Ok, so I have to move away form my current group for job reasons, so we had our final session with the characters we have developed over the past year. Last week, they assaulted and captured a castle that sits on a pretty important river, in the service of one PCs quest to get his ancestral sword back. I left them with the hook that beneath the castle lay vast treasure, but also danger. So yeah, it was our first "real" dungeon delve in months, and at the end in a huge room, all snug like he owned the place? A mature adult white dragon. 14 rounds the fight took us, and I dropped the "main" hero along the way, which is actually kind of good because that player is taking over DMing for a while, and DMPCs are sub optimal at best.
So yeah, we fought a dragon in a dungeon. What've ya'll done for final sessions? Not storyline capstones, but when the group was breaking up due to summer breaks, deployments, job moves, etc.
At the end of last summer, my group was dispersing for college and the military. So, I ran a super hack-n'-slash session for them (which I typically despise). Or rather; I tried to. It didn't come out so well.
One of the players (they were, and still are, all good friends of mine) had fallen in love with his first-ever character some two years earlier: a half-elven ranger named Jherrith (you'll see Jherrith the Great post on these boards every so often; that's him). Jherrith had made several incarnations, and was a firmly rooted character in our group.
Jherrith had also, though in two different incarnations, come by two rather unusual followers. In his first form ever, and in the first dungeon I'd ever run, the party had captured an orc (creatively named Gruhm; he has also been incarnated several times, though not all in D&D). Jherrith's player had recently become aware that mortals could, in theory, ascend to godhood if they amassed enough followers. So, the ranger basically coerced the orc, at sword-point (or more likely arrow-point now that I think of it) into worshipping him. The paladin hadn't gone along with it, though, and after detecting the orc as evil, lopped his head off. Jherrith never forgave him.
In another incarnation, Jherrith and a friend were saved once or twice by a goblin they had captured under similar circumstances (though there was no attempt at apotheosis this time); his name was Gruznub. He became the cook/porter/occaisional deus ex machina for the party in a very short lived campaign.
I tell you that to tell you this, for those all factor into the one shot I planned: I devised a plot for the party to save Jherrith! He had been captured by an evil half-fiend warlock (the best kind) and was being held on the Abyss. But to get there, the party had to first defeat a shadowcaster vampire on the Plane of Shadows (he had a key or info or something; can't remember).
Gruznub, now a high-level mystic theurge, contacted the various party members (11th level) and called them together to rescue the famous ranger. Gruhm was being held by the vampire, and would have helped with the rest of the adventure if the party had made it that far.
But they didn't.
First off, the players couldn't be helped to have their damned characters made before the game. This was always a problem. So, there went two hours. Finally they got going.
The fight with the shadow dragon on the (Plane of Shadows) was... interesting. It drug on 30 rounds, long enough for 2 ray of enfeeblements to wear off, which set a massive record for us. No one could hurt the dragon due to lack of ranged attacks and a shortage of spells not blocked by spell resistance. Finally, Sexi Golem's character (a gnome mage named Paddock who has likewise become immortal in our circle [this wasn't his first incarnation]) polymorphed into a tendriculous and ate, yes ate the dragon. That's impressive! :)
Then they looted the dagon's treasure, and within found many goodies, all dwarfed by a staff of power that I had gotten on a completely random, legitimate treasure roll when designing the adventure. Sexi nearly wet himself.
Unfortunately, it didn't matter after the next fight, which involved a shadesteel golem (MM3). Though they had healed up since the fight with the dragon, for whatever reason they just couldn't handle this thing, and it TPK'd them. Bummer.
When I told them the rest of what I had planned, Sexi seemed insulted that the final boss was planned to be a warlock (he hates the class and thinks its pathetic) and demanded to run a mock battle with him. I agreed. Paddock was smug when he led off with a greater invisibility, but the warlock just threw dispel after dispel around. Paddock counted well, and it went into a stalemate of Paddock throwing attacks that the warlock was highly resistant to, and the warlock finding his attempt to pin down the gnome nearly futile. However, it quickly became obvious that the warlock didn't care, since it was only a matter of time before the wizard was down to magic missiles, then out of spells completely, while he, the warlock, would be just fine to keep blasting.
Most people would call that a "win," but of course Sexi wouldn't (and likely still won't) admit that (prejudice dies hard). Anyway, the gnome made the point mute by using that staff I had given him (and allowed into this fight) by blowing both of them to pieces with a retributive strike.
So, there's the highly unusual, but all together fun for a laugh, last session my high school group shared before splitting up (though we have convened again once since that time).
I've only ever played in one campaign that the game ran unto "completion."
One of the players got a job in Virginia, so the DM (who was running a homebrew and was one of the most conniving intelligent DM's I've ever had)set up the final stage, a bit early...but let it loose for us toward the end- which I felt was a little unnecessary- but I liked how he had done it conceptually...
I liked playing with the group, we had Frank, the fat lecherous cleric knee breaker. Stiles, the insane (eventually insanely rich and intelligent, ring of intelligence only made him even more psychotic). Lucien, the strong arm knight (fighter actually). Cutteridge (NPC/DM) the nervous bookworm caster/cleric. And Veon Valadon my fighter/urban ranger elf. All of us were nobles, save the rogue who was richer than all of us combined by the end of the session- not that it mattered for much at the end (he actually gave up his wealth to ensure our characters would be equipped to face the Devil being summoned).
Two things stuck out about the game,
1. All of our characters but the Knight were converted to Christianity by THE Holy Bible (will saves on resisting reading the entire thing then secondary to resist believing)
Veon became a crusader who attempted to emulate Gideon (the lord came upon him in a troll infested city), but in the end we faced the Doomsday Nihilistic Cultists in their very den- we had infiltrated it via the Rogue and a peculiar circumstance with the Cleric's character.
See, the cleric was killed by an old man cultist in a chance encounter, but as he fell, the old man was like "Don't kill me, I'm Frank, I some how got into this old man's body."
He had been acting weird before that- but nothing we could prove as truly suspect, so we let Old Man Frank infiltrate the cultists ranks to sabbotage the summoning circle.
At some point, after my character wakes up- figures out some semblance of what the current plan is- (he was unconscious and elsewhere during the Old Man skirmish), and he and Cutteridge find Frank's body, and naturally the NPC Cleric gets the bright idea to ressurect him (Lucien wasn't there I don't think, but neither was Stiles).
No, Frank didn't get sucked out of the Old Man, but Veon wanted old Frank back not Old Man Frank and encouraged Cutteridge- things got very interesting.
Frank was frank, and the old man was Frank, only...not really. He was a Devil trying to trump the other devil being summoned by the cult.
So, Revived Frank goes undercover as a cultist, but instructs us to let the Old Man Devil Frank to keep doing what he's doing, and Stiles has to fool him into that and Veon has to prepare for battle anyway, as Lucien attempts to get the king's forces ready for any resulting contingency as we attempt to foil the cult in a foreign land.
In a game where we met angels, Deck of a Few things Wished ourselves into other dimensions/time travelled and haphazardly errata'd the universe with it too- unkilled my character by a Balor in the process and dealt with an elusive sneak who went by several names (including Uriah Heep and Artemis Milburrow) and the Redheaded Mage Babe (kitsune?!) and a string of destroyed hotels...we end the campaign superbly armed (my character bought a freaking greatbow)
and as the Old Man Devil Frank rechannelled the energies the Cultists were tapping into our party (save the newcomer Monk whom I forgot to mention) we all gained temporary levels up to 20 and some measure of insanity...
My character rode into combat on the fourth horse he rode in the game (his heavy warhorse, Valois was "eaten" by a chaos beast- which was latter engaged in a death lock with a balor/pit fiend-someone wished demons were nice, so they joined the angels and in the game Devils became the new evil outsider to fight).
The cultists did summon the devil, but with lesser given powers to destroy the world- unfortunately in Religious Zeal the rogue prayed for the Apocolaypse- "Bring an End to this World"- the DM made it so, the suicidal Real Frank almost killed his counterpart- then slit his own throat and started dying- but we saved him via the other cleric. Lucien gained amnesia instead of a minor mental compulsion and totally in character didn't know us and said "F$&@ you Guys I'm going Home" (he was the guy with the new job oddly enough), refused the help of my INSANELY Zealous Bloodthirsty Fighter/Ranger Elf on a Warhorse- with a Halberd who was moments before rushing head long into cultists and undead...
Rescue? We beat the devil. Easily. But oh yeah, the angels came down for the final battle, the zealous rogue decided to remain but encouraged the rest of us to go through the hastily made Gate- the devil fled the Old Man Cultist for its old plane- and also made a Gate- both caster's desired only to get the hell out of the place as the world fell down around us. The Monk just ran as he hadn't been embued with insane magic powers.
So, Veon (and new warhorse), Frank and Cutteridge (veon couldn't force Forgetful Lucien to go with us), and the Cultist rather far away on a highway, ended up in round about contemporary Texas.
(he detected evil on the black surface before him, and it was in fact evil- he kept it going and proceeded to the capital city).
And our remaining party appeared like a bunch of Ren-fair rejects in the middle of Texas, completely zealous Christians.
Franklin Selesco is probably boning and converting in the best little whorehouse in Texas- sometimes in the name of his lech buddy Stiles, perhaps, and certainly in the name of the Lord- somewhere in fictional Texasland right now.
Veon is probably a farmhand or in jail.
Cutteridge got drunk and blew himself up inside a library.
The Cultist got a job in State Government.
(okay the Animal house endings are my own.)