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5-06: You Have What You Hold
Playing up with: lvl 4 barbarian, lvl 5 cleric, lvl 6 sorc, lvl 6 ranger, lvl 6 rogue, and a lvl 7 valeros. I expect some scary fights and I'm a touch worried that I might swarm the barbarian.
I needn't have worried.
12 baddies versus 6 players and a pet? The solution is: FIREBALL!
small boats and many baddies = cramped quarters. What else is a sorceress to do? The fact that the survivors shot her full of arrows didn't overshadow the fact that 6 baddies fell down from the blast.
BBEG who has the ability to shred the party?
Hideous Laughter (sorceress) and Aboleth's Lung (cleric) on the BBEG in a single round can really wreck a GM's plans if the dice so decree. It hurts to fail 2 saves in a row, especially when all you needed was a 7+ on the die. I still hurt the party significantly, but this broke the back of my assault upon them.
Venture-Agent, Australia—QLD—Brisbane
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Then we come to the final fight. A lucky grease and the BBEP was down. Two rogues then attacked her. Followed by a monk.
Monk says hi ;)
Also from PaizoConOz -
Siege of the Diamond City
Elven Entanglement
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Our Lady Of Silver.
Our party is facing off against an enemy with Spell Resistance. My Holy Vindicator is doing the 5ft shuffle with it, when the GM announces that the latest attack has staggered it.
I proceeded to use my shirt reroll to make sure I beat the SR with a Sound Burst, effectively cherry-tapping it unconscious via sonic damage.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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What better way to revive this thread than with another barbarian story. Well, a 3 barbarian, 1 rogue story.
That was our party composition for Maiden, Mother, Crone, the 3rd installment of the Reign of Winter AP.
Barbarian 1: Jill, our DPS dwarf barbarian
Barbarian 2: Rukk, my half-orc barbarian
Barbarian 3: Iesha, sassy ifrit rage-prophet
Rogue: Eliandra, master of deception aasimar dancer
I'd bore you with details of the entire game, suffice it to say every combat was lots of damage being taken on either side of the GM screen, followed by Iesha expending dozens of wand charges at the end of each fight.
Some highlights:
- Getting a gorgon to accompany us as an ally.
- Having said gorgon turn an evil fey to stone, then smashing her hands off before she could return to flesh.
- Soaking damage from 8 shadows before using Jill's ghost touch greataxe (what a backup weapon!) to take them all out
- Using a necklace of fireballs blindly to start a fight against a giant spider
- Never making a majority of the Knowledge checks asked of us to identify a monster
But the best moment came during the final fight. Not to spoil much, but at the end there's some BBEG and his equally evil buddy. Both hit pretty solidly. The fight so far was rough--Rukk was already bloodied before we were able to drop the weaker one (warhammer crit = ouch!). It was getting down to the wire, so after dropping the first guy, Rukk took a fleeting swing at the BBEG before "tagging out" with the other barbarians behind him. The BBEG took his AOO, and dropped Rukk into the negatives. Thank god for Diehard.
The barbarians took their swings, dealing some decent damage; but not even bloodying the BBEG. He goes, circles to the side to break flanking, and tears into Jill. She's now bloodied.
Low on options, Rukk decides to roll the dice.
He activates his ring of ferocious action as a free action and pounces. He takes the BBEG's AOO to the face. 26 damage, 20 after DR. I do the math. Rukk has 4 hit points before he's true dead, sitting at -42.
"I'M STILL ALIVE, YOU SON OF A *****!!"
Full attacks from the pounce. Hit, natural 1, miss, natural 20. Portfolio reroll on the natural 1. Reroll is a natural 20. Both crits confirm. Crits are x3 on claws. Roll the dice, do the math. 126 damage. BBEG falls. Rukk takes 1 point of damage from his strenuous action. Rukk has 3 hit points left.
Thanks to Raging Vitality, Rukk can't drop rage or he dies. Luckily, Iesha is ready with a wand.
Victory from the clutches of defeat. What an excellent fight.
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Alright I have one. It's been about 10 years and no moment has ever lived up to this one. It's nothing heroic and probably more of a "You had to be there moment" but I will share nonetheless.
We were playing fantasy D&D in the Hero System. It was fantasy like most other campaigns but with a few changes. Namely, in this GM's world elves elves were about 2-4 feet tall. Anyway I made a 3 ft tall elven sorcerer named Tiax The Mighty (Kudos if you know where my inspiration came from)
He always talked in the third person, and thought he could do anything he wanted. He was delusional and believed that he was all powerful and that everything belonged to him. He had a pony named Tiax II. That pony died and the next one he named Tiax 2 the II etc...
He claimed to be all powerful but among the first things he did when a fight broke out was go invisible and and fly to a safe distance. After that he would throw fire etc... but safety first lol.
If he failed at anything, he claimed that if he *really* wanted to, he could deal with it with a snap of his finger but chose not to because "This amuses Tiax". The system didn't have alignments but I'd cement him at a comfortable Chaotic Neutral. His personality was easy for me. What would happen if someone with the mentality of a 3 or 4 year old had insanely powerful magic at his fingertips? He was never disciplined and learned to (almost always) get his way.
Whenever he entered a town, he would telekinetically roll out a red carpet, magically enhance his voice, and bellow "ALLLL HAILLLL TIAX!" He would use TK to make one person bow and others would bow because that's how people work lol. (In This system powers cost endurance which recovered over time. I didn't have to worry about "blowing" my powers for the day) He wasn't "violent" per se but he would use Telekinesis to make people bow to him, charm people, threaten, posture etc... but was mostly harmless unless his life was threatened. Haha I don't know how many times I introduced myself and then the group offhandedly as my escort, bodyguards, or servants. After a while, they quit objecting lol.
Now that there's some context, the actual story.......
Well one day we were traveling to another town (After being exiled from the town we just left). We actually had a map with marks on all of the places we weren't allowed back to lol (mostly because of Tiax's antics).
The group was traveling on horseback and we were pulling our cart full of treasure. I think there was a new party member because a character had recently died. Tiax was educating this person on the party dynamics AKA everyone there were servants of Tiax. This new party member had the ability to detect magic and that was when everyone realized Tiax had cast his own version of Arcane mark on their foreheads (Something I had told the DM about in secret when he first met them haha) His mark? TM :)
One of the players sarcastically asked Tiax if there was anything that *didn't* belong to Tiax. Somebody then noticed that Tiax the Mighty had plastered TM all over the cart. The party member that actually paid for the cart said
"No, I bought this cart and it is the group's cart."
"No, Tiax's cart"
"Group's cart"
"Tiax's cart"
Everyone in Unison: "GROUP'S CART!"
Everyone thought they finally won an argument with Tiax when I passed a note to the GM
Silence...
BOOM!
The cart explodes in fire as Tiax calmly says "No one's cart"
We had to take a break for about 15 minutes because we were laughing too hard.
Story #2
Same character - different reincarnation. I used to like playing Tiax for a new group to evaluate their level of RP and their comfort level in regard to characters with extreme personalities.
I believe Anzyr was actually the GM for this one. It was 3.5 I believe I was a Sorcerer/Incantrix.
We were attempting to infiltrate a party of some sort. One player turned to me and said (out of character) "Oh god... how are you going to have Tiax blend in/not blow our cover?" I said easy. I'm gonna to Rick James this s$~~. lol I still don't know if people just thought I was a bard telling tales of some badass named Tiax (because I referred to myself in the 3rd person) or if they were just picking up what I was puttin down.
Either way it would have worked out but our hot-headed monk got drawn into a fight lol.
I was proud of myself in the same module
Has anyone else realized how many of these proudest moments involve a crit of some sort? Maybe Keen and Improved Critical SHOULD stack...
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I was proud of my players when I ran ** spoiler omitted **
Maybe more of a sadistic than proud moment, same scenario.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Last night my dwarven foehammer caused a small boat to capsize, as he ran and jumped on the bow while enlarged. With a successful Knowledge (engineering) check, the GM allowed me to accurately catapult my ally on the other end at the fleeing enemy spellcaster.
He also headbutted an enemy mook through a wall. When I beat his CMD by 20 on a bull rush, the GM wagered that the ramshackle wall wasn't enough to stop him, so he broke through it and flew into the swamp beyond.
What a good GM.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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One for me.
you have what you hold, boat fight.
Already had heroism up, want to get in the caster's face. So I check the map.
"Any penalty for the mooks since I'm on the upper deck to jump?"
"No, I've been calling it a DC 5 to jump to the other ship."
"30 from where I am."
*Gm checks the map* "Are you sure?"
"Yup."
"Ok. Make that DC 30 check."
"Alright, burning luck."
My archerologist makes the dc 30 jump check vaults from the barge and lands on the other boat, nocks an arrow and hits the druid. Only thing that would have made it perfect would have been a crit. +17 to jump is awesome.
Edit: Later drilling the BBEG with two arrows, doing enough damage to drop her to the surrender threshold. This was after she dropped our cleric to -4 in one shot.
My Enemy's Enemy had some moments. From the Barbarian critting the LBEG, to the BBEG dropping fireballs at his feat and me going toe to toe with him (we both had evasion) it was an awesome fight.
I have a pretty awesome Halforc Assassin in a party of 4 who seems to take any female npc I throw at him. During the first 3 sessions of our RotR AP he managed to get himself into quite a bit of trouble.
Ven's Daughter:
Don't do drugs:
During the 3rd session the following week, I thought he had learnt his lesson, but nop. Once again he leaves the party in hunt for information. This time at a tavern. Giving him very obvious hints that the ladies in this tavern are crooks, and greedy liars, he still proceeds to try to sleep with them and after failing some bad checks, he gets his gold stolen from him the following day.
He has never talked to another female NPC since then. This campaign has been running for 3 months now.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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I GM'd the Blackros Matrimony the other night. Here are a few highlights (spoiler free).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Confirmation Story.
Ok, things went well to start, hyper Halfling, not needing the Underdark map (because I misplaced mine), teaching the newish player why you don’t wander off alone at first level. We had two paladins in the party. Janira asks the first, “So do you have the stick up your aft yet? He says “Yes.” Perfectly deadpan. So she asks the other paladin. “No.” First paladin says, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a spare.”
“I’ll scout ahead story” (Here there be spoilers)
Three zombies he fails to notice get a surprise round! One hits, dropping him to 2 HP. Initiative is rolled, he withdraws as far as he can, past the rest of the party.
Me: The rest of you hear the sound of what seems to be a little girl crying in panic, then see your half orc friend go running past you, clutching his side in pain.
They dispatch the zombies and are disappointed to see the body was hiding shiny rocks.
After dispatching the oozes (almost resulting in dissolved paladin) and healing, they go fight the minotaur. It drops Janira, and is getting ready to Coup de grace her. (note, I missed he has Javalins to throw, this comes up later) Our paladins, and archeologist go running into combat. Minotaur drops paladin 1 to negatives, but he has die hard. Other paladin goes charging in, and draws the AoO. Now she’s at negatives (and doesn’t have die hard). Archeologist, being the only one in melee, tries to trip the minotaur, misses, and down he goes.
Half orc ranger is standing 70’ away, pinging with his crossbow ineffectually. Die Hard paladin swings, GM forgets he’s already at negs, minotaur returns the favour and now he’s permadead. After the archeologist goes down, it is pointed out to the ranger, “Well at least you no longer have the ‘in melee’ and cover penalties…”
Minotaur comes towards him. He gets off two more shots and retreats into the caves. Minotaur is still coming, but is squeezing now. Half orc is trying to draw him in (fortunately I had all the caverns maptiles, so making a tunnel was easy). Minotaur moves, half orc is going: Shoot, move. Move, reload. Shoot, move.
GM suddenly remembers (as the Minotaur moves into a 10 X 10 section) he has a javelin! Minotaur drills ranger for 8 points, he’s down to 2 HP (new player, 10 con) He retreats into a narrow cavern where he’s squeezing. Minotaur spends some time to get to him, then turns to go back and finish off the rest of the party.
Half Orc heroes up and comes out, shooting the minotaur. Minotaur throws Javelin, hitting.
One of the players points out, “Did you remember the squeezing penalties?” I hadn’t. Missed, by one. I describe it as “A javelin, as big as a spear, imbeds itself deep in the stone beside your head.” Half orc, stands his ground, reloads and shoots, knowing the minotaur can reach him with his axe.
Hit! 8 points! Dead minotaur! Much rejoicing at the table, even from the half orc player’s dad, (who played the dead paladin) Likely one of the more nail biting tables I’ve ran in a while.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Night March story.
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got any funny stories?
GM: Um... Bad Moon Rising.
Sorceress: I cast ghost sound to make a voice come from just outside the door, shouting "Free grit at the Bad Moon Rising next door! Free grit!"
GM: *rolls a bunch of Sense Motive* Two of the patrons leave.
This repeats a couple more times until all the basic brawlers have left.
Later, on the ship:
I spend multiple rounds looking for the Lady while the party is fighting two sailors and a gnoll. My wife's archer (who doesn't have Rapid Shot yet) takes a shot, crits the gnoll. Next round, she takes another shot, gets another crit, killing him.
"You know, because he had two eyes."
So we keep looking for the Lady (and I've done almost nothing else). I open a door, and find another gnoll, with an axe raised in a ready position.
"Oh, hi! Have you seen Lady Salhar around somewhere? I'm trying to find—"
The gnoll's readied attack crits me (handaxe is x3), taking me from full HP to 1 HP. I then mime pulling an axe out of my chest, and continue:
"Yeah but seriously, have you seen her?"
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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This isn't exactly a proud moment, but my inquisitor of Norgorber kind of forgot to put away his holy symbol when he went to confront the angry mob in Scars of the Third Crusade. Turns out it's really hard to convince townsfolk you're not a murderer when you're wearing one of those things.
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This isn't exactly a proud moment, but my inquisitor of Norgorber kind of forgot to put away his holy symbol when he went to confront the angry mob in Scars of the Third Crusade. Turns out it's really hard to convince townsfolk you're not a murderer when you're wearing one of those things.
Similarly, it's difficult to spread the Word of Aroden in Razmiran (Glass River Rescue).
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I was running The Wardstone Patrol at a local con when I had a player die. He was at half life when his dwarven fighter (or skald, I can't remember) took a critical hit from a scythe. Rolled a natural 20 on the attack, natural 20 on the confirmation. He was dead. My first dead player. He was a local and I felt bad about it but felt there was nothing I could do.
Nearby, another local GM reaches into his notebook, pulls out a boon and gives it to the player of the fallen dwarf. The boon was given out for demoing the Beginner Box and allowed a free raise dead for a player with less than 20 fame. He had that boon for ages and thought it would likely never see use so he gave it away.
Long story short...he died, then he got better.
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From a distance, the giant frog attacks the player with his tongue, grabs him, and swallows him, together with the skyrocket.
The skyrocket explodes from inside the frog, obviously taking out Mogmurch as well, who goes down in Licktoad history as a true hero.
Last night's game was fun. It's a homebrew. The PCs:
Defina - CG human female inquisitor (Iomedae)3
Tami - NG half-elf female fighter 3
Micah - NG Halfling male sorcerer (faerie dragon bloodline)3
Viorec - CG human ranger (dungeon delver)3
So the adventure is simple: go into a dungeon, map it out, and recover specific religious items there. The party is 5 rooms into a section of the dungeon populated by mites (with 2 levels of warrior added) and giant centipedes. They come to the final boss fight of this section to find 2 mite warrior 2 guards riding giant centipedes, a mite witch 2 and a centipede swarm.
The bad guys are pretty high in the initiatives so the PCs are caught in a hallway blocked by the guards and their mounts. The witch had previously commanded the swarm to advance on the trespassers so she hexes Defina to sleep. Things look bad; the swarm is creeping up, the guards have the group pinned and one PC is down. Up steps Micah and Tami.
The half-elf surges in, risking an AoO and power attacks/cleaves through one guard and into the mount below him. Tami hit so hard that both of them are incapacitated and dying. The sorcerer meanwhile breathes his breath weapon: a cloud of Euphoria Gas. This sickens and staggers the other mount. The rider ordered the centipede to retreat so Tami leaps in with her own AoO and hits that mount's rider hard enough to knock him to exactly zero HP. So with its unconscious rider on its back the centipede skitters, capering, along the walls, it's antennae waving as if dancing.
The witch attempts and Undine's Curse spell on the slumbering inquisitor but she resists. In comes the swarm and starts devouring the party. Then out of nowhere the ranger comes in with Vermin Affinity. He decides he wants to try and push the centipede swarm back on the witch. I ask for a contested roll and he 20's. The ranger, with a full-round begins willing the swarm back!
Not to be outdone Tami executes a miraculous vaulting cartwheel out of the swarm's area hurling a vial of alchemist's fire on them as she goes. The Halfling similarly drops another vial of the stuff even as it's turning toward the witch. Horrified the witch attempts to retreat while trying her own contested roll against the ranger and failing. The swarm eventually overwhelms her and she is consumed by her own most powerful "minion."
There's only one dangling thread left: what happened to the rider who got slashed across the eye but didn't die? Time will tell...
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Wanted to give props to my players for yesterday's Voice in the Void game, which finished in two hours with total success despite a near-TPK in the first few minutes.
So when they trigger their first fight (the owlbear "skeleton"), I have it go for the paladin, against whom I need a natural 14 to hit.
Full attack: hit, miss, crit.
/facepalm
Round 1 of the first combat, the paladin is down. Then it occurs to me that he's the only one capable of activating the happy stick.
/doublefacepalm
With some coaching about tactical movement and attack coordination (as well as some creative interpretation on my part of a mindless creature's response to threats), the three pregens manage to bring it down.
Fortunately, they managed to get the stabilized paladin back up to 0 HP (via a misremembering of the Heal skill; oh well, they got a freebie on a 10gp CLW casting, no biggie) and he can then get everyone back on their feet.
They end up only going through half the basement, go down to the final boss, and Merisiel climbs the gate to examine the can. She opens it up, sees a brain, puts two and two together, and stabs the brain.
Mission accomplished, and Imrizade is rescued without having been harmed in the slightest, all in about 2 hours.
Way to go, team! :D
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Venture-Agent, Australia—QLD—Brisbane
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Interestingly, I ran the same scenario on Sunday, and the result was very similar.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Nice!
My party happened to skip one entire side of the museum (the statue room and the scriptorium), so unlike your table they had no idea what was going on when they went in. But when they saw the umbilicals, it wasn't hard to figure out the general idea, and it was pure curiosity that led to opening the can. And when you've already surmised that a person is being mind-controlled via some creepy cords, and at the source of those cords you find a brain in a can, well... it's not too hard to figure out what to do. :)
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At a Con last year, we were having an easy (and goofy) time going through Among the Living, that is until the end. (No spoilers)
One of the frontliners was cornered apart from the rest due to poor maneuvering and down he goes. I believe with a crit from good health to well below zero.
I make eye contact with a friend of mine and our gears click, it just became real dangerous and we were the only two with healing. We had one round to revive him or he's dead, and the fight had just begun so we needed him swinging. It didn't help that we were somewhat fragile compared to that frontliner and had to run past the enemy to get there.
Wordlessly, we looked at the map and our plan unfolded as it had to.
His well-armored Cleric was playing above tier and with no healing other than a wand (which would not be enough), and if I recall was too slow to get there and help anyway. He runs through taking the AoO, also blocking off another enemy from moving in. This clears the way for my Mystic Theurge to safely dive there with a Cure Moderate on my hands and get the guy functional. So yes, two prone victims and a big baddie staring down at us.
From the ground, the frontliner grabs his weapon (safely) and takes down the enemy from there.
Whew.
I really liked the way my friend and I were able to execute without table talk. Felt pretty cool.
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Alright here's mine.
Setup: A bar fight starts up and somehow the party ends up getting blamed for this. The only character that wasn't arrested is my wife's rogue. Does she try and break us out of our unlawful imprisonment? Nope she goes tavern hoping and falls asleep in a temple confessional booth.
Venture-Captain, Washington—Spokane
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Here's mine:
On a shipboard investigation:
Sense Motive on the Captain
Sense Motive on the First Mate
Me: Sense Motive on the Winter Witch (my character)
My wife's character(Hunter - Sister): 22 - Sis, I know your ticklish on your feet.
Me: Damn, swearing in Elven
Qatari(Elf): I didn't know she could do that with a Mammoth.
Entire table cracks up.
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Although not technically PFS, I have to share this-
My three year old daughter was playing princess and castle with some dwarven forge game tiles I left out and picked out minis for her, mommy, daddy and the cat. She then lead them through the maze of tiles. At some point she had the mommy mini alone ahead of the group and I asked what she was doing. My daughter repliedn "Mommy is checking for secret doors". I have players ten times her age that don't remember to do that.
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ok Golemworks Incident (I have posted before on that thread but here are details of the lower tier