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Snarfmite
2011-02-24, 10:17 PM
As a relatively new DM, I'd like to hear stories about other people's most fun/memorable encounters, and what specifically about them made them so fun.

I'll start with one from the group I DM. The party had just entered a partially complete dungeon that was built into a hill in some wastelands. A group of bandits, led by a half-dragon barbarian, had taken over the dungeon after it was abandoned. A bandit sentry on top of the hill (unseen by the PCs) alerted his comrades that the PCs were approaching.

A few rooms into the dungeon, the PCs enter a medium size corridor, featureless other than some 6" holes in the wall and floor, and a stone outcropping in the corner. By the time they see the holes, they hear a lever being pulled and the door behind them closes. Some dwarf barbarians run out from behind the outcropping, and shortly after, fire sprays from the holes in the wall and spikes pop out of the holes in the floor.

The fire could be tumbled through for minimal damage, but those without tumble could also just run through and take fire damage. The bandits, of course, knew the trap and were skilled tumblers (although I rolled abysmally for them, so they ended up getting hurt more than the PCs did by the fire).

The party is very evenly matched, and eventually, everyone in the party is lying unconscious except the Venerable gnome cleric. Our party's insane gnome fighter has actually died (by trying to run through the fire with only a few HP remaining). The only remaining bandit is their half-dragon leader, who's taken a fair amount of damage, but is more than a match for the cleric.

Now, the party had recently recruited an eager young NPC warrior named Boris from the slums in the nation's capital city. He is currently unstable at -9 hp (this is his first encounter with the party - he's level 1 while the rest of the group is level 5).

The cleric has a choice - heal the party's beloved Boris to ensure he doesn't die, or focus on the half-dragon (who is already in melee with the cleric, meaning any spell will provoke an AOO). Being venerable-aged (and a gnome), he is very frail, and has a low to-hit bonus and a negative damage mod on his morningstar.

Now, we have a house rule called Will of Olmec. Olmec is the prominent god of the campaign world, and we (players, not characters) bought a tiki flower pot thing that we use as a representation of him. The house rule is that once per session or so, players may roll any d20 roll inside of Olmec. They don't get to see the result of that roll - but it gets +1, and counts for the next 5 d20 rolls they would make.

Making the tough decision to leave Boris be, the cleric decides to melee attack the half-dragon, and invokes the Will of Olmec. His roll? Natural 20. Of course, that hits and crits, and even with his negative damage modifier, deals a substantial chunk of damage to the half-dragon, but not enough to knock it out. Boris' turn comes around, rolls his stability check... and stabilizes! The half-dragon attacks the cleric, dealing him some damage but not enough to kill him. Cleric's turn, still influenced by Will of Olmec, hits and crits, and brings the half-dragon down.

NotScaryBats
2011-02-24, 10:31 PM
I had a beloved dmpc get captured and turned into an undead general of bbeg lich's army. They didn't know it was her until the battle started, and her and her wights were very strong.
Her heart had been frozen and used to create a portal to the feywilds (she was an eladrin princess) so the lich's armies could conquer them as well. The pcs had to keep her occupied as the bard ran to the heart and broke it out of the ice, freeing her.
It was a memorable encounter because it was extremely plot-relevant, everyone had something important to do, the pcs nearly died, and it was an unusual encounter due to the alternate win condition.

Thrawn183
2011-02-24, 10:38 PM
I did a one shot where the PC's had to save a town that had been conquered by fairies.

Outside of the town they ran into the tooth fairy. It was a reskinned dire weasel with ten barbarian levels. I fluffed its attach and blood drain abilities as summoning up a dentist's chair that it could strap a PC into and then using a hammer to slowly bash their teeth out. One tooth for each point of constitution damage dealt. If you lost too many teeth, she killed you by ripping your soul out through your mouth.

She also had refluffed animated objects that were giant tooth brushes.

The party was somewhere between stitches and freaking out.

Gamerlord
2011-02-24, 10:40 PM
Does this include traps?
Basically, I had designed this trap for a dungeon, trigger is first step on stairs, when triggered, stairs turn into a ramp, to avoid sliding down character may make a balance check, if they fail they slide down into a pit that opens once the trap is triggered, after someone lands on the floor of the pit a giant stone exactly the shape and size of the pit falls down, instantly killing anyone below.

The way to disable the trap was to press a switch on the right wall when you enter, I included this in a note they looted off some orcs just beforehand. I assumed they would read it, and just included the trap to round out the XP of the adventure.


Guess.

The player's reaction to their TPK was very memorable.

Vknight
2011-02-24, 10:49 PM
Verdin.
He was a Artificer slaver that after the party fought through his dungeon and his mechanically enhanced guards they came to his room. Standing before him. The Ardent declares he will stop the evil this man has caused.

Verdin proceeds to slap the Ardent in the face activate a Flash ability and spends the encounter blinded.
After a few rounds they eventually take him down not without some insanity from the various abilities he had.
They hate him and love the encounter for how it went and the story. It also introduced them to Rodrick.


The other big encounter. The Inquisitors a group a Rangers that had wolves with rouge levels. They proceeded through the party critting the entire way. The battle was an epic duel and in the end the party died not without leaivng the 'Inquisitors' broken and beaten.

Lycan 01
2011-02-25, 12:54 AM
Game: Savage Worlds, homebrew Steampunk Victorian England setting.

Party:
-A one-eyed Irish gunslinger
-A lesbian mad scientist
-A young noblewoman

Enemy: Giant acid-breathing cyborg Great White Shark with steam-driven legs.

Results: The mad scientist exploded the cyborg-shark with her lightning cannon, but not before it reduced the gunslinger to a sizzling skeleton in a derby hat. He got better. No really, the mad scientist salvaged his brain, and now he's a robot. :smallcool:

herrhauptmann
2011-02-25, 01:20 AM
While DMing.
Party consisted of:
Rogue3 with stabby weapons
Vop Monk1/sorc2 who had a feat that her hands did slashing damage
Druid 3, favored magical attack was produce flame
Psion3, almost every attack was fire based
cleric3, with a morningstar

Against the calzone golem of "Something's cooking in the kitchen."
Every time they hit it with stabby weapons, they got hit with splash damage (really hot cheese). After a few hits they realized they were hurting themselves and decided on a new tactic. The melee types went full defense and blocked it from reaching the druid and psion, who commenced to torch it.
With each fiery hit, I told them, it looks more and more cooked, getting all blackened. After 3 rounds and almost 50 points of fire damage, the melee types starting wondering why it was still up when I had earlier told them
"It looks almost beaten." The whole time, it's rolling 3's on its attacks, so they haven't actually been struck yet.
They started asking various questions like, "is it getting healed?" After another round of Q&A, one of the melee types tried hitting it again.
Imagine her surprise when she suddenly couldn't hit it on a 27, when previously a 21 had been enough. :smallbiggrin:
It's next turn, it hits her, and because I had my dice hidden, they didn't hear that it was a critical, just that she got knocked from nearly full to almost to -3 in one hit.

Suddenly the party is terrified, thinking that the monster has been steadily getting stronger, and stronger. Higher AC, better attack, more damage.
They're freaked, wondering how they're going to kill it, and save the unconscious girl before she bleeds out, and without it killing her via splash damage.
5 rounds go by, no damage from either side, girl is at -8. I start rolling the attack dice in front of the party, so they can realize I'm not fudging, it was just rolling really badly.
Finally they get the bright idea, lead the golem away from the unconscious girl so someone can finally reach her and provide first aid. It takes a step to follow the cleric, and the rogue decides he's going to AOO it as it passes by.
Everyone starts screaming that he's going to kill the girl with splash damage. But he rolls, gets a nat 20. He's excited, he's got flanking, he's going to finally get some sneak attack in, and it'll multiply his craven damage. When I finally have to remind him, you can't crit or sneak attack golems normally.
He looks like he's going to cry, and rolls his 1d3. For a total of 1. Starts cursing up a storm when I tell him, with a crunch, your dagger bites deep into the golem, coating your hand in hot cheese. And slowly the monster collapses to your feet.

Everyone stops and stares, thinking I'm fudging the result to continue the game. Calmly I show them my notes. For every 3 points of fire damage, its AC rises, no damage is taken, and no other effects. And I show them where I'd been counting off hitpoints. The party switched to fire when the golem had 1 hitpoint left. By the time they switched back, it was unhittable except for a 20.

DeadEnded
2011-02-25, 03:25 AM
Ah the days of old...

I don't remember the party, I just remember I was playing a wizard with enough levels to cast a lot of the useful spells.

So the party has made it to the last encounter: An evil tentacled Illithid badass that my DM had really worked hard on to make a dragged out tooth and nails to the end fight. So we're throwing damage at it and not really getting anywhere real quick with it's spells and abilities and I get the bright idea to feeblemind the jerk.

DM rolls save really low.

I turn a beefy encounter into a total 'let's make calamari' party. Best day for my wizard ever.

NichG
2011-02-25, 04:38 AM
Memorable-difficult:

There was one encounter that involved a bunch of invisible assassins with Hide the Path (or whatever makes it so you don't disturb the environment when you move), combined with a huge open area.

It was rough. We eventually settled with 'surviving' after we caused the side of the mountain to mudslide, burying some unknown number of them.

Memorable-strange:

Dog Nilbog, like the old 2ed Nilbogs, but with a bunch of bizarre powers that it chose randomly from a list such as 'excessive gift' which drops 20d6 damage worth of valuable items you'd like on your head, and 'invert resistance' which did damage to equal to your resistance to elements (if you had immunity it was an insta-kill basically).

We didn't really have strong healing in the party at the time (mix of D&D, Stargate, Star Wars d20, and Trinity characters...), and half the party fled or was trying to defend it, so the other half ended up having to painstakingly stim-pack it to death (and this was after the initial couple of rounds to figure out that it was hurt by healing).

Demonweave
2011-02-25, 06:19 AM
Most memorable hey?

Well we were in the middle of a dungeon crawl, We had left our extremely unintelligent half Ogre NPC in a room about half way through the dungeon. (he was too big to fit down some of the smaller corridors, plus he was our pack mule) We told him to yell for us if he saw anything....

So a good few looted rooms later we heard him shout for us. So we all sprinted back to protect him. With the various running speeds and having to squeeze through a corridor less than 5ft wide. We managed to get there one PC per round. Only to discover a large group of orcs. So one by one we pile in, each of us going down pretty quick as they just mobbed us one at a time. The only ones left standing were me the elven cleric and the half Ogre who wouldnt fight as he was paid enough. The orcs not managing to hit me without critting, but thats when fatigue finally gets the better of me(we were too afraid of sleeping in this dungeon we had been in for days). Then I pass out and we have a TPK.

Later on the DM told us that the Orcs would never have attactked the Half Ogre unless provoked, as they were too scared of him.

Another one.
Came across a Dragon of some kind with the whole party, I managed to get off a successful Hold Monster before anyone or anything else reacted. Then asked the party what we wanted to do, fight or leave? Ended up having an in character arguement about whether I should have ran from the dragon in the first place and so I decided that I was going to prove a point and take it on solo..... Thats when the Hold monster had worn off and he quite simply ate me (after very quickly ripping me to shreds) then the rest of the party did a runner. Later they went back to kill it and revive me, which they got no response as he didnt want to return to the mortal realm. Then they had no Mage. Was very interesting session.

potatocubed
2011-02-25, 06:27 AM
There's three of us: an elf mage reincarnated in the body of Conan the barbarian; 'Adam', who is a human male who does things; and Funkmaster Flex, the dwarf bard, played by me.

We've been tangling with a particular illithid. None of us have dimensional anchor, so he keeps getting away via psionic teleport or plane shift when we beat him. What's notable is that we've all got excellent Will saves, so his mind blast and mind control powers are proving pretty useless.

So we meet him again - but this time, he's wearing a psionically powered exoskeleton. He pumps all his PPs into it, boosting his physical stats to crazy levels, strikes a kung fu pose, and proceeds to give us the fight of our lives. Awesome stuff.

-

Another time, in a 4e game I was running, almost the entire party got themselves captured by an evil gnome. The only one to escape was the bard. She disguised herself as a noblewoman (the evil gnome had some high-placed allies), which meant leaving her weapons behind, and bluffed her way right the way through the dungeon until she got the evil gnome alone. Unarmed and out of dailies, she improvised: she grabbed him (didn't want him turning invisible and escaping, see), dragged him over to the heavy iron door, and slammed his head in it until he was dead. Then she swiped his keys, released the prisoners, returned their gear, and there was much rejoicing.

-

Or there was the Eberron game I ran: the final combat with the maniacal skeleton wizard came down to the wire, with the archer blinded and the skeleton flying around outside of anybody's reach, blasting away with his wand of lightning bolt. Randy the Rogue in the Hat saved the day, though, snaring the skeleton's ribcage with his grappling hook so that they could reel him in.

Then they pounded him to death with a bowling ball in a sack, which made perfect sense in context.

Gnoman
2011-02-25, 10:20 AM
The most memorable fight I can recall was when I threw my ~13 level party against 12 1HD goblins. Behind fortifications. With four light catapults firing poison, fire, thunderstones, and acid.

Combat Reflexes
2011-02-25, 11:51 AM
The most memorable fight I can recall was when I threw my ~13 level party against 12 1HD goblins. Behind fortifications. With four light catapults firing poison, fire, thunderstones, and acid.

Get in the car! It's Tucker's Goblins (http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=93582)!!! :smallcool:

Adam...?
2011-02-25, 12:50 PM
As far as interesting encounters are concerned, I pulled a "House of Leaves" on my players while they were still pretty low level.

They thought they were exploring a haunted house, so when they first explored the place, I drew a very detailed battle map of a small, two-story building. Thus, when no evil ghosts or monsters jumped out to attack them, they were rather confused. After a few minutes or searching, they found the closet that lead to the infinite corridor of doom. They spend a couple days exploring, and I throw them off guard with shifting hallways, weird noises, and spatially impossible rooms. A few days later, they admit to being completely lost, and start worrying about a lack of food, and protection from elements, as the temperature has dropped to near freezing.

So before they start getting incapacitated, I throw them a bone, and they find their way back. As soon as they're all back in the "normal" house, **** hits the fan, and I have them roll initiative. Versus the house, who I decide deserves two turns a round. I give the house the ability to shift the direction of gravity, expand the dimensions of rooms, or contract them to perform slam attacks against players (with free bull rush attempts), all in an attempt to knock the PCs back into the closet, which has now become a bottomless black pit.

The party monk broke an arm jumping out a window to avoid being squished between two walls. The rogue got a lucky toss with a rope/grappling hook, and managed to climb "up" to the staircase and crawl across the second floor. The cleric and fighter were climbing up the rope when the the room expanded, leaving them dangling about 50 ft. in the air. Fighter lost his grip, and ended up falling into the pit. Cleric managed some ridiculous rope swing/jump combo to make his way to the front door. Meanwhile, the rogue was forced to jump "down" about 70 ft. of hallway to dive head first out a second story window. Shot out of it like a rocket, and fell most of the way to the ground before pasting himself on the neighboring house. Lucky bastard survived the fall damage.

All around, a good time.

Sipex
2011-02-25, 01:38 PM
I've got two which are relatively interesting.

Willard

The PCs have been hired for a relatively routine quest. People have gone missing from their homes in one section of the city and the guard have come across a house with a hole in the wall leading directly into the sewers.

The PCs, being the PCs, head in and get to stumble around a badly planned maze of sewer pipes and the like. After being lost for a while (about 30 minutes of real time) they come across a giant rat who flees. Through a successful sequence of Nature checks the manage to track the rat all the way back to it's den.

The PCs slide down a river of sludge into an incredibly dark room. Shapes are moving at the edges of their torch light and small rats bolt across every once in a while. The PCs follow the sound of a lute playing and a child crying softly until they come across two little boys sitting on a small island of stone in the middle of the sewage (surrounded by various pillars other stone islands).

Here they meet a ratty looking man who they dub 'Willard' after he goes on about how the PCs are going to make a great feast for his children.

The PCs attack him and he flees as dozens and dozens of rats pour in. A few hang back to protect the boys while the two rogues give chase and lose Willard in a crowd of rats. The wizard decides to pummel the water with lightning based attacks frying several rats while we stuggle to keep them back from the boys.

We hear shifting stone and porcullises start opening up at random intervals, splashing water down on us and washing both us and other rats into the water.

Willard shows up again, turning into a human from a giant rat form only to get jumped by both rogues simultaneously and downed near immediately. They break his lute and the rats all flee.

I had particular fun with this because there was a lot of differing terrain, many different monsters and a trap which changed things mid battle. My PCs had a blast too.


Rush to the end!

Recently we ran a session where the PCs had just escaped a secret prison and met some mysterious allies who aided in their escape. The allies turned out to be from a sort of cult the PCs are fighting against and there's some animosity between the two groups but they don't really know each other well.

During the escape (which is on an airship) the cult members ask about our party Rogue and don't really give much information beyond that.

It's about 3 hours later when we arrive at a cabin out in the middle of no where and the airship decends and lets us off. Escorted by our possible enemies/allies we enter to find that the cabin is a deception and acts as a cover for some sort of elevator leading deep into the earth.

Down in the earth we find many cultists packing up and rushing about all busy like. We see airships taking off and are led down a giant tunnel.

A gigantic chain comes into view, the PCs know of these chains very roughly. They know that the chains bind the continents together after some sort of catastrophe and that they're arcane in design. There's also some sort of device hooked up to the chain.

"BRRRRRRROTHER!" a voice calls out from a catwalk nearby (ala liquid snake, the player affected is a huge MGS fan). An elf decends from the catwalk and gives our Half-elf Rogue a hug who is very confused.

We converse a bit, the Elf reveals that his name is Bero and that he is a long lost half brother to our Rogue, R'tas (same mother, different fathers). He bears a grudge against their parents (mainly his mother and R'tas' human father) and their xenophobic home town (it was almost all elves who were quite racist). He doesn't blame R'tas though and offers that we all join the cult to help reunite the world back into one piece (as I said, currently held together with chains).

Unfortunately, to make the transition from partial to whole the continent we're on needs to be cut free and destroyed. The leaders of our land are incredibly narrow minded and have been using various trickery (including heavy magic trickery and secret police) to hide the fact that the world is no longer whole. As such they won't co-operate to re-unite the world.

The PCs have a problem with this, mainly because this is the continent they've played on for the entire campaign and there's a lot of stuff they like here (plus most of them are from here).

After a brief arguement, Bero declares that he'll allow R'tas to save his continent if he can beat Bero in a duel. Bero is currently holding the key to the machine which is draining the energy from the chain.

Bero also introduces us to a large rumbling crate we'd noticed at this point and orders it opened. Out steps a large half-machine/half-man abomination of a chap named John who the group left for dead early on in the campaign after defeating him and stealing his eye. John is no longer intelligent though and is barely sentient. He's meant to deal with the rest of the party along side the dozen or so cult members who are still around.

So the battle ensues and R'tas and Bero duel it out, Bero dealing mounds of damage per round while the rest of us fight off cultists. Bero is wielding a double sword (ala darth maul kind of) while R'tas wields two blades. Bero is a ranger while R'tas is a rogue. It's the whole 'mirror opposite' thing going on.

Our two wizards dash off, one jumping in a bag of holding and the other grabbing the bag and dimension dooring past John (and most of the cultists) to rush to disable the machine leaving the Cleric and other Rogue to deal with everything else.

R'tas and Bero take their fight to the catwalk and R'tas uses some acrobatics and stealth to swing under the walk and behind bero, gaining combat advantage and bloodying him.

Meanwhile the wizards have murdered a couple folks and are busy trying to figure out the machine (which is a puzzle). One wizard fiddles while the other controls the baddies nearby who are presently trying to turn them into pin-cushions using auto crossbows.

The cave is gradually collapsing all the while, cave ins are happening and quakes are knocking people down. The floor starts to split in several places and everyone is running low on surges (4th edition).

Finally, we can an upper hand when Bero tries to make an escape and critically fails on his roll (it was an attack/flee maneuver) meaning he can't get away from R'tas. R'tas hits him with a daily which deals heavy damage and knocks him off the catwalk, 30 feet down. Bero falls and is knocked to the negatives. R'tas jumps down (tumbles) and bids Bero goodbye before decapitating him and taking his cool sword.

With R'tas's help the other Rogue and the Cleric are able to fight off the other cultists and finally get John under control (who has been punching us into walls and the like, the only reason we're not dead is a well placed web spell by the wizards before they fleed).

Down the hall one of the wizards hits negatives and falls unconscious and the other retaliates against the cultists with a barrage of spells (action pointed). Before going back to the machine. R'tas rushes down the hall to help but he has two pits to make it across and it's about 40 feet as well so he's got quite the ways to run.

Finally, the wizard left standing figures out the sequence and disarms the drill, with 4 turns left before it finishes the job! R'tas makes it just in time to revive the other wizard who has 1 saving throw left to fail before death.

They mop up from there, the five of them easily finishing off John and saving the day.

I loved this encounter because it combined player story, overall story, large size battle, trap like effects, changing and unique terrain and puzzles.

Daftendirekt
2011-02-25, 01:45 PM
As far as interesting encounters are concerned, I pulled a "House of Leaves" on my players while they were still pretty low level.

They thought they were exploring a haunted house, so when they first explored the place, I drew a very detailed battle map of a small, two-story building. Thus, when no evil ghosts or monsters jumped out to attack them, they were rather confused. After a few minutes or searching, they found the closet that lead to the infinite corridor of doom. They spend a couple days exploring, and I throw them off guard with shifting hallways, weird noises, and spatially impossible rooms. A few days later, they admit to being completely lost, and start worrying about a lack of food, and protection from elements, as the temperature has dropped to near freezing.

So before they start getting incapacitated, I throw them a bone, and they find their way back. As soon as they're all back in the "normal" house, **** hits the fan, and I have them roll initiative. Versus the house, who I decide deserves two turns a round. I give the house the ability to shift the direction of gravity, expand the dimensions of rooms, or contract them to perform slam attacks against players (with free bull rush attempts), all in an attempt to knock the PCs back into the closet, which has now become a bottomless black pit.

The party monk broke an arm jumping out a window to avoid being squished between two walls. The rogue got a lucky toss with a rope/grappling hook, and managed to climb "up" to the staircase and crawl across the second floor. The cleric and fighter were climbing up the rope when the the room expanded, leaving them dangling about 50 ft. in the air. Fighter lost his grip, and ended up falling into the pit. Cleric managed some ridiculous rope swing/jump combo to make his way to the front door. Meanwhile, the rogue was forced to jump "down" about 70 ft. of hallway to dive head first out a second story window. Shot out of it like a rocket, and fell most of the way to the ground before pasting himself on the neighboring house. Lucky bastard survived the fall damage.

All around, a good time.

HUGE House of Leaves fan, so it fills me with glee that a DM has based something DnD-related on it. If I had any DMing skills I'd do something similar. :smallbiggrin:

Zaydos
2011-02-25, 01:47 PM
Most memorable:
The BBEG of my longest running game. We played it two years (a few months of which was after he was beaten) and last time I talked to one of the former players (about 3 years after the battle) they still recalled it fondly. It was a real life or death situation for the PCs and honestly if someone had rolled 2 lower then it would have been a TPK (half the party was at low health and revivify had already been used on three different people). Actually without in battle healing they'd all have died (the knight dropped, and was still dying when the healer was dropped and the warlock used a scroll to revive the party healer who then healed the knight who beat the boss). Everyone had to play their role and it was still close.

Most memorable of more recent games:
Hopefully last week's large scale battle will be memorable since we'd never done that before.

icantsavemyself
2011-02-25, 05:09 PM
The most memorable encounter I ever had was during the d20 zombie campaign where the characters were ourselves. It was the first night of the campaign and the zombies swarmed our town on Halloween. The first thing we did was drive my truck to the park to save my friends little brother and sister who were standing on the playground keeping out of reach of the zombies. We ended up killing four or five zombies, we had to make will saves to keep from puking and losing our heads for a few rounds. After we got the kids in my truck we started running zombies over and forgot that the kids were in their with us. After 3 zombies were killed we dropped the kids off. The next major thing happened was that my friends sister was bitten and ended up killing our other friends mom. The following was pretty brutal and we had to take a break from gaming for an hour or two.

TinselCat
2011-02-25, 05:33 PM
The most recent encounter I just had will be infamous for a long time. This encounter involved both players and DM (me) rolling more natural 1s than I have seen in a very long time. Most of combat consisted of players and monsters alike picking themselves up off the ground, missing each other, dropping things, failing checks and saves, tripping over and into each other, and generally being ineffectual. It probably took two to three times longer than it should have, but wasn't at all unbalanced, because both sides were equally unlucky. No matter how many different d20s we tried or how often we shuffled them between each other, the 1s just kept coming. If only we had kept track of them.

jywu98
2011-03-26, 07:55 AM
We were in this Kobold dungeon with a whole lot of traps, and one trap involves the Kobold rolling a small stone that triggered a boulder trap. We thought it was a thunderstone so we got out of the road, unknowingly avoid a vicious trap.

FreelanceAngel
2011-03-26, 08:27 AM
This moment still stands out in my mind, even though it was about... five years ago.

My ex-boyfriend was running Legend of the Five Rings- Oriental Adventures ftw!- and we'd been playing for a year. Our party was mainly samurai: Lion, Crab, Unicorn and an NPC Crane, with a Dragon monk and my Scorpion shugenja, Soshi Kyako. Having fought our way up to an average party level of 14, our DM ran us through the Battle of Baiden Pass.

Now, having been playing a spellcaster for the first time- despite having played D&D for nearly seven years at that point, I was always a ranger or fighter- I'd been having utter hell trying to keep Kyako alive, and most of her spells were area effects that none of the samurai were fond of. (Burning Hands + samurai's topknot = one angry Lion) We'd rarely run across any scenario where Kyako was of any real use.

In the middle of the battle, our party- with a small accompaniment of NPC samurai- get attacked by two battalions. The first one was taken out through two hours of laborious dice rolling and feat comparisons, and as Kyako had little to do, I was getting bored. Matt lets everyone take a moment to bandage wounds and clean off blood, and then declares the second battalion is running up the hill. The samurai immediately prepare for more combat.

My little Scorpion rose to her feet, walked in front of the samurai and waited until the battalion was charging at full speed up the hill. One spell- Wall of Fire.

Two of the attacking samurai staggered out of the flames. One immediately committed seppuku and the commander asked to be decapitated when he realized that he'd just run his men right into the spell. The PC samurai were standing with jaws agape as Kyako brushed off the sleeves of her kimono and walked back to the log she'd been sitting on without a word.

A year of having a useless character that drew considerable mockery and in one shining moment, she earned respect. Best. Moment. Ever.

Vulaas
2011-03-26, 01:58 PM
My most memorable gaming moment was probably not a pleasant one for all involved, but it was wonderful for me all the same.

Setting: A homebrewed world of darkness with no vampires, no werewolves, no standard horror. The DM was quite creative about making whole new versions of horror for us to fight run away from. We were headed on our way to a bombed out old city, but to do that we had to appease a dark entity with a display of each of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The cast:
Bob - One of the PCs. The creepiest character I have ever had the fortune to play with. He was a giant man with strange ideas on theology based on an abusive background, severe masochism, and having watched Dogma at an early age.
Patrick - My character. Ex-IRA wetworks guy. Pulled some stuff from the Slashers book, so he was a nasty piece of work. Specialty in edged weaponry.
Corey - Another PC. The poor, poor police officer who was supposed to be keeping us in line while we dug through this place, and tried to get through a door that would only open when covered with blood from a fresh kill.

It was the end of the campaign. We'd demonstrated our sins (other than wrath, as it was mostly a puzzle up until this point), avoided the demonic entities running around, got ourselves some equipment (as we started in a police escorted armored truck, only Corey had any weapons), and figured out the puzzle of the door, and knew that the Entity wouldn't let us leave the area until we went through. Emotions were running high in the crew, with the cop not liking us criminals having weapons, and the criminals not liking the cop in general. It should at this point be noted that Corey can't roll high dice to save his life. On a 8 roll skill, he's lucky to get a single success. Anyway, things had finally come to a head with this. We found a dog, and he was not letting us inflict Wrath upon it to get out. He said we could find another way, and so we did. This is when the final battle happened. Ol' Patrick and Bob wanted out, and so we did what came naturally. We attacked the cop. Of course, the GM had been waiting on this all along, and that dog turned out to be a hellhound who attacked Bob at the same time as us going to kill Corey. Corey had the first shot in with his pistol, but thanks to his rolling, missed horribly. Patrick on the other hand...I had a perk that let me slice off a limb if I rolled 5 or more damage in one go. +3 roll weapon, and 9 again trait. I hit for 8, and he was disarmed and bleeding out. I took the stump and threw it against the door, and simply walked through, ignoring the other players. All in all a satisfying end to the game

herrhauptmann
2011-03-26, 04:15 PM
Fourth Edition Game:
Sorry, it's a sort of long description, and especially amazing I can remember everything since it's been over a year since I've even played 4E.

I was playing a barbarian through some minicampaign in Living Forgotten Realms (I forget the title), and had one particular issue. I was using a Wulfgar figurine all through the first 2 levels with that character, and couldn't get an average attack roll above a 7. The number 4 tended to show up a lot. (Someone counted my rolls during one session) My few crits, tended to be on minions. While surrounded by other minions. So I couldn't even do a charge after a kill.

Eventually, I level up and get an option to change some of my powers around as per 4E rules, and decided via a coin toss to keep my Pressing strike at-will and changing one of my other at-will powers.

We get to the final fight, and right before it starts, our archer (whiny pimply kid who thinks the extent of someones ability to play rests on their ability to roll well) sends my Wulfgar figure flying under a couch where we can't find it. I replace it with a random human sized one out of the shoebox, Lord Strahd, and we enter the room.
The boss fight, starts off with everyone slowed and/or dazed as a result of someones powers. We're getting our butts kicked, because no one can move and attack. Suddenly I remember I've got pressing strike, which includes a shift of 2 squares prior to the attack. So I go on the offensive with an at-will power, keep springing up behind enemies, getting that flanking which gives me the extra bonus needed to hit their AC. Attacks the following round were done with pressing strike, letting me shove the enemies around to our benefit. And sets up the rest of our party to actually have an effect.
Eventually, we've I've cleared out some of the room, and decide to Action Point with a daily power on one of the enemies that's been having the most damage: Pressing Strike to get flanking, Action Point for the daily (Entering a rage), and I crit. I kill the enemy who's been bothering us, and with my rage I get a melee basic on an enemy. Which I use, critting again, killing another barely bloodied enemy.

Once he was down, I realized I had a straight line to the boss himself. Finally get to activate Swift charge which gives me a charge attack when I kill someone, but with the distance involved, I couldn't reach him. Unless I used Howling Strike as part of my charge. :) So I charge the boss. Two enemies make AOOs on me. The ones marked by the fighter and the swordmage. The fighter kills his marked target, while the swordmage does some fancy retargeting thing, causing the enemy to hit his own buddy.
Hit the boss, with another crit. And while it doesn't kill him, it does stop him from targeting the party with his ranged magic powers. About the only thing he can hit me with is something which targets my fort save, so the rest of the fight he's having no effect on the fight. While I'm hitting him, and using pressing strike to shove him into the fireplace (kept falling prone rather than go into the fire, but eventually I got him).
A few rounds later, the party has killed the rest of the enemies, and we dogpile on the guy. Just before the fight ends, I finally make my saves versus being slowed and dazed. Effects I got saddled with in the first round of combat.

So one turn by a dazed and slowed melee warrior involved:
4 attacks by my character (3 crits), and two more attacks on assorted enemies. Causing 3 kills, and completely removing one more enemy from the fight.

Alleran
2011-03-26, 11:13 PM
An angry deity sent an Aleax after the person we were protecting. Now, we couldn't hurt it. But what made the encounter fun is that we had to think, and think hard. We couldn't stop it. What we had to do was slow it down, delay it, pull it off-course and away from the target. It turned into a running battle that lasted for hours, and we had great fun.

When we actually found out just why it had come after the NPC, though, we let it kill him.

Dr.Epic
2011-03-26, 11:16 PM
The ones where I die?

TroubleBrewing
2011-03-28, 08:43 PM
The party was running through the hallways of a swiftly sinking flying castle populated entirely by undead. We had come to this castle under the impression that it was being run by a vampire warlord who had a beef with the town situated directly below it; in exploring the castle, we discovered that there might have been somebody else pulling the strings.

So, we were given a time limit of three days to complete the task of stopping the vampire lord from crashing his castle into the town. The castle was sinking because we'd rested one too much, and we'd run out of time.

We're sprinting through the halls, running towards the control room in a desperate, last-ditch effort to find a way to stop the castle from falling when the vampire lord, the big bad of the campaign up until that point, appeared out of nowhere to stop us in our quest. He just jumped out from behind a pillar.

Well, my Cleric of Pholtus just reached out and touched him. With a Heal. 130 positive energy hits the vampire right in the dome, and he's dust.

And we just kept right on running.

grimbold
2011-03-29, 10:39 AM
my favorite was probably when i was in an epic battle with these elves. I was playing a orc barbarian who likes to sacrifice to Gruumsh and make gore angels. This was our first combat session in months. As one of two combat oriented characters in the party i got the spotlight. I charged into a tower filled with elf soldiers
5 rounds later great cleave helped me clear the tower of all the elves and then i made a gore angel on the towers roof.

it gets better...

i heard my friend screaming for help on the next tower over 20 feet away, now it should be noted that i have 15 points in jump being a high strength character and jump being one of his few skills

so i jump the 20 foot gap with a 33

my dm rules that this is a high enough jump check to make a flip in midair and get a surprise round on the fire breathing lizard things harassing my friends,
before i even landed i stabbed a lizard through the head with a nat 20 and then screamed
I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR

thus firmly cementing my characters epicness and my love for belkar

BayardSPSR
2011-03-29, 11:57 AM
So far? A PC-laden airship crashing through a cloud of angry demons AND the two angel-paladins fighting them INTO a tower of a castle floating in the sky in an effort to break in to rescue the princess locked in side so that they can murder her father. It was about as epic as it sounds.

Not to mention the fact that they managed to flip an NPC buddy onto the roof on impact. That was fun too.

TroubleBrewing
2011-03-29, 12:13 PM
... in an effort to break in to rescue the princess locked in side...

Good thing she wasn't in another castle.

BayardSPSR
2011-03-29, 12:52 PM
Good thing she wasn't in another castle.

That would cause a player revolt. Sort of like having an NPC who interrupts every five minutes with a cry of "Hey! Listen!" to tell the players something they all already know - and who can't be killed, no matter how hard they try.

Murphy80
2011-03-29, 12:53 PM
D&D 2nd
We were on a quest for the Gods and came to a LG city where we thought the advisor to the king was secretly a demon. So a PC challenges the advisor to a public duel...and loses. The advisor then proceeds to change into a very large, very angry red dragon. The rest of the party takes 1 look at this thing and runs away (not through magical fear or any ingame effect), except my 2 characters (we all had 2 pc's). I was joined by 3 npc paladins and an npc mage from the audience got off a lucky (to overcome the SR) lightning bolt before running away. My 2 characters managed to kill the thing (though I will admit they let the 3 paladins attack the head/front).

D&D 1st
We were a mixed levels group, 3 were 2nd level and 3 were 7th level (the stupidity of forcing players to start at 1st level when 1/2 the group is 7th is a subject for another thread). We run into a huge antient red dragon, and proceed to make it angry, so it breathed fire on us. All the 2nd level charcters saved...and were killed anyway by 1/2 damage. All the 7th level characters who could have survived if they saved...failed. The only survivor was an NPC bodyguard who failed, but had 1 more hp than the breath attack did in damage.

Shadowrun
We were a group of bounty hunters who tracked 3 badguys to an apartment. So we burst in from 1 side while a pair of bounty hunters (competitors) broke in from the other. SR is typically a very lethal game, but that session the groups dice got cold, frozen in fact. While we could hit easily enough, the damage from each hit was pathetic. We were doing 1 or 2 boxes of damage with each hit (when normally a hit could easily knock someone out of a fight). We manage to take down 1 badguy and wound the other 2, but in the process, they took down all but my character (a mage). Wounded and with 2 badguys about to slaughter everyone, I put everything into 1 last attack spell, not saving anything for the drain. I finally manage to knock them out, and proceed to knock myself out as well with the stun drain.
Later, we were talking about what it was like at the Docwagon dispatch, "We got 1 code re...wait 2, no 3...%$#@&, we have 7 contracts down at the same address. Send in everything we got." All the PCs survived, 2 of them thanks to those Docwagon contracts.

D&D 3.5
The group is holed up in a cabin in the woods in the dead of winter when an incorporeal wolf comes through the wall and howls. I am the only character to make the save vs a fear effect. So, while the rest cower in back, my undead hunting ranger (2nd level) with the only magic weapon in the group faces off against this creature and proceeds to roll insanely good. Every attack hit (including the 50/50 miss chance for it being incorporeal), it was epic.