My wife looted a pig on a rope (im not too sure about the sanity of the gm) and immediately asked how much damage that could do. Spent the rest of that session with a PigFlail. Apparently pigs on ropes do d10 for the first few hits then start dropping die as combat goes on.
Nother game, nother gm. The GM allowed some fluff magic items at creation for each PC. The bard had a beer bag of holding as his item. We were in a tavern that was being attacked by flaming rats. Most of the floor had caught on fire when said bard jumped on a table and up-ends his bag... of beer holding. Drowning the rats, stopping the fire, and saving the entire party.
Same group. I was a halfling rogue trap springer. Could not disable a single trap, not in over a year of playing that guy. But I never took damage either. It got so bad the other PC's would run around a corner every time i looked at something. The set up was a stone hall with a door at the end. Found the trap and rolled a 1 to disable. At this point the gm states I would have to have nat 20's on the next three rolls to make it out. As near as we can make out, the fire from the flame trap somehow had a perfect me shaped empty spot as it rushed past, only singing a few hairs.
Seriously, I want to know. What is the point in all of our collective experiences if we don't get to share? PF is such a great place to have our creative vulcan mind-melds, yes?
My best experience was playing Gip, the goblin Cave Druid, and explaining, backwards why the Duegar Fighter should be left behind in the Underdark while we were lead to town. The best part?
It made perfect sense.
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Dm goes out into his garage (he was a smoker so we thought he was taking a quick cancerstick break only... he came back with these large styrofoam sheets he had painted up with grid squares...then he pulled out the towers on either side, then he put on the bridge he made. then he grabbed the wirebrush trees he had made.
It went from a coon this could fun fight scene were were discussing to intstant omg this is serious business. Me and the other guy (we were both prior service by the way) started pounring over the terrain, getting eye level the works. We comfirm the plan, group here the plan just as we start to get ready to move...we spot the dragon landing on the other side. (did i mention it ramped up in epicness quickly.
My ranger/barbarian and his rogue crept forward avoiding the patrolling guard with direwolf companion to try and take out the archer in either tower. (in case they had signal arrows) The entire tables was so silent you could hear us breathing. It took us five rounds to get to the towers and creap up the stairs to get ready for the assault. I went first on my initiative and charge forward, critting and cutting my guard in half. The rogue went next and did the same... only he rolled a 2 and missed horrible. Someone literally gasped... He managed to down his guard on the next round after he managed to get his flaming arrow lit and ready to fire.
We took out the dire wolf and his guard, ransacked the towers for anything burnable... douses the base of the bridges in oil Lit the bridge and ran... Our stealh in the trees was high enough to not get dragon toasted and we escaped feeling amazingly epic
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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At a recent local convention, I played a level 4-5 PFS adventure using a pregenerated Merisiel (iconic rogue) pregen. She's a 4th-level DEX build. Her CMB is +5.
I somehow managed a flawless grapple/pin/tie, ending the encounter in 3 rounds. Enemy never got off a successful action of any kind.
I imagine a lot of these are "you had to be there" moments, but I'll share mine just the same because I enjoyed some of "alls y'alls."
As a GM: A very short game with two players. One was a troll who lived under a bridge (yes), and the other was a Forgotten Realms Dwarven Gutbuster with a ring of regeneration. There was an adventure planned... but they spent the entire two hours trying to kill each other in incredibly creative and hilarious ways. It was disgusting and awesome.
As a player: The other was this game with a large group. We had a gladiator in our group and an uppity elf. We encountered some Goblins. The Elf suggested we not attack them and "Must use diplomacy!" The Gladiator decided to attack them himself - and killed them all himself in three rounds. He then turned to the Elf and said "Gladiator - 1. Diplomacy - 0."
Also facing an epic Giant Dragon (like HUGE - see Dragonlance during age of mortals) and then seeing said Dragon fail it's save by rolling a 2 on the first round of combat (needing a 3 or better) and be destroyed. That was pretty awesome, if anticlimactic.
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Hmm, I can't quite pick 'the most fun thng' I've ever done, but I will list some examples.
In 3.5 my DM custom built a 'grapple-swallow' character for my Half-Orc Ranger/Barbarian to face off against. It was a tournament style fight at some Arcane Wizard's Fair. The two wizards in the party entered my ranger into the tournament as a testament to their strength by measuring the strength of their 'minion' or some such nonsense.
Anyway, the only real rule of the fight was some item limits, like limiting weapons to either a single weapon or pair of weapons (in the case of TWF). My Ranger used a double-axe as her weapon, which can't be used when swallowed whole.
Anyway, so she drank her Potion of Enlarge Person instead, and raged (she was saving her rage in case she really needed it) resulting in her bursting out of the monster's stomach. The visual of a 12 ft. tall Half-orc drenched in blood and dripping guts from her tusks in the grips of a rage sufficiently intimidated the other contestants that they refused to fight her.
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Same character as above, different scenario. A Nemesis of the party had been making several hit-and-run attacks on us. One such scenario involved him using a Wand of Blink to attack the party and run through walls to escape.
My ranger would have none of this.
She raged and charged the walls and used her tremendous strength to burst through them. The nemesis had levels of rogue and used a sneak attack that was a confirmed critical and happened to roll nearly max damage.
She told him his knife was adorable, and then proceeded to beat the crap out of him. He eventually escaped using a teleportation item, but after that point, he never attacked when my Ranger was around as she terrified him.
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In my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, I ran the Seven Swords of Sin module as a side adventure. At the end of the module, they faced off with a custom female enchantress. One of the spells she had prepared was Baleful Polymorph and she'd already cast Fickle Winds. She managed to turn the Paladin with the Baleful Polymorph and turned him into a little bird. He kept his own mind and everything, so he tried to attack her. He was furious when he found out he couldn't fly through the Fickle Winds because he was too small.
After the party dispelled the Fickle Winds, he charged her with his adorable little birdyness and with his smite active, managed a crit dealing some ~60ish points of damage that finally killed her.
He was so proud!
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Also in Curse of the Crimson Throne, in a previous side-adventure I pitted the group (at level 5 ish) up against some skeletons guarding a mausoleum. This consisted of a custom Skeletal Champion with some template advanced Skeletons; I think it was a Bleeding Skeletal Champion with 7 levels of fighter and 6 Bleeding skeletons with 3 levels of fighter.
The party fought these skeletons and got their butt kicked and ran away. They later came back at 7th and 8th level and destroyed them, because it was a mark on their ego.
When they first entered Castle Scarwall in the 5th module of Crimson Throne, they encountered a large group of Skeletons guarding the entrance. The party actually retreated, rested and re-prepared spells because they all recalled the skeletons from the mausoleum and spent 2-hours discussing a battle-plan and tactics before they attacked. The fight ended up lasting all of 2 or 3 rounds, with the 3rd round being mop-up.
I loved the fact they spent 2 hours planning an assault on ~20 1 HD skeletons because they were so scared of the previous beating they got the against the last group of skeletons they fought.
So in my homebrew world there are these thick mist/fog/smoke veils that are pretty much the embodiment of elemental evil and destruction...
Everyone knows this, and the Paladin gives a long speech of how it is a bad idea to walk into it, how people die and never return...
What does the parties brute do? Stuff his finger in it. Needles to say, somebody lost a finger. Then tried to freeze it with wizards help to save it for re-attachment.
Needless to say 1d3 cold damage onto a severed finger didn't help preserve it at all...
Another time everyone got a small cold from walking in a swamp unprepared for a day... and the druid of the party had natural 1 on every roll against disease, 4 days in a row. He had Tonsillitis, fever, and was essentially of little use (though I still let him do a lot of things) and a lot of other debuffs before a shaman helped him.
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As a GM I ran a time traveling adventure that kicked off with the destruction of Absalom. The party started with a meeting in a tavern called the Jolly Lobster when calls of burglar’s drew them from their meals. They headed outside to see hooded and masked thieves leaping from their rooms upstairs. It culminated in an epic chase across roof tops during which the thieves escaped.
It was after this that the city was destroyed. The player’s managed to survive, without their gear, and found their way to a couple npc survivors that had means to time travel for short periods; though it had never been tested fully. They volunteered and found themselves back in Absalom only a few hours before it was destroyed.
Without knowing how much time they had they decided to stop the thieves from taking their gear. The look on their faces when they realized that they were the ones who had taken their gear was priceless.
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In a 3.5 game we ran the module against baba yaga. My Halfling fighter (converted from the 2e kit Homesteader) had a custom artifact that, among other things gave him a 24 str. Benarin Stouthammer was a master of the "great maul"; the gm's equivalent of a 20 # sledge.
I had several fine moments:
1. we burst through a door to find 2 pit fiends guarding a fountain. My guy was the only one that could act in the surprise round. He hits and crits in the surprise, then goes first in the first combat round, crits twice more and hits with the last iteratives, effectively destroying both fiends before anyone else even acted.
2. We face one of the witch's clones and her clay golems. I go power attack/cleave straight through the golem and into her, critting and maxing damage; the rest of the party finished her by the end of the round.
3. the party makes it to the control room and is facing another yaga. While hitting me with spells she's gloating about being immortal. I get to her and grapple, pinning her. "You want immortality? It doesn't come from taking power and life from others. A century from now, you'll be dead and gone and everyone will forget you on purpose. A century from then my kin will sit peacefully before the hearth I built, in the town I founded, in the safety I forged here today and they'll think of their old granther and smile. THAT's immortality."
4. and finally... after the control room I get dropped into the engine which is essentially a giant anti-gravity field pushing me away from the machine. I make str check after str check, clawing my way to the device taking damage every round. I have Endurance, Diehard and am slowly dipping into the red zone but STILL going. I make it up to the engine, hoist my hammer and bring it down. My gauntlets, on top of their other powers, triple my sunder damage. In one shot at neg 17 HP I shattered the machine and saved the world.
That was a really fun campaign.
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I know that the general rule of thumb is that party conflict and PVP is bad, but some of my best role-playing stories involve characters getting into hijinks without the rest of the party knowing.
The rest of the party wanted to stage an escape, while my character (a rogue) wanted to stay in the capital and stir up a rebellion. Not wanting to be the jerk who holds up the rest of the group, I conspired with the DM to fake my character's death, have my rogue become an NPC, and bring in a new character that would be more willing to go along with the rest of the party.
We cooked up a plan where most of the party snuck out of town in the middle of the night, while the rogue stayed behind. I was supposed to mis-direct any search parties that went after the party, and then meet up with them later (because I actually had stealth and disguise and those sorts of skills). The druid was supposed to fly back into town as a bird, and tell me the location of the secret meet up after everything calmed down.
When the druid came back, there were bad guys waiting outside my door. They came busting in, disrupting the meeting. The druid flew away, with archers shooting at him and the last thing he saw was my character failing a save and falling unconscious. My new PC met up with the party as they were fleeing the capital, and none of them realized the old PC was still alive and working on underhanded schemes, off camera.
At the end of the campaign, he had a reasonably good opportunity to throw the rest of the party under the bus during the climactic showdown. I had actually prepared for things to go either way because I didn't know what he would choose. He helped the party survive, and then just walked away to join Rand's training program for male channelers, because he had revealed that he had somehow got his magic back and didn't want to answer the awkward questions.
I gave my player a chance to be a backstabbing murderhobo, and he decided to turn it down!
Alright, this seems like a good thread to share the story of one of my favortite characters of all time: Korinil Ironfist.
Korinil was a dwarf monk I played in a one-shot homebrew 3.5 game with my older brother, who got me into D&D to begin with. All in all, he was a character that shouldn't have worked at all, because not only was he a dwarf monk, but he was a dwarf monk in a nautical game. I think the only really good decisions I made were getting him Improved Sunder and giving him ranks in Jump.
The game started with Korinil being sent to another city to check in on some activity there. He met up with a captain of a ship that may or may not have engaged in piracy in the past--my brother's GMPC--and they sailed off.
First combat was a fight between two ships, where a group of definitely pirates sailed after us. Both crews were getting ready to board, with men on both sides readying weapons and boarding planks. He asked what I was doing and I asked how far apart the ships were. Twenty feet? Cool. Korinil jumped. And made it.
Thus began a fight in which Korinil dropped the first pirate with a flurry of blows, then backed onto the planks that had been lowered. An axe-wielding pirate came up and missed with his attack, and Korinil punched his axe in half. Then the ships collided and Korinil and his foe both failed Reflex saves, ending up in the water. Thinking quickly, Korinil used Stunning Fist on the pirate and succeeded, then began climbing back onto deck while the man floated there, helpless. He got topside just in time to help put down the enemy captain.
It was a short encounter, but a lot of fun, and making a character work when he really shouldn't have was great. Still a memorable adventure and one of my favorites to this day.
So many dead gnomes in 1E & 2E...
As a PC:
Most fun - PvP with mature players that keep things in game. Personal fav, killing a gnome that was 8 levels higher by tricking him into swallowing several beads of force and then detonating them inside of him.
Casting Earthquake 12 or 15 times on a svirfneblin city. Boom.
Talking a recent convert to Malar into taking up the faith of Shaundakul.
Early in my career as an assassin/mage, using Ray of Enfeeblement on a contract that required that even the target think that their death was an accident. Speak with Dead "no, I wasn't attacked, I was swimming and got tired and weak and drowned."
Finally completing my fortress and the look on another player's face when he realized that I was using multiple decanters of endless water & a sphere of annihilation for nothing more than a sewage system.
As a GM:
Watching one of my PCs run away in a panic from an Umber Hulk for 3 - 4 rounds before realizing that it was summoned because he activated a wand of wonder and it was following him awaiting his instructions.
Same PC after getting the other PCs in WAY over their heads with much higher level / higher threat NPCs ... finally reveals his master plan by yelling "Demogorgon!, Demogorgon!, Demogorgon!" on the demi-plane of shadows. I wasn't sure if they were going to kill him before the Teleport without Error went off or not, but they all immediately started rolling initiative (against him). In hindsight, I'm sure my expression was probably as priceless as those of the other PCs.
-TimD
for non-PF/D&D: juggling Glitter Boys ... because even in Rifts, that was kind of awesome (likely much more so in 1992, to be fair).
I'm currently playing an insane alchemist and having a blast.
I see a lot of you play the evil route.
Hey! My Cleric was Lawful Neutral. Sure, the deity she worshipped was Evil but still!
My favorite thing I've ever done in-game was sacrifice my PC to save the world.
This was in a 3.5 game from about 10 years ago...
We had been doing a "collect the artifacts" campaign, set in a homebrewed campaign world. The PCs were in a race with demon cultists to collect artifacts that were used in a ritual that had sealed a portal to the Abyss 1000 years ago. The cultists needed the same artifacts to reverse the ritual of sealing and let the deomns back in.
In the world, 1000 years ago, demonic cultists succeeded in opening a rift into the Abyss which unleashed a plague of demons into the world. The paladin now known as St. Bethwyn completed a ritual which sealed the rift; she sacrificed herself to close the rift, and her companion St. Bertram then hid the components of the ritual around the known lands.
Anyway, we had failed in our quest to assemble the artifacts. (Well, technically we had succeeded, but realized too late that we had been tricked into collecting the artifacts for the cultists: our patron, the High Priest of Gideon, was possessed by a glabrezu!)
Over the next several days, we chased the cultists to the site of the rift. Now the cultists were performing a ritual to unseal it. I played Joanna, a ranger with the Demon Hunter prestige class (a slightly redesigned version of the Knight of the Chalice from Complete Warrior).
The rift was in the middle of an evil-tainted desert, inside a chasm. Filling the chasm was what appeared to be a glassy wall of force. On the other side were hordes of terrifying demons pressing against the barrier, trying to break through. Yet, the barrier was one-way only: Creatures could freely pass through this end into the Abyss (presumably to be destroyed -- or worse -- by the demons). A stone causeway extended halfway over the chasm, ending in a circular platform (without a railing). This has been where the cultists had originally performed the ceremony to open the rift, and where St. Bethwyn's self-sacrifice sealed it.
The cultists had kidnapped an NPC ally of ours-- a paladin who whe'd learned was the direct descendant of St. Bethwyn and St. Bertram. Our erstwhile patron was performing the ritual on the platform, with our ally tied to an altar. He was clearly close to completing the ritual, and was poised to plunge the Dagger of St. Bertram into his victim's heart. Three demons blocked the causeway.
The party engaged the demons, and I declared that I was running past the demons, and was charging the possessed priest. The GM warned me that the demons would get AOOs, and I said that was fine. The attacks brought my character's hit points down by more than half. When I got to the priest, the GM asked what I was attacking with. I said, "I intend to do a flying tackle to push him over the edge. I think that's a Bull Rush."
He looked at me questioningly. He said, "The priest is armed with the Dagger of St. Bertram, and he'll get an AOO on you." I said that he didn't because I had Improved Bull Rush. We made our opposed Strength checks (me at +6 for the charge plus feat), and I won handily, pushing him back 15 feet from the center of a platform only 20 feet in diameter.
The GM asked if I would make a Reflex save to avoid going over the edge of the platform. I said that I wasn't avoiding going over the edge, and in fact I wanted to pin down the priest's arms so he couldn't grab the edge either. Realizing what I intended, the GM asked me if I was sure, and I said yes.
The GM said, "Joanna sprints up the causeway and vaults over the altar, slamming headlong into the body of the High Priest, knocking him backward off his feet. The Dagger of St. Bertram clatters on the stone platform. Joanna and the priest both slide off the edge. Still strugging together, the two fall thirty feet onto the Abyssal Barrier. There is a sickening shimmer in the air that you feel more than see, and you hear an unearthly rumble from the portal. Through the portal, you see Joanna and the priest on the other side of the barrier. The demons fall upon the priest almost immediately, tearing him limb from limb. Joanna manages to draw the Sword of St. Bethwyn, but she is outnumbered at least 100 to 1. Scores of demoinic terrors close in, and you can no longer see her through the unholy horde. The ritual is over, and the rift still holds."
It has been a while. Hopefully there are new stories worth sharing!
AS A PLAYER
back in (what was it 1st ed?) island of terror, full with very big very hungry Dinosaurs. gm sent the party with my 10th level wizard to the island with quest hook of a high level wizard looking for dinosaur body parts for magic materials. i came up with the idea that instead of killing them and carring body parts to use balefull polymorph(or it's 1st ed equvilent) to turn them into small turtles (cant run, easy to catch and store) and when the wizard need the material let him kill it which bring it back to size.
we were traveling mybe 3 hexs a day and my wizrd only prepered one polymorph spell a day(needed other slot for a difrent spell) BUT i had given the DM my "luckly" black d20 to roll for saves. that thing NEVER rolled over 10 when you rolled for saves. mostly landing on 3 or 4.
it was a jorny full of DM :"charging at you this so and so big-" Me:" TURTLE!".(DM roll 3 "...turtle")
it seemed that each incounter was of only one really big dinosaur at a time. and we only got one per day so it was fine by us...until.
there was an incounter with an Alosaourus(the hugh long neck nad tail vegy dino) that eat something that made it agresive. so of course i turned it into a turtle, BUT then it turned out that this specific hex had also a T-rex (the most powerfull dino in the island 20HD~ and bite attack of 1d20+swollow etc) that just came up as we picked up the Alo-dino.and here is my wizard without any more polymorph spells.
i throw the turtle into the T-rex mouth! (for some reason, all of my 1st ed wizards had very high rolls for atributes i allways had enough to get a very high str mod as well. they all were baroom fighter vetrens). short story T-rex swollow Alo-dino. dael damage enogh to kill it which make it change back into a full grown alozaurus and exloding from the T-rex belly - good times!
AS A GM :
party is in an anciant building they found. searching around. main corador seem to be a very long complte square with doors that lead into rooms inside the square and outside. what they don't know is that there is a gentle slope all along the long corrador they THINK it is a full Square but it actuly go deeper and at such a slow slope that when you finish a full run around you end one story lower. party splits with the rogue searching away while rest invetigate some books and he does a full round of the corador(or so he thinks) only when he gets to the room he left them at, the door they smashed is whole. and once opend it reval the room but not his friends(each floor had similar rooms to the floor above. this was the libery part). he starts ot freak out. (and they as well, they were young players so didn't keep strict onto player knowledge,but it was better this way) they started casting spells to see if magic is envolved. because when lookin in the map they are standing facing one an other(in difrent levles) but not seeing each other. the rogue decided to RUN on and catch up with them(ending doing 3 full rounds and 3 full levles lower) and they also split even more with some staying and some moving on. they couldnt get why even tho their toons were placed so close in the map they couldn't spot each other.
defrent party 3.0 ed . just started. since everyone had a defrent race i gave everyone his own bit of his race historical knowledge. the elves had a secret they kept about a rogue mage some 50 years ago trying and almost taking over the world(name was vortex, and i actuly wrote the game back in 2ed when i was in high-school-way before harry potter was outand i had to ocnvort it to 3.5 .but the similarity of a high level wizard traying to take over the world with a V name so similar..couldn't bring myslef to repeat this campaign with later groups).
anyway the party's elf druid knows about this failed atmept and that the wizard was slain in an epic battle. then after the party leaves their very first dungeon they spot a large Worg sneaking up on an elven girl (young about 90 years old. in my game that was about 12 yaer old for humans). they heroicly charge at the Worg. when the girl angerly stop them telling them to let her pet go so they can finish their game of hide and seek. they start to talk to the girl and they notice she has a necklace with "vortex" writen on it. asking her about it she answers: " dady gave it to me". ok so the druid imidetly tell the others who "dady" is then he askes about the wolf."Dady gave it to me" she answers. then i have him roll knowledge nature. he makes it so i inform him that to the best of his knowledge worgs don't live that long (remmebr that vortex died 50 years back). so he akes her and she tells them "yea he was dady's Familiery". ok that tells him that this is a Familiar so now he gets realy agiteded and starts cursing. rest of the group asks him why. but the player is so shoked that he actuyl coudn't speak for like a min. all he can do is write down -"Vortex is still alive" (the player was a very emotinal one. and i really liked his respons to what happend next). they all get very scared as they are just 1st level and just found out a crazy wizard out to get the world is still alive, when i explain to them something they missed. that is. that since this is by most acords also a very HIGH LEVEL wizrd. not only is he alive. he is most likely powerfull enough to have the power to SCRAY THROUGH HIS FAMILIER ,in other words the most powerfull evil wizard known to them can be right now watching them, talking to his DAUGHTER....
Took some thinking but it goes way back to the first character I played in D&D 3.5 days in Faerun setting.
Mechanically, he was a mix of lots of classes including fighter, weapon master, tempest, and some I forget. He used a pair of bladed claw gauntlets from some resource I can't recall, but long story short between improved crit and weapon master his crit range was something like a 12 to 20 so he delivered critical hits often and hard. He joined the party around level 13 or so I think and the story occurred around level 16 or so.
So he had been traveling with the party for awhile at this point and was finding out that they were well regarded as powerful dragon slayers. By the time he had joined they had already slew around 5 to 6 dragons, some of considerable age and earned some serious hate from the Church of Tiamat. It felt completely epic and still cherish the memory of it.
It got to the point we got ambushed by Tiamat's high priest in the woods. The battle started out really rough but slowly shifted in our favor. Eventually things escalated really quickly. The high priest basically said screw it and used (miracle or gate I think) to call Tiamat herself to the fight. Our one mystic theurge did something of a lower level that basically alerted Bahamut that Tiamat was on the prime so he popped up with his ancient gold dragon brigade. Tiamat called in an avatar to help even things.
It got stupidly ugly fast in other words. The fact we were there wasn't making any difference when the gods started battling back and forth.
Eventually, thinking entirely in character I told the DM at the time that I was going to watch Tiamat's avatar to get badly hurt and let loose everything I had to kill it in the glory of Gargaros. The DM looked amused.
Eventually the DM said it was at the point where I'd have the only shot I'd get. It was hurt enough that the avatar would be plane shifting out we were sure next round. I had already been in position and had everything up including haste, fly potion, everything I could to eek out all I had.
So as I rolled the dice the DM basically told me I'd need to be pretty lucky to pull it off. I made 8 attacks. 1 Miss. 1 Hit. Six confirmed crits. Using weapon master ability I augmented I believe 3 of those to x3 and every hit maxed the weapon damage.
I don't remember the exact number but the table was quiet as we compiled the damage. I had done just over 10 points to put the avatar to dead. Cheers around the table. DM describing the way my character leaps in and releases a flurry of claw strikes that cover me in Tiamat's blood. Utterly glorious. Gargaros was most certainly smiling this day! I would be his favored champion for certain!
...the next round Tiamat whirled around on the insect, me, that had killed her Avatar in utter fury and decimated me in a way that left a fine red mist of my poor elf and all his gear.
Still was worth it. Wouldn't change a thing.
Real Tiamat got out of there a few rounds later. The party had issues resurrecting me since it was hard to differentiate my blood splatters from Tiamat's avatar and all the rest of the fighting. But the way it worked in that setting Tiamat couldn't use that avatar for like a year or something so we counted it as a win still.
That and when he was eventually brought back the bragging rights were awesome and Gargaros gifted him a pair of brilliant energy claws that caused huge bleed damage for what he pulled off.
Most memorable moment of DnD EVER. Still has me smiling.
Dwarf Slayer (4e) on his very first quest with new party (level 11). We all need to go investigate a warehouse (filled with lots of crates). We get a surprise round, and I want to charge the first enemy we see, but there's no straight line to him so my DM rules I can't do it. I argue there is a straight line (through the boxes). DM lets me charge the person as I shout "OHH YEEAAAH!!!," rolls a die, turns out the boxes I charged through were filled with volatile explosives. However, when he rolls for splash damage, he fails to hit me, and instead hits the person I was charging, who gets a huge axe to the face.
Here's another, same Dwarf Slayer (4e). Our party eventually got access to a Spelljammer (with an undead crew to boot). We needed to track down a Githyanki admiral, so we jumped planes to follow him to a Githyanki port, but we wanted to find a way to sneak in. So we decided to park our Spelljammer against the underside of an outlying floating fortress. We get spotted by a Githyanki patrol boat however, so we decide to hide in the hold as it pulls up and a few guards board us.
I then come up with the brilliant idea to get on deck with my Dwarf (disguised as a Githyanki captain) to bluff my way through this. Keep in mind my character is a slayer - so he sucks at skill checks. The conversation goes a little like this, with me improvising EVERY lie.
"Hey where the hell is your crew?"
"In the hold"
"...why are they in the hold?
"Because...we were celebrating one of the crew's birthday party!" *cue massive snickering from everyone else*
"During your patrol...?"
"Oh no, no! We just got finished with our patrol"
"And you didn't have the party in port...because?"
"Well, it was a SURPRISE birthday party, we couldn't wait!"
"And...why is the ship up against this fort?"
"Well...we drifted into it...on accident!"
"You drifted into it..." *DM says in his most deadpan voice ever*
"Oh...well, the crew got a little drunk..." *everyone else is basically losing it*
The githyanki then shakes his head in disbelief thinking I am the most incompetent ship captain EVER (he actually managed to fail an Insight roll against my shitty bluff check) but his dragon mount actually saw through me. We were THIS close to pulling off that bluff.
Quick Backstory - Two members of our party robbed a wizards house and then set it on fire and burned it to the ground.
The wizard then sets about getting revenge on all of us by using the girls that work at his brothel to get us drunk and they drug us. We then wake up naked strapped to tables. The wizard then tells us that if we complete two tasks for him he will forgive what we had done. So we all agree. My cleric and the LE anti-paladin are there the whole time asking if the women from the night before are free for later and air high-fiving because "it don't matter, had sex."
After we finish the first task the same anti-paladin and I are able to trade a harpy egg in for lifetime platinum passes to the wizards brothel.
So all in all it was great RP fun with a bit of combat.
Quick Backstory - Two members of our party robbed a wizards house and then set it on fire and burned it to the ground.
The wizard then sets about getting revenge on all of us by using the girls that work at his brothel to get us drunk and they drug us. We then wake up naked strapped to tables. The wizard then tells us that if we complete two tasks for him he will forgive what we had done. So we all agree. My cleric and the LE anti-paladin are there the whole time asking if the women from the night before are free for later and air high-fiving because "it don't matter, had sex."
After we finish the first task the same anti-paladin and I are able to trade a harpy egg in for lifetime platinum passes to the wizards brothel.
So all in all it was great RP fun with a bit of combat.
Aaaan some of you got to burn down the wizard's house. with all the stuff in thre should have been like a firework display. ;)
What happens in game stays in game...
Most memorable moment of DnD EVER. Still has me smiling.
Dwarf Slayer (4e) on his very first quest with new party (level 11). We all need to go investigate a warehouse (filled with lots of crates). We get a surprise round, and I want to charge the first enemy we see, but there's no straight line to him so my DM rules I can't do it. I argue there is a straight line (through the boxes). DM lets me charge the person as I shout "OHH YEEAAAH!!!," rolls a die, turns out the boxes I charged through were filled with volatile explosives. However, when he rolls for splash damage, he fails to hit me, and instead hits the person I was charging, who gets a huge axe to the face.
Here's another, same Dwarf Slayer (4e). Our party eventually got access to a Spelljammer (with an undead crew to boot). We needed to track down a Githyanki admiral, so we jumped planes to follow him to a Githyanki port, but we wanted to find a way to sneak in. So we decided to park our Spelljammer against the underside of an outlying floating fortress. We get spotted by a Githyanki patrol boat however, so we decide to hide in the hold as it pulls up and a few guards board us.
I then come up with the brilliant idea to get on deck with my Dwarf (disguised as a Githyanki captain) to bluff my way through this. Keep in mind my character is a slayer - so he sucks at skill checks. The conversation goes a little like this, with me improvising EVERY lie.
"Hey where the hell is your crew?"
"In the hold"
"...why are they in the hold?
"Because...we were celebrating one of the crew's birthday party!" *cue massive snickering from everyone else*
"During your patrol...?"
"Oh no, no! We just got finished with our patrol"
"And you didn't have the party in port...because?"
"Well, it was a SURPRISE birthday party, we couldn't wait!"
"And...why is the ship up against this fort?"
"Well...we drifted into it...on accident!"
"You drifted into it..." *DM says in his most deadpan voice ever*
"Oh...well, the crew got a...
you had a Roosterteeth moment.
Favorite Pathfinder moment: Our own Gothbard was playing a goth bard (go figure!) through Carrion Crown.
The final book was so gruesome and so over-the-top demoralizing that she decided she needed several scrolls of Mad Monkeys to liven things up.
Cue our fight with the BBEG, where we had to run and take cover because well, he's nasty, and a swarm of howling mad monkeys poured over him and stole his cape (natural 20 on CMB check) and he got distracted (natural 1 on his save).
We still speak with fondness of the mad monkeys who saved the day for us.
And memories of the GM pantomiming the monkeys donning the cloak and doing little Superman poses will live with us forever...
Favorite Non-Pathfinder moment: Our Runequest group was trying to infiltrate and destroy a skaveling stronghold (powerful rat-men in our campaign), and had our butts handed to us. Even the GM admitted that maybe he'd made it a wee bit too tough.
The surviving party members, including my baboon Rune Priest of Lodril (the volcano god) moved away from the fortress, licking our wounds.
Fed up, and playing my baboon as the blood-thirsty psychotic he was, I said, "I cast Summon Volcano on their stronghold!"
GM: "You need an 01 (on d100) for that to work. And you'll lose the POW whether or not it works."
Me: "I don't care. They p***ed me off!"
(Rolls a very public, middle-of-the-table 01. GM curses as his entire scenario goes up in a flaming mountain of lava, rock, and ash.)
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I was playing my cleric of Calistria -inspired by pathological liar Gaius Baltar - in PFS "Eyes of the Ten" a while ago. He walks up to the very first person in the adventure he meets, the venture captain who assigns you the mission, and introduces himself as "Venture Captain Jorza Wood" - I rolled a 20 on my bluff check giving me a 52 and the "real" venture captain fully believed me.
Playing in campaign where the GM made a custom Wild Magic bloodline for our sorcerer. Early on he wound up rolling "change the campaign" and summoning a demon city full of fiendish lizardmen we had to deal with (bonus points as both the GM and I play WHFB, so these lizardmen used those models...and had a unit champion, standard bearer and musician).
Later in that same campaign, we're busting down the door to one of the villain's hqs, he winds up teleporting himself out of the battle for 4 rounds, gets back just as we're finishing up the scrubs and getting ready to face the boss...at which point he promptly screws up casting scorching ray and turns into a tree for the next 5 hours.
Later still, our Slayer buys a discount magic bow, which has a tendency to randomly teleport around whenever he drops it. Once teleported right to one of the enemies in mid combat.
I have 2 from old D&D days.
1. My 1st time GMing in 2.0 there was player who was always a Halfling rogue. Whenever danger threatened, his 1st words were always "I hide in shadows". Until I arranged for the shadow he hid in to be an actual shadow.
2. I played a rogue(they seemed to have all the fun back then) in a 3.0 campaign. He found a wand that he didn't know how to use although it had the keyword written right on it. Turns out it was something called a "wand of humor". Whenever the rogue pointed it and said the keyword, the GM would secretly roll a D4 & a D20 to see which of 80 possible effects would happen.
Once the party found a manticore in an enclosed pit. We could look down a tiny spyhole and see him down there. The rogue pointed the wand down the spyhole and said the magic word. The GM rolled his dice an announced that the manticore and the rogue had switched placed. The rest of the party was now nose to nose with an angry manticore. They fought for a few rounds until the manticore backed up over the spyhole. The rogue pointed his wand skyward and fired; chain lightning.
The lightning went up through the manticore, through several of the PCs and back through the manticore, killing it.
The wizard finally took the wand away and had his familiar (a parrot) fly as far out over the sea as he could and drop it.
Morag
I have 2 from old D&D days.
1. My 1st time GMing in 2.0 there was player who was always a Halfling rogue. Whenever danger threatened, his 1st words were always "I hide in shadows". Until I arranged for the shadow he hid in to be an actual shadow.
2. I played a rogue(they seemed to have all the fun back then) in a 3.0 campaign. He found a wand that he didn't know how to use although it had the keyword written right on it. Turns out it was something called a "wand of humor". Whenever the rogue pointed it and said the keyword, the GM would secretly roll a D4 & a D20 to see which of 80 possible effects would happen.
Once the party found a manticore in an enclosed pit. We could look down a tiny spyhole and see him down there. The rogue pointed the wand down the spyhole and said the magic word. The GM rolled his dice an announced that the manticore and the rogue had switched placed. The rest of the party was now nose to nose with an angry manticore. They fought for a few rounds until the manticore backed up over the spyhole. The rogue pointed his wand skyward and fired; chain lightning.
The lightning went up through the manticore, through several of the PCs and back through the manticore, killing it.The wizard finally took the wand away and had his familiar (a parrot) fly as far out over the sea as he could and drop it.
Morag
Deck of many things syndrome?
Here's a couple of mine...
As a player in a 2nd Edition campaign, our party was on a sailing ship going somewhere (I don't remember where) when we come across a damaged derelict. I'm playing a half-elf fighter/thief and the halfling thief and I suggest that we should be the ones to scout the ship since we're the only stealthy ones in the party. Everyone agrees and, as soon as we're on board, we look at eachother and say, "First dibs on the loot."
As a GM, I have quite a few so I'll stick to the most memorable ones.
My second campaign when I was a teen using the BECMI rules, the party was confronting a rival party who had stolen the pieces of the artifact McGuffin they'd collected thus far. The enemy assassin NPC had double-crossed her allies and was preparing to teleport away to live to be a thorn in everyone's side. The party magic-user used a potion of gaseous form, entered her lungs, and then cancelled the potion as the assassin was teleporting. The assassin was an exploded mess and the magic-user found herself in the middle of the hidden HQ of an evil cult.
During 3rd Edition, the party psion decided to pull a prank on the half-ogre cleric and the druid by slipping the half-ogre and love potion in his drink. The half-ogre then fell in love with the druid and made some exceedingly comedic attempts to woo her, like filling her room at the inn with flowers and leaving mostly dead fish at her door. Well, the potion wore off, but the relationship didn't and the two PCs ended up getting married just prior to the campaign finale.
I adapted Temple of Elemental Evil to the 5E playtest rules, but changed a few details. Primarily, the nature of demon lords - each one has a dagger that can drain souls when it kills, empowering the demon lord as it does so and corrupting the wielder. But, a fully charged dagger is the only thing that will kill the demon lord its tied to. So, the party's bard was secretly empowering Zuggtmoy's dagger while the group made their way through the Temple. In the final battle, he succumbed to the corruption and attacked the party. The players were playing fantasy versions of themselves and, when the bard went after my wife's character with the dagger, my daughter's character, now a werepanther, leaped in to take the blow. The bard regained himself long enough to throw the dagger at Zuggtmoy, killing her, and causing the Temple to collapse around them. My daughter's character, her soul trapped inside the dagger, had a choice. The dagger had been used to destroy a Deck of Many Things and thus had absorbed the artifact's power over fate. My daughter's character could take that power and Zuggtmoy's status as demon lord in order to change everyone else's fate, or let Zuggtmoy's evil be permanently destroyed...and let everyone die. She chose to become the new Demon Queen of Fate, becoming a NPC. I played this music while her character said her goodbyes and made my daughter cry. I felt pretty awful about that but, at the same time, it was freaking epic.
The players wanted to talk to the town sage for information on an unknown enemy. So they find this man named Eldar on the outskirts of town. Turns out this man was just a raving lunatic and his cat was actually the wise sage. A curious thing though, Edldar could still cast spells but when his spell book was examined they found nothing but pages covered with cat S***. A very interesting encounter to say the least.
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Playing Against the Giants with 4 players was probably one of the best experiences I've had. Our group was brought to the brink by a great GM who held no punches. Near the end of the battle our group of adventurers had run dry on spells and our hit points were low enough a trip and fall could have taken out players. And we still had Giants coming at us.
Everyone was on their feet watching each dice tumble, it was a blast. Great module, great GM, and even better friends.
-MD
Playing Against the Giants with 4 players was probably one of the best experiences I've had. Our group was brought to the brink by a great GM who held no punches. Near the end of the battle our group of adventurers had run dry on spells and our hit points were low enough a trip and fall could have taken out players. And we still had Giants coming at us.
Everyone was on their feet watching each dice tumble, it was a blast. Great module, great GM, and even better friends.
-MD
:) I'm happy it turned out that way for you.
1. In ROTL the party alchemist saw his backpack was unorganized, so he stopped mid-battle to organize it. Then, our ranger left the battle and went to help him, leaving the summoner (me) and the rogue to fight some sinspawn.
2. In Razor Coast, our wizard had just gotten lightning bolt, so when a bunch of lacedons come at us in a line, he said somewhat quietly in a voice filled with total glee, "They're all lined up!"
3. Same game, but later on. There was a sewer totally filled with cockroach swarms. The wizard was out of spells and we got to a part filled with flammable gas. The party gets out, wizard casts spark, and 20d6 of fire damage later we had ourselves a bunch of crispy cockroaches.
4. In Kingmaker, I was playing an insane Strix alchemist, we were camped on a cliff using ropes, pitons, and hammocks when we were attacked by a group of bears in the wee hours of the morning. Alchemist, having a ring of sustenance, was awake. He saw the bears, screamed, "GOOD MORNING, SWEETIES!" and started bombing.
5. ROTL again, trying to make a poster to convince people to join us in attacking the Thistletop Fort. Summoner (me) with 20 CHA and Paladin with 16 CHA try to make it. I get a 10 with my +8 diplomacy and the paladin tries to aid me and fails. The GM did a quick sketch of what the poster looked like, and it was 3 cartoony goblins holding swords (basically lines) eating a ridiculously out of proportion cow.
This game is the most fun I have in-game.
It was the game I never knew I needed, until I played it. It's the closest I've gotten (repeatedly) to the ending fight in The Avengers. That epic, large scale, many moving parts, battlefield rending style of fight.
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So, the story behind this is Milva, half-orc rogue (sailor) , is in the clocktower in the rafters. Milva has been hit by a critical, slashed across the eyes, and is blind. The rafters have been set on fire and there is a silence effect in place as well. Milva eventually manages to grope around on her hands and knees to find the ladder leading up to the loft above the rafters while the other party members battle the big bad.
The battle's not going so well for the other party members either, and the party's wizard comes up with a way to take the tower down, hoping to get the big bad with it. So once Milva can hear again (still can't see), all she hears is rumbling and and the crackling timbers below her. The tower is shaking all around her and there is no quick or safe way down or out.
As the tower falls, the party's Dwarven Druid swoops in, in hippogryph form, saving Milva at the last possible second.
I think Hugo did a great job of illustrating this moment for me. Rescue of Milva
Remember to thank Hugo. That's impressive.
I have so many, but this one is my favorite.
I ran a 10 year long 2e campaign that ended in 2000. One of the major characters was my friend Tam's ranger, Diana Brownsparrow. Her backstory included leaving her homeland to escape her abusive lover, another ranger.
At one point I ran a couple of adventures where he showed up and joined the party. The roleplaying was awesome between her and "him". But soon he showed his true colors and turned on her again, so she told him to leave under threat of death.
A year and a half later (in real time) I'd run a few adventures that made them think he was somewhere still around. Sure enough he was, as he showed up in the nick of time to save Diana and the rest of the group from a pack of ghouls. He sacrificed his life so they could escape.
6 more real time months go by, with lots of gaming. At the end of a particularly harrowing adventure, they faced off against a wight, who they discovered was her former lover. He told her he that, "I swore I would love you until I die, and now we'll be together forever!" He attacked, and after a really good combat segment, she killed him for good. Tam, the ranger's player, actually broke down and cried because she was imagining the emotional agony Diana would be going through after it was all over.
In a 1e game where one of my friends absolutely hated the Bounty Hunter character I played. I never knew why. Anyway, I told him I'd stop running him alongside his character and introduced a new PC, a fighter into the game.
After a few game sessions where they adventured together quite successfully my character knocked his out cold, trussed him up, and revealed that it'd been my old character in disguise the whole time (the DM gave plenty of chances to see through it but he was never able to do so).
I turned him in for the bounty and let him sit in the caliph's dungeon a few days before turning up and breaking him out and sharing the reward with him. I told him that like me or not, I just saved his butt and we were both 5,000 gp richer. He was really pissed at ME for a long time but eventually got over it.
Good times.
Ran a Star Wars homemade module for WFRP 1st Edition on April 1st. Full of the sort of awful puns that was a prominent feature of the published WFRP modules of the day.
Jedi Knight profession.
Lightsabers
Smuggler riverboat Millenium Falchion complete with Slann technology drive system
.. her equally infamous owner Hans Solo and his faithful mutant ogre sidekick (Chaos Gift: Furry Hide) Chewbaccy
Climatic river battle between the forces of Chaos and Order
Attempting to drop a bomb into the exhaust port of the Chaos flagship from Dwarf Gyrocopters
Ran a Star Wars homemade module for WFRP 1st Edition on April 1st. Full of the sort of awful puns that was a prominent feature of the published WFRP modules of the day.
Jedi Knight profession.
Lightsabers
Smuggler riverboat Millenium Falchion complete with Slann technology drive system
.. her equally infamous owner Hans Solo and his faithful mutant ogre sidekick (Chaos Gift: Furry Hide) Chewbaccy
Climatic river battle between the forces of Chaos and Order
Attempting to drop a bomb into the exhaust port of the Chaos flagship from Dwarf Gyrocopters
I wish I understood that better....
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One of the most fun ones I've had as a GM:
We were scheduled for a full gaming day. 2 players were there from the beggining, while a third one was supposed to join after lunch. So I told them we'd play a one-off, and then the real game would begin in the evening.
And we began: they were in control of a minor band of thieves, tasked with "retrieving" a certain circlet. Lots of fun was had (the whole table paused for a moment and then broke in laughter when they realised they hadn't asked what they were meant to steal. Their solution: steal EVERYTHING that wasn't flixed to a wall). I took detailed notes of EVERYTHING they did.
After lunch, the third player joined us, and I set the stage: They were part of the city guard, and tasked to investigate a recent robbery. So the characters were guided to the crime scene, and I repeated, word by word, the same description of the manor I'd given that morning. The two players sat in disbelief, and I winked at them. The third player didn't know anything about this.
The climax happened when they finaly caught the thieves at their base: I took the character sheets off the two players that had been there the whole day, and handed them control over the guilds (player C, who hadn't caught on yet, and me would play the city guards). It was an epic final battle where everything was revealed (in and out of character).
Everyone agreed it had been one of the most fun games they'd ever been at.
Kudos. That was impressive gaming, sir.
The most fun I ever had in-game wasn't technically Pathfinder, but it was a high-fantasy game.
Long Back-story Short: Our kingdom was being invaded by cannibal elves (from space, as we learned later) called Orlocks, and our party was only a day ahead of their invading force, trying to worn every town, ready their defenses, and try and hold the Orlocks off for as long as we could. The towns always fell and we always had to flee eventually, but we knew we were buying time for the capital to prepare to repel the invasion, so it was worth it.
[b']The Set-up:[/b] I was playing an Awakened (animal humanoid) bear named Gronningor.
At one particular town, the lord presiding over it was a stuck up, entitled racist sorcerer that we knew had the resources to protect the people better but he refused to believes the invasion was coming, so we had infiltrate his fortress, disable his elite guard, and signal the dwarf allies waiting outside to take the castle
On a whim, I asked if he had any Awakened wolves in his employ, and curious, the GM decided that most of his palace guard were wolves, so on the spot I made up a huge racial animosity between Awakened wolves and bears.
This combined with my low Appearance (this games version of social Charisma) made it difficult for me to get inside. I had to do embarrassing dances and silently endure ridicule from the wolves so that the party could get inside.
But I knew, somehow, I would have my revenge...
What Happened: As usually happens with stealth missions, things started to go wrong. My half of the group was in audience with the lord, so at the first sign of trouble, I knocked him out cold, piled shit in front of the door, held the lord halfway out the window, and waited.
The wolves eventually broke down the door, but if they shot me, his body would tumble out the window and he would die, so we were at a stalemate.
It was now my turn to make the wolves grovel. I had them dance, bring me berries, and a host of other things. Partly to give the rest of the party time to complete their tasks, but mostly out of spite. IRL, I was having the most intense stare-down with the GM. We were both completely in-character and it was phenomenal.
The bear/wolf rivalry turned into a bigger thing for my character later and had a more profound influence on the plot, but for me, nothing beat that stare-down.
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There are too many to pick just one...
But the most fun I have in game is when everyone just completely snaps into character so well that the real world just melts away. We ARE our characters for hours and it is amazing! I probably would have quit pen and paper rpgs a long time ago if it weren't for these incredible moments in gaming.