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View Full Version : Gamer Tales Your Most Exciting/Memorable Encounter! DM + PC.



nakedonmyfoldin
2014-09-19, 08:07 AM
I just enjoy hearing encounters that stick with you through the years. Whether it was the completely unique setting, the interesting baddies, or just the way an encounter winded up. I'm interested!

As a PC, my most memorable encounter was starting off a campaign in a pretty mundane setting. We were all imprisoned, and we didn't know why. I scrounged around the filthy floor until I found a wishbone. As the party's Rogue, I used the bone to pick the lock. Then, before any of the guards heard or saw me, I used the wishbone to kill 3 of the dwarven jailors, even with the penalties of an improvised weapon and whatnot. It was all luck of the dice, but the DM felt that something special needed to be done. Some diety or demi-diety (I forget which) appeared and blessed the wishbone as a magical weapon! Not amazing. Worked just like a dagger but had x3 critical and also functioned as a lockpick. I friggin loved that wishbone for a concealed weapon.

BWR
2014-09-19, 09:01 AM
In a Kult game I had three girls curled up in the sofa trying to get away from me (the guy I was playing was a bit insane, and I apparantly channeled that well).

And the story where my PC had to lead the prosecution (arguing for the death penalty) against his daughter, a character we had spent several years developing. That one had me in tears.

TheEmerged
2014-09-19, 09:27 AM
Annoying Man!. System is HERO\Champions 4th edition, Genre is superheroic, during a moderate campaign, and back in the pre-internet days.

As part of a conversation I'd had with a player outside of the gaming group, I set out to design an opponent for the players with limited attack\defenses but designed to keep the encounter going as long as possible using primarily "meta" tricks. The result was easily the longest HERO system fight I've ever been in and a death threat from my players if I ever do that again.

"He disappeared... and reappeared over there! He's a teleporter!"
"Wait, my attack went right through him? Can he go Desolid?"
"Unless he took the Invisible advantage, we'd be able to tell, this must be an illusion!"
"Wait a second - who just attacked me? Can he go invisible?"
"Wait a minute, six of him just appeared - and two of them attacked us! What's going on?"
...and it got much, much worse from there.

Eisenheim
2014-09-19, 09:37 AM
For my most memorable encounter, I was essentially a spectator. It was at the end of a long-running star wars campaign. Our Jedi counselor had challenged the the leader of the growing empire who we had been fighting, a jedi we believed to have fallen, to single combat, essentially for the fate of the galaxy. When they squared off, the jedi's player rolled a die and told the DM

"I activate Dark Rage at maximum."

This was character who had been not just light side, but a beacon of light, always arguing for non-violence, negotiation, understanding. He'd been the moral compass as well as increasingly the leader of the party. He had saved my character's life at leas once, and was generally the example for both the galaxy and the party of Jedi who did not want to rule over other people, which was the nature of the empire we were fighting.

Even though we were just watching the duel, the amount riding on it and the sudden shock of that twist kept everyone in character and powerfully engaged.

BioCharge
2014-09-19, 09:40 AM
I have only been D&Ding for a short time, so I don't have many stories, but one does stick out. It was a Pathfinder game and I was playing a Human Paladin. We were thrown into the Plane of Shadow (or I believe it was so, it had all the effects of the Plane but the DM didn't describe it as such, doesn't matter) to defeat a Necromancer that had taken refuge in there.

During the battle, he kept going up and down a flight of stairs that because I was in heavy armor (and the DM apparently didn't understand move speed because he was moving 60 feet as a half-elf, but whatever) and would use feather fall to jump off the ledge out of my reach. I eventually got tired of it and jumped after him, hoping to land on top of him or something. I rolled a nat 20 on the attack roll and confirmed the crit. My 250 LB Paladin + gear basically jumped on top of the guy, flattening him. It was a rather proud moment.

lytokk
2014-09-19, 10:28 AM
Was a 3.5 eberron game. I was playing a halfling paladin of dol arrah and the other pertinent character was a chaotic shifter monk. Couple pieces of backstory. I fell due to a disagreement between me and dol arrah, and at some point had acquired a 1/week ability to rewind time 1 round, so long as I take a completely different action. 6 seconds, not much, but enough time to fix a single mistake. The DM was using a potion mixing table from an older edition, and the monk had decided to mix every potion he had together.

We were sent into a camp to rescue a few targets, and through a little divination found out where the captives were being held. Our psion d-doored us into the tent, where we started fighting for freedom. The monk decided this was the point he wanted to drink his potion. The DM called for 3 fort saves from everyone. Around the table, everyone was making their saves, but on my turn my first roll was a 1, which happened to be the save vs death. I took it in stride, sucks to die on a 1, but happens. Once one of our targets to be saved also died, I felt I had to activate my ability. I could always re-roll, but we needed to rescue these people. Gave up my round to stop the monk from drinking the potion.

After a few more rounds, a pit fiend burst into the tent. We opened the d-door again, and I said I'd be the last one out. We were using dimension door as sort of a portal type deal, so we walked out in a line. I still had that potion in hand, said to the pit fiend "have a drink" and nat 20ed the roll to throw the potion into the pit fiend's mouth. I got out of there, and made the dm roll for everythign we had to roll for. Everything in that tent failed their saves.

Thats the story of how my level 14 fallen halfling paladin solo-ed a pit fiend in one round, and got his paladin status back.

Rainman3769
2014-09-19, 04:35 PM
Our level 10 party was taking on a Green Dragon (Don't remember what age) that was basically the BBEG for the entire campaign up to that point. This bastard had REALLY earned our ire. He had destroyed entire towns just because we stayed at the inn there once. He had annihilated the Keep we had taken and made our base of operations. He had even sought out and slowly and painfully killed certain individuals, each one very important to each of our characters for one reason or another. The DM had done a very good job of making us want this dragon's head on a spike.

The final showdown began with a level of epicness I had never experienced before playing a TTRPG, it felt like everything we had ever worked for had been leading up to this. The fight lasted about an hour in real time, and bit by bit we were wearing him down. However, bit by bit he had been taking us down too, and it got to the point where we figured he HAD to be on death's door. Our entire party, save our stalwart Dwarven Paladin, was down and out of the fight. The Paladin was completely out of spells, had maybe 1/4 of his HP left, and his only ranged weapon was a Light Crossbow he had started the game with and literally never used before. The dragon was swooping down and beginning another strafing run. Our brave hero stood on a rocky outcropping, steadily aimed his Light Crossbow, and proceeded to roll a 1. the shot misses and the weapon falls apart in his hands. On the next turn he gets hit with a breath weapon that takes him down to, I kid you not, 1 HP. At this point we all figure the campaign is over, next hit will kill our Paladin and then its a TPK. In a fit of rage and frustration probably felt equally by PC and the player himself, he goes into full on "**** it" mode, and in what he is sure will be a final, brave show of defiance, throws the remains of his Light Crossbow as an improvised weapon. He rolls a Nat20 (because OF COURSE he does), which the DM swore up and down did the exact amount of damage needed to drop the dragon. He even showed us his notes and the ticking off of the dragon's HP throughout the battle to prove to us he wasn't just throwing us a bone via DM fiat.

We all unanimously decided to end the campaign right there, even though ostensibily there were still plot hooks for us to explore. We all just figured that no matter what else the DM threw at us, NOTHING in that campaign was ever going to top that fight.

Tragak
2014-09-27, 03:00 PM
I was running a game about a year ago where I had a chance to bring in one of my favorite BBEGs: Bloodsauger Nightshroud, High Priest of Nerull, a lich Hell-bent on conquering the world with his church-army of liches and vampires. Nightshroud was established as being Epic, and the PCs were each in the level 12-15 range, so they had never confronted him directly, but had scored numerous key victories against his lieutenants.

One time that stands out, however, is when the party’s Kobold Wizard – named Tangri – got killed by some of Nightshroud’s mortal cultists. I give my players a lot more control over the game world than a lot of DMs we've met and/or heard of, and one of our specific house rules to that effect is: a player can bring his/her character back to life in the middle of a battle, instead of waiting for a high-level Divine spellcasting later on, as long as the player comes up with some terrible knowledge that the character brought back from the netherworld and which would make the campaign more challenging in the future.

My player decided to bring Tangri back then and there, declaring that the Gatekeepers of Death (yes, G o D :smallbiggrin: ) had sent her back to warn the party that Nightshroud had discovered a ritual that would plunge the continent into darkness to give his vampires free reign, and that he was less than a week from using it.

After a bit of back and forth between her and the rest of us, Nightshroud’s plan – that the Gatekeepers wished to prevent, so as to protect the natural cycle of life and death – grew into:

Before testing the ritual on a continental level, Nightshroud was going to practice a smaller version (the Epic spell Eclipse: 8 hour duration, 5 mile radius) to conquer a city on the Winter Solstice (the next day), when the shortness of the day and the size of the city would allow him to start with as little of the ritual as possible.

A vampire army would not normally be able to commit to a battle-plan that would take more than one night without interruption, but if Nightshroud managed to use his Eclipse to connect the two longest nights of the year, then his vampires would have 2 long nights + 8 hours uninterrupted as opposed to one night, and their presence across most of the city would give the liches an easier time dealing with the parts of the city still exposed to the Sun.

If Nightshroud found himself comfortable with sustaining the ritual enough to conquer a city, then he would continue to escalate with larger and larger castings (which would not be the official Eclipse anymore).

The party escaped from the cultists and rallied the city to prepare for war. It was agreed that the party’s stronger NPC allies would try to fight Nightshroud himself to prevent the immediate Eclipse, while the PCs would destroy his troves of ritual supplies to prevent him from attempting more in the future. While the city braved the first night of the living dead, the PCs fought their way into Nightshroud’s vault, and were preparing to break through the protective wards (with the help of a vampire double agent) when one of them declared that his character - a Catfolk Barbarian named Mairsarshas – had just received a dying telepathic message from one of their NPC allies, warning that Nightshroud’s guards had killed most of the would-be executioners and that the Eclipse was going to happen.

The party feared that they would have no chance at killing Nightshroud where their stronger allies had failed, so they agreed to continue their own mission of destroying his ritual supplies, at very least ensuring that the imminent Eclipse would be a one-time disaster instead of an eternal Hell on “Earth.” They succeeded, escaped the vault, and returned to the city to join the battle against Nightshroud’s servants, hoping to minimize the damage. I had the vampire ally point out that the Sun would be coming up soon, and that Nightshroud was probably about to start the Eclipse very soon.

Tangri and her player then realized, on the ridiculously absurd off-chance that they could keep Nightshroud occupied until sunrise, that the entire vampire army could be destroyed just by being out in the open without a protective Eclipse, and then the liches could be easier for the city to defeat.

Of course, even if the party could distract Nightshroud long enough for the Eclipse to become moot, they would still have an Epic level Lich Cleric now devoted to killing them rather than to performing the ritual, but they decided that it would be worth it just in case they could destroy the vampire army.

They tracked down Nightshroud and his guards to a basement under the city hall, and I rolled for the number of rounds before the spell was completed (I believe it was 3d6 = 14). The party set about creating distractions as dramatic as possible to make Nightshroud lose focus on controlling the spell. Tangri summoned an Earth Elemental to burrow under the guards, emerge behind them, and bull rush Nightshroud. Mairsarshas ran circles around the guards and threw a bunch of ditherbombs around the room. Sharek (a human Cleric of Kord) brought down large portions of the building with Earthquake (his first ever casting of an 8th level spell). Nightshroud's guards couldn't risk allowing his ritual to be interrupted, so they spent all of their efforts trying to keep up with - and divert - all of the distractions that the PCs were throwing at their lord, not taking the risk of engaging the PCs directly until the Eclipse was assured.

Nightshroud eventually failed a Concentration check with just a few rounds left on the casting. The entire Eclipse was averted, and the vampires in Nightshroud's army were obliterated by the sunrise.

Then came the hard part :smalleek: Nightshroud had over twice as many levels as the strongest PC, and the party now had his UNDIVIDED attention. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Within 3 rounds, Sharek was forcibly transported to Gehenna, Mairsarshas to Hades, and Tangri to Carceri.

Each was mind-controlled into forgetting that they were alive and had been sent to the Infernal Realms because their enemy was evil, believing instead that they had died and been sent to the Infernal Realms because they themselves had brought about evil in their lives.

… And I was not the one who decided that :smallbiggrin:

Tarlek Flamehai
2014-09-28, 04:07 PM
1ed AD&D. Party is three floors down in a particularly nasty dungeon crawl. They walk into a room and activate the trap that drops a porticulis behind them. A pack of rust monsters charges the party through an illusionary wall on the side of the room. Then, on the other side of the illusion, the Beholder opens its main eye....carnage ensues.

Lord Torath
2014-09-29, 08:16 AM
1ed AD&D. Party is three floors down in a particularly nasty dungeon crawl. They walk into a room and activate the trap that drops a porticulis behind them. A pack of rust monsters charges the party through an illusionary wall on the side of the room. Then, on the other side of the illusion, the Beholder opens its main eye....carnage ensues.That one's easy! Have your non-metal-armored PC's herd the rust monsters behind you (toward that huge metal portcullis - yum!) while your armored buddies take on the beholder.

Tarlek Flamehai
2014-09-29, 09:14 AM
That one's easy! Have your non-metal-armored PC's herd the rust monsters behind you (toward that huge metal portcullis - yum!) while your armored buddies take on the beholder.

That's close to what they finally did. Ranger, thief, and wizard frontlined the rust monsters; while the cleric, elf f/m, and fighter went after the beholder. They survived the fight but the thief was the only that survived the retreat out of the dungeon.

GrayGriffin
2014-09-29, 03:42 PM
The final boss fight in our Pokemon Tabletop United live campaign. It was this god-monster that could command most of the bugs of the Viridian Forest, making said forest a very dangerous place to try and walk through. We finally managed to obtain a weapon that could potentially kill it, and thus made an excursion into the forest itself.

Just getting to where the bug-god was was harrowing in itself. We received help from a former antagonist who was bound to the god through a contract, and wanted us to break it for her. She was originally concealing our auras with her own, but then as she was leading us there, Mewtwo, who she had previously fought with, came out of nowhere and attacked her. So it became a race against time to reach the god before its bug servants could devour us.

Even when we got to the clearing, it was full of various bug Pokemon, guarding a large central tree that the bug-god spoke through. And even after we fainted some of them, their unconscious bodies started moving, gathering around six trees that surrounded the central tree in a hexagon pattern. We managed to break the totem symbolizing our former antagonist's contract, and she showed up and let us know that we had to destroy those six trees, as they were the focus for the bug-god entering the world. We managed to get it down to three before it manifested.

The next few rounds were basically throwing everything we had at it. And some of us (okay, me) kept rolling misses as well. But we finally managed to, with a combination of various attacks, take it down. It was a most triumphant scene.

Telwar
2014-09-29, 10:45 PM
The encounters I really enjoy are the ones where I'm "in the zone;" i.e., it's proceeding in a way that it just seems to fall into line for me.

For example...in our 4e al Qadim game, the party (16th level) is proceeding by boat to Dihliz (spelling?) to investigate (a) what's happening with the paladin's brother getting married when we're bringing a wife to him and (b) also find out why we can't portal there, because first we got bounced to the Dismal Delve and then to some craphole magnetic island. Feh.

Unsurprisingly, we're attacked, by a swarm of elementals. I say unsurprisingly because the DM had pointed out at the end of the previous session the huge box full of elementals he'd readied and hadn't gotten to use. This boat is barely worthy of the name, maybe 50 x 20 feet, and it's stuffed full of cargo with no deck, so it's difficult terrain, and the sea is in full storm (from a storm archon who is, unsurprisingly, outside of range), so we have to make acrobatics checks to move. A quartet of archons board and run around the boat, killing the crew and knocking the paladin, the invoker, and myself prone. I clamber up to the wheel for a better view, and start sniping the archons as they come into range. Unfortunately, the heavy armor wearers aren't able to move around to engage, and the invoker whips out her jade sea snake to try to get at them, which then gets killed by one of the archons.

Eventually the archons go down between hits from the paladin, invoker, and myself, and I taunt the storm archon to come down and have a go if he's man enough. He yells out, in primordial, "Mistress, if you wish to destroy your enemies, I will need more minions!"

And then the mistress bursts through the boat in a column of water (incidentally holing the hell out of the boat). She starts blathering on about how she will deal with us later, with the DM hinting broadly that she'll leave next round.

And, hell, I have literally everything left (yay elementalist sorcerer!), and I blow that everything on her. Action Point, Borrowed Confidence (yay Secrets of Belial!) for double attack rolls, every minor action attack I have, pull the crit out of my Dice of Auspicious Fortune, and boom, bloody her in one round. *That* gets her attention, as she turns from a reasonably attractive woman to a lich, and she unloads some aoe confusion that makes us (the invoker, the surviving crewman, and my wife) attack each other. I bounce that off my Sudden Scales*, but take a hit from the wife, and then lich-chick puts a huge necrotic ongoing damage (something like 20-30) on me. Ow.

But, next round, the invoker and I put her down, and shove her now-necroradioactive corpse off the boat. And then realize it's got her loot. Le sigh. And of course she's not wearing her phylactery, so of course we'll get to see her again.

Oh, and we have no healer, because the bard player's out looking at houses, and the paladin, at this point, is busy dueling the huge water elemental that was holding our boat in place (who sees the necroradioactive corpse plummeting to the bottom, figures out that he's not getting paid for this any more, and leaves). So, I've got this nasty ongoing damage, but between my Resist 10 all from Enter the Crucible and a judicious CMW potion, I save it off when I'm at exactly 1 hit point.

And, as the boat sinks, I pull *my* jade sea snake out and use it to carry the party to safety. Boo-yah.


* - Initially, I regretted this, as when I went bloodied I could've used the Immediate Reaction from my Ring of Fury to make two MORE basic attacks into lich-chick, again rolling twice for crit-fishing (because holy hell an *encounter* utility-16 that allows double rolls on all attacks and saves until the beginning of your next turn is wasted on a swordmage). And I still do, because I keep forgetting about that ring. Oh, well. But I might've accidentally taken the wife or the invoker down, and that'd've been bad. And I think that I wasn't bloodied until my turn started. Alas.