So how many DM's have seen players actually challenge the ogre to a duel? Cause that's what my party's knight did... and he won.
I had a party of five players at level 3, and they punked the battle market in very dramatic fashion.
It actually started as a screw-up on my part. The players were close enough to hear Andrus, the Lion of Senara being tortured. But instead of placing it west of the battle market like it said, I put it just south of the open doors. That meant once the party rushed in to save him, Jank spotted them and ran inside screaming.
Thus began a perfect storm...
The beguiler, Abud, ran in after the goblin while the other players mopped up the gnolls. Thing is, the poor cleric got his head blown off by the gnoll ranger and his hyenas as they were trying to lift the stakes out of Andrus's hands. By the time they dispatched those creatures, Abud had been discovered by Kardswann.
The beguiler barely managed to talk his way out of it, saying he was here to join the Kulldis tribe. Thankfully, due to Abud's high CHA, Undrella backed him up. (The party had made the deal with Undrella on Day 1)
Meanwhile, Gerber, the knight, guarded the retreat of the other players as they took the crippled adventurer to the nearby abandoned palace. The bugbears from inside slowly advanced, saying threatening things.
Now, the intent was to scare or warn off the player by kind of hinting that maybe he should back away. Nope. As soon as the bugbear mentioned Hurvank in the arena, the low Wisdom knight said "What the hell. I'll challenge him." (He's going a little crazy being the moldspeaker and all and having these strange feelings and visions...) The stunned bugbears eagerly accepted on behalf of their boss, as bored as they were.
So Gerber walks into the battle market alone, much to the shocked looks of the rest of the party looking out from the palace. Jadid, the grappling monk, is incensed and runs off to save him - climbing the walls of the battle market to get to the skylight. Leaving Mahjub the rogue and de-facto leader shaking his head and Dima, the tiny little water shugenja/sorc going, "Uh. Now what?"
So Gerber walks straight to the bar, as he has a bit of a drinking problem since he was kicked out of his order. Abud notices him and walks down to run interference on all the merchants that divebomb Gerber trying to sell him something. The thing is, Gerber's player is smart enough to know that he's down to 10 HP and likely can't face whoever the "Strangler" is. So one of the merchants says they have just the thing... A few failed Sense Motive checks later and the drug dealer has just sold Gerber something that slightly increases the knight's STR and CON, but drastically reduces his INT, WIS and CHA. We know have a very inebriated, drugged and roided up knight.
Meanwhile, Mahjub and Dima walk to the north and use the key that Undrella gave them. Mahjub abandons Dima, telling her to stay put hidden in the hallways, as he goes to try to rescue the last Lion in the holding cell. He barely manages to sneak past Kardswann and Ugurk looking over the arena and sneaks past the bugbear fetching Hurvank for the battle. Inside, he finds Oxvard (or Omar, as we called him. Bit more Middle Eastern flavored for us...) and runs him out the door where he runs straight into Jank who has taken his position back at the door. Mahjub quickly take the goblin hostage with a good Intimidate roll and takes them across to the palace where the rogue holds Jank over the ledge and convinces through Diplomacy and Intimidation that Jank should help the party. The goblin jester agrees as long as he gets to slice up Kardswann after it's all over.
Meanwhile AGAIN, Dima is spotted by one of the merchants. Now this part is crucial. Dima wanted her to be one of two sisters, with one of the sisters missing for a while (one is a water sorc and another a fire sorc.) Since there was an NPC designed for that, I simply altered Haleen a bit to be this missing sister. Ah yes, and did I mention the player wanted to be one of two twins? The whole Fire and Ice twin thing?
Yep, you guessed it. The merchant mistook her for Haleen, and Dima was smart enough to figure that out. After realizing what was going on, the tiny little girl walked up to the arena, INTIMIDATED Hurvank by Bluffing herself as Haleen and turned around to secretly heal Gerber while keeping her cloak around her hands, giving Gerber a fighting chance. She walked away before Hurvank could react.
Kardswann announced the fight and the drunk knight opened up with max damage. Miraculously, the ogre blew the grapple roll with a 2. Round 2 - More damage, but this time Gerber gets grappled. Round 3- Gerber choked as he tries to escape to no avail. Round 4- Gerber drops Tempest and power attacks with his bare hands to nearly take Hurvank to 0. Hurvank decides to pin Gerber and keep choking. Round 5 - Gerber rolls a 20 to escape the pin, but Hurvank keeps choking. Round 6- Gerber misses, but Hurvank blows the grapple roll again to not be able to damage the knight this round. Round 7- Gerber power attacks again and knocks the ogre's eyes right out of his skull.
The knight won in single combat against the ogre.
So that's when Kardswann had enough and called open season on Gerber's head, offering up the 500 gold. The bugbears looked at each other and walked up to the injured knight.
And that's when the light brigade charged. Mahjub burst out of the hallway and sneak attacked while Omar the cleric charged. Did I mention they came back in and found Haleen on top of it? Abud and Dima burst out of hiding and shoot away and make short work of the bugbears. It was made even better that Gerber shield charged one bugbear and broke its neck in one hit.
And meanwhile, the patient monk tumbles down from the skylight once Kardswann leaves Ugurk to watch the battle and pushes the flind off the egde. The ring of featherfall saves him, but the party makes short work of the flind after that.
And then Kardswann walked back out.
By this point, the party had just gotten enough XP to level to 4, so I let them - Kardswann is a bit tough. And in the first round he cut down Gerber to negatives, making everyone in the party require a change of pants. Then the beguiler cast hypnotic pattern and Kardswann blew his save. Everyone takes a couple rounds to heal and buff in the vital breather (between the drugs and the Bull's Strength wand, the knight had +6 to damage now...) and they attack again. The knight wad dead stupid drunk and his CHA was dirt low from the drugs, so there was no chance of him convincing Kardswann to give in, but between the sneak attack from the rouge and Gerber's ludicrous damage- Kardswann finally went down to a whelming burst from Abud.
And then Mahjub went out and called Jank back in to deliver the coup de grace to the genie.
Needless to say, this was a near clusterf*** that turned into something pretty brilliant. I'm actually rather proud of my players.
that sounds awesome. I am excited for when my players reach the battle market. As of now they are just about to start clearing out the town. I am nervous about my parties Paladin. He is pretty high AC and is sort of feeling.. indestructible.. and Lady Almah is in love with him (he rolled 20's on his diplomacy checks on her, and she rolled 20's for knowledge checks and sense motive checks. Love at first sight)...