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BRC
2007-12-30, 10:38 PM
Is there one encounter that is particurally memorable for you? anything that sticks in your head? Yes there is, don't try to hide it, if you can remember it, post it here. I'll go first

It was a the session before last, the party had to take care of some guy who thought he was the grim reaper, in short he believed he was unkillable and able to kill anybody, and he went around killing anybody he found to prove it. Well it turns out he DID have something that made it very difficult to kill him unless you did somthing else, we never found out what. We find his hut with him in it, and box it in with a Wall of Iron spell, leaving only a small gap right outside his window, through which we throw beads of fireball, actual fireballs, and various similar spells and abilities. after about 3 rounds of this we let the smoke clear and see his corpse, one of us goes inside to investigate....and dies instantly. Turns out mister reaper can do illusions (but we didn't fear him). He runs out at us and we move back, we throw another wall of iron in front of him and he runs into it, our barbarian vaults over the wall...and misses, getting hit my some sort of mega magic-weapon spell on Mr Reaper's scythe. Then we knock the wall of iron over and the party wizard summons an earth elemental to dig the barbarian out from under the wall. After a few minutes mister reaper pops out of the ground, having used his ZOMGMAGIC scythe to help him burrow through the ground. After a few rounds he is firmly grappled by the earth elemental, disarmed, and the party is standing in a circle around him taking turns to Coup De Gracie his face. This continues for a few minutes until whatever magic he had that was keeping him alive (An indomidable touch or somthing similiar I think) wears off and he dies, the 900 damage he took over the course of the battle finally taking effect.

SurlySeraph
2007-12-30, 11:43 PM
There was that time we fought an avatar of Erythnul in the form of a puppy. I'll try to dig up the "PC Stupidity Stories" thread, where I described it in full.

EDIT:

The party consisted of a Greyguard (me), a CG ranger, a NG rogue, and a NG wizard. The plot involved destroying an avatar of Erythnul before it became fully powered. The diviner who sent us told us that Erythnul's avatar was disguised as some kind of animal. The last thing that's important to know is that there was a kind of aura within a three-mile radius of the avatar that maximized the rolls for all forms of damage (including not only spells, but also Smite Evil, weapons damage... everything). We had a couple encounters while searching through a devestated area to find the avatar, but we used the maximized damage very much to our advantage. Finally we came to the still-burning ruins of a razed town.
DM: As you round the corner, you see a huge bear backing away from a growling puppy.
Me: I use Detect Evil on it.
DM: You're overwhelmed by the aura of evil. You're stunned for one round.
Wizard: Lightening bolt on the bear.
Me: No, you're not supposed -
DM: You're stunned, no talking.
It was something like a pseudonatural fiendish dire bear, and a lot happened in that round. Most importantly, the ranger took a lot of damage because he got crit'd with the aforementioned maximized damage. When I became un-stunned, I helped finish off the bear but then explained "No, damn it, I detected evil on the puppy. It isn't normal for a demonic bear to be scared by a puppy. Besides, the bear was too weak to have an overwhelming aura. I know the max damage made it seem weaker than it was, but still. The puppy is Erythnul. Ask the DM. Did I detect evil on the bear or the puppy? The DM hid his expression by holding his notes in front of his face and just said "You'll never know." The ranger makes a Handle Animal check to prove it's a normal puppy. I reply "Better safe than sorry. I'm going to Smite Evil on the puppy, just in case." The ranger says he won't let me, he doesn't care what I think. Well, this is exactly the reason that Greyguards get Smite Chaos. I smite the ranger.
DM: Okay, so the ranger's at -6 and bleeding now.
Me: Bleeding?! But - but I meant for that to be nonlethal damage!
DM: Too late now.
Did I mention I had used up all of my healing spells earlier in the day? I did manage to stabilize the ranger, but at this point I got into an argument with the rogue and the wizard, who demanded that I prove the puppy was Erythnul before hurting anything else.
Me: Fine. I use Detect Evil on the puppy.
DM: Overwhelmed by pure evil. Stunned for one round.
Me: Oh, hell no...
DM: The puppy coup de graces the Grayguard, using the deathblow feat.
Me:...
Rogue: Hmm. Uh... I shoot my bow at it. So that's a 9 -
DM: No, you have to roll for damage now. Do you think Erythnul's going to make himself extra slaughterable? Also, you're at point-blank range. Puppy/ avatar gets an attack of opportunity, for 26 damage.
Wizard: Fireball.
DM: Did you even look where you are? Maximized damage to you and the rogue, but roll for damage to the avatar.
Rogue: Uh... I'm at 14 hit points now.
Wizard: ...Expeditious retreat.
Not quite a TPK, but the wizard had a very interesting time fleeing. Especially when it turned out the puppy could fly.

That was the same campaign where my paladin ate a baby to prevent the demon inhabiting its body from getting loose into the world.

God, that was a weird campaign.

@V: Hey! It was the only viable solution, except for finding some way to get a scroll of Greater Planar Binding, or a scroll of Dimensional Anchor, or possibly sticking the baby in a gelatinous cube! (details here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52503&highlight=baby)). My actions were fully justified, and I do NOT regret it.

Besides, the stupid DM ruled that it never happened anyway.

BRC
2007-12-30, 11:47 PM
my paladin ate a baby

*passes out laughing*

Yami
2007-12-31, 12:35 AM
Ages ago, back before two-weapon fighting was a feat and merely a choice you had to talk to the dm about before hand I ran an elf in weekend long campiagn. We were using some bungling rules on magic that may or may not have been homebrew and got pretty powerful near the end.

Now, there are a good few encounters that were pretty memorable, but I'll try to do justice to them all.

Now, my character was the secondary wizard, being more prone to failure and being a melee combatant as well, but it was the prone to failure part that one must remeber.

I think the first, chronologically was inside a town. We'd gotten the whole top floor of a nice inn to rest in with bunch of windows overlooking the town square and two fireplaces. Real posh.

So of course the wizard and I cast a bunch of alarm spells everywhere and hit the sack. Lo and behold we're woken in the middle of the night by all of our alarms going off. All of them.

Combat starts, Gm drops a map and rolls, ruling that those of us not one watch are too groggy to act the first round. The assassins that are everywhere seem rather competent, if only because they're attacking everyone while we're unbuffed. So, when I get to go, I begin to cast fireball, targeting a section of the inn so as to hit none of us.

At this point everyone begins describing how they dodge behind the couch into the still burning fireplace or, in the case of the paladin, behind the very foe he was fighting.

Did I mention the DM used some sort of Bungling rules for magic? Well, he did and the actualy mechanics I forgot, but the fact that I critically failed that spell and exploded in fully burning glory I do not. Fortunately the cleric was able to heal me after the fight.

There was the combat wherein my character got a highly powerful spell book that would either make me go mad and attack my party, or learn nifty new homebrewed spells, but sadly after the first go around they hid the spell book from me and wouldn't even let the wizard proper see it.

The real gem though was the final boss. The BBEG. Now, like I said, ages ago, so somethings are blury. Not to mention the game spanned some two and a half days. But early on we started coming acrost clues and riddles as to this guys power, and the secret there of. We had half of the party pouring over them at any given time. Two days. Still hadn't puzzled out the clues when we burst into our final foes lair.

We were pretty powerful by this point. I mean terrasque slaying nice high end epic characters where even the secondary caster had wish. We knew our foe was a highend wizard, but them's the breaks.

So, we get into this fight and our big buff beefy minotaur paladin wins initiative, so he charges in and prepares to bash him into submission. Well, he hits, there is a question of damage, and the DM laughs. The BBEG then proceeds to grab the paladin, bash the his head in and fling him through the nearest wall, just managing to knock him out. He then blasts the party cleric, slaying him where he stood.

I attempted to Wish knowledge of how to defeat this nigh unstoppable foe, (probably not the best move, but everyone paniced when we saw our melee god get trashed in his chosen profession by a mage.) Of course, with my usual luck I managed to critically fail my spell again, erasing me from existance.

So, halfway through round two and our party one of the still living characters cried out in insight and everyone returned to the pages of symbols and riddles as we unlocked the power needed to defeat this dastardly foe and scrapped through with a narrow victory. As an Epilogue everyone was raised save my poor elf who managed to wish himself from the minds of all involved.

So let this be a lesson to you all, never try to wish against overpowered casters, no good can come from it.

evisiron
2007-12-31, 12:59 AM
The final encounter of the game I was running. The players had reaching level 20, and got crazy good items from the Vault of the Gods (homebrew version), so they had a chance to beat the BBEG (a Colossal red Dragon summoning a new evil god into the world, potentially destroying the planet in the process.)

The entire last session was this one battle. It was EL 690.

It included:
-About 400 low level minion warriors
-30 or so airborn half fiends
-about 60 elemental/ giant things
-3 altered multi-elemental things
-A lava dragon...thing
-Re-animated Tarasque (hehehe)
-a line of 20 spellcasters holding anti magice fields infront of the Dragon (who was trying to finishing the summoning while tossing spells at the players - Spellcasters dropped antimagic on command and brought it back up as a readied action)
-The Col Red Dragon himself.
-The Dracolich brought back from the Dragon

The players prevailed, with only one dead player (at the very end too!), but so many times that they almost TPK-ed and brought it back, everyone was really excited and worried. It all worked so damn well. Best of all, the druid who had been stuck on healer-duty completely destroyed hindreds of the minions with big AOE spells. I still smile when recollecting her evil laughter.

Good times :smallbiggrin:

Dhavaer
2007-12-31, 01:16 AM
The time we fought a lich.

We'd abseiled down past a prismatic sphere into the liches lair. The fighter, monk, paladin and ranger/rogue bashed down some constructs, and we came to a ledge, then a very, very deep gap, with another ledge on the other side. After some quick calculations of weight, my wizard levitated herself up to the roof, crawled across it, and levitated down to the other side. The rest of the party held onto the fighter as he drank a potion of levitate and did the same thing, while the wizard laughed hysterically.
There was nothing but a tiny hole (a couple of inches across) on the ledge, and we debated jumping into the gap for a while. Eventually, my wizard drank a potion of gaseous form and slipped through the hole. On the other side of the hole was a tiny room, with sarcophagi against the walls and a pedestal in the centre. On the pedastal was a ring, covered by a glass bowl. I don't remember what I did, but I let out some inhaled poison that was in the bowl, took some ability damage, woke up the skeletons in the sarcophagi and got the ring. The wizard cast gaseous form again and got back out.
We debated what to do with the ring for a while, when the lich shows up with some illusory minotaurs (my wizard was a illusionist, she saw through them pretty easily). She told the dwarf to smash the ring while using readied magic missiles to screw up the lich's spells, and then the game ended. Forever.

ULTIMATE CLIFFHANGER.

hobbitguy1420
2008-01-04, 02:19 PM
he believed he was unkillable and able to kill anybody, and he went around killing anybody he found to prove it.

is it just me, or does this sound like most PC parties?

WrstDmEvr
2008-01-04, 06:13 PM
Heh. This one time my party fights a couple of chokers(3) at level 6. We were in a volcano at the time

DM(me): Spot check, everybody
Monk: *fails* I keep on trying until I succeed
(after rolling 5 times, succeeds.)
Me:Okay... by that time, the chokers attack. Roll initiative.
*pause while PC's flip through MM*
Me: The chokers grapple you! Only the monk escapes their hold.
Monk: I grapple the choker.
Else: ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Me: Okay, it grapples you.
Cleric: I flip it into the lava *succeeds*
*Party takes damage*
Drow: I walk down with my boots of spider climb towards the lava
Else: ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Me: It falls off into the lava. You are now stuck at the bottom, taking 1d4 fire damage for being in close proximity to the lava
Drow: *negative HP-goes unconscious*
Monk: I grapple again! *fails*
Cleric: I heal the drow.
*Monk takes damage, goes unconscious*
Drow: I attack the choker!*hits monk*
Cleric: I heal the monk!
(monk at low hp)
Drow: I attack the choker! *hits monk again*
Cleric: STOP ATTACKING THE !^%$#%* MONK!!!!!! (heals monk)
(monk dies)

I had a good laugh over that afterwards.

Saph
2008-01-04, 07:09 PM
I told this story six months ago, but it's worth telling again. Our party was playing through the "Children of Gruumsh" adventure in the Forgotten Realms. Six-person party, all level 8, though only five were there for the final battle. We'd been working our way though some ice demiplane dungeon with a one-way entrance, and by the time we reached the top floor our main goal was just to get out of there. Unfortunately, there was a huge white dracolich in the way.

The dracolich offered to let two of the five party members go, on condition that the other three would be left behind to be sacrificed. We said no. Roll initiative.

The following battle started off okay for our team but went rapidly downhill as soon as the dracolich closed to melee range and started hitting with its full attacks. The cleric and the fighter were taken down in melee, the evoker wizard was knocked into negatives after his fire shield failed to get through the dragon's SR, and the bard was first paralysed then finished off with a full attack.

This just left me. My character's an enchanter/loremaster who really doesn't like fights but keeps on getting dragged into them. She's not very strong, is nervous in battles, has very few offensive spells and even fewer that work on undead, but in her adventuring career she's run into a lot of dragons and has learned a few things about what works against them and what doesn't. So I cast two greater mirror image spells and started running.

And the chase was on. Each round I'd fly out of the dracolich's melee range, taking an AoO in the process, and use my wand of orb of force. The dracolich would move in and attack me on its turn, splintering another image, then at the start of my turn my mirror images would regenerate, restoring the two images that I'd just lost, and I'd dodge away again. This went on for round after round, the two of us flying in circles round and round the room. If you've ever watched an old British cartoon called Catch the Pigeon, that was pretty much what it looked like. While the fighting was going on, me and the dracolich were having a conversation:

Dracolich: "Stand still so I can kill you, elf."
Me: "Um, what if you let us all go instead?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "I will make you the same offer as before. You and one of your friends can go."
Me: "What'll happen to the others?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "Their essence will be absorbed to power this temple."
Me: "No. I'm not leaving my friends behind."
Dracolich: "Then die."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Me: "I don't suppose there's any chance you're getting bored of hitting me yet?"
Dracolich: "I have existed here for centuries, staring at the blizzard and meditating. You couldn't conceive of what it would take to make me bored."
Me: "So that's a no, then?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "I'm getting tired of chasing you, little elf."
Me: "Well, I'm not exactly enjoying this either."
Dracolich: "I'll give you one more chance. Stop fighting and you can leave here alive."
Me: "Not without the others."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away . . . wand runs out of charges. Bad, bad news. I've got no damage spells left, which now means I don't have a single weapon that can hurt the dragon. I fly next to the cleric, grab his cure wand, and start trying to use that with my few ranks in Use Magic Device.*
Dracolich: "You're wasting my time. Just give up. You can't win this."
Me: "I don't care. I won't let you hurt them.
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "Let me make you a new offer. If you surrender and let me kill you, I'll let the others go free."
Me: "You know, a lot of people tell me I'm naive . . . but even I'm not gullible enough to fall for that one."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "You're just putting off the inevitable. Stand still and let me kill you."
Me: "No."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "I'm tired of this. I'm not going to chase you anymore. But I think I've figured out what will work instead." *stops, lands, and stands over the cleric and fighter.* "Come here by the time I reach zero, or I start killing them. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . ."

It was one of those moments where you have the feeling that your luck's finally run out. I was just about to shout "No!" when the bard appeared from behind, charging. My last use of the wand had healed him and he attacked the dracolich from behind, almost dying in the process but taking away its last few HP and killing it.

It was the most epic D&D battle we've ever had. I really thought my character was going to die. Having it turned around at the last minute was incredibly cool.

- Saph