Can you describe (in a few sentences) an awesome heroic moment frozen in time in one of your many adventures? An image that is still talked about to this day.
In one of my games that I DMed, the group was travelling in the frozen wastes of Norworld on a snow-gliding catamaran, when they came apon a Thyatian outpost being attacked by an Alphatian strike force (helped by a white dragon). The group decided to tie a heavy lance on the bow of the ship and slam it into the dragon when it landed. I thought it was a far-fetched idea, but I usually always give the players a chance of success (although a slight one) for comming up with a plan. I told them that at least on player should stay in the boat till the last minute to maneuver it for an attack, and that there was a big chance of faliure. The team cleric (a Thyatian) volunteered and started his downhill charge towards the dragon. At the last minute, I asked him to make a 'to hit' roll on the d20. He rolled a natural twenty! I said "Holy Crap!" and explained how the catamaran skewered the dragon onto the front gate of the fort, while his cleric came to within 7 hit points of dying because of the jump overboard. The rest of the group followed up on foot and helped defend the outpost.
Not the best plan in the world, but with a natural 20, anything can happen.
Ultradan
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Mine tend to be nat-20s at less than heroic moments...
Heading to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth our party was ambushed by a small horde of goblins. During the melee, one of the spell casters cast sleep on a batch and my thief set to making the sleep permanant. The standing SOP was to roll for any hit against any opponant (no complete freebies) and for a sleeping goblin, as long as you didn't crit fail it, he was toast. The rest of the party was hacking the last of the goblins to death a little ways down the trail as I set to. On the very last goblin, I rolled a nat-20. vs. a sleeping goblin. It was decided that my little halfling girl speared right through his aorta and killing him instantly, spraying herself with a crimson shower, and enacting a halfling sized version of Lady MacBeth... "Who'd have thought the old goblin had so much blood in 'im?"
Ok... here we go....
Picture this, Ravenloft, Gothic Earth, Terror in the 1890's,...
A mad wizard is terrorizing a prosperous town im Oklahoma for its recently flourishing diamond mine. In his employee is a minotaur who rustles up cattle for stampedes through the town on a almost daily basis, a scarecrow golem in his cornfield, and a cockatrice in the henhouse. The group comes riding into town just before a stampede. All the townsfolk are so used to the stampedes by now that they all dash inside their homes and shops and lock the doors. The group manages to get a couple of ropes set to the top of the general store and proceeds to scurry up them in record time... all except Doc'. Try as he might, he just couldn't make that climb check. He tries a couple more times before telling the party to just pull up the rope while he hangs on. A failed Strength check later he panics... "I hurry to the door of the store and crouch behind the barrel of nails". At this point one of the party notices what he perceives to be a bull/cow standing in the middle of the street watching Doc' and begins moving toward him. Scared for Doc', the quick draw artist tries to whip out his derringer and take a shot at the cow. A critical fumble later, the gun goes flying down to the street where the minotaur picks it up and fires at Doc' from 3 feet away, almost killing him...
And the line that sticks to this day...
"How was I supposed to know that the cow was gonna pick up my gun and shoot him in the face from point blank range?"
Two epic-level solars, one a fallen paladin blackguard named Eclipse and the other his sister, Flare, the champion of light. They were fighting eachother above this massive battlefield between the forces of the Allied Free Nations and the Federation of the Damned. Their swords broke upon eachother halfway through the battle, and they embraced eachother in rage, each casting the Vengeful Gaze of God epic spell on eachother, therefor each taking 506 d6 damage, causing their eyes to bleed out, their bodies to burst open and rupture, their flesh to peel off, and their wings to burn and shrivel. They plummetted to earth like two comets and created a pair of rifts so deep only one man has seen the bottom, and he went permenantly insane. The Allied Free Nations charged under the command of Laucian Lighthand, the human paladin, and won the fight, which became known as the Battle of the Twin Suns.
I was playing a dwarf fighter named Rurik at the time (if you've seen my thread on "first characters", you'll know who I'm talking about), and was in a party that included an elf ranger, a half-elf bard, a human sorcerer, a human paladin, and a human cleric. Out of all these characters, only the dwarf managed his climb check when a party of about two dozen orcs blundered upon them. Between my sounding of a Horn of Blasting and the bard casting sleep we managed to kill most of the orcs. A quick jump down from the tree and landing in the midst of the smelly orcs and the rest were soon gone.
My most memorable bad guy was a seven foot tall were tiger named Malic Creed. He was equipped with a suit of symbiotic armor that was build to kill Gods (Temporal distortion, magic distortion and manipulation, time/space lock to keep the prey,Ahem, I mean PCs from teleporting away). The fist game that I brought him out on I chased a group of 8 30+ level Pcs through the streets of a city, killing 2/3 of the group and of those that did survive, I think they all at least lost a limb or two. (One character was reduced to a torso). The mood that he created was so intense that not only were the PCs panicing, but the players so freaked out they were acting like they were trying to difuse a bomb with the clock running out. Even now, they still have to deal with him from time to time. And all though they haven't had to fight him in a while, I play him up to be just psychotic enough that they walk on egg shells around him so that htey don't make him angry and he rips them limb from limb. *Having a warm fuzzy moment remembering the carnage.*
My most memorable bad guy was a seven foot tall were tiger named Malic Creed. He was equipped with a suit of symbiotic armor that was build to kill Gods (Temporal distortion, magic distortion and manipulation, time/space lock to keep the prey,Ahem, I mean PCs from teleporting away). The fist game that I brought him out on I chased a group of 8 30+ level Pcs through the streets of a city, killing 2/3 of the group and of those that did survive, I think they all at least lost a limb or two. (One character was reduced to a torso). The mood that he created was so intense that not only were the PCs panicing, but the players so freaked out they were acting like they were trying to difuse a bomb with the clock running out. Even now, they still have to deal with him from time to time. And all though they haven't had to fight him in a while, I play him up to be just psychotic enough that they walk on egg shells around him so that htey don't make him angry and he rips them limb from limb. *Having a warm fuzzy moment remembering the carnage.*
plz describe that armor to me!
Anyway Im stuck between the time the low lvl sorcerer was alone in an mad epic wizards tower and opaned a doer labled "Little Bunny Foo Foo." He was met head on by an advanced elite bullette with rage and a half demon template.
The other one was when the other party wizard found that door on the run from two hated recurring villians (Jasmine and Rufas) and told the fighter to bull rush them in on a chance he got. The wizard permanitly locked it. I wish I could have seen the slaughter!
Fortaniutly, the epic wizard had been locked in tempral status by inevitables for breaking reality before they got to him. There still trying to get him out because the adventure was about them trying to get to him for info about destroying an evil artifact in the first place!
Hum. In the second or third adventure our practically-nameless (see the thread about first characters) 1st level heroes go to a dungeon where they meet five, count 'em, five skeletons. That was a tough fight but we made it.
Well, you had to be there, really :)
Somehow the later most memorable scenes have been more on glorious-failure type...like when we are about to reach the epic climax of an adventure and get to the place where Holy Grail is stored, the guardian of the cave (who was meant to be pretty much a warm-up to that climax) makes mincemeat out of us due to almost unbelievable series of fumbles.
Or in another adventure where we are just about to finally get some information what on earth has been going on my character shoots the informant. And then gets shot by another PC. (metagaming thinking was completely opposed to what was to happen but there was no helping, that was exactly what my character would have done in that situation)
I was playing one of my favorite clerics a few years ago during an intense fight.
The enemy we were facing escapes me right now, but the freeze frame moment was as I was healing the female elf fighter/mage. In game, my character looked to the battle and asked "aren't you going to help?". The elfs player looked at me with such a look of contempt that I sat back in suprise as he said " Hell no! You haven't finished with ME yet!" The statement was so "in character" that I jumped up from the table and shouted "Yes!! Now thats the way you play it!"
That little scene has been repeated many times to new players as they come into our gaming group.
Heroic? Quite a few, as well as horrible, pitiful failures.
Amusing... here's one.
Setting Dragonlance, 3.5ish. Side quest involving myself and one other player.
Characters: Bug Zang (Gully Dwarf fighter/rogue) and Jasmine (Female Kender Rogue). Can't ya just see the fun?
Jasmine and Bug decide to go have fun and find a treasure while the rest of the party is spending time in town. Jasmine happens to just have 'found' a map to a secret treasure.
A longish trip with various encounters with rogue dinosaurs and such fun creatures as a Digester, then we find the place.
Not much ont he way in, but the end of the cave is home to a Cryohydra (Albeit a mutated one) Bug is overly full of himself at the moment after some impressive rolling in their last encounter. So he steps up and attacks the Cryohydra, luckily avoiding bites in the process. Jasmine supports from the rear with a crossbow of some sort. Rather quickly Bug realizes that this thing bites hard so he retreats back up the tunnel around a corner. This is actually rather safe, since the Hydra is too large to enter the tunnel anymore, it had grown too large for its home and been trapped, leaving it weaker than it would otherwise have been. What followed was a rather comical sequence of events with spurts of attacking, followed by the drinking of potions. The potions didn't last long, so they tried to use a wand of Cure Light Wounds they had come across a while back.
Jasmine: Work! Gooba dabra! (Fail UMD Check). Damn you! Work! Bagabaga! (Fail UMD).
Bug: Grabs wand and tries, Boooof! (Fail UMD check)
It took a while, but we actually managed to kill off the hydra and raid it's small treasure horde. And now the player of the Kender and myself will still burst into giggles at the mere mention of "Stupid Wand!"