A couple game sessions ago, my party reached the Thistletop throne room and fought Ripnugget and a large group of goblins in the throne room. I modified Ripnugget into a order of the dragon cavalier and had him sitting astride Stickyfoot instead of resting on a throne. The big dwarven fighter and half-orc barbarian went ahead of the party to scout ahead, and entered the throne room while the rest of the group was crossing the bridge (after they had retreated back to the brambles to rest). He traded insults with Ripnugget and was challenged and charged, resulting in a big melee between these two. Ripnugget told the rest to not interfere, and the barbarian was afraid to attack for fear of involving the large band of goblins, including 2 lieutenants. The party finally caught up around round 3, and began fighting the goblins, but the dwarf was dropped before the cleric could burst, and the party backed up some, which allowed the goblins to close the doors to the throne room and bar them. I informed the party they heard hammering, and then when they finally breached the throne room doors, the dwarf (who has a 19 con and stabilized at -2hps) was spiked to the wall through his armor, which dropped him to -12hps. After an epic battle, they fought off the goblins and managed to free the dwarf from the wall. The funny part of the story is the elf who the dwarf fighter constantly heckled has taken to calling him "Art" now. :)

Late night posting, so I lost the main point of my post.. I wanted to hear if anyone else had humorous battle stories from RotRL??

redcelt32 wrote:
Late night posting, so I lost the main point of my post.. I wanted to hear if anyone else had humorous battle stories from RotRL??

Oh my, where to begin...

Well, there have been a few side adventures (including the Paladin sleeping on the beach at night despite the presence of Crabs and Reefclaws...ended up running, armorless, through town being chased by Clackerclaws the Giant Crab. One of the players even composed a song about it...)

But actual fights...

Two big ones. Both at Thistletop.

1) Paladin (who has already fallen off the cliff from the hedgerow once already) racing across the bridge to catch a fleeing Grogmurt instead of taking his time...AGAIN he rolls a fumble and slips off the bridge...luckily, the Hedgewitch was right behind him and cast Feather Fall to slow his plummet...Grogmurt escaped only to meet his doom with Ripnugget and the boys in the Throne Room...

2) After fighting Lyrie and Orik, the party killed the fighter and incapacitated "the hot wizard chick". Then the Rogue2/ Ranger 1 tried to talk to the familiar (Skivvers?) to get him on their side. He keeps confusing Speak with Animals/ Diplomacy with CHARM MONSTER. He seems to think, despite repeated explanations to the contrary, that he can use diplomacy in MID COMBAT to sway enemies into joining his side. And he keeps trying to use his Ranger ability to charm more intellegent animals.

Anyway, he rolled really low and the cat scratched him and took off. (After all, the party had just nearly killed Lyrie). So, foolishly, Kitt (the rogue) took off after him yelling "Come back, we want to be friends!"

So, by himself, Kitt ran headlong into the waiting Bruthazmus and the harem of goblin maids. The rest of the party reluctantly decided to rescue him...

There are pix of both of these encounters here: Linkified

The party I was running through this ended up splitting up. The half-orc rogue ended up away from everyone else, and was in the throne room, and had begun to bluff Ripnugget about being a wandering mercenary offering his services.

He had, upon first entering the room, climbed up one of the pillars in the room, and when Ripnugget and the others saw him, he began to lie through is teeth to keep them from shooting him.

The bluff was started to work well.

The rest of the party was tromping through the rest of Thistletop, and the Shoanti paladin, worried that the rogue was in trouble, was bashing down each door in the place with his earth breaker. On top of than, when the adventurers found the pickle thieves, the other half-orc, a fighter, decided to drown the pickle thief in the what was left of the pickle barrel.

After dragging the half-orc away from this distraction, the paladin urged everyone forward, continuing to batter his way through the fortress, until he found the door to the throne room. Bursting through, he saw the rogue and proclaimed . . . "don't worry friend, we'll help you now!"

At which time the half-orc immediately looks at Ripnugget and says, "I've never seen these people before in my life."

That would have been amusing enough, but the half-orc rogue, up off the ground hanging onto the pillar, upon realizing that Ripnugget wasn't buying it anymore, says, "at least I'm up here."

At which point Ripnugget hopped on his faithful giant gecko and charged up the wall straight at the half-orc rogue. The resulting fight consisted of a lot of climbing, jumping, and the half-orc rogue trying to keep Ripnugget from moving in a straight line to reach him, and hoping to connect with one more solid blow (the half-orc was a glass canon, with a huge strength score and a great axe, but, being a rogue, not being the best in the hit point or armor class department).

The rest of the party, after having slammed, loudly through each door on the first floor, had to deal with drawing every goblin from the first level of Thistletop to the throne room.

After going through every spell, scroll, charge, and potion that the group had, amazingly not a single PC died, but the fight was suitably epic, taking an entire three and a half hour gaming session to run through.

It was a great time.

Not at the Throne Room yet (finished up the Hedgemaze & Bunyip lair last night) but there was some awesome action that took place last night.

First, as we started in media res down at the Runwell of Wrath, our cleric did a little "investigation" of the artifact. By that, I mean he looked, smelled, and detected magic, then tossed the body of Erylium into the orange-glowing-water.

Poof, 3 Sinspawn showed up, and proceeded to grapple & gnaw on our silly little Gnomes; the Sorcerer, Cleric, and Bard.

Unable to do any significant damage to them (mostly due to unlucky rolls and lack of Claw/Claw/Bite), our DM dropped the grapple-game just as I (the Fighter) and the Rogue were able to engage. Unable to contend with the 23 AC Cleric the monsters chewed up the Sorcerer a bit before being put down with Cleave and a Longspear. Poke, poke, dead, yay!

Later on, after traveling to Thistletop and smack in the middle of the Hedge Maze, we ran into a bunch of goblins guarding a huge pile of goods. Once again, Longspear + Cleave + Combat reflexes meant 4 Gobbo's went down in the first round. As the player of the Sorcerer said, "I looked at my laptop to double-check Burning Hands, when I looked up, half the Goblins were dead!"

At the Bunyip tunnel, our Cleric went down, solo, to investigate the weird watery cave. Attacked by a seal-monster Magical Beast, he called for help. Taking the time to tie myself off and sheathe all my weapons, 2 rounds later I leaped down the hole, trying to skewer the beast below. My luck held true, and I was able to succeed on the Acrobatics check to not bounce off the walls. With a tremendous splash, all 300 pounds of spear-wielding Fighter crashed into the Bunyip, doing some 15 points of damage and causing him to frenzy. From there, only mop-up remained.

Finally, when we encountered Gogmurt, he had a bunch of Goblin Dogs and Goblin Mooks with him. They availed him of naught, as I was able to Overrun the Druid, driving him to the ground. The Rogue and I, now flanking the poor, prone gobbo, made short work of him. The Bard and Sorcerer played clean-up, Sleep'ing and Shocking Grasp'ing the various mooks still around.

A fantastic night of Ye Olde Goblin Killin' (tm), and I can't wait to get to Thistletop proper!

-t

My party just started on the Skinsaw Murders, and we had a very interesting fight in the throne room.

(we're playing through the AP using Pathfinder rules)

Their sorcerer ran out of spells mid-way through the fight, and being of the Draconic bloodline, he flipped out his claws and charged Ripnugget (who was mounted >_<)

The paladin was single-handedly removing the rest of the goblins one-by-one, while the bard focused his attacks on the Giant Gecko that Ripnugget was on...

After a lucky critical, the bard de-mounted Ripnugget, and cleansed the world of the giant gecko. The sorcerer then proceeded to grapple the king of the goblins. Afterwards, he looped a rope around the king's neck, and got the bard to tie a sword to the other end, and then throw it over a nearby chandelier, the party then tried to hang King Ripnugget. As cool as this was, Something struck me...
"Hey guys, you didn't disarm Ripnugget did you?"
"Uh........no..."

Ripnugget then cuts himself free from the rope, and drops the bard, before being dropped by the paladin.

Quite a funny story that gets laughed about often in our group :D

we finished up the top level of Thistletop last night. The whole thing was a blast, especially the Throne Room.

First off, we charged across the bridge without incident, eliciting some weak javelin fire from goblins standing in the watchtowers. Unable to really affect them (due to movement issues and a lack of good ranged attacks), I decided to go for broke.

Still hooked into a 50' knotted climbing rope with a grapple attached, I threw it, trying to hook a gobbo and yank him off the tower. Of course, that's when I roll the natural 19, and hook the little bugger clean through his head. That spooks his buddy, who flees, and leaves me with no access to the tower.

On the other side, while the rest of the party finished running over (lots of Smalls in the party -3 gnomes and 2 humans, and the gnome cleric is in breastplate) I managed to hook the grapple on the palisade. Seeing a dead goblin buddy fly over the wall with a hook through his head scared the two up there, and they fled.

Trying the front door and finding it barred, we climbed up the convenient knotted rope, and began to search room by room.

Soon enough, we found the horsey-room, and slaughtered the goblin dogs therein. Feeding, grooming, watering, and talking to the horse (via Speak with Animals from the gnomes), we also found the hidden treasure and bunnies. Everything was left in the courtyard while we kept moving.

Finally, throwing open some huge double doors, we saw a Boss Goblin sitting on a big chair, next to a ginormous lizard. Walking in like I owned the joint (thing Aragorn as he entered the main hall in Rohan) and toting a tower shield, my fighter drew his longsword and bellowed, "Hey, Goblin-Boss, I challenge you for leadership of your tribe!"

Needless to say, he did not take well to that, and we were off.

With Shield of Faith from the cleric and the aformentioned Tower Shield, I was sitting pretty. That didn't help from the double Nat-20 crit from a horsechopper wielding gobbo, but Chief Ripnugget himself was unable to land a blow. Our Sorcerer dropped a Flaming Sphere right on the Warchanter, incinerating her in a lucky damage roll, then lighting the chief himself up.

At the end of 3 rounds, Ripnugget was bleeding out on his lizard buddy, and the remaining goblins threw down their weapons in deference to their new "King". Yelling for them to bring me the remaining gobbos, they split and we proceeded to loot and pillage. At least, until the little green bastards lit the former bunny room on fire. It took us some time to fight the fire, and by that point all the remaining gobbos had fled the fort.

-t