I was DMing "Return to the Tomb of Horrors." My buddy's assassin character, Max, was knocked off the mountaintop above Dessaso's house by one of the giants (and was already down to about 2 hp). With an identical initiative count to the giant's, he was simultaneously able to act; he elected to trip the giant (a nearly impossible roll)... and succeeded. I ruled that the giant would tumble off the edge, too-- exactly what the player was going for. What I didn't plan on was, as the giant was falling, Max stabbing it with his vampiric regeneration sword, then casting feather fall on himself. The giant missed its attack roll to grab Max, and hit the ground with a heavy splat. The rest of the party had a long descent to catch up with Max, who had already looted the body and taken a nap by the time they arrived.
The most satisfying moment I ever experianced as a DM came during earlier this summer. Two of my friends wanted to start adding more characters for them to play. They wanted to create a pool of characters that they could choose to take with them like picking from a roster. I saw no problem with this (in fact it turned out pretty fun) and they made a wizard and cleric. I decided that they would have been tying to catch up with their primary characters (a fighter and bard) for some time now so I went back in time and inserted their new characters into the plot.
Their wiz and cleric were inserted into Iiel a city where the heroes competed in and won a legendary tournament. The cleric and wiz had uncovered lore linking the heroes to a hostile sect of outsiders and, hearing their names announced as champions, were trying to warn them. The wiz and cleric track the duo down to a party at a minor nobles house. My friends didn't remember their characters celebrating there but they admitted that their characters were both really really drunk after their victory parade.
These guys had been playing the bard and fighter for a long time now and their characters remained the only ones that had never been killed. The other two members of the party (Saern and DragonNerd) had pcs dropping like flies. They constantly taunted me about it saying that their characters were invincible and that they would breze through whatever I threw at them.
Anyway their cleric and Wiz begin making their way across the crowded room to speak to the fighter and bard and right before they get within talking distance a Demon bursts in through a window and removes the top of the bards head in one bite.
My friends never remembered oing to that party because their characters were drunk somewhere else. The bard and fighter were just look alikes the noble payed to add some celebrity to his party. Both the demon and the Wiz and cleric had tracked down frauds.
The wizard quickly banished the demon and the threat was over and the truth soon revealed. But the look on his face when I announced his beloved bard had been unceremoniously decapitated is one that I will never forget.
punkassjoe, did you ever find the advice above useful ?
If not, lemme know, or something ...
I will find the above advice useful, I've yet to sit down and plan the massive attack that will be the reptilian assault on the pc and npc stronghold, but I'm sure I'll work some lizardfolk tribe into the plotline as well as more Yuan-ti baddies.
I will find the above advice useful, I've yet to sit down and plan the massive attack that will be the reptilian assault on the pc and npc stronghold, but I'm sure I'll work some lizardfolk tribe into the plotline as well as more Yuan-ti baddies.punkassjoe, did you ever find the advice above useful ?
If not, lemme know, or something ...
Kewlness, I'm sure you can make the players weep with that precious mixture of terror and joy if they pull through the encounter / series of encounters you come up with for them.
If nothing else, driving them from the stronghold with lizard versions of rabid pit bulls should certainly be something that encourages them to strive to return to exact bloody, bloody revenge ... for taking thier stuff, of course. Yeah, that's the ticket...
Okay, my favorite one on one encounter was actually a nonlethal, but nonfriendly, player on player combat. This was in an epic level FR game, and my barbarian picked a fight with the party's fighter. Now, it is important to understand a few things about these characters. First of all, they were EPIC. Both of them had strength scores well over 30, and my barbarian actually passed 40 while raging. Second of all, they were rivals, and not in a good way. They got along when they first met, after all, they were both followers of Tempus. They were soon at odds, though. My barbarian was all about honor and glory. The fighter was about glory, and nothing else. My barbarian hated tyranny, and saw the fighter as little more than a bully. Tensions grew quickly.
Then, one day, my barbarian found out the fighter did something (can't remember what) that really pissed him off. He approached his door, knocked, and when the fighter answered, I punched him in the face. He punched back, and then we started grappling. At this point, the party was powerful enough that they had their own stronghold, complete with a dojo and training room. The party's sorcerer came along, and decided that it was fine that we were fighting, but we needed to do it in the dojo. He proceeded to cast telekinesis to force us to comply.
Two contestants locked in a deathgrip, floating through the air, striking each other without mercy. These were some of the scariest unarmed strikes I had ever seen. We were easily doing over a hundred points of subdual damage every round. We never actually made it do the dojo, because the fight was broken up, and our characters grudgingly made up, but it was an awsome battle.
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In a Dragonstar game, my character (who was a Wizard/Mechanist) helped bring down a Balor by firing a rocket at the ceiling above it and brought tons of rock crashing down on its head (since we lacked sufficiently magical and cold iron weapons, the only choice was to exceed the DR with overwhelming damage). After the smoke cleared and we realized he was dead, my character walked over, unzipped his fly, and pissed on the corpse. Classic.
I am the DM. The PC's are helping defend a large city, a flight of dragons is fast approaching- I had my favorite PC EVER along as an ally to the city- he was like a 15th level F/M ( 2nd edition)
as the dragons approach- he and his fairy dragon buddy fly towards them boldly- and snapps his staff of power. the party stared in disbelief as i tore up the character sheet of a pc i had used since Junior High. They then bravely fought off the dwarven horde- not a dry eye in the house.
As a player- more recently, we used an awakened tree to defeat a huge red dragon. ( similar to the flying elephant bit)
Oddly enough, my most memorable moment was in my first campaign.
I was playing a half-elf ranger. The rest of the party was fairly standard: rogue, monk, figher, cleric. But the rest of the guys had played before, so it worked out nicely.
We had just finished clearing out a gnoll encampment and began to head back to town when nightfall came.
Everyone started setting up tents, but I felt that sleeping like that was suicide, considering the gnolls that had attacked us during the night several days beforehand.
So I decided to sleep up in a nearby tree. The other characters were confident that there was no longer any threat, thinking that any survivors wouldn't try anything so soon. Regardless, the ranger went up the tree. The DM had me roll for climb and a balance to get to a comfortable spot followed by additional balance checks every hour.
Around midnight or so, a girillion found our camp and began tearing through my parties tents. ( As we found out later, the girillion was being used as an attack dog, er... ape by the gnolls who had been tracking us sinced the destruction of their kin )
The cleric nearly got torn in half. The monk was slapped away into a tree trunk and knocked out. The figher and rogue were managing to keep it from finishing off the other two, but weren't really proving effective against it.
Around the time the monk was back-handed into a pine tree, my PC had woken up and realized what was going on. He managed to navigate the branches and set himself up for a shot, all the while the girillion still unaware.
Twang. My first crit ever. ^ ^ And not only that, it was also my first instant kill ever. I had somehow managed to roll 2 consecutive 20s followed up by an 18. ( At first I didn't know why the rest of the players were so excited, then the DM explained instant kill rules )
He took his time describing the wound; the arrow sticking out the front and back of the ape's throat, it's spinal cord severed.
The gnolls hiding in the bushes, not knowing where the arrow came from, just ran...
-Kurocyn