3600 damage?!?! - Overkill and you!

[the clumsy bard]

Sorry having seen many threads about random deaths by lowly monsters and other various threads I thought it be fun to discuss situations that ended horribly for your very own pcs or perhaps friends of yours!

My experience with overkill:

Ok before I continue let it be known that I am currently in a near epic to epic level game.

That being said this happened 3-4 weeks ago and my character has come back (go epic levels) but I think I set a record for damage received in one game.

Basic scenario: My group and a bunch of forces of light are fleeing the prime material plane on a flying ziggurat (yes i know odd seeming, but its what was going on lol) In any case there is a large war zone we have to fly through to get to the other plane we will be safe in.

One of the characters is a level 18 githyanki (you know what that means!) In any case a large fleet of githyanki airships along with the lich queen herself come after us. There is a long pitched battle on top of the ziggurat involving all the pcs. My character is the go to meat shield and also one of the only evil characters in our group. During combat it seems to be going well except the oncoming airships filled with the elite wizards and sorcerers of the lich queen. In any case everything seems to be going well.

I leave to go to the bathroom.

While in the bathroom this is what i hear, "3600 DAMAGE HAHAHAHAHA!"

Confused I leave the bathroom and come back to everyone staring at me.

My good friend who got me into the group looks at me and says,"We all teleported away and left you. They hit you with a few hundred maximized ray spells... so yeah, 3600 damage..."

[Lev]

Sorry having seen many threads about random deaths by lowly monsters and other various threads I thought it be fun to discuss situations that ended horribly for your very own pcs or perhaps friends of yours!

My experience with overkill:

Ok before I continue let it be known that I am currently in a near epic to epic level game.

That being said this happened 3-4 weeks ago and my character has come back (go epic levels) but I think I set a record for damage received in one game.

Basic scenario: My group and a bunch of forces of light are fleeing the prime material plane on a flying ziggurat (yes i know odd seeming, but its what was going on lol) In any case there is a large war zone we have to fly through to get to the other plane we will be safe in.

One of the characters is a level 18 githyanki (you know what that means!) In any case a large fleet of githyanki airships along with the lich queen herself come after us. There is a long pitched battle on top of the ziggurat involving all the pcs. My character is the go to meat shield and also one of the only evil characters in our group. During combat it seems to be going well except the oncoming airships filled with the elite wizards and sorcerers of the lich queen. In any case everything seems to be going well.

I leave to go to the bathroom.

While in the bathroom this is what i hear, "3600 DAMAGE HAHAHAHAHA!"

Confused I leave the bathroom and come back to everyone staring at me.

My good friend who got me into the group looks at me and says,"We all teleported away and left you. They hit you with a few hundred maximized ray spells... so yeah, 3600 damage..."

I believe a thrower build can reach around 15k at very long ranges. Lead boulder.

[Runestar]

I believe a thrower build can reach around 15k at very long ranges. Lead boulder.

A hulking hurler can easily deal millions of damage with a uranium beach ball using the borked damage tables in complete warrior.

For me, I was running the "Sons of gruumsh" module. Players were 5th lv, and a lucky crit by this orc barb1 wielding a greataxe dealt about 50 damage and felled the fighter in 1 hit. Darn that triple crit multiplier.

[Tael]

For me, I was running the "Sons of gruumsh" module. Players were 5th lv, and a lucky crit by this orc barb1 wielding a greataxe dealt about 50 damage and felled the fighter in 1 hit. Darn that triple crit multiplier.

Hah! You think that's bad? Our party was up against this elite lieutenant Goliath of the evil army with a few of mook guards. I was a beguiler, at full health, with Mirror Image up, so I wasn't too worried about staying in melee with him for one round while I disabled the mooks. But lo and behold, the Goliath swings at me, crits with with his x4 Goliath Greathammer, and hits me out of the 4 images. Boom, 104 damage to a level 6 gnome beguiler. Yeah.

On the other-side, I was once a spec'd out duskblade who did 56 damage at level 2 , so I might have had it coming.

[Souhiro]

Well, you know... there is that fighter which carried a bag with thousands of ants. Had the feats to get whirlwind attack and cleave...

[Keld Denar]

For me, I was running the "Sons of gruumsh" module. Players were 5th lv, and a lucky crit by this orc barb1 wielding a greataxe dealt about 50 damage and felled the fighter in 1 hit. Darn that triple crit multiplier.

And this is why default MM orcs were re-equipped in the 3e to 3.5 conversion from Great Axes to Falchions. Potential for crits went up, but the crit damage potential went down. Much less likely that a orc warrior1 can 1shot a 5th level character.

[Cespenar]

Heh, I remember a game where the party barbarian punched the party wizard and got a crit. I believe he did some ~15 damage to the puny 4-6 total of wizard's hit points. I remember ruling a minor Int damage to the wizard due to concussion.

After that, the barbarian continued to massacre the party paladin, IIRC.

[Teron]

Well, you know... there is that fighter which carried a bag with thousands of ants. Had the feats to get whirlwind attack and cleave...

You can't use Whirlwind Attack and Cleave together. The actual "bag of rats" trick uses Combat Reflexes and Great Cleave to turn attacks of opportunity against the fleeing rats into free swings at the real target.

And this is why default MM orcs were re-equipped in the 3e to 3.5 conversion from Great Axes to Falchions. Potential for crits went up, but the crit damage potential went down. Much less likely that a orc warrior1 can 1shot a 5th level character.

On the other hand, it makes them more likely to one-shot level 1-3 characters.

[Dark_Nohn]

My good friend who got me into the group looks at me and says,"We all teleported away and left you. They hit you with a few hundred maximized ray spells... so yeah, 3600 damage..."

Few hundred maximized ray spells, epic level game... you got off light.

[Elondor]

This thread made me finally register.
My latest story involving silly circumstance happened last week. I'm runnung a Naztharune Rhakshasa Rogue in a ecl 30 homebrew game. We were traveling down a corridor in a mindflayer cave system. We ran into a trap of sorts. What it should have looked like to the party is that they see the lead character float into the air for a moment before disappearing into a wall. Being the rogue, I was the lead character. Being an epic rogue, I was invisible. I got wisked away, with my party none the wiser. Oh, it gets worse. What grabbed me was an invisible mutated umber hulk. I saw it due to lenses of true seeing, which also subjected me to its gaze attack. Luckily i made the save against it. Unluckily it grappeled me, with a dc I could not escape. Lucky for me, I had a cape of etherealness, so i went ethereal and headed back to my party. Then the Dm starts laughing. Apparently this umber hulk had ethereal jaunt 3/day. So he snatched me back. And proceeded to nom me to bits.

TL;DR The stars aligned to kill my character.

[Keld Denar]

Just think...your epic level 30 character could have been saved by 1400g Anklets of Translocation.

Best investment for just about ANY character, regardless of level.

[Douglas]

Just think...your epic level 30 character could have been saved by 1400g Anklets of Translocation.

Best investment for just about ANY character, regardless of level.

Or a Ring of Freedom of Movement. Standard issue on any really high level character I make.

Also, what kind of idiotic level 30 character does not have See Invisibility or an equivalent? Your entire party should have seen you despite your invisibility, unless you had some sort of super-invis ability which would presumably have also made you invisible to the umber hulk.

[BenTheJester]

Sorry having seen many threads about random deaths by lowly monsters and other various threads I thought it be fun to discuss situations that ended horribly for your very own pcs or perhaps friends of yours!

My experience with overkill:

Ok before I continue let it be known that I am currently in a near epic to epic level game.

That being said this happened 3-4 weeks ago and my character has come back (go epic levels) but I think I set a record for damage received in one game.

[...]

My good friend who got me into the group looks at me and says,"We all teleported away and left you. They hit you with a few hundred maximized ray spells... so yeah, 3600 damage..."

You, sir, havn't heard of an ubercharger

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

A hulking hurler can easily deal millions of damage with a uranium beach ball using the borked damage tables in complete warrior.

Think of the cat girls.

Chargers are the fromage-friendly alternative

[Andion Isurand]

A hulking hurler can easily deal millions of damage with a uranium beach ball using the borked damage tables in complete warrior.

For me, I was running the "Sons of gruumsh" module. Players were 5th lv, and a lucky crit by this orc barb1 wielding a greataxe dealt about 50 damage and felled the fighter in 1 hit. Darn that triple crit multiplier.

Yeah, I lost a dwarven cleric with 88 HP to the very same kind of weapon, except it was swung by an ogre. Not even my dwarven AC bonus vs giants could save me... 20 followed by a 19 confirmed the crit.

[Dark_Nohn]

I once had an ubercharger at 30 (we were doing level 30 pit fighting builds, some special rules.) Centaur, works quite well for the mounted bonus without levels of paladin, or some weakass mundane horse, and riding a dragon was far too many levels to invest. I forget the actual damage output, but it was ridiculous, and it was the only build I had that could touch my friend's ultra-defensive build without a nat-20.

[Marillion]

No overkill was done to me. However, after being attacked by zombies, my character began to hack their bodies into tiny pieces. When it was pointed out to him that he didn't need to do this, he replied "Yes! Yes I do! And they need to be burned, and their bones need to be buried upside down at a crossroads, and their ashes need to be scattered to the winds! Ideally, this is how we would deal with all of our enemies."

[grimbold]

an 18th level warblade with the right feats and weapons can do 1800 damage in a round :)

please explain the ziggurat?

[KillianHawkeye]

I don't get why they left you to die if they could all teleport to safety.

[the clumsy bard]

My character is the go to meat shield and also one of the only evil characters in our group.

In our game "Playing nice" doesn't mean working together it means not killing each other directly.

In our game I am an elven warblade / eternal blade who also has a death knight template.

2 of the other characters are:

Cleric high priestess of Pelor with levels in radiant servant and the saint template

the other is a 23rd level swordsage who is the champion of Pelor

Safe to say they didn't care about what happened to me whatsoever and the others are, well... one is self serving and the other just doesn't care.

The game is far more fun then this dynamic lets on.

an 18th level warblade with the right feats and weapons can do 1800 damage in a round :)

yes :)

please explain the ziggurat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

The short of the ziggurats in game is that there are 4 of them, which need to be controlled. One of the characters had just used gained control of the last one (read the one we were in) To leave the prime material plane we needed something that could hold many people and yada yada yada planar pirates attached their airships to our ziggurat and pulled us through the astral plane to get to another outer plane.

[Eldariel]

an 18th level warblade with the right feats and weapons can do 1800 damage in a round :)

please explain the ziggurat?

...what? If you really want to, you can probably get into 5-number digits with a level 18 Warblade.

[grimbold]

If you really want to, you can probably get into 5-number digits with a level 18 Warblade.

what i meant was that you can do 1800 damage in one attack, if you have some special weapons and boots of speed you can easily go over 20,000

[jiriku]

This thread made me finally register.
My latest story involving silly circumstance happened last week. I'm runnung a Naztharune Rhakshasa Rogue in a ecl 30 homebrew game. We were traveling down a corridor in a mindflayer cave system. We ran into a trap of sorts. What it should have looked like to the party is that they see the lead character float into the air for a moment before disappearing into a wall. Being the rogue, I was the lead character. Being an epic rogue, I was invisible. I got wisked away, with my party none the wiser. Oh, it gets worse. What grabbed me was an invisible mutated umber hulk. I saw it due to lenses of true seeing, which also subjected me to its gaze attack. Luckily i made the save against it. Unluckily it grappeled me, with a dc I could not escape. Lucky for me, I had a cape of etherealness, so i went ethereal and headed back to my party. Then the Dm starts laughing. Apparently this umber hulk had ethereal jaunt 3/day. So he snatched me back. And proceeded to nom me to bits.

TL;DR The stars aligned to kill my character.

Welcome to the Playground! Glad to have you here.

....Bummer about your character, though.

[Akal Saris]

Last game that I DM'd was a level 14 campaign. The party's half-dragon fighter, beefiest member of the group, charged a group of mid-level spearmen. His AC is in the low 40's and he had displacement running, so he was pretty confident that they wouldn't hit him. I had the spearmen panic and go full power attack, figuring they would only hit on a critical anyhow.

Well, lo and behold, one of the spearmen Power Attacks for 12 and rolls a 20 with a x3 polearm. Rolls to confirm, another 20. Confirms miss chance. BAM! PC takes around 150 damage instantly. Since we were using PF rules and you die at negative con, after he calculated his HP from leveling up an hour ago, that left him at -17, where he would die at -19

[Volos]

Playing an epic level game as a Red Wizard with Epic Leadership. The DM was foolish enough to rule that circle magic gave me extra spell levels to apply to metamagic feats. He claimed this would be 'simpler' for him to do. So I Intensified Extended Repeated Time Stop ontop of Quickened Intensified Extended Repeated Time Stop, and proceeded to surround the BBEG with as many Intensified, Enhanced, Energy Admixtured, Repeated, Twinned, Meteor Swarms. All while taking advantage of Improved Metamagic to lessen the spell level cost of each metamagic by four to a minumum of +1. That really made this easy to do honestly.

So here is what happened.
1) I am free to act for effectively 10 rounds per time stop. But with the Repeating and the Quickened Repeating, that's four. So 40 rounds.
2) I cast 80 (magic items, don't ask) Intensified, Enhanced, Energy Admixtured, Repeated, Twinned, Meteor Swarms. (Half are quickened)
3) Each of those does 11d6 of two types of energry four times. Then doubled and maximized by Intensify.
4) So now we have 88d6 maximized twice for the two types of energry. 1056 damage per spell.
5) With repeated I now have 1056 damage X 80 x 2
6) Oh yeah, 2d6 bludgeoning for each meteror. And we had 4x80 of those. Doubled and maximized that comes out to 7680
6) 176,640 damage.

Needless to say there was some divine intervention and the next thing I know I am playing a bard. -shrugs-

[Godskook]

Pretty sure you can't meteor swarm in a time stop without finding a way to "delay" it like a delayed blast fireball does.

[subject42]

One of the best ones that we've had recently was a Level 10 (Rebalanced) Charging Smite Paladin.

The DM was playing us against a puzzle monster that he let out of a box in a theater. It contained an invisible monster with improved evasion and spider-climb that dual-wielded chainsaw swords.

Nobody had true seeing or see invisibility prepared, so most of us kept blasting with area of effect attacks and hoping that it would roll a 1. The party Paladin was feeling useless and just kept casting self buffs in order to feel like she was doing something with her turns.

When the creature finally became visible the Paladin charged it and rolled a crit with a x3 weapon combined with every self buff that she had active. She ended up dealing something like 140 points of damage and knocking the monster 30 feet back.

The best part was that it landed in the box that it came out of in the first place.

[Volos]

Pretty sure you can't meteor swarm in a time stop without finding a way to "delay" it like a delayed blast fireball does.

Ah yes, it was the Delay I forgot to add in there. Still, even with the repeating it was fairly crazy.

[Godskook]

Ah yes, it was the Delay I forgot to add in there. Still, even with the repeating it was fairly crazy.

Delay only works for a maximum of 5 rounds. Your time stops lasted for 10 rounds each.

Also, are you sure its legal to repeat a personal-range spell? And if it is, is it wise to force yourself to stand still for the round required for it to go off again?

Finally, I hope you had a plan for forcing the BBEG to stand still in the same spot that just got him blasted with the first half of your salvo for the round it would take for your second salvo to launch(remember, you can't move the time stops, and the repeats fail if you move).

[grimbold]

don't you just hate it when your epic combo gets pooped on?