Favorite Gaming Moment / Story

[Gizmo777]

Grab a mug of ale, listen to the music playing in the background, and sit down in a chair around a table. Let's get the story telling going. What has been your favorite gaming moment or story? Whether it be finishing an amazing campaign, amusing things that happened to a character you loved. Whether you were a DM of a campaign or the player let's get the stories rolling.

I played a psion that went through the Demon Web campaign. Was a lot of fun, was beyond evil. Completely abused my powers for evil...well i say abused but it was against mainly commoners, but still was definitely not good. He was a fairly good person for a while, then someone accused him of something he didn't do and attacked him. So of course he took control of their body, cut open their head, and ate their brains in front of them... It was all down hill from there.

[Immabozo]

My level 10 party stumbled into an adult blue dragon's lair with no exit. The only ones capable of fighting were myself (half ogre, half minotaur barbarian) and a half dragon fighter in our party. The dragon demanded 1,000 gold a piece for us to leave his cave. We demanded rent (it was our island). He made a slighting comment against the half dragon, who immediately charged. I followed suit. The DM had this "you are so screwed" smirk on his face. Second round of combat I hit with 2 hits, one was a crit on my Dwarven War Axe (x3). Round 2 I did 16D8 +127 damage. It was very, very dead.

the half dragon player and I jumped up and were cheering and high five-ing like our team just won the Superbowl.

[CyberThread]

Mine was punching a warforged in the face with a rusting grasp.

[dupersudi]

Bloody Skeletal Gray Render grappling a dragon TWICE. First time just kept it occupied, second time pulled it off a bridge. I was so proud of it.

[Barsoom]

My favourite RP moment came when I had to retire from a gaming group due to real-life time constraints. We have just finished an adventure where we drove away some monsters that threatened a village, and the villagers invited us to a party. During the party, my character spotted a nice peasant girl among the revelers, got acquainted with her, got involved in some romantic chit-chat, all in character - luckily I had a good DM and he rolled with it.

The next in-game morning, the party was supposed to continue their travel. As my companions were getting their gear in order, my char came to them and bashfully explained that he had found the love of his life, and his fate was to stay here with her.

Then, out of character, I explained my real-life constraints and that I won't be able to play anymore. Everyone was stunned, but understood, we shook hands and hugged, both IC and OOC, and wished each other all the best.

[Immabozo]

My favourite RP moment came when I had to retire from a gaming group due to real-life time constraints. We have just finished an adventure where we drove away some monsters that threatened a village, and the villagers invited us to a party. During the party, my character spotted a nice peasant girl among the revelers, got acquainted with her, got involved in some romantic chit-chat, all in character - luckily I had a good DM and he rolled with it.

The next in-game morning, the party was supposed to continue their travel. As my companions were getting their gear in order, my char came to them and bashfully explained that he had found the love of his life, and his fate was to stay here with her.

Then, out of character, I explained my real-life constraints and that I won't be able to play anymore. Everyone was stunned, but understood, we shook hands and hugged, both IC and OOC, and wished each other all the best.

I rather like that one

[LanSlyde]

Oh... I have a number of them....

Excerpts from the Many Exploits of Scrambles.

One session I was playing my joke character "Scrambles the Death-Dealer", a gnomish cleric of Glittergold. He picked up this magically resonant crystal dust from a dungeon. Later in the campaign our fighter went crazy and began slaughtering hobos in a soup kitchen. So my gnome dusted her and followed it up with Searing Light. I created a crater 20ft deep and everything within 60ft of the impact zone was turned to dust. Two years later the locals still refuse to even go close to the pit as it as filled with rainwater and still boils at the center to this day. While it was never discovered in game, the whole crater was a major "Wild Magic" zone due to me.

The little psion that couldn't.

This campaign I was playing a human cleric of heironeous and a friend was a tiefling psion. Coastal town was being attacked by pirates with airships and biplanes with Magic Missile machine guns. At this point I'm protecting a gap in the sea wall where the pirates are trying to storm through to the town, buffed so high I might as well have been a demigod. Without going into details I was a Large golden golem in Battleplate with angel wings and a spiked chain. The psion was flying high doing silly things to the biplanes he gets the wild idea to Decerebrate one of the pilots, dimension door into the plane, kick out the body, and attempt to fly this thing.

Now, this psion had never even seen anything like the setup they used to pilot these planes. So our DM refused even and Int check to get an idea, simple told him the buttons and levers he saw. Well, our psion picked the wrong ones and ended up accelerating to maximum speed directly towards me. I get smacked in the back of the head by this thing, is magical payload detonates. I die, luckily my armor revives me back to half hp 1/week at no level loss. Sadly I lost my leg in the process and was on fire. The psion got the short end of the stick. She took enough damage to die 5 times over, luckily he had just bought some items of contingent Heal for the party and never handed out, so he technically died 5 times, lost an arm and a leg in the process, and was also on fire. But we lived! At this point we packed up and headed home... because.. well.. even if you can Regenerate you don't really continue the fight after you have been through that kind of bs.

I have others, but it would take me all night to tell them.

[Jack Zander]

Let me tell you the quaint tale of the Fleshwearer.

The campaign is Eberron, and us players were no more than 3rd level. We had been tasked with clearing a location of bandits. As we scouted the area we discovered that there were way more bandits than we could possibly handle in a straight up fight.

Thankfully, we had a brilliant artificer on our team that concocted this plan for us.

He crafted two items, a potion of enlarge (to be useable on warforged) and a scroll of silent image. He gave the potion to me, a warforged fighter, and used the scroll to glamer myself into looking like a regular human. He hid in the bushes and concentrated on the illusion while I tucked the potion into my mouth and walked out into the center of the bandit camp.

I waited until I had most of their attentions, then I bit down on the potion vial and began to mime tearing at my flesh. The artificer in turn concentrated on the illusion to make it appear as though I was ripping flesh off of my body as I continued to double in size, until they saw me for what I really was, a large sized warforged. That's when I shouted,

"I am the fleshwearer!" *points to a random bandit* "You will be my new skin!"

Needless to say, there weren't many bandits who stuck around after that, and it was pretty easy to mop up those who did.

[NeoPhoenix0]

My sorcerer trolled a mind flayer that was a recurring boss for three fights.

First fight my sorcerer was stunned from round one. As soon as he got back in the fight he scarred it off by seeing through all of is illusions and invisibility.

Second fight he attack the port town we were at by leading an armored fleet from inside a huge submersible troop transport/ram. We boarded and my sorcerer managed to prevent him from leaving for several rounds with spells like dimensional anchor.

Third fight was the last fight. It was the do or die type of battle so my sorcerer's choice of weapon was a rod of wonder. My sorcerer was flying around using the spell Forcewave and the rod of wander every round. He drew the mind flayers full attention for 4 rounds before being stunned just because he was that angry with my sorcerer from all the stuff leading up to the fight. I like to think using the rod of wonder in their most serious fight was the last straw.

[Gizmo777]

I was DMing a group and they were out adventuring doing the fun things that adventurers do, helping the town and whatnot. They came to their destination in a swamp where they were going to get an escort, but first had to help out the native lizard men in getting their horde cave secured from the monster protecting it, the entrance was underwater. So after some time figuring out how to get down there and breath there, they get into the cave and surface to find a Hydra guarding the horde. So of course combat ensued. The rogue decides that the best thing to do was to climb up onto the ledge where the hydra was, so AoO began, the rogue dropped. The party then grabbed the rogues dead body and swam out and regrouped.
The wizard, having found a book previously in the campaign titled "The great and powerful Pazuzu" realized he could have a way to bring him back.... So he says the 3 most powerful, dreaded words that any player could say.
Pazuzu shows up, and agrees to raise the man from the dead, some after life things happen, and the rogue says that he wants to come back as a very powerful creature, and Pazuzu agrees under a few guidelines, that all would be brought up in the future. So the rogue gets brought back to life a few days later, and the rogue is now suddenly a balor (Using the balor monster class from the minmax boards homebrew to scale with level.) The parties expressions were pretty great when suddenly their elven rogue turned into a large balor, laying on the ground.
That player gave me so many good stories, I have considered writing out that entire campaign in a campaign journal.

[ericp65]

This was pre-3.0, in the Forgotten Realms region of Damara. My best wizard character was in a party going through the H series of modules (Bloodstone), and were in a village that had been raided by orcs. The party leader, a paladin, found what had to be the bravest orc in the village, who took an attack posture with a spear. Paladin spreads his arms out and says "Take your best shot." The orc rolls a critical hit, and does considerable damage to the paladin! My wizard (the paladin's wife) sees this, and with a flash, there's a smoking pit where the orc once stood. This was the only time I've seen an orc acquit himself so well against a paladin, and I never heard a character say that to an opponent again :)

[limejuicepowder]

I've got two (recent) favorite moments, both coming from a campaign I was DM'ing.

1) The PC, a level 5 crusader (played by my gf actually), was travelling on horseback along a road. Destination was the capital city some miles away. As often happens in DnD, the character is ambushed by a pack of custom undead who can use the spell "blinding spittle" a couple of times per day. 1st round, horse and rider get blinded and the horse panics, taking off....directly in to a tree. "Totaled my horse" became a running joke.

2) Later on, the same character along with the rest of the party is leading the defense of the city against the BBEG. The BBEG invaded by casting a spell causing everyone near the gate to vomit forth a dretch...those that don't manage to vomit it out enjoy the creature clawing out of their chest. As that is going on, mind controlled giants hammer the gates down (they are 6th level at this point).

After a long and epic battle, we get to a stand off. The BBEG has taken the young prince hostage, and demands the artifact that he came to get. Battle commences once again, and the BBEG gets mobbed by the crusader and another PC, a factotum. The factotum draws the BBEG while the crusader goes for the prince. He charges in, despite there being a giant nearby. Eating the AoO, he picks the prince up and throws him out of harm's way. The giant then swings again, killing the crusader.

After the battle, he is given a magnificent viking funeral. Longship laden with weapons, food, and riches is burned with his body, and great songs are written to tell of his bravery.

[Tegannie]

I've got a couple from the game I've been in for almost two years:

1. Our warforged paladin (who was found buried a few years ago and had no memory) recently learned he was a king of a lost kingdom. Over 1000 years ago, it had been attacked, and he had died. They put his mind into the body of a warforged. Then, to escape the attackers, the whole city was plane-shifted, but got stuck half-way, so now all of the people are stuck between the etheral plane and the material plane.

2. My character, a fairy (homebrewed race, tiny, with butterfly wings), just entered her presidge class, Elemental Savant, focusing on fire. Her wings turned orange and yellow. The happened while we where in a city of other fairies who had moth-like wings. She got to go around being prettier than just about everyting around her. (lots of head-turning)

3. Way early in the campaign, we came accross a room full of bad guys, including skeletons. Our paladin turned them (we didn't have a cleric then), so they ran, but we were blocking the only exit, so they just cowered in a corner. Our wizard then Webbed them, and I (a druid) just sent a flaming sphere to that corner.

4. At our last session, we learned that the noble girl we rescued from vampires and are now bring home is a werewolf. To keep her from running away/attacking us, the warforged (immune to disease and really strong) held her while the drow rogue stabbed her with a crossbow bolt that had drow sleeping posion on it. She fell asleep long enough for us to tie her up.

5. Also at our last session, we were trying to find our way out of the Underdark. We weren't given even good directions. After coming across a fork in the road and having to guess which way, I cast speak with animals and asked a bat for directions. He wanted bugs for his whole flock in exchange. So they followed us for a day until I could prepare summon swarm, which I did and summoned a bunch of spiders for them.

6. When we were about to face the final boss of this dungeon, our cleric was contacted directly by her god and given her day's spells early and access to all of his domains. She then was able to blast 2 or 3 holes in a vampire. When she leveled, she took a level of contemplative.

7. Finally, after the fight with the vampires, our rogue when back and looted everything...including some of the chains the noble girl had been chained up with.

[EldritchArisano]

First game i ever played
the party consisted of :
a new DM
CG hermaphrodite human favored soul (played by the usual DM)
CE drow swordsage(me)
NG elf ranger(dm's youngest brother)
N half giant psychic warrior (dms younger brother)

early into the campaign i had stated my drow to have been cursed to where evil acts would take time from his "cosmic hourglass" and good acts would add time, so he had sought out the party in order to selfishly prolong his life, and attempt immortallity via being nice.

five minutes into gameplay of the CALZONE golem quest we had been running, we had been attacked by a wolf, and had proceded to kill it by the Elf Ranger critting it after winning initiative and rolling max damage, it all went south from there.

the favored soul had taken a few hits from some animated objects when mid-combat my drow was abducted by Elhonna (the goddess who had cursed him, the real reason was i had to go to work in a few hours and hadnt slept)

i come back and find that my party had levelled the house we were supposed to be searching, and ran off after killing everything in it that was worth xp.

deciding that i wanted to do more good deeds, i walked into the center of town and demanded (unaware that people hated drow as much as they do and nearly starting a lynch mob on myself) that the townspeople give me a quest, to which i learned of a Lizardfolk tribe that had been attacking them.

fast forward to the favored soul seducing and sodomizing the lizardfolks representative and talking them out of attacking if we removed the pirates that had been raiding them(apparently they were only stealing what they needed to survive) we set off, with a brand new bag of holding type 4, which we filled with boulders and a small tree(which the ranger had just gained an owl companion out of)

our random encounter appeared, a Panther attacked my drow, which not knowing of the Drizzt reference, i simply threw fire at so it would attack another person, it chose the psychic warrior, which dumped the bag of holding on the Panther... cat mush, we scooped the rocks and tree and cat into the bag and continued on our path, since the elf and i only slept for 4 hours, we took a canoe that we had bought downstream to the pirates while the otheres slept, on our way we were attacked by a crocodile, I placed a darkness spell on its forehead to grant us cover and we fled downstream.

the FS and PW followed us at sunrise, running into the same crocodile, when the FS used a light spell in its face and used the distraction to escape.

the Rogues that were attempting to assasinate us didnt fare so well vs the very angry crocodile...

next encounter, the pirates,

up until this point i had been doing something sneaky, i had filled my pack with flasks of lantern oil and had a barrel of "foodstuffs" that was also full of oil, i had filled all my weapon sheathes with the oil and put shards of flint in the openings of the sheaths to ignite the oil. this came into play here

the pirates had an erratic schedule, but always met up at sunset. we crafted a bomb with my barrel of oil, some rope, some arrowheads and some nails. then i cast my use of darkness on the barrel, dancing lights on tho outskirts of the pirates camp to make them bunch up the owl took the bomb about 100 feet up and dropped it on the fire that the pirates huddled to. the bomb detonated on impact and changed a long encounter full of poisoned weapons and fleeing enemies to one round of failed reflex saves and a handful of d4 damage dice.

oh and my cousin was playing a ghost and posessed a chuul which rolled a nat 1 on its will save so was ruled to be a brain dead/willing host which he used as a gate crusher for the rest of the campaign

[morkendi]

My DM takes us through solo some times. I was playing a gnome shadow craft mage. I went to this town where the thug guild was extorting everyone. A kid tried to pick picket me and I caught him. I follewed him home to confront him and was told by his mother that they needed the money. The thugs guild would come for payment. If they didn't pay, they beat them. But they would steal the money before the collector came. They were starving and had nothing. I gave them money and waited outside hidden. The thugs came and beat the family. I followed them to their guild house. I invisoed in until I found the leader. I pollymorphed the leader into a chicken and the summoned a bunch of allips. I told the allips to kill all the thugs in the house and then took the money back to the people. I then told the chicken he was going to help those he hurt. When I brought the cash to the mother, I told her I also picked up this chicken for dinner.

[zeboss]

In a pirate campaign I once power attacked an enemy through the floor of a boat... with my foot.

[Crake]

After spending about 3 days doing hit and run tactics on a hobgoblin cult to grummsh, me and my party came across a security detail of hobgoblins who were hanging out in a "break room" where they were just sitting around relaxing and whatnot. When we tried to kick down the door to get in there and kill them all, we discovered it was quite secure (despite me rolling a 20 on my str check to kick it down with +4[from int, factotum ho!]). Feeling a bit worried after that, I decided (upon glancing at my character sheet and seeing myself below half HP) that I was gonna take this another way. Playing the kick to the door as a very angry and loud knock I proceeded to bluff my way into them thinking that I was a new security professional hired by the leader of the cult and proceeded to berate them for doing such a poor job. After a bit of chatter, they got a bit angry at me (because they accidentally admitted to slacking off, so they thought they might rough me up so I don't report back) but a natural 20 on my tumble check to get out their mob while they were shoving me around pretty much secured in their minds that I wasn't a chump.

At that point, I took their leader away to have a "private chat" which resulted in me firing him from his job and taking his masterwork longsword (which was pretty sweet, we're not that high level so not all of our gear is masterwork yet) which he got as payment.

Returning to his crew, we found them barricaded in the break room because they thought we were gonna kill them. I told them that if they didnt open the door I WOULD kill them. When that didn't work, I said I would spare the first person who opened the door, which proceeded to make them start fighting amongst each other. Eventually I managed to get them to open the door, at which point I fired them all and had them leave behind THEIR masterwork weapons too. So a pretty good haul for the party, and I didn't even have to fire a single arrow :smallbiggrin:

[Samshiir]

1. DM was running a nautical campaign. BBEG, a high level swashbuckler, shows up. We know he far out-levels us, so we know we are about to get our behinds kicked. Of course, for dramatic effect, it was a stormy night out in the middle of the ocean. One Half-Orc Barbarian Bull Rush pushing the swashbuckler off the edge of the ship later, we find out that the DM didn't put any ranks of swim into the swashbuckler. Between the swimless swashbuckler and heavy storm, the BBEG drowned. Sweet victory is sweet.

2. I was running a Star Wars campaign set in the Clone Wars that lasted the better part of a year. I put the PC's on several different missions, back to back, with several clone commando NPC's that slowly developed personalities that the players loved. Secretly, the team of clones were actually a failed batch from Kamino that were strangely force-sensitive. Chancellor Palpatine immediately took and trained the clones to be his personal guard, and he had trained them in the Dark Side. The clones were put on the missions with the PC's to help them collect key pieces Palpatine needed for the creation of the Death Star. The PC's, of course, were not aware of the clone's agenda. After about seven individual missions, I assigned another mission to the group just as any other, only this time Order 66 occurred halfway through a battle against battle droids and destroyer droids. It was a three-way battle, the PC's versus the Droids versus the Clones. Eventually at one point on the battlefield, it came down to a one-on-one between the group's Jedi character against the clone captian. The captain opened a small compartment on his wrist, and pulled out a red lightsaber, and immediately started zapping the Jedi with Force Lightning.
-The look on their faces from Order 66 was priceless....until I saw the look on their faces when the clone captain, who they trusted and loved, mercilessly tried to murder them.

3. My group was crawling through a massive dungeon once, and our party leader, a paladin, was keeping a dungeon map IRL. With the way the dungeon sprawled on, his drawings were constantly running off of the paper, so he continued the lines on another section of the paper. Eventually, he had a key that read something like "1A connects to 1B, 2A connects to 2B, 3A is one level up...(and so on, still on only one piece of paper)". Also, the map had at least three different compass roses on it, so one had to constanly turn the map "upside down" to read it correctly. When we objected to his mapmaking skills, he insisted that he knew what he was doing and that he could read it just fine. The DM wanted to test that theory, and began making him call out what turns we were making as we moved through the dungeon, especially when we were trying to leave the dungeon again. After the third time we walked into a room full of goblin corpses that we made earlier, we confiscated his map.
-On a related note, this guy, IRL, literally got lost in his own backyard. But to be fair, it was about two acres of forest, but we did have city-boys with us that did not get lost.

4. There was a game our DM was running, epic-level 3rd Edition, about a rogue God getting banished from the homebrewed world's pantheon. In a skirmish with this rogue God on the mortal's plane, the epic-level party was getting trounced. At the beginning of the fight, the God ripped the holy symbol off of the paladin's necklace, crushed it into a tiny ball, and threw it across the great hall we were battling in. In the same round, the God casted Detect Thoughts. A few rounds later, after royally stomping the party and making them desperate, the DM went around the table asking what the player's characters were thinking at the time. "I plan on hiding behind that pillar!" said the Rogue. "I plan on smiting this infidel!" said the Paladin. "I plan on putting a few arrows into him!" said the Ranger. The God laughed. Then the DM asked the last member what his plans were. The party wizard (Gaeleath Silverspear, see below) stated that he planned on moving to the crushed holy symbol and using it as a spell component for a Banishment spell. The God panicked, but the wizard had the initiative roll on him, and banished the God back to the pantheon that kicked him out of their plane in the first place.
-The DM didn't expect that to happen, but as the wonderful DM he is, rolled with it. The rest of the pantheon were livid about the return of the banished God, and so cut the mortal realm off. Divine spells no longer worked, dead were rising from their graves, and a whole new psuedo-campaign began.

5. With the same epic level group, our rogue had once captured a giant demonic spider, put a Ring of Substinance on it, and teleported it directly into a wall. Just enough of it was outside the wall so that the rogue could place a magical bucket below it to collect demonic spider poison. Well, some Gods that we all know and love (see above) decided to get revenge, and regenerated and revamped this giant demon spider. The DM gave this sucker the paragon template, so that its CL was in the high-30s (our APL was mid-20s). Its defenses were so high that none of us could really do anything permanent to it. Finally, our group Cleric decided to cast a Gate spell and the party collectively forced the giant paragon demon spider to a different plane of existence. Victory at last! We all celebrated as we wrapped up another night of adventure at the DM's apartment....
About half an hour later, as people were leaving for the night, the DM asked the player where she sent the spider to. She responded with, "I don't know?". It was the perfectly wrong answer to the perfectly wrong DM. Now, for the past seven years up to this day, anytime that DM runs anything, be it D&D, Star Wars, Spycraft, World of Darkness, GURPS, or anything else one can play, we are completely terrified that this spider will just Gate in and murder us.

6. My favorite character that I play in D&D is my father's character's son. Some of my favorite experiences in the game are simply our character's ever-growing stories. Gaeleath Silverspear, my father's character that he created when he was in high school so long ago, is a failed champion of the elves. Although his heart is pure and his devotion true, an unfortunate incident occured that resulted in the death of an elf at the fault of Gaeleath. He willingly surrendered his status as champion, his supernatural powers, and his personal Moonblade, which had been passed down through several generations of his family. Now his son, Atorian Silverspear, seeks to restore his family's honor and take up the family Moonblade to become a champion of the elves, just as his father once was.
Atorian feels like a real person to me, much more than a bunch of numbers on a character sheet. I really owe my father a lot for teaching me how to use my imagination.

[RogueDM]

I ran an ostensibly "evil" campaign (were really closer to CN than CE, but they said they wanted to be evil so..) the party was clearing an ancient underground stronghold out for a tribe of orcs, and since this was almost everyone's first game (at least in a half dozen years) I sent along a half-orc Beguiler as an aid. I chose the beguiler, with few ranks in helpful skills, to be only minorly helpful to the party.

The party consisted of a Kenku Rogue, a Duergar Monk (both by the same player), a homebrew character that was effectively a super broken barbarian, a Lesser Drow Cleric of Obad-Hai, and an elf wizard (Stormageddon the Lord of Darkness).

The Duergar was played as crude and foul and the other party members instantly disliked him, so after a few sprung traps later the cleric simply "forgot" to heal him. Farther into the dungeon things got interesting. The rogue reconnoitered a room only to find, behind a waterfall, a statue of an enormous frog with an anvil shaped head and a fire in its mouth. So what does he do? Shoots it in the eye, of course! Surprise surprise, it's a living creature and breathes fire. He retreats back through the waterfall telling the party that there's a monster but the thinks it wont come through the waterfall. Incorrect.

So the entire party takes their turn, placing themselves in a straight line in front of the Forgebeast which presented me with an opportunity too good to pass up, and immolated the whole party. Everyone made their Reflex save, except the Duergar who epically snuffed it and was left a crispy critter.

The next level down the guide character, the almost obsolete Beguiler, died saving the Drow Cleric from a rather clever trap (skeletal ogre at the bottom of a pit, under 10' of water = Drowning Hazard). What does the party do? Drags her back to the surface and spends nearly all of their cash to have her reincarnated... So, we save the GMNPC and leave the Player Character dead. Yeah...

Secondly, a quick annecdote, a recurring BBEG named by the same player of the above toasty Duergar and hapless rogue. The evil and malevolent King S**t-Balls-Donkey-Pants. He persisted through two campaigns! You can imagine his turn at DMing was... colorful.

[Amiria]

I knew I had written about this here already ... years ago ... and after a quick google search I found it again. Now here comes the story ... probably also with better spelling then the first version:

It was int the Forgotten Realms in D&D 3.0. It was downtime, the heroes were around 10th level and would soon start "City of the Spider Queen".

Two PCs (Ayrin Silvershine, Elven Fighter/Diviner/Spellsword/Eldritch Knight; Marwulf "The Hero" Hornhand, Human Fighter) had a farm in Shadowdale where they bred horses, the others (Derek Astonil, Human Cleric/Morninglord of Lathander; Fingwin Galbaglinde, Half-Elven Bard; Greiner Broadskull, Dwarven Rogue/Ranger) were on a visit. This was the perfect time for an old enemy - a young adult red dragon - to have his revenge.

He flew over the farm and breathed fiery death on the farm buildings. The heros ran into the farmyard. Some began to rescue the horses from the burning stable, others attacked the dragon quite ineffectively. The dragon breathed fire on the Greiner, who - with a jump over a fence into a ditch (evasion) - remained unscathed. Derek dispelled some of the buffs from the dragon but it still kept out of melee range. Meanwhile the whole farm was burning.

Greiner, Fingwin and Ayrin hit the dragon with some arrows and spells, but not much. It landed on the burning farmhouse and had his little "You are doomed !" speech. Marwulf attacked it in melee but the dragon dished out far more damage then our fighter. Ayrin sneaked up from behind, out of sight of the dragon's keen senses - around the wall of the burning farmhouse and climbed up (fire resistance). The dragon killed Marwulf with a fiery breath but then Ayrin jumped on its back and hit it with her glaive. Enraged and wounded, the dragon flew up and Ayrin fell down into the inferno (ouch).

Now the dragon tried to escape, but on its way it tried to snatch and kill Derek since the cleric was also badly wounded from some breath attacks. But the grapple failed (dragon rolled a 1; cleric rolled a 20) and then Derek miraculously landed a solid hit with his heavy mace and killed the dragon. The battle was over, the survivers gathered in the yard between the burning buildings. Ayrin wept for her dead and toasted Marwulf. Luckily Derek had still a one-shot Raise Dead gadget from a past adventure at hand and swiftly brought him back to life.

At this moment, the fire caused the manure gases of the outhouse to explode. It rocketed skywards and flew through half of Shadowdale only to crash down in Elminster's front garden where it destroyed the patch of his prized and rare 'wumpkraut'. Elminster was very disgruntled and sent the group on a quest to a hidden valley to find some new 'wumpkraut' for him. But that's another story ...