Oh...that was the boss?

[kasubot]

I want to hear your stories of the times you have thwarted your DM's big baddies so elegantly that it made them look like a foolish npc.

Mine was a simple dungeon crawl. we got to the end of the dungeon and met the big wizard that guarded the final treasure. It was suposed to be the dungeon boss but our rogue hit him with a poisoned crossbow bolt and paralized him. So we took his immoble body and flung him into the spike pit we had just crossed before we came into his room, killing him. We werent allowed to have the gold our DM was so annoyed.

[tainsouvra]

We werent allowed to have the gold our DM was so annoyed.

Throw the DM into a spike pit too.

[Lord Iames Osari]

I've been there, from the other side of the screen.

That was before I saw this poster, though:

Spoiler

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[Raolin_Fenix]

Futuristic setting, my DM spent all week preparing a blockade that would disable our ship, then an entire escape plotline where we'd have to find another ship, provide a distraction, make our escape, and all that stuff. An entire week's worth of plotting. I ran the blockade successfully. <3 cloaking device for 50% miss chance if they target the right square.

But that wasn't really a boss encounter, so much as a "HAHA PCS WIN" situation.

For a boss encounter, we'd been playing this campaign for the better part of two years, once a week barring school holidays. We started at level 1, ended at level 20. Finally the boss fight rolls around, with this horrid demon guy with control over time. My friend Baleful Polymorphs him into a rabbit in the first round.

[Mewtarthio]

I've been there, from the other side of the screen.

That was before I saw this poster, though:

Spoiler

Show

You know, someday soon people are going to believe that sort of thing's a standard format for presenting certain RPG elements, and then they'll wonder why their boss has an RPG dictionary exerpt that reads "Endurance" and has a picture of a sailboat with some trite platitude hanging on his wall.

[Lord Iames Osari]

We can only hope, Mewtarthio. We can only hope.

[continuumc]

hmm..I have a very low level boss fight story. There were only two players, with my friend DMing the two of us. We were each level 1s. At the end of this quest, he had planned for us to fight this huge spider-monster that had been terrorizing a village. We found it hanging in its web far above the ground. (I don't remember exactly how far) It started to climb down a string of webbing and we both shot at the string of webbing.

Somehow we succeeded at hitting it, sending it hurtling to the ground to take lots of fall damage. From that it just took little fire dam. to finish him off.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

We once killed a BBEG by caving in the entrance to his dungeon, thus making him die because of lack of oxygen and vitals.

Ye olde sneak attack during the BBEG's big reveal. He never again made him a living wizard.

We grappled and chained a vampire BBEG and gave him the mafia treatment with the nearby river. Eternal darkness blotting out the sun? Puh-leeze.

I poisoned the entire planet.

One time a DM planted me in the session as the BBEG. Everyone else died to my machinations save the final fighter. He power attack one-shotted my poor rogue ass when I tried to finish the job.

[Leicontis]

One from a friend of mine:

The party happens, while doing something else, to spot the vampire BBEG. One character decides to take a pot shot with his longbow. His Heartseeker (pierces target's heart on a nat20) longbow. With a natural 20 on the attack roll...

To quote the friend, "I'm sorry, was that your plotline?".

[Kurald Galain]

I one-shotted a rather powerful melee fighter boss with my level-one beguiler. Round one, I cast sleep from a distance while the boss approaches. He fails his save, game over.

I was party once to bypassing a DM's entire adventure, because we were looking for this magical ship and for some reason that eluded me he had an efreet of some sort give us a wish. So we wished to teleport ourselves onto said ship, worded carefully so that we would arrive now and with our equipment. It worked

[Shas aia Toriia]

The ranger destroyed half of an entire ship full of orc warriors by throwing over the kegs of alcohol we always keep on board our ship.

Then, we threw over a lit torch!

[Ever Phasm]

The party had this great reaccuring villain from about 3rd level. By the time they were 8th level and the villain (assasin) was 13th level.

The villain (called Ned) lept from cover paralyzed and poisoned the Paladin and went down two rounds later because of a raging/frenzying berserker.

[Ditto]

We were doing what ended up being a one-off, but was supposed to be a longer campaign, where the end of session brought us up against and Oni (Oriental Adventures-y giant thing). The group powergamer decided to try out weapons of legacy, and had a Cloud-sized 8-ft. long sword that did something like 10d6. He charged into the Oni's cave and Massive Damage'd what was supposed to be a recurring villain, while the rest of us were discussing strategy.


Earlier in that session, another 'PCs win' sort of moment. We begin the session at the awkward 'How do we get the random PCs to be a party?' phase aboard a Lightning Rail train in Eberron. For various reasons, we each want to check out the Mysterious Cargo in the back car. Sword Guy basically says, "Hey, Mr. Guard, check me out! I need to go back there, there's... something... fishy." He gets a big no. My gnome sorcerer quickly casts Dancing Lights, which float around Sword Guy's hand. Guard Guy strongly suggests Sword Guy stops casting, but he doesn't know what to do about it.
Meanwhile, my gnome sorcerer walks calmly through the open door (where the guard was peeking out), who was apparently so fantastically distracted by the Sword Guy that he didn't notice me. Sword Guy *just* barely saw me, and steps just inside the door to grab me.

At this point, Guard Guy has called for backup. There are 3 or 4 guys with muskets surrounding Sword Guy, who is on the plank between two train cars, holding me by the scruff of the neck. While they're all deciding what to do and how to talk him down, I grab my Immovable Rod. Gnome goes FWIP! around the side of the train (I made an incredible strength check to keep my arms from being ripped off) - and sword guy is standing there, now gnome-less, with my Dancing Lights still hovering around his hands. "ZOMG! He disintegrated the gnome!" The guys open fire - but Sword Guy gets his sword out first. He's kind enough to do non-lethal damage, but 10d6 non-lethal... and teetering on the edge of the gangplank... that guy ended up with 3 broken legs and various other things, when they stopped the train to pick him up. There was *that* much damage.

...it took a bit of railroading to get us back on the same team.

[Shas aia Toriia]

How did he do 10d6? They made a weapon called the fullblade for that kind of stuff, it's as big as Cloud's sword, but only does 2d8.

[my_evil_twin]

When my party finally caught up to the highly-anticipated evil wizard BBEG, I found out in very few rounds that I hadn't given the boss nearly enough wizard levels. There wasn't much of a fight, and he didn't even have time to get of an escape plan.

After some disappointed grumbling from the players (and even the PCs), I gathered my wits and remembered the simulacrum spell. The corpse dissolved into snow and melted. I couldn't disguise that I made it up on the spot, but the players were glad to go along with it if it meant a more satisfying fight.

The found the secret entrance to the BBEG's real lair, which was empty; the real guy had used the simulacrum as a delaying tactic while he made his own escape. He attacked the party in earnest as they left his tower, killing one PC in the first round, breaking out some spells the players had never seen before, and generally making a much better impression before they brought him down.

[Jack Mann]

I'm more curious how the guard got three broken legs. What sort of guards were on this train, anyway? Centaurs?

[dyslexicfaser]

I'm more curious how the guard got three broken legs. What sort of guards were on this train, anyway? Centaurs?

"Wait, that's not a third leg..."

[Guy_Whozevl]

I was in a 7th level campaign and I made a large krenshar leap-attacking berserker type guy. We encounter this slaad who traps us in an artifact world so he can deal with us at his lesure. We eventually corner him and he says some BBEG stuff. We roll initiative. I win. I charge power-attack bite/claw/claw and kill him in round one. He was CR 13. This eventually led to the DM only creating monsters that dealt damage to anyone who attacked them with natural attacks (only me in this case) and giving everyone else magic artifacts that give ridiculous boosts like: +8 to all physical stats, unlimited wildshape into a T-rex with fullplate, and the ability to create infinite clones of yourself that can be used to as scouts or decoys. That was a wierd, confusing campaign.

[arkol]

I find it strange that some DM's react the way you guys have been describing. Any DM that reacts that way is a poor DM. Or most likely a munchkin player who decided to try a hand at DMing while not knowing anything about real DMing.

[Dairun Cates]

Oh, the memories... Unfortunately, I'm the GM in this case. After a while, I learned to throw an actual joke villain in there to keep them on their toes.

In what has inevitably been deemed the "Kata Maneuver" (named after its creator), there's a wonderful love of mutually assured fall damage in our parties. The idea is to hit a person while falling from a great height. Both people take the fall damage from the two objects clashing, and the attack adds "bonus damage". Not actually efficient in "Damage done per HP", but it has it's uses. Specifically, it was used original in facing off a monstrously huge opponent. He was doing massive damage per hit, and one of the players wanted a way to kill him in one shot. He flew up for one turn, and then accelerated downwards. Few things can survive a 12d6+12 Robot projectile.

Then there's the reason almost ALL of my bosses now have high Sense motives. One of my player's in all of their wisdom had the wonderful strategy of getting the bad guys to talk, and then when the conversation was ending, she'd say something along the lines of "I've got one more question" and then would shoot the opponent while they were busy responding most likely with "shoot". Needless to say, this was the source of many a free potshot at the boss's flat-footed AC.

On an odd side note, I eventually did the same thing with a diplomat in a Star Wars d20 campaign and proceeded to crit his bodyguard, mow down half the mooks while the Jedi tried to take out the Sith lord, and then took a headshot on the Sith Lord while he was gloating over my companions with the wonderful catchphrase, "I thought I told you to shut up". Pretty bad ass for a level 6 character with a total of a +5 to hit (2 of that from the weapon).

Finally, there's my groups love of applying a dangerously and pointlessly high amount of explosives to any situation that gets deadly. Somehow, they've managed to NOT kill themselves doing this so far.

Of course, as a GM, I feel no guilt in using equally silly tactics to occasionally teach them a lesson.

Nothing quite like the looks on your players' faces when they try to sneak attack the Psychic Government agent with a sniper rifle only to find out that their ambush site is a trap for an ambush by a highly trained Ninja that sneak attacks the first target for half their life.

[psychoticbarber]

According to 2nd Ed Rules (or else the bastardized version we were playing), your crit damage increased based on the number of 20s in a row you rolled.

I once rolled 6 20s in a row. Killed the boss in a single longsword strike.

[sombrastewart]

We finally hit the top of the evil mage's tower. There he is, waiting for us. And the orc barbarian charges with the vorbal blade he found in the tower and rolls double 20's.

[SpiderKoopa]

This was 2nd Ed so there were some things I could do then, that I can't do now in 3.5 (like crit undead and constructs).
Well, as we headed to get a sword named "Town-saver" from being delivered to Dispader (or however you spell it), we were ambushed by quite a few orcs using elevated ramparts to volley arrows at us, well, while the casters were busy with them, their boss (a special chosen of Gruumsh [again, "or however you spell it"]). This guy was crazy. 99% MR, and a crazy save. Oh, did I mention he had a vorpal sword? Well, the casters in the group finally got done with the archers and the cleric cast hold(monster/person/meh). He rolled a magical one on his percentile, and a nice ol' auto-fail 3 on his save vs spell. Bam, now I have a vorpal sword...

Ok, all of that lead up to this...
In the next to last area, my friend Kenny (necromancer w/ a homebrew template thrown on due to another longer story that I'll spare you) went shadow form to scout ahead, one problem, there's a shadow-guy blocking his path. Needless to say this guy throws him out of the shadow plane and stepped out of it himself. He looks like a big scary cleric or fighter of some type. He says he won't attack as long as we proceed no more. I casually look at the DM, say in character, "I don't have time for this..." and proceed to win initiative and vorp the poor would-be-boss on the first hit.

[Crow T. Robot]

I had a bar fight between the party and a fairly large group of Drow (It was Sigil so I could get away with it). This would run parallel with a fight between a Drow Priestess and an Angel who were both about 15 levels ahead of everyone else.

The party was leary about picking a fight when so out numbered, but the angel thought it would be funny (He was just a bit chaotic good) so he told a joke that ended in "I don't know but Lolth is a wh***"

With the fun properly kicked off, the fight could begin. Though there was a bit of an oddity. The party strong man was a sorcerer half-earth elemental if memory serves ("Freaks of nature" was the theme of the campaign). And if he didn't roll his stats in front of me, I would never have belived he never got less then a 16 for anything. So he got a two handed sword and buff spells and he was set.

So he decided to take the Priestess head on.

He rolled a Natural 20. Twice.

And since she was killed only through the actions of the party I couldn't refuse ex over it. So everyone went up almost two levels.

I have since refused to put too much effort in bad guys unless they are the type who are met at the end of campaigns.

[Roderick_BR]

This is a classic from our group. 2nd edition. We were gathering some magic itens for an NPC. One of them was a magic box, and we've been warned to don't open it.
After we opened it (obviously), we found out it was a miniportal to some lower plane, from where an chaotic evil outsider (it was 2nd edition, remember) leap out.
We all rolled initiative. The group's monk and druid won initiative, and attacked. They both critted. They both rolled max damage. The monster was killed in the 1st round of combat.
The XP it gave was enough to make the whole group advance 2 levels...

My friend, to this day, hates that 2 members killed a high level monster in the 1st round of combat, before it could even blink.

[Jack_Simth]

You get that at any level - at low levels, it's a matter of crits with low HP. At higher levels, it's a matter of save or lose effects.

In a 2nd level campaign, my Druid's animal companion took out the BBEG (well, okay, I was 2nd level - the BBEG was a LBEG, really... but moving along...). In one hit. Animal companion won initiative; BBEG obviously hostile, BBEG's reduced Hellhound bodyguards both flat-footed and not a valid target for the animal companion (as they were outsiders, and the Wolf didn't have the upgraded attack). Wolf charged right past, critted the BBEG, and rolled high on damage. DM laughed it off with the "No!!! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" schtick (which is, of course, always the last line of the BBEG that says it).

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

This wasn't the final fight of the campaign, but it did turn out to be the last major fight in it. We were 16th or 17th level, and we were about to face a 18th or 19th (maybe even 20th or 21st level I can't remember), and in the first round, the guy with the vorpal sword runs up to him and cuts his head off. That was how that week's session ended. At the beginning of the next session, after our DM had some time to think for a week, he had contingent resurrection, and we ended up having a pretty good fight that lasted an hour or so.

[Ditto]

I like the avatar, Cube. Hadn't seen this one before.

Broke three legs...

There was that much damage. He had to sprout an entirely new limb, and then crush it. There was something massively wrong with how Sword Guy built the sword. (Perhaps not 10d6... I was new at the time, I have no idea. I was proud of Immovable Rod'ing off the train and making it look like Sword Guy's fault. But we never let him use Weapons of Legacy again...) That guy was really only technically still alive. Double your HP in non-lethal damage, and thrown from a train... bad news for any NPC.

[Jack Mann]

I like the avatar, Cube. Hadn't seen this one before.


There was that much damage. He had to sprout an entirely new limb, and then crush it. There was something massively wrong with how Sword Guy built the sword. (Perhaps not 10d6... I was new at the time, I have no idea. I was proud of Immovable Rod'ing off the train and making it look like Sword Guy's fault. But we never let him use Weapons of Legacy again...) That guy was really only technically still alive. Double your HP in non-lethal damage, and thrown from a train... bad news for any NPC.

I suspect the DM didn't properly understand Weapons of Legacy. When done by the rules, a legacy weapon will actually make your character weaker, compared to using a non-legacy weapon.

[Mojo_Rat]

A number of years ago (problaby almost 18 by now) when we were kids playing 1st edition. One of the party members got really lucky and rolled this obscenely powerful psionicist.

So when the party arrived near the end of the adventure and this kraken which was worshiped by the local lizardmen reared out of the water. The Psionic character then ego crushed it or psi blasted or whatever its called killed the Kraken instantly.

I think the DM had spent days planing the encounter.