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PoeticDwarf
2015-08-04, 02:07 AM
I was just wondering, what was the coolest fight you ever had in D&D?

Inevitability
2015-08-04, 03:13 AM
As a player or a DM?

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-08-04, 04:02 AM
A Paladin/Rogue in a solo Pathfinder game. Led a group of Paladin-wannabe NPCs into the den of a misguided cult. For reference, in-setting Paladins were extinct outside of a few hidden members, myself included, and the NPCs didn't know at first that I was one. There had been a lot of murders, apparently for the "Greater Good" in a Not!Waterdeep city. We'd been called in to deal with it as the local guards were owned by the local Banks and were looking the other way. Our price was simple: Name us as a Knight Order. The Masked Lords accepted. After a ridiculous search, we figured out there was an abandoned building in town near the exact center of the last dozen or so attacks.

We moved in, Myself, the Knights-to-Be's leader, and two of their "best". We entered cautiously, swords at the ready. The room was dark, and covered in doors that defied logic. Some were on the ceiling, some on the floor. We knew nothing good would come of it, and when one of the piles of detritus suddenly reared up and exploded into some sort of Bone Naga, our suspicions were confirmed. One of the doors burst open, and one of the cultists leapt through, an unnaturally acrobatic one at that. He and one of the knights clashed, but didn't seem to find each other for several rounds. In the meantime, I and the others engaged the naga, slowly hacking it to bits.'

In time, the naga collapsed...and so did our knight when one of the cultist's flashing daggers got him, downing the knight with enough poison damage to send him into the negatives. I charged forward, greatsword flashing in the dark. I leapt onto a chair, to the table, and finally into the air.

"SMITE!"

*20*

The DM's (eventual) description: "Your blade glows with a sudden intensity, white-blue light floods the room. It flashes across the faces of three knights, who stand mouths agape, their eyes full of wonder. The light...cuts through the shadows. It cuts through the darkness of the world, and through the souls of the men present...as it rends the shadowed monster unto dust."

The party were genuinely shocked and in awe. It was pretty great moment. Sort of my character's "Gandalf the Gay UNCLOAKED!" moment.

I managed to stabilize the poisoned knight by burning through every single spell slot I had (no cure poison effects, but my DM loves roleplay and so let me do it by going through all my magic healing at once). The guy was alive, but would need days to recover. I ordered an evacuation and started pouring out my alcohol jug (+11 in Craft: Brew!). It was quite flammable, and I had already decided we couldn't take the cultists head on. So I burned them out. Unfortunately this took out half the undercity and got my character put on trial.

The Lords pardoned me despite an enraged Bank that had just lost several acres of investment go up in smoke. 1) They confirmed I was a Paladin, and thus had the authority to put down demonic cults in anyway I saw fit and 2) they gave me unlimited authority to act as their agent, and thus could not prosecute me as I was following legal orders. They still suggested I get the **** out of town before the owners of the burned part of town sent assassins.

And that was how I played my first Paladin and most favoritest character ever.

PoeticDwarf
2015-08-04, 04:44 AM
As a player or a DM?

Doesn't matter, just the best fight

Mojake
2015-08-04, 08:27 AM
Playing as a Fighter in a town run by underground street gangs of Lizardfolk. Through a bit of devious subterfuge, myself and the Wizard managed to play off a few gangs against each other.

Anyhow, after leaving the sewers shortly after a bit of reptile diplomacy, we noticed that we were being followed by a gang of Lizardfolk. We went to the mayor's house as we knew he had a big dodgy involvement in al of this. Fastforward to the Wizard interrogating the mayor whilst I stand watch. Cue a band of Lizard warriors strolling down the street looking mean. Fight engaged, I battled them on the porch for a couple of rounds before cleaving through all of them with my adamantine greatsword.

It was then that the DM described the big gang leader. A 10ft tall, half-dragon lizardfolk barbarian with a huge scimitar. Now at this point I have never been knocked unconscious and am barely even hit by attacks unless they're crits; but I engage this ****er and his breath attack knocks half of my health away on a roll of 13. Now I'm worried. I decide to charge the bastard and swing like crazy, a round of to-and-fro attacks go by before the lizard grapples me. Just as he's holding me in front of him to charge up his breath attack to my face; I ask the DM if I can use sleight of hand to throw something down his huge gaping maw to block his breath. DM says sure.

Of course, as most of these stories go, I hit a natural 20. So I reach out and toss this Tree Token into his gullet. Suddenly a 60ft oak tree bursts from his stomach in a shower of lizard blood and crashes through the mayor's house.

It was a really cool moment; and was worth it despite the damages we needed to pay.

Red Fel
2015-08-04, 08:57 AM
I love this one a lot, and I've told it before. It's not exactly a fight, but it does involve some PCs engaging in (ranged) combat with some NPCs, and some ludicrous creativity, so props must be given.

It's a Dragonlance campaign. Now, for those unfamiliar with the setting, the Big Bad of Evil is the goddess Takhisis. She controls a massive military force, known alternately as the Knights of Takhisis, the Knights of Neraka, or simply the Dark Knights. As you might expect, the DKs tend to wear big, heavy, impressive suits of armor, generally in dark colors.

I told you that, to tell you this: This story takes place in a desert. Our party has just found one of several artifact-level relics related to one of the Lances, legendary weapons that tend to change the course of history. Big surprise, the DKs want a piece of the action, and they're out in force. Most of our party is busy evacuating the small oasis town. But two members of our party - a tinker Gnome and his construct - have another plan. The Gnome's player digs up the books and points out two specific trade goods that have listed values. He then asks the DM if these are available for sale in town. The DM says that they are. The player asks for quantities. The DM asks how much money the PC has.

The Gnome proceeds to buy every hand mirror and magnifying lens in town.

He's a tinker Gnome. He builds things. He has outrageous ranks in Craft. As does the construct, who was specifically designed to aid Gnome craftsmen (and slaughter other lifeforms, but that's - wait, no, that's actually related in this case). They get to work.

Before the DKs have reached the village, around noon, there is a parabolic laser waiting for them on a hill nearby. When they come in range, having marched for quite a long time in their big heavy dark plate, they are bombarded by rays of focused sunlight. By the time they reach the village, more than half are dead or unconscious. The remainder are roasting alive in their armor, and easy pickings for the party.

The fight wasn't the thing. The ingenuity leading up to the fight was the thing.

hymer
2015-08-04, 09:41 AM
parabolic laser

Obligatory mention that the Mythbusters busted that one.

My favourite fight, well... As a player there was one case where we were assaulted in a heavy forest by githyanki (IIRC). I was a sixth or seventh-level druid. Sheer mobility, how easy it was to get out of LoS, just crippling the living hoo-ha out of the enemies with BFC, watching my friends chop them to bits... But that was really just the whole feeling of, hey, don't panic, I've got this. And also knowing the whole time that I had another few gears to shift into, should it become needed. It's the closest I've ever come to fully expanding into full tier 1-mode, something I usually avoid.

As DM, from a less visceral standpoint, I remember a fight in a ritual, where various air elementals would appear in a certain sequence. If you didn't stay on top of them, you'd get overrun by sheer numbers eventually. Specific things could be done to slow the time table down (manipulating specific objects in various places on the battlefield), and it all took place above the clouds on panes of force. Using any form of flight or levitation ended the fight in a loss. It was a sandbox campaign, and the PCs came back to that fight three or four times, so I guess they liked it too.

Freelance GM
2015-08-04, 10:29 AM
Douchebag samurai walk in to a restaurant and demand free food. Unfortunately, my pirate Bard just got his food, and is standing in close proximity to the restaurant owner.

My Bard: "You know, if you're looking for free food, I think the soup kitchen is a bit farther down the road."

The Samurai, offended by back-talk from someone so low-born, draw swords. We roll initiative. I win.

Round 1: I cast Suggestion. "Your friend's robbing a restaurant. You should report him to the authorities." The first Samurai fails his saving throw, and leaves. The second one takes a swing at me, and misses wildly.

Round 2: I cast Suggestion. Again. "That's a really nice sword. You should step outside and give it to the first person you see." The other Samurai fails his saving throw, and exits the restaurant.

So, when the guards arrive on the scene a minute later, one samurai explains what happened, while the other is wondering where his katana went. Meanwhile, everyone in the restaurant is talking about the guy who just defeated two Samurai without even drawing a weapon.


In my last campaign, which used the D&D: Next playtest, I got to run a dragon fight with the playtest version of an Adult Black Dragon - the one that introduced Legendary actions as a thing.

The 7th-level party (which conveniently had seven players) was in a scenario inspired by the Magnificent Seven Samurai. A backwater town had a dragon and his kobold/lizardfolk minions demanding tribute every month, in the form of human sacrifices. So, the PC's scare off the kobold/lizardfolk collectors, and the dragon sends an army to attack the town that night.

In addition to about 30 kobolds, and around a dozen lizardfolk, there were 12 villagers and 8 warriors the party had to protect. It set up an incredibly cool fight, because it was all about clearing a route for the villagers to escape into the village keep, instead of just killing monsters.

Then, halfway through the fight, the dragon comes in.

It swoops down from the sky, lands right on top of the village shrine, and blasts the entrance to the keep with his acid breath, seriously injuring 3 players and instantly killing several civilians. He uses a legendary action to return to the air at the beginning (because they worked that way in the playtest) of the next player's turn.

The dragon continues to menace the players with hit-and-run attacks until his army is defeated, then he flew away. It was almost impossible to hit the black dragon at night while he was airborne, so the players constantly had that threat looming over their heads.

In the end, the party triumphed, and had to hunt the dragon back to its lair, but it was a spectacularly cool and memorable fight.

goto124
2015-08-04, 10:32 AM
How did the party triumph when they couldn't hit the dragon at all? How did you balance the encounter such that the dragon's hit-and-run tactics didn't come off as cheap?

Vhaidara
2015-08-04, 11:16 AM
Haven't had a lot of good fights as a player, though I will link to my best when I get home (pbp game on these forums).

As a dm, it was my own version of the last fight of burnt offerings, the first book of Rise of the Runelords.

I had been running a game using a lot of third party content, and gestalt to boot. So it seemed off that the players were the only ones with these powers. Cue enigmatic GMPC showing up (they were down a player because life, so I was providing backup) and offering to hire them to investigate it. The last fight was their test: win, and you're in.

Stage 1 of the fight was a Warlord//Incanter (Path of War and Spheres of Power, respectively). Having had significant warning, she'd had time to drop all of her 10 buffs (4 totems and 6 protectives). Between the buffs/debuffs these entailed, the party took 3 damage every time they hit her, and were shaken for the entire fight. When they dropped her to 0, they broke her barriers which exploded in a healing effect (modified from an actual spheres ability). This started stage 2, and healed the party for 1/4 their max hp.

Stage 2 was a Mageknight//Brutal Slayer, and she was kicked up to large sized. Brutal Slayer uses Str for AC instead of Dex, which meant she was still tricky to hit. Further, she was dropping free action intimidates and other dear based debuffs the entire fight. At one stage, as part of a counter, she destroyed one of the PCs weapons (he had backups, and I had a loot drop planned for him from the fight). When stave 2 died, she vanished is a gout of fire.

Then, everything went black. The GMPC called out to his boss for a bit of help, and the party received another heal for 1/4 max before they suddenly were transported to another dimension.

They were ringed with fire, and there were geysers scattered around the battlefield, spouting lava. There was the boss, now Huge sized, and now a Fiendbound Marauder//Incanter, and her companion, basically a Huge sized eidolon, a flaming demon spawned from her own child. I gave them both shield other effects keyed to the other to compliment their large hp pools. Further, their attacks could apply directed knockback, shoving the players into the geysers.

That fight got desperate. The berserker went completely nuts and started tearing into the bossz and got through like half of their hp before he got dropped. The mad scientist got some good flanks, and pulled two crits out of his backside. The telekinetic guy, using his backup weapons, was able to apply damage from a distance, though he lost another kukri to the fires. tthe GMPC soaked up a crit for the occultist, and then ported away. He went back in for the kill, missed, and ended up in the wall of fire. By the time the boss was cleared, only 1 character, in a group of 4 plus 2 GMPC backups, was standing. And everyone was holding their breath, because they didn't know who would win.

All said and done, it taught me a lot. For big fights, focus on the environment, and allowing the enemy to use it to their advantage. It's far more interesting to be hit for 10, and get thrown into a lava geyser that does 30 (reflex half) than to get charged and smacked for 35.

Freelance GM
2015-08-04, 11:23 AM
How did the party triumph when they couldn't hit the dragon at all? How did you balance the encounter such that the dragon's hit-and-run tactics didn't come off as cheap?

They didn't have to kill the dragon yet, they just had to defeat the Kobolds and Lizardfolk, which was pretty easy for seven 7th-level characters. Once the civilians were safe, the party casters brought out the heavy-duty AOE, and mopped up the remaining enemies, which convinced the dragon to retreat to its lair. Also, after the dragon made its initial appearance, it pretty much just flew in circles over the place until its breath attack recharged. Since it was only actively participating in the fight once every few rounds, it was more like an environmental hazard than an actual opponent.

And the dragon's hit-and-run tactics absolutely came off as cheap, but it was okay, because it was a dragon. This group was mostly new players, and this was the most powerful enemy they had ever fought. They pretty much assumed that dragons would be absurdly powerful in a game called Dungeons and Dragons, so they didn't really mind. Plus, the party Druid got a few solid hits on it with Call Lightning, so they knew that when they actually had to fight it, they could actually hurt it.

The Fury
2015-08-04, 11:47 AM
I have a weird distinction of winning an encounter that I freely admit that I shouldn't have. Forgive the stupidly long lead-in but I think this needs a set-up.

The only Epic-level game I've played in was a 3.0/3.5 and I was playing a Samurai who was, well a joke. After crossing the Epic-level threshold the other PCs seemed to have concluded that I couldn't really do anything and so told me to stay out of the way in fights. Attempting to participate outside of combat, like in planning and such, just got me ignored. The latter was bad enough that the DM actually told one of the other players that some of my ideas were pretty good, and they should try listening to some of them. It never really got better though. I even considered quitting the game.

This other player, whom I will not name for fear of embarrassing them, in contrast to me is actually very good at planning and coming up with clever strategies. While I generally make Fighter-types in D&D, they wisely made casters, a Sorcerer in this case. Maybe you've had this player type in a group before? A crazy encounter continues to be crazy until this one player comes up with some brilliant strategy and then it becomes manageable-- they're that kind of player. A real asset to any party they're in. OK, so what happens when this player's character decides to betray the party? You're in big trouble.

This character bided their time until an opportunity presented itself, and it did. When the party was away from our airship, the Sorcerer realized that this was a chance to steal the airship and leave the party marooned in dangerous territory. The only character they couldn't convince to leave the ship was me, but I would be easy enough to deal with. It's the useless lump against The Goddamn Batman. So their plan was to line the halls of the ship with prismatic spheres, a spell that the party had trouble dealing with earlier and I think actually killed one of us. The rest of the party had to be impressed-- even if I managed to get past the spheres, I'd be in rotten shape to actually fight the sorcerer. In fact it was funny just how screwed I was. As the ship flew off leaving the rest of the party behind, I had an idea:

Me: "Hey, what are the ships walls made out of?"

DM: "Wood."

So rather than using the hallways at all, I followed the Sorcerer by hacking my way through the ship's rooms, bypassing the spheres entirely. Since the Sorcerer built their strategy around keeping me at a distance, when I unexpectedly burst onto the ship's bridge Kool-Aid Man-style they actually didn't have much of a plan for dealing with me. So after beating the snot out of the traitor I brought the ship back and picked up the rest of the party, thinking "Did I really just do that?"

Knaight
2015-08-04, 11:48 AM
I was just wondering, what was the coolest fight you ever had in D&D?

Does it absolutely have to be D&D? There are some excellent examples I have from other games, but the D&D list is comparatively short.

Seto
2015-08-04, 12:02 PM
As a player :
Hmm, I'm not sure. The one who comes to my mind right now happened very recently. We're 3 adventurers assaulting a Bugbear military camp (basically) : a Half-Dragon Gnome Dungeoncrasher, a Totemist Duskling with the Totem Avatar Soulmeld (the one that makes you look like a gray render), and myself, the Bard/Fighter/Dervish Half-Elf Werewolf. Yeah, we're kind of a strange bunch. We range from ECL 7 (the Duskling) to 10 (my character, because of the Lycanthrope adjustment). Even though the Bugbears were individually weaker than us, we were pretty sure a good portion of them had class levels and, as there were 15 of them or so, we didn't want to just rush headlong and get killed. Anyway, we devised a plan to first distract them, and them close on them by surprise. The Duskling threw an eternal torch over the fence onto one of their huts and started climbing the barred passageway (main entrance). As they started to run towards the river on the opposite side of the camp to fetch water, the Half-Dragon and I came from that side, running on the river (having drunk our two Water Walk Potions). In the purest Naruto style, I pulled out a scroll and, standing on the water, invoked a Fugue (http://therafimrpg.wikidot.com/fugue). 5 of them took damage/lost their turns to it. Meanwhile, the Half-Dragon breathed fire into 5 others' faces. On the other side of the camp, the Duskling tore them to pieces with her 4 claws at 1d6+7 each. Then we swooped in towards the center and swiftly took out the remaining Bugbears.
We weren't supposed to take the whole camp at once like that. We did. We felt awesome.

As a DM :
Ha, dear Aboleth. See, one of my problems as a DM is that I worry too much for the PCs and have a tendency to pull my punches a lot as a result. But this fight allowed for a near disaster, the players panicking when they realized just how screwed they were, with an epic resolution and no one having died in the end (so I didn't feel bad).
My Aboleth was in the middle of a subterranean lake where, of course, none of the melee PCs wanted to go attack him. Within a few rounds, the Dominated Enlarged Paladin with his flaming sword was attacking his allies, the PsyWar and the Bard were utterly Confused, attacked randomly and babbled nonsense, the ranged Fighter lay agonizing on the ground and the Ranger was trying to flee. It was hilarious. Then the Ranger pulled it together, healed the Fighter, who shot the Aboleth, who rolled 2 on his Concentration check. I fluffed it as "you got him in the eye and he recoils in pain". The Confusion ended, the party could fight, the Aboleth fled due to damage (and is still alive) and left them with the Dominated Paladin as a departure gift. They finally knocked him out and wrapped that sidequest.

LaserFace
2015-08-04, 12:26 PM
Not sure if this is my best, but I've had a number of good ones (a lot of them were in the same party, actually). Anyway, maybe you'll enjoy it:

In a 3.5 game, my party and I had to figure out a way to defeat Zqqalblagargg (I think that was his name), an immense, intelligent ooze (regarded as nobility of the Ooze plane) who had been plotting to conquer the material plane. As my insane Halfling Bard, I come up with a Thinking With Portals solution involving a free-fall onto a tiny pocket plane, which we would then collapse to kill him. I didn't actually have any of the resources to enact this plan, but the party went ahead and found everything we needed to do exactly this because it amused them and nobody had a better idea.

When it comes time to put it all together, things start alright, but it turns out the guy is way more powerful than we imagined. The stronger party members had to trade off who was taking the most of the damage and switch ranks, and eventually everyone was so wounded that finally my halfling, armed with a dull practice sword (I guess it was magical too, but yeah) had to square off against it for a bit. We kept this up for a while, trying not to get consumed, rescuing wounded party members etc for like 30 minutes, and managed to keep everyone alive up until we could finally bail. Distracted long enough, the Ooze Lord failed to escape the collapse and was destroyed. We were heroes, yet no one in the realm had any idea what the hell a Zqqalblagargg was.

Also, epilogue: our wizard/kidnapped potion-seller managed to capture a small portion of the ooze at one point prior, and raised it as his own. Eventually it grew into a miniature version with a new, friendlier personality. He called it Junior.

Dunsparce
2015-08-04, 06:47 PM
Both stories are D&D 3.5

As a Player:

We were a party of 4, I was Eliwood Smith, Human Mystic Ranger(With a dog(not a riding dog, just a normal dog) Wild Cohort named Meatgrinder) and the rest of the party was a Whip Chaino the Human Fighter, Zook the Venerable Gnome Cleric, and Galvish Halfling Rouge/Wizard/Arcane Trickster(With a female Imp Familiar who was also the halfling's wife(Long story, don't know if anyone would care about the story)). don't remember the exact level but it was before level 10 when I had level 5 spells. There a thick tar-like substance slowly consuming the desert in which the entire campaign took place in. It killed everything in its path and turned many people and monsters into weird ooze-zombies(Basically a homebrew template doubled their strength and halved their HP and AC). We made it to the altar in which the evil artifact that caused this whole mess was. We were about to approach it when we were apprehended by a Bone Devil and an oozed-up Purple Worm. We were thrashed pretty hard from the get-go. We kept rolling low and they kept rolling high, we downed the purple worm eventually but the bone devil got us in a corner. Eliwood was bleeding to death and the rest weren't much better. He was in the condition he was in because the bone devil wanted to go after his dog and best friend in the whole world. Meatgrinder was still at full health but Eliwood didn't want to see any harm being done to them so he taunted the devil to attack him instead. pretty much the only two characters with postive HP outside of the dog were Zook and Galvish(and his Imp Wife). Whipchaino was out after taking a round of full attacks against the devil and was only alive due to Delay Death. The devil decided to go after Zook(aka the only guy that can get us back on our feet consistently) so Galvish(who was pretty much out of good spells) ran over to Eliwood and shoved a potion down his thoat. Healed him to exactly 0 health. He was right before the devil, so we had only one chance to stop this guy from making a TPK, so for the first time Eliwood used Manyshot. Both attacks hit, and barely did enough damage to kill it(Previously he had cast many damage increasing buffs on himself so dealing massive damage was within the realm of possibility). Eliwood reopened his wounds from that action and went down again. We were all healed back into the positives and were victorious, barely. It was quite an adrenalin rush.

As a DM:
The party was about to take on what was essentially a demigod. At level 4. The party consisted of Clubber Lang the Human Fighter, Al the Esper(Homebrew Race) Savant(Dragon Compendium class), and Penalope the blind 10-year old Human Cleric, and Uncle Tat the Human Wizard. The party also has 2 riding dogs (Soap and Dollars2009), a Seeing-Eye Dog for Penalope(Mr. Snuggles, also was a Wild Cohort) a Dire Pug(Dodongo), and a mostly useless NPC Scout(Mask). After fighting their way up the tower, they reach the top to fight the mad god Ashura, who was one a goblin that used the maguffins to become a monstrosity with 6 arms and 4 faces. The battle went on like a normal D&D fight for the most part, Ashura had the ability to make 7 attacks(6 claws one bite) or cast 2-3 spells in the same turn, so he was no pushover especially for the level they were at. I should point out that in an earlier dungeon, the party found an batch of odd items. In particular was 6 rubber cockroaches that when crushed each summon a giant hissing cockroach that obeys every command the person who summoned them gives. Penalope and Uncle Tat split them and Penalope had previously used two. Uncle Tat kept his in a bucket that used to have calzone golem cheese in it(long story). During the fight he crushed all three of his cockroaches at once by throwing a rock into the bucket. So we got 4 PCs, 4 Dogs, an NPC, and 3 Giant Cockroaches all fighting this guy at once. Ashura was getting beat up pretty bad so he basically climbed up a pillar and jumped down to smash the floor everyone was on. Everyone fell down to the floor of the tower(most of it was a spiral staircase) except Dodongo the Dire Pug and Penalope(and the two riding dogs who were spooked away from the room with a double dose of cause fear shortly before) I should point out that Ashura had a ring of Featherfall, and no-one else did. Everyone was pretty beat up, including ashura from being mobbed, but no deaths outside of one of the cockroaches. Penalope was the only one not prone so on her turn she smashed her last cockroach and threw it down the big hole. I rolled to see where it would land(She is blind afterall), and it just happened to be where ashura was. Needless to say both the god and the cockroach went splat, and I was too busy laughing to even care that my first major boss fight for the campaign ended that way.

LaserFace
2015-08-04, 08:52 PM
...

So rather than using the hallways at all, I followed the Sorcerer by hacking my way through the ship's rooms, bypassing the spheres entirely. Since the Sorcerer built their strategy around keeping me at a distance, when I unexpectedly burst onto the ship's bridge Kool-Aid Man-style they actually didn't have much of a plan for dealing with me. So after beating the snot out of the traitor I brought the ship back and picked up the rest of the party, thinking "Did I really just do that?"

Very entertaining story (I happen to have a soft spot for underdogs). Thanks for sharing this one.

Tridax
2015-08-04, 09:09 PM
I don't know if this counts, but it was one of the last scenes in the second season of my game. A noble lord who was a PC in the first season wanted to kill a current PC, a prodigal knight. The knight did not uphold his vow to protect the lord's daughter and left her, although the reason behind this is that she was simply a lot lizard by behavior. The knight was also heavily injured during the just finished war and was practically unconscious.

So the lord arrived into the tavern where the knight had been resting. The other two PCs, his bastard daughter and her werewolf lover, followed him in hopes of making him forfeit his decision. He did not, being blinded by arrogance and the whispers of his cursed flamberge, which was picked up from the boss of the previous season. The lord brought his blade above the ill knights bed, but the boy-werewolf managed to pin him down to the floor. The lord groaned and pushed him aside, still aiming for the knight. His daughter barely managed to parry his attack with her dagger, which promptly broke into pieces. Her boyfriend swiftly turned into a wolf (by the end of the season he mastered this ability of his) and attempted to bite off the lord's arm. Here it is worth mentioning that the lord had a magical ability allowing him to conjure and control chains. Also, his flamberge was blessed to strike down the tainted beasts such as lycanthropes.

He raised his arm and clenched his fist. The wolf got entangled in chains and pierced by the lord's blade. His daughter cried in anger and attempted to attack him again, only to be thrown out of the window. The lord struck the werewolf once more - just to be sure - and returned his gaze to the unconscious knight. The daughter, whom was his close friend, managed to get herself back through the window into the room and, gathering the remnants of her strength, shoot the lord with her bow.

BAM. Natural 20. The arrow pierced the lord right between his eyes, and such was the death of one of the first PCs. The drama was unbelievable; the 20 was actually the last dice throw made in the second season, the rest was merely exposition. We all decided that this throw was determined by fate.

Another memorable fight was a duel between two mercenary PCs for the control of a large company which at the moment participated in the war mentioned above. One was a stoic soldier with a good heart and a large smile, a true protagonist; the other was a vile bitch. He wore a chainmail, she was clad in steel armor. They fought under the gazes of hundreds of watchers. With luck and skill, the protagonist managed to gain an advantage. He won - at least so he thought. The vile bitch threw sand in his face and charged him down and beat his face to a bloody pulp with her armored fists aka the Mountain and the Snake. The players were at the peak of their emotions as two of them practically attacked each other in real life.

The Fury
2015-08-04, 09:13 PM
Very entertaining story (I happen to have a soft spot for underdogs). Thanks for sharing this one.

Aw, thanks! I can never be sure how entertaining these stories are to other people so it's nice to know when they're actually appreciated.

Brendanicus
2015-08-04, 10:22 PM
>The party is stuck in a huge dungeon.
>Most direct route out is through a massive, locked door. Roaring can be heard from behind it.
>Players, not being idiots, try to find a way around it.
>A session of wandering and failing Search checks later, they have only one choice.
>They are greeted by a Fiendish, Plot-Touched Chimera named Anguish.
>My players have fought a lot of big monsters before, but the moment they found out that I named this one, they knew they were in for trouble.
>Anguish is way out of their league; they were supposed to find a way around it.
>Doom approaches; the Druid's animal companion is torn apart in one turn. The Druid herself downed the next round by lightning breath.
>Duskblade uses Ray of Enfeeblement.
>NATURAL 20. DOUBLE STRENGTH DAMAGE.
>22 Strength behemoth now reduced to 10 Str.
>It collapses under its own weight. My super monster got owned. The celebration was unreal!

Alent
2015-08-04, 10:40 PM
My absolute favorite fight was sadly in GURPS, but the scenario is directly translatable to any edition of D&D just due to the absurdness of it.

We had a party of five members, most of which were your bog standard D&D characters:

The guy with the huge hammer who calls himself a cleric of some demigod that nobody respects, the anthro-creature Warrior dual wielding swords that did even worse than an unoptimized TWF Fighter does in 3.5, and the tall dark stoic and mysterious monk from a secret tribe of warrior-monks that lives in the mountains and protects a conveniently random abstract concept called "The balance" which served as a halfassed justification for disagreeing with the party at every turn.

Then there's the war hero, who is effectively a level 1 commoner with a focus on successfully lying and spinning things to his advantage, and he had a character advantage that let him have insanely lucky things happen for him 5 times a play session. His reputation as a war hero comes from the time he got in trouble with his CO and his CO gave him a squad of men that weren't good for anything and sent him against a dwarven fortress. Somehow he came back from the fortress stark naked, and claimed to have successfully defeated all the dwarves himself after all his men were killed in battle. (What really happened is he surrendered as soon as he got there, his men fought to the death, and after being stripped naked and tossed in jail, a meteor hit and demolished the fortress, leaving but one survivor- him.)

Lastly, we have my character, the pirate. The pirate had been shanghai'd as a wee lad and spent his entire life on one ship or another, and was a devotee of a sailor's god known only as "The captain". He had good looks, reasonably good social skills, had good observation skills, used flintlock pistols but could throw a good punch once he was out of loaded pistols, could do the duties of any man on a sailing ship, and seemed to have bottomless pockets with exactly the right tool to solve the job. He could also hold his breath for ten minutes.

We'd all been contracted to work at a colony in the new world, an interesting place which was having trouble with the indigenous population, a race of 4 ft tall anthro-foxes that basically were furry kobolds. Pretty early into the first session we caught them trying to commit arson in the town church. When they realized they'd been caught, they pulled the double doors shut and held them shut, trapping the 4 of them in with the cleric and monk, leaving the other three of us outside.

The Cleric couldn't hit a thing with his massive hammer- this thing was 90 pounds. He didn't have enough character points to buy his weapon skill, so he was basically only hitting on a 6 or lower, and he kept rolling boxcars. So he'd swing at a fox and then obliterate the pew behind the fox. The monk would do some stunt from a movie and fail only to fall over.

Not one to be kept out, I pulled out a 50 ft. length of rope, tied it to the door handle on the main door, ran it around a nearby signpost, ran back to the door, made a noose to use as a handle, and pulled the door open, sending one of the foxes practically right into my face. Everyone was surprised, The fox missed his attack against me, so I swung the rope over the church's sign above us, looped it over the fox's head, grabbed the other end of the rope and pulled him up until he hit the sign. (That ended up knocking him out in addition to strangling him.)

The war hero ran off at this point "to get backup". The Fighter type ran in to join the fight. The Monk, Cleric, and fighter couldn't hit the Fox they were aiming at inside. One came outside at me because he'd watched me string up his friend. The party was egging me on to "just shoot him" because they wanted to see how the GURPS gun rules worked. Well, I didn't actually have my gun loaded because we weren't expecting combat. Oops.

Instead, I ended up taking the length of the rope I was holding to hang the one fox, looping it up three times to draw it tight and tossing the loops over the fox's neck as I hurriedly jumped on and pulled the other fox down as far as he'd go, which sent this fox flying up into the air at just the right force and angle to break his neck. The two foxes ended up hanging side by side at about the same height until I let go and they both hit the ground one after the other.

Meanwhile, inside, the party of three is doing their best to kill the two Foxes remaining. Eventually the cleric finally lands a hit with the hammer that weighs more than the fox on the receiving end does. I turn to the last one and draw my unloaded gun on him, demanding he surrender. He surrendered without hesitation, just in time for the war hero to arrive with the guard and take personal credit for defeating all four enemies.

My group has had many combats ranging from boring to interesting, but that was pretty much my favorite, if for no other reason than I got to defeat three monsters as a Guybrush Threepwood Expy with nothing but a rope, an unloaded gun, and a bluff.

Later on in the campaign we had a second-runner-up fight where the cleric ended up tanking a high level castle sized robed monster with a jack-o-lantern head wreathed in saint elmo's fire. He did this by himself with a string of miraculous dodge rolls in the town square for around ten minutes while the rest of us worked to get to the ships and fire a naval broadside into the beast. The cleric somehow survived the broadside without a scratch despite the fact that it turned the entire square into a Shrapnel of fire, debris, and death... only to get knocked out when the creature's corpse landed a critical hit by falling on him.

Sajiri
2015-08-05, 03:14 AM
Its not really D&D, but my current campaigns all use my DM's own system (that was based loosely off pathfinder, it was made to better suit solo player, more RP focused campaigns).

There's been plenty of great fights, nothing really stands out as the best. We had a boss fight recently which...I missed out on the first part of it.

My character (Ana) is now a margrave and has her own island with the town in the caldera of an extinct volcano with the entrance only able to be entered in low tide. An enemy nation attacked the island, being lead by their immortal kitsune empress, because it turned out she was the birth mother of the npc my own character adopted at the start of the campaign and she wanted him back (even though she tried to sacrifice him earlier). Ana was recently discovered to be pregnant, so both her necromancer friend and the paladin general of the island pressured her into staying behind while her fleet went to engage the empress outside the caldera. She agreed only if nothing was going seriously wrong, and proceeded to magically monitor the battle through a mark she left on the necromancer.

Her own fleet, plus some other pirates she'd recently helped at sea who were now wanting to work for her, plus the goblin/demihuman half of her island she shares with all went out, were outnumbered by the other nation but managed to pick them all off until it was just the empress's flagship. During this time, another recurring character (also a pirate, who Im not sure if she's a friend or an enemy yet), happened to show up to dock at the island, saw what was going on and came to help as well. When the NPCs started to battle the empress she....turned into a giant feathered t-rex looking monster. Started chomping down on people, even nearly snapped through the paladin's armor (he survived, barely). This counts as 'something seriously wrong' so finally Ana heads out to take part in the fight. She was able to put Piercing runes (special rune power specific to her) on the bullets for her pistol and shoot the eyes of the empress, thankfully her evasion abilities are the highest so she dodged the snapping jaws for the most part. I unfortunately got a very low roll at one point, but the DM fudged it a little and had the empress bite down on her arm and throw her across the deck. Cut ahead to when we finally wore her down, and she transformed back into her kitsune self, Ana's adopted son shows up, the empress thinks she's able to control him, but ana had already given him an amulet to ward against hypnotism and ordered him not to take it off. His special power is Murder, so once he got in close to her with her thinking she could control him...he just went and ripped her arm straight off.

She transformed into some shark creature eventually and swam away, but we defeated a self proclaimed 'goddess' and now own her gigantic flagship, as well as have several VIP prisoners. Meanwhile the necromancer and paladin keep lecturing Ana for getting involved, but when I saw a t-rex I didnt want to miss out on that boss battle anymore ):

Brendanicus
2015-08-05, 08:52 AM
So rather than using the hallways at all, I followed the Sorcerer by hacking my way through the ship's rooms, bypassing the spheres entirely. Since the Sorcerer built their strategy around keeping me at a distance, when I unexpectedly burst onto the ship's bridge Kool-Aid Man-style they actually didn't have much of a plan for dealing with me. So after beating the snot out of the traitor I brought the ship back and picked up the rest of the party, thinking "Did I really just do that?"Brilliant! Best story in the thread. Total :roy: move!

MrStabby
2015-08-05, 11:17 AM
Best fight in D&D? I was at a table and one of the other players decides to play a Kender so I shank him in the kidneys. Does that count?


Joking aside best fight was a rolling sewer brawl. Waves of filth to doge, tentacles to break free from... having to worry about noise attracting more of the denizens of that sewer and sometimes playing by the aquatic fighting rules. It was all going well until we got caught in one wave and the torches went out and the party got spread out in the wash. It was the opening needed for the ghouls to come in and pick us off one by one. TPK over two sessions fought to the last. Dying in a giant toilet wasn't heroic but the fight was just perfect for everyone to use their abilities, needing strategy and planning to survive and lots of tradeoffs and resource management.

YossarianLives
2015-08-05, 12:10 PM
I was playing a gnome paladin. (yes, a gnome paladin)

After several weeks of questing in the wilderness we rush back to the city where we had been hired to investigate problems in the wilderness, desperate to warn the city of a incoming army of zombies. When we arrive there, we find the city already under siege. Thousands of zombies are wreaking havoc, the gates are in splinters, and evil wyvern-riders roam the sky picking off stragglers. One of the wyverns sets down outside the city to a attack a small group of knights. We cut our way through the zombies to the zombies, kill the wyvern-rider and steal the wyvern for ourselves. We then fly to the middle of the city, where atop a massive tower hundreds of feet high the creator of the undead, an evil wizard is casting spells and raining destruction on the city. We near the tower and the wizard sees us and prepares to do battle.

Then the barbarian picks me up and throws me at the wizard sending us both hurtling off the edge. We then proceed to have a sword fight in mid-air as were falling to our deaths. I manage to defeat the wizard before he can teleport away and the party gets close enough on the wyvern to cast feather-fall on me.

We then have a glorious parade through the streets of the city and the king gives us free magic items.

The Fury
2015-08-05, 01:15 PM
Brilliant! Best story in the thread. Total :roy: move!

Wow, I'm actually really flattered that you'd compare me to Roy. But I guess it is an encounter I think of but almost never mention whenever the subject of 3.0/3.5 caster vs. fighter comes up. Especially when the consensus is "Caster wins every time! Good day, sir!"




Then the barbarian picks me up and throws me at the wizard sending us both hurtling off the edge. We then proceed to have a sword fight in mid-air as were falling to our deaths. I manage to defeat the wizard before he can teleport away and the party gets close enough on the wyvern to cast feather-fall on me.

We then have a glorious parade through the streets of the city and the king gives us free magic items.

Oh man... I wish I had an encounter this cool. A midair duel? Crazy!

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-05, 01:55 PM
I once, in an act of desperation, grappled a vampire and during the grapple smashed a whole necklace of fireball on his head, nuking the entire room and incapacitating every member of the party, except for the cleric, who not only succeeded the Reflex save but was also resistant to fire.

The vampire died. Everyone lived. It was supercool. :smallcool:

Then the DM Rule of Cool'd that since the vampire bit me just before I did it, I was infected.