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kasubot
2007-09-17, 05:21 PM
I want to hear your stories of the times you have thwarted your DM's big baddies so elegantly that it made them look like a foolish npc.

Mine was a simple dungeon crawl. we got to the end of the dungeon and met the big wizard that guarded the final treasure. It was suposed to be the dungeon boss but our rogue hit him with a poisoned crossbow bolt and paralized him. So we took his immoble body and flung him into the spike pit we had just crossed before we came into his room, killing him. We werent allowed to have the gold our DM was so annoyed.

tainsouvra
2007-09-17, 05:28 PM
We werent allowed to have the gold our DM was so annoyed. Throw the DM into a spike pit too. :smallbiggrin:

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-17, 05:31 PM
I've been there, from the other side of the screen. :smallfurious:

That was before I saw this poster, though:

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k177/LordIames/Motivators/Other%20Motivators/alita-russiandoll.jpg

:smallbiggrin:

Raolin_Fenix
2007-09-17, 05:35 PM
Futuristic setting, my DM spent all week preparing a blockade that would disable our ship, then an entire escape plotline where we'd have to find another ship, provide a distraction, make our escape, and all that stuff. An entire week's worth of plotting. I ran the blockade successfully. <3 cloaking device for 50% miss chance if they target the right square.

But that wasn't really a boss encounter, so much as a "HAHA PCS WIN" situation.

For a boss encounter, we'd been playing this campaign for the better part of two years, once a week barring school holidays. We started at level 1, ended at level 20. Finally the boss fight rolls around, with this horrid demon guy with control over time. My friend Baleful Polymorphs him into a rabbit in the first round.

Mewtarthio
2007-09-17, 05:35 PM
I've been there, from the other side of the screen. :smallfurious:

That was before I saw this poster, though:

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k177/LordIames/Motivators/Other%20Motivators/alita-russiandoll.jpg

:smallbiggrin:

You know, someday soon people are going to believe that sort of thing's a standard format for presenting certain RPG elements, and then they'll wonder why their boss has an RPG dictionary exerpt that reads "Endurance" and has a picture of a sailboat with some trite platitude hanging on his wall.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-17, 05:36 PM
We can only hope, Mewtarthio. We can only hope.

continuumc
2007-09-17, 05:40 PM
hmm..I have a very low level boss fight story. There were only two players, with my friend DMing the two of us. We were each level 1s. At the end of this quest, he had planned for us to fight this huge spider-monster that had been terrorizing a village. We found it hanging in its web far above the ground. (I don't remember exactly how far) It started to climb down a string of webbing and we both shot at the string of webbing.

Somehow we succeeded at hitting it, sending it hurtling to the ground to take lots of fall damage. From that it just took little fire dam. to finish him off.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-09-17, 05:43 PM
We once killed a BBEG by caving in the entrance to his dungeon, thus making him die because of lack of oxygen and vitals.

Ye olde sneak attack during the BBEG's big reveal. He never again made him a living wizard.

We grappled and chained a vampire BBEG and gave him the mafia treatment with the nearby river. Eternal darkness blotting out the sun? Puh-leeze.

I poisoned the entire planet. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57046)

One time a DM planted me in the session as the BBEG. Everyone else died to my machinations save the final fighter. He power attack one-shotted my poor rogue ass when I tried to finish the job.

Leicontis
2007-09-17, 06:01 PM
One from a friend of mine:

The party happens, while doing something else, to spot the vampire BBEG. One character decides to take a pot shot with his longbow. His Heartseeker (pierces target's heart on a nat20) longbow. With a natural 20 on the attack roll...

To quote the friend, "I'm sorry, was that your plotline?".

Kurald Galain
2007-09-17, 06:09 PM
I one-shotted a rather powerful melee fighter boss with my level-one beguiler. Round one, I cast sleep from a distance while the boss approaches. He fails his save, game over. :smallcool:

I was party once to bypassing a DM's entire adventure, because we were looking for this magical ship and for some reason that eluded me he had an efreet of some sort give us a wish. So we wished to teleport ourselves onto said ship, worded carefully so that we would arrive now and with our equipment. It worked :smallbiggrin:

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-17, 06:12 PM
The ranger destroyed half of an entire ship full of orc warriors by throwing over the kegs of alcohol we always keep on board our ship.

Then, we threw over a lit torch! :smallbiggrin:

Ever Phasm
2007-09-17, 06:23 PM
The party had this great reaccuring villain from about 3rd level. By the time they were 8th level and the villain (assasin) was 13th level.

The villain (called Ned) lept from cover paralyzed and poisoned the Paladin and went down two rounds later because of a raging/frenzying berserker.

Ditto
2007-09-17, 06:25 PM
We were doing what ended up being a one-off, but was supposed to be a longer campaign, where the end of session brought us up against and Oni (Oriental Adventures-y giant thing). The group powergamer decided to try out weapons of legacy, and had a Cloud-sized 8-ft. long sword that did something like 10d6. He charged into the Oni's cave and Massive Damage'd what was supposed to be a recurring villain, while the rest of us were discussing strategy.


Earlier in that session, another 'PCs win' sort of moment. We begin the session at the awkward 'How do we get the random PCs to be a party?' phase aboard a Lightning Rail train in Eberron. For various reasons, we each want to check out the Mysterious Cargo in the back car. Sword Guy basically says, "Hey, Mr. Guard, check me out! I need to go back there, there's... something... fishy." He gets a big no. My gnome sorcerer quickly casts Dancing Lights, which float around Sword Guy's hand. Guard Guy strongly suggests Sword Guy stops casting, but he doesn't know what to do about it.
Meanwhile, my gnome sorcerer walks calmly through the open door (where the guard was peeking out), who was apparently so fantastically distracted by the Sword Guy that he didn't notice me. Sword Guy *just* barely saw me, and steps just inside the door to grab me.

At this point, Guard Guy has called for backup. There are 3 or 4 guys with muskets surrounding Sword Guy, who is on the plank between two train cars, holding me by the scruff of the neck. While they're all deciding what to do and how to talk him down, I grab my Immovable Rod. Gnome goes FWIP! around the side of the train (I made an incredible strength check to keep my arms from being ripped off) - and sword guy is standing there, now gnome-less, with my Dancing Lights still hovering around his hands. "ZOMG! He disintegrated the gnome!" The guys open fire - but Sword Guy gets his sword out first. He's kind enough to do non-lethal damage, but 10d6 non-lethal... and teetering on the edge of the gangplank... that guy ended up with 3 broken legs and various other things, when they stopped the train to pick him up. There was *that* much damage.

...it took a bit of railroading to get us back on the same team.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-17, 06:30 PM
How did he do 10d6? They made a weapon called the fullblade for that kind of stuff, it's as big as Cloud's sword, but only does 2d8.

my_evil_twin
2007-09-17, 06:34 PM
When my party finally caught up to the highly-anticipated evil wizard BBEG, I found out in very few rounds that I hadn't given the boss nearly enough wizard levels. There wasn't much of a fight, and he didn't even have time to get of an escape plan.

After some disappointed grumbling from the players (and even the PCs), I gathered my wits and remembered the simulacrum spell. The corpse dissolved into snow and melted. I couldn't disguise that I made it up on the spot, but the players were glad to go along with it if it meant a more satisfying fight.

The found the secret entrance to the BBEG's real lair, which was empty; the real guy had used the simulacrum as a delaying tactic while he made his own escape. He attacked the party in earnest as they left his tower, killing one PC in the first round, breaking out some spells the players had never seen before, and generally making a much better impression before they brought him down.

Jack Mann
2007-09-17, 06:37 PM
I'm more curious how the guard got three broken legs. What sort of guards were on this train, anyway? Centaurs?

dyslexicfaser
2007-09-17, 06:56 PM
I'm more curious how the guard got three broken legs. What sort of guards were on this train, anyway? Centaurs?
"Wait, that's not a third leg..."

Guy_Whozevl
2007-09-17, 07:00 PM
I was in a 7th level campaign and I made a large krenshar leap-attacking berserker type guy. We encounter this slaad who traps us in an artifact world so he can deal with us at his lesure. We eventually corner him and he says some BBEG stuff. We roll initiative. I win. I charge power-attack bite/claw/claw and kill him in round one. He was CR 13. This eventually led to the DM only creating monsters that dealt damage to anyone who attacked them with natural attacks (only me in this case) and giving everyone else magic artifacts that give ridiculous boosts like: +8 to all physical stats, unlimited wildshape into a T-rex with fullplate, and the ability to create infinite clones of yourself that can be used to as scouts or decoys. That was a wierd, confusing campaign.

arkol
2007-09-17, 07:13 PM
I find it strange that some DM's react the way you guys have been describing. Any DM that reacts that way is a poor DM. Or most likely a munchkin player who decided to try a hand at DMing while not knowing anything about real DMing.

Dairun Cates
2007-09-17, 07:17 PM
Oh, the memories... Unfortunately, I'm the GM in this case. After a while, I learned to throw an actual joke villain in there to keep them on their toes.

In what has inevitably been deemed the "Kata Maneuver" (named after its creator), there's a wonderful love of mutually assured fall damage in our parties. The idea is to hit a person while falling from a great height. Both people take the fall damage from the two objects clashing, and the attack adds "bonus damage". Not actually efficient in "Damage done per HP", but it has it's uses. Specifically, it was used original in facing off a monstrously huge opponent. He was doing massive damage per hit, and one of the players wanted a way to kill him in one shot. He flew up for one turn, and then accelerated downwards. Few things can survive a 12d6+12 Robot projectile.

Then there's the reason almost ALL of my bosses now have high Sense motives. One of my player's in all of their wisdom had the wonderful strategy of getting the bad guys to talk, and then when the conversation was ending, she'd say something along the lines of "I've got one more question" and then would shoot the opponent while they were busy responding most likely with "shoot". Needless to say, this was the source of many a free potshot at the boss's flat-footed AC.

On an odd side note, I eventually did the same thing with a diplomat in a Star Wars d20 campaign and proceeded to crit his bodyguard, mow down half the mooks while the Jedi tried to take out the Sith lord, and then took a headshot on the Sith Lord while he was gloating over my companions with the wonderful catchphrase, "I thought I told you to shut up". Pretty bad ass for a level 6 character with a total of a +5 to hit (2 of that from the weapon).

Finally, there's my groups love of applying a dangerously and pointlessly high amount of explosives to any situation that gets deadly. Somehow, they've managed to NOT kill themselves doing this so far.

Of course, as a GM, I feel no guilt in using equally silly tactics to occasionally teach them a lesson.

Nothing quite like the looks on your players' faces when they try to sneak attack the Psychic Government agent with a sniper rifle only to find out that their ambush site is a trap for an ambush by a highly trained Ninja that sneak attacks the first target for half their life.

psychoticbarber
2007-09-17, 08:05 PM
According to 2nd Ed Rules (or else the bastardized version we were playing), your crit damage increased based on the number of 20s in a row you rolled.

I once rolled 6 20s in a row. Killed the boss in a single longsword strike.

sombrastewart
2007-09-17, 08:24 PM
We finally hit the top of the evil mage's tower. There he is, waiting for us. And the orc barbarian charges with the vorbal blade he found in the tower and rolls double 20's.

SpiderKoopa
2007-09-17, 08:47 PM
This was 2nd Ed so there were some things I could do then, that I can't do now in 3.5 (like crit undead and constructs).
Well, as we headed to get a sword named "Town-saver" from being delivered to Dispader (or however you spell it), we were ambushed by quite a few orcs using elevated ramparts to volley arrows at us, well, while the casters were busy with them, their boss (a special chosen of Gruumsh [again, "or however you spell it"]). This guy was crazy. 99% MR, and a crazy save. Oh, did I mention he had a vorpal sword? Well, the casters in the group finally got done with the archers and the cleric cast hold(monster/person/meh). He rolled a magical one on his percentile, and a nice ol' auto-fail 3 on his save vs spell. Bam, now I have a vorpal sword...

Ok, all of that lead up to this...
In the next to last area, my friend Kenny (necromancer w/ a homebrew template thrown on due to another longer story that I'll spare you) went shadow form to scout ahead, one problem, there's a shadow-guy blocking his path. Needless to say this guy throws him out of the shadow plane and stepped out of it himself. He looks like a big scary cleric or fighter of some type. He says he won't attack as long as we proceed no more. I casually look at the DM, say in character, "I don't have time for this..." and proceed to win initiative and vorp the poor would-be-boss on the first hit.:smallamused:

Crow T. Robot
2007-09-17, 09:18 PM
I had a bar fight between the party and a fairly large group of Drow (It was Sigil so I could get away with it). This would run parallel with a fight between a Drow Priestess and an Angel who were both about 15 levels ahead of everyone else.

The party was leary about picking a fight when so out numbered, but the angel thought it would be funny (He was just a bit chaotic good) so he told a joke that ended in "I don't know but Lolth is a wh***"

With the fun properly kicked off, the fight could begin. Though there was a bit of an oddity. The party strong man was a sorcerer half-earth elemental if memory serves ("Freaks of nature" was the theme of the campaign). And if he didn't roll his stats in front of me, I would never have belived he never got less then a 16 for anything. So he got a two handed sword and buff spells and he was set.

So he decided to take the Priestess head on.

He rolled a Natural 20. Twice.

And since she was killed only through the actions of the party I couldn't refuse ex over it. So everyone went up almost two levels.

I have since refused to put too much effort in bad guys unless they are the type who are met at the end of campaigns.

Roderick_BR
2007-09-17, 09:50 PM
This is a classic from our group. 2nd edition. We were gathering some magic itens for an NPC. One of them was a magic box, and we've been warned to don't open it.
After we opened it (obviously), we found out it was a miniportal to some lower plane, from where an chaotic evil outsider (it was 2nd edition, remember) leap out.
We all rolled initiative. The group's monk and druid won initiative, and attacked. They both critted. They both rolled max damage. The monster was killed in the 1st round of combat.
The XP it gave was enough to make the whole group advance 2 levels... :smallbiggrin:

My friend, to this day, hates that 2 members killed a high level monster in the 1st round of combat, before it could even blink.

Jack_Simth
2007-09-17, 09:52 PM
You get that at any level - at low levels, it's a matter of crits with low HP. At higher levels, it's a matter of save or lose effects.

In a 2nd level campaign, my Druid's animal companion took out the BBEG (well, okay, I was 2nd level - the BBEG was a LBEG, really... but moving along...). In one hit. Animal companion won initiative; BBEG obviously hostile, BBEG's reduced Hellhound bodyguards both flat-footed and not a valid target for the animal companion (as they were outsiders, and the Wolf didn't have the upgraded attack). Wolf charged right past, critted the BBEG, and rolled high on damage. DM laughed it off with the "No!!! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" schtick (which is, of course, always the last line of the BBEG that says it).

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom
2007-09-17, 10:28 PM
This wasn't the final fight of the campaign, but it did turn out to be the last major fight in it. We were 16th or 17th level, and we were about to face a 18th or 19th (maybe even 20th or 21st level I can't remember), and in the first round, the guy with the vorpal sword runs up to him and cuts his head off. That was how that week's session ended. At the beginning of the next session, after our DM had some time to think for a week, he had contingent resurrection, and we ended up having a pretty good fight that lasted an hour or so.

Ditto
2007-09-17, 10:34 PM
I like the avatar, Cube. Hadn't seen this one before.


Broke three legs...
There was that much damage. He had to sprout an entirely new limb, and then crush it. There was something massively wrong with how Sword Guy built the sword. (Perhaps not 10d6... I was new at the time, I have no idea. I was proud of Immovable Rod'ing off the train and making it look like Sword Guy's fault. But we never let him use Weapons of Legacy again...) That guy was really only technically still alive. Double your HP in non-lethal damage, and thrown from a train... bad news for any NPC. :smallsmile:

Jack Mann
2007-09-17, 11:11 PM
I like the avatar, Cube. Hadn't seen this one before.


There was that much damage. He had to sprout an entirely new limb, and then crush it. There was something massively wrong with how Sword Guy built the sword. (Perhaps not 10d6... I was new at the time, I have no idea. I was proud of Immovable Rod'ing off the train and making it look like Sword Guy's fault. But we never let him use Weapons of Legacy again...) That guy was really only technically still alive. Double your HP in non-lethal damage, and thrown from a train... bad news for any NPC. :smallsmile:

I suspect the DM didn't properly understand Weapons of Legacy. When done by the rules, a legacy weapon will actually make your character weaker, compared to using a non-legacy weapon.

Mojo_Rat
2007-09-17, 11:35 PM
A number of years ago (problaby almost 18 by now) when we were kids playing 1st edition. One of the party members got really lucky and rolled this obscenely powerful psionicist.

So when the party arrived near the end of the adventure and this kraken which was worshiped by the local lizardmen reared out of the water. The Psionic character then ego crushed it or psi blasted or whatever its called killed the Kraken instantly.

I think the DM had spent days planing the encounter.

illyrus
2007-09-17, 11:57 PM
Round 1 of the fight (think my paladin was level 4 at the time), blue dragon goes first, my paladin goes second. Blue dragon breathes electricity on all of us, killing the cleric in our party outright. My paladin performs a charging smite attack with full power attack using a lance and crits. I follow that with an action surge for a second attack and hit knocking the dragon to about 3 hp. Barbarian moves up and finishes off the dragon with a normal hit. To be fair that fight did have a PC death.

Same game, same paladin, and a bunch of paladin scrolls later my paladin was effectively soloing the 2nd dragon of the dungeon and a custom creation of the DM to boot.

Another game a DM decided to put two cave trolls against the party. One magic jar later (I was the jerk wizard that actually cast it) and we used a cave troll to EZ-Mode the rest of the dungeon and the boss inside.

In the same game as the first we had fought a 26-27 HD fiendish bulette. One super-bulette simulacrum, some wizard, bard, and cleric buffs later we took on an EL+8 encounter including the head wizard of the cult (he had 5 levels on us), the head assassin, the head half-fiend giant, a beholder, and a bunch of giant mooks. It's refreshing to watch a PC controlled creature actually start one rounding multiple named and important bad guys as opposed to the other way around.

Icewalker
2007-09-18, 12:15 AM
yeah, this one happens to me all the time. I try to make sure my BBEG won't slaughter the party, then they one shot him.

I had a barbarian dude who was the leader of some fortress, they summoned an earth elemental, pinning him into a thin corridor, took some potshots, then charmed him and told him to turn around and walk into his room, where they used some sneak attack on im.

Ravyn
2007-09-18, 12:54 AM
It's sort of a running joke in my group: the demonically empowered BBEG always seems to end up being defeated the first time he appears to the group, in the fifth or sixth session, by the character who focuses on sneaking around and throwing things, while grappling the weakest member of the party. The first time, it was my game, and to add insult to injury, the individual who delivered what would have been the killing blow was an NPC under the control of my assistant. (This, needless to say, would not do. But the individual who actually died just being possessed made the BBEG downright scary.) The second time, the game was being run by a friend of mine, and.... while my character meant to hit him that hard, I kinda didn't. Either way, we've taken to making as much of a game of finding new and inventive ways to keep these characters technically around as possible, and deciding that such an ignominious defeat is a sure harbinger of the real final battle being epic and impressive and all-around successful.

(Of course, then we start overcompensating for the party's power and get complaints about those fights....)

Krursk
2007-09-18, 05:57 AM
Well, this story comes from right after the BBEG fight (We were an evil party, but still, there was a BBEG. We wanted his job). We all were at the tavern, resting for free after having saved the town from a nasty assassins guild. One of the players, Oggy, insists going watch. The DM tells him there's no need, as the town is well guarded and him keeping watch will mean he needs to spend time rolling dice. Oggy insists, and sure enough, he hears a noise outside. Going outside to investigate, he suddenly is knocked out. The DM then wakes my character with the line "you see a hobo outside your window doing horrible things to Oggy's character" I say "Ok, I rig his bedroom with my bag of infinite caltrops and then throw more caltrops at the hobo" (I loved my bag of infinite caltrops). We all make jokes for the next 9 months about Oggy's character's "bad night"

bugsysservant
2007-09-18, 07:01 AM
My all time favorite story: I was playing 2ed FR, where if you fire a pistol (1d4 I think) and you roll a four you can roll again and add the damage. First level, in the first encounter, our party ran into the BBEG, who was something like 10 levels above us. Our DM was just trying to set up the campaign so we would get pissed off, and try to defeat him later, but my character, an impatient fighter, proceeded to pull out his pistol and shoot. He rolled something like 8 fours in a row. On a critical hit. The culimination of the campaign was ruined, and our party advanced half a dozen levels.

Our DM then tried to railroad us back on track with a story about the pissed off brother of the original BBEG, and things were going as planned, till the epic fight at the end. After a few unlucky rolls, things weren't going our way, so, saying a prayer to Tymora, my character pulled out the exact same pistol, and did the exact same thing. It was incredible, and a great ending to one of the best campaigns I have ever played.

Dean Fellithor
2007-09-18, 07:45 AM
My Friend Ben rolled a Natural 20 on his bluff check, he covinced a 5th level wizard to kill himself. He was only level 2.

Kesnit
2007-09-18, 07:47 AM
This wasn't a BBEG, but it was intended to be the Boss fight of the current quest.

Human Ranger and Kender Rogue (me), both LVL 1. We're in an underwater cave full of treasure (looking for a pirate's lost gem, enjoying the fact that the DM gave us Potions of Water Breathing). A mermaid (Boss) pops up and shakes her trident.

The Ranger manages to swim over and attack, but rolled very poorly. (I think he did 2 damage total.) I had some problems with my Swim check, but after about 3 rounds, got myself into Flanking position. Where I proceeded to roll a natural 20 on my attack. And confirm the crit. And roll a 4 on the d4 (Small Short Sword) and a 6 on the d6 (SA), plus my +1 from STR.

The DM looked at me and said "She was supposed to last a lot longer."

SadisticFishing
2007-09-18, 08:25 AM
We fought a super caster BBEG - and our Warlock was like... "Wait, I have a gem here that summons a water elemental. What can those do?" I think for a second, grin and reply "grapple". Short fight.

Another BBEG, same campaign (our DM was new at the rules, we were all really immersed in his world, but the gameplay was a tad bit out of the rules), the same warlock filled up a bag of holding with sling bullets and dropped them on the group of BBEGs standing in one place. Of the four, three rolled 15+ on the easy reflex save. The cleric rolled a 1. Instant death, as for some reason we treated every sling bullet as 1d4. Woopie.

bbugg
2007-09-18, 08:59 AM
New to DMing I thought it would be great to have a horde of weak undead set upon the PCs as the final encounter in a dungeon crawl. I didn't want to kill them all, so I set the ER at about 3 or 4, I think.

Round 1 - Cleric turns all of the undead.

I hate turning. Now I play a cleric.

Krursk
2007-09-18, 08:59 AM
My Friend Ben rolled a Natural 20 on his bluff check, he covinced a 5th level wizard to kill himself. He was only level 2.

Can you do that? I don't think anyone's a good enough talker to get any other person to commit suicide. The closest I can think of is Hitler getting German parliament to vote itself out, and that took crazy amounts of work.

Jack Mann
2007-09-18, 09:31 AM
Can you do that? I don't think anyone's a good enough talker to get any other person to commit suicide. The closest I can think of is Hitler getting German parliament to vote itself out, and that took crazy amounts of work.

No, you can't, at least not at level two. You might get someone to engage in a course that would ultimately lead to their death... But it would have to be something they wouldn't see coming. Even with an epic bluff check, you can't make someone kill themselves.

woc33
2007-09-18, 11:23 AM
Two words: Shivering Touch. My DM almost cried after i used that, and banned it forever a few moments later.

Telonius
2007-09-18, 11:48 AM
Playing Shackled City, we had a super-charismatic Radiant Servant of Pelor in the party. Near the end of the adventure path, there was an uber-badass vampire that was bathing in a pool of negative energy. It was supposed to be an extremely difficult fight. One Greater Turning later, we were shaking vampire dust off of our clothes and continuing on our way.

Seems to be a common theme of Vorpal weapons, double-20s, and turn checks going here...

EvilJames
2007-09-18, 11:59 AM
According to 2nd Ed Rules (or else the bastardized version we were playing), your crit damage increased based on the number of 20s in a row you rolled.

I once rolled 6 20s in a row. Killed the boss in a single longsword strike.

We use that same idea, except we unusually say 3 20's is an insta kill, and it does go both ways. So while I've never gotten the insta kill from it, I have lost several minions that way (poor poor "world's punching bag" Gorba). So I must say that 6 20's is pretty amazing because I haven't seen the "3 20's" rule come into effect in quite some time and it's never come into play in a game I've DM'd

also I usually avoid my bosses being one shot because I nver give my players the stupid "Kills on a 20" weapons like vorpal or the "Heartseeker" someone mentioned. If you give these to your players then you deserve to have your bosses one-shot and your plots derailed and you can't complain because you gave them permission the moment that weapon came into their hands.

On the other hand I have had a boss one shot on me before. Not long ago in my weird west game (Hero system) The party was going to face the man who was responsible for the undead bandits attacking the town, They encounter the head zombie (Rotting Jack) and some of his boys outside the cave and while most of hte party are dealing with that the Indian shaman sneaks off and uses his "spider climb ability to explore the cave and comes across the true leader, a "bad Voodoo" Witchdoctor. The shaman leaps from the ceiling and suprises the witch doctor and scores a crit knocking the BBEG unconscious and the coup de gracing him the next phase.


Also while she wasn't exactly a boss, there is also the infamous Beholder queen "system shock" incident, involving the same player.
Me: "Sure I'll roll a system shock for her but she's only going to fail on 99 or better so I don't see it helping you guys"
::ROLLS:: 100
Me: Dammit!

EDIT

My all time favorite story: I was playing 2ed FR, where if you fire a pistol (1d4 I think) and you roll a four you can roll again and add the damage. First level, in the first encounter, our party ran into the BBEG, who was something like 10 levels above us. Our DM was just trying to set up the campaign so we would get pissed off, and try to defeat him later, but my character, an impatient fighter, proceeded to pull out his pistol and shoot. He rolled something like 8 fours in a row. On a critical hit. The culimination of the campaign was ruined, and our party advanced half a dozen levels.

Our DM then tried to railroad us back on track with a story about the pissed off brother of the original BBEG, and things were going as planned, till the epic fight at the end. After a few unlucky rolls, things weren't going our way, so, saying a prayer to Tymora, my character pulled out the exact same pistol, and did the exact same thing. It was incredible, and a great ending to one of the best campaigns I have ever played.

That sir is awesome and I applaud you for it

Martok
2007-09-18, 12:30 PM
D&D 3rd Ed: We were facing the boss character for that particular leg of the campaign. (You'll have to forgive me for not remembering the exact details, as this incident was about 4 years ago.)

Our party (we were all somewhere around 6th-7th level) was on a boat, crossing a large body of water when the boss shows up. He was approximately a 12th level sorceror, and he had cast both invisibility and flying on himself. We were able to neutralize his invisibility without great difficulty, but in the meantime he was obviously dealing us some heavy damage with all his spells.

Fortunately for us, however, our human rouge suddenly remembered she'd salvaged a functioning Arrow of Slaying from an earlier leg of the campaign -- a fact which our DM had completely forgotten. She quickly retrieved it and handed it to our elven fighter. He immediately fitted it onto his uber Longbow of Doom (not the weapon's actual name, but you get the idea :smallwink: ). He then proceeded to not just roll a natural 20, but he also fell short of maxing out the crit damage by only 2 points!

Not surprisingly, the sorceror dropped dead right onto the deck of the ship. The look on the DM's face was priceless. (He took it all in fairly good humor, however.) :smallbiggrin:

Argent
2007-09-18, 01:00 PM
The old 3.0 tanglefoot bag was the method used by my group for a memorable pantsing of a boss. BBEG in the middle of his "cooperate with my evil masters or you will all die horribly", party ranger hits him with a tanglefoot bag (and its attendant really, really high DC save), he pooches the roll, ends up rooted to the spot where we offed him with no trouble.

The DM's outraged reaction is often imitated for a laugh: "That's IT?"

TheAlmightyOne
2007-09-18, 03:08 PM
I was DM once. I put in a wizard and a few skeleton minions. Party walkes in. Ranger criticly shoots one of the skeletons, destroys it instantly. The other three get crushed by the barbarian. The bard then does a siplomacy check on the wizard, natural 20, cnvinced him to just walk out the dungeon.

Later (same group I stopped DMing cos we actually had a plotline) we were facing a couple of really annoying fighters that somehow kept passing their will saves. When they we down to 1hp they run off as they were supposed to relay our position to the evil lord we stole a dragon egg from. Magic missile. Instnant damage, 1hp, instant dead. Just to piss off the DM I cast animate dead on them and sent the corpses to attack the lords family.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-09-18, 03:49 PM
Yeah...you can't deal critical damage to skeletons. Just so you know. I'm also not saying it's impossible for the bard to have diplomacy'd him to death, but one-round diplomacy checks are made at a -10 penalty.

Citizen Joe
2007-09-18, 03:55 PM
Yeah...you can't deal critical damage to skeletons. Just so you know. I'm also not saying it's impossible for the bard to have diplomacy'd him to death, but one-round diplomacy checks are made at a -10 penalty.
They also have DR 5/bludgeoning so shooting them is likely less effective.

Rid
2007-09-18, 04:19 PM
My friends and I were playing an Iron Kingdoms game, and were well into our campaign. Because things were getting a bit old doing all the steam-punk/mech stuff, the DM decided that he would work in a trip to the hastly incorporated castle Ravenloft (it was neat how he tied the two settings together, actually). It was lots of fun for the first few sessions, as we explored the area around the castle. Great atmosphere and everything. Once we got to the castle however, things became a slog. We must have spent at least 6 or 7 sessions trying to map out the castle, find the vampire, and get it over with. Thankfully, we eventually manage to find a way down to the bottom of the castle, and encounter him. I was playing a goblin sorcerer, focusing on chaos magic. The only weapon that I had was a rod of wonder, which the DM had graciously allowed to have many different lists of spells (so that it was a quite effective weapon, all told). The first round of combat goes normally, with us trying to close with the vampire, and him using his cover to try and flank us. Second round comes up, and he charges me. I quickly react in the only way that I know how: I hit him with the rod. First, we roll to see which spell list for the rod we use, and them I roll the percentile die to see what spell comes up. The spell that came up was 'baleful polymorph'. The vampire, sadly, failed his save, and was turned into a rather nice doggie. The party ogre then smashed him. It was a fitting end to what ended up being the part of our campaign which took the life out of the group. We never really recovered from that castle. But at least my rod turned him into a dog in one round (well, effectively one round).

Darkbane
2007-09-18, 04:19 PM
Which book is Shivering Touch in?

mostlyharmful
2007-09-18, 04:24 PM
Frostburn.... DON'T DO IT!!!! It's the spell of ultimate death for all CR appropriate encounters, fighter involvment and party enjoyment. Seriously stay away from this one, with it you can one shot great wyrms routinely, nuff said