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Three stand out. Two as a player and one as a DM.

The first as a player was in a 2E Forgotten Realms campaign. I was playing a paladin of Helm facing off against a frost giant one on one. He was kicking my butt and I was rolling terribly. After yet another round where I missed badly, I just got fed up and said, "That's it." Three consecutive rounds of critical hits and the frost giant went down... right on top of me.

The second occurred in another 2E FR campaign. This time I was playing a half-elven swashbuckler. The battle the character was involved in was taking place on a ship sailing on the Sea of Fallen Stars. The ship I was on was boarded by pirates and I was being grappled by a ogre which I had noticed was wearing a small hoop earring in one of his ears. So, with all seriousness, I looked at the DM and said that I was going to try and take his earring out of his ear. He looked at me smugly and told me to go for it. One natural 20 later, I had the earring on the tip of my saber as the ogre tossed me down overboard to face off against sahaugin.

The third, as a DM, was the crowning moment of two separate campaigns, one where I was a player which ended but I allowed the other players to join the campaign I was running. Both were FR campaigns and required little to join the campaigns together. One of the PCs was a mage from Nimbral (illusionist). He wanted nothing more than to regain the portfolio of Illusion back from Cyric. He went so far as to work his way through the food chain until he got to speak to Iyachtu Xvim, vowing to let him take Tyrrany back from Cyric for his assistance. The final battle occurred in Cyric's home plane and found Larshan (the illusionist PC) succeeding in wresting Illusion from Cyric, Xvim taking Tyrrany back from Cyric and thus becoming Bane again, and ushering 3rd Edition into our games. Getting to the end of the campaign and seeing the looks on the player's faces at their success was a great feeling.

Thanks for the response. ^_^ Did you have any major changes to the ways spells worked when you mixed the two systems?

Not really, to be honest. He was able to cast fireball, and when he saw a sorcerous blast being cast using lightning, I just gave him a Spellcraft check to see if he could determine if it was a different spell or a metamagicked fireball. It worked the same with heightened and diminished versions of the various spells.

I was wondering something similar, since I'm pretty sure one of my players is going to want to play an AE race. Has anyone mixed the spell systems? Or tried to convert the diminished/heightened spells, laden spells, spell templates, simple/complex/exotic spell stuff?

I did. My homebrew world originally used the AE rules. As we've gone one to the third campaign in my world, we've gone from just AE, to AE and Pathfinder, to straight pathfinder. I had a wizard from another world come through a portal to my world with magisters and their heightened and diminished spells. He had to try spellcraft to determine if it was a fireball being cast or if it was sorcerous blast.

My own homebrew world started out using Arcana Evolved. One player really love the new magic system (as did I), but another player wasn't keen on it. They did like the classes however. Races were some from AE as well as some of my own design (including racial levels).

My second campaign was an amalgamation of both AE as well as Pathfinder (beta rules). I chose to allow classes from both systems, but using Pathfinder's skills. The one problem I ended up having was having a wizard (with Pathfinder spells) in a world with magisters (with AE spells). But I got to play up the uniqueness of magic and the thrill of the unknown as the wizard (from another world) thought the spell was going to be a fireball but became a sorcerous blast and he had to try and learn the magic of the world.

This is the third campaign in my world, and we've gone straight Pathfinder. But I'm still going to put AE stuff in the world, be it spells, feats, or otherwise.

In a Forgotten Realms game I was running a few years ago, the centerpiece character of the campaign was having a rough night of die rolling, in particular his d20. One of the other players opened their mouth to complain about rolling his third 10 in a row, or some such not-so-bad result. The player of the centerpiece character flippantly said, "Shut the eff up and like it, I've been rolling 3's and 4's all night." His line was added to our journal of humorous in and out of character dialogue, and we still bring it up to this day.