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Maquise
2013-03-25, 02:00 PM
So, remember that time when the Big Bad got the mcguffin and was about to summon the Legion of Doom, and we were 10 HP from a TPK?

Yeah, how'd we manage to get out of that again?

So, Playgrounders, what have been some of the closest calls you as players have ever experienced in your games? When the stakes were high, the odds were against you, and you still won?

I'd start, but unfortunately, I haven't played enough to actually have one.

Paragon468
2013-03-25, 03:01 PM
My human fighter went up solo against a dragonborn who he'd had some trouble with in the past. The battle was SUPPOSED to include the rest of the party, but my character challenged him to a one on one duel.

I was at 1 HP when I killed him... Nasty battle, that was.

Minitroll
2013-03-25, 07:08 PM
We were in a Morlock infested tomb- a wizard, a ranger, a monk, and me, the cleric. We entered a huge chamber with pillars everywhere. There was a large chasm about 70 feet wide, and we had no way of crossing. So, we decided we'd smash down a pillar in the room and push it to land across the chasm. It worked, but the sound was... well, needless to say, it was loud. We started to hear crawling from behind us and from the chasm. The wizard used a light and we saw hordes of Morlock's crawling up, maybe 300 feet down. The Monk ran across the pillar first, with a wonderful acrobatics check. Then, the Ranger ran across. Then I, the Cleric got lucky and ran across, even when I only had a plus 3. The Wizard, on the other hand, slipped in the middle, and barely clung onto the side. The Morlocks were only 100 feet away now. The sound from the Morlocks were we came from was getting louder.

I ran back onto the pillar, grabbing the Wizard. However, then I failed my Strength save and my Acrobatics save. I fell off the side into the endless chasm, unable to hold onto the makeshift bridge. However, I managed to grab onto a Morlock about 200 feet down with a good Dex save, and I held on for dear life. The Wizard got pulled up by the Monk, and cast Charm on the Morlock I was on, and had it start to climb. However, then I failed a strength save to hold on and fell another 20 feet. For the next hour and a half of gameplay, I was hanging onto Morlocks, climbing up their tiny bodies, and creating water on any of them to minus their saves. Eventually, we managed to escape by combineing shoving the pillar away and crushing a ton of Morlocks, combining Grease with Spark, and Webbing entrances shut, and we eventually all ran away.

Did I mention we're only level 3?

Prince_Ornstein
2013-03-25, 08:15 PM
Did not happen to me in particular but it did happen to the parties paladin (so that makes it even better right?) here goes:

crawling through a long abandoned Dwarven city, the party comes to a vast open room that looks around the lines of the royal throne room with a huge platform with a staircase leading up to the throne. we get to the top of the staircase and there is a dwarven skeleton sitting in the chair equipped with full dwarven plate mail a battle axe and a crown. the party rogue simply must have the crown and proceeds to take it off without asking anyone.....

**whole party holds breath**

nothing...wow how lucky! my bard screams out in exclamation at our luck, as if it wasn't going to happen anyway the little dwarf king comes to life at the sound of my voice and proceeds to "show us a good time"

anyway mid fight the paladin is holding the front line down and rolls a natural 1...he throws his flail on the ground and in the next turn bends down to pick it up and get caught on the way back up by the dwarven kings natural 20 crit attack roll. the dwarven king chops the paladin's whole arm off at the shoulder and the paladin kept fighting and we won the battle..be it barely. everyone else was already less then 10hp or unconscious. our dmpc cleric picked up the arm and stated he could preserve the arm and attach it later.

when we got back to town that night the rouge stole the paladins preserved arm from the cleric and gave it to my bard. my bard sang songs in the tavern all night to the brave deeds of Zepher the one armed paladin....while holding up his severed limb :smallbiggrin:

DontEatRawHagis
2013-03-25, 09:12 PM
So, remember that time when the Big Bad got the mcguffin and was about to summon the Legion of Doom, and we were 10 HP from a TPK?

Yeah, how'd we manage to get out of that again?

So, Playgrounders, what have been some of the closest calls you as players have ever experienced in your games? When the stakes were high, the odds were against you, and you still won?

I'd start, but unfortunately, I haven't played enough to actually have one.

Two games earliest one first.

Cyberpunk Tank Battle:
The group is up against a Smart Tank, ie AI that is running a tank system. Two of the players decide to board it. One of them being the squishy hacker. The Sniper of the party had been firing at the AI's main computer cause the system to leak coolant and overheat.

By the time the Hacker got into the tank the tank was slowly becoming red hot(ie. Imminent explosion). He was able to jack in with the help of an AI his partner gave him.

Inside the machine he finds himself in the middle of a beach with a buff man in a speedo drinking an appletini. He tries to convince the AI that he should give up his mission because he can be more than what is beyond his programming. The enemy AI ponders this for a moment and responds that his mission is to kill his targets and if he has to explode to cause that so be it.(AI has become sentient in this universe yet)

The Hacker manages to stall him for a second with a Paradox statement. And shutsdown the tank. However, one of the players attached C4 to his back and blew the charge. :smalleek: Destorying what could have been their own AI tank and turning it into scrap metal. Granted the tank was almost warped by the heat, but it was just a fixer upper.


The Shrine of the Silver Monkey(Dark Sun):

You remember Legends of the Hidden Temple? I based a module on it. A small one that involved a few encounters and stuff. So they enter the Temple and low and behold they come to the room with three suits of armor.

One of Obsidian, One of rusted Chainmail, and One of Gold.

Each able to fit one person and the hint I gave before they came into the temple was that the builders were very fickle people who enjoyed the luxuries while the working peasants died to build their temple.

The "Smart" DnD expert who has been playing since middle school.(I myself only started a year or two ago), decided that this was a test of poverty and that the rusty chainmail was the correct answer. They had their healer step inside the chainmail(I say suit but I mean like pieces of metal sticking out of the wall to act as an outline for a person)

The Chainmail animates and starts to suffocate him. The "Pro" DnD player then stops the new player(About a few months experience) from saving him. Saying "No, maybe he's meant to die..."

I was lucky the new player decided the pro's advice didn't mean anything in Dark Sun.

Traab
2013-03-25, 09:27 PM
Can I use a dungeon run from a MMORPG? I was running a dungeon in World of Warcraft and we had fought our way to the final boss. This boss proceeded to spank us royally. The tank died quick. then the healer, then 2 of the dps. At the same time, its hp are also dropping rapidly. It is clearly a race to the finish line. The last person besides me drops dead and the boss is at about 5% life. I am playing an elemental/restoration shaman, meaning I can heal and blast, and I am blasting away like this boss owes me money. My hp is plummeting, my mana is dropping just as fast.

At this point I am about to die the next hit, and I have enough mana to either cast a big heal on myself OR cast a lightning bolt on the boss not both. Said boss is basically at .05% life. I cross my fingers, mumble a quick prayer to every god this game has, and decide to go for the nuke. The lightning bolt flies from my hands, the boss nails me for lethal damage, my lightning bolt connects and BOOM! Boss dies! Not only that, but I have the ability to reincarnate up. So I am able to resurrect myself and raise my group mates. We are all cheering at this epic finale and I got to feel like the Big Damn Hero for a change.

comicshorse
2013-03-25, 10:05 PM
From a Warhammer game :

We are exploring the caverns under Middenheim with the Middenheim military when we encounter a Skaven infestation. My character ends up going toe-to-toe with a rat ogre. My P.C. is a elf duellist with many careers under his belt and spanks the rat ogre leaving it running from combat with a permanent limp in his leg. We are forced to pull back to tend to our casualties so it gets away.
The next night we go back and find the Skaven again. There is weird Skaven chanting but seemingly no effect and then they charge us. The Rat Ogre goes straight for me and I prepare to finish it with, I admit, a bit of a smug smile on my face.
I go first but in a moment of prescient paranoia opt to let it attack first. It does so and hits, I parry and take 6 off its attack.
GM informs me after parry it does 6 damage. I reply that doesn't get through my Toughness and armour. He grins and informs me thats 6 AFTER taking off my toughness and armour.
The Rat Ogre attacks again and again and again and again and again ! After Dodging and using every attack I've got as a parry I just take a 1 point Crit. and don't have anything left to scratch it.
Next round comes and I'm out of wounds, facing an unharmed, turbo charged Rat Ogre and knowing if I collapse among a group of Skaven then there's a good chance even Fate Points aren't going to cut it. Especially as the rest of the Skaven are fighting remarkably well and my side is losing badly.
At the start of the round the GM casually picks up a D10 and rolls a 1 and then collpases swearing. When he's finished he brokenly informs us all the Skaven drop dead !
( Turns out he'd adapted the Death Shriek(?) spell for WFRP. It doubles the Stats of the creatures its cast on but every round there is a 10% chance of their overtaxed systems just collapasing and they die )

illyrus
2013-03-25, 11:20 PM
Not really a win but a survival here:

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game, GM dumps the entire fire temple on our party. We begin a fighting withdrawal.

My bard uses inspire greatness to keep the fighter up with temp HP. My bard is saved from death by the ranger gunning down the ogre about to knock his last bit of HP off. Cleric heals the severely injured fighter. Lightning bolt hits all of the party (save my bard due to lucky positioning).

Cleric: Damn that's -12, I'm dead.
Bard(me): I run back and grab her body.
Fighter: No leave her, she's no good to us dead. <- as a note the player of the fighter was the husband of the cleric's player
Bard(me): My character would have no way of knowing if she was actually dead or simply dieing, he's going to try to save her.

Ranger drops the one thing that can catch up to my bard that round and we evade our pursuit 2 rounds later.

Cleric: Wait, the lightning bolt only did 35 damage right?
GM: Yes...
Cleric: -6 HP!

Anderlith
2013-03-26, 12:01 AM
When we were level 2-3 we were drawn into a war that started over an evil skull of an ancient demon, it was an artifact worn like a helmet. The Crown (Skull) of Xetalelthus (Idk the real spelling) It had the power to raise the dead & other nastiness. After the theft of the crown from a hidden catacombs under a hamlets cemetery, our party went to retrieve them helm, if was currently in a small border keep that was abandoned a long time ago & recently a band of orcs had taken residence. We faced an orc chieftain that was incredibly tough, a handful of gnolls & a bunch of zombies & skeletons. An evil cleric almost destroys the party in just a few spells but we recover & she flees to the top most level of the keep, melting the stone around the only stairway.

We lick our wounds & climb in through some windows to face off against her, only this time she's summoned up a pet bone devil. Most of our party is down for the count by this time, our halfling rogue tries to swipe the crown away from the cleric (The cleric isn't wearing the Skull, just carrying it) when the rogue tries to run of with the artifact she takes damage because her alignments off & she goes down, alive but unconscious. We knock the cleric unconscious as well, but then the bone devil picks up the cleric, the halfling, & the Crown & flies through a window fleeing. My character, a paladin makes on last ditch effort, pulling out a grappling hook & jumping out the window, trying to catch hold of the fiend. I fail, I fall, I almost die. Several of the party do die.

We then spend the rest of the campaign trying to get the Crown back & fight the war, until all the characters in the original party die (my paladin was swallowed by a tendriculos, our half orc barbarian is slain in combat, & our elf succumbs to depression & retires) the other five members of our party don't have much of a connection to the war & the Crown & so we end the campaign.

Afterwards our DM tells us that the Quest for the Crown was supposed to end in that little border keep & we were never supposed to have wrapped it up then...:smalleek:

Our close call in the border keep spawned our entire campaign. & I loved it:smallsmile:

DigoDragon
2013-03-26, 06:54 AM
The closest call my group ever had was when they were around 17th level and took on a collossal epic red dragon. The seven-member party went TWELVE rounds with this monstrous wyrm and nearly lost to it. The party and their final HPs (if I remember correctly):
Cleric, 22 HP
Favored Soul, -8 HP
Ranger (TWF), -7HP
Ranger (bow), 16 HP
Wizard Diviner, 9 HP
Paladin/Rogue, -3 HP
Sorcerer/Rogue, 14 HP

HP figures might have a +/-2 HP margin of error. Anyway, that was a really fierce battle I ran and with nearly half the party down they really sweated it out. :smallbiggrin:

I think the cleric got the final blow on the dragon, a solid hit delivered by her longsword.

Negativethac0
2013-03-26, 10:33 AM
The first chapter of Skull and Shackles has the heroes explore an island on which they run into three ghouls (I believe it is) at some time. Even though they were around third level, four members of the party were paralyzed within the first couple of rounds. Leaving the poor gunslinger alone to kill off the one still standing. She managed all her saves, but it brought her down to 2 hit points, meaning in the end she picked up an old club and started clubbing it.

I can only explain it by incredible dice luck, but she pulled it through. Pretty impressive, I'll have to say. We have since named it the 'Dead Island episode.'

Angel Bob
2013-03-26, 11:21 AM
Our party ranger's been making a habit of this. Recently, she was torn open by a rage drake's claws, but her latest scrape with death takes the cake.

After clearing the undead out of the first room of an Egyptian-style dungeon, the elf archer clambered up the walls and climbed around a corner to look down the hallway. As she took in the sights, she also noticed a swarm of scarab beetles crawling towards her from the ceiling. Thanks to its aura, the swarm blasted her with at least two attacks per round, each of which dealt ongoing necrotic damage. All the damage wore her down to 8 HP, at which point she opted to just drop out of the battle -- literally. Using her Acrobatics, she reduced her falling damage to 7, leaving her at a meager 1 HP.

As of our latest session, she's fleeing out the door of the dungeon.