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BRC
2008-10-21, 09:22 PM
Story Time!

I want to here about your most memorable encounters. It dosn't have to be your most difficult, or your most plot-centric, just those you will always remember. Maybe the DM gave the enemy some interesting quirk, maybe the setup and momentum of the fight was different. Maybe a PC did something clever involving the surrounding area, whatever, just somthing that clearly makes this encounter stand out from the countless "Walk into a room, kill things" encounters that quickly fade from your memories.

Pie Guy
2008-10-21, 09:39 PM
When our level 1 party beat off four shadows, we were thinking that we were TEH P4R7Y 0F 4\/\/350/\/\3!!! (the party of awesome), but then the dm declared that a fifth dropped down from the trees and knocked out our last member. It wasn't so much the encounter as the fleeting moment of triumph.

LoneStarNorth
2008-10-21, 09:48 PM
Recently, in a game I'm DMing, the party was fighting an orc army. They were doing this primarily by buffing their pet dire tiger (long story, just roll with it) and letting it tear things apart. It had a Strength buff, and increased size to huge, and probably some other stuff I don't remember.

Now, these orcs had been in the process of forging a treaty with some lizardfolk from across the sea. Some of these lizardfolk were present, as was one of their pets; a triceratops. This triceratops was decked out in black dragonhide full plate armour, because why the hell not.

When the 30-foot-long dire tiger fought the armoured triceratops, everyone at the table had to sit back for a moment and just visualize it. Such was the awesomeness of that particular fight.


In another campaign, as first level characters, the party was roaming the city sewers looking for the source of a 'plague'. They came upon a shrine dedicated to some horrific frog-deity. When they examined it, a nearby lever slammed to one side, shutting some metal doors and trapping them in the room. At the same time, about a dozen black, red-eyed toads hopped out of the water, and more began appearing from out of the shrine (1d4+1 toads per round).

These toads attacked the party, knocking the sorceress into negatives and swarming the cleric and rogue as well. The wizard managed to use sleep and colour spray to good effect on these tiny terrors, but by the time thirty of the things were hopping around, it wasn't making much difference.

This whole time, the cleric was trying to pull the lever back, opening the doors and letting in the ranger who was stuck outside. He failed repeatedly, rolling nothing higher than a 9. The kobold rogue finally tried out of desperation (everyone is at 2 or 3 hp tops, except the sorceress who is at -7), and succeeds on his first try. The ranger runs in and starts killing toads while the rest of the party backs off.

They realize they need to drag the sorceress out from under the pile of sleeping toads, but can think of no safe way to do so. Then the ranger gets the idea to attack the shrine from which the evil toads are hopping. She succeeds, and the newly-summoned toads vanish, leaving only a few snoozing amphibians behind. A few coup de graces later, the party came out on top, with about 2 hp each, averaged.

Good times.

ocato
2008-10-21, 09:56 PM
In another campaign, as first level characters, the party was roaming the city sewers looking for the source of a 'plague'. They came upon a shrine dedicated to some horrific frog-deity.

Blibdoolpoolp? If you're a DM running a campaign with Kua-toa cultists to Blibdoolpoolp living in the sewers under a city, I applaud your creativity. Kobolds have been done to death.

Lycan 01
2008-10-21, 10:17 PM
The only time I got to play Call of Cthulhu myself instead of Keeping, my Russian pacifist Catholic Priest ended up becoming the team BAMF. Everyone knew there had to be a twist to why I was playing as a Russian Priest named Father Gregory. (Cough cough Ravenholm) Turns out they were right.

Apparently, the Father had been a White Russian during the Russian Revolution, and he knew a thing or two about using a shotgun.

So when he found himself trapped in Innsmouth, looking for a member of his congregation who'd gone missing there, and he suddenly found himself holding a new-found double-barrel shotgun... there was only one logical course of action.

The "Love and Peace" part of the Good Father died, and the "Vanquisher of Sin and Savior of the Lost Sheep" Father kicked in.

After a half-hour of me and my group throwing out ideas, I finally gave up and decided to go do my own thing while they tried to climb a random building and jump onto the slanted roof of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. So while they're striving to make Jump rolls, I just walked up to the back door, bashed the doorknob off with the butt of the shotgun, and kicked the door open.

Needless to say, the Keeper hadn't really anticipated this, as the floorplan of the building he'd made had the missing Miskatonic U student sitting in the back room... which I'd just barged into. Unfortunately, there was a Deep One Hybrid guarding him.

Fortunately, I knew the fine art of improvising. Can't make a loud noise, like a shotgun blast? Can't let the guard attack me first? Can't risk the kid getting hurt? No problem! I solved all three at once!

I shoved the barrel of the shotgun right up against the guy's stomach, and pulled the trigger. Before he had a chance to react, he suddenly found himself with a basketball sized hole in his lower torso. 1-hit kill with a singe shotgun roll, FTW! Unfortunately, the impact forced the air out of his lungs, and he let out a hollow scream as his guts became the new wall decorations in that room. Just as he hit the ground, the Keeper mentioned that I heard noises from outside the other door I'd failed to hear him mention seconds before.

Oops.

The next thing I knew, a wall of bullets flew through the door at me... and they all missed. Standing there in shock, I raised my shotgun and waited for whatever was out there to come in the room. I got my wish. A Deep One Hybrid and a True Deep One, both armed with .38 revovlers, rushed into the room.

I passed my Sanity check, and decided that there was only one thing for Father Gregory to do.

"BACK TA HELL WITH YE, YE WRETCHED ABOMINATION UNTO THE LORD!!!!" Father Gregory screamed at the top of his lungs as he raised his shotgun towards the Deep One, and fired.

Rolled my shotgun roll. Got a crit.

Rolled my damage roll. Got 24 damage.

The thing had 14 HP. And 1 point of Armor.

I did 9 points of extra damage. From 8 feet away. With a shotgun.

The Keeper had intended for this Deep One to be a High Priest of Dagon, capable of summoning a Nightgaunt, which was going to hold me down while they tied me up so they could sacrifice me to Dagon.

I reduced his BBEG to a cloud of fertilizer, because he said the thing's head, shoulders, and upper torso were turned into dust and/or paste by the blast.



Needless to say, I enjoyed destroying the BBEG of the session with one shotgun blast.

And then here's the kicker. The Hybrid shoots me, point blank, in the shoulder, snapping my collarbone, shattering my scapula, and paralyzing my left arm. I hit the floor, and manage to stay alive with 3 HP. My response?

Pop open the shotty with my good hand and start reloading.

Just as I finished putting one shell in, and me and the Hybrid both began to bear our weapons upon each other, the rest of my group finally barged into the room and obliterated his face with two .45 auto bullets, one of which was a crit.

They then led me and the student out to the car, where I soon passed out from blood loss, content with the fact that I'd saved the lost sheep...


Father Gregory has since then recovered, and will actually show up as an NPC in my new campaign. Woot! :smallbiggrin:


So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games. :smallamused:


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... :smallbiggrin:)

Kris Strife
2008-10-21, 10:22 PM
I wasnt actually in this encounter, we had split up at an intersection, but anyways, we were level 5 or so and basically going through a scooby doo style mansion with evil suits of animate armor. one attacked the party's female samurai. she got grappeled, but managed to knock it down some stairs and boogie boared down about a 60 stair case, then stabbed the belt buckle, killing it.

Enlong
2008-10-21, 10:27 PM
The last encounter I DM'd had the party Sorcere perform the most excellent use of Fireballs I've ever seen. First, he fought off a pair of Dustform Gargoyles by torching them with maximized Fireballs (I ruled that they died by turning into glass and shattering against the ground). Then, after the party finished off the Sand Golem (thanks to a little help from the Ashworm Dragoon that I had to NPC), they got attacked by a Brine Ooze and finished it off in one round. The Rogue split it in two with his crossbow, the Cleric did it again, and the Ranger used Rapid Shot to split the thing into about seven small gloops. Then the Sorcerer fried them all at once with a Maximized Fireball. Quite cool.

PhallicWarrior
2008-10-21, 10:41 PM
There was the time in a (very dark, Watchmen-inspired) game when the (street-level) heroes went up against the Master of Pain. (A mad scientist who had, through continuous surgery, eliminated his pain response, allowing himself full use of his body's strength.) After chasing him through the abandoned hospital where he "worked", they cornered him in his torture chamber. The walls are covered in all manner of spikes and blades and other means of inflicting pain, all covered in blood, dried or otherwise. Our resident powerhouse, the only one capable of going toe-to-toe with the Master, rushed him from the get go smashing him into a workbench. They grapple, and the powerhouse (I think his name was Backbreaker, or something similar) throws throws the Master across the room. The Master picked up a meat cleaver from another table, and Backbreaker did the same. They both lunge, they both crit, the Master's toughness save is higher, so he stays up, Backbreaker goes down. The other three heroes were busy with the Master's minions, so when he attacked them, he knocked our healer out in one attack. Backbreaker spends a hero point to recover from unconscious, hauls himself to his feet, pulls the cleaver out of his face, buries it in the Master's back, and tackles him into a wall covered in spikes. Master critically fails Toughness save, is dead. Much rejoicing. Backbreaker performed strenuous action while disabled, falls to dying again. Much laughing.

Eita
2008-10-21, 11:01 PM
It wasn't my encounter, but it is far more memorable then any of my own encounters, even if odds are it didn't really happen. I won't take the time to find the copy-pasta, so I'll just say this: Noh.


(long story, just roll with it)

because why the hell not.

When the 30-foot-long dire tiger fought the armoured triceratops

Good times.

These four lines were all you really needed. They pretty much convey the awesomeness right there.

BossMuro
2008-10-21, 11:42 PM
Not the coolest story, but the first that comes to mind, because it happened earlier this week.

A couple friends and I decided try out DnD 4th Ed. after having the GM of our current game decided not to show up. Our (new) DM,-who had never ran a game before, incidentally- said he'd run an introductory adventure from the DM Guide, with our party being just a rogue and a cleric, both level 1, instead of the five players it was meant for.

After two pretty straightforward fights against kobolds, we went down a staircase to find a large room with several piles of animal skulls and a large pit on the half near us, and at the other end, two raised platforms with kobolds on them playing a game that involved them swinging a big rock hanging from the ceiling at the piles the try and hit it.

Now, clearly they were supposed to use this rock as a weapon against us, and since the stairs to get up to the platforms was blocked by a gate, we would've had trouble hitting them back. So I waited until one of them swung the boulder, then sprung out of hiding, grabbed it, swung up onto the platform and shoved one of the kobolds down a flight of stairs. When I started getting mobbed by them and the two of drakes they had kpet hidden, I jumped off, swung to the other platform and started attacking the ones who had held back, all the while howling like a psychopath.

After a few swings they gave up, opened the gate, and sicced the drakes on the rogue, who had been picking them off while hiding(Oh yeah, it was the heavily armored dwarf cleric of the party doing the swinging around). He jumped into the pit to get away, and it looked like they weren't going to follow him until I aimed the rock at one and accidentally knocked it in. It hit him again, and looked like it would kill him next turn, so my dwarf jumped off the 10-foot high platform into the 10-foot deep pit and tackled it. We finished it off and were congratulating ourselves on him not being dead when the Drake's friend followed me off of the platform and critted me in the back, almost killing me, too.

DrizztFan24
2008-10-22, 09:26 AM
I think I can manage at least two....

Ok so we were playing ToH....horrible party set-up...bad players...and we all lived...no deaths...no naked resets (those of you who have played know).

First, my Beguiler/Assassin managed to get a cool set of goggles that allows him to see through smoke, and an eversmoking bottle. His combat involves popping the cork and backstabbing everything. We tried this on the big nasty thing that is hiding behind the door. The one with 4 arms. I managed to hide and everything good, and then I tried to death attack the sucker....I rolled good damage and everything but he passed his save (duh...why wouldn't he) and turned on my spot, out of reflex. I had been hiding on the cieling and jumped on him...I get hit with all four claws at nearly max damage, and his rend....my character is so negative that Niagra Falls could have been considered half-empty.

AFTER my shapechanger druid sister managed to kill the thing in bat form, we realize that I had total concealment. Reroll damage and miss chance. I get missed by one attack and manage to live with 2hp. My character's response, "That's gonna leave a mark."

Later on in the dungeon our dragon shaman blew all of his Touch of Vitality points on a big nasty critter. (spoiler avoidance) First round of combat, after the monologue and spot checks about the weapon on the ground and the creature aversion to it, my bro walks up to the guy and deals 90 some damage in pure positive energy...thus destroying the creature before I could test the weapon....bummer huh?. We actually did very well int he treasure vault also...

AND, we (earlier on with the characters, level 7 or so) were clearing out Poccari's den (draconomicon sample dungeon). I have the bottle and the cool shades at this time also. I managed to death attack the Gnoll guard outside (woo!) and had managed to use my hat of disguise to get escorted to the boss. Some mumblings about a potential treaty and a bag full of a good fortune tribute...it was really the bottle in the bag but oh well, he didn't need to knwo that. So with an ettin (IIRC), two commandos, and the BBEG cleric in font of me, I drop the bottle and cast spiderclimb.

Next round of combat consists of move silently and ghosts sounds to have the two commandos beat the crap out of each other. I climb up the wall with some botched checks and have spells and arrows shot at me. I keep fleeing across the ceiling of the cavern until I am behind the baddies with some mirror images keeping the others busy.

I sneak up behind the cleric and just before I deliver my death attack, the ettin hears me and roars. He tries to make an attack and barely misses. I pull out my rapier and crit the BBEG in the back, only the sharp intake of breath gave it away. I quickly loot the best and smalles items and toss his body next to the ettin. The big guy thinks its me and squashes the corpse of his former employer into a puddle of jelly on the floor of the cavern, as I calmly walk from the hallway back outside, collecting my jar as I leave.

"Mouth of the cavern is clear." "Now it should be safe for us to head in." As the sounds of an angry Ettin and two commandos battling each other echo out of the cavern.

That attack is the second time my death attack had ever worked, to date the number can still be counted on one hand.

Hiisi
2008-10-22, 09:45 AM
The party just about to enter a wizards tower. The halfling rogue picks a lock and sees a HUGE golem in the first room.. and it's just standing there. He picks up a couple of small rocks and tosses them at the golem. Nothing. All the players grin and start taking out their ranged weapons but rogue scratches his chin and before anyone can stop him, taps the floor behind the thershold with his foot. The golem comes alive and charges the party, it was my time to grin.

I 'knew' someone would be curious/stupid enough to do that. They could've just shot the thing from afar but no.. Gotta love these moments :smallbiggrin: You should've seen the look on rest of the players faces.

I even showed them my notes which clearly stated that the golem would not move until someone steps over the treshold. They left the rogue sleeping in the wilderness the very next night *grin*

Lord_Gareth
2008-10-22, 09:50 AM
Mine was with Jade Manydeaths, otherwise known as 18-Death-Bard, a character who managed to die that many times in the course of a single game month.

The party was confronting the head of a cult to Nerull (this is in 2nd edition, mind) and we're doing rather well. Jade is in melee with the priest, who keeps missing or (GASP!) fumbling, and he's landing the occasional hit, when he rolls a crit, followed by a fumble. The DM rolls on the table, and then says this:

"Jade plunges his longsword into the evil priest's chest, inflicting a grievous and, eventually, fatal wound, then slides his blade out and runs himself through in the chest.

The priest stares at him and says, 'Why do such a thing?'"

I responded, off the top of my head: "Chicks dig scars!"

valadil
2008-10-22, 10:43 AM
The encounter my players bring up most often was actually ripped off from a DDO quest called Kobold Assault. I put the PCs in a three story tower with a McGuffin. 100 kobolds outside were trying to get the McGuffin. They weren't quite Tucker's Kobolds since they weren't on their own home turf, but they were conniving little buggers. The combat was memorable because it was dynamic - the players set up defensive choke points where each PC could hold off several Kobolds, and then fell back as they saw the Kobolds pull out different tricks.

Totally Guy
2008-10-22, 12:03 PM
There was the time the Ghostly Dark Lord was chasing us through a haunted corridor and I suddenly realised we were doing that slapstick comedy sketch thing where the different characters are all going through the doors back and forth. Scooby Doo style.

Then there was the time when I, Obon, Cleric of Kord and that paladin were stuck in a tomb of undead monsters and neither of us remembered we could turn undead until the end of the session.

Then there was the time the undead bees attacked the party.

The climactic fight with the BBEG on the end of a burning pier... it was over in one round, warlord won initiative and bull rushed.

An armwrestle with the strongest man in the world. That funded our adventure.

I remember dropping those sandbags on enemy combatants in a theatre. That was fun.

I also remember the time when an enemy wizard intentionally set off a trap that targetted the closest target. Himself... boy that was a badly designed trap.

Tadanori Oyama
2008-10-22, 12:31 PM
Years ago, in 3.0, my very first long term campaign. Started in the Forge of Fury premade and moved up into the higher levels over months of play. Great time. I spent most of my time being fairly nice to the players. They had tough fights but they got treasure at an amazing rate so they were equiped to handle themselves properly.

At around eighth level I decided to throw them back into the dungeons after alot of military campaign behind enemy lines kind of adventures. So, they have to get this book for some wizard to win the guys help in their country's war. Book is in a tomb but that easy enough, they'd handled undead before.

I set up this encounter in a much crueler manner than I normally would, had a great trap. The book, which they knew was cursed, was on a platform in a floorless room. The platform is held up by a massive pile of bones that decends into darkness. It's connected to the doorway by a narrow rope bridge that has alot of slack on it. Players have to Balance their way across it, which two of them do while the other two wait.

The Cleric, drawing information from some insane part of his mind, decided to read the book. The trap for the room triggers when the book is removed so I asked him if he was going to open it on the stand or pick it up. He said picked it up and cracked it open. Moment he does so two things happen: the platform rumbles and bones start clattering below them and the book blasts the Cleric with negative energy. He took fairly light damage but he was totally paralized.

A round later, as the Wizard tried to pull the book out of the Cleric's hands (without looking at it because the book was still open) so I could close it and the Fighter (the wizard's brother) is rushing across the bridge to see what's going on, skeletons start to come crawling up over the edges of the platform. The skeletons aren't really a threat to the players but there's a problem. The skeletons are what's holding this platform up and as more and more come to get the adventurers the platform is starting to lower.

The Fighter gets to the platform and starts smashing skeletons as fast as he can because that's how Brutar the Dwarf liked things: smashed. Meanwhile the Wizard managed to get the book loose at last and tosses it into a bag. The Cleric, no longer staring into the cursed book, starts to come out of his paralized state. The Rogue is still at the doorway, laughing himself stupid, because that's how Jay-Yaj was.

The platform is dropped about ten feet by this point and has pulled the formerly slack bridge tight. Skeletons are still pouring up from the edges and the Wizard manages to convince the Fighter that smashing them isn't actually helping the situation that much. The Cleric, thinking quickly, managed to stumble his way back onto the bridge and start back towards the doorway while the brothers argue about how to stop the skeletons, thinking he can take the opporunity attacks without much trouble. But the skeletons don't try to claw him, they grapple him (which took be a LONG time to get right, I wasn't great with the grapple rules), and working as a team pin him down on the rope bridge.

Now the platform is getting even lower and the bridge is more of a ladder. The ropes are surprising strong and take some of the weight from the platform as it continues to sink, which tilts the platform at a thirty degree angle and forces the Wizards and Fighter to keep their balance and returns their attention to the problem of escape. The Cleric, using a knowledge of his class features he had not yet managed to demonstate, remember he could turn undead! He won his grapple to get out of the pin and I said he could turn while in grapple so he made one of the luckiest damned rolls he'd ever gotten. He scored high enough to turn all the skeletons on the platform, about ten of them, and then some (they were 1/2 HD I believe). He assumed they would crawl back over the edge, thereby stablizing the platform. I then reminded him that they were less than half his level so they weren't turned; they where destoryed.

The skeletons turn to dust and the platform tilts farther as I inform the players that the burst of holy energy (he did get a 20 on the roll after all) destoryed skeletons UNDER the platform. The thing is at a sixty degree tilt now with the Cleric hanging onto the rope bridge while the Wizard and Fighter try to scamble up the slant to do the same. At this point the party was starting to get really scared because the Wizard had used most of his spells for the day (this was the end of the dungeon) and he didn't have any useful utility spells to throw around. Also at this point they started to get pissed at the Rogue player, who was still laughing in and out of character.

Skeleton hands start peaking around the bottom on the platform were it still touches the pile of bones and it starts to tilt more. With some pretty nice Climb checks from the Wizard and Fighter (nether of whom had Ranks in it) they manage to get high enough to catch hold of the Cleric's legs. The Cleric, well aware of his average strength score, informed them that he couldn't hold them up. The Wizard, in a fit of brilliance, pulled the cursed book out of the bag he'd stuffed it in and tossed it up to the Cleric. He told the Cleric to lace his arms through the ropes on the bridge and then open the book.

The Cleric, though nervous, did so and promptly froze in position. Skeletons reached the Wizard and Fighter just as the platform finally came away from the bones, swinging vertical, hanging from the rope bridge, and away from the skeletons, some of whom managed to keep their grip on the thing and started trying to pull the Wizard and Fighter back.

The Fighter, who was currently hanging from the Cleric's leg, on the Wizard's advise, inched his was higher and started to cut at the ropes connected the platfrom and the bridge. As mentoned, they were quite tough, so he elected to give it an axe swing rather than try and do it bit by bit. One lucky swing later the rope split, the platform swung, snapped the other connection, and dropped into the pit, hitting the pile of bones farther down.

The Wizard, hanging from the paralized Cleric, didn't want to try and make a Climb check because significant failure would result in a fall into the pit. The Fighter, however, was high enough to grab the planks on the rope bridge/ladder, and start climbing. He managed to get to the top and promptly began kicking the crap out of the Rogue for not helping them. After a few rounds of that a reminder call from his wizard brother returned him to business. The Rogue aided, the Fighter pulled but they couldn't pull the whole bridge up. They dropped a rope to the Wizard and got him level with the Cleric. After a few tries the Wizard again pulled the book loose from the dude's hands, freeing him up, and stuffed the book into his bag.

Within three rounds the Cleric managed to climb up and the Wizard got pulled up by the Fighter and Rogue.

They had the book, and they resolved to never open any books in the dungeon, ever again. Also, the Rogue would go first from then on.

skywalker
2008-10-22, 12:39 PM
So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games. :smallamused:


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... :smallbiggrin:)

My Keeper hates this method of Cthulhu resolution. My party tends to make him cry :smallbiggrin:

My personal favorite D&D encounter was a chase scene. The party was escorting a king, and, while camping, all of the horses had been killed, along with us being poisoned during the night. So we woke up with one horse(my paladin's mount) and about 8 party members. One of whom happened to be a (recently weakened by posion) minotaur. The cleric says: "Well, I can blow about 5 restorations among the 8 of us..." Two of those went to the minotaur, and the rogue strapped everyone but me, the dwarf ranger, and the king himself, all of whom rode my horse. As we were nearing sight of the city, our adversaries came riding up on us from behind. The ranger begins deploying alchemist's fire into the dry grass around us to create a wall of flame between us and them. We see a large amount of water fall upon the fire from the sky as the chase continues. He employs this tactic again. Same response. 4 times total this same cycle occurs. I take the time to mutter "only a very well prepared wizard would prepare 4 uses of create water."

Finally, as the BBEGs(there were three of them) reached the minotaur(who was lagging behind, being that he was carrying many, many party members and not up to full strength), the dwarf, who had tried everything to stop them short of poisoning his crossbow bolts(he was sitting on a paladin mount, remember) takes the opportunity to throw a grapple hook around the minotaur's horns, in an attempt to jump from mount to minotaur. He makes his [throw grapple] check, misses his jump, and when the minotaur manages to stay upright and running against this new, added force, begins land-surfing behind the minotaur. The pragmatic BBEGs simply cut the rope(apparently, the DM forgot that they were after the king, not the dwarf). As they surround him and tell him to surrender, the dwarf's response is to lop off one of the horse's legs with his Urgrosh before he is repeatedly stabbed to death. So ends one of the most epic, fun D&D characters I ever had the privilege of gaming with. Then my paladin put the king down in the city and rode out to avenge his comrade.

evisiron
2008-10-22, 12:40 PM
I remember the biggest fight (against 3 lvl 20 characters):

-400 assorted race minions
-26 half fiends
-14 elemental giant hybrids
-3 Omni-mentel
-Pyrolastic Dragon
-Undead Tarrasque (hehehe)
-20 Low level mages spamming an antimagic screen to protect...
-Coll Red Dragon

And then the Col Red came back as a dracolich when then killed him the first time. It was a damn good fight that took up an entire session.
I think one of the players worked out the ECl as 167. :smallbiggrin:

Artanis
2008-10-22, 12:47 PM
Mine was a combination of many instances in a very short-lived campaign. I joined because the DM said on a forum I frequent that he was starting a new campaign due to the previous one ending in his characters depopulating and burning down a casino, and I thought it sounded like a good place to end my five-year avoidance of DnD that had started with a 2e DM...no Arty, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. *deep breath*. Anyways, this DM really really tried, but he just wasn't very good yet, and we players inadvertantly made it ridiculously difficult on him.


The first couple sessions went more or less as the DM planned, with us raiding an abandoned warehouse, getting our objective, and the building winding up on fire. At the end of the session, we were approached by a cop, which the DM intended to be a combat encounter...and my Warmage (whose high CHA made her the closest thing to a "face" we had), saw the cop's .45 and started - and then succeeded in - talking our way out of the fight. The next session, the DM planned for us to have a non-combat session of us talking our way through the police asking us what had happened. I tried to talk our way out of what sounded like a rather invasive interrogation, but that attempt ended when one of the players got desperate and set the police station on fire.

By now, you can probably sense a trend.

With the police station on fire, the plot was more or less unsalvageable, so we agreed with the DM that most of us should make new characters and try to continue on with them. Feeling bad for him, we all readily agreed. I made a Druid, and the second session of "Episode Two" had us fighting Earth Elementals in the attic of a store. The floor was none too solid, so I looked up the heaviest creature on my summons list, a Hyppogryph, plopped it down in the center of the room, thereby collapsing the floor. The floor and everything and everybody on it fell all the way to the main part of the store, breaking and/or spilling tons of stuff all over the floor. One of the players promptly shot off a fireball, and it turned out that the spilled stuff included lamp oil and ingredients for Alchemist's Fire. The store went up in flames.

At that point, we had burned down three buildings in the span of four sessions. We all felt really bad for the DM because he'd been trying so hard and had actually been doing a pretty good job (especially by newbie standards!) of adapting to his plot utterly disintegrating every single session. But we all had to give up and end the campaign there.

Keld Denar
2008-10-22, 01:06 PM
Living Greyhawk, one of the series finalies for a long running metaregional plot arc. The creature, a fiendish shadowed beholder hive mother of legend, challenged our party to arena combat in a Koa-Tua temple (KT temples double as arenas...their god is into that kind of thing) for the aligence of the Koa-Tua who were trying to side with some Drow, Illithids, and a bunch of humanoid cannonfodder. The Kuo-Tua alliance would have been very bad for the already hardpressed surface world, and the only way we could stop their alliance was to accept the challenge (or fight our way out of a few thousand Kuo-Tua).

Man, this beholder was a badass. He had Tomb Tainted, so he could heal himself for 4d6+20 with his inflict critical eye ray. He had DC 34 rays that were Dominate Monster, Flesh to Stone, Disintegrate, Finger of Death, Confusion, Telekenesis, and probably another couple save or dies. He had a monocle on his Flesh to Stone eye that let him split the ray into 2, and a feat from Lords of Madness that let him change his eye cone AMF into a single target AMF. He had a grapple check in the mid 40s, and when he targeted you with his AMF, you lost FoM and all your str enhancements, making it very difficult to resist the grapple, after which he would swallow you whole. I think he was around CR20, and probably on the far end of the CR20 scale, closer to 21.

Luckily, our group was a fairly optimized group of 6, all level 15, my Occult Slayer spiked chain PAer, my friends dwarven Occult Slayer Deepwarden with Uncanny Blow, 2 clerics with great casting utility, an archmage (who spent about 1/2 of the combat stoned...twice), and a druid. We managed to do enough damage to it that it had to heal itself with its Inflict Crit eye, we noticed this (good spellcraft rolls) and our clerics both hit it with Heals the next round. By then, we finally managed to get it down after a very long (almost 3 hours IRL) and hard faught combat that probably lasted around 12-13 rounds. It was the most epic combat I've ever taken part in, and my buddy had spent the last 2 weeks conspiring with another friend to stat out this monstrosity.

And now, my character is a retired Legendary Hero, and life is good :)

chiasaur11
2008-10-22, 01:27 PM
The only time I got to play Call of Cthulhu myself instead of Keeping, my Russian pacifist Catholic Priest ended up becoming the team BAMF. Everyone knew there had to be a twist to why I was playing as a Russian Priest named Father Gregory. (Cough cough Ravenholm) Turns out they were right.

Apparently, the Father had been a White Russian during the Russian Revolution, and he knew a thing or two about using a shotgun.

So when he found himself trapped in Innsmouth, looking for a member of his congregation who'd gone missing there, and he suddenly found himself holding a new-found double-barrel shotgun... there was only one logical course of action.

The "Love and Peace" part of the Good Father died, and the "Vanquisher of Sin and Savior of the Lost Sheep" Father kicked in.

After a half-hour of me and my group throwing out ideas, I finally gave up and decided to go do my own thing while they tried to climb a random building and jump onto the slanted roof of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. So while they're striving to make Jump rolls, I just walked up to the back door, bashed the doorknob off with the butt of the shotgun, and kicked the door open.

Needless to say, the Keeper hadn't really anticipated this, as the floorplan of the building he'd made had the missing Miskatonic U student sitting in the back room... which I'd just barged into. Unfortunately, there was a Deep One Hybrid guarding him.

Fortunately, I knew the fine art of improvising. Can't make a loud noise, like a shotgun blast? Can't let the guard attack me first? Can't risk the kid getting hurt? No problem! I solved all three at once!

I shoved the barrel of the shotgun right up against the guy's stomach, and pulled the trigger. Before he had a chance to react, he suddenly found himself with a basketball sized hole in his lower torso. 1-hit kill with a singe shotgun roll, FTW! Unfortunately, the impact forced the air out of his lungs, and he let out a hollow scream as his guts became the new wall decorations in that room. Just as he hit the ground, the Keeper mentioned that I heard noises from outside the other door I'd failed to hear him mention seconds before.

Oops.

The next thing I knew, a wall of bullets flew through the door at me... and they all missed. Standing there in shock, I raised my shotgun and waited for whatever was out there to come in the room. I got my wish. A Deep One Hybrid and a True Deep One, both armed with .38 revovlers, rushed into the room.

I passed my Sanity check, and decided that there was only one thing for Father Gregory to do.

"BACK TA HELL WITH YE, YE WRETCHED ABOMINATION UNTO THE LORD!!!!" Father Gregory screamed at the top of his lungs as he raised his shotgun towards the Deep One, and fired.

Rolled my shotgun roll. Got a crit.

Rolled my damage roll. Got 24 damage.

The thing had 14 HP. And 1 point of Armor.

I did 9 points of extra damage. From 8 feet away. With a shotgun.

The Keeper had intended for this Deep One to be a High Priest of Dagon, capable of summoning a Nightgaunt, which was going to hold me down while they tied me up so they could sacrifice me to Dagon.

I reduced his BBEG to a cloud of fertilizer, because he said the thing's head, shoulders, and upper torso were turned into dust and/or paste by the blast.



Needless to say, I enjoyed destroying the BBEG of the session with one shotgun blast.

And then here's the kicker. The Hybrid shoots me, point blank, in the shoulder, snapping my collarbone, shattering my scapula, and paralyzing my left arm. I hit the floor, and manage to stay alive with 3 HP. My response?

Pop open the shotty with my good hand and start reloading.

Just as I finished putting one shell in, and me and the Hybrid both began to bear our weapons upon each other, the rest of my group finally barged into the room and obliterated his face with two .45 auto bullets, one of which was a crit.

They then led me and the student out to the car, where I soon passed out from blood loss, content with the fact that I'd saved the lost sheep...


Father Gregory has since then recovered, and will actually show up as an NPC in my new campaign. Woot! :smallbiggrin:


So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games. :smallamused:


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... :smallbiggrin:)

Nice.
Really, who doesn't love Deep Ones getting shotgunned to death?

Hzurr
2008-10-22, 01:42 PM
[The Beholder] had a monocle on his Flesh to Stone eye that let him split the ray into 2

Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

goram.browncoat
2008-10-22, 02:28 PM
Party of four (lvl 4 (i think) monk / sorc / rogue / cleric) was decending to a lower level in a sewer system. They were climbing down a rope hanging above a 15ft deep collector in which a giant crocodile was lurking.

The monk hits the water first and nobody makes the spot check to see the croc. The croc gets a surprise round and goes from a bite into an improved grab grapple and the monk is now in the crocs mouth.

The rogue drops down to assist the monk by poking the croc a bit. The sorc stays on the rope and casts from up above. the cleric tries to go down the rope to assist the monk with healing but totally botches his climb. I allowed him a reflex save to heal the monk on his way past (totally not covered by any rule, but I often DM by the rule of cool :)

The monk tanked the entire fight from inside the mouth of the croc, while the rogue and sorc did damage and the cleric tried frantically (weighed down by his half plate) to stay afloat and keep the monk alive (he went down and came up again several times).

I find it funny sometimes. This was a little random on-the-way encounter to a were-rat camp led by an evil sorcerer with barghest bodyguards. The croc fight wasnt supposed to be much at all but it was the encounter of the session (and probably also the encounter of the campaign, theyre lvl 8 by now but i think we still havent topped that one)

only1doug
2008-10-22, 02:41 PM
CoC:

My character was arrested for stealing from the town armory (I'd bought some weapons from there in a dodgy deal then got time warped 3 months into the future with no chance to cover my tracks).

I was feeling very pissed off (the GM ended the session with the reveal of my arrest and the charges and i was feeling very railroaded).
Two weeks later (the next session) the GM introduced me to my Lawyer (his Wife's new PC, she'd decided to play and her defense of me was to be her intro)

After the revelation of the new character I was relieved and the Trial itself was actually quite fun.

The prosecutor was the nephew of the judge, we wiped the courtroom floor with them due to contradictions in evidence and we agreed that charges would be dropped. Then the Judge declared me not guilty (so we actually won the case (guess he forgot that they were dropping the charges).
In order to cover up the mistakes of the case the Judge gave me a license for everything that I was accused of stealing (which was much more than I actually purchased).

Dragonus45
2008-10-22, 02:48 PM
My first ever game i played a lvl3 bard with a very high Perform (acting) skill. When we were ambushed by a large number of orcs my first battle went very badly as i rolled a 3 a 2 and a 1 to hide and escape there fire. So i took a ready action to Play Dead the next time i was hit (i 5 hp left) Well i rolled a 20 and played dead so well that my allies thought i was dead, and chucked a bag with five thunder stones onto a ledge collapsing the whole thing right on top of me. Fortunately the dm let a paladin run in and save my to keep my losing my first character so badly.

Calinero
2008-10-22, 03:06 PM
Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

Yeah, that bit right there stole the post for me. I am now busy picturing a Beholder with a Monocle. Awesome.

Ganurath
2008-10-22, 03:14 PM
I turned a charging dwarf's full plate against him by convincing my DM to let me cast Create Water inside his armor. The DM's very lax about the rules, and decreed that the dwarf was stunned for two turns, no save. This is the evil party, so it goes without saying that the dwarf didn't last two turns. Best part? One of the reckless berserkers in the party is a dwarf who took the very same set of armor for himself. I'm going to have fun if he crosses the line.

LotharBot
2008-10-22, 03:20 PM
Here are my top 6, all from D&D 3.5e.

#6 - "Epic Bar Fight" (session log (http://rubblerousers.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubble-rousers-day-50-2008-05-02-630-pm.html)) -- I was DM'ing this one. The wizard in our level 26 party has taken ownership of what used to be a part of Celestia that was cast into the Abyss, and we're trying to return it to Elysium (which matches our wizard's alignment.) We have a very-epic lawful dragon holding the plane together with an epic shell of law, and our job is to protect him as we drift toward Elysium. Thus far, we've flown through Pandemonium and Limbo, where we've fought some random epic CE/CN creatures. Now we're over Ysgard, a CN plane of endless battle, and some dwarves show up complaining that our huge Law aura is cramping their style. Our chaotic dwarf fighter chick yells back at them to "mind your own business", and their leader shoots back "you cannot bring such order to our battlefield! We have to settle this, or at least make things a bit less structured, with a drunken brawl! Who is up for the challenge?" 40 shots later, our dwarf fighter chick (who owns a brewery that's famous throughout the planes) isn't even remotely drunk, while the other guy is feeling it a little bit.

The two exchange punches for a little while, while the other dwarves cheer and smash barstools (from bags of holding) over each others heads. Then our fighter chick rolls two critical hits during her attack routine. In this game, we were using the "critical hit deck" (http://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store.woa/18/wa/browse?path=gameMastery/accessories/v5748btpy7wv9&wosid=lZCPzgHV5yAXDcoLUU7rng&source=top), so she drew a pair of cards. One was "seeing stars" or something like that, and the other was "knockout blow" -- making the guy dazed and unconscious.

#5 - "The Guards Said to Come Right In" (session log (http://blacksandsofsemferia.blogspot.com/2008/02/session-17-2008-02-29-in-ur-camp-killin.html)) -- My wife was DM here, and we were level 12. In this campaign, there's a worldwide war going on. Our party bard is son of the king of the city of White Fields, which is currently under siege by the Yuan-ti kingdom of Serpenti. Our party is called the "Ninja Mongoose Rockstars", and we specialize in infiltration and assassination. So we kill a powerful enemy adventuring party and take on their personas using Veil, and walk into the middle of the enemy siege camp to meet with their head cleric. He tells us he has a job for us: he wants us to go out and assassinate the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars. We agree and ask him if anyone in the camp has experience fighting with them (an excuse to figure out who stole our archer's favorite bow and go get it back.) So we go find the guy with the bow, kill him, and then walk back to the head cleric's office. My sorcerer bluffs the guards into letting us in.

Now, the high cleric wasn't expecting us at all. "Speak a word and save your lives!" he says, holding a charge of some nasty spell on his hand. "The guards said to come right in" my sorcerer bluffs, rolling a natural 20. Everyone at the table busts up laughing, and the guy's all "OK fine. What do you want?" "We just got this bow that used to belong to the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars. We need you to scry on it to locate them. It's time-critical." So the guy grabs the bow and starts scrying, and we all step forward to watch as his scrying image zooms in on his own camp... on his own office... on us, disguised as his best assassins, weapons all trained on him. He still put up a decent fight, but we triumphed fairly shortly. I drew our party logo in chalk on the floor, and we all walked out, with the veil still active. To top it all off, I bluffed the guards again by saying "he's really mad that you let us in. I wouldn't go in there until he's had a chance to cool off a bit."

#4 - "The Second Battle of Paverly" (no session log) -- this comes from my very first D&D campaign ever, in 3.5. My wife had been DM'ing a plot in the town of Paverly: a Glabrezu had made a deal with a necromancer named Alishaz to slay 400 people in town square (where Alishaz had been killed) in order to raise him as a lich. If he didn't succeed within the month, their contract stipulated both would be obliterated. We'd managed to stop several plots to slay people in town square (including the First Battle of Paverly, wherein we held off an orc army of 90+ led by a Vrock... while we were level 5.) Eventually we managed to summon the Glabrezu into a magic circle, and kill him while he was unable to retaliate, ending the campaign so we could move on to the next thing we had planned. I thought that ending was lame, and said so... so my wife ran a better ending for me.

At this point, we were about level 9, and had a level 7 NPC fighter (with a very large holy weapon) and a level 4-5 NPC bard who were in the town. One morning, we hear a ruckus. Vrocks have appeared at each of the three town gates (the town is about 400' across), the Glabrezu is in town square, and Babau and other lesser demons are moving around the town paralyzing people and preparing to drag them to the square so the Glabrezu can start slaying them. We quickly head out to gate #1 and kill the vrock, move to gate #2 and kill the second vrock, and then leave the third gate and vrock as we approach the glabrezu in town square. By now, he's just getting his very first group of paralyzed victims all lined up so he can drop an Unholy Blight on them. The cleric summons a smallish archon in the middle of the civilians, using Magic Circle Against Evil to block Unholy Blight. The druid puts a wall of thorns up to block off all but one entrance to town square, so the lesser non-flying demons can't get in to help, and we start beating on the big bad. He gets the wizard down to like 2hp so she polymorphs into a Hydra and (with the help of the town bard's buffing powers) manages to maul the final vrock that flew in to help his buddy. The rest of us beat the living snot out of the big bad, and that was that.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this battle was how mobile and "big" it was. It wasn't just a room with a big dragon; it was a battle across the entire town with lots of enemies and high stakes.

#3 - "The Battle of White Fields" (double session log (http://blacksandsofsemferia.blogspot.com/2008/03/sessions-19-20-2008-03-21-and-28-battle.html)) -- back to the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars, still level 12. After killing the top cleric in the siege camp outside White Fields, we flew off to the main temple of Merrshaulk on eagleback (teleports were blocked) and placed a gnomish-built "unstable contraption" on its roof, nuking it. Now, Merrshaulk had threatened the yuan-ti that if the temple of Senneth (his son) ever stood higher than his own temple, he would abandon them for one hour... and since Merrshaulk's temple was gone and Senneth's was still standing, that technically met the criteria he'd set out. So the army around White Fields, which was about 60% clerics, was suddenly turned into a bunch of fighters without bonus feats or full base attack. White Fields' army was pressing the attack, and 58 minutes later (2 minutes left on the countdown), we joined in. And all of a sudden our pimped out bard (+7 to attack, +7 to damage, and fast healing 3 from bardsong) -- who, remember, was son of the king of White Fields -- was boosting a bunch of generic level 7 fighters up to ridiculous levels.

Too many interesting things happened over the 20-round, 2-session fight for me to detail here; it's all in the session log. The party finished the battle with over 150 kills to their credit, mostly CR 8-ish, but with about 20 CR 15s and a kill and two assists on CR 22 champions. (The two assists: shatter mind blank+feeblemind, and some soldiers found the dude stumbling around; the bard buffed up his father the king who led a suicide-charge to take out the epic boss cleric just before the timer ran out.)

#2 - "Go Seek the Wraith" (session log (http://blacksandsofsemferia.blogspot.com/2008/06/session-26-2008-06-27-unlikely-allies.html)) -- the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars are now level 16, with my wife still as DM. One of our characters, Brother Jakob, was a half-ogre monk/swordsage with some psionic abilities and a custom PrC based around it. His backstory involved killing his own master, Michael, who had been turned into a wraith. So my wife wrote out that story: Master Michael had gotten an oracle that included the lines "by dark descent go make the pathway clear" and "go seek the wraith, return the key, defy your fear." He had gone into the stronghold of the strongest wraith on the continent, a wraith-sorcerer (caster level 35) named Vash, trying to retrieve a key that would summon the great elven city of Kirani (a key ally in the continent-wide war.) Vash turned Michael into a wraith with a single touch.

So Brother Jakob, once he reached sufficiently high level, inherited Michael's quest. At this point, we all knew Vash was a CR 40+ encounter by himself, and we were level 16. But we knew something Michael didn't: we didn't need to actually get the key out, we just needed to break it to release the spirit it held, and it would reform itself in the hands of its rightful owner. So we head toward Vash's lair, and run into Michael's ghost, who helps us find the way. Vash's lair is a huge cave filled with thousands of dread wraiths and spellthieves, with dimension lock blocking teleportation, and the key in the middle inside an AMF and a wall of force. So Jakob, with various buffs to his speed an AC, takes off running for the middle, piercing the wall of force with a dagger of cancellation and snapping the key in half. Mission accomplished, except that now our level 16 guy is in the middle of thousands of dread wraiths and the CR 40+ Vash. So he takes off running for the exit, and nearly makes it out of Vash's spell range... and gets hit by a ridiculously nasty save-or-paralyzed spell and blows the save (rolling a 16 wasn't good enough.) My wife hands him a sheet of paper and explains to the party that "the wraiths swarm him and he dies; we're not going to roll it." Most of our players are like "WTF this sux" except for Jakob's player (who is reading the sheet) and me (because I'd figured out the riddle before.)

1d4 rounds later, Jakob rose as a wraith ("by dark descent"), but his legendary discipline allowed him to retain control for a few rounds. He could either take off running for the exit and let us kill him and raise him (note: this game had custom death rules; if we didn't raise him within a few rounds he was gone for good)... or he could turn around and join with the ghostly Master Michael in fighting Vash, who now appeared to him as an old man sorcerer. The choice was obvious -- Michael-the-ghost walked up behind Vash and tripped him, and Jakob-the-wraith broke out his flurry with all the psionic and swordsage buffs he could muster (plus the lingering buff from our bard). And now Vash was in a bind -- he didn't have many spells that worked on wraiths; he didn't usually fight them. Two failed disintegrates later, he again found himself on the recieving end of some extremely buffed up flurries. In a round and a half, Vash's 800 hitpoints were gone, and a CR 40+ wraith-sorcerer was killed by a monk/swordsage and a Master of Nine, both below level 20. As Jakob lost control and turned into a true wraith, Michael's ghost finished him off, and now Jakob's ghost haunts that mountain killing wraiths by the dozens.

#1 - "Summon Rubble Rousers" (the end of the above session, and session log (http://blacksandsofsemferia.blogspot.com/2008/07/session-2851-2008-07-05-inevitability.html) and another I haven't written yet) -- in the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars campaign, whenever we faced a fight that would best be handled in melee, the players joked that we should summon the Rubble Rousers (the level 26 party from the epic bar fight.) So my wife, DMing the NMR campaign, and me, DMing the RR campaign, conspired to make it happen for our final 3.5 blowout session. I'd designed a summoning room that worked across all time and space and was run as a joint project by all the good gods in the entire pantheon (described at the end of this session log (http://rubblerousers.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubble-rousers-day-49-2008-04-25-630-pm.html)). The catch was, if you used the room to summon help, you'd get the perfect help for the job, and then you'd be summoned as the perfect help for someone else's job. So I got the Rubble Rousers into the room by having them summon the epic law dragon from the epic bar fight story, and then left that campaign hanging with the party waiting to be summoned.

During the "Seek the Wraith" session, my wife mentioned that we'd only play one more session in this campaign before we went to 4e. One of the players asked if we'd finish off the Rubble Rousers campaign. My wife replied "let's finish this campaign first, and then we can decide what to do about that one" -- a clever misdirection. At the end of that session, as we were dealing with the emotional turmoil of Brother Jakob's death, our remaining NMR party teleported to meet up with the king of Kirani, who handed us an artifact and said "I have held this for a hundred and fifty years, looking for the right time to use it. That time is now." He triggered it, and my wife started reading the description of the room we appeared in -- exactly the same description as I'd read before. Soon, the players started to figure it out, and one of them excitedly stammered "oh... oh my god... it's... it's... IT'S THE RUBBLE ROUSERS!" Some of the players were so excited that they lost sleep at times during the week between.

What made this really cool was the party synergy. You'd think mixing a level 17 party and a level 27 party would be a disaster. But the level 17 party had a bard who was now giving +9/+9 with bardic music, which went well with the level 27 party's barbarian, fighter, ranger, and rogue. The level 17 party had an illusion-focused sorcerer who made everyone look like someone else and got the enemies to focus fire on the high-HP/AC epic fighter instead of the squishies. The level 17 party had a monk who was now a ghost, who got to act for one round per fight but could interrupt others' turns to do it (he twice saved another character's life by interrupting a potentially killing shot and throwing the enemy out of the way.) The level 17 archer still dealt out massive damage at silly long range, and since he looked like a tree, nobody ever figured out where the arrows were coming from. And the level 17 druid had control of a continent-wide storm (we were in the sacred grove of the god of storms) and was able to use it to drop a 100d6 attack once per fight. The level 27 wizard (NO epic casting this game) was great at finishing off targets the others had weakened, and dealing massive damage to groups. With the level 27 buffer-healer cleric, everyone stayed alive and healthy as we took on fights of ridiculously high CRs where ancient wyrm dragons, balors, and the Tarrasque were mooks. Oh, and we ended by killing a god -- Senneth, son of Merrshaulk.

chiasaur11
2008-10-22, 03:26 PM
Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

What made you fail to guess the obvious "Both"?

Keld Denar
2008-10-22, 03:28 PM
Yeah, that bit right there stole the post for me. I am now busy picturing a Beholder with a Monocle. Awesome.

Its in Lords of Madness, in the magic item section. Neato item, if you are a beholder, or otherwise shoot lazers from your eyes. Plus, you can telekenetisize it off, breath on it, and rub it on a cloth if you need to buy yourself some time to think of a suitable reply to an unexpected question.

sombrastewart
2008-10-22, 03:32 PM
3.5 campaign, level 9 or so. We're trapped in a dungeon, without our gear. My rogue is the only one that can get us out, given that the locks suck and he was able to improvise up some tools. I slip out and shut the gate behind me and start creeping around to let everyone else out.

The iron golem at the end of the room went into action when the cell doors were opened. What do my compatriots do? Left them standing wiiiiiiide open.

Flash forward to everyone wanting to run, while I'm flanking it with our orc barbarian. He's in a grapple with it and I'm unscrewing something out of its back that looked like it fit the door at the end of the room. The barbarian successfully grappled the iron golem long enough for me to get the thing off its back and defeat it.

What were the two mages and the cleric doing? *sigh* Force the door open.

only1doug
2008-10-22, 03:34 PM
a long time ago i ran a WFRP campaign, the PCs were exploring an long abandoned wizards stronghold (they knew it had been abandoned for several hundred years). They opened the door of the casting chamber and found that it contained the skeleton of a 10' tall creature.

As they entered the room they were alarmed to see the skeleton pull itself together and stand up. they rapidly left the room and slammed the door behind them.

Standing outside the room the PC's planned how to defeat this skeletal Guardian.

"We can starve it out!" exclaimed one player.

Incredulous stares followed by a thump as someone fell backwards off his chair from laughing to much.

10 minutes later we were capable of continuing the game.

10 years later, we all still remember the event.

Lycan 01
2008-10-22, 04:03 PM
Here are my top 6, all from D&D 3.5e.

-snip-




That, my good man, was the definition of EPIC.

potatocubed
2008-10-22, 04:24 PM
Here are my top 6, all from D&D 3.5e.
<snip>

...

......wow.

I've just started a new tabletop game. My new goal is to make it at least as epic as that. :smallcool:

Qanael
2008-10-22, 04:32 PM
Our pacifist pacified or turned to stone most of a CR 19 encounter. Our party was level 12. The DM looked like he was going to explode.

Avilan the Grey
2008-10-23, 01:34 AM
Long time ago:

Setting: Past apocalypse Sci-fi game.

Four players:

Me: a mutated golden retriever with no fur but green skin (photosynthesis), gills, and four arms (yes there was a very long random table for mutations) and a severe pain sensitivity (basically totally oversensitive nervous system)

Other players:
One wakened sentient robot with no real modifications (although in perfect condition)
One mutated human (two heads, clawed hands, "goat" legs. Female)
One non-mutated human

Anyway...

Party split in two to try to infiltrate an old pre-apocalypse bunker system where it was a huge possibility that the big bad (an awakened battle robot and his mixed band of primitive worshippers and other robots) was hiding out.

This was a huge area and it took us two days to reach the central bunker system. To avoid detection our group (me and the robot) stayed as much in the river and swamp system as possible, since he was water tight and didn't mind the cold and I had gills. We even went as far as actually setting up camp under water and sleep on the bottom of the river every night.

The other group had a harder time, but enough skill to avoid setting off any alarms although we had to wait for them for an hour or so hiding at the entrance of the bunker.

We got inside without trigging anything, more because the state of the complex (it had been built several hundred years ago, after all) than actual skill. It was quite clear that someone had tried to repair the sensor systems but failed.

Sneaking around quieting random encounters and freeing a number of prisoners (taken for ransom, mostly) we suddenly stumbled upon a major watch central / guard room. Now remember this was inside an atom bomb proof bunker. Massive walls, massive doors, massive everything.

The un-mutated human, who's supposedly was born pre-apocalypse and woken up from cryogenic sleep (and therefore actually among other things has several high tech weapons etc, the rest of us had to do with brute strengtht, swords, and two Kalashnikovs we had found in an earlier adventure, but with very limited ammo) is the only one that fails to realize exactly what happens if you set off a hand grenade in an environment like that... Instant splat.
We tried to stop him, but he would not listen, instead he sneaked into the guard room, pulled the pin and rolled the grenade.

Now, three things happened: One, we realized we were lucky enough that between us, and him, there was a double blast door. Two, if we closed it he had no time to get out before the grenade went off. Three, everyone in the room turned and stared at him, then us, then the grenade. And then started running for the door.

The decision was easy... Close the door, and hope it held. It did. We found parts of him all over the walls afterwards... The GM took pity on him and let him play one of the freed slaves so he wouldn't have to sit out the rest of the day.

The rest of the adventure was fun too, and the Big Bad went down hard (think of him as the battle robots from Judge Dredd, very badass and very very badass-looking). But it was this part I have always remembered, mostly because the player who got splatted actually used to be very level-headed and smart. I guess he got a blackout...

starwoof
2008-10-23, 01:53 AM
A few years ago my group got together to play a 3.5 Oriental Adventures game. Our group was me (OA Samurai), a ninja, and a barbarian.

In the first session we were in a small village out in the boondocks, plagued by gangsters and a tyrannical mayor type. The group had hunted down and killed the big bad mayor type, then we decided to stay in the town for a while. A few days later a samurai leading a group of about ten men on horseback roll up into town, shouting for the murderers to come and face the justice of the emperor or the dragon clan or something.

I hadn't really been paying a whole lot of attention because I was reading my class features, but when I heard that I sat up and told the group to wait in the bar (because that's where we spend our time IC). I stepped out into the middle of the street and without saying anything, challenged the other samurai to a staredown. They have rules for this in the OA book and it's totally awesome.

Anyway, the GM and I roll off. I got a 20. He got a 1.

He stares at me for a moment and then the samurai and his men decide to leave, rather than deal with a single level 1 samurai with a mean stare.:smallbiggrin:

Hzurr
2008-10-23, 01:29 PM
his happened a year or so ago in a game I was DMing.


Quick Background:
We were running an evil campaign, where all the PCs were former employees of an evil lich sorcerer who was trying to take over the world, but had been stopped by a party of good adventurers.
The lich (who the party re-named "Skeletor") was imprisoned 1000 miles below the earth, couldn't be scryed upon or have his location detected by magic, and the only way to free him was to know his exact location, which the adventurers split between them, and had their memories modified so only the 5 together could set Skeletor free. So the PC's job was to hunt down the 5 retired adventurers (a bard, a cleric, a rogue, a paladin, and a wizard), and get a piece of the location of the lich from each one, set him free, and continue with world domination.

The Characters:
Jorrel - Elf cleric of a torture diety. Specialized in "gathering information" from people they captured as part of a ... ritual to his diety. Former "Inquisitor" of the Lich
Demona - Succubus Paladin of Tyranny - Not very effective in combat, but in out of combat situations, she dominated (literally, she dominated. She had charm monster at will :). To balance things out a bit, we made it a rule that she had to kiss whatever she tried to charm). Former "advisor" to Skeletor
Blitz(?) - Jungle Goblin Barbarian - was an evil little guy with a big axe. He died at one point, and the cleric turned him into a sentient ghoul. We never told him he was a ghoul, and he failed all of his sense motive and wisdom checks, that he still thought he was a goblin (he thought the lack of a need to sleep, and the hunger for flesh were all part of being raised) Served as a scout in Skeletor's army
Rigdan(?) - Half-Dragon Fighter Was basically a Dragoon. He jumped on things, and killed them with a glave. He also died, and was raised as a ghoul after he saw how well it worked for the goblin. Former Colonel of Skeletor's army
Slave - the ogre artificer We allowed him to trade off his ogre hit dice for artificer levels as he advanced. Always had a number of effigies(?) & construct things around. Had origionally been a cook/slave of skeletor (hense his name), but managed to eat a high-level adventurer who was still wearing all of his magic items, and developed artificer powers because of it. There was some outstanding role-playing by this character


Prior to the encounter:
- The party had defeated the bard (who had retired and ruled a small town.) After defeating him, the succubus took his form, passed all sorts of horrible laws, and the town eventually collapsed into civil war.
- They had defeated the rogue (who was one of the higher-ups in the theives guild.) They managed to get recruited into the guild, and killed the rogue they were after, leaving a lot of destruction and angry rogues in their wake
- They defeated the Paladin (who had started his own paladin school) by sneaking into the compound and slaughtering him in his sleep (plus a large number of low-level paladins, who were too close to Jorrel when he cast a maximized circle of death)
- They had defeated the good cleric, who was hanging out at a shrine of Pelor with a gold dragon. They weren't able to defeat the dragon, but they did manage to kill the cleric, grab his body, and get out of there before the dragon ate them all.



The epic encounter:
The Party is level 15 at this point, and had killed all the members of the good party except for 1, a halfling wizard. They know that the halfling can cast 9th level spells, but they don't know anything beyond that (He was level 18, I think). They go into his tower, fight a few things, and eventually find a portal to his extra-dimentional mansion. They buff, prepare themselves (the cleric had a number of shadows under his control that he was keeping in a bag of holding, and the Artificer had two dire tiger constructs under his control) and upon entering, they find themselves facing not only the high level wizard, but nearly everyone they had ticked off on their journey (they never stopped to consider that the good guys would communicate with each other and anticipate what they were going to do). Now they were facing a high-level wizard, an angry colossal gold dragon, a couple of mid-level paladins, and two angry high-level rogues.

They did not expect to survive. (Come to think of it, I didn't really expect them to survive either)

The battle begins, and the wizard immediately casts timestop. He quickly casts deathward on himself and the dragon, casts dimentional anchor on the Succubus to keep her from teleporting away, and throws up a globe of invulnerability around himself before combat begins. The
fighter, barbarian, and succubus immediately attack the rogues,
while the tiger constructs and artificer go for the paladins.
Jorrel casts a spell to keep the dragon busy for a couple of
rounds, and then the wizard attacks. He casts disjuntion (which
I've never actually seen done by an NPC before), primarily
because this will neutralize the artificer, and hopefully get rid
of the lifedrinker-axe that the goblin/ghoul barbarian had (and was slaughtering the rogues with).
Fortunately, the party does well on their saves, except for the
artificer (suddenly he became very aware of how much lower his
saves were because of the level adjustment). The artificer loses everything, and is pretty ticked off at the wizard, because he's been more or less reduced to "just an ogre"

The party does battle, with the succubus frantically trying to charm the dragon (which was really amusing, because she basically flew around it and kept kissing it), while the wizard and the cleric were trading spells back and forth.

The Colossal gold dragon then rolls a natural 1, and is under the control of the succubus. She has the dragon go to sleep, Rigdan does his awesome jump-in-the-air-and-be-a-dragoon move, and coups-de-gras it.

They mop up the rest of the "good guys," and now all that's left is a wizard who has so many buffs going they they can't hurt him, and he's flying well out of reach of the party (they weren't all that great on ranged attacks), and it's only a matter of time before they all die. The only high level spell that Jerrol has left is anti-magic-field, and he was waiting 'til the wizard was closer before he used it. Suddenly, the player playing Jerrol looks over at the player playing Slave (who had been feeling rather useless the last few rounds), and says "Wait...what's your strength?" Since Slave is an ogre, the answer is "really freaking high.".

Jerrol looks at the wizard, looks at the ogre, then looks back at the wizard and a slow smile creeps across his face. The player playing Jerrol turns to me and says "I cast anti-magic field on myself, turn to the ogre and say 'Fastball special'"

The ogre picks up the cleric, rolls very well, and throws him into the flying wizard The cleric grabs the halfling (again, excellent rolling), and they both crash to the ground. Suddenly the all-powerful halfling wizard finds himself a very weak, very vulnerable halfling with large scary people all around him.

Slave walked up, bashed him in the head, then ate him.

After a few clever uses of "Speak with Dead," the party learns the location of Skeletor, restore him to the material plane, and begin a tyrannical rule over the world that would last for centuries!!


Edit - Man my spelling sucks today.

Lycan 01
2008-10-23, 02:09 PM
^Your whole post was made of awesomeness. :smallbiggrin:

Alaris
2008-10-23, 03:13 PM
Well, I'd have to say it was the ending encounter of Chapter 2 of our current campaign. To paint a picture, we have a relatively large party consisting of:


THE PCS:
Wizard 8/Monk 2
Cleric 10
Fighter 5/Barbarian 4/Ranger 1
Rogue ?/Swashbuckler ?/Assassin 1 (or 2)
Monk 2/Fighter 8 (Falcionist)

THE NPCS:
Rogue 10
3 Paladins (Between levels 8 and 10) (Do not have Paladin Abilities)
Bard 10
Wizard (Between levels 5 and 6)

GUEST:
Serievo (Computer)

I believe that was everyone in the party... though I may have missed one or two. We had alot of party members... seriously.

Anyway, our characters had been transported FAR into the future. (We are playing D&D 3.5, which means, normal medieval D&D). We're confused as hell, and we're supposed to buy one of our friends 10 minutes of time to complete something that will fix time. We hoped.

We had Serievo, the computer, to help us out. She controlled all of the defense protocols of the ship we were on. Force fields, weapons, etc. So we don't really formulate much of a plan here, and the three paladins head off in one direction after hearing the start of the invasion. Apparently we're holding back an army.

They buy us a total of 2 minutes before Serievo ends up disintegrating their bodies in an attempt to destroy part of the invading force. Our entire battlefield ends up being the door we're defending in the main room, and 2 hallways.

So us PCs head out into the hallways to see an oncoming army of shadows. ("The Shadow" is a recurring villain, more or less. It's after us because we have these really nifty amulet things... and it doesn't like them. They're the only things that can hurt it.)

So we're fighting off an army of shadow creatures (In the forms of various monsters, from owlbears to humans... to elves, to purple worms. Whatever you can think of at our CR.)

Serievo ends up cutting off three of our other members in the group. 2 PCs and an NPC. Those three people use their amulets to become almost literally a train of light piercing through the shadow. It collides with a train of shadow that was going to overrun us all.

Back with the rest of the party, we see a screen that shows three black amulets drop to the ground after the two trains meet. We just lost 3 more party members. That's what... 6 so far? So we have 5 people left.

With that stunt they pulled, they bought us an additional 7 minutes. After that time passes, we see what we didn't think was possible. What walked down the halls was shadow versions of major NPC bosses from the normal game showing up. High Elven Generals, the Vampire Lord... yeah. So you can guess that we enjoyed beating the crap out of them, throwing our last spells out to hopefully buy the last 2 minutes required.

No... our luck isn't that good.

After we somehow managed to kill off the shadow versions of our enemies, the army of shadows started to return. Serievo manifested itself in a hologram form and stepped out of the door, wielding two firearms of some sorts and ended up decimating most of the army of shadow with brute force.

It ran out of power and soon after vanished. A very useful NPC, if only it hadn't had 6 of our party members killed off.

Anyway, now it was time for the BBEG to show up. It looks to be a Wizard (According to the DM, of 12th level at that... though I'm not sure we can 100% trust his word on that.)

So I (The Wizard/Monk) and my friend (The Cleric 10) started letting loose blasts of the highest caliber. Enervation, Searing Light, Scorching Ray, fireball, lightning bolt.... ANYTHING we could think of.

You know what? Life sucks. You see, we have another friend who was absent that day. At the most random times, he would say, "I DISBELIEVE!" And he would be wrong. If he were here, and would've said that... well, you can only guess what would happen.

The BBEG was an illusion. Thus the reason for our spells being totally ineffective. So our gracious DM has the NPC wizard, instead, say, "No way. It's... IT'S AN ILLUSION"

And we turn around, and the BBEG is at the door we should be guarding. "****... I should've known" were my exact words.

What was funny was... that was the last round.

We successfully guarded the door for 10 full minutes. Bursting out from the door was a glowing scythe, and it cut the man in half. But not before he nearly killed us with a negative energy wave. Basically... the Cleric and I were the only ones to survive through all of this.

It was one hell of a combat... but we managed to get through it, and ended up fixing time back to the way it should be. I won't go into much more detail, as I'm sure it would bore you all. If you're interested at all, you can PM me.

only1doug
2008-10-23, 03:34 PM
<snip>

It was one hell of a combat... but we managed to get through it, and ended up fixing time back to the way it should be. I won't go into much more detail, as I'm sure it would bore you all. If you're interested at all, you can PM me.

don't make people PM you, create a new thread so everyone can read or ignore it as they choose.

Alaris
2008-10-23, 03:37 PM
don't make people PM you, create a new thread so everyone can read or ignore it as they choose.

Wasn't really trying to make people PM me. It was more so, if you're really that interested in what happened afterward, or more so of the back story, then you can ask.

late for dinner
2008-10-23, 04:59 PM
K so My party in my 3.5 game in March consisted of (all 3rd level) a Human Ranger, A dwarf Rogue, An Elf Sorc, and My Gnome Barbarian(always liked gnomes and I thought it would be fun to play with...it was) Anyways we were fighting a group of goblins and had just killed them with no problem. All of a sudden we hear this BANG BANG CRASH! one of the Door to the building we were by, that happened to be right by our ranger, broke down and a Troll walkekd out and one hit ko'ed our ranger. Well, the rogue and I did what we do best. Flank so the rogue can get his sneak attack and I can just destroy him with my sword. anyways the rogue was the biggest problem so he dropped in a few hits and then I was next to go down cause I was available to punch. All that was left was our sorc...who was completly out of spells for the day...(gotta love spells per day)...so she hightails it around the entire map making a huge circle and getting the troll to follow her, but always staying far enough ahead so he couldnt kill her in one hit. well the troll took the bait and by the time he caught up with her, she had dropped a healing potion down my mouth, thus reviving me and giving me time to stand to my feet and ready my action. I charged that Troll and hit it square in the jaw. It still didnt drop. Well It hit me again and I dropped again. My, out of spells, out of potions, sorcerer pulled out her bow that she never uses and took aim and let go(of the dice) Nat 20! Confirmed! She sent an arrow of awesomeness through the air doing max damage right into the throat of that beast, spilling its blood and adam's apple all over the ground. Celebration was had by all.

Lycan 01
2008-10-23, 05:08 PM
Hm. Hate to get off topic, but all these DnD stories are making me want to play it again. I only got to DM/play a few times, so I never really got a feel for it.

Anybody got a link to the 3.5e SRD thing? As well as character sheets for 3.5e and 4e?



Wait, a second... I totally forgot about my DnD stories! :smallbiggrin:

Egiam
2008-10-26, 08:26 PM
I was DM'n in Eberron and the PC's were in Rhukaan Draal (capital of the goblin lands) and they got into a brawl with some gangsters. I had a system where a group of town guards came to investigate disturbances every (dice determined) few rounds.
They came, and the warforged fighter accidentally atacked one of the guards. That started a 3-way fight in the streets with the pc's, the gangsters, and the guards. Later on, another group of guards came, then another, then another. 3 another's later they ran off because of low HP. :smallamused:

Yukitsu
2008-10-26, 09:36 PM
One for each of my favourite characters then.

Sarah the warlock was a part of the party when we were accosted by a band of clerics of the god of hearth and home. The party being evil and all, we were unrightiously attacked. After my freinds were killed, I went nuts in character, and killed them all off, one by one with eldritch lances. After then, I waged an unending personal war against the church of housewives.

Isaac the emo maenad paladin got to fight a vampire army+ lord. We were high levels, I was on a pegasus mount, and was an uber charge build. I broke the tip off my lance and did excessive amounts of damage with a 7 foot long stake, killing an otherwise impressive boss in a single shot to the heart.

Jo Pistachio, who is my favourite modern character got in a fight with an ancient priestess of Hel, who was trapped in an artifact. (I was screwed anyway, so I put it on, even though I could detect it as evil without magic and without an even average wisdom score.) I got out of it by showing my DM where I had written down "illegitimate child of James Bond" on my character sheet, and opted to make out my way through the encounter.

William Sheperd, who is a highly optimized character in a gods campaign got in a fight with a dire dragon. Being busted beyond all belief, he managed to chase the dire dragon down, while asking it questions in a survey. I still have that character go back to do monthly surveys.

Cael had an interesting battle with evil Cael, who came from the future. I had to defeat my future self without creating a permanent death for myself or making any paradoxes, and without letting my future self remember what I had done.

In a call of Cthulhu campaign, I had my character jump out of a helicopter to intercept a missile inbound for it. I took the hit, lived, fell in the water, and went unconcious from falling damage.

Lorne the merchant had an interesting opening fight with a smalltime thief. The Dm was using a funny crits chart, and I ended the battle by removing the thiefs good arm. The one he needed to use to thief with. He became a recurring villain with favoured enemy: Lorne. The fact that two named NPCs wound up hating me more than the rest of the party was compensated for by the fact that the BBEG didn't seem to know that I existed, even when I was attacking him.

Darth Mario
2008-10-26, 11:01 PM
I have a few that I DMed. They were part of a D20 Future campaign I ran a while back, with a convoluted plot that roughly resembled Firefly until the aliens invaded. None of that matters to these encounter, however. Except kinda the alien invasion.

Whatever.

Encounter 1:
The heroes, shortly after the aliens invade for the first time, decide that the legitimate athorities can handle it (having much bigger battleships than the heroes) and decide to keep scavenging as normal. They get a call from one of their fixers, telling them about a major science expedition that their home base lost contact with a short time ago (planets can instantly communicate with each other, but the technology to do so is very large and expensive, so most people rely on communication that travels at about the speed of a ship -- still faster than light, but not instant). Anyways, what this means is that by the time the heroes get to wherever they're going, the ship they're looking for will have been derilict for about a year. Little hope for survivors.

Well, they arrive and discover that they're not the first to get there. The science vessel had been scouting a planet for terraforming. It was still in orbit, but was in bad shape. Another ship was there too -- a cargo ship with similar specifications to the heroes, with a single survivor on it. The heroes go and scout him first, taking a shuttle, figuring that there are more likely survivors there than on the science ship.

The man on the ship tells them his name is Robert Ender (This name strikes fear into the hearts of my players, to this day). He tells them that he's doing just fine, thanks, and he's repairing his ship on his own. He doesn't want their help. The heroes, naturally, find this quite suspicious, but they agree to leave him alone and head back to their shuttle.

Meanwhile, the few of the party who stayed aboard the main ship decide to take a gander at the science vessel. There appears to still be one survivor there, as well. They attempt to dock with the ship, but the derelict cargo ship, which still has weapons available, starts to power them up. Ender locks the first group of heroes in the airlock of his ship and attempts to jettison their shuttle.

This eventually devolves into a situation where all three ships end up plummeting to the surface below. The science vessel is wrecked, Ender's ship splits in half on it's way down, and the heroes lose an engine. All three are stranded on the planet below.

(I know I kind of glossed over the combat, but this is mainly the setup for the other two, and to be honest, while it was awesome, I can't really remember the combat all that well. This was quite a while ago.)

Encounter #2:
By this time, the survivor from the science vessel has told the heroes that she used to be a member of Ender's crew, and that he's a raving lunatic (they were able to figure this part out on their own). He seems to blame the heroes for the loss of his ship, which is the thing that he holds most dear in life. At this point, though, they think he died in the crash.

Seeking parts to repair their ship, they travel across the barren wasteland of the planet and find the cargo section of Ender's ship, mostly intact. They enter and start searching the place, not bothering to post watch because they think they're totally alone on the surface. They notice some crates have been recently opened and emptied, but don't think anything of it. Suddenly, the door slams behind them.

Silence at the table.

They hear some scratching and fiddling at the door, but since there are no windows, they can't tell what's going on. They start taking up defensive positions.

Finally, it stops, and after about five minutes of nothing, they decide to go to the door. The party's pilot opens it.

Robert Ender is standing about 100 feet away from them, on a ridge, holding a remote control in his hand. They can hear him say one word through a radio within the hold.

"Boom."

The entire doorway lights up with 20 pounds of C4. Two party members die out of six, the pilot and the medic. Ender was able to escape nearly unharmed. To this day, my players still claim it was one of the scariest encounters they ever had -- they were caught on the enemy's turf, totally unaware of the situation and without a home base to escape to.

There's one more, I'll post it when I'm fully awake.

7th lvl scrub
2008-10-27, 06:22 PM
Well, in this story, my party consisted of the following(although I don't remember our exact levels):

Level 8 Human Barbarian (Dual Wield Style) (Me)
Level 8 Gnome Wizard
Level 7 Half-Drow Sorcerer
Level 4 Yaun-Ti Ranger (Archery Style)

Well, at the beginning of the adventure, we all rolled our move silently checks. Everybody was rolling well, then when I rolled, I rolled 1 under the creatures' listen checks, so the Ranger and Sorcerer split off and go on a different passage from me and the wizard.

Well, we run into a group of 2 large vipers, and a spirit naga I believe. The ranger and the sorcerer are overlooking a viper and a naga and the wizard and I are each fighting our own. When we began rolling initiative, the DM rolled 20's for both of the vipers, which led to some pictures and odd calculating. As we fight, the wizard casts bull's strength on me, and as he's telling our DM how he does it, he says he grabs my butt when he casts it. After this, our DM makes us act it out, and after some laughs we continue on the adventure.

At this point we go our separate ways once again and we each go through an encounter. After the encounter the wizard and I go through, we run into a room, and our DM makes us do a search check, and I roll a natural 1. Thinking, "What would be suitable for a barbarian," I act this out:

*Roll Nat 1*
Me: *Looking at belt* Hey!, where'd mah swords go?!
*Looking at hands* HOLY CRAP!!! Look at these awesome swords I just found! They're so much better than my old ones!

Well, while this is going on the ranger and sorcerer end up finding a couple of naga just staring at them, and after successfully getting into a naga treasure horde through an awesome bluff check made by the ranger I decide to split off from the wizard and join our ranger and sorcerer. Well, I meet up with them and generally anger the naga so that they attack us. I start my second turn next to a naga and while raging, hit it with a full round attack, which for me was 5 attacks. I hit with every single attack, and our DM says, "Ok, roll these, add them up, and tell me what you get." I end up rolling exactly enough to kill the naga outright.

Meanwhile, our mage, on his own decides it would be smart to cast ice storm in a chamber so that nothing will surprise him. What he ends up doing is killing two imprisoned commoners who die giving him the middle finger. So, deciding that that wasn't the best idea he summons his dretch, casts light on a rock, gives it to him, and sends him in a room. The dretch stops dead in its tracks frozen there, and sensing something that something "bad" is in the room he disguises himself as a minotaur, duplicates himself, does and intimidate check, and charges in.

After running in there, he's faced with a successfully intimidated medussa, and rolls first initiative. He realizes he just learned a spell last level that might get him out of here without taking a hit, and casts phantasmal killer. The medussa fails both of its saves and drops dead. Then the dretch, freed from the medussa's gaze runs up to our wizard and yells, "DADDY!" and hugs him, of course, he hugs the wrong minotaur more than once.

After meeting up again, we fought our way out and ended up calling it for the night.

DragonBaneDM
2008-10-28, 10:15 AM
Well, in this story, my party consisted of the following(although I don't remember our exact levels):

Level 8 Human Barbarian (Dual Wield Style) (Me)
Level 8 Gnome Wizard
Level 7 Half-Drow Sorcerer
Level 4 Yaun-Ti Ranger (Archery Style)

Well, at the beginning of the adventure, we all rolled our move silently checks. Everybody was rolling well, then when I rolled, I rolled 1 under the creatures' listen checks, so the Ranger and Sorcerer split off and go on a different passage from me and the wizard.

Well, we run into a group of 2 large vipers, and a spirit naga I believe. The ranger and the sorcerer are overlooking a viper and a naga and the wizard and I are each fighting our own. When we began rolling initiative, the DM rolled 20's for both of the vipers, which led to some pictures and odd calculating. As we fight, the wizard casts bull's strength on me, and as he's telling our DM how he does it, he says he grabs my butt when he casts it. After this, our DM makes us act it out, and after some laughs we continue on the adventure.

At this point we go our separate ways once again and we each go through an encounter. The ranger and sorcerer end up finding a couple of naga just staring at them, and after successfully getting into a naga treasure horde through an awesome bluff check made by the ranger I decide to split off from the wizard and join our ranger and sorcerer. Well, I meet up with them and generally anger the naga so that they attack us. I start my second turn next to a naga and while raging, hit it with a full round attack, which for me was 5 attacks. I hit with every single attack, and our DM says, "Ok, roll these, add them up, and tell me what you get." I end up rolling exactly enough to kill the naga outright.

Meanwhile, our mage, on his own decides it would be smart to cast ice storm in a chamber so that nothing will surprise him. What he ends up doing is killing two imprisoned commoners who die giving him the middle finger. So, deciding that that wasn't the best idea he summons his dretch, casts light on a rock, gives it to him, and sends him in a room. The dretch stops dead in its tracks frozen there, and sensing something that something "bad" is in the room he disguises himself as a minotaur, duplicates himself, does and intimidate check, and charges in.

After running in there, he's faced with a successfully intimidated medussa, and rolls first initiative. He realizes he just learned a spell last level that might get him out of here without taking a hit, and casts phantasmal killer. The medussa fails both of its saves and drops dead. Then the dretch, freed from the medussa's gaze runs up to our wizard and yells, "DADDY!" and hugs him, of course, he hugs the wrong minotaur more than once.

After meeting up again, we fought our way out and ended up calling it for the night.

I have no idea how you remembered that so well, Akatosh... It was half a year ago!!! Ptolus was good times, gooood times.

Lycan 01
2008-10-28, 10:37 PM
One for each of my favourite characters then.

Awesome stories. But I have questions and comments for some of them...



Jo Pistachio, who is my favourite modern character got in a fight with an ancient priestess of Hel, who was trapped in an artifact. (I was screwed anyway, so I put it on, even though I could detect it as evil without magic and without an even average wisdom score.) I got out of it by showing my DM where I had written down "illegitimate child of James Bond" on my character sheet, and opted to make out my way through the encounter.


Time out... you kissed a possessed amulent to death?



William Sheperd, who is a highly optimized character in a gods campaign got in a fight with a dire dragon. Being busted beyond all belief, he managed to chase the dire dragon down, while asking it questions in a survey. I still have that character go back to do monthly surveys.


Okay, I gotta know, what sort of survey do you ask a dire dragon?




Cael had an interesting battle with evil Cael, who came from the future. I had to defeat my future self without creating a permanent death for myself or making any paradoxes, and without letting my future self remember what I had done.

How? :smallconfused:


In a call of Cthulhu campaign, I had my character jump out of a helicopter to intercept a missile inbound for it. I took the hit, lived, fell in the water, and went unconcious from falling damage.

NO. NO. YOU DO NOT GIVE A GENERIC DESCRIPTION FOR A COC MOMENT LIKE THAT. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO GO INTO FURTHER DETAIL.

Yukitsu
2008-10-28, 11:07 PM
Time out... you kissed a possessed amulent to death?

No. Just until it didn't want to kill me any more.


Okay, I gotta know, what sort of survey do you ask a dire dragon?

"So what ecological niche do you fill? What part of the food chain do you belong in? The top? Obviously not, as you seem to be having some trouble eating me. I'll put you down under "Vegetarian." How many of your kind live around here? None huh? Must be pretty lonely then..."


How? :smallconfused:

I took the book that was cursing future me (same as a helm of opposite alignment) from myself and a party member hurled it into the planes, after I let the BBEG kick the ever loving snot out of my character. He was a liche, so he respawned near my phylactery. My phylacter is a lode stone, so when he died, it automatically went to past me. When he reformed, we got him to spit all the memories into a thought bottle, then I put all my memories in a thought bottle, then we gave the memories to a grad student. He promptly went insane, but a small price to pay.


NO. NO. YOU DO NOT GIVE A GENERIC DESCRIPTION FOR A COC MOMENT LIKE THAT. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO GO INTO FURTHER DETAIL.

OK. In that one, our party was being chased by interpol for a bunch of crimes we didn't commit. I faked my death at this point in time, (And signed all my money over to the agent in charge of catching us in my will.) so I could keep operating without getting caught, but eventually, they offered to let me off the hook if I helped them on an assignment. Rather, my boss told me to do it. (Area 7 from D20 modern) I was supposed to take out a dangerous knife wielding psychopath with an interpol team, so me being the guy who has sanity defects and a few supernatural tricks up his sleave, I wind up on point. We go in after him, but due to some crazy god powers, he slips in behind me and start knifing agents before hoofing it out the building and into a boat, under fire the entire time.

We chase after him in two groups, one in a boat, and one in a helicopter. My build was a sniper, so I went up into the air, where I could get a better view. I take a few pot shots at him, but it's clear he's not going to go down. After he gets out far enough, we see him pull out a law rocket launcher. I look at the agents, say "I just want you to know, I f***ing hate you all." and then I jumped out as a readied action, making a melee touch attack vs. the missile. I touched it, it exploded, and I managed to survive, due to a decent save, and being a fairly tough character all around. Then I fell into the water, and was knocked unconcious by the impact, where I was rescued by the guys in the boat. I woke up in the infirmery, and not only cleared my name, but also was on better standing than the rest of the party with interpol.

AslanCross
2008-10-28, 11:28 PM
Blackguard vs. Paladin
The party was facing a Warblade/Blackguard of Bane in a dark forest on a stormy afternoon. She had 5 levels on the PCs, and I "scripted" the first few rounds of the fight to be the exit of a PC whose player could no longer come. The warblade killed her, enraging the party.
She smugly took up their challenge, repeatedly spouting blasphemy against Tyr (the party paladin's god).

However,the paladin got extremely lucky. His initial charge+smite+Power Attack was supposed to have been parried by the Warblade's wall of blades---however, I rolled a 2. That cleaved off about 1/3 of her HP.

The Paladin hit again, threatening a crit but not confirming. Another 1/3 of her HP.

Finally the Wizard flew above her and blasted her with scorching rays. She ran away with 6 HP.

An encounter that registered 'Overpowering' on the Encounter Level table was over in 3 rounds. I'm so excited for the follow-up to that fight. It will be the final encounter in the campaign.
------------------
Black Dragon Kills: 1
I posted this on another thread awhile back. This was the last session we had before our weekly sessions were interrupted by a school fire. :P


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.

PrGo
2008-10-29, 07:47 AM
We were about lvl 9-10. I was an Ogre Mage (not yet fully grown but pretty imbalanced with my +1 admantite greathammer of thundering), one of the other players was a pretty powerful Sorcerer that easily killed most of the DM's monsters without much trying, and his brother was a Pirate-ish Rogue/Fighter/Dervish that was pretty weak and useless at current level.
While traveling across the sea we got caught in a big storm that stranded us on a tropical island. After going out to explore it, the group saw that trees were humanoid shaped.
The pirate guy draws one of his guns and shoots the tree, rolling a natural 20. A dead dryad fell down.
After rolling listen, all of us turned to see a Nymph standing behind us.
Rolling fortitude.
Ogre mage and the imbalanced sorcerer lying dead on the ground while the pirate dude was trying to realize what happened.
Then he killed the nymph.
Hillarious :P

Xallace
2008-10-29, 08:39 AM
A demon getting pumped full of hand crossbow bolts by four orphans (that the warforged ninja who now thinks he's a dwarven paladin adopted) who just popped out of individual wicker baskets strapped to the war camel in the entry way of a forgotten pyramid.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cries of a thousand tortured souls heralded the return of the evil ooze as it dripped through the ceiling onto the elven fighter, who promptly freaked out and started whacking the now 15-by-15 foot blob of doom with his courtblade. The sorcerer, standing in the next room, decides to check on the fighter after hearing the yelp.

"I wonder if he's in trouble," the sorcerer says. He opens the door to find the ooze's dozens of tiny faces open up and scream at him. The sorcerer calmly shut the door. "Yep, he's in trouble."

Next round, the sorcerer breaks down the door with guns blazing, screaming at the top of his lungs for dramatic effect.

Meanwhile, the druid decides to assume Grey Render form so that he can burst through the wall dramatically. In-character reasoning, by the way. He tries to break through the wall... fails, by a lot.

By that point the fighter was being engulfed by the ooze, so the sorcerer blasted a rather sizable hole in the malevolent blob and used his move action to tear his comrade from the slime. Once again, the druid tries to burst the wall. He fails.

So the sorcerer and the fighter flank the beast. Soulooze slammed the sorcerer into a wall before proceeding to make a meal out of the elf again. The elf resisted, but once again got thrust headfirst into evil soul ooze. The sorcerer, now rather ticked, charges the ooze. He thrusts both of his hands into the beast and unleashes a torrent of death like has never been seen before. The ooze exploded.

So now the sorcerer and the fighter are standing in the hall, completely sickened by being covered in soul-slime, but glad to be alive.

With a crash, the druid's head comes breaking through the stone wall next to them, shouting a single word: "FINALLY!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------

And those're both from the same campaign. I loved that campaign.

Doberler
2008-10-30, 06:49 AM
We were level 1, playing the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. I was a Cleric of Pharasma and the rest of the party contained a Cleric of Desna, a TWF Ranger, and a Sorceror with a weasel familiar.

We started out with little troubles, eventually making our way to a maze sized for small creatures with brambles for the ceiling and walls, making us have to hunch or be pricked to death. We first came across a room filled with goblin dogs all attached to chains. No harm there right?

Wrong. The ranger started doing his thing to make them like us, when we (read: I) were(was) attacked by a freaking panther, while the rest of the party was entangled.

The panther crit me, knocking me into the negatives, as a goblin appears from the brambles. The other cleric, thinking quickly, activates a domain ability to grant himself a 1 round freedom of movement and charges the panther, smashing in its skull with a beautiful heavy-mace crit.

The Goblin moves to strike the cleric as revenge for killing his panther while the rest of the party struggled to free themselves from the entanglement.

Next round comes along and the cleric brings me back up to 2 HP. When My initiative hits, I stand up and deliver yet another crit with my scythe. The Goblin then proceeds to paint the trees with his blood and dies.

Later, after diplomacizing the hell out of another goblin named Grogbak, We move to walk across a rickety bridge. Grogbak, the Ranger and the Cleric make the mistake of all stepping on the bridge one after the other.

The half of the bridge on our side of the 400 foot drop to the rocks below snaps, turning the bridge into a really big ladder, alerting the evil goblins on the other side.

Miraculously, Cleric and Ranger make their saves and manage to hold on. Grogbak wasn't so lucky, when the bridge impacts into the side of the cliff, he looses his grip, but the Cleric manages to catch the falling goblin.

The goblins up top start firing crossbows and javelins down at the helpless climbers, but the Cleric cast's entropic shield on the Ranger, who is now the highest up after Grogbak's fall, which foiled most every shot that would have hit.

Meanwhile on the other side of the 100ft chasm, I stand with the Sorceror who is firing crossbow bolts at the goblins. I take my one ranged weapon, a dagger and throw it at one of the goblins. I miss by one and it lands at his feet.

This was a mistake I realized, because the goblin picked up the dagger and cut one of the supports for the bridge, which happened to be the side that Grogbak was now hanging from, before he was taken out by the sorceror.

The Cleric caught the rope, saving Grogbaks life yet again.

When the Ranger reached the top, he was viciously destroyed by a small pack of goblin dogs, and fell off the edge. The Cleric again moves to catch him, missing the first time, but thanks to a domain granted luck roll, was able to try again, got a nat 20 and caught the unconscious Ranger with one hand. He then dubbed himself "Spider Cleric, Master of Climbing.

I was tired of not doing anything, so I tied a rope around my waist and after a few tries, set a grappling hook on the other side and made like Tarzan. By then, the Cleric had healed the Ranger and the three of them made their way into actual melee combat.

I think that's the rest of the epic moments we had for that campaign, with the exception of lobbing a jar of alchemist's fire through an arrow slit right into a goblin archer's face.

Guinea Anubis
2008-10-30, 11:05 AM
This was in a D20 modern game.

The BBEGs where taking over town after town for an unknow reason and are first job was to find out what they where up to. After stealing a dropship and getting ahead of there mech army that only had 15 BAD ASS mechs in it, we hid the ship and waited to spy on them to see if we could gather any good intel on them.

The BBEGs mechs where marching in a Wedge/triangle formation and my guy had a brilliant plan. My guy snuck back to the dropship with out telling the other guys and unloaded the six battle suits it had on it and took off. At this point one of the others sees that I was not there anymore and radioed me and asked where I was, My guy radioed back "Bowling" and flys the unarmed and heavely armored dropship in to the mechs taking out all but two of them. At the very last second my guy ejects and lands safe and sound and radios back "I need another one of them to pick up the spair".

Iudex Fatarum
2008-10-30, 12:09 PM
I have three I can think of off the top of my head, in chronological order (none are the same campaign).

Burning Boats
So the party consists of 4 people at this point all level 10
me, an aquatic elf monk, who thanks to his monks belt swims at 100ft/round
halfling sorcerer
Human Druid (with CHA = 5)
and a human fighter

There are two empires at war (we started) and we are on the evil empires boat (no good boats going where we needed to).

They find out via intelligence that the good empire was going to get some critical supplies from a ship passing our planned course. We pull in to a small inlet and talk to the captain. our halfling has 3 teleport spells per day. we agree that teleporting the top 12 people from the evil empires ship onto the good guys ship is going to be the most effective way of killing them, my monk will carry the halfling back to our ship so he can send another wave of 4 people. (getting the total of 12)
We bluff like crazy that this is our plan so we have the captain, and first mate dress in full plate mail and teleport, .... 10 ft in front of the bow of the good ship. halfling grabs my back and off we go, doing this two more times before people realize what is going on. the good ship then turns tail to flee, our sorceror decides the only spell he has that will stop them is to fireball their sails. then they send a homing pigeon, who we again promptly fireball (long range spells) This turned out odd as we then had both ships sink on us and the druid tell sorceror to accept a spell to let him swim Baleful Polymorph, but forgot to mention to resist the mental portion of it.

Stuck in a basement
All 3rd level. this was our first session
Another monk on my part who was LN and a jerk about it.
a CN rogue, CN ranger, and a NG (said LN) cleric).
We walk into a major city that is burned almost to the ground. We start searching around and find one shop that is still standing. We go in, see a large oak desk and some small trinkets on the wall, we also see a metal trap door. Open door and jump down. I make it to the bottom and land safely. Everyone then follows. We find short tunnel to a small room full of gold and magic items. (Yes this is the guy's back room with all of his profits, ...) at which point the party goes crazy, scoops all the gold they can into the random bags of holding sitting around. I calmly ignore all of this tell them I don't approve and climb out of the trap door. When the rogue throws up the grappling hook for me to attach to something I carefully wrap it around the large desk, they climb, physics works and desk covers hole. They try to burn desk with mundane fire, try to stab me from under the desk, ... they spent two hours trying to get out, in the end OOC I told them to bluff me, they did so, left part of the gold (half truth they left the gold) and then promptly climbed back down to grab it while I was avoiding getting killed by rogue. The DM wasn't too happy about this, but certainly memorable (hey, they were robbing from a merchant who was forced to leave his shop)

Lycanthropes
This last one occurred last march.
I was Tod Smith a 4th level fighter with a thing for hatting lycanthropes.
At one point the DM got angry because my character (who carried a large scythe for a weapon and wore black armour) walked up to someone being taken in by slavers, she says she is innocent, I ask slavers to show paper work, says they can take any lycanthropes, I ask her to hold out hand and promptly slice it with a small dagger, she winces and it heals. I turn around and leave. the next day in an arena fight we fight a were-wolf who surrenders and I grab his hair and slit his throat and then walk out ignoring the prize money. Party then puts a mark of justice on me without my knowledge. (I hate GM fiat) they way they worded it was I would loose half my rounds if "Tod attacks a lycanthrope that there is not at least one party member considers a threat".

This sets the stage. A party member gets kidnapped and the rest of the party accosts police in an attempt to get the cleric back. I stay back and am able to remain in the city. In early morning I start looking in back allys for our cleric and a beggar says for 10 gold he will give me the info I want, I say yes he points down an ally. I follow, at which point he turns hybrid in a were-rat and attacks. Being the person I am I promptly swing my scythe, roll 20, roll to confirm 20, because of this the GM rules if I could confirm again I could take the weapon as a x5 instead of normal x4, I confirm again (roll 19) my silvered bane (huminoid (shapechanger)) weapon does somewhere around 58 damage (Dm said the extra 2+2d6 for bane multiplied as did weapon spec). Then I get swarmed, I never loose a round to my now active mark of justice, and I kill 4 were-rats in the next 4 rounds. They run and the party finds me half dead, infected and just plain annoyed with them.

vikbra
2008-10-30, 02:44 PM
This happend a while ago when we where playing dnd at a friends house, our party consisted of a dragonborn knight, a human shadowcaster (me) and a human cleric/rouge. We were fighting an evil wizard in a room at the top of a 400 feet tower, when he decides too flee by casting fly. He flew out of a balcony and said that he would get revenge.

We could all see that this was going to be a reoccurring villain, but that's when the party cleric/rouge jumps out of the balcony, grabs the wizard and stabs him to death, then he falls to his almost certain death saving himself in the last second by casting updraft.

So it was just me and the dragonborn left when we heard guards trying ti get in to the room, and we we're at a low level so we couldn't take them out on our own.

That's when we got a brilliant idea.

In the room where a giant cauldron and a sail (a bag of holding filled with a lot of useful and not so useful stuff had been emptied in the room). The DM had told us that it was blowing almost upwards here for some reason that I can't recall. I had a bottle of Sovereign Glue on me that we used to glue the sail to the cauldron (an artifact that we had to get out of there) and flew it out of the tower - the DM rolled really bad at the damage rolls so we took very little damage (I had a total of 2 HP left after the landing and I had around 20 before...) - managing to bounce it of a roof and landing it on a carnival wagon which we rode to the city harbour.

On the way to the harbour the city watch catches up to us, so we had around 20 guards on horses after us when I cast clinging shadows at the horses feet rooting all but three to the ground when they are at full speed. It was hilarious.

That's when our cleric/rouge catches up to us on his newly stolen horse jumping from his horse to a guards horse, killing him, then jumps up on the wagon. The second guards jumps up on the wagon too but I hit him over the head with a board so he fall of again and gets trampled by his own horse. When the third guard jumps on to the wagon I yell to the dragonborn to take my place. After we switched place I realize that I got a ring of brute force and I use it exactly the same that the dragonborn roars at the guard making the guard fly of the wagon, and making the dragon born believe that he can roar so powerfully that people will get knocked down.

It was a session filled with pure awesome. :smallbiggrin:
(Please excuse my bad english)

Entar
2008-10-30, 02:59 PM
We had a quite low level party, 1 to 3 tops, and we had a small army of orcs after us (after getting greedy and trying to loot the treasury). So we enter a room and the DM starts to describe the room, but we had already decided to make a desperate stand right there.

So the orcs stormed the room and while we managed to kill quite a few of them with our fighter scoring a couple of lucky rolls, we were eventually overwhelmed and everybody died. Well, except for our sorceress, who was knocked out by the door when the orcs kicked it in. Everybody was quite upset for having to roll new characters.

The DM was upset, too, because his campaign had failed that way. Then the DM goes "Well, there was a backdoor, but no one was interested..."

littlechicory
2008-10-31, 10:18 AM
Lich wizard, immediately followed by an adult white dragon. Both CR 12-ish. Average party level was 8.

Lich: Our friendly warforged juggernaut grappled him. Construct = immune to paralyzing touch. Grapple prevents spells and provides flanking to another strong hitter (my swashbuckler in this case). Juggernaut spikes meant he was dealing passive damage.

Dragon: This one was just as ridiculous. Cleric O' Doom buffed everybody against fear so only one person (a sorc) succumbed to Frightful Presence. Warforged and swash both ate a breath weapon, swash tumbled to a flanking position, and remaining sorc backed up and cut loose with Scorching Rays. Swash was critting almost every round thanks to keen rapiers. Dragon lasted about six or seven rounds.

LotharBot
2008-10-31, 02:49 PM
Got a new one... doesn't crack my top 6, but it's worth mentioning. Happened less than 48 hours ago.

Get Off My Ship: 4e party, level 5, in a world called Aeris. Lots of islands, and there used to be a big nation called Velinon that exploded(!) about 3 years ago. A mysterious fog has covered the remnants of Velinon with forgetfulness, which means, among other things, the Velin no longer patrol the waters to keep them safe from pirates. So, pirates are springing up everywhere.

We're on a ship headed to the world's center of shipping, and we've fought off various pirate attacks. Through the fog, we see a pirate ship approaching (on a former Velin pirate-hunting ship, no less.) We send the passengers and crew below decks, and a blue dragon flies off of that ship and next to ours. Now, this particular pirate clan had a reputation for allowing surrender, and if you did so, they'd take your stuff and let you live. The DM's plan was for the dragon to try to intimidate us into surrendering, us to wound it, and it to fly back and then fight with a bunch of pirates at its side. So the dragon flies up to the ship and booms out "everyone drop your weapons and stand against the far wall, and prepare to be boarded."

Enter Illishawn, Dragonborn Warlord, with his first great roll of the night: he bluffs the dragon! "I'll set down my sword, but my men are afraid the pirates might try to harm them. Let's negotiate terms." My female minotaur barbarian truthfully pipes up "the last group of pirates, a succubus kissed me! I don't want to be violated again!" So the dragon flies down and lands on the deck, next to our warlord, who has set his sword down. The dragon now insists that we should drop our weapons, and we're all "umno." Illishawn picks up his sword, we go on initiative and the dragon rolls poorly. We proceed to stack status effects all over the dragon (grab w/Bigby, prone, dazed, etc.) Even with action points, it doesn't have enough actions to get away, so it just starts attacking, and blue dragons are not real good in melee. We manage to kill it in short order.

Now, at this point, the pirates are still a few minutes back in the fog. So we decide to string up the blue dragon in the ship's rigging, making it look from a distance as though he's standing there intimidating us and we're all cowering on the opposite side. The pirates, fully expecting such a sight, don't notice we all have our weapons behind our backs. Their ship latches on to ours, and we take our surprise round. The wizard drops some kind of cloud that kills half of the pirate minions (and will kill the rest before they get a turn.) My barbarian charges a minion, kills it, and uses the charge-after-a-kill power to charge the pirate captain. The warlord comes up beside me, yelling "this is my ship now, and your crew is now mine" at the pirate captain, and the rest of the party works on whittling down the other pirates. First round of combat, all the minions are already dead, there are 6 non-minion pirates still standing, and I whack the pirate captain pretty good, down to bloodied.

Illishawn yells out again "you're on my ship!" and breaks out his second great roll of the night: he uses his biggest daily, a 3d12+lots attack, and crits. This kills the pirate captain. The DM rules that he gets plus a million to his intimidate check, which turns out to be a million and eighteen. This is enough to make the remaining pirates surrender, and they're now the crew of Illishawn's ship.

mindblank19
2008-10-31, 09:24 PM
This one's still fresh in my mind: massive damage with a lvl. 1 orc barbarian!!!

It's true: the player rolled stats and got a 21 in Strength. I DMed an adventure where the players explored a cave. Eventually, there was a fight against four kobold pikemen on a 10 ft by 10 ft bridge over a fast-moving stream. Now, the conventional way would be, in my opinion, to just bull rush the puny things over the edge.

Not so for Grukk, the most ridiculously overpowered lvl 1 orc the world has ever seen.

With an epic cry of "GRUKK SMASH!!" he charged the first kobold (whose ready attack missed), and then critted it (while raging with Str 25, and with a greataxe) for 54 damage :smalleek:

Actually, that has been the finisher for every battle this orc has fought since then. Just this evening, he killed a 6th level sorcerer (at 3rd level), thus preventing him from using a second fireball that would have killed them all. (the first had already dropped them to about 10 hp each).

Zenos
2008-11-01, 05:55 AM
I am having one right now in a PbP game. We're fighting an Adult white dragon CR 10. With a party ofeight 4-5th level people, including a kensai fighter, a half-orc barbarian, a sorcerer specializing in blasting, a rogue, a fighter (I think he used the survivalist variant) and a female fighter/rogue/wizard, and myself, the resident bard. The battle has been going on for a few rounds, So, since I have draconic as a language, so I shout that I am going to summon a fire elemental, and my bluff check is a total of 22. I am level five. I use silent image to bluff summon monster six. The dragon lifts its tail away from the illusion. Then I cast rage on the kensai and the survivalist fighter. In the same turn, the dragon recovers its ice breath it had used to nearly drop our rogue, and unleashes it solely on the fire elemental. Poof, illusion disappears, and it is left feeling foolish as the fighters hack away at its flanks. I have just made it use its most powerful attack on a 1st level spell. :smallamused: So now I'm gonna be using my whip to distract it from defending itself, as I've run out of good buff spells.

Satyr
2008-11-01, 03:30 PM
The whole campaign was played in a system that is much more deadly than D&D and has a more realistic approach to combat and especially injuries (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but with more severe penalties for injuries), while magic was rare and takes much time (and can kill the caster if he makes even the tiniest mistake).

The setting was a crossover of a more classic swashbuckler tale with strong mystery and horror elements, somewhat similar to “Pirates of the Caribbean” but made for adults, and inspired by a multitude of different horror movies, such as White Zombie and my own nightmares.

The PC’s were on the search of a legendary treasure, while they were hunted by a Spanish privateer, who wants the treasure for the glory of the Empire, and are caught in intrigues among themselves, while they stumble between the fronts of a shadow war between the two most powerful sorcerers in the Western hemisphere – an old with (the hag of Tortuga) and Edward Thatch, called Blackbeard.

The player characters were:
Juan, a Spanish fencing master from an impoverished noble family, whose great swordsmanship was only exceeded by his pride;
Valérie, a French thief, con artist and part time mistress of the Governor of Guadeloupe; more intelligent than any man around her, and constantly underestimated by her ,ale allies and rivals;
‘Black Joe’, a former buccaneer on Hispaniola and expert hunter and marksman;
Captain Bartholomew Chandos, smuggler, owner of a ship, charismatic leader and treacherous scum

‘Dysfunctional’ doesn’t even start to describe it, but that was a part of the campaign’s premise – the different PC’s were meant as much as enemies as allies.

The campaign had several scenes that were intense
– a sugar cane mill run by zombies (true zombies as in people with severe bran damage under hypnosis instead of the living dead) was depressing, especially, when one of the character found his brother as one of the mindless workers;
- a sea battle against a much larger and better armed ship, while they PC’s crew tried to lure the enemy into more shallow waters, while desperately trying to hinder the other ship to damage the ship’s manoeuvrability;
and a duel between the PC captain and an upstart mutineer with only knives, while bound to each other…

But the most epic confrontation was the battle between the Pc’s (without their crew) and a warlock and his guards in the ruins of the destroyed Port Royal – the battle took several hours (in game), where the PC’s lured the mercenaries in ambushes, set traps and outsmarted a much stronger a really scary enemy.

The warlock’s guardsman were under an enchantment that fuelled an enormous hatred in them on the Player Characters while it at the same time suppresses all feelings of pain or exhaustion – even severely hurt, the guardsmen kept coming and fought literally until they dropped, while the PC’s were tired, badly equipped and severely outnumbered.

The first two guardsmen were lured by Valérie into the cellar of an instable house, where the other PC’s let the house collapse on them. Joe used an old arcebuse with a lunt lock to let their enemies think he was hiding on a tree, so he could circumvent them and steal and burn their black powder stash. Juan managed to challenged two of the enchanted guardsmen into a battle with the sword, only to give the rest of the team the chance to short them from behind. The captain fled into the port basin, hiding under a mole and shooting one of his pursuers from below with a pistol enclosed in a pig’s bladder to keep the powder dry. The blood dogs of the guardsmen were effectively disabled through a great waste of money – the PC’s throw self-made bags with Cayenne pepper after them.

And in the end, they only had to face the warlock and his two direct bodyguards, after no side had any powder left, most of the mercenaries dead or crippled, the players exhausted, but determined- it was a great displace of superiority through smart tactics, that the warlock – who would have been dangerous enough to wipe out the whole team if he would have been willing to risk to use his magic arts – fled and never returned. This scene, were the protagonists (calling them heroes would be completely wrong) facing their opponent while nearly exhausted was extremely strong – a field of ruins, on the one side, a tall and pale pseudo Puritan ,while his two remaining mercenaries- two hulking brutes with black clothes and masks that cover their faces stand on his sides, gripping their boarding axes, while on the other side, the characters are nearly ragged, but determined to face the warlock – fencing master Juan with a badly bandaged head injury, Valérie with torn skirts and a pair of old daggers, Captain Chandos with a broken arm and the last loaded gun, and Black Joe with a Musket that he wielded like a club. With the right background music – in this case the End scene of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ - it created an extremely intense atmosphere, even though nothing happens. It became clearly the highlight of the campaign, the first time that the PC’s had the impression that they were able to tip the balance of the whole conflict they were dragged in, even more so, they suddenly became significant.

I was quite fascinated how my players managed this one, because I actually planned to let them suffer. They also forgot their smarter approach in the very next confrontation and turned to impulsiveness instead –promptly causing the death of the fencing master, which turned the Port Royal fight into an even more outstanding event – it was the last time they were all together…