Close Calls

[Sandwich8080]

Here's a story for you to enjoy:

In our DND 3.5 group, we have 6 characters. 3 are relevant to this story:

Tyrian, a Human Cleric
Livena, a Half-Elf Warmage
and Ispen, a Human Ranger

The group was divided. The 3 relevant members were at the top of a cliff over an underground river. 2 others were currently trying to help the last one not drown in said river :smalltongue:

As the 3 members up top were shouting words of encouragement, a Gelatinous Cube was making it's rounds, feeding on what refuse the Basilisk in the cave didn't turn to stone. The group, in part being to engaged with the tension going on below, and in part because of the Gelatinous Cube's near-transparency, did not notice the creature until it was a mere 20 feet away. Tyrian was the first to react. Having never even seen a creature like this before, he did what most adventurers do in such situations: "I'll shoot my bow at it." (As an aside, I'm not sure if this is a houserule or not but I've always played that oozes are unaffected by piercing weapons.) The arrow sunk into the oozy Cube, disintegrating before their eyes. Livena had a much similar tactic, knowing that the last place she wanted to be was next to Cubey. Her lesser orb of cold showed some signs of effectiveness, but overall the Cube was unfazed.

Ispen decided that she would try and get between this underground menace and her friends. Drawing her battle axe and shield, she swung at the Cube. Ispen rolls. The table gets silent for a minute as the dice stops to say "20!" Ispen takes a moment to complain about how all we fight is undead and oozes so critical hits are worthless. Then the battle axe strikes true, dealing a massive... 10% of the Cube's hit points. At this rate, these fair adventurers will become a 6 course dinner for this eating machine.

Cubert, the Gelatinous Cube (Also known as Encounter #4 by his work buddies,) had no trouble deciding what to do when dealing with these level-3 meals. Simply moving forward would do. Ispen saw him move towards her, but couldn't react in time. She was trapped inside the Cube! She felt the toxins secrete over her, making her numb to the acid already eating t her flesh. She felt relaxed, almost...immobile...No! She resisted the Cube's paralysis by a mere 2 points! But she was still trapped inside the creature.

Tyrian decided upon a different approach this time. He shouted out "In the name of Saint Cuthbert!" and ran at the foul ooze. Longsword in hand, he sliced at it, trying to free his Ranger companion. Livena opted to use yet another lesser orb of cold, despite now being only 10 feet away from the Cube. Both attacks struck the Cube for a decent amount of damage, but still not enough to strike down the ooze. Ispen had managed to break herself free from the Cube's oozy interior, deciding that maybe her next favored enemy should be Ooze. Meanwhile, the adventurers below were pondering whether or not they should just let their friend in the river drown.

Cubert decided that his tactic he'd been using since birth was good enough to use once again, so he moved forward. This time, Ispen knew how to react. She dove out of the way just in time. Livena and Tyrian, on the other hand, weren't so lucky. The Cube swallowed them up, leaving both of them paralyzed and surely dead. In his last moments before he was paralyzed, Tyrian said "I guess I can start rolling up that wizard..."

Ispen was torn. Should she attack this creature with her axe once again, even though she may also be turned into Cube food? Or should she just go with her instincts and leave this cave and forget it ever existed? Out of desperation (and maybe lack of sleep), she desperately said "I throw my torch?" The cave filled with laughter at the suggestion. Even the Cube bubbled at the ridiculousness of the situation. What the Cube didn't realize, though, was that it had a pitifully low Armor Class. And even with the penalties applied for throwing a torch, which isn't even a weapon at all, even an below average roll can still hit it. What the Cube (and the rest of the group) also failed to realize, was that a thrown torch can still roll maximum on the d4.

Everyone's jaws dropped as the Cube dissipated into a mere Gelatinous Puddle. Ispen broke the silence with a "Nuh. Uh." As if they timed it, the rest of the group met up with them just as the paralysis was wearing off.


So, there's my story. Does anyone else have any "close call" stories? It can be from any game, not necessarily DND. I look forward to reading some! :smallbiggrin:

[CoffeeIncluded]

My group just had a really close call yesterday. We have 6 characters, all level 3:

Mithril, a human Wizard
Valen, a human Sorcerer1/Barbarian2
Natalia (my character), a human Rogue2/Swashbuckler1
Kurt, a dwarf Barbarian
Miriam, a human Cleric, and
Shiny, a gnome Beguiler

The party was scouting out a bunch of orcs in the mountains; they're planning an attack in a couple of days and we wanted to give them a very bad time. On the way, Miriam, followed by Mithril and Kurt (Stonecunning) made very good Will saves to notice that a crevasse in a cliff face we were passing was hidden by a Permanent Mirage Arcana. Remember, we're all level 3, and those are 5th level spells. Once we all disbelieve it, we spend some time trying to figure out who cast this in the first place and narrow it down to two or three people: The half-orc arcane spellcaster leading the tribe, some mysterious guy who Natalia's convinced is behind the tenuous peach of the orcs, gnolls, ogres, and giants in the area, or a long-dead ancestor of the tavernkeeper in the town we're trying to save, who's helped us out so far. OOC, we know it's the tavernkeeper's great great grandfather.

Anyway, the point is that Natalia carefully pokes her head inside the cavern, but doesn't go in because it's pitch dark inside and they have to get to the orcs soon. Mithril, against Natalia's warning, wanders further in. At this point it's a very good thing Natalia rolled a 27 on her Listen check, because she's the only one who heard Mithril get ambushed by an upgraded choker. The choker beat us all on initiative, and Natalia can't just charge in after it because it's pitch dark. She screams for the others to bring light and backup, and by the time Miriam's turn comes up and she casts a light spell in the middle of the room the choker's got two whole rounds of strangling Mithril and knocks her down to 4 HP. Natalia's got a crush on Mithril and also sees her as one of her best friends; she takes a page from the barbarian, charges the choker while howling for its blood, and hits it for nearly max damage. Which is only 11 damage, but it's still pretty nice. Valen also rushes in and also does near max damage (14 in this case).

The next round the choker lets go of Mithril...But not before strangling her to -8. And then she promptly fails her stabilization roll and falls to -9. Mithril's player is now wondering if she'll have to roll up a new character in a bit. Natalia was fully prepared to full attack the choker and reduce it to paste, but now she freaks out and shoves a potion down her throat, following it with artificial respiration when the potion only brought Mithril up to -3 and she's still unconscious. While Miriam helps stabilize Mithril, the choker attacks Natalia and Valen, missing the rogue but grappling the barbarian and strangling him as well. At which point Kurt comes along, also deals near-max damage with his greataxe, and the choker explodes like an overripe orange.

We got incredibly lucky in this fight, even though it didn't seem that way at first. Natalia figured out what was going on right away and the choker only rolled 1 or 2 for damage every single time while all of us rolled for near-max damage. If that damn choker had rolled well just once, Mithril would have been dead. It was a very scary fight.

[Erik Vale]

I play Heroes, but it's still relevent.

In an evil game we came upon an orc camp, and decided to attack it (Cause we could), splattering slave goblins and orcs everywhere, not taking any damage (heroes, we would have about 5 levels on the goblins, 3 on the orcs) until we come across and org (ogre mage equivilant). 3 of our characters are melle bashes, and doing what we do best, we charge. However, we soon find that we can do no damage, it just has to much armour. I get thrown accross the clearing, our biggest melle guy is just exhausting himself, and our flyer has his halbard broken.
And slowly, our mental attack sneaky guy is wearing off stun (Non-Lethal damage) and is the only one doing any damage. 2 Almost dead melle/brutes latter, the ogre falls unconcious.