Epic Moments

[imaloony]

So, I've been playing D&D for a few years now (Dodging back and forth between AD&D, 3.5, and Pathfinder) and I've found that sometimes, everything goes right, or everything goes wrong. Sometimes, something amazing happens in those games, and they need to be recorded for future generations.
It doesn't necessarily have to be something awesome like slaying a dragon, or defeating a lich's army. It can happen in the most simple encounter, or just from a player wandering a town, and here is one from our group of an encounter that went so perfectly that you'd have thought that the DM was railroading us through it:

So, we just started a new AD&D campaign after defeating the boss from the last campaign and had a 70 year time-skip. I'm playing an Elf Druid, and our party consists of a Water Spirit Cleric, a Human Fighter/Rune Priestess, a Human Paladin, a Human Cavalier, and a Wild Elf Monk, and we're all still 1st-3rd level.

We're sent to try and find out who tried to take over a series of strongholds by staging a fake tournament to lure the guards away. We return to a previously cleared out stronghold to find it occupied with baddies again, but we've got 30 men-at-arms with us this time, so our group enters first.
We enter the main chamber and see a few Orcs. One Orc turns and sees our group. Then he waves at the Cavalier and turns back around.
Let's pause for a moment. The Cavalier is from a previously destroyed family, looking to rebuild his family. A while ago, he received evidence that may point to his family NOT being destroyed, and potentially being behind these attacks. So now the Cavalier has almost confirmed that suspicion, as the Orc didn't attack after seeing the family crest on his shield.
The Cavalier turns to the rest of the group and says "Get back with the soldiers and get read out here."
We protest, but after he insists, we agree and retreat behind the doors to set up.

Now the Cavalier approaches the Orc and gets directions to the leader of this stronghold. He finds two Minotaur; the first and second in command. They speak a rough common, and the Cavalier poses as his brother, the one who would be in on all of this business. The DM is stunned when the roll passes and the Minotaur buys it. The DM then asks him "Okay, so what do you do?"
The player thinks on it, and then asks the Minotaur to mobilize and line up his men for inspection, which they do. He's presented with 21 Orcs, slightly heavily armored than a normal orc. The Minotaur in charge says "You are satisfied with my men?"
Cavalier: "Almost. I'd like to see them march."
Yes. The Cavalier got the entire lot of these guys to march straight into our ambush, oblivious of it.

Now let's back up again. When the doors closed for the Cavalier to go do his stuff, we started to prepare. The Rune Priestess scribed into the ground in front of the door a rune of Shocking Grasp. We position all 30 men with crossbows at the next floor up in perfect sniping position, while the rest of us take up positions in side hallways along the main one.

And then the Orcs march out of the door. They're in a procession of three-per-rank, giving us seven ranks of Orcs with the leaders (The Cavalier included) at the back.
So now, the DM rolls an eight sided die to see which of the seven ranks of orcs steps of the rune.
He rolls an eight. "There are seven ranks."
He rolls another eight. "There are seven ra... oh crap."
That's when he remembered that the Minotaur and the Cavalier formed an eighth rank. He randomly rolls to see which of them stepped on it, and the head Minotaur steps on it. He rolls the Minotaurs saving throw, and he critically fails it, leading to him being paralyzed for two rounds. At this point, the DM says "I'd hate to have a Thief at this guy's back right now..."
Me (Druid): "Or an angry Minotaur?"
DM: "What?"
Me: "I cast Charm Person/Mammal on the second-in-command."
DM: "Well, he rolled a 5 on his save. What's your command?"
Me: "I order him to attack the lead Minotaur."
So, we get a pretty spectacular display of blue lightning as the second in command smashes the lead Minotaur's head in with his magical battle axe.
On cue, the Men-At-Arms opened fire, mowing down the 21 Orcs in their surprise round.
We deal with the last (charmed) Minotaur, and then observe the wreckage.

The DM contemplates this for a minute before explaining the details of the fight to us:
"The Orcs... were just Orcs. I didn't expect them to give your trouble. Their AC was a little higher than a normal Orcs. The head Minotaur I expected to be a problem for you guys. He was a Magic-User/Shaman. The Second in Command was a Shaman. The Battle Axe that the second in command was using was a +2 Battle Axe that becomes a +5 Battle Axe against Magic-Users."
He then turned to the Cavalier, shook his hand, and said "Well played."

So, what epic moments have you had in your campaigns worth preserving?

[BWR]

Not so much a single epic moment but a series of bluffs and misdirection and failed Intelliigence rolls that had little effect on the game as a whole but was amazing nonetheless.
The thing is, these successful and failed rolls happened IRL about the characters in the game.

It was my first real game of V:tM. We all started off as normal humans who were quickly ghouled. Only one of us started as a vampire. The setting was backstabbing and secretive and paranoid and (for the players) a wonderful mix of fun and despair as we tried to navigate our way through the labyrinthine world of vampires, knowing bugger all about it and what to do.
We were Camarilla in Brussels, and my Bureaucrat (he wanted to be Sir Humphrey when he gerw up) was ghouled by the Prince's Childe and second in command. However, after only a month or two of this, a non-Sabbat Lasombra Embraced him because he and his Sire needed someone on the inside.
So he had to pretend to still be a ghoul and find out about the McGuffin (actually, the start of Gehenna) and hide his vampiric nature from everybody, IC as well as OOC.

His second night as vampire, he had to come and help the others with a matter. At the end of the session he was running out of the hotel where some minor Masquerade breaches had occurred and the ST mentioned the sun was coming up. Cursing, Nigel had to jump into the sewer for cover.
The other players wondered why I did this.
"If there were gunshots and magic going on, how would it look if witnesses saw me running out of there with blood on me and a big effing book in my hands?"
Everyone bought that.

The next night, Nigel's first time hunting on his own. His sire had neglected to tell him how to close the wounds on his prey, so he was caught by another PC with an unconscious girl with two oozing holes in her heck in his arms.
"Help. One of the masters left this lying around. We need to hide her and clean up."
And the player believed that.

A week later game time, the gang was travelling to a large mansion on a hill. Nigel had gone a little bit ahead of the others, and panicked when the place caught fire. Running in a frenzy, he meets the others as they are driving up in a car. He crashes through the windshield, tears open the rear door and procedes to outrun the Brujah who had Celerity, not seeming to have taken any damage.
"Ghouls don't have that sort of power, especially new ones like him. And why did he frenzy?" the others asked.
"There is a Flaw that gives ghouls the same sort of panic attacks as vampires. The ST was just a **** and gave it to me."
And they believed it.

Later still, one of the PCs as a new vamp was being punished for a misdeed by having to sit in the Sun-Well. Basically, stuck at the bottom of a narrow pit while the sun rises. If he survived a certain amount of time, he could 'live'.
My job was to watch the guy and pull him out, since all the real vampires would be asleep.
Multiple amazing Willpower and Self-Control rolls later, I managed to pull the guy in (he had Fortitude, I didn't).
"how come you, a ghoul, took aggravated damage like that?" the others asked.
"You know that flaw that gives you vampire weaknesses?"

Later still, another PC and Nigel were caught by the local Mage cult when investigating the disappearance of an NPC. Negotiations to have us returned were long and harrowing, especially when offers of vampire blood were turned down because they already had two.
"Two? But they only have Andreas. Nigel is a ghoul. Wait, do you think the mages have the guy we're looking for?"
I didn't need to do anything for that one.

Later still, Nigel was given to serve another PC. He was also ordered by his sire to start taking control of the other PCs. Nigel's 'master' didn't want to be bothered hunting for himself, so ordered Nigel to get him food. Another PC asked nicely, since he couldn't easily get food for himself.
No work needed, two bonded PCs.

Several other minor incidents like this peppered the game and no other players caught on that Nigel was anything but a lowly ghoul until the end of the story. Not once did I roll any Subterfuge checks for him. If the player's believed it, so did their characters. And everyone congratulated me afterwards on a masterful piece of deception.

[imaloony]

Well, I also had a second moment involving Smidget the Kender. Before I get into this story, I should explain Kenders, because while I'm sure a lot of you know what they are, there might be someone who hasn't read that particular sourcebook.
So, Kender are halflings with a few personality quirks. They're all completely fearless, completely ADD, entranced by shiny objects, are all kleptomaniacs but believe it is simply "Barrowing" and not "Stealing" (And will become extremely offended if you call them a thief). All in all, the perfect race for someone wanting to play a crazy character, which brings us to our story:

Enter Smidget (I did ask his player, and this character did not have a last name for some reason), our Thief/Illusionist Kender of the group. This was in our first AD&D campaign, the one before the campaign where my previous story happened (In this particular campaign, I had two characters a female Human Cleric of Isis and a male Elven Ranger). Now, Smidget was in charge of the shenanigans portions of the campaign. He would do things to throw the DM for a loop just to have fun, and we all loved him for it. In this instance, we were in the human capitol of this world. While browsing around and doing business, Smidget's player turns to the DM and says "Can I make a religion?"
Those five words would become the start of the greatest running joke in our group.
Our DM loves that kind of stuff and said "Sure, if you can get the followers."
So Smidget began spreading the word of the "Great Kitty Deborah." According to him, the world lies in the eye of the Great Kitty Deborah, and night comes when the Great One closes her eye. She rained light and love on her followers until one day, evil and corruption began to fill the world. Shaken and saddened, the Great One wept, and her eye shattered, spreading the Holy Shiny across the world. Now the followers of the Great One must reassemble her eye by gathering the shiny together and dancing around it crying "PRETTY PRETTY SHINY SHINY PRETTY PRETTY SHINY SHINY."
Now the DM, like the rest of us, found this hilarious. But with how ADD Kender were, he didn't find it likely that this religion would catch on, so he gave it something like a 2-3% chance on percentile dice and rolled them.
He then looks up at Smidget and says "You look around and notice that you have a follower."
And it all snowballed from there. The DM says that he made something like 8 rolls the rest of the night to see if the religion would grow, and 7 of them passed. The religion spread like wildfire and soon hand hundred, and later thousands of followers in the city. Smidget came to be known as "The Prophet" of the Great One.
Fast forward a bit to a ceremony for one of our fighters to be knighted as a Knight of the Rose. After the ceremony, my Cleric catches wind of this religion and is furious that Smidget would be spreading the word of a false God. She caught up with him and began chewing him out and giving him the most pro-Isis and angry speech she'd given in her life (This is all in character. Out of character, we were all having a blast with this). She even went so far as to call the wrath of Isis down on this false prophet.
And then, at that moment, Smidget heard a whisper in his ear with some instructions. He raised his hand, uttered something and cast a Light spell. My Cleric recognized it as a Cleric spell. I was stunned, and immediately tried to find some way to explain it away, about to claim that he was using one of his Illusions to trick me.
Then Isis whispered into my Cleric's ear "I feel something behind him, something divine. It's faint, but there is a Divine presence behind his spell."
That's right, Smidget got such a following for this religion that he actually created a Kender god. The DM later explained that the books don't actually have a Kender god and was totally willing to let that fly.
So my Cleric turned around, found a bar, and drank herself under the table.

A few days later, we flew to an island and resolved a subplot that our Samurai wanted to deal with, which ended up with us flash-freezing and then flash-thawing a house full of bad guys. Great for us, but we scared the crap out of the villagers, and when we went to the town, not a soul was willing to come out and meet us. We tried coaxing them out, but nothing worked.
Finally, Smidget stepped up and said "We're not bad guys, honest! We just wanted to get rid of the bad people living in that house!"
The DM pauses and rolled a set of percentile dice and then begins laughing his head off. We ask him what's so funny.
Someone walks out of one of the houses, points ad Smidget and yelled "THE PROPHET!"
This religion was like a week old, and we were currently on an island. This awesome religion was spreading faster than we could travel (The DM said that he gave it a 2% chance that a follower would be on the island, and the roll passed).

In our follow-up campaign set 70 years later, we've already found a Church of the Great Kitty Deborah.
Smidget's player insists that the whole "Great Kitty Deborah" initially started as OoC screwing around, but it has become cannon in this world, and it's glorious.