Flame's attention being turned to the cult. As Inquisitor Gnomon, he knows that little more of his influence in the Flame will keep them away from the cult for long due to their actions.
• Press X to Die: You can type "/death" into the chat/command box to kill your character. This can be useful for teleporting to a distant tavern that you've asked to be resurrected at (although your equipment will be damaged if you /death outside of a tavern). It can also be used while incapacitated, occasionally handy if you won't be rescued but a resurrection shrine is nearby.
• Prestige Class:
  • Some of the prestige classes from tabletop are available as enhancement lines, meaning that you can reset them for a small platinum fee whenever you choose.
  • Epic Destinies, available at level 20, are also a sort of prestige class. With sufficient grinding, any character can adopt any Epic Destiny, even if it's a mismatch for their normal class.
• Properly Paranoid: Thaddeus Hitchstone, a producer who is a guest of House Phiarlan during "Partycrashers", is convinced that his former stagehand Deuce Darly is trying to murder him. He's correct, as a series of blade traps await him at the sabotaged stage controls. However, his paranoia leads him to suspecting you of wanting to murder him as well, and he doesn't trust what you tell him about the trapped controls. Darly's scheme is largely based off resentment of Thaddeus' treatment of him as well as firing him, and he has no apparent ties to the Maleficent Cabal's attempt to sabotage the Phiarlan ball.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: There is no gameplay difference between male and female characters. Naturally, this causes several male players to create female characters.
• The Quisling: Jacoby Drexelhand, the Korthos crypt keeper, has willingly given himself over to the Cult of the Devourer. He claims that it's because Sahuagin will kill everyone who doesn't convert, and he's looking out for his own skin. His true affiliations are hinted at in Heyton's Rest, where his warnings about entering the crypt are veiled threats to people looking too much in the activities within and how he predicts that within a month, the only people left in Korthos will be those loyal to the cult. He's outed as a traitor to the player by Sigmund Bauerson, who asks for his death when he finds out that Drexelhand plots to kill the tavernkeep for his resistance against the Cult.
• Raptor Attack: Raptors, first appearing in the Sharn expansion, are large and completely featherless scaly dinosaurs. Notably averted by Isle of Dread raptors, which have a full coat of feathers. However, Dread raptors encountered in quests are usually without feathers.
• Religion of Evil: There are quite a few religions that would count, including:
  • The Devourer cult on Korthos.
  • The Dark Six cult on Sorrowdusk.
  • The Vulkoorim in Menechtarun, a group of drow who worship the scorpion god Vulkoor. Interestingly, most other Vulkoor worshipers are much more benign. It is implied that the Vulkoorim’s taste for Human Sacrifice was intentionally introduced by Queen Lailat, but Vulkoor himself seems to approve.
  • The cult of the Black Abbot in the Necropolis.
  • The cult of the Spinner of Shadows
  • The Path of Inspiration.
  • The Lord of Blades' cult.
    • Interestingly enough, the player can be a follower of this cult as a Warforged. These include Warforged Paladins. Who are like every other paladin, paragons of goodness.
  • The cult/empire of Lolth.
  • The cult of the Hidden Hand.
• Repeatable Quest: Adventures are infinitely repeatable on four different difficulty levels each. The first play on each adventure/difficulty combo gives an array of experience bonuses, while subsequent replays start adding penalties, eventually hard-capping the XP gain at a very low number for extreme repetition. Even though you can repeat quests, you probably shouldn't (except if you are hunting for specific items available only in that quest). Ransack is a thing, so don’t do it too often
• Resignations Not Accepted: Lady Nepenthe's son sought to break ties with the Blood of Vol, leave Aerenal and join his mother in Stormreach. In response, they shot his airship out of the air - killing all others aboard - and then raised his body as a skeleton to guard one of their holdings in the Stormreach sewers, and sent a letter taunting his mother with this.
• Resurrection Sickness: Being resurrected will afflict you with a minor debuff for one minute. If you die and get resurrected again within this minute, the debuff will be more and more severe each time until you are able to stay alive long enough to recover. The point of this is to prevent cheesy suicide tactics; whatever keeps killing you is only getting harder and harder to fight because of the stacking debuffs.
• Resurrective Immortality: Outsiders like devils can only die permanently on their home plane and will reform there if killed elsewhere. This carries over from D&D 3.5, but is a departure from the standard Eberron setting, where immortal outsiders will eventually reform no matter what.
• Retcon: Certain quests were overhaul over time, resulting in changes:
  • The devil invasion of Stormreach that saw the original marketplace bazaar destroyed originally happened following "The Shroud" from the Veil of Twilight story arc. "The Chronoscope" changes it into having taken place well before the adventurer was stranded on Korthos.
  • After the Catacombs story arc overhaul of Update 45, Marguerite Dryden no longer appears as a wraith chasing the party at the end of "Setting the Wards: The Patriarchs' Crypt". She is still alive, though she is possessed by the demonic Beast of Bel Shalor, which she will transform into and then chase the party. As she is still alive, a choice comes up in "Endgame: Marguerite" where players can spare her or kill her, which will change Friar Renau's dialogue appropriately based off of the decision. The spirit haunting Archbishop Dryden is changed from his brother Arkasic to his uncle Gerard, who takes over Arkasic's role as the Arc Villain. Previously, Gerard was simply a ghast protecting the details of the Duality that were written on his tomb within the Catacombs. Bishop Thaddeus Graylight was added as Dryden's right-hand man and the one behind the sabotage of the Catacomb's wards on Gerard's orders, whereas Dryden had originally been the one to do so while possessed by Arkasic. Fitzwood, the Sole Survivor of the Sanctuary, was changed to be afflicted with Lycanthropy; instead of literally disappearing before your eyes, leaving doubt that he had even been there in the first place, he transforms into a werewolf at the least opportune time and has to be killed.
  • "An Explosive Situation" was overhauled from a solo quest into a standard group quest in Update 66. In doing so, the Quickfoot thieves were changed to being of the Bilge Rat criminal gang, and the Quickfoot Master Thief replaced with a Bilge Rat Gifted who, unlike the rest of his gang, is a wererat. The Quickfoot were moved to a new safehouse in the Cerulean Hills.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Oriphaun Huntsilver is a member of House Huntsilver, one of the most prominent noble families of Cormyr owing to their close ties to the royal line. To his family's displeasure, he has taken to the life of a treasure hunter and adventurer, though he puts his relic hunting and thrill-seeking aside when he discovers that Netheril has infiltrated Wheloon and plans to strike against Cormyr from the heart of the kingdom. From then on he acts as a stalwart protector of his nation, even being inducted into the Harpers when he brought them the Nether Scroll that the Netherese were using to tap into the Shadowfell.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of "Reach for the Sky", any member of The Fallen guild that wasn't detained by Molin Kaine flee combat at low health aside from the minotaur Rudus Caskrage, who stands his ground and dies in battle. In the event where the mercenaries are detained, only Gish Helion and Rudus Caskrage confront the players in the climax.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: There are several boss monsters that are or were imprisoned in some fashion. Three of them are arc villains, and can be punched out. The Devourer cult at the beginning of the game tries to release a "Devourer beast" that cannot be punched out, meaning that you have to reverse their efforts to thaw it out. The Spinner of Shadows, sealed for eons in the plane of Khyber, is another canned boss that led to a MUCH more powerful goddess. Word of warning, there is a raid boss in the Isle of Dread wilderness.
• Self-Made Orphan: Gatekeeper initiate Lily Hargrove is manipulated by a coven of hags into killing her own family, as discovered in "Rosemary's Ballad". Her father Sage and her sister Rose return as a vengeful undead, whereas her mother Briar appears oblivious to her status as a ghost and mistakes the player for Lily.
• Sentry Gun: Magefire Cannons, and to a lesser extent, the Artificer's Flame Turret spell.
• Shattering the Illusion: The first section of the "Partycrashers" quest takes place in the Phiarlan Illusionarium, which is packed with illusionary enemies and traps that can, and will, hurt you. The only way to get past them is to destroy the Dragonmarks of Shadow that created them.
• Shipwreck Start: New player characters start out shipwrecked on the island of Korthos off the coast of Xen'drik. The ship turns out to have been wrecked because of a dragon that is being controlled by cultists of the Devourer, and the quests on the island involve fighting the cult, protecting the villagers that live on the island, and eventually dealing with those controlling the dragon.
• Shoot the Mage First: Killing the casters first is a good rule to follow, given the general danger of spellcasters in D&D in general.
• Shout-Out: Stuffed to the gills with them. From Heavy Metal references all over the place such as a Scorpion boss named Schenker]] to a quest called Running with the Devils to a bard themed sword with the enscription Anthem of the heart; Anthem of the mind to Star Wars flavored quotes in NPC text to Mythology Gags to other D&D properties (for example, in the quest Fear Factory there's an optional locked door behind which first you find a dead Acrobat. Further down you fight an undead Cavalier, Ranger, Magician, and Barbarian. Popular theory is the Thief sold them out. Makes the end of Dungeons & Dragons (1983) a bit Harsher in Hindsight.)
  • For an exhaustive list, see this page on the DDO wiki: https://ddowiki.com/page/References_in_DDO
  • You can also check out this forum thread: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/364243-Easter-Eggs-and-Puns-in-DDO
  • There's a raid featuring three weapons named Nightmare, the Fallen Moon; Celestia, Brightest Star of Day; and Twilight, Element of Magic.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: A recurring theme during Sharn questing are the people of the city looking down on the player characters as coming from the wilds of Xen'drik. During one quest, the Xen'drik adventurers are referred to as "barbarians", and various NPCs recognize the player as coming from Xen'drik from their appearance.
• Squishy Wizard: Sorcerers and Wizards gain less health per level than most other classes.
• Smug Snake: The Black Abbot was confident that he'd be able to use Erandis Vol to his own means and betray her when he had no more use of her. Unfortunately, he ends up falling under her control when she comes up with a spell that allows her to control another lich. He is furious at having been Out-Gambitted by her, declaring in his journal entries that he was the one who was worthy of godhood. Not only does Erandis compel him to obey her, but she takes control of his followers, his most powerful lieutenants, and had the Black Bishop's flesh maker killed, ruining his plans for an army of flesh golems.
• Sole Survivor: Of the three hags from "Housekeeping", Cadence is the only one who survives the events of the Fables of the Feywild story, on account of begging the player not to kill her in exchange for the True Name of the slumbering Lord Arden and remaining away from the player for a very long time. While she escapes with her life, as Hyrsam's agent she failed her scheme to keep Lord Arden asleep and can no longer interfere with the player.
• Sore Loser: Grogan, the bugbear promoter of Tharashk Arena, enters the arena himself with his enforcers after the party kills the arena's reigning champion and claims the Oath of Droaam as their prize.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Graden Wylkes is dead in the original setting, and his son Jonas succeeded him as Coin Lord. In DDO, Graden still lives and Jonas needs to be rescued from the Path of Inspiration.
• Standard Fantasy Races: It started with six: Humans, Elves, Halflings, Dwarves, Warforged, Drow. More options have been steadily added on a regular basis.
• Stat Sticks: Except for the rarely used Eldritch Knight enhancement line, arcane casters have no business making melee attacks. Most wizards and sorcerers will instead carry a quarterstaff or dual scepters with bonuses to spell damage and spell critical chance.
• Steampunk: Considering the setting, the game has this and Dungeon Punk all over the place, from the low-level The Waterworks and Shan-To-Kor, to the advanced adversaries in the Cannith Manufactuary. The Menace of the Underdark expansion, however, sticks to the high-fantasy campaign settings when you visit the Forgotten Realms. Comes roaring back with the adventures set in Sharn, a major city that essentially runs on a blend of magic and industrial technology.
• Summon Magic: Every spellcasting class except Paladin and Artificer has access to either the Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally line of spells, Artificers can summon a stationary fire-shooting turret, and any player can hire a mercenary to fight beside them. There's an associated Feat (Augment Summoning) that makes all summoned creatures and hirelings more powerful.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Lucian Vaunt insists that his Arcane Assistant is perfectly safe, has no side effects, and is built to the highest standards of quality. He completely side-steps the question of whether the product was actually tested, let alone lying about how it has a major side effect: it draws from the user's life force to be powered and will kill them through repeated usage. If anything, his guarantee of it lasting for a lifetime is at least technically truthful.
• Taken for Granite: in one quest, a Medusa has petrified every palace guard and noble in a palace. It can (temporarily) happen to her thanks to a mirror placed there.
• Thanatos Gambit: Both Gnomon and Karas' deaths seal the ritual that begins unraveling the prison of the Spinner of Shadows. Gnomon may have been unaware of it, but Karas dies knowing that his death will bring about the return of the Spinner.
• The Can Kicked Him: A challenge named Moving Targets has an optional objective of killing a boss in the toilets.
• Time Travel: The Chronoscope Raid, where you go back in time to the Devil invasion in the Stormreach Marketplace.
• Too Dumb to Live: Somehow Tremas got it into his head that it would be a good idea to kill a powerful devil by aging him to death. Devils are immortal, and since Tremas is a tiefling there is no reason why he would not know this (having likely worked with them for his entire adult life). He still acts surprised when it fails, though.
  • The Delirium and Acute Delirium quests were caused by an apprentice who wanted to show off to his girlfriend with a scepter created by the Lord of Eyes, the Daelkyr Prince of Madness. You can guess what happens...
  • House Deneith's tower is heavily-protected from the ground but has a completely undefended airship dock at the top. The tower guards even point out the enemy would have to fly like a bird to attack. They're fighting pirates, who have airships. Guess what happens. Luckily for them, Visbane wasn't as oblivious to this as the rest of them.
• Tragic Monster:
  • In "Return to the Sanctuary", Fitzwood, one of the wards kept in the Sanctuary beneath the Silver Flame's cathedral, is a werewolf. The Silver Flame had an alchemist on retainer working for a cure for him, but as the curse was inherited from his father, there is no cure for his state and the chemist resigned rather than continue working on a futile prospect.
  • The patients of the Eveningstar War Hospital have to go through two instances of turning into monsters. In "Outbreak", Peron Uthe is described in revered tones as a beloved hero of Eveningstar, yet being unknowingly infected with a red musk disease he succumbs and infects many patients awaiting treatment for wounds inflicted by the Drow; and in "Murder by Night", the company of Purple Dragon Knights also being treated after battle in the King's Forest were infected with lycanthropy, which they unknowingly spread to other patients and even some of the clerics on staff after unconsciously murdering the head priest.
• Treacherous Quest Giver:
  • "Wayfinder" Dael in the Marketplace is not an actual representative of the Wayfinder Foundation. In truth, she's a Con Woman who dupes the player into finding the Seal of Shan-To-Kor for her, ostensibly so that it could be taken back to Sharn for safekeeping, only to turn around and try selling it to Sor'jek Incanni. As she can later state in "Mired in Kobolds" if she doesn't recognize the player, Sor'jek simply took the seal from her and knocked her off his mountain.
  • Inquisitor Gnomon in Bogwater Tavern is no mere member of the Church of the Silver Flame, but actually a rakshasa using his position to ruin the Silver Flame from within by hiring adventurers to attack innocents and other good-aligned religions throughout Stormreach.
  • Anton Westmore of Vaunt Arcanotechnic directs players to the Grandview Arms hostel, where his employer Lucian Vaunt seeks to have a meeting with you about helping find the missing Stormreach Beacon. It's a trap, as Vaunt was the one who stole the Beacon in the first place. When you return, Anton is mildly surprised, but suggests staying out of Vaunt's way and retreating back to Stormreach and the jungles of Xen'drik.
• True Companions: Jeets Shimis and Talbron Tewn are an inseparable pair, but never far behind them is Cellimas Villuhne, whose time with them softened her to Jeets' antics. While Jeets and Talbron are almost never apart, Cellimas is occasionally away from her companions; Talbron states in House Cannith that she "has found... battles of her own, elsewhere".
• The Undead: They tend to be Goddamn Bats to rogues, because a +5 Holy Shortsword of Disruption is a mite costly at lower levels (and can't be used anyway until you're much higher in character level). On the other hand, they are loveable for wizards, especially if you have Command Undead (LV2 Necromancy specialisation spell) to turn them into your temporarily allies. Bonus point for Skeletal Knight summon for Wizard class.
• Understatement: After you destroy the Quori Mindsunder in "Misery's Peak," the Dungeon Master notes that the dragon you just freed from its power looks "very annoyed" — as she uses her ice breath on the Mind Flayer that had her under its thrall and turns it into a popsicle.
  • Unintentional example: The game uses the same tooltip to indicate whenever you detect a way to defuse a trap. This leads to some hilarious moments when, as you run straight into a spike pit / tunnel filled with acid jets / fire beam / whatever, the game will merrily inform you: "Your acute senses detect that danger is nearby." (Better still, this doesn't happen if the trap can't be defused!)
• The Unfought: Several major villains are never fought directly, usually because they are either too weak or too strong for a boss fight, or because it would be more appropriate to beat them some other way.
  • Darastrix Achthend, the mind flayer controlling the dragon on Korthos, is indirectly dealt with by destroying the Quori Mindsunder. Aussircaex instantly kills him with her icy breath once the Mindsunder is destroyed. In the "Time Flies" 20th anniversary quest, you get a chance to fight him directly when you travel back through time to Misery's Peak.
  • Lucian Vaunt is an artificer with no known combat ability, and is killed when you take back the Stormreach Beacon he stole, allowing the forgewraiths his crimes created to take their revenge. The actual final fight is against the Fallen, a recurring band of mercenaries in his employ. While the Forge Artificer Wraith that forms from his body is fought almost immediately after taking back the Beacon, it teleports away at 10% HP and presumably merges into the Forgewraith Titan from "Too Hot to Handle".
  • Hyrsam is an archfey, essentially a god, and beating him requires trickery and subterfuge rather than combat. Since he had to hide his immortality in a needle to steal the Codex from the Gatekeepers without immediately being detected, you steal the needle and threaten him with it, getting him to stand down without a fight.
  • Vecna is a god from a universe beyond Eberron trying to make his way in and conquer it. Despite several appearances, he is technically only partially manifested and isn’t really physically present in Eberron, so you beat him by helping the Traveler complete a ritual that permanently locks him out.
  • On the side of minor antagonists, Eldamir Fallowcrest from "Recovering the Lost Tome" and Miller Tarrigan Rosethorn from "The Miller's Debt" disappear after setting their traps upon the adventurers investigating them. While in both cases, the traps are defeated, both Fallowcrest and the Miller remain unconfronted for their attempts at killing the player. In Miller Tarrigan's case, Berrigan Enge is satisfied with the debts being paid and won't get involved in what he sees as a personal dispute between Tarrigan and yourself.
• The Unseen: Saidan Boromar, patriarch of the Boromar Clan of Sharn, has yet to be seen in-game. However, his presence is felt throughout the "Masterminds of Sharn" quests, as Lucian Vaunt managed to get quite close to him and hires his people to kill the Xen'drik adventurers searching for the Stormreach Beacon. Eventually, he takes an interest in the adventurers and sends Jix Boromar to aid them in toppling Vaunt when he's fallen out of favor with the Aurum.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: A number of quests require a minimum number of people to coordinate levers and buttons, or to pass items to each other; trying to tackle the quest while shorthanded can render it unwinnable. Such quests warn you ahead of time that it needs two or more player characters, and that hirelings may not be enough.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Fred, the resident Eldritch Abomination brain-eater/feat retrainer. Also Hennespyra, the Argonnessen emissary, who periodically flies into Stormreach as a gigantic white dragon and lands right next to the bank in the Marketplace before bothering to assume humanoid form.
• Useless Useful Spell: Plenty of them:
  • Anything that does stat damage is not very useful, with the exception of reducing an enemy's saves for a follow up instant death spell.
  • Turn Undead, which can incapacitate or destroy targets but seldom works on anything powerful enough to be worth fighting in the first place. This ability can only work on so many, so keep a weapon handy for anything still standing
  • Fear, which mostly causes weak enemies to run away and thus take longer to kill. Very annoying to deal with for players if they don’t have the proper protection against it.
  • Bosses, of course, are largely immune to stat damaging, along with all other forms of instant death, level drain, paralysis, charm, stun, petrification, knockdown and immobilization. In fact, the only spells worth using on a boss are ones that do as much direct damage per spellpoint as possible.
• Vancian Magic: Played straight on points one (spells do one thing and only that one thing) and three (spell levels, caster levels, must rest to recharge spells), averted on point two: spellcasting players have a Mana Meter.
• Vengeful Ghost: The forgewraiths in “Masterminds of Sharn” are murderous fire ghosts spawned from a Magitek industrial accident. They want one thing above all else - to kill Lucian Vaunt, the man responsible for the disaster - but their rage also extends to industry and the city of Sharn in general.
• Video Game Caring Potential: After everything that transpired in the Catacombs, you can choose to spare Marguerite Dryden when you encounter her in the Catacombs. Friar Renau will be ecstatic and say that Marguerite is safe and that she can no longer hear the voices of the demons plaguing her.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • If you follow the Archbishop's orders and kill Marguerite in the Catacombs, she dies there. Friar Renau will give you your reward for solving the problems, but expresses that his faith is no longer what it was and is heartbroken at the loss of his niece.
  • The quest "Purge the Heretics" has you purge a chapel to the Sovereign Host in House Phiarlan for Inquisitor Gnomon of the Silver Flame, who claims them to be heretics. To hammer the point home that something may be suspect about Gnomon's motives, not only must you kill at least ten preachers and have optional objectives to kill the assembled worshippers and their mercenary defenders, but the leaders of faith that you are ordered to eliminate are named Celine Peacemaker and Oisin the Merciful.
  • A recent quest involving time travel allows you to water a sapling from centuries in the past. You can then jump to the present day where the sapling has grown into a mighty tree and a dryad. Instead of this helping you in some way, you can then simply kill the dryad and the tree in order to get a chest full of loot that may not even be useful.
• Villain Ball:
  • Suulomades apparently grabbed this while planning his attack on Stormreach. As opposed to simply waltzing through a city where not a single living soul is strong enough to take him on, he sends an army of mid-level Mooks to do his dirty work while he was back on Shavarath. This resulted in the devils losing the battle when it could have been won with very little effort.
  • Tremas also does this when he tries to kill Suulomades by aging him to death. Suulomades then does it again while overlapping with Lawful Stupid by taking Tremas to Shavarath to face the prescribed punishment (torture) instead of entering a battle that his much weaker minions are losing.
• Villainous Breakdown: Strahd completely loses it when Ireena is freed from Barovia and is out of his grasp at the end of "Sunrise".
  Strahd von Zarovich: SHE IS MINE! She's escaped! Escaped to where I cannot follow! And you helped her! I will make you suffer for that.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted. Malicia is the main antagonist of a level 5 story arc, and is also the main antagonist of a level 18 quest. In both cases she is of a higher level than the characters. She survives anyway, cause no one knows which plane she is from.
• Violation of Common Sense: "The Pit," yet again. Often the general strategy of the Pit, when going from up high to a lower point, is to jump off and use your feather-falling boots to survive, and steer yourself to the next area. Jumping off cliffs as shortcuts in general tends to be this.
  • One of the quests has you launching yourself from a ballistae to get into enemy settlement. Good time to get your Feather Falling boots on? No. If you keep them on, one of the ballistae will launch you in a wolf pack led by Mini-Boss Alfa. Others? They'll just send you to the other side of the level to run back again.
• War Refugees: The background of the game starts with the adventurer being one of many who fled the devastation of the Last War in Khorvaire to the continent of Xen'drik in search of a fresh start in the city of Stormreach. The player character's ship ends up being sunk by a dragon during the voyage, stranding them on Korthos Island that is suffering from a cult of the Devourer.
• Wham Line: When the nature of the Thread of the Weave is unveiled in "The Portal Opens":
  Hekta Szind: You're too late to stop my scrying, surface dwellers! Now I will find the Thread of the Weave and deliver it to Lolth! Wait... Can it be? It's the girl - Ana!
• Wham Shot: The Catacombs story arc starts off as an innocuous request on the behalf of Friar Renau to check up on his niece Marguerite, who is kept in the Sanctuary of the Silver Flame cathedral. Though everything seems to be in order upon first entering the Catacombs' main chamber, it becomes clear that something very wrong has taken place immediately upon entering the Sanctuary itself, as there is a dead Silver Flame guard right in front of the entrance and several rotting corpses in the hallway to the north wing.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Averted with the Spinner of Shadows. Midway into traversing the Rift between Worlds, the narrator idly speculates on what the Spinner could do now that she was free. However, she instead becomes one with Lolth just shortly before the end of the quest.
  • Dedryk Black disappears after the Wheloon Prison prequel quests, having been freed from captivity by the Shadar-kai assassin Teralyn. Despite his key role in the Disciples of Shadow story arc, he has no role in the Shadowfell Conspiracy expansion or the events that unfold in Wheloon Prison.
• Would Hurt a Child: In "The Lost Seekers" arc, the kobolds of the Waterworks are involved in a string of kidnappings of children from Stormreach Harbor. Two such children, Arlos and Venn ar-Kerran, were captured while exploring the sewers for the Seal of Shan-to-Kor. Venn is already dead by the time you find him, having been tortured to death days earlier by the Tunnelworm interrogator.
• You All Look Familiar:
  • Inverted. The NPCs are fairly varied... it's the player characters who tend to all look the same.
  • The enemy NPCs (i.e. monsters) will all use the same character model. Any given batch of cultists will look an awful lot like any other given batch of cultists.
  • The final quest of Korthos Island has the player (or player in front, if in a party) turn a corner to see several cultists dressed in all white marching in a 2x3 formation. All identical down to walking in step.
• You Don't Look Like You: Race-wise, the tieflings. Prior to their addition as a playable race in Update 41 Patch 4, the tieflings were based off their 3.5 appearance - that is, superficially human, but with a few traits that hint at their fiendish heritage. However, the playable race version of the tiefling is based off of the 4e-5e tiefling with various shades of otherworldly colors as skin tones, fiendish horns on their brows, and tails. NPC tieflings released prior to this update were not changed, thus resulting in modern tieflings being side-by-side with the old tieflings. This is most obvious in the Phiarlan Carnival story arc, where the tieflings of the Maleficent Cabal led by the succubus Malicia are the primary antagonists that you come across.
• You Have to Burn the Web: Some of the earlier quests involve webs that block your progress. You can get through them with a cutting weapon, a flaming weapon, or a fire spell... Or any other mundane weapon, or your fists, or any kind of attack spell. It's worth noting though, that the webs WILL simply shrivel away if you light them on fire.
  • The actual Web spell can be burned away with a fireball or burning hands spells or some other fire area effect.
  • Some higher-level quests have web curtains which cannot be burned or damaged in any way, but as soon as you kill the spiders involved, the webs part obligingly.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: In the Wheloon Prison prequel quests, you go to great lengths to capture Dedryk Black, a lieutenant of the disciples of Shar in Cormyr. Despite the efforts gone through to capture him in the Storm Horns and ensure that he reaches Wheloon Prison by boat, he ends up being freed by the Shar worshippers during a raid on Whelon that distracted the players away from the magistrate's office where he was being held.
• Zerg Rush: Kobolds and zombies are fond of this tactic. There is a quest where the player must kill 200 kobolds, who come in large waves.
  • Another quest cranks this up where you have to beat 200+ hobgoblins and bugbears, which are significantly more of a threat due to almost half of them being casters and require strategy rather than brute force to thin out. The last wave contains ogres.
  • Devil assault is another quest that follows this formula. You have to deal with devils and fiend-bloods that get stronger depending on the difficulty you play on.
• Zombie Apocalypse:
  • The Aurum, in their scheme to break into the Vault of Night along with the dragon Velah, unleash one on the bank of Kundarak's staff and personnel. Dwarven bankers, guards and engineers throughout the Vault's facilities have been killed and raised through a highly contagious disease named "Necrotic Touch", which can infect players and does a whopping flat 10 Constitution damage if not removed within a minute of infection. Orphene, the magical expert of the Laughing Knives, came up with a magical wand to counter the Touch's effects. The Laughing Knives devote their time in the Vault to holding the entrance so that none of them break out and unleash the plague on the rest of Stormreach, leaving the players to find and eliminate whoever planned the attack.
  • Before it was updated, most incursions of Mabar into Delera’s graveyard counted as this.