Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jamie_noone 11-17-05, 01:17 AM	Forgive me if there's already a thread for this. I've seen threads on the coolest thing your character ever did or most heroic deaths that, seriously, are an inspiration for me. This thread, though, is about the brilliant ideas that just didn't work, whether the dice let you down, or your party was misinformed ("turns out fire makes him stronger"), or whatever. For example, our party unknowingly freed a bad guy from imprisonment. He tried to con us into thinking he wasn't evil, and we offered to help him leave the dungeon in which we found him locked up. He didn't realize that we weren't buying it, though. So when we got to the bridge over the boiling tar pit, the party leader subtly signalled for the party barbarian to push him off the bridge into the boiling tar, using the incredible gajillion d6 (exaggerating, I know) boiling tar damage to finish him off, whoever he is. The barbarian rolls a 4, with all other mods and penalties for the enemy, loses the bull rush by 1 point. The vampire (as he turns out to be) turns around, dominates the barbarian, who then kills the party leader and party rogue. The sole undominated party member ran after the others dropped. So we came this close to killing a vampire as easily as a kobold. But instead, we suffered a campaign-ending near-TPK. -jamie
Tibs 11-17-05, 11:20 AM	I don't know if this counts, but here goes: I was playing a halfling Barbarian as a sort of "guest PC" over the summer in one of my friend's games. The party was in the Northern, icy part of the world, hunting down a dwarf-slavery ring (the dwarf of our party, a fighter with 50+ hp that plays like a paranoid thief with less than 30, had been commanded by Morradin himself to do so). We had tracked the head of the operation to a cave complex in the tundra, whereing a goodly number of ogres, orcs, and (somewhere within) a frost giant blackguard. The party had just fought our way past a group of orcs (we tried to sneak in disguised as the hunting party we had ambushed; Rowan was hiding in the gutted corpse of a deer when we were found out), and came upon a large central chamber divided into two levels (really nothing more than a ridge around a large room; we were on the ledge). Below us were maybe three or four ogres, and a couple of orcs; in one corner of the chamber were the slaves. So, we're spotted-one of the surviving orcs had been running away from our dwarf screaming "the Hero is coming, the Hero is coming" (having been forewarned by the god Hextor). Now, everyon is pretty much staying on the ledge, letting the orcs and such come to us by means of a ramp, while also trying to deal with the ogre mage that's flying around(invisible). This seems to be working okay, but Rowan... ...well, Rowan always was a bit proactive. Seeing an ogre just beyond the ledge (about ten, fifteen feet below Rowan's position), our favorite tiny ball of rage decides it time to take the fight to them. He goes into rage, grips his greatsword in both hands, and makes a running leap off the ledge, and onto the ogre's back. Makes the jump check. Makes the balance check. The ogre, not being pleased, attempts to grapple with Rowan (with the halfling at a serious negative, I might add), and this is where I screw up. I forgot to add my improved strength bonus to the check, and failed. Had I remembered, I'd have made it. So, instead of beating off the ogre's meaty fists and stabbing him in the head, Rowan is instead grabbed...and thrown across the cavern. Luckily, the party's bard has been paying attention, and cast feather fall on him; when Rowan sails over the gates to the slave pen and into a pile of Dwarves, he is unharmed. Next round, he's up again and charging the very same ogre that threw him, and I'm loving every minute of it.