I don't think I'll ever top tonight's game

[Shpadoinkle]

As I've said in several other threads, I'm playing a centaur ranger with the Giant Killer kit in a 2e game run by my sister's fiancee. About 90% of the campaign up to this point has consisted of the DM's conversion of the old 1e modules that made up the campaign Against the Giants; Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. We just started on the third one tonight.

Without going too much into detail, we made it to the fire giants' headquarters, and a new player to the campaign, the DM's sister, joined us with a half-dragon priest of the god of blowing **** up or something, because she can cast stuff like Fireballs. Anyway, she cast Wraithform on herself (basically it turns you ethereal for 2 rounds/level) and investigated the compound. This took a while, real time, so while she was doing that, I was poking through my character sheet, and the sheets of the two henchmen I had brought along, and hit upon an idea. Once the priest was back in our campsite and described what she saw, I pretty much immediately had one of my henchmen, a level 9 wizard, cast Reduce on me 4 times. As we figured it, this reduced my size to 1/100th of 1% my original size, or about 94/10,000s of an inch. Then he cast Fly on me, and I used my ring of Invisibility. Next I flew into the king's throne room, flew up his nose, and, using a power I got from a Wish a few sessions ago that lets me cast 5 dice worth of lightning bolts per day per level, essentially vaporized his head with a 45 die Lightning Bolt from inside it. As far everybody else in the throne room knew, his head simply exploded for no reason whatsoever.

The DM said he had never had a player pull off something that outrageously ridiculous before. He had a great attitude about it, so he wasn't angry or anything, but he did admit disappointment due to the fact that he had given the guy 20 HD and had specifically tweaked him to be able to last at least a few rounds of melee with my character (so far I think the record is about three rounds).

So, yeah. I'm pretty sure that I'm never going to experience a moment in D&D that was quite as awesome as that.

If you've ever been in a game where the players have come up with something ridiculously awesome like that, regardless of whether it worked or not, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe I'll be able to come up with something even greater for next week.

[FoE]

Ouch. Impressive strategy. Very clever. Though it's a bit of a double-edged sword, now that you've got a way to basically kill anything you come across without much of a battle.

[evil-frosty]

I cant believe you did that to poor king snurre, he never did anything to you. Are you still going through the mod or are you done with it since you killed him?

[BobVosh]

I would have hit you with the lighting bolt as well, you were in his nose and it would easily have lept to you.

I remember that module, lots of fun.

[Who_Da_Halfling]

Just remember: anything you can do can be done TO you.

-JM

[Drider]

I suggest talking to the DM, coming to an agreement not to do that ever again, if he never does it to you, or something to that effect.


He would be justified just making you fight the fire giants if that happened tho.

[Keld Denar]

Now heres a curious thought. Given that the character was sized down, would the lightning be similarly scaled down? Now, relative to a normal sized character, the skull of a fire giant would be about as thick as an average stone wall.

Now, 2e Lightning Bolts had a nasty tendancy to bounce, and reflect off of solid surfaces. Clever players with an eye for geometry and trigonometry could bounce a single Lightning Bolt around a small room with devistating results.

What would happen if you bounced miniature Lightning Bolts around the inside of the head of the giant? They would keep bouncing until they ran out of range or escaped through the nose or jaw or somehting.

Would probably completely frying yourself though...

[Shpadoinkle]

It's not an exact duplicate of the Lightning Bolt spell. Once it hits something living, it stops, but it can bounce like normal before then. Also, my original idea was to be reduced to micro-size, then fly up his nose and set upon hacking his brain up with my swords, but the DM ruled that, even though he agreed by the RAW in 2e specifically say that your Strength score is not reduced, nor is the bonus damage from your weapons for magical bonuses or anything, and ONLY the damage from your weapon's base die roll is reduced thanks to your size, having a centaur kill a giant with what amounted to less than pinpricks but still somehow did a minimum of 20 damage anyway was just totally out of the question. That's when I remembered my lightning bolts.

He also specifically mentioned that there were at least two other giants he had tweaked who could give me a significant challenge, and that would NOT work again. He has a tendancy to let crazy things like that work the first time it comes up, but then blocks it from being effective (for either the players of the NPCs) ever again. Considering I'm sure they would have been able to take countermeasures eventually, I was fine with that.

Now heres a curious thought. Given that the character was sized down, would the lightning be similarly scaled down?

The DM also ruled that no, the bolt wouldn't be scaled down. It's magic, and spell X produces Y effect, regardless of the size of the person casting it. If that were the case, then giants would be even more powerful, and races like halflings and pixies and such would be SoL as far as... well, pretty much anything went. They can't fight the bigger races hand to hand, and that rule would have meant thier magic did bupkis to them as well. They'd pretty much have been screwed out of existance ages ago if that were the case.

[Assassin89]

I have two tales of trap handling. My group contains a Hound Archon monk, an elf gun mage, a human psychic warrior, a human sorceror (killed by a fire trap), a fighter, a warforged healer (now a goblin due to drinking blood from a fountain), a female magmin wizard (fell to Baator?) and a half-elf cleric (me)
One was a set of axes that swung down whenever a certain step was pressed. As the axes were 4 feet above the ground, the magmin decide that should could just walk under the trap. The other members except the sorcerer (he died before encountering either trap) crawled up the stairs under the trap. A different trap was a block that fell on a 10 by 10 square. As everyone in the group is an engineering student, the psychic warrior made a plan to cause the trap to stop functioning by pushing the block in order to induce mechanical failure, but a great axe was lost in the process, as it was used to activate the trap.

Another situation of awesome was when the psychic warrior bullrushed the Hound Archon so that he could bypass a barrier that also block the barbed devil in the room. the psychic warrior failed on his luck check, but the Hound Archon succeeded.

[Sebastian]

Not to rain on your parade, but I don't think Reduce (or Enlarge) are cumulative.

And even if they are, how could your wizard cast spells on you if he effectively can't see you?

Or, at least, that is what I'd have ruled as a GM.

Or I've made you meet some standard sized fleas or mote to fight