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View Full Version : Gamer Tales Beating monsters you never had a right to beat



Resileaf
2019-06-10, 09:22 AM
So yesterday in D&D 5e, our three-person lvl 6 team was exploring a necropolis for a secret office that was once owned by a powerful mage. This necropolis was the home of a lich as well, so we didn't want to attract its attention, but the secret office was in its own turf. The office was hidden behind a solid wall that became non-solid for anyone who pressed a code on hidden indents. We managed to reach the office, and found in it several items: a +3 breastplate, a +3 defending rapier, and a scarab of protection, along with several important notes.
Before coming out, a teammate slipped her head outside the wall to see if it was safe, and came face to face with the lich, who had no idea this secret passage existed. The lich tried to grab her and pull her out, but failed, so we hurried and made a plan. The group's frontline, being a finesse fighter, would take all the items we found, I, a sorcerer, would make her invisible, and she would sneak close to the lich to attack it by surprise (we were unaware that liches have a constant truesight effect). The Lich, which actually only wanted to talk and the DM never intended for us to want to fight, let her approach him, probably amused at this foolish mortal's antics, and when she was far enough away from the wall and wouldn't be able to return in the secret passage, addressed her, causing her to attack in blind panic.

So, here we have a lone level 6 fighter, but she's decked out in awesome gear that makes her virtually immune to the lich's strongest spells, because the scarab of protection can automatically succeed any save if the spell effect is necromancy or comes from an undead. The lich doesn't know she's wearing that (or at least doesn't realizes it quickly enough), and so his first action is to cast dominate monster, which fails because of the scarab giving her an advantaged natural 20 (he uses a legendary action to attack in the same round, but the extra effect fails because of the scarab allowing her to automatically save), which allows our fighter to do 4 attacks in the same round, and deal a lot of damage with her +3 rapier. On the second round, our rogue comes out of the wall (but fails his attack, so he doesn't really contributes to the fight), and then the lich casts cloudkill (I think, I didn't ask), heavily damaging the rogue, but the fighter, being a halfling and having resistance to poison, is barely damaged. Then I come out of the wall (surviving the cloud's damage as well), and cast haste on our fighter (plus a quickened fireball for minor damage because of legendary resistance), allowing her to attack 8 times in the same round, completely wrecking the lich (I also use bend luck to let her hit one time she would have missed), destroying it.

Now let me mention, I had no idea that a lich had a CR 21. I thought they were built like in 3.5/PF, and so would have a default challenge rating around 11/12. I was also certain that the lich wanted to kill us for intruding and so didn't think that we were intended to talk to it. Furthermore, we had found some really awesome gear, particularly the scarab (which was rolled randomly, btw, it wasn't planned that we would get this specific item at this point in time). If I had known it had such a high CR, or if we had not found this scarab, I would have never suggested trying to fight it. As far as I know, we completely cheated this encounter and never had the right to beat something like that even if, in retrospect, the lich really asked for it by just standing there and letting the adventurer get so close to him.

So, how about y'all guys? Any stories of pulling wins against creatures you should never have even dreamed of beating?

mephnick
2019-06-10, 12:45 PM
Not to be a rules lawyer downer but you can't cast Haste and quickened Fireball in the same turn, the limit to 1 leveled spell per turn still applies. Also Haste only gives a single extra attack, not a whole other Attack action or bonis action, so I believe a level 6 Fighter attacking 8 times is impossible, even with Action Surge.

Must have been fun though.

Resileaf
2019-06-10, 01:30 PM
Why would that rule have been in some random page instead of on the sorcerer ability... Well, no matter, as I said, I did minor damage with that fireball so it wouldn't have changed anything.
And I misremembered. It was six attacks, not eight.

Vulsutyr
2019-06-10, 05:06 PM
It is not a specific rule for Sorcerer, though they probably should have repeated it in the Metamagic section. All spellcasting classes could potentially want to use bonus action spells in the same round as action spells. Cleric Healing Word+Bless, Wizard Misty Step+Disintegrate.

Jay R
2019-06-10, 06:04 PM
It was in a D&D tourney in 1976 or 1977, with sixth level characters. The game was original D&D, with very rudimentary rules. Any unusual idea was left to DM judgment. The dungeon designers put in a monster that no sixth level party could beat, just to test if the players were smart enough to run. Evidently, we weren’t.

We open the door, and see a 10x20 room with a 134-hit die monster. No, that is not a typo — the hydra had one hundred thirty four heads. We close the door. After a little thought, we did the following:

Player 1: I open the door.
Player 2: I cast Web.
Player 3: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 4: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 5: I throw in a torch.
Player 1: I close the door.

The web spell fills the room, and is flammable. It did 1d6 damage to anything in the room — including each head.

A few minutes later, we did it again. Each head has 1d6 hit points, and each took four points of damage, then three. End of 134-hd monster.

Khedrac
2019-06-11, 12:46 AM
The dungeon designers put in a monster that no sixth level party could beat, just to test if the players were smart enough to run. Evidently, we weren’t.
[Hat Off] :Applaud :Bow [/Hat Off]

I am not usually a fan or "rule of cool", and I don't rememebr 1st Ed well enough to say whether the damage should have been applied to the heads individually or not (I think not because fireball) but that is so awesome it deserves to work (if just to annoy the designer who put it in there). Well done indeed.

TalonOfAnathrax
2019-06-11, 11:24 AM
This is cheating, but...
Among GMs I've played with, most tend to make the same mistake in their first seagoing/pirate campaigns : they all design recurring villains who can't breathe underwater. Therefore don't even fight them directly, sink their ship beneath them, and then throw ranged attacks at them while they drown.
Not a mistake a GM makes twice, but certainly an effective way of getting a lot of XP fast.

Note that sometimes the GM gets annoyed and doesn't award full XP for the fight, but that's understandable enough.

DMThac0
2019-06-11, 11:53 AM
Be me: Level 3 Ranger/Rogue with a table full of new players

We get caught between four dire wolves and a vampire spawn. Two of the players go and attack the dire wolves, one of them gets dropped in a couple rounds, the other shortly after. One player stays on the hallowed ground to protect the important NPCs. One player goes to rescue the downed characters.

This leaves me playing tag with a vampire spawn and subsequently making my, brand new, DM go crazy. I spend a few rounds plinking away at this thing with my bow, keeping a good distance away so it can't get a claw into me. When everything starts to go south I get a brilliant idea: I'm going to stand still with my back to the hallowed ground, I stand one square outside the area. I taunt the creature and make sure to hit him one more time for good measure. It charges down on me, grabs me, and bites, I look at the DM and say thank you (cue facepalm).

My turn comes back around and I ask the DM if I am considered grappled, they say yes, I say thank you again. I explain that I do not want to escape the grapple, instead I want to body slam the creature into the hallowed ground, cue athletics, and I barely win. I then use my movement to drag the creature through the hallowed ground so that it is in range of the NPCs and other player. I barely keep the grapple going this entire time. The other player is a Paladin, cue massive radiant burst damage.

Somehow it managed to survive a crit from the paladin, three rounds of hallowed ground, and a few good stabs from me. It runs, I unleash an arrow, crit, it drops. That was the first time we made our DM curse at us...but not the last.

Jay R
2019-06-11, 10:57 PM
It wasn't a monster per se, but six of us once defeated an army. The game was Flashing Blades, a musketeer era game with no magic.

Jean-Louis is my rogue PC. Vivienne is Ruth's actress PC.

In a previous adventure, we had captured bills of lading for supplies to feed an army coming to France next spring. The bills of lading implied an army of roughly 2,000 soldiers and camp followers and 500 horses, led by the General Don Miguel ----, whose last name is a moot point, as shown below. All winter, we had horses staked out to attract two wolf packs to the forest between Luneville and Drouville. We wanted numerous wolves used to feeding on horseflesh to greet the Spanish army.

The first delivery was at St. Die. We arranged that the food would arrive two days early, to allow spoilage. Then there was a heavy rain that delayed the troops. The wine was (very mildly) spiked with bad water. There were 20 pistoles baked into the bread. We spread a rumor that the rich soldiers have been throwing coins to the peasants, to encourage peasants along the road to get in the army's way.

Vivienne and Jean-Louis joined the army as camp followers, Vivienne concentrating her attentions on the officers. Jean-Louis started to become a common face, performing, spreading rumors, asking questions. "What's this I hear about a missing paywagon?" The next day was Baccarat. 20 more pistoles and 2 Louis d'Or (gold coins) were baked in the bread. The wine was slghtly more spiked. Deliveries of the food arrived mid-morning the next day, further delaying the troops. Vivienne had two officers fighting a duel over her. […] we spread rumors about the paywagon, and bad blood between officers. (Jean-Louis gathered a crowd of soldiers at the dueling field.) We started a fire in town after the troops left.

Some cavalry units left early, and so were not fed. Near the town of Luneville, we burned a bridge and planted stakes. The cavalry units tried to cross first, and one horse was lamed. So they waited for the rest of the army to arrive to build the bridge. More unrest, more rumors, more bad food. We incited some guttersnipes to throw rocks across the river at them. The bridge was finished mid-morning the next day, so late the next night, a bedraggled, tired, dispirited army arrived at Drouville. The army was forced to detour through the wolf forest by a road block. We spread rumors that the army had been torching villages behind them. The food was strongly poisoned, and the rye bread was tainted with ergot. The army was not going to be in shape to deal with the situation. Vivienne lured Don Miguel to her room at an inn, and murdered him in his sleep. We spread poisoned oats out in the woods. Then we torched the town, stampeding the horses. We started several fires on the upwind side of town. While cutting horses loose, Jean-Louis was spotted. He yelled, "Release the horses – don’t let them burn!" And he convinced the sentries that were there to guard the horses to help him release and stampede them.

The Spanish lost supplies, horses, and lots of time trying to round up the horses that survived the night. Note that spooked horses aren't too bright, and that they were downwind of the flames. Many horses were lost (or eaten). Jean-Louis slipped into the General's headquarters. He fought and killed two sentries, leaving them in a pose indicating that they had slain each other. He then made off with the general's orders, dispatches, and 70 escudo (4200 L.!).

In nearby towns the next day we spread rumors that the army was berserk, looting and burning. We spread rumors in the army that the general was seen running off with a courtesan. Henri went north and bought their next shipment of food (with their money), which we dumped in the river. After spreading a few more rumors in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, we returned to Paris, where we delivered the orders and dispatches to Richelieu.

The army split up, some becoming bandits until captured by the Duke of Lorraine; some continuing on, ravaging the countryside as they went.

Elvensilver
2019-06-12, 05:17 PM
Our two-person party (bard/oracle and cleric
/paladin, both Lvl. 9) once finished a human lvl. 14 baddy, (an important member of an evil cult,) that was truly frightening.
4 attacks per round, could sneak attack (or dead attack, or something) and silence my bard to uselessness in a single round, could turn to slime, change his face, use mid-level-spells.... Quite a hotpot of abilities, but our DM clearly intented him to be a large threat and a recurring villain.
It was a hard fight, healing was necessary every round, but we were fully buffed. And after hurting him with some sonic damage, the cleric crit- and between smite evil, divine power, bardic performance, a high-damage-weapon, power attack etc., etc... She made over 100 damage, killing him, and the DM stared at us blankly. I...I had plans for him! He wasn't supposed to die!
The baddy's boss then teleported over to tell us something similar and threaten us, but we felt like sovereigns of the country for our sucess.:smallredface:

SimonMoon6
2019-06-12, 07:53 PM
Back in the days of 1st edition AD&D, I ran a game that, for the first few adventures, was designed to be this sort of thing every adventure.

The first main opponent that the PCs fought was a lich. They were 1st level, he was not. However, this lich was a bit insane. And he liked to cast almost nothing but "save or die" spells... at the group's barbarian who (in 1st edition) was very good at making saves "versus spell". So, the lich wasn't much of an offensive threat. However the PCs couldn't hurt ("hit" in 1st edition) the lich at all... until they noticed a bunch of miscellaneous magical items on the lich's desk that they could hit him with (this wasn't damage resistance back then, he just couldn't be hit except by magic), and somebody eventually wrapped the lich up in the magical tablecloth to incapacitate him.

For the second adventure, I let the PCs hear rumors of a multi-headed dragon flying around causing problems. This was meant to make them think, "Oh, F---, not Tiamat!" In actuality, of course, it was simply a chimera, one that they were somewhat capable of fighting.

For the third adventure, they had to go up against an army of beholders. However, one of the treasures from the chimera adventure protected them from the worst of what the beholders could do. (It was an artifact pearl that was originally a lady druid who was eventually turned back into herself.)

Then, for a random encounter, they fought a pack of wolves and almost died.

SimonMoon6
2019-06-12, 08:04 PM
"Not monsters, but..."

This was in a superhero campaign (using the GM's custom system). The GM had gotten tired of this game, so he decided to kill off our characters. He didn't say this at the time, but that was his plan. However, he was going to do this "fairly", by having us fight some supervillains that were just too powerful for us. One of the GM's main flaws was that he couldn't resist showing off his "cool" new characters to me. So, before the adventure began, I got to see these overpowered supervillains.

One was a noncorporeal guy who couldn't physically interact with anything except this one particular metal; he also carried a sword of that metal with him so that he could attack other people without them being able to hurt him. Another guy was a superspeedster. I don't remember the rest. (This was in the late 80's, so it's been a while.)

My character still had "building points" left from the last adventure with which to improve himself. So, here's what I did. First, since I already had a limited amount of martial arts skill, I bought the "disarm" maneuver as something I could now do. During the fight, I would disarm the noncorporeal badguy and attack him with his own sword. The only other thing I could afford to do was to buy a weak little robot sidekick. The main thing that this robot could do was spill slippery oil all over the floor. This was crucial when the superspeedster showed up; he slipped on the oil, running out of control into a wall at full speed; that was the end of him.

And so, pretty quickly, we beat the supervillain group that was meant to kill us.

Then, the NEXT adventure ended the campaign (with everybody on Earth losing their powers except for my character).

RedMage125
2019-06-13, 11:21 AM
It was in a D&D tourney in 1976 or 1977, with sixth level characters. The game was original D&D, with very rudimentary rules. Any unusual idea was left to DM judgment. The dungeon designers put in a monster that no sixth level party could beat, just to test if the players were smart enough to run. Evidently, we weren’t.

We open the door, and see a 10x20 room with a 134-hit die monster. No, that is not a typo — the hydra had one hundred thirty four heads. We close the door. After a little thought, we did the following:

Player 1: I open the door.
Player 2: I cast Web.
Player 3: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 4: I throw in a flask of oil.
Player 5: I throw in a torch.
Player 1: I close the door.

The web spell fills the room, and is flammable. It did 1d6 damage to anything in the room — including each head.

A few minutes later, we did it again. Each head has 1d6 hit points, and each took four points of damage, then three. End of 134-hd monster.

Well played, sir. And reminds me of a story I was told when I first started playing D&D in...1998...ish? 2nd Edition, at any rate. So, high level party finds a vial of Brown Mold. If you recall, Brown Mold responds to the presence of heat by simply expanding over and over until it encounters cold.

So this guy's group later encounters a portal to the first layer of the Nine Hells that they were supposed to close, but before they do...they toss the vial of Brown Mold in.

Cue this mold expanding until it literally consumes the first 4 layers of baator entirely (5th is frozen).