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Calinero
2008-09-19, 09:52 PM
Everyone has had at least one, or seen one. That moment where a character does something so epic, so ridiculously awesome that you want to stand up and applaud--or maybe just burst out laughing at the sheer insanity. At least, everyone should be familiar with one of these. If not, maybe you aren't playing the game right!

Ahem. Anyways.

This thread is a place to share your most awesome stories from any RPG. Dice based, otherwise, whatever. Post it here, and spread your legends!

I'll start us out.

Some friends of mine and I were playing a rather fun game called All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It's zombie based, and very easy to die in. We were all playing "Norms," which meant that we weren't particularly strong or fast or well equipped. Normal civilians trying to survive a zombie outbreak. Zombies in this game come in all shapes and flavors, and more than one variety is more than strong enough to rip a Norm to shreds.

However, one of my friends' norm was stronger than average. He was fairly minmaxed out, with high scores in most combat related abilities. He didn't cheat, but his character was far from balanced. He was essentially a huge Native American warrior who barely spoke English. And this was a modern setting. Yes, my friend makes unusual characters.

It was the beginning of the campaign, and all of our characters were separated. We each essentially got our own little mini zombie encounter before the group banded together. The Native American had been camping in the local park, when a man approached the fire. NA (Native American) was hidden nearby, and finally decided to approach the man. He was moaning, and clearly injured. He had several large claw marks on his face, and had been blinded. He died a minute later.

As soon as the words "Claw marks" passed out DM's lips, a collective groan with mixed swearing broke out over the table. In All Flesh, things with claws are nasty. Always. And they often come with matching teeth. *shudders* But the teeth are a story for another day.

Out of the darkness came the thing that had killed the man. It was lean, hideously deformed, had enormous teeth (crap on a stick), and its legs were oddly crouched. Plus, it had huge claws (double crap on a stick!) NA threw one of his hatchets at the thing, and hit it in the thigh. It did not seem to care. Going with discretion as the better part of valor, NA promptly mounted his bicycle and began to pedal far, far away. The thing pursued on all fours, leaping like a freakish cat creature. It easily kept up with NA, who was going...18 miles an hour? More, I believe.

The thing was catching up when NA reached a highway. This is where the epicness comes in.

NA pedaled as fast as he could across the highway until he reached the metal divider in between the two lanes. In a fairly amazing athletics/acrobatics roll, he jumped off the bike and, in the same motion, vaulted over the divider and landed on the ground on the other side. He then drew his other hatchet, and planned to leap up and attack the thing as it came over. However, the creature leaped ten feet farther than he expected, leaving him cornered, lying on his back, and about to be torn to pieces by a thing with claws. However, he managed to get up and fight the thing off for two rounds--and that's all it took.

An eighteen-wheeler came barrelling down the highway towards the two. NA then kicked the zombie in the face, stunning it. He turned around, and vaulted back over the divider. As he did this, the eighteen wheeler (as it tried to stop) screeched, and fishtailed. The tail end of the truck swung all the way around and sandwiched the zombie between truck and divider, killing it and barely missing NA.

NA was an epic character overall, who later went on to make a normal zombie's head explode with one blow of a baseball bat. I miss that campaign...

Hal
2008-09-19, 10:26 PM
I wish I had stories like that. Most of my stories are more amusing than epic.

One time, our party stuck an animated candelabra in a box. We were going to give it to someone we hated, but the game collapsed shortly thereafter.

The other night, our party was trekking through the jungle. I decided to use my Hand of the Mage to throw triceratops dung at the back of the dwarven ranger's head. I don't think anyone at the table stopped laughing for about 5 minutes. Well, except the dwarf. And he was less amused when my Bluff check beat his Sense Motive check (to figure out who did it) by more than 20. FWIW, I used Prestidigitation to clean him up later.

Yeah, I need epic stories.

Lert, A.
2008-09-19, 10:54 PM
Well, there was this one Shadowrun campaign where my gang ended up in a hostile corporate takeover.

Literally.

By the end we had our own corp and were making a good profit. Then Ares crushed us.:smallfrown:

revolver kobold
2008-09-19, 11:25 PM
Our mid level party in a Forgotten Realms campaign has managed to get themselves stuck in Undermountain, and due to a botched Plane Shift attempt, we now have no idea where we are or how to get out. So we have been pretty much hacking and slashing our way through everything that hasn't been helpful to us.

We meet with up a mad Wizard (who claims that he is long time mates with Halastar), and against my characters constant protests, end up following him for a while, as he claims to have a way out of the current level we are in.

The way out is blocked by a rather large lava lake, with a bunch of fire elementals living inside it that attack anyone who tries to cross. So the Wizard has set up a catapult (he has taken ranks in siege engineer) to fling us all across the lake so fast that the elementals cant reach us.

Everything is going to plan, until the Orc fighter climbs aboard. Feeling a bit worried, he downs a potion of Remove Fear, then, a potion of Levitate. The catapult had been set up to throw us in a somewhat ballistic trajectory into a hidden passage in the roof. Under the effects of Levitate, the Orc didn't follow a ballistic arc. He flew very, very, very fast, right into the roof.

Having passed a reflex save, he was given the chance to make one action to try and save himself. He chose to use a Feather Token - Anchor. An Orc holding an anchor, flying at about 400 feet a second into a solid stone wall. Best. Death. Ever.

SeeKay
2008-09-20, 12:22 AM
Ahhh. The famous Werewolf game. Most of the players were dogs except 2 of us (Storyteller rule: Majority wolves and only changelings), I was the were crow and the person behind this story was the were tiger. We were in a Moot that just got attacked by some spider things. I headed to the treetops to snipe while the rest of the party assisted the NPC werewolves, that is, except the were tiger.

Since he was made unwelcome in the Moot, he didn't want to help them take down one, he wanted to take one out by himself. These spider things are tough and it even says that no one survives solo against one in the flavor text describing one. I can't remember exactly how initiative worked, but he and the bug had simultaneous actions.

For those that have never played a World of Darkness game, there are no hit points, there are damage levels. Most PC's only have about 5-8 damage levels total while monsters (and this one especially) can have lots more. Depending on your stats, you can "soak" damage (ie: absorb the blow and not be hurt), but every time you take a few wounds, your ability to soak (and other things) drops. That being said, combat begins...

The other bugs are ripping into the camp and giving out wounds around 6 levels when they hit. They took hits in the 8-wound ball park and kept swinging with no problems.

Then the bug and tiger went. The bug hit for the maximum of the tiger's ability to soak (I think 7, it's been a while). Somehow, he makes every soak roll and delivers a huge blow back (only 2 levels unsoaked, though). The next round, they again exchange massive hits. This time the bug hit for more than the tiger could soak. Again, he makes his max soak roll and takes only 2 wounds but delivers 6 more levels of unsoaked wounds.

Both of them kind of staggered, they enter the third round. In the main battle, we've managed to seriously wound one of the bugs and a second was taking some good hits as well. Then these two swung and again delivered big hits. Again, the tiger soaks all of the damage (we at the table were starting to ask if we could have him roll our soaks for this fight). Again the bug takes a few wounds.

By this time we've managed to drop one bug and had the other 2 crippled. The tiger was starting to spend his rage to keep his combat stats up (and the bug was spending his as well, but the Storyteller didn't say that until after the fight) and again both of them delivered huge hits. The Tiger (now with a Teller ordered dice change) again makes his soak while the bug blows all of his.

Finally we drop the last 2 bugs. Next round we'll be able to move to the other battle and aid the tiger. Again the tiger and bug exchange huge blows and again the bug sucks up a few wounds but this time, so does the tiger. After the damage, he was one wound away from dying.

In a move of desperation, he blows all he can. If he doesn't kill it, he'll be unconscious, human, and one hit away from death. Somehow the bug misses and he hits a maximum blow. The bug botches it's soak roll and dies. All of us now gathered around see him drop this thing. The player then says, "I turn to the crowd and say 'And that's why you all are inferior to me.'" He then passes straight out.

After the battle, the Storyteller informs us just how tough these things really were and that he was amazed that a level 2 even matched up. I will note that the next session he had a GM screen.

Knaight
2008-09-20, 12:25 AM
While none of mine were particularly impressive, we once had a player in a fudge campaign, who was in a fight with what was basically a reptillian humanoid that breathed fire, called a Lizkel, who was an accomplished staff fighter. So the guy takes his frying pan that he mastered the art of throwing(he kept it after taking out an elf cavalier with a lucky throw after finding it in the saddlebags of one of his buddies), throws at the celing, grabs the staff, the frying pan hits the lizkel, and then he blows a fudge point to make a perfect stab right into the fire gland of the guys throat. Worth noting is that attack roll translates to damage in fudge, so he cleaned up. At this point fire starts spraying out of the lizkels neck, and the character just calmly holds the swords in the flame, then timing it perfectly stabs it down the lizkels throat to cool it while blocking the flames with the frying pan. He came out of this one with a dead lizkel, a slightly damaged frying pan, and a sword that retained heat exceptionally well and stayed sharp because of it(lizkel intestines and such have fluids in them that seeped into the metal a bit, which allow for this).

Later, in a different campaign with a different player, this dragon made out of some dark material thats being empowered by this sickly orange mist is terrorizing the party. The dragon is being controlled(and for that matter created by) a priest who was causing the orange mist, after an incident involving a portal to the dark world(there were a few of these, not the least of which someone pulling a gun and firing a bunch of bullets in, that came back as growing cannonballs), and on of the characters has a phoenix, who's fire was being held back. So the guy in the mecha(its a universe hopping game) shoots two grappling hooks into the dragons nostrils, around a tree, pinning it down. The winged, angelic guy then times the dragon suddenly recoiling and bending the tree so as to be launched into the air, in the wrong direction, and fire a bunch of arrows with impunity to counter attack while flying backwards uncontrolled. Aimed at where the wing joints that connect to the main body are going to be the instant the dragon gets yanked by the nose. The dragon drops, the priest drops out of the dragon when it hits the floor, and the character with the phoenix then blasts the priest with a blast of semi-divine fire, vaporizing him, as well as getting rid of a lot of the orange mist. At which point the phoenix, who was having his fire held in by the orange mist, then attacks the dragon, hurling insults the entire way that had the whole group laughing (the phoenix was at times a comic relief character, a character who had lived for thousands of years, but was kind of stupid and naive, and so got tricked by a cart dealership, and any number of other humorous stories that the group loved, in general a great personality.).

PaladinBoy
2008-09-20, 06:40 AM
The second to last encounter in our Eberron campaign comes to mind.

See, we'd been assigned to retrieve one of our employer's agents from a Riedran port city. We knew the agent was capable of teleportation, so our plan was simple: Fly over the city, and wait for him to show up. Of course it wasn't that simple... as we flew over, a Riedran wilder showed up. Our warblade and my character, the captain, immediately advanced to strike at close range; our warmage and druid struck from farther away.

Then it was the wilder's turn. He proceeded to unleash a blast of sonic energy which shattered the entire main deck of the ship. Over a 30 ft. radius, and more than 90 damage; it had to go through a layer of adamantine and a layer of wood. The warmage teleported (as an immediate action) behind a armored bulkhead and was STILL damaged. If my character hadn't had energy immunity(sonic) active, she would have died instantly.

So the battle continued, one deck lower. We continued to beat on the wilder, but then his turn came around again. This time, he chose a giant blast of fire; the rules for damage type and objects saved our second deck (barely) but my character didn't have fire immunity, just fire resistance 30. I had 1 hp left; I was lucky that the warblade took out the wilder that turn.

So, of course, I decide that my character is quite angry at nearly being killed and having such huge damage done to her ship. And the agent appeared in our cargo hold during the fight, so we didn't need the city anymore. I cast the listening coin spell, and tell the druid to take his dragonhawk animal companion and put the transmitting coin through the window of the city leader's office, as best he can find it. I then say into the listening coin, "One of your people just tried to destroy my ship and nearly killed me in the process. Observe the consequences." (I adapted that from a book; does anyone know which book?)

We then proceeded to use spells like fimbulwinter, blizzard and control weather to turn the city into an icy, lifeless wasteland.

Saph
2008-09-20, 07:01 AM
My 'most awesome' story's more of a team effort than a solo thing. But it was still cool enough for me to remember it perfectly. :)

D&D 3.5 game. We were 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.

The temple we'd been working through was in some demiplane with a one-way entrance, so our main goal by the time we reached the top floor was just to get out of there. The dracolich who ran the place agreed, on condition that three out of the five party members would be left behind to be sacrificed. We said no, the battle kicked off.

It started okay for our team but started to go downhill as soon as the dracolich closed to melee range and started hitting with its full attacks. (I wish people would pay more attention to me. I told everyone before the battle "Don't go toe-to-toe with the dragon, it'll kill you, stay at a distance, okay?". Did they listen? Nooo . . .) 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. The character I was playing at the time was a sun elf enchantress wizard/loremaster who really didn't like fights but kept on getting dragged into them. She wasn't very strong, was nervous in battles, had very few offensive spells and even fewer that worked on undead, but in her adventuring career she'd encountered a lot of dragons and had learned a bit about what worked against them and what didn't.

So I cast two greater mirror image spells and kept running. Each round I'd fly out of the dracolich's melee range, taking an AoO in the process, and take a shot at the dracolich with my orb of force wand, the only effective weapon I had. 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. In between the fighting 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. Uh oh. I've now got nothing that can hurt the dracolich but my rapier, which I barely know how to use. 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, fighter, and evoker.* "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 sickening 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, and even a year or more later, we've never topped it. I really thought my character was going to die. Having it turned around at the last minute was incredibly cool.

- Saph

only1doug
2008-09-20, 07:10 AM
Setting: (mostly) Forgotten Realms;

Location: Soulforged Factory (exactly like warforged, re-specified for area).

Villagers are being kidnapped and their souls inserted into golem bodies creating soulforged, these soulforged are then indoctrinated to follow orders of the boss golem.
we are investigating the complex because this is where the Rod of Dark Fate (artifact: controls Drow, acts as a Phylactory for Drow Lich, Contains 2 warring intellects 1 good, 1 evil) was made and thus may tell us how to destroy it. A secondary goal is to stop the sacrifice of villagers in the soul forge process.

we are all disguised as soulforged via various methods (mainly Hat of Disguise) and have got to the library.

The Aasamiir rogue slight of hands the keys to restricted area from the librarian then changes disguise to emulate librarian while others distracted it (disguise total 10 after modifiers).
i spotted (roll of natural 20) that his disguise wasn't very good and helped him re-disguise better (rolled a 2 on my assist, total 10, yay!) he redisguised (total roll after modifiers was 8 (+my +2) 10) i failed my spot check and thought we'd cracked it.

the rogue walked straight past the guard like he was the librarian and it failed its check, he slight of handed the keys to try them all and make it look like he only used the correct one.

Searching the restricted area he eventually found the info we needed and pocketed it.

while he was searching some more guards entered and spoke to the librarian about the commotion on the surface where some flesh forms had attacked the escorts of some new recruits (yup, that was us).

Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Upon exiting the rogue found that as he rounded the shelves there were a group of guards talking to the librarian and looking right toward him. so he timed his turn around the corner and made a hide check as he activated his vanishing cloak. to the guard behind him he turned the corner, the guard in front never saw anything. The rogue then sneaked up to the librarian, returned the keys (slight of hand) and moved away before re-appearing in his original disguise.

Liliedhe
2008-09-20, 07:12 AM
Hm... Let's see.:smallconfused:

In Shadowrun:

A Yakuza Boss with a grudge on the party was holding a contact of the runners as hostages in an abandoned nightclub. Using the only change to surprise her, we go in through the sewers and the cellar. Stupidly, we managed to get pinned in the exit from the cellar, but, that's a good thing because the Yak's bodyguards are freaking Troll Ki Adepts - and they don't fit into the entrance. So, both sides snipe at each other, one of the trolls gets pasted by our mage, another is shot. At that point, the Yak decides she's had enough and tosses a grenade into the stairwell.

Cue the Elven Jane of all trades, who has a huge bone to pick with the Yak, too, catching the grenade, flinging it out at the Yak, jumping after it while everyone else dives for cover, evading most of the explosion while the Yak goes down, and, when she comes up again, the first thing she sees is the elf's foot, colliding with her jaw. That's one Yak we won't have to worry about anymore...^^

Ok, not as spectacular as some of the other stories, but it was quite cool. *G*

Heliomance
2008-09-20, 08:42 AM
Our DM does random encounters in this way. He rolls a d8. if it's an 8, we get a random encounter. He then rolls again, and rerolls every 8 he gets. Each 8 means the encounter is more significant. Once he runs out of 8s, he rerolls every 7 or 1. Multiple 7s make the encounter harder and harder, multiple 1s make it more and more benign. I think what he rolled on this occasion was 8 8 7 7 7. We were level 6, leading an army. We ran into an army of neverdead - homebrewed monsters with fast healing stupid, the ability to rip your arm off if they hit with two attacks, and the ability to go down to around -1000 HP without dying. They were led by three neverdead elders, each CR 20. One of our NPC allies offers to teleport us out of there, but he can't manage the whole army, just our party. The army would be slaughtered. Our leader, a dwarf fighter, decides he's not prepared to do that, and steps to the head of the army, meaning to lead the charge into battle. Cue every member of the party going "If you're going up, I'll stand by you." We were pretty certain it would be a TPK, but it seemed the right thing to do. We lead the charge. We manage to meet one of the elders. Ingvar, the fighter wins initiative, and attacks with his axe. He rolls. He frowns, and rolls again. And again. We ask him what he got and he shushes us. He rolls again. Then he starts rolling the damage dice. He rolls a few more times, frowns, and gets a calculator, paper and pen out. He shushes us every time we ask what's happening. Finally, he reads the total amount of damage - four thousand, four hundred and sixty four. The neverdead elder dropped. We later worked out the odds of that roll, and it came out as something like one in eight million.

Magnvo
2008-09-20, 09:34 AM
Three other friends and I were playing a d20 variant system that one of them had made which was made with mecha battles in mind. Each stat was renamed and retooled and all of the action takes place inside your mechs because, well, the game wasn't made to work with anything else. Your HP was your mech's durability, your AC was the mech's defense (plus some other stuff based on your stats), and so on.

We were playing a campaign set in the Universal Century of the Gundam metaverse and we all made up the 16th Mobile Suit team attached to the California Task Force, used by the Earth Federation to retake California from the Principality of Zeon. It was the final encounter, on December 15th UC 0079, where our MS team was in San Francisco, I believe, and fighting against an ace Zeon pilot. I was the pilot of one of these little numbers (http://mahq.net/mecha/gundam/08thmsteam/rx-79g.htm), as were the DM's character and another person's character. Our fourth guy was our Sonar man.

To give a sense of scale, his durability was in the hundreds. Even with our mass-produced Gundams, our durability was 65. His defense? One point higher than any of the three pilots could hit in melee, and that's where the ace had us. Taking a page from Space Above and Beyond, this ace was not only incredibly skilled but he had "Abandon All Hope" written in red letters on the chest. Needless to say, we all had to reinforce our pants when Zeon von Richthofen (what we'd nicknamed him. Also a nod to SAaB).

I was his first meal of the battle because everyone else was hanging back with heavy weapons. Drawing my beam saber and attempting to jump at him (he was on top of a small building. Yes, yes, high ground and all that), I miss my attack roll and he vaults into the air with his own heat saber drawn and comes down on top of me, dealing 62 damage in a single hit (it crit) and almost completely destroying my mech. I reasoned that he came down at such an angle that allowed him to stab down through the Gundam's neck but miraculously not hit anything. Anyway, he goes off and picks our most danger-prone team member (ironically, the DMPC) to fight.

The DMPC's gun jams three times in a row and Zeon von Richthofen slams him into a building and shoots off the head, ruining primary camera control and destroying his comm. set, which had been a running gag since the start of the campaign. Our next person goes against him, gets royally trounced but still manages to deal a hit.

Mustering what I could and yelling hotblooded phrases in-character (such as "this saber of mine will pierce through the heavens", "this burning saber of mine tells me to defeat you", "take my pain, my anger, and all of my sorrow", etc.), we exchanged some blows where I was unable to hit him and where he didn't hit me. Combat began to drag on and I knew my luck was running out.

Convinced I was going to die that next round, I tried to put an extra amount of spin on my d20. It came up... natural 20. Automatic hit. The DM tells me to roll to confirm, I do so, and get another natural 20. He tells me to roll my damage, which was 5d12 and I rolled a 43 for a total of 129 points of damage.

Yelling "Just who the hell do you think I am!?!", I swing a mighty cleave and bisect Zeon von Richthofen about the cockpit and make his reactor start going wanky. I passed my Reflex save to gtfo, the guy who'd lost his head was not so lucky. When Zeke von Richthofen went up, so did he and my awesome kill was mitigated by the fact we'd lost someone who would probably trip on his own feet and land in a combine.

So the campaign went down in memory where I managed to kill a PC and get away with it (I have a reputation in my group for playing characters who have no qualms about killing other PCs if they're just plain stupid or incredibly annoying. I also do so with the DM's permission but that little revelation hasn't gotten out yet. I hope none of the people in my group read this >_>).

Ascension
2008-09-20, 10:00 AM
^ This, this is awesome.

I'm not even going to bother sharing the story I was about to tell, since there's no way I could follow that up.

Incidentally, are those variant rules available online anywhere?

AslanCross
2008-09-20, 10:14 AM
Wow. OP's post is indeed filled with awesome. The image of a huge Native American warrior furiously pedaling a bicycle is just hilarious, though. It reminds me of something out of Looney Tunes.

Anyway, one from this week's session:

The PCs were on their way to quell a potential uprising led by an evil genius noble who ruled a march on the border between Cormyr and Sembia (Forgotten Realms). They had to trudge through some swampland from the coast to get to the Marquis's castle and ran into a black dragon.

They had their hands full with the dragon already, as they were rolling badly on their reflex saves against its breath (and they didn't bother to heal up, for some reason). Then, out of the swamp, came a Drowned. It's an undead creature from MM3 that radiates an aura that basically begins to drown you even if you're on land. As the dragon was beating down on the paladin and the wizard (almost killed the wizard twice by Power Diving him), the drowned was moving closer, smothering the ranger and the rogue with its aura. Both failed their CON checks and began to drown.

The last party member, a meek, mild-mannered female cleric of Kelemvor (anti-undead god of death, for those unfamiliar), found that she had to destroy the drowned before everyone failed their CON checks and drowned. (she usually healbots even if everyone tells her she can actually fight well if she tried. Part of her RPing, I guess.) Anyway, she turns undead (we use the Complete Divine variant that simply deals damage equal to 1d6 per cleric level), severely weakening the drowned. The wizard follows up with an orb of cold, shattering off about half the zombie's body. It continues trying to advance on them but falls into some quicksand. The cleric, thinking quickly, blasts it with searing light. Needless to say, the sight of glowing, frozen zombie shards peppering the area in a blast of positive energy was very encouraging to the party. I might add it's the first time she killed anything in the entire campaign.

Of course they're still trying to kill the dragon, which has been moving too fast for them to keep up with. The newly revitalized rogue/swordsage wants to use her shadow garrote to take it out. Waiting to see if they can pull it off next session.

rankrath
2008-09-20, 10:16 AM
The first encounter of a new campaign, level 1 PC's investigating the murder of a group of woodsmen. One of the PC's, a barbarian wielding a Greatsword and with 18 STR finds a set of tracks leading away from the scene of the murders and follows them, alone. The tracks lead to a door in the side of the a hill, which the barbarian proceeds to smash in with one hit. Beyond the door an ogre was taking a nap, and gets up, ready to turn the barbarian into a smudge on the wall. I think you can all see where this is going, the barbarian won initiative and proceeded to crit for max damage. 32 damage, dropping the ogre in one hit. The classic part of this story is that immediately following this, the rest of the PC's arrive, and all proceed to roll ones on their spot checks. "hey, look an ogre!" became a running joke.

Fri
2008-09-20, 10:35 AM
Saph's and Magnvo's are particularly awesome. The OP's also awesome, especially because it had huge native american pedaling a bicycle in a highway as fast as he can and chased by a zombie.

But my personal favourite would be Saph's

It's not only awesome. It's friggin cinematic. I can imagine the scene, where they circle each other, magic duel, with the villain spouting threat to the hopeless protagonist...

The closest thing I have to CMoA was this time when I DM-ed a Star Wars RPG

As usual, I started the game in a tavern. A Player played this cowardly little kel dorian rogue that's very jittery and want to leave the planet for unknown reason.

So the bad guy came. A huge lizardman (forgot the race name) followed by a squad of scout droid. Force Mindscrew failed and battle ensues.

As the jedis hacked and crushed away the droids and the soldier guy went blasting with his blaster rifle, the keldorian rogue jumped behind the counter and trembled there.

Then, still cowering, he raised his blaster pistol above the counter and made a shot from behind the cover.

He hit the lizard guy. Critical Hit, some lucky shot feat, maybe sneak attack (I forgot the crunches).

The point is, he one shotted the mid boss character that I want to use as a recurring antagonist.

The droids were remote controlled, so they all went dead.

That's on the first round of the battle, just in the first encounter of the game.

Doresain
2008-09-20, 03:20 PM
the group is about level 6 in an Eberron setting...we had been following this gnome that stole a royal Cyrean object that we intended to return to the prince, seeing as how we worked for what remained of the Cyrean government...we tracked him down to a cave and fell into one of the most obvious traps ever...skipping ahead, the party falls into a pit that turns out to be a jail cell...the slot on the door opens up and a level 10 cleric decides to flame strike us...we all save against it, take some damage and the elf ranger gets pissed...slot opens again, elf sends an arrow through it, cleric dies...the DM was using death threat rules, and said ranger managed to role three nat 20s in a row...

he managed to do this to a level 7 necromancer earlier in the campaign, as well as a rather powerful naga and mind flayer in this same cave...

Calinero
2008-09-20, 03:44 PM
I agree that, though almost all of these stories are pretty epic, Saph's is still my favorite. So few people roleplay well with their villains during a fight. That was pretty cool.

AslanCross
2008-09-21, 04:54 PM
My PCs, in the fight before the black dragon battle, the party had to deal with a pirate raid on their ship.

The wizard was in the spotlight for most of the battle, counterspelling the pirates' fireball barrage and incinerating most of the deck crew with his own. His Crowning Moment of Awesome, however, was when the pirate ship came around to ram their vessel.

The ramming jolted the ship violently, putting the PCs at a disadvantage. The boarding party began running toward the PC ship, but the wizard was able to take a turn before the pirates got to even move.

<Wizard> Are they within the range of black tentacles?
<Me> Yes.
<Wizard> I cast black tentacles.
<Me> Huge, rubbery tentacles sprout out of the pirate ship's deck, grabbing the buccaneers. *rolls grapple checks*
...Every single pirate grunt is grappled. Their wizard is too.

(The tentacles slowly choked the life out of each of them.)

Now the pirates had a sniper in their crows' nest who was taking potshots at everyone on the deck, and no one was willing to risk climbing the rigging that high. What's worse, is that the pirate gunner, a hobgoblin dual-wielding katars, was bearing down on the wizard and overall hurting him badly.

Knowing that the sniper needed to be taken out, the wizard was able to get out one very well-placed spell: baleful transposition. I ruled that the two ships were as connected as they could ever be, so the spell worked. The wizard switched places with the sniper.

Rewind a bit: The wizard had the party paladin beside him, fighting with the hobgoblin warblade over the wizard's head. (Paladin was enlarged.)

So the sniper is now beside the paladin.

She looks up sheepishly and vainly tries to fight with her longsword, but the paladin cuts her down easily.

(The hobgoblin later gets thrown off the deck by the ranger/swordsage.)

By the end of the encounter, the wizard had killed:
-12 pirate grunts
-the pirate mage

He also:
-helped kill the sniper
-polymorphed the pirate captain into a snail.

If anyone still doubts as to whether Wizards are overpowered... <_< It was all in good fun, though. Everyone enjoyed the battle.

Lycan 01
2008-09-21, 05:59 PM
Yesterday, my CoC party took a detour to Silent Hill for our new campaign. (I know, lame... But I put a TON of work into it, and they had fun! So totally worth it, IMO...)

Anyway, over the course of the first session, these things occured:

-A large African American Iraq War vet attempted to hide in a trash can in order to avoid being seen by two Lying Figures (tortured souls trapped in straight jackets of their own flesh - they spit acid) as he attempted to make his way to a grocery store. He succeeded his Hide roll - but they both succeeded their Spot rolls in the next round. So they both staggered over and began to spit acid on his trash can. As the metal began to melt around him, he realized that he'd screwed up. But then, out of nowhere, his large Texan war-buddy sprinted out of nowhere, stabbed one of the creatures to get it to turn around, and then whipped around it and pulled the lid off the trash can. Amazingly, they both managed to avoid the waves of acid hurled in their direction.

In fact, a few turns later, the Texan rolled a crit on his knife attack. I rulled that he grabbed one of the Lying Figures from behind, jabbed his blade into the base of its skull, and dragged the knife all the way down its body, effectively gutting and/or de-spining the thing.


-One player was getting strangled by a monster I made up while driving a cop car he and 2 other players had hot-wired. Those three players had to leave within 5 minutes of then, so we had to figure out something to end the session for them - fast. I rolled a strength roll on the resistance table for him, and he somehow managed to weasel his way out of the grip of the creature's strangling tongue. He then rolled a critical (1/5 of his skill) on his Drive Auto roll.

I ruled that he floored it and then hit the breaks. The creature, which was perched on the hood, went airborn. It then smashed against a telephone pole, and actually bent around it. The creature slid to the ground... and then started to get back up. He did another Drive Auto check, and I ruled that he just swerved onto another road and made it to the town's exit.

They drove out of the town and spent 5 minutes driving forward into the fog, only to drive past the "Welcome to Silent Hill" sign yet again. I'm evil...


-One player, who'd been complaining about being useless (Not my fault she wanted to be a gothic female artist...), decided to try and be helpful in their next encounter. Guess who their next encounter was?

Pyramid Head.

She said she wanted to try and grapple him. I stared a her, as did everyone else. The Texan and an ex-gangster had both opened fire with .38 and .45 handguns, and the bullets were barely scratching him. And she wanted to grapple with him. Well, she rolled... and succeeded. I told her to roll again... and she failed. I said she grabbed onto him, only to be pushed away seconds later.

Her next turn? She tried again... and succeeded. Her second roll? A success. I felt kinda bad for her, and I wanted her to feel useful... So I said that she jumped through the air and grabbed him by the arm, actually causing him to drop his Great Blade.

The catch? He hurled her 20-30 feet away, resulting in a loss of 4 HP and a dislocated shoulder. She then began to complain about being the only one who ever got hurt... >.< There's just no pleasing some people...



So yeah... Maybe not Crowning Moments of Awesomness, but I wanted to write something relatively cool... :smalltongue:

Colmarr
2008-09-22, 01:26 AM
Saph's story

Epic, simply for the fact that a Loremaster and a Bard were the all-conquering heroes :smallbiggrin:

Oddly enough, all of my experience with epic moments is with the bad guys (including killing 2 PCs in one encounter).

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2008-09-22, 02:04 AM
I was playing in a Marvel heroes RPG with random powers, no idea what version but my character had some sort of evolution ability. He could evolve into a floating supermind with powerful noncombat mental abilities, or de-evolve into a tough neanderthal form with increased physical attributes. Second session the characters are all driving out to help at some kind of science facility that's under attack, and we all decide to buff up before we get there.

Me: "I'll go into my neanderthal form." GM: "Aren't you the one driving?" He lost all knowledge of what the van even was, and got so big that he ripped off the steering wheel and burst through the floorboard. He saw that he was moving forward and that the ground going by under his feet, and instinctively tried running to keep up with it. We managed to show up before the place was leveled with a battle cry of "Yabba dabba doo!"

That's the only part of that entire campaign that I remember.

Swordguy
2008-09-22, 02:23 AM
In an L5R 3e campaign that is currently on hiatus, I'm playing a Matsu Berserker - Matsu Katsumi - a melee-only character that, while able to do tremendous damage in melee (seriously - she averages out to 80-90 wounds per attack, when most PCs do 20-30 and most everything has 60hp tops) is a serious glass cannon. She's really melee-only: no ranged weapons on the character whatsoever, and no skill at all with any sort of throwing weapon. If she can't get into melee, she's pretty useless. She even has a Disadvantage that limits her ability to use a bow.

(Fluff note: In L5R, "Jigoku" is equivalent to "hell" - the literal translation is "the afterlife" but it's got negative connotations in the setting.)

So, the city in which we act as magistrates has been infiltrated by an evil, blood-magic wielding Clan (the Spider) under our dumbass noses. After nine months (and a year of real-time) of their seeding the city with their forces, they spring their revolution and start raping, killing, and looting their way across our beloved city, not necessarily in that order. We wake from a sound slumber to combat them, entering into a four game session extended combat.

By the end of this, we've engaged the BBEG (a blood magic-mutated uber-samurai) and his retinue. The rest of the party goes after him while Katsumi mops up the three-critter retinue (with 2 attacks per round and an interrupt attack that goes off when someone attacks me, the three are all dead before they've had a chance to make an attack roll). I turn around to see Mr. BBEG with three of the five party members strewn about him in varying states of "heavily wounded and unconsciousness", one PC cowering in a "castle of water" that he cast around himself, and with the last party member with his ancestral weapon broken on the ground.

BBEG recognizes Katsumi by reputation and pops wings via a spell and takes to the sky. He's about 50' up and starts monologuing while I stand around like a chump on the ground wondering exactly how the heck I'm going to go after this guy when I have no ranged weapons. Then I remember: with enough force behind it, anything is a ranged weapon. I blow a point of Void (kind of like Action Points) to give myself a single "virtual rank" in the "Thrown Weapons" skill (for dice to explode in this game, you must have ranks or virtual ranks in the skill), and burn the rest of my Void Point to perform "a single action not generally otherwise allowable by the rules."

Katsumi hefts her no-dachi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodachi) like a spear, shouts "From Jigoku's heart, I stab at thee!", and launches her ancestral weapon skyward.

BBEG has a TN to be hit of 80, and 120 wounds.

Rolling 5 d10 and keeping 4 of them (10's explode) against a TN of 80. Four dice roll 10s. Then 3 rolled 10s. Final check result? 81. A hit.

GM tells me to grab my wife's dice and use hers. I shrug and grab her dice.

Damage check. GM rules that the no-dachi thrown does damage as a thrown spear. After some math (and advantage that adds a LOT to damage) I'm rolling 10 dice and keeping 5. 7 dice roll 10's. Then 5 dice roll 10's (20 per die so far). Then all five of those dice roll 6 or above. Final damage result? 142!

So, the BBEG, mid-speech against a melee-only character stuck on the ground 50' below him, is suddenly struck through the heart by a flying 2-handed sword and plummets, stone dead, to the ground below, ending the battle and the war.

My sword even rolled a 10 on the "GM's feeling vindictive" check result (needed a 10 on a d10) to not be broken when it hit the ground. :smallcool:

Lycan 01
2008-09-22, 03:11 PM
^ That was just beautiful to imagine... :smallamused:

Doomsy
2008-09-22, 08:24 PM
In an L5R 3e campaign that is currently on hiatus, I'm playing a Matsu Berserker - Matsu Katsumi - a melee-only character that, while able to do tremendous damage in melee (seriously - she averages out to 80-90 wounds per attack, when most PCs do 20-30 and most everything has 60hp tops) is a serious glass cannon. She's really melee-only: no ranged weapons on the character whatsoever, and no skill at all with any sort of throwing weapon. If she can't get into melee, she's pretty useless. She even has a Disadvantage that limits her ability to use a bow.

(Fluff note: In L5R, "Jigoku" is equivalent to "hell" - the literal translation is "the afterlife" but it's got negative connotations in the setting.)

So, the city in which we act as magistrates has been infiltrated by an evil, blood-magic wielding Clan (the Spider) under our dumbass noses. After nine months (and a year of real-time) of their seeding the city with their forces, they spring their revolution and start raping, killing, and looting their way across our beloved city, not necessarily in that order. We wake from a sound slumber to combat them, entering into a four game session extended combat.

By the end of this, we've engaged the BBEG (a blood magic-mutated uber-samurai) and his retinue. The rest of the party goes after him while Katsumi mops up the three-critter retinue (with 2 attacks per round and an interrupt attack that goes off when someone attacks me, the three are all dead before they've had a chance to make an attack roll). I turn around to see Mr. BBEG with three of the five party members strewn about him in varying states of "heavily wounded and unconsciousness", one PC cowering in a "castle of water" that he cast around himself, and with the last party member with his ancestral weapon broken on the ground.

BBEG recognizes Katsumi by reputation and pops wings via a spell and takes to the sky. He's about 50' up and starts monologuing while I stand around like a chump on the ground wondering exactly how the heck I'm going to go after this guy when I have no ranged weapons. Then I remember: with enough force behind it, anything is a ranged weapon. I blow a point of Void (kind of like Action Points) to give myself a single "virtual rank" in the "Thrown Weapons" skill (for dice to explode in this game, you must have ranks or virtual ranks in the skill), and burn the rest of my Void Point to perform "a single action not generally otherwise allowable by the rules."

Katsumi hefts her no-dachi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodachi) like a spear, shouts "From Jigoku's heart, I stab at thee!", and launches her ancestral weapon skyward.

BBEG has a TN to be hit of 80, and 120 wounds.

Rolling 5 d10 and keeping 4 of them (10's explode) against a TN of 80. Four dice roll 10s. Then 3 rolled 10s. Final check result? 81. A hit.

GM tells me to grab my wife's dice and use hers. I shrug and grab her dice.

Damage check. GM rules that the no-dachi thrown does damage as a thrown spear. After some math (and advantage that adds a LOT to damage) I'm rolling 10 dice and keeping 5. 7 dice roll 10's. Then 5 dice roll 10's (20 per die so far). Then all five of those dice roll 6 or above. Final damage result? 142!

So, the BBEG, mid-speech against a melee-only character stuck on the ground 50' below him, is suddenly struck through the heart by a flying 2-handed sword and plummets, stone dead, to the ground below, ending the battle and the war.

My sword even rolled a 10 on the "GM's feeling vindictive" check result (needed a 10 on a d10) to not be broken when it hit the ground. :smallcool:

That is both epic and the GM was probably near tears if I am reading those rolls right.

Little_Rudo
2008-09-22, 09:26 PM
In my currently longest-running game, I'm playing a Gray Elf Cloistered Cleric. The setting is a homebrew world, and her deity is a Pelor-like god of a monotheistic, world-wide religion. She's a "divine healer", a nun who's a healing specialist and avoids harming others (no Vow of Nonviolence, though; I dislike feats that punish other characters for your own choices). During the game, we've gotten involved in a conspiracy within the religion that resulted in my nun being excommunicated from the church and blamed for the murder of a bishop, mechanically depriving her of her spells. She's found a bit of a loophole that lets her cast one spell per spell level, but mostly she's been neutered in effectiveness.

We recently came to a town. While talking with the local priest (news of her excommunication isn't very widespread yet), she was asked to examine a local pregnant woman who was pregnant and doing bad. Using a homebrewed ability that let her sense a person's health (undead in this world are almost non-existent and aren't linked to divine powers, so it's my trade-off for Turn Undead), she found that the baby was unwell and it was affecting the mother's health. After some discussion, the nun decided to perform a very, very rough Caesarean section. After letting the mother get drunk enough that she'd be able to endure it, the nun used a scalpel, a chalice that constantly filled with holy water (the purifying powers helped keep things relatively clean), some well-timed Cure X Wounds spells, high Heal checks and a very allowing DM, the nun managed to save the child (who's cord was wrapped around it's neck) and the mother, by using a C-Section in a low-tech, low-magic world.

Hey, pacifists don't get many Crowning Moments of Awesome, so I liked it!

Thurbane
2008-09-22, 09:53 PM
I was in a homebrew campaign where we had two rogues in the party - a particularly obnoxious, annoying shifter (Dante) and a halfling (Swampy).

During the campaign, the shifter got seperated from the group and came across a scene of unimaginable horror (involving cultist and sacrificing of abducted townsfolk - mainly children) while seperated form us, which pushed him to the brink of insanity. We met up back at the inn we were staying at. Him and the halfling were both in the bar when he returned.

Swampy had recently lost an arm in a trap, and hadn't had it regenerated yet, which left to the shifter mercilessly teasing him and calling him Stumpy. Anyway, Dante is at the bar, still smitten with horror, and asks the barman "Gimme something to knock me out!". The halfling can't resist - he creeps up behind him drawing his sap, and smacks the shifter across the back of the head with a sneak attack.

Here's the kicker - with no fudging, Swampy does EXCACTLY enough nonlethal damage (1 or 2 points off maximum) to knock Dante out cold (-1 HP). :smallbiggrin: The barman, who was none too fond of the shifter either, just raises one eyebrow. Swampy then asks for a hand to drag the unconscious Dante up to his room, which the barman gladly does.

Next morning, Dante wakes up with a very sore head, with all of us sniggering to ourselves over the cause of his pain. :smallsmile:

drengnikrafe
2008-09-22, 11:29 PM
I apologize to all of you who have heard this story one of the three (I think) other times I told it on these boards, but IMO it's the best story I have when it comes to 'awesomeness.' And, I don't have a lot of experience to draw from (only a few campaigns, most of which lasted a full one session).

So, for the purpose of this, there are only 3 important pieces of information for this, as far as set up.
-I was playing a 7th level blaster wizard (Give me a break, it was my second campaign).
-We were fighting against the Merfolk in a war, and had just defeated the boss.
-We were PTing Action Points as a houserule. We weren't using them (7th level, somewhere about 50 AP), so he allowed the use of more then one per action/round, ect.

My DM decides that, since we just killed the big, bad, wizard, Merfolk Wizard, all the merfolk went crazy, and attempted to rush towards the cave in which he was hoarded up (yay for scrying to find things), and which we had recently left. So, a few failed spot checks later, we notice an arrow as it passes by us. In fact, not only was there a gigantic squadron of archers above us (think us taking 30-some-odd damage when only 20's hit, at 1d6ish damage each), but 2 squads of 10 solider (being led by a warlord-type fighter for bonuses), a few bards, Electrical Circles that could launch 12d6 damage every 1d4 turns (there were 2 or 3), some minotars on Rhinos, and this and that other. A total of more then 200 enemies (I believe).

In any case, our party has almost no magic in it (me and a poorly made druid that isn't allowed to wild-shape). Round one, I abuse my action points to make sure I go first. Everyone is invisable. We go this way and that, and clear up small amounts of enemies. Round two, I use fireball, and destroy a circle of the lightning guys. Upon doing very poorly on rolling damage, my DM tells me there's a type of magic that allows you to max out the damage on a roll, and I can do it (as per a feat, which is accessable due to AP): Sudden Maximize Spell. So I apply the feat, and all of them die. More random attacking. Plus, a big group 'found' me, and I got hacked to pieces. Round three, I convince the Party Druid to rez me (Yay AP for supplying impromptu spell componants that cost masses of money), and come back as a Halfling (strength penalties force me to drop my quarterstaff).

Here's where things get fun. Fourth round, we're struggling to overcome them, and they're barely diminished. That's when I get an idea...
Me: Are there other metamagics I can apply to my spells?
DM: Quicken, Maximize, Empower, Expand, Silence, Still.
Me: :smallamused: ... Can I cast 2 fireballs (using 2 action points, since I ran out of spells), one quickened, maximized, empowered, expanded, and the other all of those, only not quickened?
DM: ... Sure?
We are talking big fireballs. 60 damage (30, if they made the save) to everything in 2 circles with a radius of 40 ft.

The rest of round 4 and 5 are light cleanup of the meager leftover forces.
Needless to say we leveled up. However, we also never touched that campaign again. One, because my DM decided he'd had enough of AP, so he banned them from all future campaigns (yay for PTing?), and two because the DM and the Bard (who was trying to be a healer... very poorly) had RL issues.

And, again, sorry if you've already heard that one, but... I just love it.

Lycan 01
2008-09-22, 11:54 PM
I've never heard that one, actually... XD

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-09-23, 03:15 PM
In AQ:Jaern (http://www.aquest.com/AQJAERNdownload.htm), the God of Emotions grants a spell called Audacious. It essentially stuns the enemy with no save for a number of rounds based on how surprising your next action is. Mooning is one round, 4 rounds is the highest(and I've never seen that happen). So, the party is getting beat on. Winning, but a lot of them are hurt, and half the enemy(started with 15, mix of casters and Gishes), is still up.
One player:I fireball the party. I think I'll be able to position it to hit everyone, but I'll also get the black-sword guy, too.
DM::smalleek:
Other player: Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.
DM::smallconfused:
First player: In that case, I can hit the whole party except him, and none of the enemy.
Party as a whole: We don't resist.
DM: Schwa?
Fireballer: I use my item to make it a healing Fireball, the party gets 29 DP back.
DM: Oh, you have an item that does that...It makes sense now. Okay, their round. They sit there going ":smallconfused:"

That ended up being a 3-round Audacious. He was fairly proud of himself.

Lycan 01
2008-09-23, 03:18 PM
:smallconfused: So... he nuked his comrades... to heal them?

Yeah, friendly fire don't work that way with my party. :smalltongue:

Swordguy
2008-09-23, 03:29 PM
That is both epic and the GM was probably near tears if I am reading those rolls right.

Not so much in tears from the rolls, but from the fact that he had explicitly designed the encounter so that after dealing with the retinue, I wouldn't be able to participate anymore.

Clearly, he hadn't thought his cunning plan all the way through.

This, by the way, is an example of my general response to situations where your character would be otherwise useless (like how people complain about not being useful all the time in D&D) - stop complaining about the rules, go be creative and make yourself useful. :smallcool:

Tyrrell
2008-09-23, 03:38 PM
In a 3.5 Ebberon game our party had tracked down an NPC who had a price on our heads. My changling PC with good bluff rolls, OK disguise rolls and a charm person spell talked him out all of the cash that he was going to use as a reward for those who killed our party by posing as an agent for his superior. We left the NPC with instructions to immediately report to his (murderous and unforgiving) superior to give an update on his progress.

Lycan 01
2008-09-23, 03:59 PM
^ Amen. During my last Call of Cthulhu session, one player kept complaining about how useless she was. So finally, she decided to try and do something important. Normally, this would be a crowning moment of awesomness. But when consider what she actually tried to do... Its a crowning moment of "WTF were you thinking?!"

What did she do that was so... not smart?


She tackled Pyramid Head.


Yes, thats right. In the very beginning of my Silent Hill campaign, she decides to try and grapple the semi-BBEG during his introduction scene.

She succeeds, and says she wants to break his neck.

ME: :smallconfused:
Her: C'mon, I have him in a headlock, right? :smallamused:
ME: Ahem. Do another Grapple roll to confirm... (I decided she needed like... 5 successes to break his neck.)
Her: *fails*
ME: You jump on Pyramid Head and try to get a grip on his head. He simply throws you off with his free hand...

A few rounds later...

Her: I try to grab him again.
ME: :smallconfused: Again? Okay...
Her: *rolls grapple roll. Succeeds* Yay!
ME: Er... roll again.
Her: *succeeds second roll* Yay! Do I break his neck?
ME: *losing patience* Er... no. You jump through the air, and grab onto his left arm. The sudden impact and your grip on his wrist cause him to release his Great Blade. The weapon clatters to the ground with a deafening clang.
Her: Hah hah! I'm awesome! *begins bragging in a very annoying manner*
ME: But in response to no longer being weighted down by the Great Blade, Pyramid Head hurls you body with his left arm. You soar 20 feet across the street, and hit the ground - hard. Roll 1d4 damage.
Her: What?! *rolls a 4*
ME: You dislocate your shoulder, and lose 4 HP.

She promptly exploded at me about it being unfair that she can't do anything, and she is the only one who gets hurt. (She twisted her character's ankle earlier on when she rolled a Fumble on a dropkick attempt...)


I tried to be nice, and the next thing I know she's flaunting her awesomeness about something I shouldn't have even allowed. So I decided to even the odds are make her pay a price...


Was I wrong to do so? :smallconfused:



Sorry to derail the thread... It would have been a crowning moment of awesomeness if she hadn't have been so dang whiney! >.<

Calinero
2008-09-23, 06:41 PM
No, I find that to be totally fair. I mean, you have to teach Cthulhu players that they can't go after everything and try to kill it. Let alone tackling freaking Pyramid Head. Lessons must sometimes be learned the hard way.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-09-23, 07:12 PM
I find a woman in Silent Hill fighting Pyramid Head slightly odd...I guess this was movie-version Pyramid Head?

Lycan 01
2008-09-23, 07:24 PM
Silent Hill 2 version, actually.


Most of the PCs are accidental or voluntary killers. Pyarmid Head is there to torture those who feel the need to be punished, a la Silent Hill 2.

The girl was in the group with a guy who's a former gang member. He was accidentally responsible for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a childhood friend of his. He killed the guys who did it, but he still feels responsible for what happened, especially since he had to listen to her screaming his name in hopes that he would help her, and then he had to watch her die when they slit her throat so she'd shut up.

(side note: making up that character's reason for being in Silent Hill was... interesting, to say the least...)

Anyway, the guy essentially got away with it, but the guilt eats away at him. Pyramid Head is there to fulfill the punishment he subconsciously thinks he deserves.

As previously stated, the girl was in his group, so when it came after him, the other people in the group got dragged into it...



I didn't just throw PH in there for fun. I thought this stuff through. :smalltongue:

Nerd-o-rama
2008-09-23, 07:27 PM
Aha. I thought Pyramid Head was more about, ahem, "frustration" than guilt, but it's been a while since I pretended to understand Silent Hill 2. That makes sense.

Lycan 01
2008-09-23, 07:31 PM
He's the physical embodiment of Torment. He can also represent "frustration," but mainly he's just there to punish people for their crimes. He's based on the town's executioners before the place became all evil and stuff...

He's in Silent Hill 5, so I figured it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to toss him in my little campaign... *shrug*

SliderDaFeral
2008-09-23, 09:52 PM
I'm working from memories over ten years old, so I apologize in advance for any sketchiness.

Crowning Moment of Awesome comes from a character not my own in an AD&D 2e version of Greyhawk. This campaign was dominated largely by a dwarven cleric of a homebrew smith god named Gradius, who oddly enough, saw Gradius as the One True God and spent an inordinate amount of time proselytizing, but I digress. The character of this moment was named Bock Grolschlager (guess the number of beer references and win a prize! :smalltongue:), and he specialized in bardiche. The party is fighting the Big Bad for the session, with Bock on NPC autopilot since his player is working. About half the party is down with the rest in dire straits when Bock's player arrives from work just as his turn in the initiative order comes up.

He rolls a crit, taking down the BB.

As he promptly proceeds to leave the session, he says, "My work here is done."

His player had a hot date, most likely.

As a bonus, here's a Crowning Moment of Fail from a Rifts game played on IRC. This player was a homebrewed Jedi Knight OCC (occupational character class) named Darth Utinni (irony!). As the PC pick-up group met in the wastelands, for some reason the Headhunter distrusted him and drew his laser pistol. Force Mindscrew fails. Utinni tries again, using up all his available combat actions for the round... and fails again. The Jedi can only watch as the Headhunter drills him once in the head, killing him instantly.

Lert, A.
2008-09-24, 01:44 AM
Hearing the experience of the thrown sword turned spear reminded me of a spear story of my own.

It was a science fiction setting that I was DMing. The party consisted of six members, one of them the indomitable warrior Xolandar (he was just that smart). The warrior class was similar to the D&D barbarian, one change being to the berserker ability, which gave a half bonus to all saves instead of a bonus to Con. Xolandar was also of a race which was similar in many respects to a feral Halfling..

So we begin.

My intention was to attack the party with hordes of mooks, grinding down and eventually capturing the party. As the battle begins, Taliew the party sneak takes down a three grunts with a tossed grenade before taking out a lieutenant with a sneak attack that maxed out damage. Unfortunately, he falls as soon as the grunts get their turn, as well as the ex-mercenary expert gunman.

Xolandar is battling three grunts in a corner of the room, holding them off while the medic attempts to revive the merc, the other two party members covering her. He begins to laugh in a Goofy-esque manner - Intelligence was his dump stat after all - as all three continue to miss their attack rolls, which they should have made, naturally.

He begins to make Intimidate checks on the grunts that are attacking the rest of the party. Charisma was not a dump stat for Xolander. The mooks are demoralized, taking penalties to their attacks, and slowly moving away from the demented midget. He then proceeds to break down the morale of the rest of the attackers.

Then the BBEG enters the room from a side door, being evacuated by his elite guard to the shuttle bay. This was to be the players’ first introduction to the evil mastermind. The master disappears behind the armored door, leaving half his guard to bolster the failing grunts.

This is when Xolander asks the question, “how thick is the door?”

He makes his Spot check to determine how thick the door is. About 2 inches.

He then states that he is going to attack the boss man through the armored door. With his spear. This spear was a replica of the primitive spear he was used to, but being made with advanced materials. Deciding that the BBEG was likely still behind the door - untouchable - I allow him to try.

Xolander enters a berserker fury, charging at the shuttle bay hatch. The readied shots of the elite guards all miss him. He thrusts out to strike the hatch and I force him to make a check to see if his spear breaks against the much harder, thicker door.

He succeeds. His weapon is safe.

He rolls for attacking an enemy behind full cover and succeeds.

He then begins to roll for damage, throwing his last two action die behind the blow. Both action die roll maximum and explode. His spear damage rolls maximum, and due to special abilities this die also explodes. It was also a critical hit so he rolls an extra die for his spear. Max.

Then it happens again. The third time only one die rolls maximum. The fourth, it rolls max again. The fifth was only a 7 I believe.

I calculate the damage and it bypasses the 30+ hardness of the hatch and drops the BBEG past -10 hp. Immediate death.

The entire group sat there with our jaws dropped.

Eventually I recovered and the party was knocked unconscious, but I had to completely rework the scenario.

All because of a midget who couldn’t tell a rock from a cob of corn.

DrizztFan24
2008-09-24, 08:32 AM
A truly Crowning Moment of Epic Awesomenocity....

I nearly single-handedly lead my party through ToH with no deaths. The rest of the party was ages 13, 13, and 10. I played a beguiler...

We did kind of cheat through and accidently took the usual escape route out of the dungeon....so it wasn't actually too bad. (If someone wants to mash those two quotes together I have no problem with it)

Otherwise, that same beguiler took down an entire room of drunken bugbears, without being seen. Incite Riot. Oh man was the DM sorry for that. I destroyed one of the biggest encounters in the game with one big, drunken fist fight.

chevalier
2008-09-24, 08:53 AM
3.5, Generic D&D/Greyhawk campaign. Characters are 3rd and 4th level.

The party has been on a quest through the Vast Swamp (100 miles wide) to find a powerful druid who can give them vital information. They find the druid (who lives with a large tribe of lizardfolk, whom he is trying to teach to be farmers and stewards of the swamp and blah blah blah) and he says he can help them, but first, will they please go and take care of a little problem?

Big problem, actually; there is an unnatural, giant frog (colossal size) that is causing multiple problems. First, it is ravaging natural resources. Secondly, it is unnaturally fecud, and its tadpoles and froglets are also destroying the swamp's ecosystem. Thirdly, the local bullywugs think it is their god, and have been worshipping it.

So druid wants the party to eliminate the frog--harmlessly if possible, so he gives them a souped-up potion of reduce person--without getting into a big fight and killing lots of bullywugs. In fact, don't harm any if possible, because the swamp is theirs, too, etc.

The party and their two bullywug guides traipse off and manage to sneak to the periphery of the bullywug "settlement" (village is too nice a word). They see a huge area of crushed, matted reeds, covered in stains and decaying fish and just all sorts of grossness. After a while That Damned Frog comes.

The bullywug villagers swarm around TDF, kowtowing and worshipping and giving it offerings: baskets of dead fish, froglets (which they don't even realize are the big guy's own offspring, fermented eel, all disapperar down his froggy gullet. Finally, they bring out their chief offering--literally--ol' grampy bullywug, their chief, passed away a few days back. They've skewered him hole-to-hole on a pole; they toss him into the gaping maw.

So the PCs are hurriedly whispering about how to solve the problem, when one of them, a Barbarian of the North (thing viking mixed with the tribesmen from 10,000 AD) gets an idea. Without consulting anyone, he smears himself with mud, soaking his body and hair in it. He then walks toward the giant frog reverently with the potion held above his head.

A surprisingly high bluff check later, the bullywugs are too stunned to act.
As the barbarian approaches TDF, it lashes out it's huge tongue, wins the unopposed grapple, and swallows the barbarian whole.

What does the barbarian do next? He opens the potion of reduce amphibian and pours it into the frog's stomach, from inside.

I rule that the potion only affects living tissue. This means that you have a colossal size frog shrinking around a live barbarian and hundreds of pounds of dead swamp creatures.

Result: massive implosion. The frog bursts with a sickening squelch, and fermented eel and fish and dead bullywug splatters over a fifty foot radius. The barbarian--covered with guts and slime and dead TDF takes off elbows-over-arse.

He and the party manage to escape the rampaging bullywugs--but not until we had to break for fifteen minutes to stop the laughter caused by the image of exploding frog and dead bullywug.

Leicontis
2008-09-24, 10:14 AM
I think I've mentioned this one before, but it was fun, so...
Game: 3.5 D&D
Setting: A sort of post-apocalyptic Forgotten Realms, where orcs/goblinoids have taken over the world and destroyed civilization. The PCs were part of a small group of free survivors.
Character: Alaerd, a somewhat grizzled warrior who had watched as goblins killed his mentor in a fashion that went very much against everything he believed in, and as such had a particular hatred of goblins.

We're clearing out an old dwarven stronghold, in order to hopefully pick up some useful items (like barrels, an anvil, etc.), and it turns out that it's currently occupied by goblins. We open the door to the first building we reach, and there are three goblins inside. The rest of the party hangs back and makes some ranged attacks.

Alaerd comes about as close as a LG character can come to barbarian rage.

He charges in and crits the first goblin with his longsword, dropping him in one hit. Next action, he shield-bashes the goblin on his other side, nat20, caves in the little creep's skull. Third round, bull-rushes the third goblin into the wall, rolls ridiculously well AGAIN, and crushes him to death against the wall. Three rounds, three kills. The quiet, dignified, middle-aged LG character tips his head back and lets out a primal roar, while the rest of the party stands there with "do we know this guy?" looks on their faces.

The main reason that was awesome was the rolls dovetailed so perfectly with the character's personality.

Dracoma
2008-09-25, 03:16 AM
D&D 3.5, the setting is a homebrewed post-apocalypse setting where there are few settlements still standing. There's not many races left, and a main source of conflict within the setting is "Psionics v. Magic". Magic was apparently responsible for said apocalypse, so it gets the flak.

Anyways, Here I am playing a Lawful Evil Elan Erudite, in the middle of a rather large settlement. The psions are all in control, with a strong underground "rebel movement" of magic users. My character, being an erudite, loads up on all the powers he can get his grubby little hands on. Due to the XP loss of course, I'm definitely lower level than the rest of the players (who ALL sided with the underground rebellion of course...).

I tend to play fairly social characters, so my Erudite has been hanging around the Social Elites as it were. As such (after multiple sessions of good social interaction, RPing, and cross-class checks) I'm part of the "In-Crowd" that helps make decisions in the city. Due to this, the rebellion receives news of me, and vote that I need to be "eliminated" along with the rest of the psions. (Our DM had an obsession with pitting PC versus PC)

The rebellion however, ended one of their sessions with preparing for a final assault on the settlement, which would span the time of months, giving me plenty of time to do whatever I wished.

The DM ended up giving me 1-on-1 sessions to "be fair". I started calling in any favors I had within my "In-Crowd", started a campaign to gain more political power, and did my damned best to back stabbing/blackmailing anybody else on the political ladder who wouldn't have ways to defend back.
At one point I even gave an in-game campaign speech of sorts, which lasted for a good 5 minutes real-time. (DM gave major bonuses for doing it well.)

<Crowning Moment of Awesome>
So the full-group session starts up again, and the rebellion is finally ready to start their assault on the Psionic Settlement. So here they come, up from their nifty little secret tunnel up into the settlement's town center. Everything is cleared out, and there's surprisingly no people around. It's an over-cast sky with a decent wind.(DM's note to say: "BBEG is near")
They have their anti-psionic-fields up and whatnot, and are all battle-ready and buffed when they finally all turn around, up towards the capital building.

Standing on the balcony a good number of stories upward is my Erudite, in full Royal Chancellor garb, in the middle of a very convincing bout of maniacal laughter. He throws his arms out and zaps two building-tall cloth banners on each side of building, letting them unfurl revealing my face and symbol in black, upon a red background.

The other players are absolutely slack-jawed, since up until this point, my character had played very quiet and almost meek psionic archivist, more interested in his powers than anything else.

I call for guards to surround them, and I literally throw all of the city's defenses at them. A truly epic battle ensues, resulting in a GREAT portion of my city's defenses being absolutely slaughtered. Finally, it all ends with a huge battle of me v. all the magic rebels left. (only the PCs, who would've thought?) I take down most of them, except for one last thri-keen fighter who, after being very secretive with the DM for most of the fight, Jumped his way up to my balcony, and guts me through accordingly, but not before I got one last power off, leaving him with bleeding wounds.
</ Crowning Moment of Awesome>

I want to give a whole lot of credit to my DM on this one, he played it out very well, and NOBODY expected my guy to end up being the BBEG. My character, along with everyone else's died....but we were all too awestruck by how we worked out the final session to even be angry about it, we had a pretty strong group with good RPing that made the truly awesome moments all that much better.

*Also, to all else who posted before: very nice! I think many of you had far greater stories, but I suppose that's inherent to the nature of a CMoA :smallamused: *

AslanCross
2008-09-25, 07:53 AM
Fresh from today's session:

My players were fighting an adult black dragon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4955470&postcount=14).
Party is 9th level: LG Aasimar Paladin (level buyoff), CG Half Elf Rogue, N Wood Elf Ranger, LG Human Cleric of Kelemvor, NG Moon Elf Wizard.

After the previous session where things weren't looking good, the Paladin had actually successfully landed a series of solid blows and had knocked down the dragon to roughly a third of its HP.

This session, the dragon begins on the ground, and the Rogue (who has a few swordsage levels) slapped it with a Shadow Garrote. The thread of darkness wrapped around the dragon's throat, but she shakes it off easily. The wizard is able to breach the dragon's SR with a scorching ray, but the dragon is able to take off---with both the paladin and his mount (a dire wolf) trying to hit her. The wolf successfully bites the dragon's leg, tearing a lot of flesh before the dragon finally pumps her wings enough to rip free into the sky.

Now enraged, the dragon keeps circling above the party, and most of them can only try and shoot it---to no avail. Weaving through their shots with barrel rolls, the dragon lowers her altitude.

By now the cleric and the ranger realize why the dragon is just circling---she's preparing to fire her breath weapon again. Everyone panics (especially the rogue, who develops a phobia of lines) and tries to scatter.

The dragon finally flies in for the kill, strafing in an oval with her acid breath. The stream catches the paladin (who tanks a lot of the damage thanks to his racial acid resistance and two levels of crusader), the cleric, and the rogue in the stream, and all of them fail to dodge out of the way. The cleric goes down, slowly bleeding to death, while the rogue limps away frantically. The paladin is able to run to the cleric in time to Lay On Hands.

Meanwhile, the wizard frantically tries to blind or otherwise incapacitate the dragon. He casts a silent image of another black dragon, but the dragon ignores it, saving successfully. The wizard then tries glitterdust, but the dragon saves once more. Frustrated and out of spells, the wizard cries it in horror: "WHY ISN'T ANYTHING WORKING?"

With the cleric safe, the paladin stands up beside her and readies his greatsword to attack the dragon.

The black dragon circles once more, making a sharp u-turn and plunging toward the paladin in a power dive. He makes his readied attack and slashes straight down at the dragon's head.

He crits.

I rule that the dragon's head is split clean down the middle, and the force of the blow (the paladin was enlarged) slaps the head right down into the bog. The momentum of the falling body carries it over the paladin's head, and the corpse somersaults twice before it lands belly up in the bog.

We then celebrate by watching The Gamers.

Leicontis
2008-09-25, 10:09 AM
One I forgot about that a friend related:
They were early into a campaign, and the DM decided to give them a brief glimpse of the BBEG. One member of the party decides to take a pot-shot at this much higher level vampire with his bow.

Natural 20.

Did I mention the bow had the Heartseeker enchantment? (Bow equivalent of Vorpal, automatically pierces the target's heart on a nat20) One shot, staked. To quote my friend:
"I'm sorry, was that your plotline?"

Klaz Eidron
2008-09-25, 10:28 AM
My group was playing a GURPS Western campaign, the party was composed by a streetwise alcoholic soldier, a racist doctor somewhat skilled in firearms, and my character was a british spy mediocre with firearms.

We were fighting a wanted criminal that was hiding in a ranch, the soldier and the doctor charged with their guns while my character stayed far (I had the lower ammount of Health Points) with my first attack, I failed critically and I shot the doctor instead, leaving him crippled and unconscious. The soldier tells me to drop the firearm and use a melee weapon before I cause another disaster.

I did not contribute much to the fight this way, so we were both killed by the villain. Then, the villain turns his back to our corpses, the doctor recovers consciousness and kills the villain with a surprise shot.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-09-25, 12:01 PM
My group was playing a GURPS Western campaign, the party was composed by a streetwise alcoholic soldier, a racist doctor somewhat skilled in firearms, and my character was a british spy mediocre with firearms.

We were fighting a wanted criminal that was hiding in a ranch, the soldier and the doctor charged with their guns while my character stayed far (I had the lower ammount of Health Points) with my first attack, I failed critically and I shot the doctor instead, leaving him crippled and unconscious. The soldier tells me to drop the firearm and use a melee weapon before I cause another disaster.

I did not contribute much to the fight this way, so we were both killed by the villain. Then, the villain turns his back to our corpses, the doctor recovers consciousness and kills the villain with a surprise shot.Now that's a Western.

Lycan 01
2008-09-25, 02:07 PM
@ Dracoma: Nice plot twist. I'm hoping to do something like that with my Cthulhu group. After a session or two in the next campaign, one or two will start to recieve tempting offers from Cthulhu via their dreams. I'm hoping one of them will realize that he's been workin' for the wrong team... :smallbiggrin:



I rule that the dragon's head is split clean down the middle, and the force of the blow (the paladin was enlarged) slaps the head right down into the bog. The momentum of the falling body carries it over the paladin's head, and the corpse somersaults twice before it lands belly up in the bog.

Nice.

Bagera
2008-09-26, 01:04 AM
So we were in hell, questing to save the souls of some party members who had been trapped by the stupidity of using a deck of many things, and one who had been abducted. We had managed to make it to the great city of hell, and my wizard had managed to find an artifact he had been searching for since level 1. I entered negotiations to purchase it, and it was about twice what I had. I casually mentioned to the Devil I was bargaining with that I had researched this spell that could break magical contracts and links, and that it would be a shame if such a spell was to become public knowledge. So after the DM and I drew up the contract, I pointed out that though I was bound to never pass on the spell and that it would be erased from my spell book upon my death, and that I could not tell anyone that such a spell was even possible, that I had already taught the spell to 2 people and they were under no such obligations.

I out Bargained a Devil.

Dode
2008-09-26, 01:16 AM
My 'crowning moment' was a few years ago when I was playing an arsonist sorceror, introducing my character to a new party member...

I moved in close, stared him dead in the face and said...

"I'll keep my eye on you, Leander"

and just then popped my eyeball out of its socket for dramatic effect.
The series of faces he made in response I'll never forget for the rest of my life.

NeoVid
2008-09-26, 04:31 AM
It happened just today in the concluding session of our Mage campaign.

Our cabal, working with our archenemy and his cabal, were literally at the edge of Ascending. We had come face to face with the guard of this last piece of the Celestial Ladder, an ancient Adamantine Arrow archmage (who happened to be the founder of the Perfected Adepts Legacy) who tested those who reached that far to see if they were worthy. We could challenge him to anything we were willing to try.

The alcoholic, gluttonous vice squad detective I was playing immediately said, "Drinking Contest."

2-liter bottles of the soda-mixed-with-vodka he drinks on stakeouts were instantly conjured, and they went to it. I quickly realized I would be able to spend Willpower on every roll, since this was making his vice of Gluttony pay off. We got to having a boozy, rambling conversation during the challenge, about how much the world had changed... "Seriously, people went to the moon 40 years ago, and they did it without using any magic!" Until the archmage keeled over. I had beaten the original Perfected Adept by using my character's crippling weaknesses.

There was much more awesome in the session, as it was the conclusion of an 18 month campaign, but that was my big moment of pure, um, inspiration. :smallbiggrin:

I think everyone in the group will remember the conclusion of that moment, with my character staggering around in victory, bottle in his hand, saying, "I am the greatest, uh... I am the greatest something!!"

Crazy Scot
2008-09-26, 05:03 AM
One, not from a campaign I was in, but one I watched (posted on GitP before). Setting: undead filled dungeon the group was clearing out.

The group finally gets to the BBEG (vampire or lich or something like that, I forget what), and he goes on this long speach about how they have done well to get this far, and he will let them go if they don't attack him. [Note: the group was basically out of everything at this point -- hit points, spells, potions, etc] The group looks at each other, and then the guy playing the wizard says "Well, we will never get back here again," so he turns to the DM and says "I cast Magic Missile." The group is in shocked silence turning into outright anger, as the DM says, "Okay, but it is a wild magic zone." *DM rolls some dice, and looks on the books to find the result* The player is now getting nervous from the angry attention the other players are throwing his way until the DM reads out..."Effect lasts 10 minutes."

Lycan 01
2008-09-26, 11:21 AM
^ I don't get it... :smallconfused:

Calinero
2008-09-26, 11:41 AM
Well, I imagine that the DM ruled that the magic missile lasted for ten minutes. That amounts to a crapload of magic missile. In reality, though, there's probably a better way to handle that situation.

Gah, I hate places that screw up magic...I'm always a sorceror when we run into one. Once I was a CG Halfling, very jolly, who was watching over a group of three small children who we had just rescued from orcs. We got attacked just after the rescue by freakishly mutated goblins. I was a ways a away from the group, and some went for me and the kids. I stood by the children, ready to protect them, and tried to hit the things with Scorching Ray. I loved that spell, but never got to hit anything with it. He rolled that I fired the spell in a line that went straight across two of the three kids...yikes...

Fortunately, I missed on my attack roll, so no crispy children. I was more careful after that, though. The psychological effect on my character of accidentally slaughtering children would have been most unpleasant.

Starbuck_II
2008-09-26, 11:41 AM
^ I don't get it... :smallconfused:

I think the Dm ruled Magic Missile hit the enemy for 10 full minutes:
1d4 +1 per missuile per round. :smallbiggrin:

Smeggedoff
2008-09-26, 11:41 AM
I'm assuming the DM ruled that he's hit by the magic missiles constantly for the next ten minutes.

Drinking contest though, awesome :)

Kurald Galain
2008-09-26, 11:50 AM
I'm assuming the DM ruled that he's hit by the magic missiles constantly for the next ten minutes.

That's too much, really. I'd instead have argued that the magic missile takes ten minutes to travel the distance to the BBEG.

Anyway, wild magic can give some pretty CMOAs... I've been known to save a sinking boat with a Reckless Dweomer (which caused the random effect of platn growth everywhere, essentially turning our ship into an overgrown, yet floating, tree).

drengnikrafe
2008-09-27, 01:52 AM
Hey, Lycan, do you have any new epic-awesome CoC / Silent Hill campaign moments? You seemed to be pumping out around 2 a week (maybe more) for a bit there, and I sort of got addicted to hearing them....

EDIT:Wild Magic Zone? Where are the rolling tables and descriptions for that? I mean, like, what book (unless there is a website...)?

EDIT... again: Nevermind, I found it.

Ricky S
2008-09-27, 07:32 AM
This occured while playing a 5th level city campaign. My group was to infiltrate a guard house and steal some vital information from a . Our group consisted of a crusader (human) scout (human) cleric (halfling) and wizard (gnome). The crusader and the scout went in fairly loudly to try and create a distraction for myself and the wizard. They proceeded to set fire to the left wing of the building and create a general mess of the area. Meanwhile the wizard and myself crept quietly through the area rolling really high for move silently and didnt alert any guards. Along the way the wizard used up all his sleep spells to avoid detection. At last we entered the room where we spied a wizened old man who held the vital information in his top pocket. Luckily he was asleep so we approached quietly and I proceeded to role a 1 on the move silently and we ended up bashing the old man near to death with our saps. A gnome and a halfling standing over a defenseless man and beating the stuffing out of him. It may not have been particularly epic in anyway but had the entire dnd group laughing hysterically for at least 5 minutes.

Staven
2008-09-27, 08:07 PM
A few CMOA in my games. I'll name a few of mine.

Mixed WoD. We were all different kinds of things from it. The DMPC was a vamp, my brother was a Promethean, another PC was a werewolf, I was a mage. We had followed a group of satanistic hunters of the occult (the good guy occult, like the forsaken and awakened of the oracles) and it was me, a changeling (another group member) and the vampire. We burst into the old, abandoned church that the slayers inhabited, interrupting a blood ritual. I walked up and said:

"I'd like to join the Jewish faith."

The slayers were speechless.


Another time, I was an evil ranger/barbarian/blackguard, trekking to the end of the world. We had come across the lair of a...shadow giant or something's fortress and did battle. When the thing came out, he used a giant sword that was seemingly attached to the stronghold's portcullis. He had donned giant, black armor and came charging at me with it. I succeeded on quite a few checks and ran up his arm, charged into his face, and pulled an Ender's game on him and cut through his eye. He toppled back and got impaled on one of his own spires.


Lastly was more of a dialogue. The topic is a little NSFW, so beware, I guess.

My character had just...failed a very important check in his blossoming relationship with this one girl, so much that he hit his head on a bedpost and got knocked out. This did not impress her. Later that day, the party leader, an egocentric halfling womanizer (weird, right?) had just made it, so to speak, with two girls of 17 charisma each. One of them had even passed out and was being dragged along by him. He smugly went up to me and said "I win." My character raised his eyebrow, pointed at the unconscious floozy and said "Looks like she lost." Speechlessness.

snowbard55
2008-09-28, 04:38 PM
3.5 DnD

So we're fighting the BBEG. We've got an Elf Druid, a Half-Orc Fighter, a Half-Orc Monk, a Gnome Bard(me), and a Human Sorcerer. The BBEG in question is an Epic level, around 22 or 23 if memory serves, Human Wizard(Evoker) plus his henchwoman, a level 10 Rogue/10 Assassin Human. The battle is taking place in the city square, all innocent bystanders have fled. The sqaure has a large statue of the king in the center, is...square..., and is 200x100 feet. The Rogue/Assassin is sniping every so often from behind the statue with her heavy crossbow and occasinaly applying poison to her bolts. The poison has a manageable save, but is still troublesome. The BBEG is standing 5 feet from the statue and spamming various evocation spells.

Our Sorcerer and I(the bard) are standing as far back as our ability ranges will allow. He is attempting to return fire and I am mostly bard songing and occasionaly healing him. Our fighter and monk are mostly dancing around, employing a hit n run, it isn't going well, the druid is healing them and sometimes joining in the hit n run with her Wildshape (thank the gods for Natural Spell). We had a Half-Elf Cleric, but he got a Sneak Attack from the Rogue/Assassin before combat.

The Druid, Monk, and Fighter all go down. The Sorcerer, in a last ditch effort to win, casts a Maximized, Empowered Fireball at the Wizard. The wizard takes massive damage and dies. My action is wasted with a shortbow shot at the assassin. She flees, seing her master down. We sit in silence for 5 minutes at the awesomeness.

Lycan 01
2008-09-28, 06:16 PM
Sorry, no stories this week. We had to cancel yesterday's session. Half our players couldn't make it, and I was having serious family issues...

I can, however, input my own NSFW story. :smallbiggrin:


So I'm trying to get my little bro and his friend into DnD. They're 16, so I figure they're mature enough for the game.

My bro is a half-elf rogue, and his friend is a Dragonborn fighter. Their mission is to infiltrate a hotel, and assassinate a Kobold terrorist who plans to do some bad stuff or something like that. I was just throwing something out there...

Well, they enter the hotel at around 2 AM. There are only two people working there at the time: a 16 year old girl receptionist, and the hotel manager, who was supposedly asleep in his office.

I had intended for them to steal some uniforms, sneak in through the kitchen, and masquerade as room service guys.

They instead just walked in through the front door, walked up to the front desk, and told the girl to tell them where the Kobold was staying, or else.

Me: *facepalm*

The girl starts quivering in fear, and they decide to just chop her head off rather than worry about it. My bro, however, decides that she might serve... better, purposes.

In exchange for living, she tells them everything about the Kobold. Top floor, 10 bodyguard. Dragonborn heads upstairs to kill everything. The half elf stays downstairs to make sure she doesn't try to escape, or so he claims. The moment the DB is gone, the half elf starts layin' on the charm in hopes of getting in the girls pants. I do the math...

16 year old girl with raging hormones + decent-looking half-elf assassin + no witnesses - a horrible Diplacy skill = Diplomacy DC of 15

Several failed Diplomacy checks later, my bro looks at me in annoyance, rolls his eyes, and says jokingly: "I just whip it out."

I promptly handed him a d12 and told him to see what his new charisma bonus was.

He started at me, unable to believe what I was saying. "Wait, I can do that?" he asked. I explained to him that in DnD, you can do anything you want. It just won't always succeed.

He rolled the d12. And got an 11.

We all nearly died from oxygen deprivation due to the laughter this action produced. My brother then rolls his Diplomacy check, plus his new charisma bonus... and gets a 28, IIRC.

I ruled that the girl's eyes widened in shock, and she then dove over the counter in order to get her hands on the half-elf.


The Dragonborn got thrashed by the Kobold's bodyguards, and only had about 2 HP by the time the half-elf got done with his fun and came upstairs to help him.


They eventually succeeded in killing the Kobold... IIRC, the Dragonborn shoved his sword through the kobold's face and pinned him to a wall. They then left him dangling there and drank all his beer...

Also worth mentioning: the 16 year old girl was the mayor's daughter. The only reason they weren't arrested for the murder of 10 or so Kobolds was because she convinced her dad to pull some strings and keep the PCs out of jail. Apparently, the half-elf made a good impression on her. XD



So yeah... One minute I'm DMing an assassination attempt, the next thing I know my party is trying to get lucky with everything that moves.

Oh, I forgot to mention. The Dragonborn used the same tactic during an Intimidation check. He dropped his pants and grinned at a pair of Kobolds, which promptly hurled themselves out a window in order to avoid being raped to death...

Brauron
2008-09-28, 10:09 PM
This past Friday, we began a new campaign, DMed by one of my housemates.

Characters are...

Commissar Sturm Undrang, CN Human Marshall
Brummbar Tiermorden, CN Dwarf Ranger
Nauka, CN Human Scout
Skogul, CN Half-Orc Barbarian
Ragnell Grander, CN Human Fighter (looking to multiclass into Sorcerer, then later Spellsword)

That's right, we all independently decided to be Chaotic Neutral.

We were in the sewer, tracking down a rat's nest to exterminate them.

We open the door, and see 5 Dire Rats, 5 Rat Swarms, and what the DM described as "The Rat Queen."

The Commissar wins initiative, and hurls an Alchemist's Fire into the center of the room. When my iniative comes around, I say, "So there are now flaming rats running around? I put a cigar in my mouth, pick up a rat, use the rat to light the cigar and then stomp the rat out. I then say, 'It's Go Time.'"

That statement (my entire action for the turn) got me bonus XP.

Ascension
2008-09-29, 01:58 AM
I just have one question... Sure, it's awesome and all, but... How is a Commissar Chaotic?

Irreverent Fool
2008-09-29, 05:33 AM
Sorry, no stories this week. We had to cancel yesterday's session. Half our players couldn't make it, and I was having serious family issues...

I can, however, input my own NSFW story. :smallbiggrin:

So we just need to get all our porn stars to be diplomats and we'll have world peace.

Calinero
2008-09-29, 05:39 AM
So we just need to get all our porn stars to be diplomats and we'll have world peace.

I've been saying that for years.

Lycan 01
2008-09-29, 09:31 PM
Aw man, don't tell me this thread is dying...

And I just remembered a story from my first DnD session, too. It involved a dead Kobold, a skinned rat, and a crazy idea I came up with... But why bother writing it out if there's nobody to read it? :smallfrown:


Oh, and there was the time I broke the same DM in our next (and last) session by creating a nuke from mushrooms.

...

Yes, you read that right. :smallamused:

Ascension
2008-09-29, 09:56 PM
Aw man, don't tell me this thread is dying...

And I just remembered a story from my first DnD session, too. It involved a dead Kobold, a skinned rat, and a crazy idea I came up with... But why bother writing it out if there's nobody to read it? :smallfrown:


Oh, and there was the time I broke the same DM in our next (and last) session by creating a nuke from mushrooms.

...

Yes, you read that right. :smallamused:

Explain these. Please?

Eldmor
2008-09-29, 10:12 PM
[4e] I scored a critical hit with a +2 Vicious Maul. With the Fighter daily Reckless Strike. While Power Attacking.
DM described it as me doing a 360* spin while keeping the maul low, then raising it right into his lower jaw and crushing his skull from the underside. Bone shattered onto me like shrapnel and all sorts of juices blended on the floor.
Best 68 points of damage I've ever dealt.

Who_Da_Halfling
2008-09-29, 10:36 PM
in a low-level campaign, my friend playing a dwarven fighter with an axe got rushed by a couple rats on a flight of stairs. He critted and dealt max damage. Our DM ruled that 16 damage vs. 2 HP = he liquefied the rat with his axe. WITH HIS AXE....

-JM

Lycan 01
2008-09-29, 10:41 PM
^ Oh SNAP!! I bet the DM loved you for killing whatever you killed so easily. XD



Explain these. Please?

With pleasure. :smallamused:

In regards to the kobold and skinned rat, the story goes like this...



So I'm playing a game of 3.5e DnD with my GF, her best friend, and the friend's brother. The brother is the DM, and... well... he's crazy. You think your DM is homicidal? This guy was known for making rules up on the spot just so he can win. Nobody ever wanted to play with him. I only played so I could see what DnD was like...

The game was simple, really. In fact, it came in a box. "Basic DnD Set" Dunno how, but he had the equivalent of a starter kit... It had some pre-made character sheets, a few enemy stat cards, and a handful of figures. And dice, thankfully...

I was given the role of Regdar, a human fighter. My GF was a half-ling ranger, IIRC, and her best friend was an elven mage. The friend was more intent on RPing than fighting, so she quickly became a human meat shield. XD The plot was simple: Go in a cave, kill some monsters, and defeat the main bad guy. Easy, right? Heh... no.

Anyway, right off the bat, I know we're in trouble. The first encounter was a simple drunkard, but he'd intended us to have no knowledge of the rules, which he didn't intend on explaining to us, more than likely. Needless to say, the DM got annoyed when we dropped him in 2 hits, before the guy even had a chance to land a blow on any of us. I think he especially hated me, since I had pre-studied the rules via 3.5e SRD, and I kept pointing out flaws in his game, as he barely knew the rules himself. (Like I said, he prefered to pull stuff out of nowhere...)


Anyway, the game progresses, and I keep doing things to annoy him. We ended up meeting a baby dragon who was a slave to the wizard or something, and it decided to give us advice for no reason. (I know, WTF, right?) Anyway, it mentioned that the second in command was a big dragon. I kept asking questions about it, and finally the DM ran out of stuff to say and just threw out: "He likes Teddy Bears..."

My mind began to plot.

Eventually, he coerced a Kobold into joining our squad. He was a helpful little fella. I think we named him Leonard... I ordered the elf to kill him. The DM described in lurid detail how his sister's character killed the Kobold, since he knew she liked him and wanted to keep him on the team. I then proceeded to skin a rat we killed a few combat rounds earlier.

A few moments later, I had an impromptu Teddy Bear made from a dead Kobold wrapped in rat fur. I handed it to the elf, since she wanted to keep her "friend's" corpse, rather than let me hold onto him...

And as if on cue, the big dragon stormed into the room, intent on killing us. In fact, the DM said that we had one combat round before the dragon used its fire breath attack - a TPK.

I smirked, turned to my GF's friend, and stated: "Throw the Kobold."

She didn't want to. >.<

She thought it would be best to run. And, not suprisingly, she didn't want to throw her dead friend to the dragon... My GF thought it would be best to run, as well. I knew, of course, that all the doors would probably be locked, or we couldn't outrun the flames, or some BS like that. So I eventually convinced her to the chuck Leonard's dead corpse at the dragon.

The DM ruled that the dragon grabbed the dead Kobold, hugged it, exclaimed: "Yay, Teddy!" and then dissappeared.

We all stood there, dumbfounded. We then entered the next room, and the session ended.




So yeah. I defeated a dragon by making a Teddy Bear out of a dead Kobold and some rat fur. :smallbiggrin:



Edit: Oh, I'll tell the other story some other time... If anyone cares, of course...

ocato
2008-09-29, 11:01 PM
I joined some folks for a one-shot "level adjusted" (L12) tomb of horrors last week. I won't go into all of the details, but I was the only person who didn't have to fall back onto a second character. One of the players felt the need to antagonize me endlessly for my domain choices (Air and Good. I played a Raptorian cleric, I really like Raptorians) and decided his goal was to try and mess me up/get me killed so he could make me play something "optimal." My survival was particularly epic when we fought the Mummy-Lord and the Fake Lich and it was my good domain that saved the day. He lost a character in both fights and was pretty uppity.

So the other day I get a call asking if I wanted to turn our one-shot into a campaign. I really liked my character so I agreed. We had our first session yesterday with the same group (playing either a new character or their last survivor, ECL 13) and I was pretty excited to play my Cleric again. The grumpy player who thought I was suboptimal decided to be the CE jerk who is in the 'good' party. We tried to struggle on despite his actions as best we could until he sort of provoked me. He tried to burn down the cottage of this family we were supposed to get medicine for. The family rushes out of their home and he says he wants to kill the man, rape his wife, and maybe eat the sick kid, he hadn't decided yet. I look at the Wizard (TN) and the Paladin (LG) and they seem willing to ignore it, so I had to step in.

He kills the man before the DM will let me get an action, because his character would have the surprise round (supposedly) because declaring his plan was a free action or somesuch. I didn't really fight it. He kills the man and turns to the woman and then she tries to run. He goes to chase her and I get a turn. I flew over to him and Divine Spellpower'd (+4 CL, I rolled well) a Holy Word, which with my +caster level from the good domain (The DM let them stack, I'm not 100% sure on that) gave me 5 caster levels higher than CE jerk's HD. So he's about to rape this poor woman and gets hit with 1d10 minutes of paralysis, 2d4 rounds of deafness, and 1d4 rounds of blindness. When he came to, his items had been sold to resurrect the man, rebuild their home, and buy a special component to slow the illness his son had, giving our quest more time. He was also stone-shaped into a rock straight jacket that was in turn melded into the wall of the Magistrate's holding cell. "Good thing I kept the Good Domain," I said.

He was furious enough to try to strike me. Things went downhill from there.

Lycan 01
2008-09-29, 11:06 PM
Wait, he actually hit you? O_o Wow... You gotta tell us what happened next. Did the other players step in? What happened to the group? Is the campaign still on?


The worst one of my players has done is eat another player's character sheet... And I thought that was bad! :smallamused:

Dentarthur
2008-09-29, 11:06 PM
Our DM just put us through a dungeon full of zombies that were being used as miners. Three were guarding the main cavern, but we managed to sneak up on them unnoticed. The party's warlock lured them out one at a time, and we gave them a proper thrashing. The remaining zombies were all mining, with their backs to us.

We took the miner-zombies out with ease; none of them even noticed us until we'd lopped its head off. For gits and shiggles we gave the last one special treatment. We picked up the pick-axes from the corpses, lined up 20' behind the thing, and all chucked our picks at once.

The fighter and I both scored nat 20's, pinning the sucker to the wall by the head with TWO pick-axe heads. We decided to chop its legs off and leave it dangling right there on the wall.

TheThan
2008-09-29, 11:12 PM
I'm running a low level game that's going fairly well.

Anyway, the BBEG is a hobgoblin sorceress with the fabled “Orb of storms”. Basically it allows her to control the weather. She’s been unleashing nature’s fury on the locals in the area, even going so far to destroy a town with it.

Enter the PCs: a human monk, a half elf ranger/ druid, a gnome rogue and a human wizard NPC (player had a lot of no shows) all level 3. They’re on an epic quest to stop the hobgoblin and return the orb to the monks (well the only surviving monk) which are supposed to guard it (but failed).
So anyway the PCs wander into the above-destroyed town. There they found two ogres, which were rummaging around in the remains of the local Inn. One of them had found the storm shelter/cellar and was trying to bust through the metal door to get to the people trapped inside. So the Pcs engage the ogres.

First round the monk dashes inward and stunning fists one of the ogres. The ogre fails his save and is essentially KOed. The other players jockey for position so they don’t hurt the monk. the ogre swings and misses the monk. Back to the monk’s turn, and she stunning fists the other ogre and knock him unconscious (bombing his save). Now the monks have two unconscious ogres, they quickly dispatch. The monk, having done very little (thanks to the wizard and Ruid (ranger/druid), just made herself look freaking awesome.


That’s not quite as cool as a few days later (game time) they enter a small Dwarven mine that has been abandoned. As they explore it and clear out the dungeon, they walk into the dwarf’s kitchen, which among the usual stuff they found in the kitchen, there was a sphere of annihilation set into the wall. The dwarves used it as a means of getting rid of their trash. You just toss it into the hole and *poof* its gone.

Well the pcs had never seen one before (same with the characters). So they entertained themselves for quite some time as they threw various things into it and watched them go *Poof*. They threw a rope, some other miscellaneous kitchen equipment and even a dead goblin.

ocato
2008-09-29, 11:14 PM
Wait, he actually hit you? O_o Wow... You gotta tell us what happened next. Did the other players step in? What happened to the group? Is the campaign still on?


The worst one of my players has done is eat another player's character sheet... And I thought that was bad! :smallamused:

I said he tried. The DM politely dissolved the game for the time being and asked everyone to leave. It was all handled very calmly (with the exception of the CE player) and I hope to resume play with them soon. However, they know the CE player a lot better than they know me, so I am not counting on it. I'm not particularly upset about it, a CG Cleric of a CG goddess applying a nonlethal take-down on what could only be classified as a nutjob is, if anything, not chaotic enough. It may have been more in character to kill or more violently incapacitate him, but I'm ok with what I did. He's the one who should be embarrassed, even if he gets his way and plays and I don't.

Lycan 01
2008-09-29, 11:16 PM
Wow. Just... wow.

Btw, I found your actions against his character to be quite awesome. Stole his stuff to rez the farmer, and left him for the law. Nice. :smallcool:


But still, how immature of a person to try and strike another player of words on a piece of paper. I mean, its good when your players get into the game, but a line must be drawn somewhere...

Dr Bwaa
2008-09-29, 11:21 PM
Edit: Oh, I'll tell the other story some other time... If anyone cares, of course...

^This is cheating :p

Well, I probably ought to save this story for when it's finished, but I won't :p

I'm currently DMing a game over on M-W; my first DMing experience in PbP.

My players are doing absolutely spectacularly in an Overpowering--maybe technically Unbeatable--encounter that has gone absolutely sideways from what I thought would happen.

The PCs (level 1: fighter, rogue, bard, and an alternate fighter styled as a monk that the player and I worked outGood for my setting, and I told them not to worry about balance. I'm pretty good at dealing with that.) started off meeting up at a fort in the north of a country, on the border with a Goblin territory from which raids have been becoming more aggressive and frequent. They meet in a tavern and have some good RP and everyone gets a feel for their characters. That night, everyone wakes up at three in the morning to find out that the fort is burning (stone walls, but the inside is mostly wooden).

Well, after some various running around and rescuing/good samaritanism/looting, one character avoids the crowd fleeing (very very slowly) out the South Gate by climbing up on a house and from there looking over the wall. I was not anticipating this: he discovers the horde (in Heroes III terms) of Goblins just outside the door, making slaves of everyone who comes out the gate, clubbing them and stealing them away in a bucket-line type thing.

Well, this character, of course, tells everyone, and just at this moment, someone manages to free the horses from the military stable at the north end of town. Fleeing the burning everything, they charge down the center street, sending panicked commoners all over as the lead stallion rolls a 19+STR+charging bonus on a strength check to burst the South Gate (it's really just a wooden door, but the guards like to call it a Gate because it sounds better).

Having determined that the majority of the guard were killed in the burning barracks, they gather what they can (about eight soldiers and a haldful of commoners with weapons of some sort) and charge out in the wake of the horses and engage the stunned Goblins, forming a ring around the commoners (and around the Rogue, who is staying out of trouble with his hood up and his backpack full of stolen property, unbeknownst to everyone).

The good guys: 4 (effectively 3 atm) level 1 PCs, one NPC warrior with a name (so higher than level 1 :smalltongue:), a handful of commoners who need a 19 to hit, and some level 1 warriors with average stats. Total of about 10-12 good guys with a total party level around 2 or 3. The baddies: 50 Goblins. In addition, 4 Goblins are set to arrive with crossbows (how they were burning the fort) in a set number of rounds, and the Chieftain and his two lieutenants (and the worgs that the three of them ride) are set to show up a couple rounds after that.

So that's 54 Goblins and three Gobbos-on-worgs, against a party level of about 2-3. I expected them all to walk out the gate originally, and get taken as slaves after a quick fight. They had to go mess everything up by finding out what was going on :smalltongue:

After killing about half the Goblins, all the nameless NPCs but one are dead. One PC is at 0, and the named NPC is at a little under half health (though he has a Cure Light that he gives to the hurtin' PC). The Crossbows show up, and do no damage before the PCs take out the two on the side that they have killed all the Gobbos on. Had they done it one round faster, a bunch would have actually escaped, but as it was, the worg riders got there and managed to corral them again.

The Chieftain mouths off for a while, and through some very appropriate and very lucky Intimidate/CHA checks by various party members, a scene ensues in which the two fighters and the named NPC warrior face off against the Chieftain in "single" combat. The Chieftain is an Elite Array Goblin with warrior levels. The fight right now? It's anybody's game, especially if the bard gets there in time to get a spell or two off. The worg is low on health and the Chieftain is hurt, while all the good guys are at about 5 or 6 HP. No matter how it turns out, I'm extraordinarily proud of them. Level one or not, I'm not pulling punches and their success has so far been nothing short of Heroic. :smallsmile:

drengnikrafe
2008-09-29, 11:34 PM
Dear Lycan01
I love your stories. In fact, every time I see this particular thread has a new post, I read it. I would tell more stories of my own, but, as I've said before, all the campaigns I've been in have dissolved after one session with the exception being the story I already told. However, I recently had an awesome session of which I will tell the conclusion, and very awesome (or lame, depending) story. I already posted this as a campaign diary, but I'll put different emphasis and details here.

Here goes nothing...

18th level,
My PCs each got an epic item as part of the story, and a bunch of decent ones. Most had 3 stat booster +4 items as their normal ones. For the epic ones... one had ShimmerSpike, which let him grow to Gargantuan (he was Half-Ogre), and, due to his feats, he could AoO 6 things in range, and stop them short (as in, they don't move). Also, if they don't move, he AoO's them. 5 foot step also provokes AoO. Insane. 2nd one is a Spellwarp Sniper, and, due to houserules, can unload nigh infinite fully-metamagic-ed spells in ray form. He gets something to increase his range, and increase his power a little. Third one is mostly useless (Bard 18, but with improved music abilities for actually helping), but gets 10 Doses of Continuum Dust. Continuum Dust is like a 1 round time stop, only your allies join you, and you can affect the outside world.

Jump to the final battle. Gigantic, homebrew beast with tentacles that will almost definately grapple, and then AoO any time they try to act. The one with the dust hasn't used any yet, so when it approaches.... it freezes. And it's anti-magic shell cracks after some beating of the one with ShimmerStrike. And the high AC of the crack is hit over and over by the Spellwarper. And the two of them destroy the opened brain. Total time? 6 rounds. 6 ROUNDS, and they destroy the super-special-awesome-epic battle that I gave them 10/1 odds on winning as an estimate. AND THEY DIDN'T TAKE DAMAGE!. I was angry, but impressed. Continuum Dust is now permenantly banned. Forever. End of Story. It's massively OP. When I say "they destroyed all 3 forms" I mean 400 with no magic, 1200 with high AC, and then 1600 when it was just open. In 6 rounds, if you didn't pick that up. Fortunately, it was a 1-shot, so I was able to disolve it there, just like I had planned.


So they didn't take any damage at all from the nigh-epic final battle just like that.

In conclusion, keep telling stories, Lycan. I enjoy them very much, and as soon as I have more, no matter how lacking-of-epicness, I will post them.

-Drengnikrafe

Swordguy
2008-09-29, 11:53 PM
Dear Lycan01
I love your stories. In fact, every time I see this particular thread has a new post, I read it. I would tell more stories of my own, but, as I've said before, all the campaigns I've been in have dissolved after one session with the exception being the story I already told. However, I recently had an awesome session of which I will tell the conclusion, and very awesome (or lame, depending) story. I already posted this as a campaign diary, but I'll put different emphasis and details here.


I think it says something about gamers that threads about PC stupidity last for 50+ pages and 3 straight itinerations, while threads like this one about positive things that PCs have done tend to die quickly.

/nice story, though.

streakster
2008-09-29, 11:55 PM
I think it says something about gamers that threads about PC stupidity last for 50+ pages and 3 straight itinerations, while threads like this one about positive things that PCs have done tend to die quickly.

/nice story, though.

It might simply say that watching someone trip on a banana peel is funnier than watching them win the lottery.

drengnikrafe
2008-09-30, 12:00 AM
The reason is because you can only sit there for so long and say 'woah, that was epic', before you get bored. On the other hand, when PCs do something stupid, it's unexpected, and you get a laugh. And another laugh. And another laugh. Whereas the epic stories are just campfire tales of awesomeness.

Also, stupid PCs is easy. Awesome PCs is a difficult achievement. For instance, how many chances does a PC have to be stupid? All of them! Any moment, a PC can be stupid. But, only during epic (or could-be epic) battles can you have a crowning moment of epicness. So, when you compare the ratio of "All the time" versus "During big battles"... well, let's just say the good times aren't as common as the idiocy. I have another story to tell, but it's late, and I'll probably butcher it to hell heck Baaltor(?) in my current state (it's late), so I'll write it tomorrow when I have some spare time.

Lycan 01
2008-09-30, 12:03 AM
Why thank you for those kind words of encouragement. Now please allow me to return the favor. :smallsmile:

I quite like your stories, as well. Just because you think its lame doesn't mean others feel the same. I've read every story in this thread (give or take one or two, maybe...), and I enjoyed all of them (once again, give or take one or two that went over my head or something...). So if there's something you want to post, post it. If you don't want to be left out, then don't be. Tell us whatever you have to say, and don't worry about what we think. More than likely, we'll probably get a smile out of it, at least. :smallamused:

By the way, I can soooo relate to the whole "big set up, only for the PCs to win almost instantly..." thing. Lemme think of one such scenario...


Oh. First Call of Cthulhu game I hosted...

Several hours of bumbling around a haunted house, and the PCs finally bust into the secret room in the basement where the Lich is chilling. 2 of the 4 players go crazy, 2 of them open fire with whatever guns they're packin', a Dimensional Shambler (zombie that can teleport, in a nutshell) gets summoned by one of the crazy people, and the Lich just claws wildly at anything that moves.

All of this confusion is only increased by the fact that a direct headshot - a critical hit, in fact - did nothing to the Lich. In fact, his twitching brain was then exposed, causing even more Sanity loss for everyone.

But then, without warning... one of the gun-toting players, who hasn't even been paying attention to most of the game, manages to kill the Lich by scoring a critical hit with a random shot.

On his crotch.

Yes. Yes, that is right. She killed the BBEG of that session with a stray bullet to the crotch. And it was a critical hit, too. Lemme explain...

When she said she wanted to shoot him, I asked where. Said said his crotch. I shrugged and said ok - I figured she'd miss. Lo and behold, critical hit. On his crotch. And according to the rules, the Keeper has to explain in extra detail how brutal and gory a critical hit is, more-so than any other hit in the game.

IE: Somebody gets a crit on a headshot, I have to describe the bits of brain matter flying through the air.


So now I'm left to describe a critical hit on a Lich's crotch.

Yeah...

One of the few times I hated my job...


In conclussion, all that work I put into setting up the final encounter with the Lich was effectively ruined when I had to describe in graphic detail the results of a gunshot wound to a Lich's crotch, which was not only a critical hit, but also the killing blow.


To save the poor guy's dignity, I said he was still twitching, so another PC walked over and cut his head off with a knife they'd found. That just seemed more... fitting. :smallconfused:

Gralamin
2008-09-30, 12:06 AM
In the Star Wars Saga Edition game I'm in, there is a Twi'lek scout named Nosi. Now Nosi is ****ing insane. Not just normal insanity, he is truly insane. Now at one point the group had almost convinced some Mandalorians to leave the planet without killing us all, until another player pushed them just a bit to far. So okay, were fighting Mandalorians, not that big of a deal, but then on Nosi's turn he walks up to the Mandalorians, and shows them his gun, and starts talking about it. In fact, I have the quote right here from my logs...
(Olbap is a Jedi, I'm playing the other Jedi who didn't talk during this, and the guy who pissed them off was a solider)

[19:48] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "You don't know **** about Mandalorian honor, so just die quietly."
[19:51] - Nosi_Ferdi , cool as you please, draws his blaster in an easy motion and walks straight up to the Mandalorian in the midst of them all.
[19:51] [Nosi_Ferdi] "Do you see this? I got it from a Mandalorian. I didn't buy it or steal it. I took it. Your way."
[19:52] [Nosi_Ferdi] "Now you can call me a Republic coward or a jedi pet, but I am not afraid, and I know how you do business."
[19:52] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "Congrats. Why am I supposed to care?"
[19:52] [Nosi_Ferdi] "You're not. You're supposed to get the **** off this planet."
[19:53] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "I was going to leave, but then you up and pissed me off."
[19:53] [Nosi_Ferdi] "No, he up and pissed you off. I'm asking you your way."
[19:54] [Olbap_Seomis] "There is still time. We can avoid this violence if you leave."
[19:54] - Nosi_Ferd holds up a hand to Olbap.
[19:54] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "If you know anything about mandalorians.."
[19:54] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "..then you'd know that we don't stop once we start."
[19:54] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "Only way one of us is gonna walk away is if the others are dead."
[19:56] [Nosi_Ferdi] "I ran ammo to your brethren at Yavin IV."
[19:57] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "And? That was then, this is now."
[19:57] [Olbap_Seomis] "There is still time Mandalorian, you have no business fighting padawans, soldier and a twi'lek. You can leave now to fight more worthy opponents, like we have already sugested. I do not wish to fight you."
[19:57] [Nosi_Ferdi] "I was a slave to one of the squads annihilated to the man. You wanna tell me now I don't know how Mandalorians operate?"
[19:57] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "You weren't born in the Clans. You didn't become a warrior, and you didn't fight against the Republic."
[19:58] [@Zero-DM-Mode] "You don't know how Mandalorians operate."
[19:59] - Nosi_Ferdi fires.
[19:59] [Nosi_Ferdi] "You don't know how I operate. Get the **** off Dantooine."

Now as if this wasn't enough, during the same fight, he took out a permacrete detonator (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Permacrete_detonator) and armed it while holding onto it. We then threw it at the Mandalorians, using the force to stop them from throwing it back, and it detonated, killing them and almost killing us.

[hr]

There were many moments of awesome in another game I was in under the same DM. I can't think of any that my character caused, though there was a huge amount of awesomeness in that game.

Swordguy
2008-09-30, 01:08 AM
Oh. First Call of Cthulhu game I hosted...

[snipped for hilarity]

To save the poor guy's dignity, I said he was still twitching, so another PC walked over and cut his head off with a knife they'd found. That just seemed more... fitting. :smallconfused:

Heh - I'm running the Haunting for my annual October of Horror game. I can only hope old Corbitt bites it in a more dignified fashion.

On the topic of Call of Cthulhu:

So, my players are doing Dead Man's Stomp. For those uninformed, essentially a jazz musician is gifted a demonic trumpet by Nyarlathotep which can raise the dead. They've generally failed at the mission - the trumpeter, driven insane by the power of the trumpet, runs off from the funeral he's disrupted (guess how) to go raise his dead wife from the grave.

At the city graveyard.

The players pursue the musician to the city graveyard, and get there too late. He's already climbed to the top of a mausoleum, and is playing Jelly Roll Morton's "Dead Man Blues" (1926 - yes, it's an actual title). They pile to a halt and look around wildly - sure enough...it's a

Zombie Apocalypse!

Hundreds of dead people, everyone within listing range of a trumpet being played with inhumanly strong lungs, are rising from the dead. Miraculously, the investigators all manage not to go insane from the mind-bending sight, and fall back. They end up taking refuge, along with several dozen other people, in a local speakeasy. For three days, they sit there, slowly draining the booze supply. One player passes me a note that his character is going to be reading a Mythos Tome he'd picked up a while back. I hadn't detailed it yet, so I rolled randomly to see if it had any spells. Getting a stupidly good result, I noted for him that one of the spells was Call/Dismiss Daoloth.

The investigator in question then and there resolves to summon this diety to stop the zombie menace.

The genius slips out of the speakeasy, unarmed and without anyone else noticing. He then proceeds to run across town to an appropriate summoning site (the steeple of the church next to the graveyard), dodging zombie attacks the entire way. He's completely untouched during this trek, when more than 30 attack rolls from zombies were rolled against him. Pretty much every zombie in town has followed this guy, and he's headed towards their center. He gets to the steeple, and performs the ritual (fairly easy ritual, since nobody in their right OR wrong mind wants to summon this God).

Now, the Daoloth is summoned, it starts expanding. Any tissue (organic matter) it contacts disappears (sent somewhere in the infinite void of the universe). The spell lasts until dawn. So, Daoloth expands through the entire town, vanishing all the zombies and hundreds of civilians (practically all of them, in fact). The investigator in question stays in the tower until dawn, gibbering and insane. As dawn breaks and Daoloth begins retracting back into nothingness, the PCs follow the retracting tentacles in time to see the quite-mad investigator climb through a window in the steeple.

He screams, crying tears of blood, "I'm so sorry! I had to destroy the town in order to save it!", and steps out of the window, falling headlong into the last vanishing pieces of Daoloth and disappearing forever.

The players unanimously voted it the best death EVAR and commissioned a statue of the investigator to keep watch over the graveyard forever more.

Lazy Zomb
2008-09-30, 02:07 AM
Well, I have two to add here...

First one - D&D 3.x FR, we have a 5th level party consisting of: DMPC Druid, NPC/PC rogue, Scout/ranger (moi), favored soul, warlock, and a paladin, the hero of this tale. This guy is a Elfling (yeah, pulled from some splatbook or other) raised by Blink dogs. Now, we rolled for basic background, and while this is out there, the character isn't built overpowered, and the player is a good roleplayer, so he got a blink dog as a mount/companion (and later will be a cohort) right from level one. So, he's built for mounted combat.

We'd just killed a bunch of orcs, who seemed to think that we would be better off dead, and we're in this glass tower in a star elf demiplane... So we head downstairs, where we meet a half orc, who tells us to go back. The warlock just wants to off him, the favored soul wants to turn back. My scout is rather short tempered, and is ready to attack too, before the paladin jumps off his dog and challenges the orc to a duel. My character agrees not to interfere if the orc accepts, but only because he likes the paladin (having taken down an efreeti with him a couple levels back, without the rest of the party), and the rest of the party agrees too. Finally, his short little paladin gets this big, beefy half orc to agree - and promptly turns into its real form, a handmaiden of lloth!

So, super unoptimized paladin here, despite the deception, pulls out his greatsword and charges (won initiative). Smite evil for max damage. He then proceed to get whacked on by six nat attacks. Uses his second and last smite evil attempt for max damage again. Gets whacked on - he's now at 1 hp. Huffs it out and swings once more - ready to die, and hits for 11 damage. His attacks are now subject to damage reduction 10/good. And of course, that 1 damage was just enough to knock the thing out. You can be sure more than just the character got a slap on the back for that.



Second one - Dark Heresy. We're exploring a cave for the source of mutations that have been happening. My scum has had it bad since the beginning. A fluke made him fail a climb check, wich dropped him to -2 health, and a broken ankle. Later on, after shotgunning two creatures into mush, he gets shot in the same leg, and has the femur snap. Now, with a splint made from two crowbars tied around his leg, and being supported by the humongous psyker, we encounter some crazy elite mutant in a room with leaking napalm... So no guns allowed.

The rest of the party rushes forward to enter melee with it. Some hit, other don't. Psyker spends his round Helping me get near there. My turn comes around, and with guns out, and being out of melee range, I throw my knife. Grazing blow. Another turn, my allies whack at it, the psyker pulls me with him again. My turn again, and I'm out of non-shooting weapons, so I grab the only thing I have - a crowbar I picked up off a mutant miner, and hurl it. Amazingly the improvised weapon hit. For max damage. And caves in its skull.

Jastilus will be carrying around a crowbar from now until he inevitably dies.

Calinero
2008-09-30, 05:49 AM
I loved the Daoloth story. Very nice.

As for the thread dying, I certainly hope not. I am currently out of stories that meet my awesome standard, but am trying to get more through the campaigns I'm in right now. I'll let you know if I find anymore.

I demand to know how you could make a nuke out of mushrooms. Some connection to mushroom clouds?

Lycan 01
2008-09-30, 11:41 AM
Heh - I'm running the Haunting for my annual October of Horror game. I can only hope old Corbitt bites it in a more dignified fashion.

On the topic of Call of Cthulhu:

So, my players are doing Dead Man's Stomp. For those uninformed, essentially a jazz musician is gifted a demonic trumpet by Nyarlathotep which can raise the dead. They've generally failed at the mission - the trumpeter, driven insane by the power of the trumpet, runs off from the funeral he's disrupted (guess how) to go raise his dead wife from the grave.

At the city graveyard.

The players pursue the musician to the city graveyard, and get there too late. He's already climbed to the top of a mausoleum, and is playing Jelly Roll Morton's "Dead Man Blues" (1926 - yes, it's an actual title). They pile to a halt and look around wildly - sure enough...it's a

Zombie Apocalypse!

Hundreds of dead people, everyone within listing range of a trumpet being played with inhumanly strong lungs, are rising from the dead. Miraculously, the investigators all manage not to go insane from the mind-bending sight, and fall back. They end up taking refuge, along with several dozen other people, in a local speakeasy. For three days, they sit there, slowly draining the booze supply. One player passes me a note that his character is going to be reading a Mythos Tome he'd picked up a while back. I hadn't detailed it yet, so I rolled randomly to see if it had any spells. Getting a stupidly good result, I noted for him that one of the spells was Call/Dismiss Daoloth.

The investigator in question then and there resolves to summon this diety to stop the zombie menace.

The genius slips out of the speakeasy, unarmed and without anyone else noticing. He then proceeds to run across town to an appropriate summoning site (the steeple of the church next to the graveyard), dodging zombie attacks the entire way. He's completely untouched during this trek, when more than 30 attack rolls from zombies were rolled against him. Pretty much every zombie in town has followed this guy, and he's headed towards their center. He gets to the steeple, and performs the ritual (fairly easy ritual, since nobody in their right OR wrong mind wants to summon this God).

Now, the Daoloth is summoned, it starts expanding. Any tissue (organic matter) it contacts disappears (sent somewhere in the infinite void of the universe). The spell lasts until dawn. So, Daoloth expands through the entire town, vanishing all the zombies and hundreds of civilians (practically all of them, in fact). The investigator in question stays in the tower until dawn, gibbering and insane. As dawn breaks and Daoloth begins retracting back into nothingness, the PCs follow the retracting tentacles in time to see the quite-mad investigator climb through a window in the steeple.

He screams, crying tears of blood, "I'm so sorry! I had to destroy the town in order to save it!", and steps out of the window, falling headlong into the last vanishing pieces of Daoloth and disappearing forever.

The players unanimously voted it the best death EVAR and commissioned a statue of the investigator to keep watch over the graveyard forever more.


Lol! No fair! Your group does that session, and awesome stuff happens! My group does it, and... well... I think I've already told that story enough. :smallamused:


Okay, time for the mushroom nuke story...


So a week after my first session ever, we're due for the 2nd one. We all reassume our roles, and the game restarts from where we left off.

It quickly became a nightmare.

The DM had waited until 3 AM that morning to write the session.

Yeah... Right off the bat, we're forced to crawl down a sewer drain, and then we get ambushed by Monty Python-esque French knights who "throw poo at you" and the only way past them is to find the Holy Grail, which is somewhere in the sewer.

...

I started losing my patience when 4 knights swarmed around my Fighter and started throwing poo at his face. Not only was I dying, but I was dying from something stupid. My GF and her friend just hung back, firing an arrow or two whenever they had a good shot open.

So I eventually hack my way through the stupidity, and find the Grail. It opens the exit...

Which leads to a waiting line.

To the DM's office.

So my party suddenly finds itself standing behind several dragons, demons, and figures from entirely different games, all in hopes of meeting the DM.

I snapped here, my friends. I snapped...


Disregarding whatever plot he had in mind, I walked to the front of the line, hacked down the door, and rolled for Initiative. Not expecting this, he said the DM teleported us back to a room beginning of the dungeon from the first session.

Joy...

Something to note here: The floor tile he was using showed the room we were in to be full of mushrooms. Thus, he ruled that the room was full of mushrooms. All over the ground, walls, and ceiling... mushrooms.

I'm effectively out for blood by now, my friends. So I start rolling strength checks to hack down the door to get out. He then places an angel figure of some sort on the board, and tells us to roll initiative.

I asked what her AC was. It was like... 8 points higher than my MAX attack roll. So I just gave up. I decided to try something crazy...

I figured that if I had to die, I'd take everyone with me. I removed 2 one-gallon flasks of lantern oil from my backpack, splashed it all over the mushrooms, and threw down a lit lantern I'd had on me.

I told the DM to start rolling dice to figure out how fast the fire would spread, how much damage it would do to us, how quickly it would kill the Angel lady thing, if it would burn the door down, et cetra...

He simply glared at me, said that the Angel teleported away... and then decided that a chemical reaction in the mushroom caused a massive explosion on par with a nuclear blast.

TPK.

...

Me and my party had been passing notes over the course of the game. We had decided on what to do in this sort of situation.


I stood up, pointed down at the DM, and stated: "You have been found unfit to act as DM for this group. You abuse the rules, your power, and your players. By a democratic vote of 3 to 1, you are hereby stripped of your title of DM. In addition, I take upon myself the title of DM, to which the rest of the party offers no objection. This decision is final. Good day to you, sir!"



So not only did I break the DM and cause a nuclear blast with mushrooms, my I also took over the position of DM for my party via coup d'etat. :smallbiggrin:

Hzurr
2008-09-30, 01:55 PM
I stood up, pointed down at the DM, and stated: "You have been found unfit to act as DM for this group. You abuse the rules, your power, and your players. By a democratic vote of 3 to 1, you are hereby stripped of your title of DM. In addition, I take upon myself the title of DM, to which the rest of the party offers no objection. This decision is final. Good day to you, sir!"

First of all, that's a pretty horrid DM.

Secondly, my mental picture of this scene makes it exceptionally more amusing than I think it should be. I see all the lights in the room going out, except for a spotlight shining down on the DM as he looks up to see 4 figures standing over him clad in robes, pointing and having a booming voice echoing through the chamber.


On a side note, what happened after that?

Lycan 01
2008-09-30, 02:30 PM
Actually, there were only 3 robed figures. :smallamused: The 3 against 1 vote was the 3 players voting against the 1 DM.


He sat there laughing. He didn't really grasp that he was out of the job. Actually, I seem to recall that he quickly tried to rewrite what had happened, saying that our characters were actually still alive. I adamantly held my ground, and the session ended right then and there.

A few minutes later, his dad came into the kitchen where we were playing to get a drink. The dad was a highly skilled DnD veteran, and I just actually realized that we should have asked him to DM....... :smallconfused: Anyway, the DM asks his dad if a coup d'etat is allowed. His dad laughed an said something along the lines of: "Yes, its allowed. If they didn't have fun with you in charge, they can replace you... You should have done a better job. :smalltongue:"


So yeah... I wrestled the title of DM away from a less qualified individual, and his own dad agreed with our decision. :smallbiggrin:

Blackfang108
2008-09-30, 03:01 PM
Ok, here's one from a week ago.

I have a reputation for playing evil-leaning CN characters. they do good deeds, but they use BRUTAL methods to stop evil.

Think the Punisher with magic.

3.5, lvl 20Duskblade/2Fighter Improved combat casting, and a Prime plane getting ready to fall apart.

I and two others have been tasked by Tenser's (the local Mercenaries guild) with obtaining a coffin nail from the coffin of a 100+ year long Vampire. Without killing him. *sigh*

so, as the DMPCs Fighter and Cleric (the DM had forgotten his notebook with their names), and I made our way to where we believed an encampment was, we noticed that Magic is acting screwy.

I blinded myself with Darkvision, and froze my pipe trying to light it.

a few nights later, several vampires come to our encampment. I use Stand to get up, making me sound like a Munchkin(the Oz kind).

The Vampire says we won't be killed if we come with. and we may become "something better." The character was recently shot, unprovoked, by a former friend turned thrall.

"I already have a friend who's thralled."
"You mean exalted."
"No, thralled. He really needs better taste in women."

The vampire took a fair amount of exception to that last bit, and started to loom.

I cast Chain Lightning. Or, I tried to. The detatching plane caused the visuals of the spell to be altered ever so slightly.

Instead I cast Chain of Butterfiles. And two of the targets were put in Ghost Form from it.

Yes, I killed two vampires with butterflies, and the other two who were hit looked to be in pain and ran off.

When I told one friend about it he asked a simple question:


You were being nice?

snowbard55
2008-09-30, 04:25 PM
3.5 DnD

The party was all about 13th or 14th level. It consisted of an Elf Wizard(Illusionist), a Half-Orc Fighter/Ranger, a Half-Elf Cleric/Wizard/Mystic Theurge(me), and a Halfling Rogue. We were facing a group of Ogres that we suspected of helping to rob the local temple of a few key relics that we needed(basicly they took the McGuffins we had been working so hard for)

The encounter sounded simple enough, kick the tar out of the ogres, take one hostage and interrogate him, but we were wrong. Once we have 3 out of 5 ogres down an arrow comes out of the trees(we were fighting on a forest path) and hits me in the back. In response I start a massive forest fire via a Fireball. This killed the Human Rogue/Assassin who shot me, the 10 other ogre warriors hiding in the trees, and caused the remaining ogres to surrender to us out of fear of the "scary fire god" AKA Your truely :smallbiggrin:

drengnikrafe
2008-09-30, 08:24 PM
Just so you all know, I didn't say that this thread bored me, I just said that may be why it doesn't last as long as stupidity. Sorry if it came across as rude. I love these stories.

Now, for that story I promised...
We were doing a PvP campaign (fairly poorly designed, all in all), and it was me (2nd level Elven Ranger) and my buddy (Barbarian 1 / Psychic Warrior 1) against 2 other guys... A soulknife and... something else. Anyway, we're in this big, poorly lit dungeon (yay lowlight vision), and move silently is something nobody took. So, every time the other guys move around, the DM comes back over and says "You hear a loud clattering from this general area *points at map*". After hiding for awhile, we charge after them. We're immediately swarmed by wolves (didn't see that one coming), and after slashing through 3 or 4 of them, I get a lucky shot and take down one of the other guys (to 0), and in his last action, he finishes off my buddy. Now it's me versus a pack of wolves and a soulknife. After slashing through a few more wolves (yay TWF), I pass a seige weapon which had been wheeled around for awhile, appearantly. But, it took 2 people to use properly, so it had to be left.
I evidently underestimated the power of a soulknife, because when I rounded a corner, I got stabbed by a surprise attack.

Okay, I remembered it more awesomely in my head, but I still like that they brought a balista and a pack of wolves into the mix...