PDA

View Full Version : Most Epic Moments in RPGs



Amaril
2013-09-21, 12:52 PM
So I know there's a thread up for funny stories from RPGs, and I thought it might be cool to start one for sharing stories of awesome, epic or climactic moments from people's games as well. If there's already one for those, I'd love it if somebody could direct me there :smallsmile: Otherwise, I'd recommend that everybody keep Flame of Anor's advice from the funny stories thread in mind (with some adaptation for epic stories rather than funny ones):



It's always nice if you give the characters names, or refer to them by their roles. It's difficult to read "Then K attacked the mayor but P backstabbed K with L's cursed dagger that he stole in R's house" and have to constantly refer to the key at the top.
It would be really sad if people skipped your story because it looked too long. Perhaps not all of the subplots going on really contribute to the humor?
Maybe your story really does have to be long to get the full humor across. If so, paragraph breaks are your best friends.
Don't badmouth other forum members. A similar thread got locked for that, which was a great shame.
Rouge is a type of makeup.
Have fun!

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-21, 02:13 PM
In a Fate Core game, our "Cryptokillologist" pulled in favors from the Rat Kingdom and the orphan kids in Washington DC, so that the group could invade a Faerie "safe house" where they were hiding a dimensional portal.

In a Torchbearer game, my dwarf, Rogen, whose motto for life was "If you're going to do something, do it with style!", used an impenetrable shield to bobsled through a village of orcs.

Finally, a longer story, from a Burning Wheel game that I ran.

Tomar Leo was the bastard son of a local lord who was murdered near the start of the campaign. The lord's wife, Lady Jain Braegard, took over the leadership of House Braegard while Tomar led Tarl, the house heir, around the lands belonging to his House, to teach him the ways of being a ruler. Along the way, they met Kiriel, an archer who was searching for the source behind a magical aura that had been infused in her. (This aura caused two things: one, people tended to not notice her, and two, when something went badly around her, physical things tended to break.) Through the events of one adventure, Kiriel became intrigued by the presence of witches in the world, and resolved to find more witches and hunt them down.

Eventually, Tomar determined two things about Lady Jain. One: she had somehow been involved in magic. Two: she was secretly not a noble. With these in hand, he headed back to the castle, resolving to unseat her from her place and install Tarl the heir back on the throne. So the group headed to the castle, where there was a confrontation scene.

Tomar let drop the accusation that Lady Jain was a witch.

In the midst of the courtyard, Kiriel made to shoot Lady Jain, instinctively--because she had made a goal of hunting witches. I let the player attempt it, only because of the aura of inconspicuousness. I set a ridiculously high obstacle for the skill check.

Kiriel made it, and rolled damage for the shot. It was enough to mortally wound Lady Jain in one hit. I declared that Kiriel had managed to shoot Lady Jain in the head...and nobody noticed who had fired the shot. Suspicion immediately fell on Tomar, and the group of them high-tailed it out, barely managing to escape the castle.

It was hilariously unexpected, and awesome.

navar100
2013-09-21, 02:25 PM
It was a 2E game. My cleric and the paladin were battling it out with a balor, exchanging blows for blows. I tried a few spells before but couldn't get past the spell resistance. The balor tried magic as well, but we kept making our saves until finally the paladin failed against a fear attack and was forced to drop his weapon and leave the battle. It was my turn. I was considering trying for another save or die/lose spell, but the odds of breaking through the spell resistance and the balor failing the save was just too much. I swung with my mace and hit. The balor dropped, not having that many hit points left. The paladin player and myself literally hugged, briefly, in joy of our victory. In character I respectfully returned the paladin's holy sword to him.

Terraoblivion
2013-09-21, 03:07 PM
I have a fairly recent one from a Legends of the Wulin game that is set in a city-sized martial arts academy in modern Japan rather than ye olde kung-fu times as is the default of the system. The only system aspects that really matters here are that AoE is both very rare and very powerful in Legends of the Wulin and that a big part of the system is balancing your qi expenditures to win before you run out.

The central characters in this are:
Julia Dietrich, my character. The younger daughter of a family of German nobles with a long martial legacy who wasn't meant to inherit the family tradition despite great talent due to being the younger sister. Was only even allowed to come to the martial arts school after her sister got crippled in a training accident with their mother, who she absolutely hates. In general she's a not terribly bright girl in lighter punk clothes who fight with a pair of sabers and two fighting styles, a very fluid one centering on picking away at weaknesses and her heavily improvised version of the family style of saber fencing.

Tsukino Miyako, my girlfriend's character and my character's girlfriend. An ordinary, hardworking student who was revealed to be a martial arts prodigy when managing to fend off a group of thugs with just her mechanical pencil. A student council member who sees it as her duty to try to bring some sanity to a crazy place full of scary, violent people. She fights by alternating between blinding speed and sneaky, underhanded means, using throwing knives.

Takahara Hakufu, also a PC. A big, loud thug from Osaka who is notably dumber and less informed than Julia. She's also highly eccentric, obsessing over food and cute costumes and can't seem to find a sensible balance between both being a thug and obsessing over cute bunny outfits. Fight unarmed with a variety of moves from sports such as boxing, wrestling and her own imagination.

Inoue Fujika, the final PC present. A Japanese shrine maiden who manages to combine a generally conservative outlook with being extremely flirty and wearing a rather revealing variant of a shrine maiden costume. By far the most honorable and orthodox of all the PCs. Fights with a spear in a way centering on holding and keeping ground, bolstering it with lightning.

Pretty Hark, Aotora Miyuki and Iwasaki Miyako, three NPCs who were tagging along with us. Hark and Miyuki are a couple consisting of an honest, hardworking construction worker and candidate for world's worst crossdresser and a hostess who appears to have absolutely no shame when it comes to romance. They fight with boxing and evading attacks while tearing down her opponent's will to fight respectively. Iwasaki is a wanna-be samurai, complete with the armor who fights like she's in a Kurosawa movie.

All the seven above are first years who have only been at the school for about a month and are only just coming into their power as martial artists and getting used to it.

Kakeguchi Ryo, the student council president and main antagonist of the story arc. A very cold, aloof girl who is a strong believer in strict meritocratic hierarchies, social determinism and people keeping to their place rather than getting ideas above what she considers her station. She is especially concerned with preventing waste, whether that means people focusing their energy at things they aren't talented at, property destruction or long-term injury and generally tends to see people in utilitarian terms. The heir to a company having a virtual, global monopoly on shipping and crippled her sister, Yasha, a year before the game started to make her stop challenging her for the inheritance. A very highly talented second year.

The Three Stooges Magi, Ryo's personal, color-coded bodyguards. Other than two of them taking strongly after their master in terms of how they view the world, while the third came off pretty nice and like she was simply an honorable warrior sworn to a bad master, they didn't have much of an identity. And even the comment about a bad master is my interpretation given that the GM insists that Ryo's position was reasonable, just not compatible with our characters. These three are also second years and quite talented ones at that.

There was also a fifth PC, Soutsuki Asuka, but she had been defeated before we reached this point and was either still sitting in a block of ice or had been carted off to the infirmary

The story leading up to this is that we had learned of Ryo's plans to not only tighten regulations of what fights were or weren't allowed, though the only detail we ever learned was that she intended to ban crippling people off campus, but also expel a large number of students, heighten entry requirements and cripple Yasha to try to see if it would stick this time. The hypocrisy of the last one wasn't missed on any of our characters, with Julia and Miyako (the Tsukino one, not Iwasaki) especially disgusted by it.

After preparations of signing up with Yasha, though only until Ryo was beaten as she was quite crazy herself, trying to recruit support and Julia completely defying the expectations of everyone ICly and OOCly by beating Ryo's personal strategist in a duel, the day of the big fight between the two sisters came. Our side was at a disadvantage in not only relying on first years rather than second years, but being new and unproven students trying to recruit an army to challenge someone as established as the student council president also meant we were badly outnumbered. To make matters worse, before we learned the full extend of Ryo's plans and personality, Miyako had thought she was probably in the right and spilled key parts of the plan to Ryo, meaning we would have to face her head-on.

Even so, we managed to beat several of Ryo's people while losing Asuka in a duel with a personal rival, winning the support of Hark and Miyuki who had been attacked by Ryo's people despite being bystanders in the process before finally making our way to her headquarters. There we made the critical decision of not calling Yasha for backup, going in ourselves only accompanied by the NPCs we'd personally run into and picked up on our way, leading us to a final confrontation in a hot spring cave somewhere deep underground.

There were seven of us and four of them, though it was clear to all of us that they were almost certainly stronger. Pre-battle banter was rather vehement with accusations of being mindlessly destructive and lacking in both ideals and reason flying our way, while accusations of corruption, hypocrisy and fascism coming Ryo's way. And then the battle started. The first round was simple enough, nobody on either side took or dealt serious damage, though it became clear that the enemies were strong against the newer kung-fu Julia was trying out as it was better at defense, leading to her taking around half the damage dealt that round. The round did, however, start the pattern where Iwasaki was left alone with one the Three Magi.

The second round was where hell broke lose. Everyone on both sides concluded that it wasn't going to be an easy battle and so they broke out their strongest kung-fu and spent as much of their limited, non-renewable resources as they could. Dispensing with all honor, we ganged up on one of the Three Magi to take her down as quickly as possible, which proved to be the end of the round when Julia landed the finishing blow. Before that, however, all three of the Three Magi had gotten off area attacks hitting everyone of us at the absolute peak of their power. Nobody went down or even took impairing injuries, though Miyako ended up heavily debuffed, but everyone lost a lot of ground and would be far more sensitive to future attacks and the first moment where we seriously questioned if we could win came.

The Third round we continued the strategy, still having plenty of qi left and once again everybody spent all the resources they could. This time, however, only one area attack came while the other Magi chose to target Julia, the only person going after her, in the hope of taking her down instead of going down there. The result was that everyone except for Miyako and Hakufu were heavily injured, with Hakufu and Julia adding a laundry list of debuffs as well and only some incredibly lucky rolls kept Iwasaki on her feet as she still personally tried to take out the one of the Magi the rest of us had ignored. At the end Julia's right arm was broken, forcing her to drop one saber and simply fight with one in her off-hand, though she still managed to take the second Mage down.

By the fourth round the remaining Mage and almost everyone on our side were getting extremely low on resources, both renewable and finite, and were racking up serious injuries. Yet as everyone could predict, the third mage went down after after a final area attack to try to take us all out, leading to more fortunate rolls keeping Iwasaki on her feet and we were essentially spent. Through all this Ryo had been sniping from the sidelines, conserving all her resources for when we came for her. Julia charged ahead at Ryo as the final minion was defeated trying to make use of her buffs for the round to stab her, which was easily ignored and just let to her left arm getting injured as well.

From here it was seven, utterly spent people against someone stronger, more experienced and completely fresh and other than Julia everyone had to cover ground to get to her, though not everyone did. Iwasaki paused to catch her breath after her solo fight with the third Mage, while Miyako and Fujiko preferred to use their superior reach to attack Ryo from a distance where she couldn't hit all of us with area attacks, while Miyuki hung back on account of being terrible in a straight fight, so instead she'd try to shout at Ryo to distract her. The first round against Ryo was a mess, nobody had any qi to invest in offense so she effortlessly evaded almost everything and only taking light damage from the rest. Julia especially was in no position to do anything with two broken arms and no weapons, instead she focused on using her talents to make it harder for Ryo to hit by using what was left to her - Her head, headbutting her on the nose to make her eyes tear up to make attacking unclear. She got Ryo's attack for her trouble, completely mangling her left arm and draining the last of her resources.

Then came the second "oh, ****" moment where we all thought we were going to lose in the next round. Our attacks had done a bit better due to people taking a breather the round before and Iwasaki catching up to Ryo the round before, but we were still very spent and Julia who was one of the two high damage people had her offense neutered. Realizing that and that she was unlikely to last through the round anyway, she sacrificed everything to kick Ryo in the solar plexus to weaken her blows and leaving herself with no defense. Others were a bit better off and braced themselves as another, even stronger area attack hit, immediately knocking Julia and Hark out and putting Hakufu and Iwasaki in a very dicy position.

That was the cue for us to make a final, desperate gamble. Miyako and Miyuki would channel their energy to Fujiko who would make sure attack at her full power while Hakufu and Iwasaki kept Ryo pinned down and the other three safe. The scene got somewhat more surreal as Miyuki decided that the proper way to do so, was cuddling as tightly to Fujiko as she could while whispering pillow talk in her ears. Several rounds of this went by with Ryo finally starting to get spent as she got more and more injuries, both straight cuts and bruises and nerve damage from lightning, slowly crippling her ability to act, yet landing a finishing blow kept eluding those left as Ryo too started slowing down to catch her breath and winding up for another area attack that would almost certainly have been the end of the line for both Hakufu and Iwasaki and leaving the other three in an uncertain position...Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere the stars aligned and the dice smiled on Hakufu and she landed one of the strongest blows we'd seen all game, while Ryo fumbled her defense and all of a sudden it was over.

The entire fight had lasted for more than two sessions and it remained nailbitingly intense until the very end and the stakes were very high. Had we lost, Hakufu at least would have been on the chopping block of the purge for causing massive property damage all the time, Julia would have experienced the horror of letting someone cripple a family member, Miyako would suddenly find herself in a position of trying to rebel against a superior and losing and we'd all have lost any shred of reputation we had for a failed attempt at a rebellion. And those were just the personal consequences, the consequences for the school could have been quite dire as it became a far more elitist, authoritarian place.

And that was long and I'm pretty sure I told it terribly, but there it is. My story of saving a school from fascism full of sacrifice and things coming down to the dice just barely managing to fall the right way for us to win. Still not sure about the fallout of all this since the GM needed a break after that much intense fighting.

BWR
2013-09-21, 04:46 PM
In a alt-u L5R game, one of the characters played was a pre-gempukku kid who was training with the Hiruma named Kichiro (in the L5R setting most kids are trained in their profession from about the age of 8 to about the age of 15 or 16, this kid was 14. The Hiruma are probably the most accomplished scouts in the setting, and very good at sneaking). He was the son of some rather important nobles and a target for those displeased with his parents. Some traitorous underlings had managed to lure him away from his teachers under the pretext of his younger sister being terminally ill and his presence was requested before she died. His sister was actually being kidnapped at this point.

He started suspecting something was not right when they headed out into the country side rather than towards his home city. The excuse that they were heading out to a remote temple did not do much to reassure him so he was on guard. Finally, when they arrived at the destination he decided this was too fishy so he jumped off his horse and ran into the thick woods. Fortunately for him, his kidnappers were not terribly good at woodscraft or finding people (and some lucky rolls on his part), so he managed to elude them. The kidnappers then brought out his little sister and threatened to kill her if he didn't surrender (they didn't actually know if he was still in the area, just did this in case). Kichiro heard them but stayed put.

The kidnappers decide to cut and run, taking Kichiro's sister with them. He could have hidden until they left, then run for help, but he can't just leave her all alone, so he decides to follow them. So this kid has to follow a bunch of people on horses while he's on foot, and keep hidden so no one sees him. Also, he has to do this on no sleep and an empty stomach. Fortunately, this is excatly the sort of training the Hiruma school gives. Even so, the chances of success are slim, but the player insists on doing this rather than doing the smart and easy thing and go for help.

So for the better part of 2 days he runs and hides, with ever increasing penalties, and the dice are with the player. Finally, the kidnappers stop at an inn, excusing the rather displeased girl as a spoiled brat who is having a tantrum. Kichiro manages to sneak into the inn, up the stairs, steal a sword practically out of the hands of a sleeping samurai and kill eight men in their sleep without waking anybody up. The last one wakes and the resulting battle is not unlike a level 0 rogue against a level 4 fighter. Yet the dice are on Kichiro's side with some of the most consistently lop-sided rolls I've ever seen. As GM I rolled crap. Utter, smelly, sloppy excrement. The player rolled unusually well on top of that. So in the end Kichiro had defeated 9 experienced warriors before he was fully trained legally considered an adult.

To top it off, the story was kind of sordid (killing people in their sleep? How uncouth and dishonorable!) so it was hushed up by his mother to save face. The only people who could actually learn the truth and praise him were his father, brother and sister.

DontEatRawHagis
2013-09-21, 10:25 PM
System was Spycraft, we were using it to play a supervillain campaign.

After getting left out of one of the missions involving disrupting the City Day parade. I wrote a page worth of info to my GM while the other players were planning what they were going to do.

The result?

Krojack(ex-KGB agent, wears a zombie mask and suit/tie) bought about 40 molotov cocktails. His minions had most of them and set fire to some parade floats.

Captain Awesome and his sidekick kid wonder appear to try and contain the situation.

Krojack walks up the back of an Abraham Lincoln float and as it burns he stands a top its giant hat delivering the best monologue I could manage about how the heroes were going the way of extinction. By the end, Krojack feigns targeting Captain Awesome throws a dagger at Kid Wonder killing him, and causing Captain Awesome to lose composure.

Then Krojack holds out his hand as an Apache Helicopter flies over head and he grabs onto it's ladder. Laughing maniacally as he escapes.

endoperez
2013-09-22, 12:02 PM
In an Ars Magica one-shot, the players were trekking through a forest in a wagon, transporting some magical goods from one covenant to another. The party:

Narissa the Mind-reader. Narissa is a powerful wizardess who specializes on reading and affecting human minds. A side-effect of her power causes shadows and dims lights whenever she uses it. She usually hides her magical powers.
Rhys the mercenary. Rhys is a mercenary captain with sour personality. He and his underlings were hired as bodyguards.
Lissa the Seer. Lissa is an eccentric young woman who once lived with faeries. She has golden and conspicuous eyes, and two separate abilities that let her see things others can't. To avoid suspicion, she acts shy and hides her eyes.


They met a noble who was hunting deer in the woods, and were invited to his camp deeper in the forest. They were a bit wary and came up with a delay, ending with some of the noble's servants camping with the players' party for the first night.
During the night, Narissa cast a spell to keep the noble's servants asleep while they discussed what to do. Rhys had realized the noble couldn't be who he claimed to be. They tied up the servants, and Narissa started casting and recasting a mind-reading spell on them, and kept at it throughout the night. Their campfire was the only illumination against the darkness, and with every spell she drew forth strings of darkness that floated in the air, slowly dissipating. Truly a spooky night.

Thanks to Narissa's mind-reading they found out that "noble" was in fact leading a band of outlaws who were trying to lure them into a trap deep inside the forest, in a glade that clearly held magical powers and might still hold clues to magical rituals once performed there. Their interest was piqued, but they didn't want to fight the outlaws, so they came up with a plan to scare the men away.
They wove a frightening tale of a soul-eating forest, delivered in the morning by wide-eyed Lissa who made sure they noticed her unnatural eyes. Rhys laconically told the men Lyssa's eyes were one symptom of a similar experience ("the poor girl"). Once their leader arrived to repeat his invitation, Narissa sneaked a curse of hellish nightmares and restless dreams on the lot of them. The outlaws were scared out of their minds, and the players were free to continue their journey.

The players had managed to avoid the ambush and had made sure the forest's magical resources were now uncontested. All this without a fight or having to reveal too much about themselves. They were rather happy with themselves already, and then I explained they had just chased Robin Hood out of Sherwood... :smallcool:

Nero24200
2013-09-22, 04:49 PM
The characters

My Paladin - Undead hunter
The Cleric - Traditional healbot
The Rogue/Sorcerer - Sneaky/Cocky combatant
Monk - A dwarf with a shaved head and beard

Our party was hunting a necromancer when we encountered these strange balls of light. We reckoned they could be wisps, but my paladin (who carried an undead bane weapon) wasn't getting any bonuses, and they still pinged for evil.

They managed to smack our sorcerer/rogue up pretty badly.

We ended the game there but the sorcerer/rogue player couldn't make it next week. She spoke with the DM and they came up with an idea. Unknown to us at the time these balls of light were actually pseudo-demon eggs, used to incubate the physical bodies demons use to enter the world (at least in this setting).

To accomidate the other player not being present, one of the eggs latched onto her after striking her. She was unconcious and in need of healing. One heal check later and we are rushing her back to her room at the inn so our cleric can surgically remove the thing from her. The cleric RP's the scene pretty fully, which includes putting her various alchemical substances (alchemist fire included) on the desk at the window.

The Rogue/Sorc's player arrives to then watch the last part of this story. The cleric finally removes the egg, then it hatches. It's a imp that flies in front of the window. The monk, showing no hesitation, charges it. The result is the monk pseudo bull-rushing the imp though the table of alchemist fires and through the window.

tl;dr. The monk grabs an imp whilst leaping from an exploding room.

The worst part is that the sorc/rogue got to roll a reflex save. Despite being half-unconcious due to the chloroform she avoided all damage due to evasion whilst my paladin and the cleric left with their eye-brows burnt off.

Amaril
2013-09-22, 04:55 PM
I have one of my own, from my most recent Pathfinder session.

The Game
This is a Pathfinder campaign with some fairly extensive houserules (nothing important for this story, though). Our party is 5th level. The setting is a mix of alternate post-Spellplague Forgotten Realms, Golarion, and homebrew elements.

The Characters
Amaril--my character, an elven transmuter wizard.
Alden--my RL dad's character, a half-elf fighter/cleric.
Guttersnipe--another PC, a goblin rogue/diviner wizard.
Kor-en--our fourth PC, a drow monk specialized for grappling.
Ilsoari--my character's father, a powerful wizard and former Harper from the days before the Spellplague.
Lady Draklar--a high-ranking drow priestess who had caused problems for us in the past.

The Story
The party had come to an ancient battlefield in pursuit of a mysterious mage who destroyed several farms just a short ways north, identifying himself to the only survivor as Ilsoari the Slayer--my father's name, minus the title. Based on some information gained from a friendly cleric whose path we happened to cross, we believed he may have fallen under the influence of a powerful artifact called the Staff of Shimmering, supposedly buried in a tomb on this battlefield, which held potent necromantic powers and an evil will that possessed its wielder. On our way to the burial mound where the staff was buried, we had to contend with a massive undead horde set on us by an old enemy of ours, a drow priestess named Lady Draklar, who was trying to use the staff for her own purposes. However, just as they were about to overwhelm us, a huge column of dark energy struck from the top of the burial mound to the storm overhead, and as it did, every one of Draklar's undead minions instantly forgot about us and began making their way towards the hill. After we took a brief moment to tend to our injuries, I bid a temporary farewell to my companions and flew off towards the hill to see what was going on up there.

The burial mound was completely surrounded by an army of undead creatures of all shapes and sizes--everything that had ever died on that battlefield was making its way towards the hill. In the clear circle at the top stood Lady Draklar with three of her personal honor guard, as well as a hooded figure holding an ornate staff, which was emitting the energy we had seen from farther away. Remaining out of sight high above, I flew back to the rest of the group and told them what I'd seen. All of us agreed that we needed to stop whatever was going on up there right away, but even if we managed to get past the undead, we'd still have to contend with both Draklar and a mage empowered by the Staff of Shimmering. Things weren't looking good...until Guttersnipe spoke up and reminded us about one of the items we were carrying--a small crystal that, as far as we could tell, was able to drain power from magic items on contact, possibly destroying them. A plan was hatched.

Using some hastily improvised rules that our DM provided for the situation, we organized ourselves in a wedge formation and began pushing past the undead horde. There were a couple times when we almost failed our rolls to avoid opportunity attacks, but thanks to some divine assistance from Alden, we managed to reach the top of the hill without so much as a scratch (other than our remaining injuries from the battle before). As we crested the mound, we were faced by Draklar's elite guards, arrayed in formation to keep us away from the mage with the staff. Alden clutched the stone in his shield hand. We all held our breaths--he would only get one shot at this. This was it--go time.

The DM began the combat round. Kor-en charged forward, sprinting between the guards before even one of them could react. He ran straight at the hooded mage, spinning him around and pinning him in a full nelson--his grappler fighting style served him well yet again. A second behind him came Alden, barreling past the drow honor guards and charging straight at the grappled wizard. He made his touch attack roll to touch the stone to the staff--a 15. High enough.

The second the stone touched the staff, it exploded with searing red light that almost blinded all of us. The staff instantly turned to ash and was absorbed into the stone, which became so hot that Alden was forced to drop it. As it fell to the ground, it grew, becoming fist-sized, then head-sized, and finally growing to almost two full feet in diameter. It landed with a shockwave of energy that dealt a full 8d6+10 damage to everyone caught in it--not one of us would have survived if we hadn't burned the Hero Points that our DM had awarded all of us a moment ago for making it past the undead army. The last thing I remembered seeing before falling unconscious was four clawed feet, a scaly tail, two huge wings, and a horned head emerging from what had been the crystal just a second ago...

When we all woke up, several hours had passed--it was already night. All around lay the remains of the undead army that had surrounded us, the magic that had sustained them dispelled when the staff was destroyed. The storm had dissipated, and by what little light there was, I could see my father laying where the hooded mage had stood, unconscious but apparently unhurt. Draklar's body was nowhere to be seen--she must have fled before the explosion. Off in the distance, we faintly heard the roar of the dragon we had released, the first in the world for the last five hundred years.

We managed to save the world from an undead apocalypse, destroy the most powerful magical artifact any of us had ever encountered, and resurrect dragons from extinction in a single round of combat. Needless to say, we went home that night pretty proud of ourselves :smallbiggrin:

Wow, ok, that ended up being pretty long. I probably didn't do it much justice either :smallsigh: Ah well.

GrayGriffin
2013-09-23, 11:38 PM
In a Pokemon Tabletop Adventures Game, I'm playing a young kid who's a Capture Specialist. Now, in this game, to capture a Pokemon, you need to throw a Pokeball and roll 1d100, then hope you get under its catch rate. Capture Specialists can subtract their DEX modifiers from that roll, as well as deal damage when throwing a Pokeball to further raise their chances. I also took a feature that allowed my trainer to automatically try and capture a Pokemon when an ally rolled high on an accuracy check. Usually, a trainer would have to wait for their turn to make a capture attempt.

Anyways, in the first session, our group ventured out and got attacked by a large mob of Pokemon, led by a Carnivine that opened with a bunch of area attacks. However, thanks to a lucky string of rolls, my Hoothoot first put it to sleep, and then hit it with a critical Peck attack, allowing me to trigger my feature and throw a Pokeball, while also using my damage-dealing feature. The normal catch rate for a Carnivine is 15, and I only had a -2 bonus from my base features. But thanks to the combination of factors (asleep, critical hit, low health) I was able to succeed, and also caused most of the mob to stop attacking and try to flee. That Carnivine became a staple of my team, even after that game died, as I continued to use my character in other games.

Lvl45DM!
2013-09-24, 03:09 AM
snip

Love it when D and D perfectly mimics action movies!


1st Edition D and D game with Cthulu as the BBEG and the Black Oil from X-Files as a corruption agent turning everything it touched into an aberration from your nightmares.

My character is a assassin, turned paladin, with a Holy Avenger that had the soul of his mother encouraging his good actions. He was, simply put, a bit annoying. Every fight I did decent in, I added a new heroic title. "Orc Bane, Dragonslayer, Hornboros savior, Treereaver, Bandit's Doom, Griffin Rider-***-slayer, Paladin of Beauty..." etc, etc. and I read out the list to every new character we met. He was, however, a hero sacrificing his own body to save others close to death, nearly dying cos he gave his daily Lay on Hands to his barbarian bash bro. Every thing I think a paladin should be.

The Epic Moment

High Priestess of the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep (Big God) has a stone thats producing the oil, big fight yadda yadda. My Paladin distinguishes himself by slaying a Dark Young in single combat and the Mage put a Resilient Sphere (Not sure if they have that in later editions, like a spherical Forcecage) around the Priestess. She completely filled the globe with the Oil and when the globe expired it would release a flood of oil which would kill us all and raise us as Formless Spawn. My paladin lunges at her, his holy sword granted magic resistance allowing him to pass through the globe but not bring it down. Blinded by the oil, dying from its influence he has to roll a 17 to hit the Stone to destroy and halt the flow of oil. I roll a 20 and destroy the stone and kill the nearly dead priestess in one hit as well.

Mage disintegrates the sphere to save me and the massive flood of oil allows Nyarlathotep 1 round of existence on our plane. Everyone else runs, smart move. My paladin however, stealing a line from the Erevis Cale trilogy, says "I may die, but before I go I will hurt you. Hurt you so you remember it." and hits it twice doing about 40 damage. Nyarlathotep rolls a single tentacle shot, that would do, at minimum, enough to kill me, and at maximum enough to obliterate me. He rolls a 1 and fades back to R'lyeh as my Paladin, Allaine taunted it "Maybe if you had eyes you tentacle faced freak!"

So I won right? badass one liners chased off a god, Epicness over. Wrong. I had failed my poison saving throw against the oil. I had 1d10 rounds before becoming a monster, alive or dead. My DM is kinda awesome and notes to me next round "It seems like the gate is still a teensy bit open."
I knew history could be made. I drop my holy sword, take up my spear, weapon of choice back when I was an assassin, and dive headfirst into the gate, never to be heard from again.

But the next time we saw Nyarlathotep 5 years later real time 2 months game time (so like 4 levels higher), he had a big scar on his chest and smelled like roses...the Symbol of my paladin's deity. Needless to say his fear aura had no effect on us

SowZ
2013-09-24, 03:55 AM
6th level party. Massive city siege. CR 14 worm was burrowing a tunnel under the wall to give a time limit on repelling the army. The assassin, with 10 Int and 1 assassin level, decides to use death strike on it. She gets herself to the worm and I'm unconcerned. She can't kill it, she'll either die or be chased off, right? She gets off her attack, a nearby unit spots her, but she already hit. Time for the worm's pitifully easy fort save... Aaaand I rolled a 1. Of course I did. Lovely.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-09-24, 11:52 AM
6th level party. Massive city siege. CR 14 wyrm was burrowing a tunnel under the wall to give a time limit on repelling the army. The assassin, with 10 Int and 1 assassin level, decides to use death strike on it. She gets her to the wyrm and I'm unconcerned. She can't kill it, she'll either die or be chased off, right? She gets off her attack, a nearby unit spots her, but she already hit. Time for he when's pitifully easy fort save... Aaaand I rolled a 1. Of course I did. Lovely.
YES. :smallbiggrin:

Dovahsith
2013-09-27, 09:30 PM
Homebrewed Fallout RPG
Party had token doctor, robotics scientist, crazed NCR vet who thought the reds meant the legion (Me) and finally Jarrod, or as we came to believe him as, "the lost primarch".
My first session joining the group had us against a small group of securitrons and several robotic dogs. After realising our guns didn't have the power to inflict meaningful damage on military grade battle armour, myself, the doctor and our techie pulled back to attempt to force them into a chokepoint so we could concentrate on the one at a time. Jarrod had other ideas...

Next thing we know, the player states that his free action is to challenge the lead "or biggest, i don't know, perhaps the rubble made it taller than the others" to a "duel". The robots ignore the honorable combat and shoot laser at him, which for some reason barely burn his skin due to the worst damage rolls i have ever seen. Angered by this Jarrod proceeded to run towards this fiendish mech and as he came into melee distance, he grappled a robotic hound who was running past him. Picking it up as a makeshift club, Jarrob swung the now yelping weapon with his considerable strength and smote the securitron in twain, also knocking the dog into some sort of off setting.
By the end of the battle, the robots were dead, Jarrod has a sack of repairable robotic dogs he wanted to pull a chariot with and his first loyal followers, who glanced at the player with a mixture of respect and fear.

Silva Stormrage
2013-09-28, 12:35 AM
D&D 3.5 Homebrew Setting

The party: Unarmed Fighter, Homebrew Poison User, Druid, Sorcerer, Artificer
All 16th level.
DM: Me

The party recently preformed a task for a rebel group that they support (3 way civil wars :smalltongue:). And the party was spending the night on their magical flying ship next to the rebel's main fortress, a large tower on a plateau. Suddenly their ship starts to fall as its flight enhancements are supressed and the tower starts launching fireballs from spell turrets lined on the wall. Their ship plummets to the ground but survives in one piece (it is REALLY well made).

The group is confused and not sure whats going on but they decide that instead of fighting they want to flee. The druid casts frostfell and control winds creating a path of ice and pushing their ship across the ice at high speeds (It still has sails). Their BBEG however, wanted them to invade the tower and fight the rebel group so she teleported in front of the ship while invisible and used magic to essentially knock the ship back by placing wards on the ground (Vector Witch + Vector Plates (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228402)). The party not wanting to turn back now has the sorcerer create a wall of force ramp over the wards so that the ship jumps over them and hopefully off the plateau.

Now I wasn't expecting this (And so neither did the BBEG) and I had the BBEG teleport IN FRONT of the charging ship. I asked them to hold on a bit and did some math with the angles. They collide straight into their bbeg and knock her to 5 HP. All the PC's heard was a "You hear a thud as your ship goes up the ramp as if you hit something. You still see nothing in front of the ship". They then cast true seeing before the BBEG gets another turn and then see their BBEG pressed against their ship as it goes about 200 MPH off a ramp and off the plateau. Thankfully for the campaign they couldn't kill her before she could teleport away.

For TL:DR The group skated their flying ship along a path of ice jumped off a ramp and crashed straight into an invisible BBEG they didn't know was there almost killing her.

Lucid
2013-11-03, 08:15 AM
D&D 4e
The Party: Elven Ranger, Elven Avenger, Kobold Cleric & Human Warlord (Me)

We were high upon a mountain, looking for a rare flower to be used in a ritual. After a trek of several days we've reached the top and spot some of the flowers, growing in the center of two large patches of weeds.
As soon as we get close to the weeds it starts entangling us. It doesn't do much damage, but we all have to spend our turns weed whacking, moving 5 feet and getting entangled again, and slowly we're getting closer to the flower.
To make matters worse we made enough of a commotion to attract a hungry wolf pack who also start attacking us. Luckily some of them get entangled as well.

I focus my attention on the wolves, urging the ranger to continue to try and get the flower, and the avenger does the same for the cleric in another patch. With plants snaring my legs, immobilizing me, I still manage to block the wolves from getting to the ranger, but the situation is getting dire, with more wolves coming. (How a 10+ wolf pack ended up near a snowy mountain top I don't know:smallconfused:)

Seeing the ranger has grabbed the flower I call out to the others to get the hell out, and we'll meet them at the base of the mountain.
I tell my DM, "Allright, I spend an action point and hack myself free, kick off the wolf, drop my towershield, jump on and grab the ranger."
DM: :smallconfused: "Ok, make an attack on the weeds and the wolf, a strength check to grab the ranger and roll a d20, under 5 and you'll succeed"

I manage to make all the attacks, grab the ranger, only one more roll to go. I throw the die. I've never been so happy to see it come up a 1. :smalltongue:

Sledding down a steep slope at increasing speeds, the DM asks me how I think I'm going to stop? :smallamused:
Me: "I hadn't put much thought in that honestly, uhm, is there a less steep part somewhere ahead? :smalleek:
DM: "Yeah, you can see a 20ft ledge sticking out, what do you do?"
Me: "I pull my sword and plunge it into the ground as hard as I can, try to make a turn and stop."
DM: "You've still got one action point right? Spend it and make an attack roll with a penalty"

I make the roll, and we tumble into a snow bank. The ranger and I head back to base camp and wait the two days it takes for the others to get back.



tldr; Two people sled down an alp sized mountain on a tower shield, making a trip that took 3 days going up and less than an hour getting down. :smallbiggrin:

Yoven
2013-11-06, 08:17 AM
The Incredible Face of your DM when the Druid decides to Smash some enemies in a Fight... by turning into a Rhino in midair.

Stops the game to check the weight of it.. then googles for drop damage.. and notices that after modern D20 Rules its going to be 3D6 for the Druid, and 25D6 for everyone underneath who's not able to do the DC20 Reflex Save.

Slipperychicken
2013-11-06, 11:46 AM
For TL:DR The group skated their flying ship along a path of ice jumped off a ramp and crashed straight into an invisible BBEG they didn't know was there almost killing her.

That reminds me of one from a game my brother DM'd. He (the DM) gave each PC unique homebrew powers, like animal summoning or the ability to conjure objects made of force. They quickly realized that they could summon a rhinoceros, create a ramp made of force, then have the rhino charge off it like a projectile. They didn't hit anything particularly notable or epic, but he allowed it in play, and it was super badass.

Silva Stormrage
2013-11-06, 01:56 PM
That reminds me of one from a game my brother DM'd. He (the DM) gave each PC unique homebrew powers, like animal summoning or the ability to conjure objects made of force. They quickly realized that they could summon a rhinoceros, create a ramp made of force, then have the rhino charge off it like a projectile. They didn't hit anything particularly notable or epic, but he allowed it in play, and it was super badass.

Ya that does sound pretty badass :smallbiggrin: Their enemies must of been pretty shocked at the random Rhino appearing out of nowhere.

Rabidmuskrat
2013-11-06, 04:56 PM
Our Barbarian was a little... gung-ho in our pirate campaign. He swam after a rather powerful encounter we had managed to chase away from our ship (good rp, not bad player). As the captain, I was a bit worried about him chasing these rather powerful monsters alone, so I sent the druid to just keep an eye on him in eagle form.

He followed them up the river they had fled into for a while until, predictably, they decided to turn around and slaughter the irritating PC following them. Now the barbarian was powerful, but he wasn't quite a match for these big blue worm things, so after a round or two when it became clear who was going to come out on top the druid decided that more direct help than the few ranged spells he had been providing was necessary.

He put himself - still in eagle form - into a steep dive directly onto the last remaining blue worm (the barbarian had critted the other one quite dead). Halfway down, he turned into a shark and thus, the Shark Torpedo was born.

The DM described it as such:
"The Shark slams into the [monster] hard enough that it not only hits the bottom of the relatively shallow river, it actually bounces back up. Roll for bite damage while I figure out how big a bonus to give you."
The monster didn't survive for long after that and we even managed to save the barbarian who was dying at the time.

LWDLiz
2013-11-06, 05:11 PM
Playing in a D&D game a few years back with a really lax GM when it game to the rules, so don't focus too much on whether this was actually feasible.

A PC had seen the story's adversary slit the throat of his brother and push him off a ledge of the fortress we were attacking. Once we faced the adversary, we had beat up on him a lot and he was nearing death.

My friend, who played the grieving brother, took up his 20-sided dice and looked to the GM - "I notch my bow and aim the arrow straight at the [expletive]'s eye." He then rolled a perfect 20 and then, I kid you not, confirmed with another perfect 20. Now I have no idea if that shot would have actually killed him, but the GM appreciated the epicness of the moment and the foe was vanquished, the PC's fallen brother revenged.

Lemonblu
2013-11-07, 08:28 AM
I was playing some Warhammer Roleplay thing a few months ago, and managed to roll up a Human Noble, Jebediah, who was not particularly gifted at anything bar drinking (comparable to the dwarves on the team). Ranged combat ability was poor, melee combat was even worse.

After a number of sessions where Jebediah unsuccessfully tried to perform some heroic acts (including one where he leapt off a boat to the shore to slaughter the enemies - the reality of it being he failed his skill check and just barely made the shoreline in a heap), the party descended on a warehouse containing a suspected evil ritual (*thunderclap).

Inside were cultists, the wizardy-ritual guy and a handsome noble, who on seeing us promptly turned into some demon of awfulness. The party cleared out the cultists pretty quickly, and after taking much damage Jebediah attempted some last ditch effort.

Backing out of the warehouse, he tried to taunt the demon into charging him. The plan was to take it out of the fight (if only temporarily), allowing the rest to take out the wizard. Perhaps they would both even up in the river immediately behind him. He was prepared for the heroic sacrifice. When it didn't bite, he charged at it instead.

What Jebediah saw: He charges valiantly at the demon, sword in hand. His grip is steady, his eyes are focused, and his fate is uncertain; he may or may not go down a hero. Just so long as the others are ok.

What everyone else saw: He runs at the demon, both hands gripping the hilt of his short sword, arms fully extended, the tip pointed forward and bouncing frantically. His head is thrown back, his eyes are shut, and he is screaming all the way.

What the dice show: Roll d100 to hit: Passed. Roll d10 for damage: 10
Max damage? That deserves a re-roll my friend, see if you can hand out more pain.
Roll d100 to hit: Passed. Roll d10 for damage: 10
10 again? Roll d10’s until you stop get max damage, then add it all up.
1… oh well, 21 damage is a little more than unexpected (!)

What the demon saw: A screaming human running headlong at him, a barely-controlled wobbling glint of steel, then… nothing.

The tip of the sword found its mark, and the blade was driven into the demons face right up to the hilt. Its head caved inwardly, blood and entrails spewing out as the creature collapsed to the floor still gurgling. Jebediah stood for a beat unsure of what just happened, then with renewed vigour threw himself at the wizard. Driven by a newfound bloodlust, or sheer suicidal recklessness, he could not say. Somehow his blade connected, severing the enemies leg just below the knee. The wizard was left keeling over staring in horror at his bloody stump, cursing the party for his now-failed ritual as he drifted out of consciousness.

The party quickly left the vicinity as a hole opened up beneath the dying wizard, and expanded to swallow the warehouse and half the harbour. Jebediah, self-important, snobbish and thoroughly incompetent, sailed away as a slayer of evil.

BeholdenCaulf
2013-11-07, 01:12 PM
Dragonvein: male human fighter
Aralazio: male half-elf sorcerer
Hope: female elf cleric
Pantanious: male elf ranger
Ivellios (uncreative player uses example name) male elf ranger

Dragonvein, Aralazio, Pantanious and Hope are atop a mountain on a side-quest, waiting for the main antagonist, Grundlewood, the evil gnome wizard to resurface

While jumping a chasm, Dragonvein falls 200ft after failing both jump check and reflex save, to his supposed death

Ben (playing Dragonvein) gets RIDICULOUSLY lucky with damage rolls and succeeds on the fortitude save to resist massive damage

"Body" is irretrievable, Ben rolls new character, Haze, a female elf rogue to be getting on with

Final battle goes down and king of the country has given Pantanious an "arrow of soul binding" that he must hit Grundlewood with so his soul is trapped in a gem somewhere on the astral plane

After dragons and Orc captains were fought and defeated, this was it, reunited at the side of original party member Ivellios and the king and his general, the party faced the final battle against the evil wizard (without Haze who was incapacitated)

Aralazio was nullified early with feeblemind and Hope drags him to safety, the king's general dies for the king which was to be in vein as the king later in the battle also died

Towards the end of the battle, a mysterious man in shiny full plate jumps off a horse and into battle and removed his helmet (for effect with no penalties) and OHMYJEEZ it's Dragonvein!

Pantanious misses with the arrow of soulbinding and Ivellios scrambles to pick it up (which the general also tried to do before his demise)

Sensing it's importance, Grundlewood charms Ivellios who proceeds to fire the arrow which successfully connects with Dragonvein

Uh-oh

Pantanious finishes Grundlewood and the Bronze Dragon Revet, the King's next in command, in human form, reveals to the party the true nature of the arrow and next time Dragonvein dies, he will stay dead

Mixed emotions were had in that session

The Oni
2013-11-07, 01:18 PM
This one time my friend played a male halfling bard whose name I cannot remember (let's call him Richard), but his bluff, disguise and Charisma were out the wazoo. First he convinced the entire party that he was an NPC shoemaker, rather than having any levels in a PC class (we all failed the bluff check.) Then, while raiding a dungeon, Richard convinced an entire noble court of evil dwarves who apparently were living there that he was the queen, while disguised using only her lingerie. Every one of them believed it.

Gnoman
2013-11-07, 06:27 PM
Bit complicated, but here's the encounter that almost immediately ended my campaign.


The party. investigating a stolen godforged inn sign (which had been in a museum) and following a surge of magic from a long-dead city, comes across a pair of wizards doing something to a little girl while a choir of cultists chanted. The party took one look at the situation and shot her in the face.

Explanation.

Why did this almost end the campaign? The "little girl" was an evil god that was allowing her power to be drained in order to ressurect her mother (the setting's Satan analogue that had once ruled the entire world after imprisoning the other gods) and rebuild the near-impregnable fortress that she had previously used as a base. The party had no way of knowing this, and the bard actually assumed that she was an innocent bystander. He simply deduced that she was being used to make Very Bad Things happen, and decided that that was the best way to handle the situation. Fortunately for the campaign, they had her ressurected.

ShadowFireLance
2013-11-08, 12:02 AM
When I tore the continent in half. :smallcool:

Jay R
2013-11-08, 09:58 AM
When I tore the continent in half. :smallcool:

See? This is why we can't have nice things.