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One time, party is fighting a golem with no adamantine weapons. Round 1, the front-liner bullrushes the golem, the cleric stoneshapes a ramp under the golem, the bard casts grease under the golem, and my scout lassos the golem, drinks a potion of enlarge person to octuple my weight, and jumps off the cliff, hauling the golem with me. Rounds 2-5, I used a feather token that had been in my pocket for 5 levels to let me drift down safely.
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Dragonlance stuff under 3.5 rules. At the end of the campaign we were ambushed by the BBEG, who was a SUPREME Dragon (and he was well worthy of that name). The entire world had become a zone of impeded magic. The dragon, on top of all his attacks, was casting 2-3 quickened spell and 4-5 quickened SLA EVERY SINGLE TURN (he was unaffected by the impeded magic; it was his doing, after all).
Our Bard was using UMD with a stolen artifact from the dragon to inflict him (and herself) negative levels; she almost died by her own hand.
The Fighter couldn't land a single blow in all the fight.
The Wizard was unable to cast a single spell (impeded magic, remember?)
The Dragonrider was doing quite well until he was hit by a permanent insanity effect, got his dragon mount killed and caught into a grapple.
My Druid? She shapechanged, charged into his mouth, down his throat and started to blast him from the inside. She had to cope with the automatic grapple, crushing and energy damage, but it was safer in the inside . It was a nice duel with the dragon trying to spit me and I charging again into him every time he spitted me.
At the end we had to retreat and finish him by using our last healing spells... to destroy the dragon's totem. Even though the dragon was a living creature, his magic totem was heavy with necromantic energies, so... Healing spells. With impeded magic. Ouch!!
Three sessions later we managed to kill the dragon. Then the place we were in (a dempiplane with very nasty planar traits) started to crumble. We managed to retreat in extremis. At the end, the dragon mount was the only party loss. It was truly a miracle.
My most memorable encounter might not be as epic as other encounters here but I just loved it because it was really meaningful to my character and had some neat roleplaying in it.
It was in Reign of Winter adapted to a Dragonlance setting. Let's put some background to the story:
I am playing a young changeling witch of elven heritage who was still receiving the call from her mother. Her name is Kileanna (I'm using her name in the forum as I registered to solve a doubt regarding to her xD).
She was raised by her adoptive sister, the slayer on our group, who's called just "Cat".
We had Argentea Malassene from the first chapter with us. GM had remade her a sword and board fighter of solamnic heritage. Oddly enough, Kileanna and her ended being lovers with my character having strong feelings for her.
The last character in the party was a solamnic auxiliary mage, Arthur, an abjurator wizard. He has recently joined the party and he is Argentea's cousin.
My GM had redesigned Artrosa to make it fit my character. He loves to give each player a part of the story that specially fits his character and it was my turn.
First, Kileanna had found her mother, the green hag Grishelmuk, disguised as an elf. She was friendly to her, and Kileanna went to have a private talk with her. Cat wasn't happy, quickly distrusting her. Grishelmuk tried to trick Kileanna to embrace her true self, and she was tempted at first but finally rejected.
Grishelmuk threatened her to change her by the force and told her she was coming back with her coven. Then she casted Invisibility on her and left, knowing that she couldn't confront her rebel daughter alone. I had many ways to deal with her so I could probably have taken her easily while she was trying to leave, but Kileanna wasn't willing to turn on her own mother and let her leave.
So now we have the whole hag coven reunited and plotting against us.
GM didn't want to use Jadrenka as a deux ex machina against the coven and he thought we were resourceful enough to take them on our own.
So we went on with the dungeon crawl and finally found the three hags reunited and prepared against us.
Arthur was invisible as he always is (we are starting to think he is not real, even though we often hear spells being casted and magic happening around us).
I had flight and prehensile hair activated.
Arthur casted haste on us.
I casted Silence on Argentea's sword and she quickly approached the hags to prevent them from casting. She was stuck on melee with Caigreal, as Silyzil was out of reach. Cat engaged Grishelmuk in combat without a shade of doubt and struck her remorselessly.
Arthur went on using battlefield control spells and dispels while our melees were affected by a waves of fatigue spell and were mostly unable to hit the hags.
I used UMD to cast a lesser restoration from a scroll and hold the touch in my hair.
Meanwhile, Silyzil and Caigreal hurt Argentea badly. She only survived because she had advanced armor training that allowed her to redirect damage to her shield.
I cast lesser restoration on her. Silyzil then attacked Argentea, who was already badly injured and completely charred her.
Kileanna went completely berserk, and with a cry that couldn't be heard went for Caigreal, who as a part of her turn tossed Argentea's sword away.
Forgetting all defensive abilities, Kileanna started delivering touch spells like crazy for the rest of the battle and got almost killed but managed to defeat Caigreal (who was fallen but not killed).
Meanwhile, Cat defeated Grishelmuk and remorselessly coup-de-graced her. Kileanna saw it and felt nothing. Silyzil was hitting Cat badly, so Arthur told her to run from the room and set an illusory wall of don't remember what to prevent her of being followed and saving her life.
Kileanna went on with Silyzil and finished her with touch spells. The fight was over. Kileanna calmly approached Caigreal, and stabbed her to death. It must be said that she had always been strongly against killing fallen enemies so the party was shocked.
Jadrenka appeared, sensing her mother's death, but she wasn't quite happy. She wanted us to know what we had done to Marislova (we had taken her to the fields outside of Artrosa). When we told her she left to confront Marislova. We followed her.
It was tense. We thought we were going to have to fight her.
"Don't be an idiot, Jadrenka" cried Kileanna. "Don't lose her. I've lost someone I love today. I'm not letting you to do the same!"
We convinced Jadrenka to listen. It took about 15 minutes of heavy roleplaying to convince Jadrenka but Marislova and her finally were together again and Jadrenka was really grateful.
She finally cast a Resurrection spell on Argentea and brought her back from death.
I love how our GM managed all this part. Instead of making the fight easier by having Jadrenka help us he let us fight on our own and gave us an epic fight. Then we could have Jadrenka's help to deal with the consequences of the fight but didn't reward us from the very beginning. Instead, he gave us a great roleplaying scene where we could talk our ways into any reward we could get.
It was wonderful.
Whew! It was too long! I've put a lot of useless info but I didn't know what to cut.
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As a curious thing, I was the GM in Dalindra's story and he was the GM on mine.
The players were not the same. In Reign of Winter, as you can see, we have a much more coordinated group.
We were playing a homebrew in a town that was a bit creepy, we slowly worked out that the population was being replaced by Doppelgangers so our party (Me a Mesmerist, A flame Sorc a Cleric and a Magus) went to the local church to deliver this information and to go purge the doppelgangers living in the sewers (we had found them there earlier).
The Sorc being paranoid refused to go upstairs to see the monks so she waited downstairs, we came down 5 minutes laters with our new 2 monks and a priest buddies to find that said sorc was gone and there were signs of a struggle.
So we hurried down into the sewers hoping she'd be taken hostage and not killed, we found in the central chamber a paladin (who we'd come to the town looking for) and 6 to 8 dopplegangers I can't quite remember the numbers but a lot basically. At the other end of the room was our sorc tied to a table looking very virginal sacrafice ish. So we cast shield on ourselves (the magus has a wand) and then combat began, I cast vanish on myself having top initiative and ran off to go untie the Sorc. Meanwhile all the monks the priest and our cleric ALL TURNED ON THE MAGUS very stressful stuff. So he rand away basically and ate a lot of attacks of opportunities.
Some Dopplegangers got burned by burning hands from the sorc and I tried a color spray but it quickly became apparent being outnumbers 3 to 11 or something close that we weren't in a winning situation the sorc started spamming grease and the Magus spaffed a deeperdarkness racial spell like ability me and the Sorc escaped into a side passage and the magus just about managed to find his way to us somehow.
We ran off down the tunnel to find their dungeon, and our cleric tied up and naked! all very dramatic, so we untied him only to find that his clone (who was AC focused) and a couple other Dopplegangers at the top of the stairs holding crossbows, he plopped down his tower sheild and they started taking pot shots down the now greased stairs at us whilst covered by the shield.
I made an acrobatics check (whilst invisible) to get back up the stairs grabbed the shield and rolled a nat 20 to get back down the stairs, the GM ruled that I legolased down the stairs surfing the shield but no-one could see me ;-;
after a rather boring me missing him and him missing me in a 5ft corridor affair whilst the cleric healed me and the sorc took pot shots at the cross bow dudes standing behind the AC cleric guy we finally murdered all of them and things were looking up.
Once we'd finally won that we ran out to find the town had been burnt down and the remaining Dopplegangers had fled to another town
about 5 sessions later we finally killed them where in another town it turned out they'd installed themselves in government so we ended up being local heroes xD
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Lvl 2 barbarian. We were attacked by a swarm of 40 monkeys. The GM ruled that there were so many that they didn't roll to hit, only damage. Well our bard ran away. Our paladin power attacked and killed six monkeys. Then my barbarian charged in and smacked the swarm for 20 damage. The GM looks crestfallen (the barbarian had one shotted the last two encounters) and describes how a dozen monkeys simply fell in half. The next round the barbarian wades into the swarm and kills another dozen. Our Magus then unleashed an electric blast that took down another half dozen, and the bard shot down three more.
The last surviving monkey fled. It turned around, looked right at my barbarian, and gestured at him in a way which said 'I've got my eyes on you.'
That monkey made an appearance in the final fight. While my barbarian was killing a construct monkey guardian of a temple they were looting, a coconut hit him in the head. You can guess who threw it. Damn monkey.
When all was said and done, our GM informed us that while we completed the scenario we didn't get the blessing of the monkey God. I'm not sure why...
AD&D 2ndEd
Me: 13th lvl (NG)Fighter, main weapon Vorpal Sword.
Buddy: 15th lvl Paladin, we are separated from the rest of the party by the DM - truly separated, not just "different levels of a dungeon."
All the other details do not matter - with the exception that both of us rose from 1st lvl to our stature over two years of play.
My Fighter missed a save vs Charm & Suggestion and was dominated. Told to attack the Paladin.
I got initiative. I rolled a 19 to hit. Headless Paladin corpse and no access to resurrection/reincarnation/ANYTHING.
My buddy refused to give up the character sheet
Lvl 2 barbarian. We were attacked by a swarm of 40 monkeys. The GM ruled that there were so many that they didn't roll to hit, only damage. Well our bard ran away. Our paladin power attacked and killed six monkeys. Then my barbarian charged in and smacked the swarm for 20 damage. The GM looks crestfallen (the barbarian had one shotted the last two encounters) and describes how a dozen monkeys simply fell in half. The next round the barbarian wades into the swarm and kills another dozen. Our Magus then unleashed an electric blast that took down another half dozen, and the bard shot down three more.
The last surviving monkey fled. It turned around, looked right at my barbarian, and gestured at him in a way which said 'I've got my eyes on you.'
That monkey made an appearance in the final fight. While my barbarian was killing a construct monkey guardian of a temple they were looting, a coconut hit him in the head. You can guess who threw it. Damn monkey.
When all was said and done, our GM informed us that while we completed the scenario we didn't get the blessing of the monkey God. I'm not sure why...
Loved this one! The last monkey surviving and coming back later in the boss fight is what really makes it epic!
Sounds like one of those encounters that can be deadly and hilarious at the same time. Swarms at lvl 2 can be quite a pain in the ass!| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Several most memorable ones...
The final encounter in our Age of Worms game. This one was memorable for the tactical complexity and the moral complexity.
Most of these are less tactically challenging and more interesting for the impact on character.
This encounter was pretty memorable low level one. I had a goblin fire department, since one of my locations included Freeport. So the PC ran into a fire department that was looting and eating pets in addition to saving babies. That fire department included her goblin crew, one of whom surprised her by acting heroic due to having been given a battering ram during a moment of terrible judgment by that PC. Her look when her goblin crewman said, "Me go save babies" made it worth it.
I had another great encounter of a duel between a PC and an actor, after she discovered he was the solution to the murder mystery, as he was killing people to advance extras who practiced his Method acting style into lead roles to promote his artistic philosophy. The fact that she had slept with the murderer--and that he had been disappointing in bed--made it particularly personal.
The hill billy horror cabin of the Hook Mountain Massacre adventure. Whoo-boy. Horrifying as a player, as I got captured. Awesome as a repurposed shrine to Lamashtu where Mammy Graul fought, naked and pregnant, in a pool of Lamashtu's vile mother's milk.
The time the party went up against a "fully armed and operational" 3rd edition battle cleric.
This whole module. But I modified it one way. The cover character had his equipment modified a bit. His swords were supposed to be invisible blades, but I changed them to have an illusion of a rubber chicken and a bowling pin. The boots of the elvenkind became the clown shoes of the elvenkind too.
I think the one that probably stands out immediately would be during my 3.5 (well, 3.Aotrs, really) conversion of Dragon Mountain (for a 16th to epic level party, not the module'sorignal 1-10), during which the PCs fought Clan Blood. In the original book, Clan Blood were described as "having a higher proportion of casters," so I took that and rather tan with it...
What we ended up with was the single most complicated, longest combat I've ever had in twenty-five years of roleplaying, with 24 enemy casters, plus ten martial adepts and a pair of casters and martial adepts.
The protagonists:
The Orb Slayers:
Sir Conrad the Wizard (Mostly human (long story...) Wizard 17 with his micro-dragon cohort, Snowball)
Sir Melchiah Turel (Tiefling (homebrew +0 LA) Ranger 6/Fighter 8/Deepwodd Sniper 2/Crusader 1)
Sir Vanda (Human Fighter 17)
Lady Gabrielle (Human Monk 17) Yes, as in that Gabrielle, of Xena fame (or at least her clone...)
Sir Drobar (Barely Human (don't ask...) Rogue 17)
Sir Telermar Mandis (Human Cleric 17)
Verses:
The religous fervour of Clan Blood!
(These were a homebrew Kobold race; mechanically identical to normal Kobolds except they were Goblinoids and not draconic.)
Clan Blood's mighty chief: Galatak (Cleric 20)
One Warlock 16
Four Cleric 3/Egoist 3/Psychic Theurge 8
Two Dread Necromancer 13, plus their Quasit familiars and 144 zombie rats (and four summoned Wyvern Zombies)
Four Ardent 13s
Ten Cleric 13s
Two Sergeants (Divine Mind 12)
Two Sergeants (Kobold Crusader 8/Blackguard 4)
Ten Crusader 10s
and fifteen more-or-less superflouous Fighter 8s (who ended up being archery support and, not being specialist archers, not being very good at it!)
The Battle:
The Orbslayers wandered into a huge amphitheatre, with an altar in the middle and four entrances at the cardinal directions. While they prodded the altar and wondered who it was too, Clan Blood made their frantic buff preparations out of sight. Then they threw open all four doors and rolled down the oil barrels, as well as released the jets of oil to flood the lower portion of the chamber. Then the battle started in earnest.
Wisely, the Orbslayers fell back to the entrance they'd come in, out of the now flaming oil. Their retreat was cut off early on by Galatak dropping a Blade Barrier behind them. This meant that Clan Blood were forced to close in (the Clan being deployed more-or-less evenly at each of the four doors), and meant that a lot of the spellcasters had to spend precious time moving into Close range (the room was about 150' or so in diameter). Telemar's first action was probably the single best move in the entire battle, casting Sublime Revelry. This had the effect of reducing melee and ranged damage to half and, equally as important, stymied half of the various psions mind-attack powers (to my dismay!)
It was a very bitter and hard-fought battle, with several of the party going down and up, and nearly as many from the enemy (who had Heal galore themselves!) Gabrielle was an absolute menance, deftly enlarging herself and proceeding to trip the poor charging crusaders - and anyone else unfortunate to get close - and pummelling them to bits. Given the obcene amounts of kit the Orbslayers had, that extra -4 to attack also meant that the meleers were pretty much negated.
The climax of the first session was, at the end of the round, the flying, invisible Warlock knocking out Vanda's Sublime Revelry with a Ravenous Dispellling and Galatax hitting him with a sucessful Dominate Monster.
Fortunately - for them, more's the pity! - Telemar, whose action was just ahead of Vanda's manged to Dispel it the next week.
Melchiah, as usual, did horrendous amounts of damage, managing at one point to floor Galatax, even through his Stoneskin! This earned him four maxed-out Energy Rays from the furious Ardents; one missed - three hit. He has a paltry SR 15 from some item or another, which he finally remembered to use. I rolled - and got a 1! Because of their level (13) one of the silly sods actually failed to hurt him! Actually, this was good for Melchiah, as 26D6+26 was enough to take him down; 39D6+39 would have killed him! (Obviously, we use death at - 1/2 hit points, not -10. At this level ten hits is literally nothing.) Once they got him back up, his effectiveness was a bit stymied towards the end, when Telermar and one of the Clerics put up Wall of Fire and Wall of Lightning (for differing reasons), effectively hemming the party in. Arrows do not do well going through (as they take fire damage - at least that's how we play it) and he wasn't willing to risk his highly expensive returning arrows!
He did get to use his +4 Heal check at the last though, when as the last two Ardents got nasty and desparate, and spammed Energy Wave in sucession on the party, knocking out both Telermar and Conrad, the only other two members of the party stuck between two elemental walls and the Blade Barrier...
They finally took Galatax down at the end of last week, and the surviving divine casters had actually ran out of heals! Just to make sure though, Drobar took the AoO to coup de grace him...better safe than sorry...
Conrad's most amsuing moment was using Reverse Gravity, causing half the Ardents and several clerics to slam into the ceiling. (To my utter delight, and to the praise of the module author, the cross-section picture on the room was in scale with the map; making calculating damage a snap.) The Ardents, not being daft, used Immovability to dig into the ceiling, while the one Psychic Theurge carefully levitated down; just in time for Gabby to run up and smack him to death.
Vanda, as usual, spent most of the combat slicing the poor fools unfortunate to get close enough to him to bloody ribbons.
The man (or in this case equivilent thereof) of the match award, however, has to go to Snowball, Conrad's micro (good-aligned) White Dragon. Trapped outside the Blade Barrier with one of the Psychic Theurges, she held him off for most of the ten rounds of the combat. Not at all bad, for saying she's only 12 HD and only her bite could penetrate the Kobolds DR 6/Good from Righteous Might. Fortunately for her, the Theurges were set up for melee-buff and support, and didn't have any offensive spells worth speaking of. Still, only her stupidly high AH of 45 saved her (and the theurge was attacking at +33/+33/+28/+23 and D4+17 damage...) And even then, only Sublime Revelry saved her skin! That theurge was the last one to go down, actually; once the rest of the threats died, Gabby and Melchiah rushed through the Blade Barrier, both having Evasion and stupid reflex saves (Melchiah's Evasion from a ring). They took him out in short order; though not before, to my great amusement, for the first time in the combat Gabby actually failed to trip and got knocked flat!
The "most usless worm" award has to go to the Kobold fighters. As 8th level generic Kobolds, not the Archer or melee specialists I'd been mostly using, they were best in melee, but ended but being fire support from the entrances. Five of them died when Telemar blinded most of the east flank with a Sunburst. The others desultorily fired at Conrad, until they realised that Reverse Arrows is not funny when you're on D6+2 damage... They spent the rest of the combat shooting at targets of opportunity; sadly, mainly Gabby, whose insane AC, plus her Deflect Arrows meant she barely notied. Then, when those Walls came up, they were reduced to literally cheering on the survivors! In the penultimate round, they actaully managed to hit Drod...once. Despite him being only AC 29 and them being on +18/+13... Then, as the last Ardent went down, and Telermar dropped a Blade Barrier on five of them, they decided discretion was the better part of valour and ran like buggery.
Conclusion
It was an amazingly tense fight. I admit, with this many casters, I did have to hold back on going for the kill from the get-go. Otherwise, it would have been a curb stomp (it's the BBEG v party problem only in reverse). I got a few Destructions off (all unsucessful!), but I didn't, for example, hit ten off simultaneously, nor in the end, did I use some of Galatax's worst area-effect spells. The rationale being, to start with, he and Clan Blood underestimated the Orbslayers. He was actually just about to cast Mass Harm on his next action - which by this point would have been very, very bad for the PCs, when he was finally killed. (Sigh. So close!) That said, he was buffed up for getting to smacking range. With various spells; he was on +39/+39/+34/+29/+24 (D6+20+D6 Fire, 19-20) with his Flaming Shortspear +4!
I wasn't trying for a TPK, of course, merely a very serious challenge. I didn't really play to the hilt with anyone until the last minute, though, when the Ardents started getting nasty (now that they were actually in range...) Also, with that many NPCs to control, I erred on speed and easily resolved action in most cases.
It was a grand experiment, and much fun was had by all. Everyone contributed - a lot - and it was a great and memorable fight. I've probably not covered half of the stuff that happened! It's not an experiment I think I shall repeat, mind - it was a bit too complex, even for me! (We managed, like two rounds each in the first two sessions; until the PCs had slaughtered the bit count down!)
Keep on the Borderlands, 1st level. 2nd edition, I think.
My epic battle.
We are entering someplace, and just began to mix it up, when in the side come marching in 16 kobolds (? some easy critter) with spears in a 4x4 formation. I have a caster, and on my turn, I cast Hold Person [4-target option]. I luck out, and the front rank suddenly stop. Then the next line in the formation is unable to stop and their spears plow into the front rank, killing them. This causes them to halt. Rank three does the same to the second rank. Rank four then finishes off the third.
One control spell killed twelve enemies at once.
My party's epic battle.
We are about to check out the moat house. Up pop the enemy: a weak dragon. Way to powerful for us, but the wizard took a chance. He readied a summon monster spell. Wait for it.... The dragon then took a deep breath, and we knew we were about to get crispy. Just then the wizard releases a summoned octopus, right on the dragon's mouth. It's instinctual action was to grasp tightly, causing it to hold the dragon's mouth shut just as it let loose.
You know what it feels like to stifle a sneeze? Add a bunch of burning fire, and that dragon collapsed dead.
We were less experienced, and didn't know the rules all that well, but we had fun.
/cevah
We had split up the party... as you can guess, it got worse from there. It was myself (the bard), the fighter, and an NPC mage who were suddenly set on by the WHOLE Thieves Guild. Well, maybe not all of them, but a very large group of them. What we didn't know was that the goal of the encounter was for us to fail, be captured, and talk to the High Thief. So, we were fighting like our lives depended on it. The Mage, down to single digit hit points and a somewhat disposable NPC, takes his staff of power and snaps it. The resulting explosion takes him out, as well as a full quarter of the remaining thieves because they were quite injured. It's enough to make everyone pause.
My bard thinking fast, reaches for a recently recovered treasure of a magical rod that hasn't been identified and holds it out before him with both hands and shouts. "I may die, but I'm taking as many of you (expletive deleted) with me!" Rolling his bluff check, he got a natural 20. The Thieves got wide eyed, none of them wanting to be blown up, and backed away. With an opening from being surrounded available, my bard and the fighter took off to rejoin the rest of the group.
As a humorous post-script, the mage didn't die, either. The game master had rolled the results of breaking the staff and he had been transported to another plane of existence. Not that we ever saw him again.