Crowning Moments of Awesome

[Azernak0]

In the last campaign I DM'd, the party was put up against a Balor in an arena for the amusement of a slightly sadistic team, but mostly to test their abilities. They were 8. It did not go well. In the first round of combat, I 20/20 decapitated two members of the party. And then, the Lawful Evil Beguiler does possibly the most manly thing a Gnome could do.

He took off his glove to reveal the large tattoo of Asmodeus' symbol on his right hand, and in his words, "I walk up to Balor and backhand him!" The imagery of Wee Man slapping the epitome of all evil and darkness with what equates to the most insulting thing to that creature, just gives me this warm feeling in my heart. Anyone else know of any such moments?

[klemdakherzbag]

I had a vampire Druid in 2e ad&d (long story) that shapechanged into a hawk, flew above the attacking dragon and rider, changed back and proceded to slice the throat of the rider and shove and hold the scimitar into the dragons head until its next breath attack. Big boom but I was alive.... Sort of :)

[beyond reality]

In a Deadlands game my players was facing a multi-story tall monstrosity formed from several demons merged together as the finale of the campaign. One character, an old man who played the "storyteller" role in the game rides up to the big thing on his mule and basically tricks it into swallowing him whole.

Previously he had sewn about 20 sticks of dynamite into the lining of his coat. The detonation blew the Big final boss sky-high. The player survived (he had taken every single Hard to Kill style Edge available).

[Diarmuid]

In the last campaign I DM'd, the party was put up against a Balor in an arena for the amusement of a slightly sadistic team, but mostly to test their abilities. They were 8. It did not go well. In the first round of combat, I 20/20 decapitated two members of the party. And then, the Lawful Evil Beguiler does possibly the most manly thing a Gnome could do.

He took off his glove to reveal the large tattoo of Asmodeus' symbol on his right hand, and in his words, "I walk up to Balor and backhand him!" The imagery of Wee Man slapping the epitome of all evil and darkness with what equates to the most insulting thing to that creature, just gives me this warm feeling in my heart. Anyone else know of any such moments?

So he provoked an attack of opportunity?

[Azernak0]

So he provoked an attack of opportunity?

Yes, and the Balor actually missed.

[Otacon17]

In the last Pathfinder session I ran, one of my players took out a tavern full of orcs in a fairly cool way. He's trying out the Gunslinger class, so he had a firearm and powderhorn, plus in the course of adventuring he'd picked up a bottle of alchemist's fire and 2 flares. He and another player (a Ninja) were supposed to sneak into this bar, assassinate a particular orc, and sneak the body out while avoiding a whole bunch of orcs. That plan went down the drain pretty fast when the Ninja got caught trying to assassinate the main orc.

The Ninja manages to signal to the Gunslinger that she's in trouble (by screaming out a window at the top of her lungs), so what does the Gunslinger do? He kicks open the door of the tavern and immediately chucks his alchemist's fire onto the bar, igniting all of the alcohol and catching the orcish patrons by surprise (and also on fire). Since I hadn't given them class levels, they burned to death pretty easy. Hearing the commotion, several other orcs rush out of the back room, and he manages to gun them down in short order (although he got hurt pretty bad in the process). Finally, some more orcs run into the bar from upstairs, and the Gunslinger - low on health and unwilling to let those orcish falchions anywhere near him - says, "I throw my powderhorn at them, and then fire off one of me flares in their direction." Boom! Orc salsa.

Sure, basic orcs are only CR 1/3, but he took them out in such a cool way that I think it qualifies.

[Gensh]

From my Exalted game's TVTropes page:

Spoiler

Show

• Rita tore a man in half in the first session, no seriously, she literally held the unfortunate sap above her head and snapped him in two like a twig.
• Mitsugi's Peony Blossom in session two. It was a tornado of Razor Wind that insta-killed at least 8 bandits, including their leader. It pretty much ended the fight instantly.
• During the fourth session, fire broke out in Great Forks, possibly due to explosives, though the cause is still unknown. Either way, the group went to work saving the people and doing what had to be done, with three members of the group being particularly notable.
• Lost Daughter is an Abyssal and has to follow the beck and call of her Neverborn Masters. The Neverborn generally don't like their servants helping the living and punish those who do. However, Lost, knowing she was going to suffer for it, pretty much told the Neverborn to f*** off and used Unfurling Iron Lotus and epic sword twirling to divert water from the river and using it to douse the flames.
• Cyrus, not to be outdone, used his Lunar Powers to cause a F***ING TIDAL WAVE to douse the town.
• As for Duskor, Rita wanted some info about the Immaculate Monks. Without hesitation, he went straight to the library, which was on fire at the time, activated Iron Skin Concentration and simply waltzed in there. After managing to find a ledger on monasteries, he walked back out, now on fire. Instead of doing what normal people do and implementing Stop, Drop and Roll, Duskor simply walked across town, STILL ON FIRE, mind you, ignoring Weiss's attempts to stifle the burning Duskor and handed the book to Rita, who responded by dousing the fire by dumping a bucket of water on him.
• Lost cut down a ship mast and then used it as a bat, with the expected results of completely decimating the crew.
• Cyrus, sick of Akana's smug face, shoved a table into him, threw knives at his throat, legs and crotch, then backflipped onto a nearby wood pile. He killed the guy. IN ONE HIT. Sure, it turned out to be a fake, but WE didn't know that and it was still completely f***ing awesome.
• Again, Cyrus manages to be awesome by turning into his Tyrant Lizard form and thrashing Loras, providing the group enough time to get out of there. The action was awesome enough that, even though he insulted him earlier, Duskor defended Cyrus when Rita scolded him for his actions, saying that without Cyrus's help, the group would've likely been killed.

[gibbo88]

We had a large cliff running next to a path we had to take so me ranger snuck up the top invisible to watch over the path and attack the enemy fort as a distraction. There was a female human who we knew to be a druid who had been a massive pain in the ass for us last time we attacked the fort - we now have 50-odd orc warriors. Anyway I went to cut her throat but she saw me and did some vaguely aimed fire orb so I spear tackled her off the cliff. 90ft cliff with double damage from the 200lb half-orc landing on her. Would have been way cooler if she had just died, but she ended up being finished off by the archivist while I was grappling her.

Turned out that the druid was going to make the wall collapse on the group as we walked under it, making it a better moment.

[Zerter]

We had a long-running (years) party in AD&D and as 3th edition was coming out we decided to do one last suicide adventure. It was a published adventure that took place in hell (don't remember the name) that was meant for a party several levels above ours.

I lost three characters in the first three sessions, but the core of the group survived and had awesome luck vs. some of the creatures that should have wiped them out easily. Most memorable was a incident that involved a collosal red dragon (working from memory here):

The red dragon spotted our party and was set to engage, ensured to kill all of us. Not being able to do much against the dragon, one party member points a wand at the dragon in desperation. The DM rolls to beat spell resistance (95%) and rolls a 97, meaning the spells gets through. The DM does not seem to care and informs everyone the wand is only effective if he rolls a one (with a D20) at the dragon's saving throw, which he does a few seconds later. The effect? The dragon turns into ice, which quickly melts and floods the entire area.

The entire campaign was filled with that kind of luck on key moments, eventually leading to us actually succeeding on the suicide mission (which was to retrieve some kind of gem artifact from some kind of lord of a layer).

[Silus]

It was my first time playing a Bard. The DM was mashing things together, and about two hours into the session we (myself, a Bard, a Sorcerer and a Fire Elemental) ended up owning a tavern (successful Forgery check to bump the 10% commission up to 70% caused the owner to have a heart attack and die). So we're running the place, then BAM! Floor of the office caves in and we find ourselves in an Orc/Goblin/Hobgoblin/Bugbear/Ogre garrison. They were busy fixing the place up for their new "overlord" and didn't really pay us any mind.

So we walk into one room and there's this Orc foreman with like 12 Goblins. So I go up to him and say "Hey, you look a little overwhelmed here, want me to take a few of these guys off your hands and have them work elsewhere?" The Orc said yes, so I got myself like 7 Goblins. I take them out into the hallway and ask them "So, what sort of benefits do you get? Health? Dental? Two weeks paid vacation?" They got none of that, so I suggested they unionize to get better benefits out of their new Overlord because, after all, they're the ones that do all the work. The Overlord just plans stuff.

So the Goblins start going all "UNION! UNION!" and striking in the hallway. I pop into the room across the hall and I'm all "Hey, we got some Goblins out here not working and going on about unionizing. You might wan to deal with this." So some more Golblins and Orcs jump in. I then pop into another room and get some Ogres in on the action. The last room I popped into had the Hobgoblin leader and I tell him that no work is getting done and that there's a riot out in the hallway and half of his workers are trying to unionize, so he runs out to deal with it.

They ended up killing each other and I got full combat XP. 'Twas awesome.

[DragonOfUndeath]

In a game of D&D I was an Airbender (homebrew class) who fluffwise could control his own voice due to being a Banshee's grandkid.
So my entire party is captured in the middle of the night and bound and gagged because they are looking for a treasure that we have the map to. So the bandits can't find it and the bandit leader takes off my gag, asking me if I will show him where it is.

My response? To whisper the word "No" and amplify it through the entire camp. Due to good rolls I reduced every single one of the bandits to unconsciousness clutching their ears which were bleeding from the sheer concusive force.
I wiped out an entire group of bandits with a single whispered word!

[Traab]

This isnt D&D its everquest, and OLD everquest at that. The Kunark expansion had recently come out and I was having a blast with my monk at the lake of ill omen. I found out that there were two groups of bad guys in the zone that HATED each other, so me being the crazy son of a monk that I am, I proceeded to gather every single goblin in the zone, (there were a LOT) then ran them into a sarnak fortress, once again, aggroing everything on the way. I somehow was still alive at this point when one of the two groups cast an aoe spell that hit the other side. I instantly feigned death and watched as EVERYTHING started fighting each other.

My computer nearly shut down from lag. There had to be 40 monsters all having a battle royal inside the sarnak fortress. The zone chat is filled with people laughing, telling everyone else to hurry to the sarnak fort so they dont miss the show, and im not sure, but I think they hotfixed that a short time later, because other people started trying to pull it off and it started turning into zone disruption. (You REALLY didnt want to be in that fort when someone tried that. Chain agro would get you killed really fast)

[Gamgee]

Gen'dai opponent in Star Wars. They could never kill him because o his super regeneration. It got so bad they called in an orbital bombardment. Due to other circumstances in the same round no less another capital class ship crashes into this boss and it lives. He did have to retreat, but it was a crowning moment of badass for me since I don't play often.

Then the other time my player took down a Capital ship single handedly and killed off most of the thousands of crew on board by his own skill. The Mandalorians respected him greatly and he was renounced as a one man army. Literally. Oddly enough the only enemy this guy feared was a Feeorin Grey Jedi who he was never once able to beat.

[nightwyrm]

My level 4 druid solo'd an ogre while the rest of the party laid dead or dying in a spiked pit trap. We were just coming off from a tough fight and the DM really wanted to capture us so he dropped another ogre. My AC was dead and I was pretty much tapped out, but I managed to get Cat's Grace and Produce Flame up before the ogre got to me. Three ranged touch attacks and three 6's on the d6 damage die later, the ogre was dead and the table was high-fiving.