Best action point ever. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Best action point ever. [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
glug
02-26-08, 11:53 AM I'm DMing an Eberron campaign (and have been on and off for a year and a half now), and my players just hit level 10. We normally have about 6-7 people playing, but due to this and that and the plague, we had four people this Sunday. Mmmm a party of four! Things moved fast, it was awesome, and the game was designed as a slaughterfest for the day, as they traveled through the Uluriak Tunnels on their way into Khyber (Explorer's Handbook -> Midpoints -> Katal Hazath (sp) ) to remove a well-guarded and very large Khyber Shard from a cavern where it serves as a 'place of power' for bringing a certain artifact to it's full potential.

Anyway...

After being pummeled that day by a number of things, they finally walk into a large room filled with stalagmites and stalactites, inching around with their torchlight and 60' darkvision to find any exits from the chamber, and suddenly find themselves being dragged across the cavern towards the gaping crystalline mouth of a roper. A number of lucky saves, and it's only the poor wizard who has had his strength sucked down to a mere 3. The others have alternately had trouble sundering or breaking the binds on them, and my barbarian wife, of course, was alternately hacking at the roper and being pulled prone again and chewed on. After our level 10 wizard had failed to effect the roper with a couple of spells (SR 30 is rough!), and everyone was figuring they'd best start digging graves, the wizard finally gives it one more go.

He rolls a 16 on his SR check, and uses an action point, pulling a 6 out of his robe (they did not know the number to hit, just that they were NOT getting through). Amazingly.. he's in! And he beats the ropers save!

Or should I say.. the mouse's save. Baleful Polymorph! He somehow gets extremely lucky and just barely beats the roper's Fortitude save* (it's best save!), and then, through some other miracle, fails to beat it's will save!

Now our beaten and abused adventurers are recovering on the floor of a cavern, deep inside the Uluriak Tunnels, nearing Khyber itself, far from anything resembling normality. And even further from normal is the object in the wizard's hand.

The wizard holds on a (DM)agically elasticized roper tentacle (read: string) a roper-mouse named Puppet. Puppet has all of the (ex) abilities, intelligence, etc. it had in it's former life. Only now, it's a friggen pet mouse. On a string.

From his little extradimensional pocket, our almost giddy wizard pulls out his Construct Familiar, a cat named Sprockets.

Post your own best action point stories. Heroic moments are fun.

*beating the save - we're using some 4E fudge rules to speed the game along, and looking forward to the new system. Save's are thrown by the attacker, so a Roper with a +17 fort save is actually +27, and a spell DC is now d20+spell level+stat modifier
ChaoticGood
03-05-08, 02:31 AM Not exactly an "action point story," but...

I was DMing a party crossing the Silln Highlands in search of a lost d'Orien spice caravan. They were being followed by minions of a long-term villain that I had been very slowly building up, who were equipped with a sandskiff - essentially, a sailboat with earth elemental-bound sled runners. When the minions (a tiefling warlock and 4 svirfneblin fighters) made their move, the party soundly defeated them and took over the sandskiff.

Now, the party's Gnome Bard/Inquisitive had been feeling pretty useless, since the game had more or less become a hack 'n' slash (due to the tendencies of certain other players), so I tried to look for little ways to give him some spotlight time. The sandskiff was one of those ways: it could only be operated by gnome subraces. This "being a good DM" tactic worked out much better than I thought it would.

The next major combat was with a sand dragon (from Sandstorm) which preyed on travelers along the caravan route and just happened to be responsible for the caravan's disappearance. As it burst from its hiding place and made towards the sandskiff, the party scattered, each trying to be as least likely as possible to be the next target of its breath weapon. After scattering the party in different directions, he dragon chased down the spellcasters (a Druid and a Psion), intending to take them out before they could significantly injure him. At this point, the Bard got a bright idea...

The little Gnome scrambled back into the sand skiff and started to sail away at top speed. But as he came to the end of his movement, he executed a smart about-face, pointing the skiff back towards the dragon.

Everyone saw what was coming... except the Psion, who complicated matters by manifesting fly and zipping up into the sky. The dragon, acting later, gave chase, and followed the Psion up to about 60 feet in the air. The poor Gnome was crestfallen! Such a good plan, wasted by such a minor tactical blunder...

Undeterred, the Ranger waved at the Gnome frantically, encouraging him to make the run nonetheless. The Ranger, it seemed, was waiting on him... Intrigued, the Gnome gunned up the elemental and drove the sandskiff up to top speed. And just as he passed the Ranger's hidden position, his friend unleashed his secret weapon... and threw a Quaal's feather token - tree under the front of the sandskiff! The Gnome made an untrained Profession (pilot) check to keep the sandskiff on a straight-line course (a fairly low DC due to lack of wind), followed by a ranged touch attack to hit the flying dragon.

And wouldn't you know it? That little bulbous-nosed circus freak rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll ... and confirmed it ... thus turning what I had calculated as 4d6 damage from the pointed metal bow into 12d6 damage (since piercing weapons generally triple on a critical hit).

This, naturally, drove the sandskiff firmly through dragon's ribcage, knocking him dead immediately. The Gnome survived the fall (and destruction of his sandskiff - or should I say sandscuffed?) by using an action point on a Tumble check, rolling out of the wreckage to execute a perfectly-timed bow in front of his adoring audience of three.

Honestly? One of the greatest battles I've ever DMed, and due entirely to the resourcefulness of my players. :)
Tukadian
03-08-08, 04:45 PM Just wanted to let you guys know that I am yoinking both of your stories to use as flavor in the game I'm running. I'm planning on using them in a newspaper article in the Sharn Inquisitive which is given as a player hand-out, modified to sound in-game of course. I'm sure my players will get a kick out of it.
tos_shai_hulud
03-08-08, 05:16 PM I was playing an Eberron game and the party was approaching 17th level, trying to escape from Xen'Drik. The halfling in the party, Narna d'Jorasco, was being played as a Kender (she had all of the racial abilities of a halfling, but was played as an adrenaline junky as a Ranger 1/Rogue 10/Extreme Explorer 5). The player loved Use Magic Device, but refused to put any ranks into Knowledge: Arcana. In fact, the player prided himself in never knowing what magical item he was using. He would have his character use trial and error in order to determine their "effects". He took Skill Focus: Use Magic Device, Magical Aptitude, and Action Boost. He had a magical item made special for Narna: a circlet of Use Magic Device +15. With his cloak of charisma +6 (the party saw so little of what Narna stole, as she had the highest spot in the party), he had the ability to hit epic levels of Use Magic Device quite easily. Her total bonus was 19 ranks + 15 (circlet) + 5 (charisma) for a total bonus of +39.

I decided to leak a clue about their final enemy, so they found themselves in the floating fortress of a mad fleshwarper who had become more beast than man. The party didn't realize the dire situation they were in and began attacking at will. When they finally realized how in over their head they were, they found that fleeing was no longer a possibility. So, Narna, who had been using every device in her arsonal, decided to use one more. She attempted to Activate Blindly on her legacy item magical ring that I had created for her. The ring provided Luck bonuses on a variety of statistics (from Luck bonuses to AC to Luck bonuses to Reflex saves, etc.)

In all actuality, the skill check likely should have done nothing, but I let him roll anyway. He rolls the d20, and gets a natural 20. Not bad there. He rolls his action point (d8) and gets 8!!! At this point, he has a 67 on his Use Magic Device check. I figure, something should happen, but I need time to figure out what. I'll have everyone roll to give me some extra time, so I had everyone roll a d% to figure out what to do. The same player rolls a 100 on his d%!!! One other player also rolled a 100. I was floored. I had those two roll d% again, and lo and behold, he got ANOTHER 100!!! I was watching, so I know he didn't cheat. I had him roll a third time and I don't remember what he got. It was not consequential. He was nearly jumping out of his seat, everyone was yelling and screaming in amazement at his luck. I did all I could think to do. I said, "Ok, you get a miracle for each 100 that was just rolled. So Narna has two miracles and Jason [the other character who's player rolled a 100] has one!"
Kalthandrix
03-08-08, 10:23 PM Not much of a story, but it did happen today.

I have a fighter 4/dragonmarked heir 3 (mark of the sentinel) and we are in a group of 8 PCs traveling from Stormreach and into the depths of Xen'drik. We have been gone from the city for about a week now and happen to be traveling through a really deep ravine -the path is about 10 feet wide and the slopes on each side of us are a good 40-ish feet high and 70 degree agle up.

Everyone has to make a spot check (and no one makes it), so these harpies come out on us with these HUGE fricken bows and dropping rocks. Well, seeing as how my PC is up front, I get his first - with a natural 20 attack and another nat 20 to confirm the crit. My character has 86 hps - but the crit on the bow rocks me for 40 hps in damage followed by two stones that deal another 4 hps total (and this was just the surprise round!!!!).

As regular initiative starts, we all have to make a Will save as the opener right, DC 16. Well I have a +7 to my Will save and I end up rolling 3 on the die. So, I know it is a slim hope, but I burn an action point...and daddy gets a 6 to bring home the save!

After that the encounter was pretty rough - we are a group that is really melee powerful, but with no archers really to speak of, so needless to say the group of 8-10 harpies really gave us a run for our money seeing as how none of them decided to ever really land :(

Oh - my best roll of that battle just happened as I attempted a fast dismount from my mage-bred heavy warhorse (I REALLY needed to get to our healer) so I ended up rolling a nat 20 for my ride check. We have a house rule that nat 1's are not auto failures, you just subtract 10 from your check, but nat 20's give you a +10, so I got a 43 for my dismount. Can I get a booyah!

:D
korcheck
03-13-08, 02:41 PM While this isn't exactly off topic it also isn't a story of something really cool but rather something I as a DM like to do concerning a AP rolls that still miss the mark. The way I figure, is if some spends the point but still can't make the roll needed then I still try to describe the way the event plays out as dratically as possible. One instance of this was when a pc fighter used one of her points to attempt to jump on to the back of a run away carriages horses from the back of her own horse.

The way I saw it was like this: one untrained (not a war horse) horse at top speed next to 8 maddened horses should be a roll of 25. She rolled a 10 plus 9 for jump and a 4 on her ap just shy of what was needed. So i gave her a rather dramatic version of the events that came next ( I don't remember the details) and how she was able to slow them enough to not harm her but not enough to stop them before she was forced to let go of them and roll away from the wagon wheels.

Basically I'm saying that it is more fun for everyone to go into detail on every ap roll even if they miss the target rather than saying "nope not enough, sorry."

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
glug 02-26-08, 11:53 AM	I'm DMing an Eberron campaign (and have been on and off for a year and a half now), and my players just hit level 10. We normally have about 6-7 people playing, but due to this and that and the plague, we had four people this Sunday. Mmmm a party of four! Things moved fast, it was awesome, and the game was designed as a slaughterfest for the day, as they traveled through the Uluriak Tunnels on their way into Khyber (Explorer's Handbook -> Midpoints -> Katal Hazath (sp) ) to remove a well-guarded and very large Khyber Shard from a cavern where it serves as a 'place of power' for bringing a certain artifact to it's full potential. Anyway... After being pummeled that day by a number of things, they finally walk into a large room filled with stalagmites and stalactites, inching around with their torchlight and 60' darkvision to find any exits from the chamber, and suddenly find themselves being dragged across the cavern towards the gaping crystalline mouth of a roper. A number of lucky saves, and it's only the poor wizard who has had his strength sucked down to a mere 3. The others have alternately had trouble sundering or breaking the binds on them, and my barbarian wife, of course, was alternately hacking at the roper and being pulled prone again and chewed on. After our level 10 wizard had failed to effect the roper with a couple of spells (SR 30 is rough!), and everyone was figuring they'd best start digging graves, the wizard finally gives it one more go. He rolls a 16 on his SR check, and uses an action point, pulling a 6 out of his robe (they did not know the number to hit, just that they were NOT getting through). Amazingly.. he's in! And he beats the ropers save! Or should I say.. the mouse's save. Baleful Polymorph! He somehow gets extremely lucky and just barely beats the roper's Fortitude save* (it's best save!), and then, through some other miracle, fails to beat it's will save! Now our beaten and abused adventurers are recovering on the floor of a cavern, deep inside the Uluriak Tunnels, nearing Khyber itself, far from anything resembling normality. And even further from normal is the object in the wizard's hand. The wizard holds on a (DM)agically elasticized roper tentacle (read: string) a roper-mouse named Puppet. Puppet has all of the (ex) abilities, intelligence, etc. it had in it's former life. Only now, it's a friggen pet mouse. On a string. From his little extradimensional pocket, our almost giddy wizard pulls out his Construct Familiar, a cat named Sprockets. Post your own best action point stories. Heroic moments are fun. *beating the save - we're using some 4E fudge rules to speed the game along, and looking forward to the new system. Save's are thrown by the attacker, so a Roper with a +17 fort save is actually +27, and a spell DC is now d20+spell level+stat modifier
ChaoticGood 03-05-08, 02:31 AM	Not exactly an "action point story," but... I was DMing a party crossing the Silln Highlands in search of a lost d'Orien spice caravan. They were being followed by minions of a long-term villain that I had been very slowly building up, who were equipped with a sandskiff - essentially, a sailboat with earth elemental-bound sled runners. When the minions (a tiefling warlock and 4 svirfneblin fighters) made their move, the party soundly defeated them and took over the sandskiff. Now, the party's Gnome Bard/Inquisitive had been feeling pretty useless, since the game had more or less become a hack 'n' slash (due to the tendencies of certain other players), so I tried to look for little ways to give him some spotlight time. The sandskiff was one of those ways: it could only be operated by gnome subraces. This "being a good DM" tactic worked out much better than I thought it would. The next major combat was with a sand dragon (from Sandstorm) which preyed on travelers along the caravan route and just happened to be responsible for the caravan's disappearance. As it burst from its hiding place and made towards the sandskiff, the party scattered, each trying to be as least likely as possible to be the next target of its breath weapon. After scattering the party in different directions, he dragon chased down the spellcasters (a Druid and a Psion), intending to take them out before they could significantly injure him. At this point, the Bard got a bright idea... The little Gnome scrambled back into the sand skiff and started to sail away at top speed. But as he came to the end of his movement, he executed a smart about-face, pointing the skiff back towards the dragon. Everyone saw what was coming... except the Psion, who complicated matters by manifesting fly and zipping up into the sky. The dragon, acting later, gave chase, and followed the Psion up to about 60 feet in the air. The poor Gnome was crestfallen! Such a good plan, wasted by such a minor tactical blunder... Undeterred, the Ranger waved at the Gnome frantically, encouraging him to make the run nonetheless. The Ranger, it seemed, was waiting on him... Intrigued, the Gnome gunned up the elemental and drove the sandskiff up to top speed. And just as he passed the Ranger's hidden position, his friend unleashed his secret weapon... and threw a Quaal's feather token - tree under the front of the sandskiff! The Gnome made an untrained Profession (pilot) check to keep the sandskiff on a straight-line course (a fairly low DC due to lack of wind), followed by a ranged touch attack to hit the flying dragon. And wouldn't you know it? That little bulbous-nosed circus freak rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll ... and confirmed it ... thus turning what I had calculated as 4d6 damage from the pointed metal bow into 12d6 damage (since piercing weapons generally triple on a critical hit). This, naturally, drove the sandskiff firmly through dragon's ribcage, knocking him dead immediately. The Gnome survived the fall (and destruction of his sandskiff - or should I say sandscuffed?) by using an action point on a Tumble check, rolling out of the wreckage to execute a perfectly-timed bow in front of his adoring audience of three. Honestly? One of the greatest battles I've ever DMed, and due entirely to the resourcefulness of my players. :)
Tukadian 03-08-08, 04:45 PM	Just wanted to let you guys know that I am yoinking both of your stories to use as flavor in the game I'm running. I'm planning on using them in a newspaper article in the Sharn Inquisitive which is given as a player hand-out, modified to sound in-game of course. I'm sure my players will get a kick out of it.
tos_shai_hulud 03-08-08, 05:16 PM	I was playing an Eberron game and the party was approaching 17th level, trying to escape from Xen'Drik. The halfling in the party, Narna d'Jorasco, was being played as a Kender (she had all of the racial abilities of a halfling, but was played as an adrenaline junky as a Ranger 1/Rogue 10/Extreme Explorer 5). The player loved Use Magic Device, but refused to put any ranks into Knowledge: Arcana. In fact, the player prided himself in never knowing what magical item he was using. He would have his character use trial and error in order to determine their "effects". He took Skill Focus: Use Magic Device, Magical Aptitude, and Action Boost. He had a magical item made special for Narna: a circlet of Use Magic Device +15. With his cloak of charisma +6 (the party saw so little of what Narna stole, as she had the highest spot in the party), he had the ability to hit epic levels of Use Magic Device quite easily. Her total bonus was 19 ranks + 15 (circlet) + 5 (charisma) for a total bonus of +39. I decided to leak a clue about their final enemy, so they found themselves in the floating fortress of a mad fleshwarper who had become more beast than man. The party didn't realize the dire situation they were in and began attacking at will. When they finally realized how in over their head they were, they found that fleeing was no longer a possibility. So, Narna, who had been using every device in her arsonal, decided to use one more. She attempted to Activate Blindly on her legacy item magical ring that I had created for her. The ring provided Luck bonuses on a variety of statistics (from Luck bonuses to AC to Luck bonuses to Reflex saves, etc.) In all actuality, the skill check likely should have done nothing, but I let him roll anyway. He rolls the d20, and gets a natural 20. Not bad there. He rolls his action point (d8) and gets 8!!! At this point, he has a 67 on his Use Magic Device check. I figure, something should happen, but I need time to figure out what. I'll have everyone roll to give me some extra time, so I had everyone roll a d% to figure out what to do. The same player rolls a 100 on his d%!!! One other player also rolled a 100. I was floored. I had those two roll d% again, and lo and behold, he got ANOTHER 100!!! I was watching, so I know he didn't cheat. I had him roll a third time and I don't remember what he got. It was not consequential. He was nearly jumping out of his seat, everyone was yelling and screaming in amazement at his luck. I did all I could think to do. I said, "Ok, you get a miracle for each 100 that was just rolled. So Narna has two miracles and Jason [the other character who's player rolled a 100] has one!"
Kalthandrix 03-08-08, 10:23 PM	Not much of a story, but it did happen today. I have a fighter 4/dragonmarked heir 3 (mark of the sentinel) and we are in a group of 8 PCs traveling from Stormreach and into the depths of Xen'drik. We have been gone from the city for about a week now and happen to be traveling through a really deep ravine -the path is about 10 feet wide and the slopes on each side of us are a good 40-ish feet high and 70 degree agle up. Everyone has to make a spot check (and no one makes it), so these harpies come out on us with these HUGE fricken bows and dropping rocks. Well, seeing as how my PC is up front, I get his first - with a natural 20 attack and another nat 20 to confirm the crit. My character has 86 hps - but the crit on the bow rocks me for 40 hps in damage followed by two stones that deal another 4 hps total (and this was just the surprise round!!!!). As regular initiative starts, we all have to make a Will save as the opener right, DC 16. Well I have a +7 to my Will save and I end up rolling 3 on the die. So, I know it is a slim hope, but I burn an action point...and daddy gets a 6 to bring home the save! After that the encounter was pretty rough - we are a group that is really melee powerful, but with no archers really to speak of, so needless to say the group of 8-10 harpies really gave us a run for our money seeing as how none of them decided to ever really land :( Oh - my best roll of that battle just happened as I attempted a fast dismount from my mage-bred heavy warhorse (I REALLY needed to get to our healer) so I ended up rolling a nat 20 for my ride check. We have a house rule that nat 1's are not auto failures, you just subtract 10 from your check, but nat 20's give you a +10, so I got a 43 for my dismount. Can I get a booyah! :D
korcheck 03-13-08, 02:41 PM	While this isn't exactly off topic it also isn't a story of something really cool but rather something I as a DM like to do concerning a AP rolls that still miss the mark. The way I figure, is if some spends the point but still can't make the roll needed then I still try to describe the way the event plays out as dratically as possible. One instance of this was when a pc fighter used one of her points to attempt to jump on to the back of a run away carriages horses from the back of her own horse. The way I saw it was like this: one untrained (not a war horse) horse at top speed next to 8 maddened horses should be a roll of 25. She rolled a 10 plus 9 for jump and a 4 on her ap just shy of what was needed. So i gave her a rather dramatic version of the events that came next ( I don't remember the details) and how she was able to slow them enough to not harm her but not enough to stop them before she was forced to let go of them and roll away from the wagon wheels. Basically I'm saying that it is more fun for everyone to go into detail on every ap roll even if they miss the target rather than saying "nope not enough, sorry."