Fights you feel kinda bad about

[Silus]

So, what fights have your characters been in that you felt were just...unfair to the enemy?

Mine was this little gem:
Pathfinder game, I'm playing a lvl 7 Blight Druid with the Decay subdomain. Basically a wildshaping plague doctor with disease magics. Anyway, we're doing this one game where there's these fey causing trouble in addition to undead. So we're walking along this path and get attacked by a zombie pegasus. Well 3/5 of the party run forward while myself and the fighter hang back in the back (I can't do much against undead after all). So the fighter gets all hypnotized by something in a nearby lake. He wanders off and I make my perception check to see that it's a Kelpie. Now, I'm wildshaped into a raptor so I can't talk, so I decide to do the next best thing. I run up (double move), get right next to the Kelpie and just put myself between it and the fighter. Its round comes up and I say to the DM "I'm gonna need a DC 18 Fort save from the Kelpie". The DM's like "Ok..." and rolls. Kepie fails the check so I say "Well, the Kelpie is nauseated for 1 round and sickened for a minute. Probably 'cause my druid smells like death and carrion. (Blight Druid's Miasma ability)" So the Kelpie retreats into the lake (about 30 feet) puking its guts up. My turn comes up, so I hit it with a Pox Pustules. Spell sticks, so it's sickened even more and takes a -4 to it's Dex. Kepie tries to pull away more, so on my turn, I fire up a Summon Nature's Ally.

The short of it was that the shark I summoned ate the plague ridden Kelpie, and the Kelpie couldn't do diddily.

[Nightgaun7]

Sounds like exactly the kind of fight you want to be in to me.

[supermonkeyjoe]

as DM I once had some low level bandits (1st to 3rd level) attack a 15th level party just to show how far they'd come, the players assumed it would be a level appropriate encounter and responded appropriately. Ludicrous gibs ensued :smallbiggrin:

[Silus]

Sounds like exactly the kind of fight you want to be in to me.

Oh totally. Especially since Miasma affects Plant creatures and animals the same way it affects Fey =D

I just feel a bit bad that I trivialized the fight in such a way =P Apparently another group ran the same scenario and the Kelpie killed a rogue or a ninja or something.

[TentacleSurpris]

I made a DM SOOOOO mad last year.

We were playing a Ravenloft game. We'd spent the entire campaign tracking down some "White Lady" that was associated with the Fae of the Shadow Rift. She had been making fae pacts with people to give them their hearts desire, but later sent her servant out with a black blade to harvest the love out of their hearts, by cutting out their hearts. Many tales of woe and tragedy followed. Lots of moral decisions were made, people fell into darkness, one character became a werewolf, one character lost his fiancee, etc.

So we got into the shadow rift and found the end bad guy. It turns out it was a handmaiden of the queen who was fooled into thinking that if she harvested enough love from the mortals, that she could open up this prison below the shadow rift and destroy this dark cthulu-like monster below their kingdom (who is also the Dark Lord of the domain, if you know Ravenloft).

The DM spent a whole afternoon statting up this 14th level sorcerer with spells and a fae template. She gave us her evil speech, and cast invisibilty. My 9th level Shapeshift Druid responded with.

"I cast faerie fire, right in front of me. There's no saving throw. We see her."

DM: "grumble grumble, what do you mean there's no saving throw.. grumble grumble, OK, you see her, roll initiative."

I win initiative

"I swift-shapeshift into a giant wolf with 26 str and grapple her." I rolled, grapple and succeeded. Bam! BBEG fight ended right there.

Now, the sorceress had a Contingency spell up to teleport her out when she reached half hit-points, because our DM wanted us to fight her twice. But our party just decided to beat her unconscious with nonlethal damage and our wizard teleported to the palace to get the queen to arrest her.

There, I ruined the entire climax to the campaign and 2 BBEG fights with one level-1 spell and 1 grapple check. Go druids!

That was our last session.

[stupiddDice]

While I don't feel bad about it, this fight was certainly unfair to the enemy. We were exploring a dungeon and we heard a noise and the DM made us roll initiative. I went ahead and saw a Minotaur and cast blindness/deafness and the Minotaur failed his save. Then the druid's wolf came by and tripped it. whenever it tried to stand up, the wolf would just trip it again. Then two other party members grabbed an anvil and dropped it on him, ending the fight

[Ardantis]

I was once playing a game of Aberrant (super heroes) and my heroes made it all the way to the big bad (sort of like a Magneto).

I had overestimated how much abuse my players would be willing to put up with from their handlers.

After the BBEG gave his big evil let's-get-this-party-started speech my players decided to just join him and his quasi-evil organization.

That was the end of our campaign- I felt so bad!

[Shining Wrath]

First fight, new campaign, starting ECL 4. We met some guys on the road giving us the "surrender or die" bit, trying to steal the item we were transporting.

I had already established my barbarian was split wide away from the party.

DM placed his guys. DM didn't count squares very well.

Round 1: Barbarian charge attack, critical hit the bad guy leader evil mage with a great sword. Confirmed. Ouchie. The bad guys who had not moved forward to engage our front line fell back to deal with me. Casters and archers got busy.

TEPK in two rounds.

[stack]

PF, Red Hand of Doom, party facing a hydra, playing a vitalist. First round: manifest collapse, full augment, spending focus to boost the DC. One failed DC 21 fort save later it was just a matter of beating the thing to death while it was nauseated.

[prufock]

In an 18th-19th level game, a cult of Tiamat had created a godslayer sword. We were at what I assume was the climax of the campaign as the cult descended on our fortress, led by the cleric of Tiamat wielding the godslayer. My Bahamut-devoted sorcerer shifts to the astral plane, casts some caster level buffs and true strike on himself, and shifts back. One well-placed telekinesis later, I'm holding the godslayer, the cleric is lying headless on the floor, and (since I failed my will save) the game has a new villain. I don't feel bad about what I did to the cleric, I feel bad about my poor decision to catch the sword in my hand, rather than dropping it on the floor. But hey, sometimes you have to go for cinematic awesomeness over good decisions.

There was also that time, in the same campaign, I scored a natural 20 to attack a lich with his own telescope. This wasn't even really a fight, he got huffy and teleported away. I have the feeling he was supposed to be a plot point, and I just smashed his skull with a spyglass instead.

This was also the game that turned my DM completely against any and all immediate-action spells, since celerity and wings of cover were put to use to save my butt several times. Oh yeah, and shivering touch took down a couple dragons.

[Zombimode]

Then the druid's wolf came by and tripped it. whenever it tried to stand up, the wolf would just trip it again.

Do note that if you meant it exactly like you wrote it, this doesn't work. The reason is very simple: one the time the AoO occurs, the triped target is still on the ground. Sure, you can make a trip attempt against a target that is already prone, but it will just have no effect. The after the AoO the target will just stand up from prone. In effect, you can't trip-lock something.

[Rubik]

Do note that if you meant it exactly like you wrote it, this doesn't work. The reason is very simple: one the time the AoO occurs, the triped target is still on the ground. Sure, you can make a trip attempt against a target that is already prone, but it will just have no effect. The after the AoO the target will just stand up from prone. In effect, you can't trip-lock something.You can if you ready actions to do so, though, yes, AoO trip-locking doesn't work too well.

[Immabozo]

I had a Star Wars Saga game where we were raiding a camp of these scientist jedi who had made force powered weapons. Well me and one other split off and an NPC shows is to the vault with all the data chips. It has 2 guards. I start combat by trying (and failing) to disarm one. They start shooting my with these force lightning guys, which every turn I turn back on them, deflect with my lightsaber or in some way use their actions to help me. Ever initiative was basically my initiative.

Then I force moved object one into the other for massive damage to both, turn after, hit them with another force power to take them out. It was a glorious fight that I just owned at. I almost felt bad for the guards

[Arc_knight25]

You can trip-lock some one. You just have to ready an action for when the Enemy is actually on thier feet. If the enemy doesn't stand up the action is wasted but they will still be on the ground getting beaten by melee.

Don't be trying to steal this players thunder. They totally crushed that enemy.

[Ardantis]

I think I agree with prufock- becoming the villain is the biggest facepalm.

[Deox]

Was in a SW:Saga game, playing a Jedi who despised mechanics, droids even more. Another party member was playing a big brute-fisted Wookiee who saw most things smaller than him as food.

We encountered a mechanized beast that we immediately surge/charge against. With my attack, I score a critical hit, slicing open the machine to reveal a small, bird like creature piloting the monstrosity. The Wookiee, having not eaten in the past couple hours, charges, successfully grabs and begins stunning the tar out of the bird until it's unconscious, then cooks and eats the thing.

The bird piloting the mech was another player.

[Ardantis]

Hilarious!

[Sith_Happens]

D&D 3.5, 7th level party of six versus two chimeras.

First turn after closing to melee, the TWF ranger with frost weapons casts Blades of Fire, then hits with all five (fifth from Haste) of his attacks. Rolls high for damage.

One chimera left.

[Immabozo]

Was in a SW:Saga game, playing a Jedi who despised mechanics, droids even more. Another party member was playing a big brute-fisted Wookiee who saw most things smaller than him as food.

We encountered a mechanized beast that we immediately surge/charge against. With my attack, I score a critical hit, slicing open the machine to reveal a small, bird like creature piloting the monstrosity. The Wookiee, having not eaten in the past couple hours, charges, successfully grabs and begins stunning the tar out of the bird until it's unconscious, then cooks and eats the thing.

The bird piloting the mech was another player.

that's hilarious!

[Averis Vol]

In a pathfinder game I'm playing a gunslinger in recently me and the other character (duo game) were venturing down the road, chasing some red mantis or something, and as night falls we come upon what we suspect to be the guys camp from the night before. So we go to settle in, I scan the area, avoid a snare trap and fail the spot to see the big clumps of spiderweb.

So as I'm coming back the rogue shouts "****, Arim in the tree!" and, reflexively, I draw my gun, turn and fire at the huge sized spider coming out of said tree. Die rolls around the table a bit and lands on a nat 20. So, at level four lets calculate: 4d12 base damage, +16 from deadly aim, +4 from a +1 musket, +4 from killer trait and +12 from focused aim, resulting in a grand total of 78 damage to the big boss creature of the session.

So long story short this is the second time this has happened: someone shouted, it startled me which caused me to place a perfect shot, and I destroyed the boss creatures head with a near max damage musket crit. After this the DM stopped throwing single boss monsters at us, or at least he stopped having them be in hiding.

[RFLS]

-snip-

Why in the name of all that is holy would he end it there? That sounds frakking great.

Sidenote: It's his own fault, too. Any enemy worth their salt at that level is going to a) have spell resistance, and b) not use their contingency on something as dumb as a teleport away at half HP.

[Deox]

While my last post was as a player, this one was as a DM.

Preface: Epic level game (characters ranging between 20 and 22).

The group was currently preparing to assault a green dragon, taking their precautions and buffing accordingly. The wizard uses a greater teleport to reach the closest destination before the dragon's territory.

(As an aside, this location was also home to a battle between this group and a teratomorph)

As a fun thing to do, I utilize random encounter percentiles for all sorts of things, this teleportation effect being no different.

I begin rolling on my charts and instead of wanting it to be a super hard fight, I decide to drop the CR (as I rolled 2 100's in a row, escalating me to the next chart) and instead, add 2 to the monsters I roll off a lower chart. The result is 1d4+4 beholders.

I naturally rolled highest, resulting in 8 of the laser disco balls of death.

Only the character who was built for luck feats survived.

[Friv]

Our grand, final Star Wars Saga battle against the Dark Jedi who had blown up a planet and was planning to blow up Coruscant, with three more dark jedi surrounding him, along with a massive deadly droid and about fifteen mooks.

Before the fight, my droid successfully bluffs him into giving our team a surprise round. Our sniper promptly rolls an astonishingly good shot, taking him two steps down the condition track and dealing a lot of damage, our Trandoshian mechanic drops a grenade into the middle of the other jedi, injuring the lot of them, and our pilot shoots the big bad hard enough to drop him another step down the CT.

Then we all roll astonishingly good initiative checks, and our sniper shoots him again; with his newly-reduced defenses, she kills him.

The Big Bad of the campaign is slain before he got to take an action.

It was amazing, but I felt a little bad for the guy.

[Spuddles]

In an 18th-19th level game, a cult of Tiamat had created a godslayer sword. We were at what I assume was the climax of the campaign as the cult descended on our fortress, led by the cleric of Tiamat wielding the godslayer. My Bahamut-devoted sorcerer shifts to the astral plane, casts some caster level buffs and true strike on himself, and shifts back. One well-placed telekinesis later, I'm holding the godslayer, the cleric is lying headless on the floor, and (since I failed my will save) the game has a new villain. I don't feel bad about what I did to the cleric, I feel bad about my poor decision to catch the sword in my hand, rather than dropping it on the floor. But hey, sometimes you have to go for cinematic awesomeness over good decisions.

There was also that time, in the same campaign, I scored a natural 20 to attack a lich with his own telescope. This wasn't even really a fight, he got huffy and teleported away. I have the feeling he was supposed to be a plot point, and I just smashed his skull with a spyglass instead.

This was also the game that turned my DM completely against any and all immediate-action spells, since celerity and wings of cover were put to use to save my butt several times. Oh yeah, and shivering touch took down a couple dragons.

Did you try teleporting the sword into tiamat's heart?

[thompur]

It was a 18th level party. I had my Warlock and his Warblade cohort all ready with the rest of the party for a long, hard battle. We were facing a hoard of demons and yuggoloths lead by an Evil Elder Titan. And we were in their back yard. They were trying to resurect an ancient evil god. If we fail to stop them, the world as we know it will end. As the fight starts, we roll initiative, and, as usual, my Warlock is last to act. Fortunately, his Warblade bodyguard goes 2nd. He uses White Raven Tactics to allow my Warlock to go next. I decide to start out with a Hail Mary play, and hit the BBEG with a Word of Changing, the Warlock version of Baleful Polymorph. The Titan had SR of 40. I rolled well enough to break through. Then came the Fort save. It needed to roll a 2 or better. You guessed it. I turned it into a sheep. At this point it was still a very dangerous sheep. It rolled its Will save. It needed a 2 or better. Using a different die, the DM rolled... a one. He was stunned. We quickly took out the demoralized minions of the elder titan "soon to be mutton chops" and finnished up in less than an hour. I didn't feel bad that we won, but I did feel a little guilty that it ended so anti-climactically. :smallredface:

[Deox]

Hey now, I had an NPC in a game that was a warlock using this exact same tactic.

"I can do this all day buddy!" He kept screaming.

Never did roll that natural one to turn one of the BBEGs into a bunny...

[Deepbluediver]

In one of my earliest campaigns, our group was participating in a series of games and contests set up by a city for groups of wandering adventureres (sort of like a fantasy olympics) so we could have lots of fighting, sneaking, and loot without the need to for an exposition-heavy plot, no concern about plot holes, and none of the downtime, character loss, or wangst.

Our group was steamrolling most of the other teams, and apparently they (the other competitors) got upset at that. In a planned and sripted encounter, several of the other groups decided to rough us up a bit outside of the arena to teach us a lesson. So basically, it was a non-lethal brawl, i.e. no weapons and no damaging spells.

What wasn't planned, was the fact that I had chosen to play a monk. At this point, I'd already fought my way through a magic maze, a haunted house, survived a run in with the local thieves guild, and avoided a fight with a group of angry druids; all without the use of weapons, armor, or significant magic items (it was a low level group). So our enemies outnumbered us more than 2 to 1, but had tossed aside their weapons and scrolls, or where taking non-lethal damage penalties. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly toss aside my hands.

For everyone else, it was a "oh god what do I do now that 90% of my options are off the table?!?" and "dammit what are the unarmed strike rules again?!?". For me it was "business as usual". I ended up double-flanked (enemies in 4 directions) and I still barely broke a sweat.


So I felt double-bad that the DM's plan pretty much went to pieces, and that the rest of my group was struggling to get by, and I was going along like "if you can all just handle 1 enemy a piece, I'll deal with the other 6".

Happy ending- the DM didn't mind really, because apparently his favorite class was monk, and he never got to see anyone else play one. He said it didn't affect the game at all, but looking back on it....there was the rust monster (no armor and using a quarterstaff), the undead (I had the parties only bludgeoning weapons), the brawl (unarmed combat for everyone); and it starts to look awfully conicidental.

[otakumick]

A monk in his natural environment...




A Studebaker.

[Zombimode]

You can trip-lock some one. You just have to ready an action for when the Enemy is actually on thier feet. If the enemy doesn't stand up the action is wasted but they will still be on the ground getting beaten by melee.

It's easy to say that, but actually quite difficult to pull of.
The problem is: when do you ready the action?

If you used your standard action to trip something you cant ready an action anymore. Most likely the target will have a chance to stand up before your next turn.

If you trip something with an AoO, the target will only not able to stand up if it has no move action or standard action left - which CAN happen, but is actually rather unlikely.

So without a way to get extra standard actions trip-locking by a single triper only works in very specific circumstances.

[ericgrau]

@^ You also can't trip-lock someone because anyone can fight, or crawl prone, or etc. Why do nothing when you can do something at a -4? This is more because people have trouble with prone rules... actually it also happens with all other conditions like blind, grappled, pinned, invisible, mounted, confusing-everything-with-helpless, shadowy illumination, cover, concealment, nearly all the skills... Really nobody likes rules.

(back to topic)

I had an epic level fighter with a looooot of magic items. Before leaving town I made sure to get all the PCs and NPCs that couldn't fly onto a flying carpet for faster travel. When we saw a gigantic worm-thing I tossed dust of dissapearance onto the group so we could greater invisibility past it. The DM said we proceeded onward without any trouble and then muttered something about how the creature was blind and had tremorsense so we would have skipped over it anyway with the flying carpet. I think we were supposed to fight it.

We had a nasty habit of bypassing encounters with stealth, tricks or diplomacy (not diplomancy, but actual bargaining) and every once in a while the DM would mention the templates and so on he put on the beasty. After the epic campaign we started a 2nd campaign at level 5 and by level 9 we were complaining about how we never got any treasure. Exasperated the DM said, "It's your fault because you never fight anything!" We said "Hey, don't drop our rewards for finding unusual solutions instead of direct hack and slash" :smalltongue:

[Dayaz]

I have a few of these.

1) My very first character, a barbarian (who never actually raged because I didn't understand the rules) had taken the Endurance and Run feats, along with having a 50 foot movement. My DM made a labyrinth with a BBEG wizard in the center, but only made the path to get to him 250 feet. He figured all the traps would slow us down and make the fight last longer, and the BBEG was supposed to summon monsters to intercept us in the maze.

My Barbarian had a natural 50 land speed and the run feet. With a full round run, he could move 250 feet. The exact amount of space from my starting square to the BBEG. I ran, managing to avoid all the traps, and just AoO'd the stunned BBEG while my party followed the path of expired traps and were met with my barbarian standing over a dead wizard grinning.

2) a THW Paladin I made in PF one-shotted the BBEG in our second mission with a Vital Strike Smite Crit. Hilarity ensued when his minions/buff partner were standing there staring at the dead Worg.

3)A PF THW Fighter with a large Adamantine Greatsword one sundered 2 buildings from under a couple groups of Arcane Missile Wand Kobolds when he got tired of them hitting him on his touch AC. He later decided to enslave draft the last 2 survivors, a male and female, to be his butler and maid. They followed him on his adventures cooking for the party and helping him with his armor, and occasionally using the wands he had saved from the massive wand fight in the first mission.

Y'know, looking at this I realize all my game breaking stuff has been with Two Handed Weapon melee types O.o

[Etrivar]

The party started the campaing as gladiatorial slaves, and we were told that we were going to be "fighting" a Chimera. Since there were four of us at level three, fighting sounded alot more like "sacrificed to", but we were promised freedom if we could defeat it, and the owners of the arena wanted this to be a drawn out spectacle, so we were given free reign of the arena, along with plenty of wood, woodworking tools, and other materials to prepare the arena in whatever way we saw fit.

Now of course, the owners merely thought that they were making the fight more sporting, making it more of a spectacle. What they didn't know, is that we anomg our number were counted a trapsmith, and an engineer. So we went about turning the arena into a massive trap.

A fifty foot deep, thirty foot wide pit was dug into the center of the arena, and sharpened stakes were planted into the bottom. Supports were set into the wall of the pit, rigged to colapse at the pull of a rope. Over the pit, ten feet above the surface of the arena was built a platform, supported by the poles rigged to colapse. Into the edges of the platform were built slides that would stay flush with the floor until stepped on, then would open outward, ejecting the person sliding on the arena floor on the edge of the pit. The platform was surrounded by twenty foot beams (4X4's essentially) that went straight into the air, ostensibly to stop flyby strafings, rigged to fall inward (forming something like a cone-shaped cage) when the slides were used, to prevent the chimera from flying away. Then open barrels of oil were left around the edge of the platform, and lit torches were put on the beams.

So the scene plays out like this:
We all enter the arena, making a show of confidence, trying to exite the crowd. We take our places atop the platform, and the Chimera is released. He flys forward to start breathing fire on us, but we've readied actions to move to the opposite side of the platform from the side the fire breathing monstrosity was on, and couldn't get to us with the beams in the way, so he flys above them and lands on the platform with us. We all jump on the slides and get out, one of us grabbing the rope along the way. The beams fall shut and keep the Chimera from flying away, and the floor colapses beneath it, so it falls to the spikes at the bottom, getting impaled. Then the rest of the rubble falls on top of it, trapping it there. And then the one of the torches finds some of the oil from the barrels, and the whole thing, rubble, Chimera, and all, turns into one big bonfire, with the horrible beastie dying in screaming agony.

When we actually did the math afterwards it came out to something like a DC 17 trap, and we felt a little bad for the chimera, seeing as level three characters shouldn't have been able to make that.

[Chilingsworth]

Well, it was supposed to happen, but:

Way of the Wicked adventure path, first wave of heroes in the horn of abbadon. After the fight, our dm told us the title of the event was "They Never Should Have Come Here." Yup, that about covers it! :smallamused:

(In particular, the cleric we captured alive isn't going to have a good time in our hands: She'll make a perfect sacrifice to open a demon seal, and to ensure she can't cast spells or run away, we'll probably cut out her tounge and amputate her hands and feet, and take her holy symbol of course.)

[Jsaur]

The four second-level characters (wizard, cleric, fighter, ranger) were wandering through some sewers when they encountered a hobgoblin, which the wizard one-shotted with his shortbow.

Three more came charging down the tunnel, and the party opened fire. The wizard, cleric, and ranger all had ranged weapons, and two hobgoblins were killed, the third wounded. The fighter ran forward and decapitated one with a critical.

I never knew encounters could even possibly end in two rounds.

[Zach J.]

My party was fighting against a witch. Our DM was really excited to show us how cool witches were and we could tell that he had put a lot of thought into this encounter. She surprised us and cast Fly as her first action which put our group in a bind as no one in the party could do the same. My oracle of flame threw a couple of fireballs at her, but she saved for half damage both times. At this point I realized I needed to change tactics. Since the witch seemed pretty sprightly for a withered old crone I knew that I had to switch to a spell that would target a different saving throw. My oracle assumed that as a spellcaster she would most likely have a mighty willpower, but more than likely a feeble fortitude save; this was fine as I didn't have any spells that targeted will saves, but I did have one that forced a fortitude save: Sound Burst. I threw a sound burst at the witch and lo and behold she failed her save. I proceeded to stun her every round while the fighters ran up a flight of stairs and jumped at her, slashing wildly and hoping they'd score a hit. We killed her without too much trouble; the DM was pretty ticked off.

[Malimar]

Playing a low-level witch, facing a single allegedly tough bugbear boss (Bruthasmus in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, if you're curious). I'm naturally at the back of the party, the rest of the party between me and the bugbear. He was almost last in the initiative. So, first round, I hit him with command, he fails his save, and I command him to Approach, making him use up his turn walking the gauntlet of the party's beatsticks. Everybody gets an attack of opportunity, then they get their regular turn to beat on him some more. He goes down without getting to make a single attack.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Playing a low-level witch, facing a single allegedly tough bugbear boss (Bruthasmus in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, if you're curious).

My group ran through that fight more than a year ago.

I was the only elf in the party- a squishy Wizard 2/Fighter 1.

We still refer to it as "the incident".

[Clumsyninja23]

I was DM'ing this one, but it's a good story nonetheless.

After figuring out the ruler of this small city is actually planning to send a goblin army against the surrounding cities and towns to take over, the PC's interrogate a goblin they captured to head off the antagonist. Gathering a militia of the city, they set up an ambush where the enemy were going to come out of an underground passage.

After a few waves of goblin fighting from the tunnels, the BBEG shows up. The PC's are low level, around level 5? I made the BBEG around level 10 or so, and even then I beefed up his stats and HP to make the fight harder, as these PC's had managed to easily clear through everything (I let them make high powered characters, less magic items, increases the feeling that they themselves are doing something heroic, not their weaponry. Just what they like to do) and I wanted it to be a really hard, close battle.

BBEG comes up, big speech and all. Barbarian flies into a rage, runs up, and swings his axe.

Rolls a 20.

"Nice, roll to confirm."

Rolls a 20.

:smallconfused:

:smallmad:

:smallfurious:


...

:smallsigh:

[Cirrylius]

Dungeon crawl, maybe five characters. We get to a split passage; one way has a "plot device" door with a keyhole. We follow the other one to find a 20x20 room with an upright coffin on the far wall. A half-hour of discussion later, we have a plan. The mage floats several oilskins onto the top of the coffin, then prepares to cast Knock. Everybody else arms themselves with an oilskin or two, and ready their actions to throw when the coffin opens. The sorcerer readies an action to cast Scorching Ray when everybody is done throwing. Someone listening to the brief-ass encounter in the next room would have heard...

*KnockKnockKnock*
*Crrrreeeeeaaaakkk*
*SplatSplatSplatSplat*
"Eeeeewwww"
*ZZZAP ZZZAP*
*FWOOOMPFH*
"AAARGHAAARGHAAARGH"
*sizzle*

The DM told us afterwards it was barely an appropriate CR for our level, but none of us liked the idea of level drain, dominating gaze, or gaseous retreat:smallannoyed:

[Metahuman1]

I once had a party run Castle Ravenloft. The cleric managed to turn ALL the mist in the setting into Holy Water.

We basically killed every bad thing in the setting.


The DM literally introduced his own face to the gaming table.

[JoshuaZ]

I once had a party run Castle Ravenloft. The cleric managed to turn ALL the mist in the setting into Holy Water.


How did he do that?

[Rubik]

I was playing a thri-kreen in a game where we were forcibly teamed up with githyanki to destroy a rapidly growing nest of kythons which threatened the entire material plane by devouring sections of the astral plane itself.

I had made it clear early on that my character hated githyanki, and we'd fought and killed quite a few up to this portion of the campaign (rather brutally, in my case).

We were in the hive, with the gith scouting ahead, when we were ambushed by ceilingkythons. (Much worse than ceilingcats, since those don't try to kill you...usually.) I spotted them before anyone else and got initiative before the kythons could drop on our githyanki scouts. I called out, "Look out above you!" to which they responded by doing exactly that. My arrows struck the kythons on a nice fat Nat 20, which sprayed acidic blood all over the gith scouts, melting their eyes and blinding them.

I laughed.

You can't have slaughter without laughter, after all.

Later I felt bad because my party made ME the scout after that. Damned gith. Can't even take a bit of acid to the eyes, the pansies.

[Malroth]

Lv 6 Pathfinder druid. City was being attacked by an Adult Red dragon who got himself affected by some DM invented poison that inflicted Slow for 1d4 hours. I turned into a periguine falcon, cast call lightning and proceeded to plink the dragon to death with lightning bolts while staying out of its reach and breath cone. The fact that the dragon could have 1 shotted me if it had simply landed and breathed up, cast dispel magic or used a building as a thrown weapon somewhat makes me sad instead it just flew around at half speed untill it was out of HP.

[JusticeZero]

Was back in AD&D. I had a low level polearm specialist with a.. Spetum I think. Set to receive charge (for 2x damage), and a weapon property that it does extra damage if you yank it out. We come into a room and I offhandedly mention that i'm setting to receive a charge.
Adventure boss yells back and forth with the rogue (who had the right language). Things go sour, so the rogue jumps back behind me, then the GM has everyone roll initiative..
..and the boss charges us, forgetting that i've been braced the whole time. Double damage plus specialization and so on. Max damage on the roll.
GM: " O.O ...Right. He pulls the blade out of his chest and raises his axe.."
Me: "He takes another x points of damage from pulling the blade out."
GM: "...What..? Where does it say that?"
I hand the book over. GM looks. Enemy keels over, dead without having had a chance to take a single swing.

[Fable Wright]

I think I agree with prufock- becoming the villain is the biggest facepalm.
Really? The last campaign I was in ended when the entire party unanimously decided that they had become the new BBEGs of the world, after the two magic-users in the group got access to 5th level spells (including Cloudkill, Magic Jar, and Dominate Person) in an E6 setting.

Our current campaign is based on taking down that old party.

On topic, the only fight I've had like that is in an encounter with an Aboleth in the last campaign. We were about to fight an Aboleth, and had spent a small while planning and burning AP to grab access to spells that we had no right to access with our spell lists to prepare for the fight. On the opening round of combat, my Dread Necromancer sends a DMM Split Ray'd Ennervation at the Aboleth, as soon as it gets in line of sight. We roll for negative levels, and rolled the max: 8. The same number of HD as the aboleth. Poor thing just died in the first round of combat, before it or anyone else in the party got a single round of combat. It was rather anticlimatic.

[John Campbell]

Do note that if you meant it exactly like you wrote it, this doesn't work. The reason is very simple: one the time the AoO occurs, the triped target is still on the ground. Sure, you can make a trip attempt against a target that is already prone, but it will just have no effect. The after the AoO the target will just stand up from prone. In effect, you can't trip-lock something.

At least in Pathfinder, it's possible to exploit that exact rules quirk to trip-juggle someone, though. Get Greater Trip, Combat Reflexes, and the trip special ability. When you hit someone, the trip ability gives you a free trip attempt on them. If the trip attempt is successful, Greater Trip means that your target being tripped provokes an AoO, which you (and everyone else who threatens them!) can use to attack them again. If your AoO hits, because the AoO happens before the event that provokes it, the target is not yet tripped... so you can trip them again. Which causes them to provoke AoOs again. Rinse, repeat, until you miss, fail a trip attempt, or run out of AoOs. At which point all of the pending trips resolve at once, and your target becomes very, very prone.

I have sadly been unable to come up with a way to get my wolf animal companion's Int high enough that he qualifies for the Trip feat chain without making him ineligible to be an animal companion or burning wishes (so not worth it). I did come up with an alternate method involving Feral Combat Training and Vicious Stomp (from Ultimate Combat), but it involves a bunch of prereq feats that are otherwise worthless (Improved Unarmed Strike! On a Large wolf!) and only my wolf would get the AoOs, so I don't think it's worth it.


Back on topic... my current half-orc ranger/barbarian mounted archer murder machine has had a couple. The most pathetic, I think, was the... warlock? Sorceress? Witch? I never found out... who the DM had spent some time designing as a major fight. She teleported in. I won initiative and, having my bow already in hand, full-attacked, with Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Point Blank Shot, Deadly Aim, and my best favored enemy bonus all applicable, and hit with everything, shooting her half a dozen times, including two x3 crits, and knocking her down from full to negative-more-hit-points-than-she-started-with before she (or anyone else in my party) even got to act.

(I did pretty much the same thing to Strahd at one point, too, though he just turned into gas and escaped to his coffin to regenerate. Frickin' mosquitoes.)

As another possible candidate... our DM won a Colossal Great Wyrm Red Dragon "miniature" in a raffle at the FLGS, and was determined to actually use it. So he had us temporarily advance all of our characters to 20, including appropriate WBL, and threw us into the scenario that came with it. It was a three-round curbstomp. None of the PCs took damage. Worse than that, the most useful thing the rogue did was get accidentally trapped in the ethereal where he couldn't affect the fight in any way. The most useful thing the cleric did was accidentally trap the rogue in the ethereal where he couldn't affect the fight in any way. The most useful thing the wizard did was bring her adamantine golem along to soak damage... all her spells (and the cleric's) kept failing SR penetration or being nullified by saves or the dragon's various magical defenses. So... the adamantine golem and I took the dragon down in three rounds. I think it would have taken me four rounds to solo it, and I might have taken damage.

[RFLS]

How did he do that?

I dunno, but I suspect the player (and maybe the DM) had read the SCS campaign logs, because an archivist in the Halloween one did exactly that (different situation, same tactic).

[SowZ]

TOR Star Wars campaign. Party landed on a planet to pick up a few republic troops stranded there. Turns out the planet was being assaulted by these pirate/slavers in this dreadnaught cruiser. The GM had this whole thing planned where a relatively small, (20-30 guys or so,) operates the biggest, oldest hunk of junk possible to scare people into assuming they have a full staff and not a skeleton crew.

I didn't know this. So the GM did not at all expect me to, after finding the troopers, assault the dreadnaught rather than try and evade it. We captured a member of a ground team sent to kill us and used him and his troop transport to sneak onto the ship. As is keeping with this character, one ridiculously convoluted plan against overwhelming odds, (but not NEAR the overwhelming odds I expected,) and we had taken over a whole dreadnaught.

We circumvented an epic battle, too, by blasting a whole in the hull from the inside sucking most of the enemy into space. I knew those three thermal detonators I bought at the beginning of the session would come in handy...

Point being, we got more loot in that battle then I think my GM expected us to every get in the whole campaign. Six transports, six speeders, a whole armory, and a FRIKKIN DREADNAUGHT.

[Immabozo]

The four second-level characters (wizard, cleric, fighter, ranger) were wandering through some sewers when they encountered a hobgoblin, which the wizard one-shotted with his shortbow.

Three more came charging down the tunnel, and the party opened fire. The wizard, cleric, and ranger all had ranged weapons, and two hobgoblins were killed, the third wounded. The fighter ran forward and decapitated one with a critical.

I never knew encounters could even possibly end in two rounds.

My group had orchestrated the siege and taking of this huge fortress and got two enemy armies through the gates and took the city. We were rewarded from our Prince with our own island with a fortress on it that had been taken by a demon, that we had taken back the week before.

My character: Half Minotaur (dragon magazine, DM approved, self nerfed so as not to be game breaking, even though DM approved the full template) half ogre (dragon magazine, DM approved) on a dwarf chassis, barbarian 5/Dungeoncrasher fighter 2/bear warrior 1/war hulk 2 stats: str 26 dex 16 con 24 int 7 wis 10 cha 4 whirling spirit lion totem barbarian (+ bear warrior) rage is +8 str, +2 dex, +4 con, 2 dodge bonus to AC, +2 reflex, +2 natural armor, -2 to attacks plus one more attack per round. Weapon Gargantuan +1 Dwarven Waraxe +16 (+18 when raging) to hit 4D8 +15 (+19 when raging) feats: Endurance, steadfast determination, power attack, shock trooper, improved bullrush, leap attack (2 flaws) Next feat is knockback, finally pulling the build together.

So the other night we were clearing out the mountains behind our new keep. We found an adult blue dragon who wanted us to pay him to leave his cave unharmed. We wanted to charge him rent. He made slight of the half dragon in our party, so our half dragon charged, followed by me. The DM laughs, a smug look of 'you are so screwed' spreads across his face.

Round two of combat. Half dragon does 32 or so damage, my turn. Natural 20 and one more attack hits. I confirm the crit and we added it up for simplicities sake. The two hits came out to 16D8 + 126 damage (4D8 +19, +10 power attack, plus, x3 crit, 12D8 +57, +30 power attack = 16D8 +126). The dragon was pronounced dead long before I finished rolling damage. I killed it on round 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did not feel bad in the slightest. Well, I felt a little bad for so thoroughly owning it's face.

[Fyermind]

So my first time running through RHoD I had a Winged Thri-Kreen Multiweapon fighting soulbow. It was gestalt, so the build came online at level 6 (we took our time with random encounters in the forest to prepare).

When we took the keep we ended up fighting them all at once. Koth had mindsight. I swept six enemies including the Minotaur in my first action. With eight attacks and massive boosts from the resident bard (+5d6 sonic). I finished off everyone but Koth in round 2 because he had total cover relative to me. Round three I re-positioned and got off a single attack but Wings of Cover blocked me out. It looked like Koth might actually win the fight. He'd dropped the crusader to half health, was flying, and even though we'd made him visible. So I was the only relevant attacker. Round 4 I teed off on Koth. So he wings of cover blocked one of them again. But in seven shots I dealt 183 damage.

That was when the DM banned bards. 80% of that damage was sonic from the bard.

[Vknight]

Ummm

Colour Spray... Took out the entire party for a module(We were level 1 & 2) I was in, except for me...
So its the Paladin vs this women whose got 4 shadow tentacles that act on her initiative and there own. She still acts so can cast spells.
So I go right after her...
I draw my personal favorite its a bag holding a pair of alchemist fires, said bag soaked in oil. I smash it into her and the bag explodes.
Each tentacle takes 3d6+2
They had 5Hp but restored to full hp her next round until she hit death or was 50ft away from this evil vase.
Next action I walk over next to the vase and ask if I can knock it off the alter.
Gm checks notes :smallfrown:
Yes
So I push it over if no tentacles are active it only has 1hp knocking it off the alter will break it.


So now after that Module the Paladin got renamed by everyone else. Inigo Jones Wayne and it stuck.
Strange considering he preferred a Bow and various explosives and was more Red Hood + Red Arrow/Arsenal
So he walks into a encounter by himself for a side mission
Its a pair on creatures that fire off a spray of needles(reflex save)
Inigo walks in by himself and what is his solution?
Calmly draws his bow proceeds to crit on his arrows. The ones with oil and the creatures were weak to fire. 3d8+6+ 1d6*2 damage on each.


Inigo continues this in several other things
We were fighting a Wisp I had wandered off food. And Inigo was taking care of other things was the explanation.
The guys had only gone 3rounds.
Inigo walks in, Smite Evil on a arrow with bane for whatever Wisps are(I can't remember), point is was it was a arrow he'd tied a pair of alchemist fires too.
3d8+27 + 2d6+2 boom gone.
Do the exact same thing on a White Dragon 2 rooms later.


We are to take care of this Hag. Without violence if possible.
Inigo calls her out, and then Full Attacks with his bow and a smite evil.
One Hag dead later.

Overall Inigo became this silly badass in situations at the strangest moments.

Setting up fireworks. Throwing roman candles. Joining the Hellknights. Getting Firework launchers on his Paladin mount. Equipping various alchemical items to my arrows. A large shield + longsword if he ever needed to tank(he did in 2 adventures and still used various silly tricks)
All in all i feel bad for those fighting him/those that did fight him

As his reliance on fire
Preaching
Barbed Arrows for bleed damage
Holy Salt
made him as described by others. The Evilest Good Paladin
I also feel bad cause he rolled really well but had a low Strength so he did enough damage to hurt so it would take him awhile to slowly beat you to death

[Malachei]

As a wizard in a solo session, coming upon a Beholder is not the best of things.

Except if you win initiative. One Disintegrate spell later, the Beholder was dust in the wind.

[Clovis]

Does accidental genocide count? Accidental in the sense that we wiped out the wrong tribe... In a 3.5 D&D game our liegelord sent us to investigate a lizardfolk infestation in the nearby swamp. Previously, when ransacking a pirate ship, we had seen a handwritten order from lizardfolk to obtain weapons. Naturally we thought that these lizards were planning to do nasty things to our liegelord's town.
We proceeded to procure a nasty poison and, not having enough money, sweet-talked our liegelord to lean on the hapless alchemist to lower the price. This ultra-virulent poison wiped out the tribe aaand a lot of aquatic critters as collateral damage.
Upon investigating the lair of the lizardfolk we saw their defence plans against sahuagin which had been making attacks to our liegelord's city.
The DM had intended these lizards to be our allies... but decided to roll with our decision.
The (now-weakened) god of the lizardfolk cursed us with lizardskin (-2 to CHA and DEX); as atonement we built and financed an orphanage for lizardfolk...

[kreenlover]

There was this time that I was playing an Anzati (from the Star Wars game. Anzati are sort of the star wars vampires with no LA) Warlock (Yes the DM allowed the crossover)
So we got kidnapped and thrown up against a black dragon (No gear, no items, no nothing)
So I used the extraordinary ability that the anzati have to fascinate and daze the enemy.
Then I drained his brains out through his nose over the five turns that I kept him hypnotized for

[JoshuaZ]

I dunno, but I suspect the player (and maybe the DM) had read the SCS campaign logs, because an archivist in the Halloween one did exactly that (different situation, same tactic).

Yeah, those are awesome. But in the context that occurred that was purely DM fiat with the archivist player, it happened in a single small town in an otherwise normal world, not all the mist of a grim campaign setting where the mists are deeply connected to nearly unstoppable strange entities which control the realm. If anything like what happened there happened here, I imagine it is more the DMs fault than anything else.

[OverdrivePrime]

My players were in the Harrowed Realm module, when two of them had split up from the party to investigate an ancient and overgrown garden. In the garden, a unicorn and a goblin were arguing about a magic pear tree next to a serene little pond.

Unfortunately, one of the players (the every-spontaneous duskblade) got the bright idea to send out his familiar raven to summon the realm's self appointed paladin and arbiter of justice. The paladin had long-ago fallen due to his zealotry, but due to the quirks of the Harrowed Realm setting, neither he, nor anyone else realized it.

Aaaanyway, the player intended to summon the paladin to pass judgement on the conflict. Unfortunately, they also managed to quickly insult both the paladin and the goblin and provoke a fight between the two of them. The goblin's swift demise in turn triggered a magic trap in the garden, the paladin failed his saving throw (badly) and suddenly there's an enraged paladin going berserk, trying to kill the chaotic good duskblade, the ranger, and unicorn.

The paladin's armor was too good for them to land any reliable hits on him, but between the three heroes(?), they managed to overbear the paladin and dragged him over to the pond.

Whereupon the ranger, duskblade and unicorn(!) spent 12 grueling rounds drowning a paladin!

I described the battle in excruciating detail, just to let what they had done sink in extra hard. They. Felt. Terrible.

I even got a call the next day from the ranger's player. He wound up losing sleep over it!