Crowning Moments of Awesome

[Calinero]

Everyone has had at least one, or seen one. That moment where a character does something so epic, so ridiculously awesome that you want to stand up and applaud--or maybe just burst out laughing at the sheer insanity. At least, everyone should be familiar with one of these. If not, maybe you aren't playing the game right!

Ahem. Anyways.

This thread is a place to share your most awesome stories from any RPG. Dice based, otherwise, whatever. Post it here, and spread your legends!

I'll start us out.

Some friends of mine and I were playing a rather fun game called All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It's zombie based, and very easy to die in. We were all playing "Norms," which meant that we weren't particularly strong or fast or well equipped. Normal civilians trying to survive a zombie outbreak. Zombies in this game come in all shapes and flavors, and more than one variety is more than strong enough to rip a Norm to shreds.

However, one of my friends' norm was stronger than average. He was fairly minmaxed out, with high scores in most combat related abilities. He didn't cheat, but his character was far from balanced. He was essentially a huge Native American warrior who barely spoke English. And this was a modern setting. Yes, my friend makes unusual characters.

It was the beginning of the campaign, and all of our characters were separated. We each essentially got our own little mini zombie encounter before the group banded together. The Native American had been camping in the local park, when a man approached the fire. NA (Native American) was hidden nearby, and finally decided to approach the man. He was moaning, and clearly injured. He had several large claw marks on his face, and had been blinded. He died a minute later.

As soon as the words "Claw marks" passed out DM's lips, a collective groan with mixed swearing broke out over the table. In All Flesh, things with claws are nasty. Always. And they often come with matching teeth. *shudders* But the teeth are a story for another day.

Out of the darkness came the thing that had killed the man. It was lean, hideously deformed, had enormous teeth (crap on a stick), and its legs were oddly crouched. Plus, it had huge claws (double crap on a stick!) NA threw one of his hatchets at the thing, and hit it in the thigh. It did not seem to care. Going with discretion as the better part of valor, NA promptly mounted his bicycle and began to pedal far, far away. The thing pursued on all fours, leaping like a freakish cat creature. It easily kept up with NA, who was going...18 miles an hour? More, I believe.

The thing was catching up when NA reached a highway. This is where the epicness comes in.

NA pedaled as fast as he could across the highway until he reached the metal divider in between the two lanes. In a fairly amazing athletics/acrobatics roll, he jumped off the bike and, in the same motion, vaulted over the divider and landed on the ground on the other side. He then drew his other hatchet, and planned to leap up and attack the thing as it came over. However, the creature leaped ten feet farther than he expected, leaving him cornered, lying on his back, and about to be torn to pieces by a thing with claws. However, he managed to get up and fight the thing off for two rounds--and that's all it took.

An eighteen-wheeler came barrelling down the highway towards the two. NA then kicked the zombie in the face, stunning it. He turned around, and vaulted back over the divider. As he did this, the eighteen wheeler (as it tried to stop) screeched, and fishtailed. The tail end of the truck swung all the way around and sandwiched the zombie between truck and divider, killing it and barely missing NA.

NA was an epic character overall, who later went on to make a normal zombie's head explode with one blow of a baseball bat. I miss that campaign...

[Hal]

I wish I had stories like that. Most of my stories are more amusing than epic.

One time, our party stuck an animated candelabra in a box. We were going to give it to someone we hated, but the game collapsed shortly thereafter.

The other night, our party was trekking through the jungle. I decided to use my Hand of the Mage to throw triceratops dung at the back of the dwarven ranger's head. I don't think anyone at the table stopped laughing for about 5 minutes. Well, except the dwarf. And he was less amused when my Bluff check beat his Sense Motive check (to figure out who did it) by more than 20. FWIW, I used Prestidigitation to clean him up later.

Yeah, I need epic stories.

[Lert, A.]

Well, there was this one Shadowrun campaign where my gang ended up in a hostile corporate takeover.

Literally.

By the end we had our own corp and were making a good profit. Then Ares crushed us.

[revolver kobold]

Our mid level party in a Forgotten Realms campaign has managed to get themselves stuck in Undermountain, and due to a botched Plane Shift attempt, we now have no idea where we are or how to get out. So we have been pretty much hacking and slashing our way through everything that hasn't been helpful to us.

We meet with up a mad Wizard (who claims that he is long time mates with Halastar), and against my characters constant protests, end up following him for a while, as he claims to have a way out of the current level we are in.

The way out is blocked by a rather large lava lake, with a bunch of fire elementals living inside it that attack anyone who tries to cross. So the Wizard has set up a catapult (he has taken ranks in siege engineer) to fling us all across the lake so fast that the elementals cant reach us.

Everything is going to plan, until the Orc fighter climbs aboard. Feeling a bit worried, he downs a potion of Remove Fear, then, a potion of Levitate. The catapult had been set up to throw us in a somewhat ballistic trajectory into a hidden passage in the roof. Under the effects of Levitate, the Orc didn't follow a ballistic arc. He flew very, very, very fast, right into the roof.

Having passed a reflex save, he was given the chance to make one action to try and save himself. He chose to use a Feather Token - Anchor. An Orc holding an anchor, flying at about 400 feet a second into a solid stone wall. Best. Death. Ever.

[SeeKay]

Ahhh. The famous Werewolf game. Most of the players were dogs except 2 of us (Storyteller rule: Majority wolves and only changelings), I was the were crow and the person behind this story was the were tiger. We were in a Moot that just got attacked by some spider things. I headed to the treetops to snipe while the rest of the party assisted the NPC werewolves, that is, except the were tiger.

Since he was made unwelcome in the Moot, he didn't want to help them take down one, he wanted to take one out by himself. These spider things are tough and it even says that no one survives solo against one in the flavor text describing one. I can't remember exactly how initiative worked, but he and the bug had simultaneous actions.

For those that have never played a World of Darkness game, there are no hit points, there are damage levels. Most PC's only have about 5-8 damage levels total while monsters (and this one especially) can have lots more. Depending on your stats, you can "soak" damage (ie: absorb the blow and not be hurt), but every time you take a few wounds, your ability to soak (and other things) drops. That being said, combat begins...

The other bugs are ripping into the camp and giving out wounds around 6 levels when they hit. They took hits in the 8-wound ball park and kept swinging with no problems.

Then the bug and tiger went. The bug hit for the maximum of the tiger's ability to soak (I think 7, it's been a while). Somehow, he makes every soak roll and delivers a huge blow back (only 2 levels unsoaked, though). The next round, they again exchange massive hits. This time the bug hit for more than the tiger could soak. Again, he makes his max soak roll and takes only 2 wounds but delivers 6 more levels of unsoaked wounds.

Both of them kind of staggered, they enter the third round. In the main battle, we've managed to seriously wound one of the bugs and a second was taking some good hits as well. Then these two swung and again delivered big hits. Again, the tiger soaks all of the damage (we at the table were starting to ask if we could have him roll our soaks for this fight). Again the bug takes a few wounds.

By this time we've managed to drop one bug and had the other 2 crippled. The tiger was starting to spend his rage to keep his combat stats up (and the bug was spending his as well, but the Storyteller didn't say that until after the fight) and again both of them delivered huge hits. The Tiger (now with a Teller ordered dice change) again makes his soak while the bug blows all of his.

Finally we drop the last 2 bugs. Next round we'll be able to move to the other battle and aid the tiger. Again the tiger and bug exchange huge blows and again the bug sucks up a few wounds but this time, so does the tiger. After the damage, he was one wound away from dying.

In a move of desperation, he blows all he can. If he doesn't kill it, he'll be unconscious, human, and one hit away from death. Somehow the bug misses and he hits a maximum blow. The bug botches it's soak roll and dies. All of us now gathered around see him drop this thing. The player then says, "I turn to the crowd and say 'And that's why you all are inferior to me.'" He then passes straight out.

After the battle, the Storyteller informs us just how tough these things really were and that he was amazed that a level 2 even matched up. I will note that the next session he had a GM screen.

[Knaight]

While none of mine were particularly impressive, we once had a player in a fudge campaign, who was in a fight with what was basically a reptillian humanoid that breathed fire, called a Lizkel, who was an accomplished staff fighter. So the guy takes his frying pan that he mastered the art of throwing(he kept it after taking out an elf cavalier with a lucky throw after finding it in the saddlebags of one of his buddies), throws at the celing, grabs the staff, the frying pan hits the lizkel, and then he blows a fudge point to make a perfect stab right into the fire gland of the guys throat. Worth noting is that attack roll translates to damage in fudge, so he cleaned up. At this point fire starts spraying out of the lizkels neck, and the character just calmly holds the swords in the flame, then timing it perfectly stabs it down the lizkels throat to cool it while blocking the flames with the frying pan. He came out of this one with a dead lizkel, a slightly damaged frying pan, and a sword that retained heat exceptionally well and stayed sharp because of it(lizkel intestines and such have fluids in them that seeped into the metal a bit, which allow for this).

Later, in a different campaign with a different player, this dragon made out of some dark material thats being empowered by this sickly orange mist is terrorizing the party. The dragon is being controlled(and for that matter created by) a priest who was causing the orange mist, after an incident involving a portal to the dark world(there were a few of these, not the least of which someone pulling a gun and firing a bunch of bullets in, that came back as growing cannonballs), and on of the characters has a phoenix, who's fire was being held back. So the guy in the mecha(its a universe hopping game) shoots two grappling hooks into the dragons nostrils, around a tree, pinning it down. The winged, angelic guy then times the dragon suddenly recoiling and bending the tree so as to be launched into the air, in the wrong direction, and fire a bunch of arrows with impunity to counter attack while flying backwards uncontrolled. Aimed at where the wing joints that connect to the main body are going to be the instant the dragon gets yanked by the nose. The dragon drops, the priest drops out of the dragon when it hits the floor, and the character with the phoenix then blasts the priest with a blast of semi-divine fire, vaporizing him, as well as getting rid of a lot of the orange mist. At which point the phoenix, who was having his fire held in by the orange mist, then attacks the dragon, hurling insults the entire way that had the whole group laughing (the phoenix was at times a comic relief character, a character who had lived for thousands of years, but was kind of stupid and naive, and so got tricked by a cart dealership, and any number of other humorous stories that the group loved, in general a great personality.).

[PaladinBoy]

The second to last encounter in our Eberron campaign comes to mind.

See, we'd been assigned to retrieve one of our employer's agents from a Riedran port city. We knew the agent was capable of teleportation, so our plan was simple: Fly over the city, and wait for him to show up. Of course it wasn't that simple... as we flew over, a Riedran wilder showed up. Our warblade and my character, the captain, immediately advanced to strike at close range; our warmage and druid struck from farther away.

Then it was the wilder's turn. He proceeded to unleash a blast of sonic energy which shattered the entire main deck of the ship. Over a 30 ft. radius, and more than 90 damage; it had to go through a layer of adamantine and a layer of wood. The warmage teleported (as an immediate action) behind a armored bulkhead and was STILL damaged. If my character hadn't had energy immunity(sonic) active, she would have died instantly.

So the battle continued, one deck lower. We continued to beat on the wilder, but then his turn came around again. This time, he chose a giant blast of fire; the rules for damage type and objects saved our second deck (barely) but my character didn't have fire immunity, just fire resistance 30. I had 1 hp left; I was lucky that the warblade took out the wilder that turn.

So, of course, I decide that my character is quite angry at nearly being killed and having such huge damage done to her ship. And the agent appeared in our cargo hold during the fight, so we didn't need the city anymore. I cast the listening coin spell, and tell the druid to take his dragonhawk animal companion and put the transmitting coin through the window of the city leader's office, as best he can find it. I then say into the listening coin, "One of your people just tried to destroy my ship and nearly killed me in the process. Observe the consequences." (I adapted that from a book; does anyone know which book?)

We then proceeded to use spells like fimbulwinter, blizzard and control weather to turn the city into an icy, lifeless wasteland.

[Saph]

My 'most awesome' story's more of a team effort than a solo thing. But it was still cool enough for me to remember it perfectly. :)

D&D 3.5 game. We were playing through the "Children of Gruumsh" adventure in the Forgotten Realms. Six-person party, all level 8, though only five were there for the final battle.

The temple we'd been working through was in some demiplane with a one-way entrance, so our main goal by the time we reached the top floor was just to get out of there. The dracolich who ran the place agreed, on condition that three out of the five party members would be left behind to be sacrificed. We said no, the battle kicked off.

It started okay for our team but started to go downhill as soon as the dracolich closed to melee range and started hitting with its full attacks. (I wish people would pay more attention to me. I told everyone before the battle "Don't go toe-to-toe with the dragon, it'll kill you, stay at a distance, okay?". Did they listen? Nooo . . .) The cleric and the fighter were taken down in melee, the evoker wizard was knocked into negatives after his fire shield failed to get through the dragon's SR, and the bard was first paralysed then finished off with a full attack.

This just left me. The character I was playing at the time was a sun elf enchantress wizard/loremaster who really didn't like fights but kept on getting dragged into them. She wasn't very strong, was nervous in battles, had very few offensive spells and even fewer that worked on undead, but in her adventuring career she'd encountered a lot of dragons and had learned a bit about what worked against them and what didn't.

So I cast two greater mirror image spells and kept running. Each round I'd fly out of the dracolich's melee range, taking an AoO in the process, and take a shot at the dracolich with my orb of force wand, the only effective weapon I had. The dracolich would move in and attack me on its turn, splintering another image, then at the start of my turn my mirror images would regenerate, restoring the two images that I'd just lost, and I'd dodge away again. This went on for round after round, the two of us flying in circles round and round the room. In between the fighting me and the dracolich were having a conversation:

Dracolich: "Stand still so I can kill you, elf."
Me: "Um, what if you let us all go instead?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "I will make you the same offer as before. You and one of your friends can go."
Me: "What'll happen to the others?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "Their essence will be absorbed to power this temple."
Me: "No. I'm not leaving my friends behind."
Dracolich: "Then die."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Me: "I don't suppose there's any chance you're getting bored of hitting me yet?"
Dracolich: "I have existed here for centuries, staring at the blizzard and meditating. You couldn't conceive of what it would take to make me bored."
Me: "So that's a no, then?"
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, wand*
Dracolich: "I'm getting tired of chasing you, little elf."
Me: "Well, I'm not exactly enjoying this either."
Dracolich: "I'll give you one more chance. Stop fighting and you can leave here alive."
Me: "Not without the others."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away . . . wand runs out of charges. Uh oh. I've now got nothing that can hurt the dracolich but my rapier, which I barely know how to use. I fly next to the cleric, grab his cure wand, and start trying to use that with my few ranks in Use Magic Device.*
Dracolich: "You're wasting my time. Just give up. You can't win this."
Me: "I don't care. I won't let you hurt them.
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "Let me make you a new offer. If you surrender and let me kill you, I'll let the others go free."
Me: "You know, a lot of people tell me I'm naive . . . but even I'm not gullible enough to fall for that one."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "You're just putting off the inevitable. Stand still and let me kill you."
Me: "No."
*attack, splinter, regenerate, dodge away, try to use wand*
Dracolich: "I'm tired of this. I'm not going to chase you anymore. But I think I've figured out what will work instead." *stops, lands, and stands over the cleric, fighter, and evoker.* "Come here by the time I reach zero, or I start killing them. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . ."

It was one of those moments where you have the sickening feeling that your luck's finally run out. I was just about to shout "No!" when the bard appeared from behind, charging. My last use of the wand had healed him and he attacked the dracolich from behind, almost dying in the process but taking away its last few HP and killing it.

It was the most epic D&D battle we've ever had, and even a year or more later, we've never topped it. I really thought my character was going to die. Having it turned around at the last minute was incredibly cool.

- Saph

[only1doug]

Setting: (mostly) Forgotten Realms;

Location: Soulforged Factory (exactly like warforged, re-specified for area).

Villagers are being kidnapped and their souls inserted into golem bodies creating soulforged, these soulforged are then indoctrinated to follow orders of the boss golem.
we are investigating the complex because this is where the Rod of Dark Fate (artifact: controls Drow, acts as a Phylactory for Drow Lich, Contains 2 warring intellects 1 good, 1 evil) was made and thus may tell us how to destroy it. A secondary goal is to stop the sacrifice of villagers in the soul forge process.

we are all disguised as soulforged via various methods (mainly Hat of Disguise) and have got to the library.

The Aasamiir rogue slight of hands the keys to restricted area from the librarian then changes disguise to emulate librarian while others distracted it (disguise total 10 after modifiers).
i spotted (roll of natural 20) that his disguise wasn't very good and helped him re-disguise better (rolled a 2 on my assist, total 10, yay!) he redisguised (total roll after modifiers was 8 (+my +2) 10) i failed my spot check and thought we'd cracked it.

the rogue walked straight past the guard like he was the librarian and it failed its check, he slight of handed the keys to try them all and make it look like he only used the correct one.

Searching the restricted area he eventually found the info we needed and pocketed it.

while he was searching some more guards entered and spoke to the librarian about the commotion on the surface where some flesh forms had attacked the escorts of some new recruits (yup, that was us).

Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Upon exiting the rogue found that as he rounded the shelves there were a group of guards talking to the librarian and looking right toward him. so he timed his turn around the corner and made a hide check as he activated his vanishing cloak. to the guard behind him he turned the corner, the guard in front never saw anything. The rogue then sneaked up to the librarian, returned the keys (slight of hand) and moved away before re-appearing in his original disguise.

[Liliedhe]

Hm... Let's see.

In Shadowrun:

A Yakuza Boss with a grudge on the party was holding a contact of the runners as hostages in an abandoned nightclub. Using the only change to surprise her, we go in through the sewers and the cellar. Stupidly, we managed to get pinned in the exit from the cellar, but, that's a good thing because the Yak's bodyguards are freaking Troll Ki Adepts - and they don't fit into the entrance. So, both sides snipe at each other, one of the trolls gets pasted by our mage, another is shot. At that point, the Yak decides she's had enough and tosses a grenade into the stairwell.

Cue the Elven Jane of all trades, who has a huge bone to pick with the Yak, too, catching the grenade, flinging it out at the Yak, jumping after it while everyone else dives for cover, evading most of the explosion while the Yak goes down, and, when she comes up again, the first thing she sees is the elf's foot, colliding with her jaw. That's one Yak we won't have to worry about anymore...^^

Ok, not as spectacular as some of the other stories, but it was quite cool. *G*

[Heliomance]

Our DM does random encounters in this way. He rolls a d8. if it's an 8, we get a random encounter. He then rolls again, and rerolls every 8 he gets. Each 8 means the encounter is more significant. Once he runs out of 8s, he rerolls every 7 or 1. Multiple 7s make the encounter harder and harder, multiple 1s make it more and more benign. I think what he rolled on this occasion was 8 8 7 7 7. We were level 6, leading an army. We ran into an army of neverdead - homebrewed monsters with fast healing stupid, the ability to rip your arm off if they hit with two attacks, and the ability to go down to around -1000 HP without dying. They were led by three neverdead elders, each CR 20. One of our NPC allies offers to teleport us out of there, but he can't manage the whole army, just our party. The army would be slaughtered. Our leader, a dwarf fighter, decides he's not prepared to do that, and steps to the head of the army, meaning to lead the charge into battle. Cue every member of the party going "If you're going up, I'll stand by you." We were pretty certain it would be a TPK, but it seemed the right thing to do. We lead the charge. We manage to meet one of the elders. Ingvar, the fighter wins initiative, and attacks with his axe. He rolls. He frowns, and rolls again. And again. We ask him what he got and he shushes us. He rolls again. Then he starts rolling the damage dice. He rolls a few more times, frowns, and gets a calculator, paper and pen out. He shushes us every time we ask what's happening. Finally, he reads the total amount of damage - four thousand, four hundred and sixty four. The neverdead elder dropped. We later worked out the odds of that roll, and it came out as something like one in eight million.

[Magnvo]

Three other friends and I were playing a d20 variant system that one of them had made which was made with mecha battles in mind. Each stat was renamed and retooled and all of the action takes place inside your mechs because, well, the game wasn't made to work with anything else. Your HP was your mech's durability, your AC was the mech's defense (plus some other stuff based on your stats), and so on.

We were playing a campaign set in the Universal Century of the Gundam metaverse and we all made up the 16th Mobile Suit team attached to the California Task Force, used by the Earth Federation to retake California from the Principality of Zeon. It was the final encounter, on December 15th UC 0079, where our MS team was in San Francisco, I believe, and fighting against an ace Zeon pilot. I was the pilot of one of these little numbers, as were the DM's character and another person's character. Our fourth guy was our Sonar man.

To give a sense of scale, his durability was in the hundreds. Even with our mass-produced Gundams, our durability was 65. His defense? One point higher than any of the three pilots could hit in melee, and that's where the ace had us. Taking a page from Space Above and Beyond, this ace was not only incredibly skilled but he had "Abandon All Hope" written in red letters on the chest. Needless to say, we all had to reinforce our pants when Zeon von Richthofen (what we'd nicknamed him. Also a nod to SAaB).

I was his first meal of the battle because everyone else was hanging back with heavy weapons. Drawing my beam saber and attempting to jump at him (he was on top of a small building. Yes, yes, high ground and all that), I miss my attack roll and he vaults into the air with his own heat saber drawn and comes down on top of me, dealing 62 damage in a single hit (it crit) and almost completely destroying my mech. I reasoned that he came down at such an angle that allowed him to stab down through the Gundam's neck but miraculously not hit anything. Anyway, he goes off and picks our most danger-prone team member (ironically, the DMPC) to fight.

The DMPC's gun jams three times in a row and Zeon von Richthofen slams him into a building and shoots off the head, ruining primary camera control and destroying his comm. set, which had been a running gag since the start of the campaign. Our next person goes against him, gets royally trounced but still manages to deal a hit.

Mustering what I could and yelling hotblooded phrases in-character (such as "this saber of mine will pierce through the heavens", "this burning saber of mine tells me to defeat you", "take my pain, my anger, and all of my sorrow", etc.), we exchanged some blows where I was unable to hit him and where he didn't hit me. Combat began to drag on and I knew my luck was running out.

Convinced I was going to die that next round, I tried to put an extra amount of spin on my d20. It came up... natural 20. Automatic hit. The DM tells me to roll to confirm, I do so, and get another natural 20. He tells me to roll my damage, which was 5d12 and I rolled a 43 for a total of 129 points of damage.

Yelling "Just who the hell do you think I am!?!", I swing a mighty cleave and bisect Zeon von Richthofen about the cockpit and make his reactor start going wanky. I passed my Reflex save to gtfo, the guy who'd lost his head was not so lucky. When Zeke von Richthofen went up, so did he and my awesome kill was mitigated by the fact we'd lost someone who would probably trip on his own feet and land in a combine.

So the campaign went down in memory where I managed to kill a PC and get away with it (I have a reputation in my group for playing characters who have no qualms about killing other PCs if they're just plain stupid or incredibly annoying. I also do so with the DM's permission but that little revelation hasn't gotten out yet. I hope none of the people in my group read this >_>).

[Ascension]

^ This, this is awesome.

I'm not even going to bother sharing the story I was about to tell, since there's no way I could follow that up.

Incidentally, are those variant rules available online anywhere?

[AslanCross]

Wow. OP's post is indeed filled with awesome. The image of a huge Native American warrior furiously pedaling a bicycle is just hilarious, though. It reminds me of something out of Looney Tunes.

Anyway, one from this week's session:

The PCs were on their way to quell a potential uprising led by an evil genius noble who ruled a march on the border between Cormyr and Sembia (Forgotten Realms). They had to trudge through some swampland from the coast to get to the Marquis's castle and ran into a black dragon.

They had their hands full with the dragon already, as they were rolling badly on their reflex saves against its breath (and they didn't bother to heal up, for some reason). Then, out of the swamp, came a Drowned. It's an undead creature from MM3 that radiates an aura that basically begins to drown you even if you're on land. As the dragon was beating down on the paladin and the wizard (almost killed the wizard twice by Power Diving him), the drowned was moving closer, smothering the ranger and the rogue with its aura. Both failed their CON checks and began to drown.

The last party member, a meek, mild-mannered female cleric of Kelemvor (anti-undead god of death, for those unfamiliar), found that she had to destroy the drowned before everyone failed their CON checks and drowned. (she usually healbots even if everyone tells her she can actually fight well if she tried. Part of her RPing, I guess.) Anyway, she turns undead (we use the Complete Divine variant that simply deals damage equal to 1d6 per cleric level), severely weakening the drowned. The wizard follows up with an orb of cold, shattering off about half the zombie's body. It continues trying to advance on them but falls into some quicksand. The cleric, thinking quickly, blasts it with searing light. Needless to say, the sight of glowing, frozen zombie shards peppering the area in a blast of positive energy was very encouraging to the party. I might add it's the first time she killed anything in the entire campaign.

Of course they're still trying to kill the dragon, which has been moving too fast for them to keep up with. The newly revitalized rogue/swordsage wants to use her shadow garrote to take it out. Waiting to see if they can pull it off next session.

[rankrath]

The first encounter of a new campaign, level 1 PC's investigating the murder of a group of woodsmen. One of the PC's, a barbarian wielding a Greatsword and with 18 STR finds a set of tracks leading away from the scene of the murders and follows them, alone. The tracks lead to a door in the side of the a hill, which the barbarian proceeds to smash in with one hit. Beyond the door an ogre was taking a nap, and gets up, ready to turn the barbarian into a smudge on the wall. I think you can all see where this is going, the barbarian won initiative and proceeded to crit for max damage. 32 damage, dropping the ogre in one hit. The classic part of this story is that immediately following this, the rest of the PC's arrive, and all proceed to roll ones on their spot checks. "hey, look an ogre!" became a running joke.

[Fri]

Saph's and Magnvo's are particularly awesome. The OP's also awesome, especially because it had huge native american pedaling a bicycle in a highway as fast as he can and chased by a zombie.

But my personal favourite would be Saph's

It's not only awesome. It's friggin cinematic. I can imagine the scene, where they circle each other, magic duel, with the villain spouting threat to the hopeless protagonist...

The closest thing I have to CMoA was this time when I DM-ed a Star Wars RPG

As usual, I started the game in a tavern. A Player played this cowardly little kel dorian rogue that's very jittery and want to leave the planet for unknown reason.

So the bad guy came. A huge lizardman (forgot the race name) followed by a squad of scout droid. Force Mindscrew failed and battle ensues.

As the jedis hacked and crushed away the droids and the soldier guy went blasting with his blaster rifle, the keldorian rogue jumped behind the counter and trembled there.

Then, still cowering, he raised his blaster pistol above the counter and made a shot from behind the cover.

He hit the lizard guy. Critical Hit, some lucky shot feat, maybe sneak attack (I forgot the crunches).

The point is, he one shotted the mid boss character that I want to use as a recurring antagonist.

The droids were remote controlled, so they all went dead.

That's on the first round of the battle, just in the first encounter of the game.

[Doresain]

the group is about level 6 in an Eberron setting...we had been following this gnome that stole a royal Cyrean object that we intended to return to the prince, seeing as how we worked for what remained of the Cyrean government...we tracked him down to a cave and fell into one of the most obvious traps ever...skipping ahead, the party falls into a pit that turns out to be a jail cell...the slot on the door opens up and a level 10 cleric decides to flame strike us...we all save against it, take some damage and the elf ranger gets pissed...slot opens again, elf sends an arrow through it, cleric dies...the DM was using death threat rules, and said ranger managed to role three nat 20s in a row...

he managed to do this to a level 7 necromancer earlier in the campaign, as well as a rather powerful naga and mind flayer in this same cave...

[Calinero]

I agree that, though almost all of these stories are pretty epic, Saph's is still my favorite. So few people roleplay well with their villains during a fight. That was pretty cool.

[AslanCross]

My PCs, in the fight before the black dragon battle, the party had to deal with a pirate raid on their ship.

The wizard was in the spotlight for most of the battle, counterspelling the pirates' fireball barrage and incinerating most of the deck crew with his own. His Crowning Moment of Awesome, however, was when the pirate ship came around to ram their vessel.

The ramming jolted the ship violently, putting the PCs at a disadvantage. The boarding party began running toward the PC ship, but the wizard was able to take a turn before the pirates got to even move.

<Wizard> Are they within the range of black tentacles?
<Me> Yes.
<Wizard> I cast black tentacles.
<Me> Huge, rubbery tentacles sprout out of the pirate ship's deck, grabbing the buccaneers. *rolls grapple checks*
...Every single pirate grunt is grappled. Their wizard is too.

(The tentacles slowly choked the life out of each of them.)

Now the pirates had a sniper in their crows' nest who was taking potshots at everyone on the deck, and no one was willing to risk climbing the rigging that high. What's worse, is that the pirate gunner, a hobgoblin dual-wielding katars, was bearing down on the wizard and overall hurting him badly.

Knowing that the sniper needed to be taken out, the wizard was able to get out one very well-placed spell: baleful transposition. I ruled that the two ships were as connected as they could ever be, so the spell worked. The wizard switched places with the sniper.

Rewind a bit: The wizard had the party paladin beside him, fighting with the hobgoblin warblade over the wizard's head. (Paladin was enlarged.)

So the sniper is now beside the paladin.

She looks up sheepishly and vainly tries to fight with her longsword, but the paladin cuts her down easily.

(The hobgoblin later gets thrown off the deck by the ranger/swordsage.)

By the end of the encounter, the wizard had killed:
-12 pirate grunts
-the pirate mage

He also:
-helped kill the sniper
-polymorphed the pirate captain into a snail.

If anyone still doubts as to whether Wizards are overpowered... <_< It was all in good fun, though. Everyone enjoyed the battle.

[Lycan 01]

Yesterday, my CoC party took a detour to Silent Hill for our new campaign. (I know, lame... But I put a TON of work into it, and they had fun! So totally worth it, IMO...)

Anyway, over the course of the first session, these things occured:

-A large African American Iraq War vet attempted to hide in a trash can in order to avoid being seen by two Lying Figures (tortured souls trapped in straight jackets of their own flesh - they spit acid) as he attempted to make his way to a grocery store. He succeeded his Hide roll - but they both succeeded their Spot rolls in the next round. So they both staggered over and began to spit acid on his trash can. As the metal began to melt around him, he realized that he'd screwed up. But then, out of nowhere, his large Texan war-buddy sprinted out of nowhere, stabbed one of the creatures to get it to turn around, and then whipped around it and pulled the lid off the trash can. Amazingly, they both managed to avoid the waves of acid hurled in their direction.

In fact, a few turns later, the Texan rolled a crit on his knife attack. I rulled that he grabbed one of the Lying Figures from behind, jabbed his blade into the base of its skull, and dragged the knife all the way down its body, effectively gutting and/or de-spining the thing.


-One player was getting strangled by a monster I made up while driving a cop car he and 2 other players had hot-wired. Those three players had to leave within 5 minutes of then, so we had to figure out something to end the session for them - fast. I rolled a strength roll on the resistance table for him, and he somehow managed to weasel his way out of the grip of the creature's strangling tongue. He then rolled a critical (1/5 of his skill) on his Drive Auto roll.

I ruled that he floored it and then hit the breaks. The creature, which was perched on the hood, went airborn. It then smashed against a telephone pole, and actually bent around it. The creature slid to the ground... and then started to get back up. He did another Drive Auto check, and I ruled that he just swerved onto another road and made it to the town's exit.

They drove out of the town and spent 5 minutes driving forward into the fog, only to drive past the "Welcome to Silent Hill" sign yet again. I'm evil...


-One player, who'd been complaining about being useless (Not my fault she wanted to be a gothic female artist...), decided to try and be helpful in their next encounter. Guess who their next encounter was?

Pyramid Head.

She said she wanted to try and grapple him. I stared a her, as did everyone else. The Texan and an ex-gangster had both opened fire with .38 and .45 handguns, and the bullets were barely scratching him. And she wanted to grapple with him. Well, she rolled... and succeeded. I told her to roll again... and she failed. I said she grabbed onto him, only to be pushed away seconds later.

Her next turn? She tried again... and succeeded. Her second roll? A success. I felt kinda bad for her, and I wanted her to feel useful... So I said that she jumped through the air and grabbed him by the arm, actually causing him to drop his Great Blade.

The catch? He hurled her 20-30 feet away, resulting in a loss of 4 HP and a dislocated shoulder. She then began to complain about being the only one who ever got hurt... >.< There's just no pleasing some people...



So yeah... Maybe not Crowning Moments of Awesomness, but I wanted to write something relatively cool...

[Colmarr]

Saph's story

Epic, simply for the fact that a Loremaster and a Bard were the all-conquering heroes

Oddly enough, all of my experience with epic moments is with the bad guys (including killing 2 PCs in one encounter).

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I was playing in a Marvel heroes RPG with random powers, no idea what version but my character had some sort of evolution ability. He could evolve into a floating supermind with powerful noncombat mental abilities, or de-evolve into a tough neanderthal form with increased physical attributes. Second session the characters are all driving out to help at some kind of science facility that's under attack, and we all decide to buff up before we get there.

Me: "I'll go into my neanderthal form." GM: "Aren't you the one driving?" He lost all knowledge of what the van even was, and got so big that he ripped off the steering wheel and burst through the floorboard. He saw that he was moving forward and that the ground going by under his feet, and instinctively tried running to keep up with it. We managed to show up before the place was leveled with a battle cry of "Yabba dabba doo!"

That's the only part of that entire campaign that I remember.

[Swordguy]

In an L5R 3e campaign that is currently on hiatus, I'm playing a Matsu Berserker - Matsu Katsumi - a melee-only character that, while able to do tremendous damage in melee (seriously - she averages out to 80-90 wounds per attack, when most PCs do 20-30 and most everything has 60hp tops) is a serious glass cannon. She's really melee-only: no ranged weapons on the character whatsoever, and no skill at all with any sort of throwing weapon. If she can't get into melee, she's pretty useless. She even has a Disadvantage that limits her ability to use a bow.

(Fluff note: In L5R, "Jigoku" is equivalent to "hell" - the literal translation is "the afterlife" but it's got negative connotations in the setting.)

So, the city in which we act as magistrates has been infiltrated by an evil, blood-magic wielding Clan (the Spider) under our dumbass noses. After nine months (and a year of real-time) of their seeding the city with their forces, they spring their revolution and start raping, killing, and looting their way across our beloved city, not necessarily in that order. We wake from a sound slumber to combat them, entering into a four game session extended combat.

By the end of this, we've engaged the BBEG (a blood magic-mutated uber-samurai) and his retinue. The rest of the party goes after him while Katsumi mops up the three-critter retinue (with 2 attacks per round and an interrupt attack that goes off when someone attacks me, the three are all dead before they've had a chance to make an attack roll). I turn around to see Mr. BBEG with three of the five party members strewn about him in varying states of "heavily wounded and unconsciousness", one PC cowering in a "castle of water" that he cast around himself, and with the last party member with his ancestral weapon broken on the ground.

BBEG recognizes Katsumi by reputation and pops wings via a spell and takes to the sky. He's about 50' up and starts monologuing while I stand around like a chump on the ground wondering exactly how the heck I'm going to go after this guy when I have no ranged weapons. Then I remember: with enough force behind it, anything is a ranged weapon. I blow a point of Void (kind of like Action Points) to give myself a single "virtual rank" in the "Thrown Weapons" skill (for dice to explode in this game, you must have ranks or virtual ranks in the skill), and burn the rest of my Void Point to perform "a single action not generally otherwise allowable by the rules."

Katsumi hefts her no-dachi like a spear, shouts "From Jigoku's heart, I stab at thee!", and launches her ancestral weapon skyward.

BBEG has a TN to be hit of 80, and 120 wounds.

Rolling 5 d10 and keeping 4 of them (10's explode) against a TN of 80. Four dice roll 10s. Then 3 rolled 10s. Final check result? 81. A hit.

GM tells me to grab my wife's dice and use hers. I shrug and grab her dice.

Damage check. GM rules that the no-dachi thrown does damage as a thrown spear. After some math (and advantage that adds a LOT to damage) I'm rolling 10 dice and keeping 5. 7 dice roll 10's. Then 5 dice roll 10's (20 per die so far). Then all five of those dice roll 6 or above. Final damage result? 142!

So, the BBEG, mid-speech against a melee-only character stuck on the ground 50' below him, is suddenly struck through the heart by a flying 2-handed sword and plummets, stone dead, to the ground below, ending the battle and the war.

My sword even rolled a 10 on the "GM's feeling vindictive" check result (needed a 10 on a d10) to not be broken when it hit the ground.

[Lycan 01]

^ That was just beautiful to imagine...

[Doomsy]

In an L5R 3e campaign that is currently on hiatus, I'm playing a Matsu Berserker - Matsu Katsumi - a melee-only character that, while able to do tremendous damage in melee (seriously - she averages out to 80-90 wounds per attack, when most PCs do 20-30 and most everything has 60hp tops) is a serious glass cannon. She's really melee-only: no ranged weapons on the character whatsoever, and no skill at all with any sort of throwing weapon. If she can't get into melee, she's pretty useless. She even has a Disadvantage that limits her ability to use a bow.

(Fluff note: In L5R, "Jigoku" is equivalent to "hell" - the literal translation is "the afterlife" but it's got negative connotations in the setting.)

So, the city in which we act as magistrates has been infiltrated by an evil, blood-magic wielding Clan (the Spider) under our dumbass noses. After nine months (and a year of real-time) of their seeding the city with their forces, they spring their revolution and start raping, killing, and looting their way across our beloved city, not necessarily in that order. We wake from a sound slumber to combat them, entering into a four game session extended combat.

By the end of this, we've engaged the BBEG (a blood magic-mutated uber-samurai) and his retinue. The rest of the party goes after him while Katsumi mops up the three-critter retinue (with 2 attacks per round and an interrupt attack that goes off when someone attacks me, the three are all dead before they've had a chance to make an attack roll). I turn around to see Mr. BBEG with three of the five party members strewn about him in varying states of "heavily wounded and unconsciousness", one PC cowering in a "castle of water" that he cast around himself, and with the last party member with his ancestral weapon broken on the ground.

BBEG recognizes Katsumi by reputation and pops wings via a spell and takes to the sky. He's about 50' up and starts monologuing while I stand around like a chump on the ground wondering exactly how the heck I'm going to go after this guy when I have no ranged weapons. Then I remember: with enough force behind it, anything is a ranged weapon. I blow a point of Void (kind of like Action Points) to give myself a single "virtual rank" in the "Thrown Weapons" skill (for dice to explode in this game, you must have ranks or virtual ranks in the skill), and burn the rest of my Void Point to perform "a single action not generally otherwise allowable by the rules."

Katsumi hefts her no-dachi like a spear, shouts "From Jigoku's heart, I stab at thee!", and launches her ancestral weapon skyward.

BBEG has a TN to be hit of 80, and 120 wounds.

Rolling 5 d10 and keeping 4 of them (10's explode) against a TN of 80. Four dice roll 10s. Then 3 rolled 10s. Final check result? 81. A hit.

GM tells me to grab my wife's dice and use hers. I shrug and grab her dice.

Damage check. GM rules that the no-dachi thrown does damage as a thrown spear. After some math (and advantage that adds a LOT to damage) I'm rolling 10 dice and keeping 5. 7 dice roll 10's. Then 5 dice roll 10's (20 per die so far). Then all five of those dice roll 6 or above. Final damage result? 142!

So, the BBEG, mid-speech against a melee-only character stuck on the ground 50' below him, is suddenly struck through the heart by a flying 2-handed sword and plummets, stone dead, to the ground below, ending the battle and the war.

My sword even rolled a 10 on the "GM's feeling vindictive" check result (needed a 10 on a d10) to not be broken when it hit the ground.

That is both epic and the GM was probably near tears if I am reading those rolls right.

[Little_Rudo]

In my currently longest-running game, I'm playing a Gray Elf Cloistered Cleric. The setting is a homebrew world, and her deity is a Pelor-like god of a monotheistic, world-wide religion. She's a "divine healer", a nun who's a healing specialist and avoids harming others (no Vow of Nonviolence, though; I dislike feats that punish other characters for your own choices). During the game, we've gotten involved in a conspiracy within the religion that resulted in my nun being excommunicated from the church and blamed for the murder of a bishop, mechanically depriving her of her spells. She's found a bit of a loophole that lets her cast one spell per spell level, but mostly she's been neutered in effectiveness.

We recently came to a town. While talking with the local priest (news of her excommunication isn't very widespread yet), she was asked to examine a local pregnant woman who was pregnant and doing bad. Using a homebrewed ability that let her sense a person's health (undead in this world are almost non-existent and aren't linked to divine powers, so it's my trade-off for Turn Undead), she found that the baby was unwell and it was affecting the mother's health. After some discussion, the nun decided to perform a very, very rough Caesarean section. After letting the mother get drunk enough that she'd be able to endure it, the nun used a scalpel, a chalice that constantly filled with holy water (the purifying powers helped keep things relatively clean), some well-timed Cure X Wounds spells, high Heal checks and a very allowing DM, the nun managed to save the child (who's cord was wrapped around it's neck) and the mother, by using a C-Section in a low-tech, low-magic world.

Hey, pacifists don't get many Crowning Moments of Awesome, so I liked it!

[Thurbane]

I was in a homebrew campaign where we had two rogues in the party - a particularly obnoxious, annoying shifter (Dante) and a halfling (Swampy).

During the campaign, the shifter got seperated from the group and came across a scene of unimaginable horror (involving cultist and sacrificing of abducted townsfolk - mainly children) while seperated form us, which pushed him to the brink of insanity. We met up back at the inn we were staying at. Him and the halfling were both in the bar when he returned.

Swampy had recently lost an arm in a trap, and hadn't had it regenerated yet, which left to the shifter mercilessly teasing him and calling him Stumpy. Anyway, Dante is at the bar, still smitten with horror, and asks the barman "Gimme something to knock me out!". The halfling can't resist - he creeps up behind him drawing his sap, and smacks the shifter across the back of the head with a sneak attack.

Here's the kicker - with no fudging, Swampy does EXCACTLY enough nonlethal damage (1 or 2 points off maximum) to knock Dante out cold (-1 HP). The barman, who was none too fond of the shifter either, just raises one eyebrow. Swampy then asks for a hand to drag the unconscious Dante up to his room, which the barman gladly does.

Next morning, Dante wakes up with a very sore head, with all of us sniggering to ourselves over the cause of his pain.

[drengnikrafe]

I apologize to all of you who have heard this story one of the three (I think) other times I told it on these boards, but IMO it's the best story I have when it comes to 'awesomeness.' And, I don't have a lot of experience to draw from (only a few campaigns, most of which lasted a full one session).

So, for the purpose of this, there are only 3 important pieces of information for this, as far as set up.
-I was playing a 7th level blaster wizard (Give me a break, it was my second campaign).
-We were fighting against the Merfolk in a war, and had just defeated the boss.
-We were PTing Action Points as a houserule. We weren't using them (7th level, somewhere about 50 AP), so he allowed the use of more then one per action/round, ect.

My DM decides that, since we just killed the big, bad, wizard, Merfolk Wizard, all the merfolk went crazy, and attempted to rush towards the cave in which he was hoarded up (yay for scrying to find things), and which we had recently left. So, a few failed spot checks later, we notice an arrow as it passes by us. In fact, not only was there a gigantic squadron of archers above us (think us taking 30-some-odd damage when only 20's hit, at 1d6ish damage each), but 2 squads of 10 solider (being led by a warlord-type fighter for bonuses), a few bards, Electrical Circles that could launch 12d6 damage every 1d4 turns (there were 2 or 3), some minotars on Rhinos, and this and that other. A total of more then 200 enemies (I believe).

In any case, our party has almost no magic in it (me and a poorly made druid that isn't allowed to wild-shape). Round one, I abuse my action points to make sure I go first. Everyone is invisable. We go this way and that, and clear up small amounts of enemies. Round two, I use fireball, and destroy a circle of the lightning guys. Upon doing very poorly on rolling damage, my DM tells me there's a type of magic that allows you to max out the damage on a roll, and I can do it (as per a feat, which is accessable due to AP): Sudden Maximize Spell. So I apply the feat, and all of them die. More random attacking. Plus, a big group 'found' me, and I got hacked to pieces. Round three, I convince the Party Druid to rez me (Yay AP for supplying impromptu spell componants that cost masses of money), and come back as a Halfling (strength penalties force me to drop my quarterstaff).

Here's where things get fun. Fourth round, we're struggling to overcome them, and they're barely diminished. That's when I get an idea...
Me: Are there other metamagics I can apply to my spells?
DM: Quicken, Maximize, Empower, Expand, Silence, Still.
Me: ... Can I cast 2 fireballs (using 2 action points, since I ran out of spells), one quickened, maximized, empowered, expanded, and the other all of those, only not quickened?
DM: ... Sure?
We are talking big fireballs. 60 damage (30, if they made the save) to everything in 2 circles with a radius of 40 ft.

The rest of round 4 and 5 are light cleanup of the meager leftover forces.
Needless to say we leveled up. However, we also never touched that campaign again. One, because my DM decided he'd had enough of AP, so he banned them from all future campaigns (yay for PTing?), and two because the DM and the Bard (who was trying to be a healer... very poorly) had RL issues.

And, again, sorry if you've already heard that one, but... I just love it.

[Lycan 01]

I've never heard that one, actually... XD

[Sstoopidtallkid]

In AQ:Jaern, the God of Emotions grants a spell called Audacious. It essentially stuns the enemy with no save for a number of rounds based on how surprising your next action is. Mooning is one round, 4 rounds is the highest(and I've never seen that happen). So, the party is getting beat on. Winning, but a lot of them are hurt, and half the enemy(started with 15, mix of casters and Gishes), is still up.
One player:I fireball the party. I think I'll be able to position it to hit everyone, but I'll also get the black-sword guy, too.
DM:
Other player: Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.
DM:
First player: In that case, I can hit the whole party except him, and none of the enemy.
Party as a whole: We don't resist.
DM: Schwa?
Fireballer: I use my item to make it a healing Fireball, the party gets 29 DP back.
DM: Oh, you have an item that does that...It makes sense now. Okay, their round. They sit there going ""

That ended up being a 3-round Audacious. He was fairly proud of himself.