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shadow_archmagi
2009-06-28, 08:39 PM
So, today my players got to reminiscing about all the good times they've had in the past, a huge percentage of which were times had while I was DMing. In particular, they recalled a vampire/orc/ranger throwaway character called Orcy The Orc Orc who I'd planned as a minor villian (they were supposed to meet him once and then kill him and then find out that killing him was a mistake) but who actually ended up allying the party (instead of killing him, the paladin ended up having the crap beaten out of him and being saved at the last minute by the rest of the party).

So, fellow DMs, what are the moments your PCs, or sheer chance made awesome and have become new memes among your friends?

Indon
2009-06-28, 08:58 PM
Hmm... a couple offhand...

Okay, I had a Monk in a Ravenloft campaign, and our DM was houseruling critical failures. So in one battle, I ended up breaking three bones to critical 1's to hit.

Our group tends not to play with critical failure rules anymore. I'm mostly why.

(Other amusing critical failure stories involve a dual wielding Barbarian who managed to hurl both of his weapons away from him on more than one occasion, and a bard who broke a leg trying to climb a knotted rope in an out-of-combat situation)

In a different campaign, our DM was running a toughness system for health. We had a skirmish with the big bad that was supposed to be breaking off shortly - one of us took a swipe at the big bad, scored a crit, and the big bad rolled very poorly on his toughness.

So we one-shot him.

SoD
2009-06-28, 09:23 PM
I remember the party I was in, I was playing a Chitine Paladin of Freedom (complicated backstory there) who quad-weilded whip-daggers. We also have a Warforged Wizard in the party. We're in the prejudiced quarter of town* and we see a bunch of humans beating up a Warforged (weaponless). Our wizard charges, I detect evil and sense that one of them is glowing, and also charge, the barbarian charges because we are, his girlfriend (in game, not out of game), the rogue sighs and goes along with it as does the rest of the party. I'm focusing all my attention on the EVIL one, and my full attack goes something like this; Critical Miss And Accidentally Throw My Whip-Dagger Away, Critical Miss And Get My Second Whip-Dagger Wrapped Around A Tree Branch, Miss Rather Badly And Hit The Ground In Front Of The Evil One, Critical Hit And Kill Him. Meanwhile, the barbarian has slaughtered a bunch of the others, as has the warforged, and then the others ran off. Then the city watch arrived. And saw us, armed to the teeth, surrounded by dead bodies, including the warforged who has been killed before we could save him.


*Warforged Player; We go to the Prejudiced Section of town.
DM: The What?
WP: where they don't like warforged.
DM:...why don't they like warforged?
WP; Because we take all their jobs by not sleeping.
DM:...fine. You go to the Prejudiced Quarter of town. Where's my city map, I think I'll need to pencil this bit in...

Thajocoth
2009-06-28, 11:00 PM
This one DM I have... EVERY encounter is memorable. It's getting more to the point where they were obviously meant to be, but here are a few from the second adventure we had him for...

A group of Orcs and a ravine. The Fighter is weilding a polearm. He has powers that push and pull with that polearm.

In one round (with an action point) he knocked the chief prone, pushes him, then pulls him back in. He essentially dug his polearm in and started mopping the floor with him. It was hilarious.

Later, the three of us are fighting a pair of Basilisks and a Dryad. By this I mean, the Fighter is soloing Basilisks who, due to their size, can't get passed him and keep taking AOs for trying to, getting his combat superiority in their faces, while the Warlord and I (Rogue) harass the Dryad. The Fighter nearly turned to stone several times, but made that last save each time. When the Fighter finally finished with the Basilisks and gave me a flank, I was able to finish off the Dryad. (The Warlord spent most of the fight stuck in brambles.)

We're fighting some Gargoyles later and some Gibbering Beast (who I off in the 1st round). After the Gargoyles take a pretty bad beating, they go up on this ledge and turn to stone. We all climb up & I pull on one to no avail. Realizing I would've shattered it if I didn't roll a natural one, the gargoyles fly off the ledge. We're now 20 feet up, on a ledge, with flying creatures, like, 4 squares away. The Fighter & I each leap off the wall, grab a Gargoyle and plummet to the ground, pushing the Gargoyle downward so it'd take 1/2 our fall damages for us in addition to their own. The Fighter's got Catstep Boots, so he takes 1/2 of the remaining damage and doesn't fall prone. I'm trained in Acrobatics and negate all my remaining damage with my roll and I've got Acrobat Boots, so I use my Minor to stand up from prone. Again, awesome. After that fight, the campaign was renamed from "Paragon Campaign" to "Legends of Wrestling 2".

Later, the Fighter was standing in a pit of lamp oil trying to disarm a trap when a think above him starts shooting off sparks. I hit it with a pie from my Everlasting Provisions, covering the sparking mechanism for a round so he could get out. I'm a Halfling, so I've gotta have pies, right?

Those were the 1st, 3rd, 5th & 6th encounters/skill challenges in that adventure.

WeeFreeMen
2009-06-29, 07:25 AM
A long time ago, in my first campaign, My first character was a Shugenja (water spec)

Our DM had us fighting a undead horde, lead by a undead general of some sort.
Our characters had alot of money, and our DM allowed us to get special DM items at our request and his discretion, so I wished for a "Healing Gauntlet" the DM in turn gave me a Glove that can cast "Heal" at my CL as a Ray..

Keep that in mind...

The DM set the Undead general against us and he greeted us with a proposition of joining him..my Shugenja had a spark of insanity and he made a 20 bluff on that I would join the Undead side yada yada yada..This in turn ended up with me "Shaking Hands" with the Undead General at which point I activated my Glove and 1 shot our boss ^_^d

Ever since then its been a group joke and brought up on several occasions
-Thats all I got ;p

Adumbration
2009-06-29, 08:08 AM
I remember the party I was in, I was playing a Chitine Paladin of Freedom (complicated backstory there) who quad-weilded whip-daggers. We also have a Warforged Wizard in the party. We're in the prejudiced quarter of town* and we see a bunch of humans beating up a Warforged (weaponless). Our wizard charges, I detect evil and sense that one of them is glowing, and also charge, the barbarian charges because we are, his girlfriend (in game, not out of game), the rogue sighs and goes along with it as does the rest of the party. I'm focusing all my attention on the EVIL one, and my full attack goes something like this; Critical Miss And Accidentally Throw My Whip-Dagger Away, Critical Miss And Get My Second Whip-Dagger Wrapped Around A Tree Branch, Miss Rather Badly And Hit The Ground In Front Of The Evil One, Critical Hit And Kill Him. Meanwhile, the barbarian has slaughtered a bunch of the others, as has the warforged, and then the others ran off. Then the city watch arrived. And saw us, armed to the teeth, surrounded by dead bodies, including the warforged who has been killed before we could save him.



You know, that sounds suspiciously similar to the one encounter our DM had. In our case, however, we walked past nonchalantly and my warforged wizard filed a complaint to the sheriff of the nearby city. :smalltongue:

Ormur
2009-06-29, 08:49 AM
I remember vividly when our 2nd level characters were attacked by an angry hog that was just supposed to be another random encounter. We failed all our attack rolls and the hog kept hitting until it killed my cleric partner. Then follows a mad dash to get him to the next valley where I have to find a powerful druid (probably handwaved by the DM to keep my friend in game) that could revive my friend. That of course meant a significant debt for us as 2nd level characters and we got sent us on a quest and the Druid became a recurring character.

Cyrion
2009-06-29, 09:10 AM
I was DMing some gnomes that asked one of the characters in the party to take out a particular monster for them. They gave a good description of the beast and warned him to watch out for its spines and snake tail. They left out some crucial information, whether through omission or because they didn't know it is still up for debate...

"I move up, staying out of range of the tail, and shoot it with my pistol."

"You've annoyed it. It turns around and breathes fire at you."

"What? Yeah right."

"Really, it breathes fire. Make your dodge."

"Hey! Nobody told me it BREATHES FIRE!!"

That line became a mantra for the group for quite some time. The player was also much more paranoid about "buying a pig in a poke."

Arcane Copycat
2009-06-29, 09:31 AM
I decided that if a player got a high enough Arcana check while making Blast patches, instead of doing damage and immobilizing, they were able to stick them to the bottom of their shoes and use them to blast jump. They decided that this was a brilliant plan that could never ever go wrong and wasted half the party gold on making these, although they only made enough for 5 pairs.

While fighting a random encounter near a massive waterfall, the rogue had managed to lure one of the Lizardfolk near the edge. Well, here's the transcript...


Me: So, you're up, what's the plan?
Rogue: Right, I'm using great leap and jumping at the Lizard
Me: What, instead of charging and bull rushing you want to jump?
Rogue: ... sort of.... Can I? It'll look a lot cooler, you know it.
Me: Fine, make the check.
*rolls a 20*
Me: Alright, you leap clean into it. Roll to push him back.
Rogue: No, I want to make a grab check mid-air, then action point, kick into him detonating my blast jumps, with him taking the full force. I figure it should be good for at least 3 squares away from the edge.
Me: ... If that wasn't the most awesome visual image in my head right now I'd say no, but it's too good to pas up. Roll grab
*rolls a 19*.
Rogue: right, now for the big finale. I scream like Captain Falcon does when he does his Up+B in Brawl. *rolls a 20*

Still one of my favorite memories.


Also, SoD, I'm quoting that in my sig

Comet
2009-06-29, 09:37 AM
Rogue: right, now for the big finale. I scream like Captain Falcon does when he does his Up+B in Brawl
This Rogue is a man of good taste. :smallbiggrin:

Artanis
2009-06-29, 11:07 AM
In my first 3.5 campaign, we were on our way to a town to help defend it from an approaching goblin army. We decided to stop long enough to slow down the army's forward couple squads. We made our stand on a cliffside road that was flanked on one side by a deadly sheer drop and on the other by a slippery upward slope that led to a rock face. But all of this wasn't what made it memorable.

What made it memorable was that it was in OpenRPG...and we had access to the drawing tools.

The next twenty or thirty minutes was some of the most fun I've ever had in an RPG as we used the battle map to draw up an ambush that would make Wile E. Coyote proud. It had all the hallmarks of one of his traps: disguised terrain, precariously-balanced boulders, dangerously-located bait, explosives, pointy objects, and even a crude but descriptive blueprint of the hilarity to ensue. It turned an otherwise fairly generic encounter into one that I don't think I'll ever forget :smallcool:

aarondirebear
2009-06-29, 12:55 PM
So, today my players got to reminiscing about all the good times they've had in the past, a huge percentage of which were times had while I was DMing. In particular, they recalled a vampire/orc/ranger throwaway character called Orcy The Orc Orc who I'd planned as a minor villian (they were supposed to meet him once and then kill him and then find out that killing him was a mistake) but who actually ended up allying the party (instead of killing him, the paladin ended up having the crap beaten out of him and being saved at the last minute by the rest of the party).

So, fellow DMs, what are the moments your PCs, or sheer chance made awesome and have become new memes among your friends?

My players have latched onto this weird thing one PC made up and the rest kinda expanded it. He started spreading the legend of the "Great and Mighty Vorpal Moose", accompanied by hand signs. It didn't stop there, now he's the "Great and Mighty Vorpal Moose of Archery Cash coin dr evil elephants booze drugs women and rock and roll" (i don't even know how dr evil and rock and roll got in there in a bloody tolkienesque fantasy game, i cant control these guys for the life of me).

Odd thing is when i had them meet the Great mighty Vorpal moose, who had achieved demigodhood thanks to the players inadvertently starting a cult, they got MAD at me for making him real..."he was just an idea!" And they WHINED and WHINED until I finally caved and had Kit Nosrac use Balefire and Mass Mindrape to erase him from existence.

CockroachTeaParty
2009-06-29, 04:56 PM
Here's a good one.

Our party had just teleported to a distant, icy mountain locale, to explore a dungeon and possible ambush nearby. As we arrived, a flight of half-white dragon wyverns (six of them, I think), flew down and attacked. My character, a warmage/wizard (abjurer) / ultimate magus, popped an invisibility and flew up into the air thanks to Overland flight. The wyverns landed, and proceeded to land several really nasty hits, including a few critical hits. In one round, the rogue and fighter were dead.

My spirit shaman friend turned ethereal to hide. Meanwhile, I was buffing myself invisibly. I watched my friends die, and I was *not* pleased. When I was ready for the madness, I cast a major image of myself a good distance away, with an illusory mirror image up as well. My illusionary self cast and missed with a fireball spell. All the wyverns turned from my friends' corpses and flew up into the air to attack the illusionary 'me.' Just as they all gathered around the illusion I cast a fireball, a quickened fireball, and my familiar cast fireball (thanks to imbue familiar with spell ability).

In one round, all six wyverns fell smoking to the ground, dead.

As I landed next to my friends, the spirit shaman returned from his etherealness. He looked stunned. All he said was "Why do you even need us?" :smallamused:

And thus began a massive side quest to steal our friends' souls back from the afterlife. Good times. We still often fondly recall the 'wyvern incident.'

AslanCross
2009-06-29, 05:42 PM
If you're playing Red Hand of Doom, you might want to skip this if you haven't gotten to Vraath Keep yet:


My party was inside Vraath Keep, kicking major butt. They were planning to storm the barracks where they'd heard several hobgoblin voices when the rogue and the NPC ranger scouted it out earlier that day. When they opened the door, I thought it was going to be a straightforward brawl.

The psion in the party saw that there was a large, stuffed owlbear in the middle of the barracks. She proceeded to fling it with telekinetic thrust at the hobgoblins and their minotaur captain.
The artificer, who goes next, lobs a fireball into the room.
From hereon, much hobgoblin flesh is squashed and burned by a flying, burning, stuffed owlbear.


In a much earlier session back when I started DMing, the party of six Lv 5 PCs was up against a 9th level hobgoblin fighter captain. They had already killed his minions and were wailing on him like crazy, but he still wasn't dropping.

The wizard was running out of spells, so he turned to his cantrips.

<Wizard> I pop him with electric jolt.
<Me> Roll for damage.
<Wizard> 3.
<Me> ...he falls, smoldering and bleeding to death.

herrhauptmann
2009-06-29, 07:48 PM
4E:
The party warden got his but kicked by a pair of minions. The were there through about 9 rounds of combat, and we never bothered trying to hit them. So they took almost all his hitpoints, twice. At 7th level.

3.5:
I was DMing 'Something's cooking in the kitchet'. The party was fighting the Golem, and managed to do a lot of damage to it, 5 left. The the druid uses 'create fire' and proceeds to deal 12 points of damage to the thing. I describe it as: "It's outer layer gets all burnt and crusty looking."
Then the pyro wilder decides to blast it with fire instead of electric. And deals another 20 points of damage to it.
All of a sudden the party can't deal any damage to it, the energy damage guys suddenly can't reach touch AC, and the rst of the party isn't rolling anywhere near well enough to damage it with it's new stats.

Yukitsu
2009-06-29, 10:43 PM
My DM introduced me in combat when I was playing an elven rogue specializing in elven thinblades. I was fighting off some minor rival thief when I rolled a natural 20 to hit, and since the DM was using a variant critical hits system, I got a special hit in on his wrist. I then rolled a 20 to confirm.
"So, uh, yeah. You slice his hand off at the wrist. His *roll* left one. Let me check *rolls* and he's left handed. He passes out from pain and bloodloss."
"I stabalize him, take all his stuff, clothes included, and drag him off to the clink."
"Of course you do."

This exchange spawned 3 more combats with a character that was hardly even scripted to show.

Same campaign, DM was plot killing us just to bring us back directly afterwards. We were fighting off a group of paladins who thought we were up to no good when that really was not the case. He trounced the whole party, sans me, whom he forgot. The ensuing conversation went over like this:
"Justice is served, and the brigands have been brought to justice."
OOC "You forgot me."
OOC "A rock falls and knocks you unconcious."
OOC /:

The paladin was a recurring character, and every time he tried to enforce his justice upon us, he forgot that I existed. "The six of you will be brought to justice." "7 sir" "What seventh?"

Talon Sky
2009-06-30, 01:17 AM
A long time ago, in my first campaign, My first character was a Shugenja (water spec)

Our DM had us fighting a undead horde, lead by a undead general of some sort.
Our characters had alot of money, and our DM allowed us to get special DM items at our request and his discretion, so I wished for a "Healing Gauntlet" the DM in turn gave me a Glove that can cast "Heal" at my CL as a Ray..

Keep that in mind...

The DM set the Undead general against us and he greeted us with a proposition of joining him..my Shugenja had a spark of insanity and he made a 20 bluff on that I would join the Undead side yada yada yada..This in turn ended up with me "Shaking Hands" with the Undead General at which point I activated my Glove and 1 shot our boss ^_^d

Ever since then its been a group joke and brought up on several occasions
-Thats all I got ;p


Wonderfully genius.

Atelm
2009-06-30, 01:28 AM
You know, that sounds suspiciously similar to the one encounter our DM had. In our case, however, we walked past nonchalantly and my warforged wizard filed a complaint to the sheriff of the nearby city. :smalltongue:

Suspicious indeed. :smallamused:

Viv
2009-06-30, 04:35 AM
Okay, so we're playing Shadowrun 4e. Dramatis Personae:

* The Face, a female elf adept specializing in social skills and magic enhancements to them.
* The Tank, a male troll adept specializing in smashing things with his rather large, rather magical fists. Technophobe.
* The Cyber-samurai, specializing in slaughtering things using his cybernetic enhancements and various high-tech weaponry.
* The Technomancer, played by yours truly, specializing in Matrix (Internet) operations and whipping up sprites (spirits of the Matrix, for those of you that don't play SR) to inhabit drones. Nobody but the cyber-samurai knows this character, as this character (a teenage female) interfaces with everyone else through a droned-up teddy bear.

Just for reference, the Face and the Technomancer do not get along. The Face wanted to meet the Technomancer in person before taking a job, a request which the Technomancer rebuffed in no uncertain, and slightly rude, terms. By "slightly rude", I mean that when the Face initially refused to work with her, the Technomancer took to refusing to speak to the Face directly. Whenever the Face would talk, the Technomancer (through the cute teddy bear drone) would ask someone to repeat it, because there's something wrong with the microphone, or there was a garbled transmission or something.

The Face was understandably not amused. My Technomancer, for her part, hacks the Face's commlink and keeps a backdoor account active on it. The Face begins getting wierd messages and calls at all hours. The Face is not amused.

The Technomancer is.

Anyway, we're tracking down leads, split into two groups, with the cyber-samurai on his own. The other three track a lead to a bar. The Tank and the Face roll up in their own vehicle, and the Technomancer rolls up in her tricked out Van and provides overwatch services.

The Tank and the Face go into the bar, and immediately find themselves in a firefight. Things are not going very well, especially since all we wanted to do was talk. The Technomancer says, "Don't worry, I've got you covered."

In through the front doors roll two Doberman drones. One is outfitted with a Light Machine Gun, the other is outfitted with an Ares Alpha. They open up, full auto. A punk dives behind the bar. The one with the Alpha fires a stun grenade over the bar. Opposition realizes that they are seriously outgunned and surrenders.

Now, this seems just like a standard high action Shadowrun at this point, right? So what could possibly be memorable about this? I'm getting to it.

It turns out that the reason they stumbled in on a firefight is because a police officer had been following the same lead and had stirred up the hornet's nest. He's critically injured.

So what do I (the Technomancer) do? I have a drone equipped with a medkit get inhabited by a sprite that happens to have surgical skills go patch him up, and recall the drones.

He wakes up, and says, "Thanks guys, I need you to come in and fill out a statement." Obviously, we don't want to come in and fill out a statement. Shadowrunners with two highly illegal drones do not find this to be an attractive proposition, because usually jail time is on the other end of such a thing.

So, the Face decides to try and talk him into letting us just walk away. The officer, being a good one, doesn't just roll over. Negotiation roll ensues. Officer rolls an unusually high amount of successes.

The Face botches, and is now convinced that we should go in and give a statement. The Tank doesn't want anything to do with this, and gets up to leave.

The Face, of course, rolls Negotiation against the Tank. The Face wins, of course. But not only does the face win, but the Tank critically botches. Not only is the Tank convinced that we should go in and give a statement, there's nearly religious conviction behind the notion.

This is very, very bad news.

At this point, the Technomancer just can't believe what's going on, and is sputtering over the com asking what the frak has gotten into these two. The Face begins trying to convince the Technomancer to come in also.

At this point, I say, "No, screw this. Roll initiative." I win, and alter the com channel so I can't hear the Face. I say over the com, "Frak this guys, you frakking idiots can go to jail, I'm getting the frak out of here."

And so I high-tail it out of there in my van. I'm not particularly worried. I can cleanse the data trail, and nobody's ever seen my face anyway.

To get started on that path, I use the backdoor account on the Face's commlink and wipe it clean.

The player of the Face is giving me a dirty look at this point, the player of the troll is shaking his head in disbelief, and the GM is cracking up. The cyber-samurai asks me out of character if I let him know what's going on.

So yeah, I call the cyber-samurai, and tell him the expletive laced story. He gets it into his head to rescue them. Of course, he does this in the flashiest way possible. He finds out their route, and riding his cyberskates flies by them, and intercepts another vehicle, commandeers it, and rams them, flipping them over.

He tricks the none-too-smart troll into coming with him, and the Face is knocked out, so they drag her away. The troll still has conviction though, and is constantly trying to get to the police station to fill out a statement.

I'm busting my butt cleaning up the data trail, editing videos, etc.

And the question comes up, "So guys, what exactly does one do with a Chuck Norris equivalent troll who is insisting upon giving a police statement and is eventually going to stop believing us when we tell him that we're going to do that just as soon as we can?"

Well, apparently, you use a memory erasing drug that you just happen to have from a previous run where you thought you might need it and didn't.

So anyway, yeah. You go into a situation with a Face about to do what she's best at, and you come out with two team members convinced that they should give a police statement. Memorable indeed.

Robert Blackletter
2009-06-30, 04:46 AM
I dopn't know if this counts but

We were given an assassination mission, and as we were only given the guy's name and rank within the mercenary guild we thought we gather information about him. well most of the party rolled high but two of us rolled one's, so the dm gave us all the information about him then turn to the two that rolled ones and said you two on the other hand spent the day learning about the great flying squirrel god and how all the mercenary guild are minions of his foe the black ground squirrel. The Two P.c then ask to roll play the encounter, where they managed to convince the squirrel cult that the party were massager of the squirrel god and we were going to rid the world of the evil of the mercenary guild but we need then to prove there faith by storming his home as distraction while we got inside to kill him. They did and we killed the general while most of his house hold were repealing the cult. We also did it in the cult religious garments Basically a squirrel suit worn over ordinary clothes so the blame could not be put on us.

mr. Tentacles
2009-06-30, 06:52 AM
At the start of my current campaign the party had just saved their town from wolf-worshipping barbarians and was travelling to the nearest city to ask the baron there for help when the barbarians came back for revenge. It was a bit of a dull session so when they got to the small hamlet of Saldingen I thought, let's throw something at them, keep them happy and guide them through the next wave of roleplaying encounters.

Now, the group was level 2 (druid, bard, wizard and fighter) but they're used to encounters of at least +3 EL, anything else is a cakewalk. So when they heard about the ogre that had been attacking the surrounding farmsteads they didn't really worry. They were on a schedule though, so they decided to travel to a nearby small forest to gather some herbs, brew a poison and poison some sheep, that way the villagers could deal with the ogres themselves.

Ofcourse when they arrived at the forest they heard something, so they decided to check it out. In order to 'punish' them for their "ah, it's just an ogre, we'll handle it" (while only ever having seen and fought a few savages and wolves) I gave the ogre a wife and child, so when the group saw 3 ogres (1 medium-sized) they started running. The ogres gave chase and so the group hid, only the druid told his dog to go for Saldingen with a small message on his collar. Not being able to see the other squishies the ogres followed the dog, who ran straight to town...

When the group finally arrived at the small hamlet most of the guards were dead or dying, the ogres were tearing the place up and the dog was nowhere to be found. Eventually they managed to kill the ogres and they were even seen as heroes by the poor farmers. Since then they've done everything they can to rebuild the place and it's population and whenever they decide to help someone it always goes "let's not make this a second Saldingen". And all that because the players were getting bored and wanted an encounter.