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Mine was the party inveigling his way into Thirifane's party, ready to jump what they understood was the Cagewrights in their den of evil, and their shock, outrage and horror to discover it was effectively an Amway recruiting session run by a junior functionary ... and THAT'S when they started to be afraid of the Cagewrights ...
In the first round of combat the party cleric avoiding the dracolich's AOO to get toe to toe, hit him with heal and kill him.
The boss party fighter successfully bull rushing the black dragon in the kua-toan temple back onto stone spikes.
The party paladin slaying the minotar in foundation of flame in a single round to recover the holy avenger.
Also in foundation of flame the party barbarian rolling a 20 and having like a +20 in handle animal to halt the stampede. Now, his PC theme song is Kid Rocks "wanta be a cowboy"
I sure that there are others I am forgetting we have been playing for three years now.
So far my party most impressive momment was in Jzadirunne, The Dark Stalker hero, Cast Fog cloud, and dissapeared , and the Begiuler cast Ghost sound , and copied the sound of the Grell from a previous encounter which scared the crap out of the Stalker and most of the Party. forcing the Stalker out of the fog to be shot with a volley crossbow bolts.
We just had ours last night. Here's the set up:
We're playing Test of the Smoking Eye, with a two man party. There's the cleric and a melee build. They're travelling with Kaurophon.
So last week the PCs confronted the rakshasa and his fire giant servant. The cleric grapples the rakshasa, but is within reach of the fire giant's full attack sequence. About 100 hp damage in one round. So now the cleric is standing there with single digit hp and decides to make a desperate run for it, which he cannot achieve without taking an AoO form the giant, who hits him again - exit cleric. The melee type finishes the job, takes down the fire giant, but the rakshasa gets away.
Now, instead of having the cleric 'reappear' in the Fugue plane, from where he can get to the paradise of his god, I decided that Occipitus would not allow that. This abyssal plane just sucks up anyone's essence after they die. So the cleric reappears in ghost form, feeling an incredible pull from the ground. Now, since this is a cleric of a good god, he can resist this inevitalbe pull for a short while. Actually, the divine energy he still has left, is the buffer that allows him to withstand. He feels he can still use his spells to influence the outside world, but everytime he does so, he will be closer to being sucked up by Occipitus forgood.
Anyway, the melee type and Kaurophon make it to the final room, where the half-fiend suddenly shows his true face and betrays the party. He only has one opponent to deal with, so he might stand a good chance, at least that's what I had thought before. He stood much more than a good chance, though. He was absolutely toying with the melee type. After a simple glitterrdust the melee type was left blinded and Kaurophon was free to wear him down. Unfortunately he wasn't really able to bring the PC to low hp, because the PC had some healing up his sleeve to even out the odds and the ghost cleric started aiding him as well. Then Kaurophon started using his telekinesis spell to throw the PC into the central fire. The PC barely survived his first fall in the flames, stumbled out and managed just enough healing (aided by the ghost cleric) to survive a second run in with the flames. Again he got out and managed to buy himself enough time to get some extra hp (healing, rage, bear's endurance potion) to survive a third fall in the central fire. Admittedly, I never expected him to survive the second and third massive damage blow, but he did, barely (once even at 0 hp). Meanwhile, the ghost cleric had done so many spells that Occipitus was about to absorb his essence forever.
Finally, after a long and very, very hard (and frustrating - at least for the melee type) fight, the ghost cleric decided to sacrifice himself, not sure whether this was going to work and hoping that his sacrifice (which the player at that time thought would be a final sacrifice of his character) would have a chance of rewarding his failing companion. Of course this was the solution I had been hoping for all along, but I hadn't given any clues whatsoever to indicate to the player that this was what I wanted. So he made a true sacrifice (very fitting for a cleric of the god of suffering), only to be rewarded with a new life and some extra powers. Kaurophon, seeing how his chances were lost, dimension doored out of there.
It was a very climactic fight, much more exciting than I had ever imagined it; and a very fitting end to conclude this adventure.
My players fought Nabthatoron when they were 10th level. It took them 21 rounds to beat him and he could only act for about 6 of them (I forget exactly, it was a while ago). The party sorcerer managed to cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on him TWICE! and, after killing Alec, Nabthatoron fumbled four times....
For the ruler of the Demonskar it was a little embarrasing.
My group loves to watch my jaw drop and do the famous DM "You wanna WHAT?!"
So there we are in the final portion of "Test of the Smoking Eye", my group having just saved the day by defeating Kaurophon and then having some Incredible RP over one character's decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good. I'm happy everything has gone so smoothly (usually about this time of night is when PC shananagans might occur).
And then it happened.
My rogue asks how tall the Mummy Lord is.
"Umm...5'6" I say looking a wee bit aprehensive.
My rogue presses "so the Mummy's shoulders aren't really that wide then right? Say like 2 feet or so?"
I blame myself. I should have known better then to fall in my (how ironic) rogue's trap. "yea sure, that's sounds about right"
My rogue then decides to sneak up on the Mummy Lord who is overseeing the final test and snap a pair of magebae manacles on him. Then the fighter bull rushes him and attemps to PUT THE MUMMY IN A BAG OF HOLDING.
I pause, stare dumbfounded as my grinning PCs show me the entry for the bag of holding in the DMG. Ok it's a 2 ft by 4 ft bag and assuming the worst the opening is two feet across and guess who's shoulders I just ruled were under that?!
Ok, fine. We all have a laugh. Mummy in a bag. Couple cracks about how they just created a cursed item that would identify as a non cursed item. Ha ha, fun.
But they're not done.
Opening of Chapter 7 the party is attacked by assassins. After reading quite a few posts about parties that were done in by this encounter I was a little nervous running it. So my players are lounging around, none of them in armour or carrying anything other then light weapons, when the assassins burst in to the Tipped Tankard catching the PC by surprise. My rogue, the only character able to act in the surprise round, without setting down his drink, throws open the bag and shouts "Mummy Lord I choose you!" (sigh)
You know what's great about Mummy Lords? Their Despair Aura. Fail that DC 17 save, like the assassins did, and your suddenly paralyzed 1d4rds. Now the best part is that the Mummy Lord simply turns to the players, (as they finish coup de gracing the assassins),asks them to remove the manacles and teleports away. (This is the book's fault. It says that the Mummy Lords won't attack the players except to defend themselves and keep them "honest" in the tests. Also according to the book this ONE mummy has the travel domain instead of the protection one.) Now while I would consider being put into a bag of holding an attack of sorts, my players pointed out that for undead it's really just "inconvienent".
So yea while usually our game is pretty serious, (as you can see here), every once in a while my players do something that reminds me why I love this game so much
Well, understanding that I only just finished Chapter 2 with them last night, here goes. The party captured several goblins at the start of Drakthars Way, and "convinced" them to lead them through the dungeon with minimal conflict. (Well...after the 20 goblin brawl at the beginning.)
Drakthar was aware of there presence, but thought he had more time. He called in the Tiefling Fighter, and Human Sorc who's name I've forgotten to give them some instructions.
The party arrived in the room with Drakthar, the two lietenants. I also positioned 2 Goblin Adepts, and 2 Silent Wolf Goblins in the room. (I increased the size of the room a bit) Of course there was also the chair. 2 More sneaks were nearby outside, and came in for some attempted backstabs midway through the combat.
It was a 2 hour brawl, with nearly everybody hovering in the hitpoint basement. We have a feral druid, or whatever it is called, that raged early on, so wasn't healing. Luckily we have a lot of DPS in the group, with the druid, the duskblade, a soon to be Eldrich Knight, and 2 rogues. They smoked everything down, then the Druid's rage ended, dropping his hit points below zero, and having him collapse.
It was a great fight. I thought I may have made it a bit to much for them, but they pulled it through (if barely) just at the end, with no actual deaths. By the end of it, the Eldrich Knight had one Cantrip left, and the duskblade was completely spelless.