The Off-topic Tavern's pretty much for non-D&D stuff... There's already a couple of threads like this in the General Discussion and What's A Player To Do? forums.
On the other hand, my AD&D thief once one-shotted a troll with a death-from-above brain-stab using a borrowed flametongue bastard sword...
On the other hand, my AD&D thief once one-shotted a troll with a death-from-above brain-stab using a borrowed flametongue bastard sword...
Ahem.
"Borrowed"?
I was playing Lord of the Rising Moon (Lorm for short), a sword created by a goddess, infused with the spirit of a turtle, and given sentience (yes, my character was a sword, in case that wasn't clear). Lorm was an entirely defensive sword, he could block or parry nearly any attack on his user (another PC), but was incapable of cutting flesh. The blade would pass through flesh and bone as if it were mist, leaving no mark and effecting it not at all. My user got into trouble, having had his other sword disarmed and lying at the bottom of a cliff.
It was only a matter of time before my user was slain, for while I could stop nearly any weapon attack, I was nearly useless against magic. Flanked by two sword-wielding assassins and with his back to a thousand foot drop, my user was slowly losing hope.
When one of the assassins stepped back and began incanting a spell, all seemed lost. In desperation I screamed "Hit him with my butt!"
That desperate thought earned me a new scabbard when my user and I returned to town.
Ahem.
"Borrowed"?
From the party's fighter, according to the plan... We were hunting trolls in tunnels and the plan was to get the troll to chase me, then run around a corner into a cave and climb the wall over the entrance so the troll ran right underneath me and into the next cave where the party was waiting - I'd then climb down and sneak up on the troll after the fight started and backstab him with the fighter's spare sword...
Slight change of plan - the troll runs into my cave and stops dead right underneath the little ledge I'm on, ten feet above it's head...
It starts sniffing around and I've got about ten seconds to pull a miracle out of my butt (1st Ed. thieves were not melee combatants), so I decided to go out in a blaze of glory (pun intended) - I reverse grip on the sword, throw myself off the ledge and brainstab the troll...
Backstab: +4 to hit...
+1 flametongue: +2 vs. regenerating creatures...
= +6 to hit...
Bastard sword: 2d4 damage, 2d8 damage vs Large creatures...
Max damage rolled: (2d8 +2) = 18 points...
Backstab: x5 weapon damage...
+ 10 ft. of falling damage...
= One very dead troll...
You have to love the OTT. Everyone points out how "this is not the place for this type of discussion then proceeds to discuss it.
One of the best adventures I played was a 2E adventure. Total undead adventure with zombie enfestations, wraiths (hated those things in 2E), vampires, and a lich. Freaking kiler. We had no priest or paladin.
years ago i was playing a half-ogre. these fellows are generally quite large. we were fighting a druid who had enlarged a T-Rex. said T-Rex proceeded to eat me alive.
while i was struggling to cut my way out with my sidearm, the party finished off the druid.
with the druid dead, the GM ruled his magical effects would wear off.
so the enlarged T-Rex began to shrink with a normal-sized me in his belly.
cue chest bursting scene from Aliens but on a MUCH larger scale.
It was her second post.
I thought Kenneth was a male name.
Sasha on the other hand is unisex, it's literally the Russian version of "Alex".
Someone whip him up an OTTer avatar to make ourselves seem friendly.
oh yeah. i forgot...
@Cyrusasha,
For some reason I just find this so adorable.
It's less adorable if the cat forgot to actually kill the mouse and it starts running around your house.
Also, I refuse to change my avatar to an OTTer simply because I've just changed it to a pig (in case you were wondering what the hell was that thing there).
And @Cybersasha: don't worry, it's the nature of the Tavern regulars to derail threads. Probably because of how few new people actually stay here (unlike, for instance, What's a Player To Do which is probably mostly inhabbited by new players).
The fact that OTT is in the D&D part of the forums is also a little misleading, some people here haven't played D&D in years and aren't even familiar with actual contents of the latest edition (I've mostly stopped keeping track myself a few months ago).
It was her second post. We can oblige something silly and off topic once in a while. That undead fight must have been grueling w/o a priest.
Same character from previous my post: He goes Terrasqe hunting every so often as he cannot wish it dead but "it puts up a good fight."
Extremely gruelling. The worst part was fighting the undead with energy drain. We screamed like little girls evertime a vampire of wraith showed up. There was one part where we were chased by around 10 wraiths.
One of the worst adventures I've ever had to play was when one of our friends decided he was going to DM. We started off at first level. It was three of us. I was a human psionicist, my cousin (who was the usual DM) was a human wizard, and our other friend (who was getting some obvious preferrential treatment) was a Quickling Brownie thief. In case you don't remember, those damn things moved so quick they were invisible.
on the other hand
We started out in the middle of a goblin horde attack on the keep we were in. They were easily winning and we were supposed to try to escape. The DM didn't like psionics, so he had a high level wizard wish my class away. I'm left running around with freaking dagger. My cousin's wizard blows his load by shooting his magic missle. so the two of us are just trying to avoid being butchered by the goblins. Fortunately the DM was completely inexperienced and the quickling brownie thief was tearing up everything in his way. So after about 5 minutes of total boredom, my cousin and I just start making jokes about how useless our characters were. after about another five minutes of jokes, the DM and the other player got tired of it and ended the game.
One of the best adventures we played was the one we played 2 minutes after that one ended.
We started out in the middle of a goblin horde attack on the keep we were in. They were easily winning and we were supposed to try to escape. The DM didn't like psionics, so he had a high level wizard wish my class away. I'm left running around with freaking dagger. My cousin's wizard blows his load by shooting his magic missle. so the two of us are just trying to avoid being butchered by the goblins. Fortunately the DM was completely inexperienced and the quickling brownie thief was tearing up everything in his way. So after about 5 minutes of total boredom, my cousin and I just start making jokes about how useless our characters were. after about another five minutes of jokes, the DM and the other player got tired of it and ended the game.
One of the best adventures we played was the one we played 2 minutes after that one ended.
I hope people know what a Xeph is otherwise that makes no sense
I've found it in the online SRD, so I know it's 3.5 stats and what it looks like (a visibly upset half-orc-half-elf with glowing eyes apparently).
And jeeze, ive been a part of so many adventures, its hard to pick a best one, there was the time we had to go back in time and fight the devil, or the time that we "accidently" blew up Mulmaster, or the time we had to travel the planes looking for a 12 pack of Pepsi to give to Elminster so he would give us the artifact we needed to banish the demon that was eating Waterdeep, ahhhh good times, good times.
And speaking of jobs, I really need to get to bed. I pulled sunday duty this week at work.
Show
For a while my group was doing "rounds" of DMs. That is, each person would run a session or two, then hand it off to the next person to continue. How the DM's character was handled varied, sometimes we had them just not talk, only taking part in combat, sometimes they just wandered off for the adventure. Whatever worked. Gentleman's agreement kept the dread "GMPC" problem from coming up. Made for a discontinuous story, but we had fun.
Anyway. During one of the times I was running, I had a fun little dungeon crawl planned. It was to start with the heroes getting to a town that the previous GM had set us toward, running into a young goodly dragon asking for help taking his lair back from a nasty not-good dragon, and then the dungeon crawl that followed. Fairly simple, meant I got to play with traps, kobolds and dragons, and appealed to multiple PCs motives1.
So we get started. The heroes get to town, the see the plot hook2 and... the pixie3 pointed it's rod of wonder at the dragon. It should be noted, at this point, that since the pixie had aquired the rod of wonder two sessions back we'd gotten only frivilous rolls. Flowers, rays of color, things like that. Nothing seroius. Despite this, of course, the druid and the paladin (both for their own reasons) were getting pretty annoyed by the rod, and were trying to get the pixie to stop using it because of it's unpredictable nature.
Anyway. So the pixie points and clicks... and a lightning bolt shoots out, hits the dragon and several of the townsfolk around it, annoying the dragon and killing the peasents. Being quick-thinking, the pixie then created an illusion of an evil wizard nearby with smoking fingers. The dragon hunter plays along, points and says "there he is! get 'em!" The dragon... rolls a 1 on it's sense motive.
And so the dragon believes the ruse, and after the wizard "escapes", gets to give it's plot hook to the PCs and fly off (the PCs didn't bite, at least not strongly. So he was going off to try and find other adventurers to help him). Meanwhile, the druid and the paladin are trying to decide what to do about the pixie who they believed was responsible for the dead villagers (metagaming + rolling a higher sense motive then the dragon).
Well, the characters get to talking... at this point me, the GM, pretty much goes and gets a drink because they're having a lot of fun PC-to-PC RP. It's going interesting... not the session I'd planned, but hey, as long as everyone's having fun, right? Then things get messy. The paladin and druid decide (together) that the pixie rogue must be brought to justice, and that it's promises to not endanger anymore innocents are just a ruse, so they take matters into their own hands. The druid fires an icelance at the pixie.
Misses, naturally. But only by 1. Could've ended there but... the players started saying "well, what does it hit? We were pretty much all in a huddle, after all." "Yeah, I mean, I said my pixie was hiding on [the half-orc's] shoulder." "So there's a chance it hit him, right?" "Sure. I mean, the pixie is about as large as his head, so if it just barely missed the pixie there's a 50-50 it hit him."
Me: "... do you seriously want me to roll to see if you accidentally hit my dragon shaman?"
All: "Yep."
Naturally, it does hit him. And with first blood drawn...
The battle lines end up being paladin and druid vs. dragon hunter, pixie rogue and dragon shaman. Mostly my shaman and the hunter were trying to knock down the druid, hampered by her animal companion and a minion she had4, while the rogue tried to escape, which the paladin and druid managed to stop.
Now, here's where things get worse... the pixie rogue was pretty hardy. It had DR, evasion, natural invisibility, an AC of a miniature god... the druid and paladin couldn't do much to it. What they ended up doing was having the paladin grapple the pixie which (by a houserule) meant it didn't get it's dex bonus to it's reflex saves to outside attacks. Like the druid dropping lightning (courtesy of a call lightning spell) on them both. Which naturally was dropping the paladin's health pretty darn fast too.
Meanwhile the shaman and hunter worked their way through the druid's meat wall.
The point where things went from bad to worse? The druid and paladin finally managed to knock out the pixie. The shaman (my character) was up next... him liking the pixie, and being a bit mentally deficit (yay for dumping int and wis!), thought it was dead. So he berserks pops a few abilities, including his dragon breath (quickened), an ability on his sword, and his own melee attack. The paladin, being low on life from his questionable tactics with the druid, it sent below zero. And being life-challenged, he dusts. And then that nice little cleave feat kicks in, and my shaman gets a crit on the druid dropping her to almost dead too.
On her next turn the druid animal shapes into a cheetah, grabs the unconcious pixie in her mouth, and gets the hell out of dodge.
We did the numbers and saw that there was no way the shaman and hunter were going to catch up with the druid. Especially not when, at a safe distance, she pulls out the scroll of tree stride and gets well outside their ability to track her.
Taking stock of the situation, we saw that we had one PC in the custody of another PC, who was now rather violently estranged from two other PCs, with another PC dead at the hands of the other PCs.
All in all, not the session I had planned. And we had to end it early, seeing as before we continued with the game we had to decide how6. Still, we all had fun. Sometimes the most memorable things are the ones that weren't supposed to happen.
________
1As I recall we had... a human ranger, favored enemy dragons. A half-orc dragon shaman, who was oblivious to his best friends hatred of dragons. A goodly elf druid, who like helping magical good creatures. A complicated paladin5, keen on doing the just thing, and a chaotic little rogue pixie who was always the wild card. The pixie also had a rod of wonder.
2*ahem*, that is, the goodly dragon in the center of town asking for help.
3Egged on by the dragon hunter.
4To make a long story short, a Deck of Many Things was involved.
5And by "complicated" I mean "a funny undead template".
6I ended up handing the reins off to the next GM and we had the story follow the only two living PCs who were both together and not trying to kill eachother, the dragon hunter and dragon shaman7. I think in the next session they got abducted by githyanki along with the other player's new characters8. Fun times.
7Their friendship really did rely on the shaman's noncomprehension of his buddy's motivations and the hunter's inability to actually kill any dragons.
8I think the next session included a out-of-PP psion sitting in the captains chair enjoying a cup of tea while the brutes fought off the last of the enemies, cheering them on from the comfort of the comfy chair. It also included them finding a color pool in the astral sea, whereupon they tied a rope around the shaman and sent him through it. At which point someone chimed in "you know that half those color pools are one-way, right? Cue the next 50-50 dice roll to see if the party is split...
Anyway. During one of the times I was running, I had a fun little dungeon crawl planned. It was to start with the heroes getting to a town that the previous GM had set us toward, running into a young goodly dragon asking for help taking his lair back from a nasty not-good dragon, and then the dungeon crawl that followed. Fairly simple, meant I got to play with traps, kobolds and dragons, and appealed to multiple PCs motives1.
So we get started. The heroes get to town, the see the plot hook2 and... the pixie3 pointed it's rod of wonder at the dragon. It should be noted, at this point, that since the pixie had aquired the rod of wonder two sessions back we'd gotten only frivilous rolls. Flowers, rays of color, things like that. Nothing seroius. Despite this, of course, the druid and the paladin (both for their own reasons) were getting pretty annoyed by the rod, and were trying to get the pixie to stop using it because of it's unpredictable nature.
Anyway. So the pixie points and clicks... and a lightning bolt shoots out, hits the dragon and several of the townsfolk around it, annoying the dragon and killing the peasents. Being quick-thinking, the pixie then created an illusion of an evil wizard nearby with smoking fingers. The dragon hunter plays along, points and says "there he is! get 'em!" The dragon... rolls a 1 on it's sense motive.
And so the dragon believes the ruse, and after the wizard "escapes", gets to give it's plot hook to the PCs and fly off (the PCs didn't bite, at least not strongly. So he was going off to try and find other adventurers to help him). Meanwhile, the druid and the paladin are trying to decide what to do about the pixie who they believed was responsible for the dead villagers (metagaming + rolling a higher sense motive then the dragon).
Well, the characters get to talking... at this point me, the GM, pretty much goes and gets a drink because they're having a lot of fun PC-to-PC RP. It's going interesting... not the session I'd planned, but hey, as long as everyone's having fun, right? Then things get messy. The paladin and druid decide (together) that the pixie rogue must be brought to justice, and that it's promises to not endanger anymore innocents are just a ruse, so they take matters into their own hands. The druid fires an icelance at the pixie.
Misses, naturally. But only by 1. Could've ended there but... the players started saying "well, what does it hit? We were pretty much all in a huddle, after all." "Yeah, I mean, I said my pixie was hiding on [the half-orc's] shoulder." "So there's a chance it hit him, right?" "Sure. I mean, the pixie is about as large as his head, so if it just barely missed the pixie there's a 50-50 it hit him."
Me: "... do you seriously want me to roll to see if you accidentally hit my dragon shaman?"
All: "Yep."
Naturally, it does hit him. And with first blood drawn...
The battle lines end up being paladin and druid vs. dragon hunter, pixie rogue and dragon shaman. Mostly my shaman and the hunter were trying to knock down the druid, hampered by her animal companion and a minion she had4, while the rogue tried to escape, which the paladin and druid managed to stop.
Now, here's where things get worse... the pixie rogue was pretty hardy. It had DR, evasion, natural invisibility, an AC of a miniature god... the druid and paladin couldn't do much to it. What they ended up doing was having the paladin grapple the pixie which (by a houserule) meant it didn't get it's dex bonus to it's reflex saves to outside attacks. Like the druid dropping lightning (courtesy of a call lightning spell) on them both. Which naturally was dropping the paladin's health pretty darn fast too.
Meanwhile the shaman and hunter worked their way through the druid's meat wall.
The point where things went from bad to worse? The druid and paladin finally managed to knock out the pixie. The shaman (my character) was up next... him liking the pixie, and being a bit mentally deficit (yay for dumping int and wis!), thought it was dead. So he berserks pops a few abilities, including his dragon breath (quickened), an ability on his sword, and his own melee attack. The paladin, being low on life from his questionable tactics with the druid, it sent below zero. And being life-challenged, he dusts. And then that nice little cleave feat kicks in, and my shaman gets a crit on the druid dropping her to almost dead too.
On her next turn the druid animal shapes into a cheetah, grabs the unconcious pixie in her mouth, and gets the hell out of dodge.
We did the numbers and saw that there was no way the shaman and hunter were going to catch up with the druid. Especially not when, at a safe distance, she pulls out the scroll of tree stride and gets well outside their ability to track her.
Taking stock of the situation, we saw that we had one PC in the custody of another PC, who was now rather violently estranged from two other PCs, with another PC dead at the hands of the other PCs.
All in all, not the session I had planned. And we had to end it early, seeing as before we continued with the game we had to decide how6. Still, we all had fun. Sometimes the most memorable things are the ones that weren't supposed to happen.
________
1As I recall we had... a human ranger, favored enemy dragons. A half-orc dragon shaman, who was oblivious to his best friends hatred of dragons. A goodly elf druid, who like helping magical good creatures. A complicated paladin5, keen on doing the just thing, and a chaotic little rogue pixie who was always the wild card. The pixie also had a rod of wonder.
2*ahem*, that is, the goodly dragon in the center of town asking for help.
3Egged on by the dragon hunter.
4To make a long story short, a Deck of Many Things was involved.
5And by "complicated" I mean "a funny undead template".
6I ended up handing the reins off to the next GM and we had the story follow the only two living PCs who were both together and not trying to kill eachother, the dragon hunter and dragon shaman7. I think in the next session they got abducted by githyanki along with the other player's new characters8. Fun times.
7Their friendship really did rely on the shaman's noncomprehension of his buddy's motivations and the hunter's inability to actually kill any dragons.
8I think the next session included a out-of-PP psion sitting in the captains chair enjoying a cup of tea while the brutes fought off the last of the enemies, cheering them on from the comfort of the comfy chair. It also included them finding a color pool in the astral sea, whereupon they tied a rope around the shaman and sent him through it. At which point someone chimed in "you know that half those color pools are one-way, right? Cue the next 50-50 dice roll to see if the party is split...
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On topic: This will be my greatest adventure to date!!!
Due to complaints received about this thread, I've closed it. The thread will be reviewed to determine if it should be permanently closed, re-opened, and/or a new thread or threads created in its place.
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