Your Most Memorable Encounters

[BRC]

Story Time!

I want to here about your most memorable encounters. It dosn't have to be your most difficult, or your most plot-centric, just those you will always remember. Maybe the DM gave the enemy some interesting quirk, maybe the setup and momentum of the fight was different. Maybe a PC did something clever involving the surrounding area, whatever, just somthing that clearly makes this encounter stand out from the countless "Walk into a room, kill things" encounters that quickly fade from your memories.

[Pie Guy]

When our level 1 party beat off four shadows, we were thinking that we were TEH P4R7Y 0F 4\/\/350/\/\3!!! (the party of awesome), but then the dm declared that a fifth dropped down from the trees and knocked out our last member. It wasn't so much the encounter as the fleeting moment of triumph.

[LoneStarNorth]

Recently, in a game I'm DMing, the party was fighting an orc army. They were doing this primarily by buffing their pet dire tiger (long story, just roll with it) and letting it tear things apart. It had a Strength buff, and increased size to huge, and probably some other stuff I don't remember.

Now, these orcs had been in the process of forging a treaty with some lizardfolk from across the sea. Some of these lizardfolk were present, as was one of their pets; a triceratops. This triceratops was decked out in black dragonhide full plate armour, because why the hell not.

When the 30-foot-long dire tiger fought the armoured triceratops, everyone at the table had to sit back for a moment and just visualize it. Such was the awesomeness of that particular fight.


In another campaign, as first level characters, the party was roaming the city sewers looking for the source of a 'plague'. They came upon a shrine dedicated to some horrific frog-deity. When they examined it, a nearby lever slammed to one side, shutting some metal doors and trapping them in the room. At the same time, about a dozen black, red-eyed toads hopped out of the water, and more began appearing from out of the shrine (1d4+1 toads per round).

These toads attacked the party, knocking the sorceress into negatives and swarming the cleric and rogue as well. The wizard managed to use sleep and colour spray to good effect on these tiny terrors, but by the time thirty of the things were hopping around, it wasn't making much difference.

This whole time, the cleric was trying to pull the lever back, opening the doors and letting in the ranger who was stuck outside. He failed repeatedly, rolling nothing higher than a 9. The kobold rogue finally tried out of desperation (everyone is at 2 or 3 hp tops, except the sorceress who is at -7), and succeeds on his first try. The ranger runs in and starts killing toads while the rest of the party backs off.

They realize they need to drag the sorceress out from under the pile of sleeping toads, but can think of no safe way to do so. Then the ranger gets the idea to attack the shrine from which the evil toads are hopping. She succeeds, and the newly-summoned toads vanish, leaving only a few snoozing amphibians behind. A few coup de graces later, the party came out on top, with about 2 hp each, averaged.

Good times.

[ocato]

In another campaign, as first level characters, the party was roaming the city sewers looking for the source of a 'plague'. They came upon a shrine dedicated to some horrific frog-deity.

Blibdoolpoolp? If you're a DM running a campaign with Kua-toa cultists to Blibdoolpoolp living in the sewers under a city, I applaud your creativity. Kobolds have been done to death.

[Lycan 01]

The only time I got to play Call of Cthulhu myself instead of Keeping, my Russian pacifist Catholic Priest ended up becoming the team BAMF. Everyone knew there had to be a twist to why I was playing as a Russian Priest named Father Gregory. (Cough cough Ravenholm) Turns out they were right.

Apparently, the Father had been a White Russian during the Russian Revolution, and he knew a thing or two about using a shotgun.

So when he found himself trapped in Innsmouth, looking for a member of his congregation who'd gone missing there, and he suddenly found himself holding a new-found double-barrel shotgun... there was only one logical course of action.

The "Love and Peace" part of the Good Father died, and the "Vanquisher of Sin and Savior of the Lost Sheep" Father kicked in.

Spoiler

Show

After a half-hour of me and my group throwing out ideas, I finally gave up and decided to go do my own thing while they tried to climb a random building and jump onto the slanted roof of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. So while they're striving to make Jump rolls, I just walked up to the back door, bashed the doorknob off with the butt of the shotgun, and kicked the door open.

Needless to say, the Keeper hadn't really anticipated this, as the floorplan of the building he'd made had the missing Miskatonic U student sitting in the back room... which I'd just barged into. Unfortunately, there was a Deep One Hybrid guarding him.

Fortunately, I knew the fine art of improvising. Can't make a loud noise, like a shotgun blast? Can't let the guard attack me first? Can't risk the kid getting hurt? No problem! I solved all three at once!

I shoved the barrel of the shotgun right up against the guy's stomach, and pulled the trigger. Before he had a chance to react, he suddenly found himself with a basketball sized hole in his lower torso. 1-hit kill with a singe shotgun roll, FTW! Unfortunately, the impact forced the air out of his lungs, and he let out a hollow scream as his guts became the new wall decorations in that room. Just as he hit the ground, the Keeper mentioned that I heard noises from outside the other door I'd failed to hear him mention seconds before.

Oops.

The next thing I knew, a wall of bullets flew through the door at me... and they all missed. Standing there in shock, I raised my shotgun and waited for whatever was out there to come in the room. I got my wish. A Deep One Hybrid and a True Deep One, both armed with .38 revovlers, rushed into the room.

I passed my Sanity check, and decided that there was only one thing for Father Gregory to do.

"BACK TA HELL WITH YE, YE WRETCHED ABOMINATION UNTO THE LORD!!!!" Father Gregory screamed at the top of his lungs as he raised his shotgun towards the Deep One, and fired.

Rolled my shotgun roll. Got a crit.

Rolled my damage roll. Got 24 damage.

The thing had 14 HP. And 1 point of Armor.

I did 9 points of extra damage. From 8 feet away. With a shotgun.

The Keeper had intended for this Deep One to be a High Priest of Dagon, capable of summoning a Nightgaunt, which was going to hold me down while they tied me up so they could sacrifice me to Dagon.

I reduced his BBEG to a cloud of fertilizer, because he said the thing's head, shoulders, and upper torso were turned into dust and/or paste by the blast.



Needless to say, I enjoyed destroying the BBEG of the session with one shotgun blast.

And then here's the kicker. The Hybrid shoots me, point blank, in the shoulder, snapping my collarbone, shattering my scapula, and paralyzing my left arm. I hit the floor, and manage to stay alive with 3 HP. My response?

Pop open the shotty with my good hand and start reloading.

Just as I finished putting one shell in, and me and the Hybrid both began to bear our weapons upon each other, the rest of my group finally barged into the room and obliterated his face with two .45 auto bullets, one of which was a crit.

They then led me and the student out to the car, where I soon passed out from blood loss, content with the fact that I'd saved the lost sheep...


Father Gregory has since then recovered, and will actually show up as an NPC in my new campaign. Woot!

So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games.


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... )

[Kris Strife]

I wasnt actually in this encounter, we had split up at an intersection, but anyways, we were level 5 or so and basically going through a scooby doo style mansion with evil suits of animate armor. one attacked the party's female samurai. she got grappeled, but managed to knock it down some stairs and boogie boared down about a 60 stair case, then stabbed the belt buckle, killing it.

[Enlong]

The last encounter I DM'd had the party Sorcere perform the most excellent use of Fireballs I've ever seen. First, he fought off a pair of Dustform Gargoyles by torching them with maximized Fireballs (I ruled that they died by turning into glass and shattering against the ground). Then, after the party finished off the Sand Golem (thanks to a little help from the Ashworm Dragoon that I had to NPC), they got attacked by a Brine Ooze and finished it off in one round. The Rogue split it in two with his crossbow, the Cleric did it again, and the Ranger used Rapid Shot to split the thing into about seven small gloops. Then the Sorcerer fried them all at once with a Maximized Fireball. Quite cool.

[PhallicWarrior]

There was the time in a (very dark, Watchmen-inspired) game when the (street-level) heroes went up against the Master of Pain. (A mad scientist who had, through continuous surgery, eliminated his pain response, allowing himself full use of his body's strength.) After chasing him through the abandoned hospital where he "worked", they cornered him in his torture chamber. The walls are covered in all manner of spikes and blades and other means of inflicting pain, all covered in blood, dried or otherwise. Our resident powerhouse, the only one capable of going toe-to-toe with the Master, rushed him from the get go smashing him into a workbench. They grapple, and the powerhouse (I think his name was Backbreaker, or something similar) throws throws the Master across the room. The Master picked up a meat cleaver from another table, and Backbreaker did the same. They both lunge, they both crit, the Master's toughness save is higher, so he stays up, Backbreaker goes down. The other three heroes were busy with the Master's minions, so when he attacked them, he knocked our healer out in one attack. Backbreaker spends a hero point to recover from unconscious, hauls himself to his feet, pulls the cleaver out of his face, buries it in the Master's back, and tackles him into a wall covered in spikes. Master critically fails Toughness save, is dead. Much rejoicing. Backbreaker performed strenuous action while disabled, falls to dying again. Much laughing.

[Eita]

It wasn't my encounter, but it is far more memorable then any of my own encounters, even if odds are it didn't really happen. I won't take the time to find the copy-pasta, so I'll just say this: Noh.

(long story, just roll with it)

because why the hell not.

When the 30-foot-long dire tiger fought the armoured triceratops

Good times.

These four lines were all you really needed. They pretty much convey the awesomeness right there.

[BossMuro]

Not the coolest story, but the first that comes to mind, because it happened earlier this week.

A couple friends and I decided try out DnD 4th Ed. after having the GM of our current game decided not to show up. Our (new) DM,-who had never ran a game before, incidentally- said he'd run an introductory adventure from the DM Guide, with our party being just a rogue and a cleric, both level 1, instead of the five players it was meant for.

After two pretty straightforward fights against kobolds, we went down a staircase to find a large room with several piles of animal skulls and a large pit on the half near us, and at the other end, two raised platforms with kobolds on them playing a game that involved them swinging a big rock hanging from the ceiling at the piles the try and hit it.

Now, clearly they were supposed to use this rock as a weapon against us, and since the stairs to get up to the platforms was blocked by a gate, we would've had trouble hitting them back. So I waited until one of them swung the boulder, then sprung out of hiding, grabbed it, swung up onto the platform and shoved one of the kobolds down a flight of stairs. When I started getting mobbed by them and the two of drakes they had kpet hidden, I jumped off, swung to the other platform and started attacking the ones who had held back, all the while howling like a psychopath.

After a few swings they gave up, opened the gate, and sicced the drakes on the rogue, who had been picking them off while hiding(Oh yeah, it was the heavily armored dwarf cleric of the party doing the swinging around). He jumped into the pit to get away, and it looked like they weren't going to follow him until I aimed the rock at one and accidentally knocked it in. It hit him again, and looked like it would kill him next turn, so my dwarf jumped off the 10-foot high platform into the 10-foot deep pit and tackled it. We finished it off and were congratulating ourselves on him not being dead when the Drake's friend followed me off of the platform and critted me in the back, almost killing me, too.

[DrizztFan24]

I think I can manage at least two....

Ok so we were playing ToH....horrible party set-up...bad players...and we all lived...no deaths...no naked resets (those of you who have played know).

First, my Beguiler/Assassin managed to get a cool set of goggles that allows him to see through smoke, and an eversmoking bottle. His combat involves popping the cork and backstabbing everything. We tried this on the big nasty thing that is hiding behind the door. The one with 4 arms. I managed to hide and everything good, and then I tried to death attack the sucker....I rolled good damage and everything but he passed his save (duh...why wouldn't he) and turned on my spot, out of reflex. I had been hiding on the cieling and jumped on him...I get hit with all four claws at nearly max damage, and his rend....my character is so negative that Niagra Falls could have been considered half-empty.

AFTER my shapechanger druid sister managed to kill the thing in bat form, we realize that I had total concealment. Reroll damage and miss chance. I get missed by one attack and manage to live with 2hp. My character's response, "That's gonna leave a mark."

Later on in the dungeon our dragon shaman blew all of his Touch of Vitality points on a big nasty critter. (spoiler avoidance) First round of combat, after the monologue and spot checks about the weapon on the ground and the creature aversion to it, my bro walks up to the guy and deals 90 some damage in pure positive energy...thus destroying the creature before I could test the weapon....bummer huh?. We actually did very well int he treasure vault also...

AND, we (earlier on with the characters, level 7 or so) were clearing out Poccari's den (draconomicon sample dungeon). I have the bottle and the cool shades at this time also. I managed to death attack the Gnoll guard outside (woo!) and had managed to use my hat of disguise to get escorted to the boss. Some mumblings about a potential treaty and a bag full of a good fortune tribute...it was really the bottle in the bag but oh well, he didn't need to knwo that. So with an ettin (IIRC), two commandos, and the BBEG cleric in font of me, I drop the bottle and cast spiderclimb.

Next round of combat consists of move silently and ghosts sounds to have the two commandos beat the crap out of each other. I climb up the wall with some botched checks and have spells and arrows shot at me. I keep fleeing across the ceiling of the cavern until I am behind the baddies with some mirror images keeping the others busy.

I sneak up behind the cleric and just before I deliver my death attack, the ettin hears me and roars. He tries to make an attack and barely misses. I pull out my rapier and crit the BBEG in the back, only the sharp intake of breath gave it away. I quickly loot the best and smalles items and toss his body next to the ettin. The big guy thinks its me and squashes the corpse of his former employer into a puddle of jelly on the floor of the cavern, as I calmly walk from the hallway back outside, collecting my jar as I leave.

"Mouth of the cavern is clear." "Now it should be safe for us to head in." As the sounds of an angry Ettin and two commandos battling each other echo out of the cavern.

That attack is the second time my death attack had ever worked, to date the number can still be counted on one hand.

[Hiisi]

The party just about to enter a wizards tower. The halfling rogue picks a lock and sees a HUGE golem in the first room.. and it's just standing there. He picks up a couple of small rocks and tosses them at the golem. Nothing. All the players grin and start taking out their ranged weapons but rogue scratches his chin and before anyone can stop him, taps the floor behind the thershold with his foot. The golem comes alive and charges the party, it was my time to grin.

I 'knew' someone would be curious/stupid enough to do that. They could've just shot the thing from afar but no.. Gotta love these moments You should've seen the look on rest of the players faces.

I even showed them my notes which clearly stated that the golem would not move until someone steps over the treshold. They left the rogue sleeping in the wilderness the very next night *grin*

[Lord_Gareth]

Mine was with Jade Manydeaths, otherwise known as 18-Death-Bard, a character who managed to die that many times in the course of a single game month.

The party was confronting the head of a cult to Nerull (this is in 2nd edition, mind) and we're doing rather well. Jade is in melee with the priest, who keeps missing or (GASP!) fumbling, and he's landing the occasional hit, when he rolls a crit, followed by a fumble. The DM rolls on the table, and then says this:

"Jade plunges his longsword into the evil priest's chest, inflicting a grievous and, eventually, fatal wound, then slides his blade out and runs himself through in the chest.

The priest stares at him and says, 'Why do such a thing?'"

I responded, off the top of my head: "Chicks dig scars!"

[valadil]

The encounter my players bring up most often was actually ripped off from a DDO quest called Kobold Assault. I put the PCs in a three story tower with a McGuffin. 100 kobolds outside were trying to get the McGuffin. They weren't quite Tucker's Kobolds since they weren't on their own home turf, but they were conniving little buggers. The combat was memorable because it was dynamic - the players set up defensive choke points where each PC could hold off several Kobolds, and then fell back as they saw the Kobolds pull out different tricks.

[Totally Guy]

There was the time the Ghostly Dark Lord was chasing us through a haunted corridor and I suddenly realised we were doing that slapstick comedy sketch thing where the different characters are all going through the doors back and forth. Scooby Doo style.

Then there was the time when I, Obon, Cleric of Kord and that paladin were stuck in a tomb of undead monsters and neither of us remembered we could turn undead until the end of the session.

Then there was the time the undead bees attacked the party.

The climactic fight with the BBEG on the end of a burning pier... it was over in one round, warlord won initiative and bull rushed.

An armwrestle with the strongest man in the world. That funded our adventure.

I remember dropping those sandbags on enemy combatants in a theatre. That was fun.

I also remember the time when an enemy wizard intentionally set off a trap that targetted the closest target. Himself... boy that was a badly designed trap.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Years ago, in 3.0, my very first long term campaign. Started in the Forge of Fury premade and moved up into the higher levels over months of play. Great time. I spent most of my time being fairly nice to the players. They had tough fights but they got treasure at an amazing rate so they were equiped to handle themselves properly.

At around eighth level I decided to throw them back into the dungeons after alot of military campaign behind enemy lines kind of adventures. So, they have to get this book for some wizard to win the guys help in their country's war. Book is in a tomb but that easy enough, they'd handled undead before.

I set up this encounter in a much crueler manner than I normally would, had a great trap. The book, which they knew was cursed, was on a platform in a floorless room. The platform is held up by a massive pile of bones that decends into darkness. It's connected to the doorway by a narrow rope bridge that has alot of slack on it. Players have to Balance their way across it, which two of them do while the other two wait.

The Cleric, drawing information from some insane part of his mind, decided to read the book. The trap for the room triggers when the book is removed so I asked him if he was going to open it on the stand or pick it up. He said picked it up and cracked it open. Moment he does so two things happen: the platform rumbles and bones start clattering below them and the book blasts the Cleric with negative energy. He took fairly light damage but he was totally paralized.

A round later, as the Wizard tried to pull the book out of the Cleric's hands (without looking at it because the book was still open) so I could close it and the Fighter (the wizard's brother) is rushing across the bridge to see what's going on, skeletons start to come crawling up over the edges of the platform. The skeletons aren't really a threat to the players but there's a problem. The skeletons are what's holding this platform up and as more and more come to get the adventurers the platform is starting to lower.

The Fighter gets to the platform and starts smashing skeletons as fast as he can because that's how Brutar the Dwarf liked things: smashed. Meanwhile the Wizard managed to get the book loose at last and tosses it into a bag. The Cleric, no longer staring into the cursed book, starts to come out of his paralized state. The Rogue is still at the doorway, laughing himself stupid, because that's how Jay-Yaj was.

The platform is dropped about ten feet by this point and has pulled the formerly slack bridge tight. Skeletons are still pouring up from the edges and the Wizard manages to convince the Fighter that smashing them isn't actually helping the situation that much. The Cleric, thinking quickly, managed to stumble his way back onto the bridge and start back towards the doorway while the brothers argue about how to stop the skeletons, thinking he can take the opporunity attacks without much trouble. But the skeletons don't try to claw him, they grapple him (which took be a LONG time to get right, I wasn't great with the grapple rules), and working as a team pin him down on the rope bridge.

Now the platform is getting even lower and the bridge is more of a ladder. The ropes are surprising strong and take some of the weight from the platform as it continues to sink, which tilts the platform at a thirty degree angle and forces the Wizards and Fighter to keep their balance and returns their attention to the problem of escape. The Cleric, using a knowledge of his class features he had not yet managed to demonstate, remember he could turn undead! He won his grapple to get out of the pin and I said he could turn while in grapple so he made one of the luckiest damned rolls he'd ever gotten. He scored high enough to turn all the skeletons on the platform, about ten of them, and then some (they were 1/2 HD I believe). He assumed they would crawl back over the edge, thereby stablizing the platform. I then reminded him that they were less than half his level so they weren't turned; they where destoryed.

The skeletons turn to dust and the platform tilts farther as I inform the players that the burst of holy energy (he did get a 20 on the roll after all) destoryed skeletons UNDER the platform. The thing is at a sixty degree tilt now with the Cleric hanging onto the rope bridge while the Wizard and Fighter try to scamble up the slant to do the same. At this point the party was starting to get really scared because the Wizard had used most of his spells for the day (this was the end of the dungeon) and he didn't have any useful utility spells to throw around. Also at this point they started to get pissed at the Rogue player, who was still laughing in and out of character.

Skeleton hands start peaking around the bottom on the platform were it still touches the pile of bones and it starts to tilt more. With some pretty nice Climb checks from the Wizard and Fighter (nether of whom had Ranks in it) they manage to get high enough to catch hold of the Cleric's legs. The Cleric, well aware of his average strength score, informed them that he couldn't hold them up. The Wizard, in a fit of brilliance, pulled the cursed book out of the bag he'd stuffed it in and tossed it up to the Cleric. He told the Cleric to lace his arms through the ropes on the bridge and then open the book.

The Cleric, though nervous, did so and promptly froze in position. Skeletons reached the Wizard and Fighter just as the platform finally came away from the bones, swinging vertical, hanging from the rope bridge, and away from the skeletons, some of whom managed to keep their grip on the thing and started trying to pull the Wizard and Fighter back.

The Fighter, who was currently hanging from the Cleric's leg, on the Wizard's advise, inched his was higher and started to cut at the ropes connected the platfrom and the bridge. As mentoned, they were quite tough, so he elected to give it an axe swing rather than try and do it bit by bit. One lucky swing later the rope split, the platform swung, snapped the other connection, and dropped into the pit, hitting the pile of bones farther down.

The Wizard, hanging from the paralized Cleric, didn't want to try and make a Climb check because significant failure would result in a fall into the pit. The Fighter, however, was high enough to grab the planks on the rope bridge/ladder, and start climbing. He managed to get to the top and promptly began kicking the crap out of the Rogue for not helping them. After a few rounds of that a reminder call from his wizard brother returned him to business. The Rogue aided, the Fighter pulled but they couldn't pull the whole bridge up. They dropped a rope to the Wizard and got him level with the Cleric. After a few tries the Wizard again pulled the book loose from the dude's hands, freeing him up, and stuffed the book into his bag.

Within three rounds the Cleric managed to climb up and the Wizard got pulled up by the Fighter and Rogue.

They had the book, and they resolved to never open any books in the dungeon, ever again. Also, the Rogue would go first from then on.

[skywalker]

So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games.


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... )

My Keeper hates this method of Cthulhu resolution. My party tends to make him cry

My personal favorite D&D encounter was a chase scene. The party was escorting a king, and, while camping, all of the horses had been killed, along with us being poisoned during the night. So we woke up with one horse(my paladin's mount) and about 8 party members. One of whom happened to be a (recently weakened by posion) minotaur. The cleric says: "Well, I can blow about 5 restorations among the 8 of us..." Two of those went to the minotaur, and the rogue strapped everyone but me, the dwarf ranger, and the king himself, all of whom rode my horse. As we were nearing sight of the city, our adversaries came riding up on us from behind. The ranger begins deploying alchemist's fire into the dry grass around us to create a wall of flame between us and them. We see a large amount of water fall upon the fire from the sky as the chase continues. He employs this tactic again. Same response. 4 times total this same cycle occurs. I take the time to mutter "only a very well prepared wizard would prepare 4 uses of create water."

Finally, as the BBEGs(there were three of them) reached the minotaur(who was lagging behind, being that he was carrying many, many party members and not up to full strength), the dwarf, who had tried everything to stop them short of poisoning his crossbow bolts(he was sitting on a paladin mount, remember) takes the opportunity to throw a grapple hook around the minotaur's horns, in an attempt to jump from mount to minotaur. He makes his [throw grapple] check, misses his jump, and when the minotaur manages to stay upright and running against this new, added force, begins land-surfing behind the minotaur. The pragmatic BBEGs simply cut the rope(apparently, the DM forgot that they were after the king, not the dwarf). As they surround him and tell him to surrender, the dwarf's response is to lop off one of the horse's legs with his Urgrosh before he is repeatedly stabbed to death. So ends one of the most epic, fun D&D characters I ever had the privilege of gaming with. Then my paladin put the king down in the city and rode out to avenge his comrade.

[evisiron]

I remember the biggest fight (against 3 lvl 20 characters):

-400 assorted race minions
-26 half fiends
-14 elemental giant hybrids
-3 Omni-mentel
-Pyrolastic Dragon
-Undead Tarrasque (hehehe)
-20 Low level mages spamming an antimagic screen to protect...
-Coll Red Dragon

And then the Col Red came back as a dracolich when then killed him the first time. It was a damn good fight that took up an entire session.
I think one of the players worked out the ECl as 167.

[Artanis]

Mine was a combination of many instances in a very short-lived campaign. I joined because the DM said on a forum I frequent that he was starting a new campaign due to the previous one ending in his characters depopulating and burning down a casino, and I thought it sounded like a good place to end my five-year avoidance of DnD that had started with a 2e DM...no Arty, happy thoughts, happy thoughts. *deep breath*. Anyways, this DM really really tried, but he just wasn't very good yet, and we players inadvertantly made it ridiculously difficult on him.


The first couple sessions went more or less as the DM planned, with us raiding an abandoned warehouse, getting our objective, and the building winding up on fire. At the end of the session, we were approached by a cop, which the DM intended to be a combat encounter...and my Warmage (whose high CHA made her the closest thing to a "face" we had), saw the cop's .45 and started - and then succeeded in - talking our way out of the fight. The next session, the DM planned for us to have a non-combat session of us talking our way through the police asking us what had happened. I tried to talk our way out of what sounded like a rather invasive interrogation, but that attempt ended when one of the players got desperate and set the police station on fire.

By now, you can probably sense a trend.

With the police station on fire, the plot was more or less unsalvageable, so we agreed with the DM that most of us should make new characters and try to continue on with them. Feeling bad for him, we all readily agreed. I made a Druid, and the second session of "Episode Two" had us fighting Earth Elementals in the attic of a store. The floor was none too solid, so I looked up the heaviest creature on my summons list, a Hyppogryph, plopped it down in the center of the room, thereby collapsing the floor. The floor and everything and everybody on it fell all the way to the main part of the store, breaking and/or spilling tons of stuff all over the floor. One of the players promptly shot off a fireball, and it turned out that the spilled stuff included lamp oil and ingredients for Alchemist's Fire. The store went up in flames.

At that point, we had burned down three buildings in the span of four sessions. We all felt really bad for the DM because he'd been trying so hard and had actually been doing a pretty good job (especially by newbie standards!) of adapting to his plot utterly disintegrating every single session. But we all had to give up and end the campaign there.

[Keld Denar]

Living Greyhawk, one of the series finalies for a long running metaregional plot arc. The creature, a fiendish shadowed beholder hive mother of legend, challenged our party to arena combat in a Koa-Tua temple (KT temples double as arenas...their god is into that kind of thing) for the aligence of the Koa-Tua who were trying to side with some Drow, Illithids, and a bunch of humanoid cannonfodder. The Kuo-Tua alliance would have been very bad for the already hardpressed surface world, and the only way we could stop their alliance was to accept the challenge (or fight our way out of a few thousand Kuo-Tua).

Man, this beholder was a badass. He had Tomb Tainted, so he could heal himself for 4d6+20 with his inflict critical eye ray. He had DC 34 rays that were Dominate Monster, Flesh to Stone, Disintegrate, Finger of Death, Confusion, Telekenesis, and probably another couple save or dies. He had a monocle on his Flesh to Stone eye that let him split the ray into 2, and a feat from Lords of Madness that let him change his eye cone AMF into a single target AMF. He had a grapple check in the mid 40s, and when he targeted you with his AMF, you lost FoM and all your str enhancements, making it very difficult to resist the grapple, after which he would swallow you whole. I think he was around CR20, and probably on the far end of the CR20 scale, closer to 21.

Luckily, our group was a fairly optimized group of 6, all level 15, my Occult Slayer spiked chain PAer, my friends dwarven Occult Slayer Deepwarden with Uncanny Blow, 2 clerics with great casting utility, an archmage (who spent about 1/2 of the combat stoned...twice), and a druid. We managed to do enough damage to it that it had to heal itself with its Inflict Crit eye, we noticed this (good spellcraft rolls) and our clerics both hit it with Heals the next round. By then, we finally managed to get it down after a very long (almost 3 hours IRL) and hard faught combat that probably lasted around 12-13 rounds. It was the most epic combat I've ever taken part in, and my buddy had spent the last 2 weeks conspiring with another friend to stat out this monstrosity.

And now, my character is a retired Legendary Hero, and life is good :)

[chiasaur11]

The only time I got to play Call of Cthulhu myself instead of Keeping, my Russian pacifist Catholic Priest ended up becoming the team BAMF. Everyone knew there had to be a twist to why I was playing as a Russian Priest named Father Gregory. (Cough cough Ravenholm) Turns out they were right.

Apparently, the Father had been a White Russian during the Russian Revolution, and he knew a thing or two about using a shotgun.

So when he found himself trapped in Innsmouth, looking for a member of his congregation who'd gone missing there, and he suddenly found himself holding a new-found double-barrel shotgun... there was only one logical course of action.

The "Love and Peace" part of the Good Father died, and the "Vanquisher of Sin and Savior of the Lost Sheep" Father kicked in.

Spoiler

Show

After a half-hour of me and my group throwing out ideas, I finally gave up and decided to go do my own thing while they tried to climb a random building and jump onto the slanted roof of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. So while they're striving to make Jump rolls, I just walked up to the back door, bashed the doorknob off with the butt of the shotgun, and kicked the door open.

Needless to say, the Keeper hadn't really anticipated this, as the floorplan of the building he'd made had the missing Miskatonic U student sitting in the back room... which I'd just barged into. Unfortunately, there was a Deep One Hybrid guarding him.

Fortunately, I knew the fine art of improvising. Can't make a loud noise, like a shotgun blast? Can't let the guard attack me first? Can't risk the kid getting hurt? No problem! I solved all three at once!

I shoved the barrel of the shotgun right up against the guy's stomach, and pulled the trigger. Before he had a chance to react, he suddenly found himself with a basketball sized hole in his lower torso. 1-hit kill with a singe shotgun roll, FTW! Unfortunately, the impact forced the air out of his lungs, and he let out a hollow scream as his guts became the new wall decorations in that room. Just as he hit the ground, the Keeper mentioned that I heard noises from outside the other door I'd failed to hear him mention seconds before.

Oops.

The next thing I knew, a wall of bullets flew through the door at me... and they all missed. Standing there in shock, I raised my shotgun and waited for whatever was out there to come in the room. I got my wish. A Deep One Hybrid and a True Deep One, both armed with .38 revovlers, rushed into the room.

I passed my Sanity check, and decided that there was only one thing for Father Gregory to do.

"BACK TA HELL WITH YE, YE WRETCHED ABOMINATION UNTO THE LORD!!!!" Father Gregory screamed at the top of his lungs as he raised his shotgun towards the Deep One, and fired.

Rolled my shotgun roll. Got a crit.

Rolled my damage roll. Got 24 damage.

The thing had 14 HP. And 1 point of Armor.

I did 9 points of extra damage. From 8 feet away. With a shotgun.

The Keeper had intended for this Deep One to be a High Priest of Dagon, capable of summoning a Nightgaunt, which was going to hold me down while they tied me up so they could sacrifice me to Dagon.

I reduced his BBEG to a cloud of fertilizer, because he said the thing's head, shoulders, and upper torso were turned into dust and/or paste by the blast.



Needless to say, I enjoyed destroying the BBEG of the session with one shotgun blast.

And then here's the kicker. The Hybrid shoots me, point blank, in the shoulder, snapping my collarbone, shattering my scapula, and paralyzing my left arm. I hit the floor, and manage to stay alive with 3 HP. My response?

Pop open the shotty with my good hand and start reloading.

Just as I finished putting one shell in, and me and the Hybrid both began to bear our weapons upon each other, the rest of my group finally barged into the room and obliterated his face with two .45 auto bullets, one of which was a crit.

They then led me and the student out to the car, where I soon passed out from blood loss, content with the fact that I'd saved the lost sheep...


Father Gregory has since then recovered, and will actually show up as an NPC in my new campaign. Woot!

So yeah. I managed to find an easy way straight to the climax of the game out of sheer desperation, and then it took me two shotgun shells to destroy more than half the session. And people wonder why I usually only Keep CoC games.


(My original plan was to hijack a car and drive it through the front door of the Order of Dagon. The Keeper says I would have probably been shot once I got out of the car in there. I think it would have been worth it... )

Nice.
Really, who doesn't love Deep Ones getting shotgunned to death?

[Hzurr]

[The Beholder] had a monocle on his Flesh to Stone eye that let him split the ray into 2

Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

[goram.browncoat]

Party of four (lvl 4 (i think) monk / sorc / rogue / cleric) was decending to a lower level in a sewer system. They were climbing down a rope hanging above a 15ft deep collector in which a giant crocodile was lurking.

The monk hits the water first and nobody makes the spot check to see the croc. The croc gets a surprise round and goes from a bite into an improved grab grapple and the monk is now in the crocs mouth.

The rogue drops down to assist the monk by poking the croc a bit. The sorc stays on the rope and casts from up above. the cleric tries to go down the rope to assist the monk with healing but totally botches his climb. I allowed him a reflex save to heal the monk on his way past (totally not covered by any rule, but I often DM by the rule of cool :)

The monk tanked the entire fight from inside the mouth of the croc, while the rogue and sorc did damage and the cleric tried frantically (weighed down by his half plate) to stay afloat and keep the monk alive (he went down and came up again several times).

I find it funny sometimes. This was a little random on-the-way encounter to a were-rat camp led by an evil sorcerer with barghest bodyguards. The croc fight wasnt supposed to be much at all but it was the encounter of the session (and probably also the encounter of the campaign, theyre lvl 8 by now but i think we still havent topped that one)

[only1doug]

CoC:

My character was arrested for stealing from the town armory (I'd bought some weapons from there in a dodgy deal then got time warped 3 months into the future with no chance to cover my tracks).

I was feeling very pissed off (the GM ended the session with the reveal of my arrest and the charges and i was feeling very railroaded).
Two weeks later (the next session) the GM introduced me to my Lawyer (his Wife's new PC, she'd decided to play and her defense of me was to be her intro)

After the revelation of the new character I was relieved and the Trial itself was actually quite fun.

The prosecutor was the nephew of the judge, we wiped the courtroom floor with them due to contradictions in evidence and we agreed that charges would be dropped. Then the Judge declared me not guilty (so we actually won the case (guess he forgot that they were dropping the charges).
In order to cover up the mistakes of the case the Judge gave me a license for everything that I was accused of stealing (which was much more than I actually purchased).

[Dragonus45]

My first ever game i played a lvl3 bard with a very high Perform (acting) skill. When we were ambushed by a large number of orcs my first battle went very badly as i rolled a 3 a 2 and a 1 to hide and escape there fire. So i took a ready action to Play Dead the next time i was hit (i 5 hp left) Well i rolled a 20 and played dead so well that my allies thought i was dead, and chucked a bag with five thunder stones onto a ledge collapsing the whole thing right on top of me. Fortunately the dm let a paladin run in and save my to keep my losing my first character so badly.

[Calinero]

Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

Yeah, that bit right there stole the post for me. I am now busy picturing a Beholder with a Monocle. Awesome.

[Ganurath]

I turned a charging dwarf's full plate against him by convincing my DM to let me cast Create Water inside his armor. The DM's very lax about the rules, and decreed that the dwarf was stunned for two turns, no save. This is the evil party, so it goes without saying that the dwarf didn't last two turns. Best part? One of the reckless berserkers in the party is a dwarf who took the very same set of armor for himself. I'm going to have fun if he crosses the line.

[LotharBot]

Here are my top 6, all from D&D 3.5e.

#6 - "Epic Bar Fight" (session log) -- I was DM'ing this one. The wizard in our level 26 party has taken ownership of what used to be a part of Celestia that was cast into the Abyss, and we're trying to return it to Elysium (which matches our wizard's alignment.) We have a very-epic lawful dragon holding the plane together with an epic shell of law, and our job is to protect him as we drift toward Elysium. Thus far, we've flown through Pandemonium and Limbo, where we've fought some random epic CE/CN creatures. Now we're over Ysgard, a CN plane of endless battle, and some dwarves show up complaining that our huge Law aura is cramping their style. Our chaotic dwarf fighter chick yells back at them to "mind your own business", and their leader shoots back "you cannot bring such order to our battlefield! We have to settle this, or at least make things a bit less structured, with a drunken brawl! Who is up for the challenge?" 40 shots later, our dwarf fighter chick (who owns a brewery that's famous throughout the planes) isn't even remotely drunk, while the other guy is feeling it a little bit.

The two exchange punches for a little while, while the other dwarves cheer and smash barstools (from bags of holding) over each others heads. Then our fighter chick rolls two critical hits during her attack routine. In this game, we were using the "critical hit deck", so she drew a pair of cards. One was "seeing stars" or something like that, and the other was "knockout blow" -- making the guy dazed and unconscious.

#5 - "The Guards Said to Come Right In" (session log) -- My wife was DM here, and we were level 12. In this campaign, there's a worldwide war going on. Our party bard is son of the king of the city of White Fields, which is currently under siege by the Yuan-ti kingdom of Serpenti. Our party is called the "Ninja Mongoose Rockstars", and we specialize in infiltration and assassination. So we kill a powerful enemy adventuring party and take on their personas using Veil, and walk into the middle of the enemy siege camp to meet with their head cleric. He tells us he has a job for us: he wants us to go out and assassinate the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars. We agree and ask him if anyone in the camp has experience fighting with them (an excuse to figure out who stole our archer's favorite bow and go get it back.) So we go find the guy with the bow, kill him, and then walk back to the head cleric's office. My sorcerer bluffs the guards into letting us in.

Now, the high cleric wasn't expecting us at all. "Speak a word and save your lives!" he says, holding a charge of some nasty spell on his hand. "The guards said to come right in" my sorcerer bluffs, rolling a natural 20. Everyone at the table busts up laughing, and the guy's all "OK fine. What do you want?" "We just got this bow that used to belong to the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars. We need you to scry on it to locate them. It's time-critical." So the guy grabs the bow and starts scrying, and we all step forward to watch as his scrying image zooms in on his own camp... on his own office... on us, disguised as his best assassins, weapons all trained on him. He still put up a decent fight, but we triumphed fairly shortly. I drew our party logo in chalk on the floor, and we all walked out, with the veil still active. To top it all off, I bluffed the guards again by saying "he's really mad that you let us in. I wouldn't go in there until he's had a chance to cool off a bit."

#4 - "The Second Battle of Paverly" (no session log) -- this comes from my very first D&D campaign ever, in 3.5. My wife had been DM'ing a plot in the town of Paverly: a Glabrezu had made a deal with a necromancer named Alishaz to slay 400 people in town square (where Alishaz had been killed) in order to raise him as a lich. If he didn't succeed within the month, their contract stipulated both would be obliterated. We'd managed to stop several plots to slay people in town square (including the First Battle of Paverly, wherein we held off an orc army of 90+ led by a Vrock... while we were level 5.) Eventually we managed to summon the Glabrezu into a magic circle, and kill him while he was unable to retaliate, ending the campaign so we could move on to the next thing we had planned. I thought that ending was lame, and said so... so my wife ran a better ending for me.

At this point, we were about level 9, and had a level 7 NPC fighter (with a very large holy weapon) and a level 4-5 NPC bard who were in the town. One morning, we hear a ruckus. Vrocks have appeared at each of the three town gates (the town is about 400' across), the Glabrezu is in town square, and Babau and other lesser demons are moving around the town paralyzing people and preparing to drag them to the square so the Glabrezu can start slaying them. We quickly head out to gate #1 and kill the vrock, move to gate #2 and kill the second vrock, and then leave the third gate and vrock as we approach the glabrezu in town square. By now, he's just getting his very first group of paralyzed victims all lined up so he can drop an Unholy Blight on them. The cleric summons a smallish archon in the middle of the civilians, using Magic Circle Against Evil to block Unholy Blight. The druid puts a wall of thorns up to block off all but one entrance to town square, so the lesser non-flying demons can't get in to help, and we start beating on the big bad. He gets the wizard down to like 2hp so she polymorphs into a Hydra and (with the help of the town bard's buffing powers) manages to maul the final vrock that flew in to help his buddy. The rest of us beat the living snot out of the big bad, and that was that.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this battle was how mobile and "big" it was. It wasn't just a room with a big dragon; it was a battle across the entire town with lots of enemies and high stakes.

#3 - "The Battle of White Fields" (double session log) -- back to the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars, still level 12. After killing the top cleric in the siege camp outside White Fields, we flew off to the main temple of Merrshaulk on eagleback (teleports were blocked) and placed a gnomish-built "unstable contraption" on its roof, nuking it. Now, Merrshaulk had threatened the yuan-ti that if the temple of Senneth (his son) ever stood higher than his own temple, he would abandon them for one hour... and since Merrshaulk's temple was gone and Senneth's was still standing, that technically met the criteria he'd set out. So the army around White Fields, which was about 60% clerics, was suddenly turned into a bunch of fighters without bonus feats or full base attack. White Fields' army was pressing the attack, and 58 minutes later (2 minutes left on the countdown), we joined in. And all of a sudden our pimped out bard (+7 to attack, +7 to damage, and fast healing 3 from bardsong) -- who, remember, was son of the king of White Fields -- was boosting a bunch of generic level 7 fighters up to ridiculous levels.

Too many interesting things happened over the 20-round, 2-session fight for me to detail here; it's all in the session log. The party finished the battle with over 150 kills to their credit, mostly CR 8-ish, but with about 20 CR 15s and a kill and two assists on CR 22 champions. (The two assists: shatter mind blank+feeblemind, and some soldiers found the dude stumbling around; the bard buffed up his father the king who led a suicide-charge to take out the epic boss cleric just before the timer ran out.)

#2 - "Go Seek the Wraith" (session log) -- the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars are now level 16, with my wife still as DM. One of our characters, Brother Jakob, was a half-ogre monk/swordsage with some psionic abilities and a custom PrC based around it. His backstory involved killing his own master, Michael, who had been turned into a wraith. So my wife wrote out that story: Master Michael had gotten an oracle that included the lines "by dark descent go make the pathway clear" and "go seek the wraith, return the key, defy your fear." He had gone into the stronghold of the strongest wraith on the continent, a wraith-sorcerer (caster level 35) named Vash, trying to retrieve a key that would summon the great elven city of Kirani (a key ally in the continent-wide war.) Vash turned Michael into a wraith with a single touch.

So Brother Jakob, once he reached sufficiently high level, inherited Michael's quest. At this point, we all knew Vash was a CR 40+ encounter by himself, and we were level 16. But we knew something Michael didn't: we didn't need to actually get the key out, we just needed to break it to release the spirit it held, and it would reform itself in the hands of its rightful owner. So we head toward Vash's lair, and run into Michael's ghost, who helps us find the way. Vash's lair is a huge cave filled with thousands of dread wraiths and spellthieves, with dimension lock blocking teleportation, and the key in the middle inside an AMF and a wall of force. So Jakob, with various buffs to his speed an AC, takes off running for the middle, piercing the wall of force with a dagger of cancellation and snapping the key in half. Mission accomplished, except that now our level 16 guy is in the middle of thousands of dread wraiths and the CR 40+ Vash. So he takes off running for the exit, and nearly makes it out of Vash's spell range... and gets hit by a ridiculously nasty save-or-paralyzed spell and blows the save (rolling a 16 wasn't good enough.) My wife hands him a sheet of paper and explains to the party that "the wraiths swarm him and he dies; we're not going to roll it." Most of our players are like "WTF this sux" except for Jakob's player (who is reading the sheet) and me (because I'd figured out the riddle before.)

1d4 rounds later, Jakob rose as a wraith ("by dark descent"), but his legendary discipline allowed him to retain control for a few rounds. He could either take off running for the exit and let us kill him and raise him (note: this game had custom death rules; if we didn't raise him within a few rounds he was gone for good)... or he could turn around and join with the ghostly Master Michael in fighting Vash, who now appeared to him as an old man sorcerer. The choice was obvious -- Michael-the-ghost walked up behind Vash and tripped him, and Jakob-the-wraith broke out his flurry with all the psionic and swordsage buffs he could muster (plus the lingering buff from our bard). And now Vash was in a bind -- he didn't have many spells that worked on wraiths; he didn't usually fight them. Two failed disintegrates later, he again found himself on the recieving end of some extremely buffed up flurries. In a round and a half, Vash's 800 hitpoints were gone, and a CR 40+ wraith-sorcerer was killed by a monk/swordsage and a Master of Nine, both below level 20. As Jakob lost control and turned into a true wraith, Michael's ghost finished him off, and now Jakob's ghost haunts that mountain killing wraiths by the dozens.

#1 - "Summon Rubble Rousers" (the end of the above session, and session log and another I haven't written yet) -- in the Ninja Mongoose Rockstars campaign, whenever we faced a fight that would best be handled in melee, the players joked that we should summon the Rubble Rousers (the level 26 party from the epic bar fight.) So my wife, DMing the NMR campaign, and me, DMing the RR campaign, conspired to make it happen for our final 3.5 blowout session. I'd designed a summoning room that worked across all time and space and was run as a joint project by all the good gods in the entire pantheon (described at the end of this session log). The catch was, if you used the room to summon help, you'd get the perfect help for the job, and then you'd be summoned as the perfect help for someone else's job. So I got the Rubble Rousers into the room by having them summon the epic law dragon from the epic bar fight story, and then left that campaign hanging with the party waiting to be summoned.

During the "Seek the Wraith" session, my wife mentioned that we'd only play one more session in this campaign before we went to 4e. One of the players asked if we'd finish off the Rubble Rousers campaign. My wife replied "let's finish this campaign first, and then we can decide what to do about that one" -- a clever misdirection. At the end of that session, as we were dealing with the emotional turmoil of Brother Jakob's death, our remaining NMR party teleported to meet up with the king of Kirani, who handed us an artifact and said "I have held this for a hundred and fifty years, looking for the right time to use it. That time is now." He triggered it, and my wife started reading the description of the room we appeared in -- exactly the same description as I'd read before. Soon, the players started to figure it out, and one of them excitedly stammered "oh... oh my god... it's... it's... IT'S THE RUBBLE ROUSERS!" Some of the players were so excited that they lost sleep at times during the week between.

What made this really cool was the party synergy. You'd think mixing a level 17 party and a level 27 party would be a disaster. But the level 17 party had a bard who was now giving +9/+9 with bardic music, which went well with the level 27 party's barbarian, fighter, ranger, and rogue. The level 17 party had an illusion-focused sorcerer who made everyone look like someone else and got the enemies to focus fire on the high-HP/AC epic fighter instead of the squishies. The level 17 party had a monk who was now a ghost, who got to act for one round per fight but could interrupt others' turns to do it (he twice saved another character's life by interrupting a potentially killing shot and throwing the enemy out of the way.) The level 17 archer still dealt out massive damage at silly long range, and since he looked like a tree, nobody ever figured out where the arrows were coming from. And the level 17 druid had control of a continent-wide storm (we were in the sacred grove of the god of storms) and was able to use it to drop a 100d6 attack once per fight. The level 27 wizard (NO epic casting this game) was great at finishing off targets the others had weakened, and dealing massive damage to groups. With the level 27 buffer-healer cleric, everyone stayed alive and healthy as we took on fights of ridiculously high CRs where ancient wyrm dragons, balors, and the Tarrasque were mooks. Oh, and we ended by killing a god -- Senneth, son of Merrshaulk.

[chiasaur11]

Wait....WHAT?

A Beholder with a Monocle...that's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard, or the most amazing thing ever thought of.

What made you fail to guess the obvious "Both"?

[Keld Denar]

Yeah, that bit right there stole the post for me. I am now busy picturing a Beholder with a Monocle. Awesome.

Its in Lords of Madness, in the magic item section. Neato item, if you are a beholder, or otherwise shoot lazers from your eyes. Plus, you can telekenetisize it off, breath on it, and rub it on a cloth if you need to buy yourself some time to think of a suitable reply to an unexpected question.