D&D Shenanigans

[EVILNess]

Originally Posted by Vauron

Wouldn't the crystals act like pillars and keep you from getting that power you have been striving for? Or do they intentionally lack that feature?

To an extent maybe, but their area of affect is rather small and I'd rather have to destroy something I have direct access to than wake up in a lava pit from an elemental plane of fire.

[Meister]

Had a pretty cool end-of-campaign battle yesterday, us against an ancient god manifesting in mortal form in preparation for his return. My character setup, equipment, and the dice all worked out completely in my favour.

[D&D 3.5, level 15 Duskblade. Equipment includes an armor that multiplies any lightning damage I take by 1.5, but also a sword that lets me absorb lightning damage as healed HP. We explicitly ruled that the multiplication comes in before the absorption. Effectively, any time lightning hits me for 20 damage, I heal 30 instead.]

First round I waltz in and critically hit with a maximized Vampiric Touch. 84 damage right there, 84 temp HP for me. Off to a good start right away.

The fun started once he broke out a Hellball. Epic spell, massive damage made up from various energy types in equal measure. His first one does 90 damage.

Everyone: :gonk:
Me: Oh what a terrible shame all my temporary hit points are gone. I AM NOT IMPRESSED, GOD.

... Hang on, part of Hellball damage is lightning, right?
DM: :stressed:

1/3 fire, 1/3 cold, 1/3 lightning, in the end it turns out I take only 1/6 damage of every Hellball he churns out. This had a certain effect on the rest of the battle and got almost unfair once I cast Protection from Energy on myself to negate the fire and cold damage.

DM: Okay everyone, Reflex saves!
Me: Yeah I made mine but if this is another Hellball I stand there and take it. I could use some healing anyway.

[EVILNess]

That was totally your DM's fault.

If I were DMing your Vampiric Touch wouldn't have worked, and his attacks would not have had an element.

[Nikose Tyris]

For those of you familiar with Forgotten Realms, there is an adventure line starting with "Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave".

THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS, guys. I don't think it's truly 'spoiler-text' worthy, since it details OUR adventure- but if another DM picks up this book, it'd be pretty ruined for you.

Anyway!



Cormyr begins with a strange temple to Mystra. Our group- a Hellbred Paladin, Human Monk, Wild Elf Ranger, and Human Shadowcaster - Are in town on request of an Itinerant Cleric of Mystra, who supposedly was attacked at the temple. We get to town, sort through shit, find out that it's Sharrans posing as Mystrans and screwing with the system, kidnapping people.

We follow the trail to a keep in the Vast Swamp, and find a portal to the plane of shadow. We fought our way through to a Monastery where we found a LG Knight, tied up to the ceiling, guarded by a Gloom Golem. (They grabbed the Knight and ran like cowards.)

The Knight joins the party.

They work through the shadow plane and approach the lair of the mastermind- who turns out to be a dragon! It launches surprise attacks at the party occasionally, just swooping in, taking a few shots and flying off.

The group finds Tapestries of Shadowy Flight- Essentially, Carpets of Flying that power off for 24 hours if exposed to bright light. Darkness Dragon popped a daylight spell and made most of the group plummet to the earth.

Eventually reaching the dragon itself, he laughs at them and their attempts to assail him.

Favourite line from the fight:

Dragon: "Who here is the brave champion of the group?!"

Fitz (Hellbred Paladin): "I-"

Rachel (Knight): (Cutting off the Paladin) "I AM!" And streaks forward with her spear.

Dragon: Boop!" *beam of darkness from crystal shard around dragon's neck* "Undead."

Rachel (Knight): "...FUCK!"

DM: "You are now lawful evil."

Rachel: "...FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK."

Fitz (Paladin): "...Well, you're going to be killed by me later."

Rachel: "Let's kill HIM first, then we'll work out our differences."

Cut to 26 round fight with the dragon, with many near-deaths, and a final victory. Dragon is down. Dragon gets skinned.

Characters are about to start fighting their way out.



There have been 4 times the Hellbred rightfully SHOULD have died. I should have killed him many times. But he just looks SO SAD every time I'm about to finish him, I end up throwing the attack elsewhere, or making up some bullshit to make the big enemy attack miss. I know I shouldn't but the hellbred is the only character in the group that doesn't make me FRIGHTFULLY ANGRY.

[Meister]

This happened a while ago but it was pretty exciting. D&D 3.5, party setup: swashbuckler (me), cleric, assassin, scout, bard, halfling wizard, occasionally a druid.

We'd come across a city where a magical disease that turned victims into undead and that had devastated the lands centuries ago was still going strong. The city itself was deserted (save for the zombies), some of us actually caught the disease (my swashbuckler was rendered immune by a well-timed natural 20 on a Fortitude check, not that I want to brag, you understand), but worst of all, our wizard suffered a teleport mishap and he and the druid ended up in the local wizard tower. We made our way in and discovered that this tower had once been a large wizard academy, quite possibly the largest and most advanced in the land (certainly the most advanced we'd ever seen). It was impossibly tall, but of course wizards can hold a tower up with magic! Several floors up, we found the library, stuffed to the brim with by now incredibly rare and valuable books.

The tower was as deserted as the rest of the city, but we actually met someone there, a young wizard who had set up camp here two months ago to research the disease and had made quite a bit of progress. After a bit of chat, we explored a bit more.

The first thing that went wrong is when we discovered a secret passage to a sealed room with a banshee in it. After the assassin had already triggered a trap on the way that I took the full force of, she closed the door behind me after I went in with the banshee. That was character death #1.

After they revived me we continued on. We were by now looking for the tower's control room to shut off a magical alarm system we'd triggered coming in, and we found it, but it was full of animated suits of armour programmed to defend the room. Character death #2 occurred when the wizard cast a maximized fireball into the control room and disrupted the focus point of all the magic energy in the tower. The cleric dropped, we revived her (Wish item, for those keeping track).

It was then that we heard creaking and felt vibrations and it occurred to us that "all the magic energy in the tower" would logically include that magic energy that was put here to keep the tower from falling over. In light of this, we decided to abandon our plan of exploration and adapt a new strategy of running to the nearest window and jumping the fuck out of it.

We ran. First to the library, to grab the young wizard. Then another two floors down to the window. We saw the tip of the tower go past, made some hasty preparations for jumping out of a window 400m high, and went for it. Most of us had magical flight; I myself opted for an improptu combination of a Rope of Climbing and two Immovable Rods, which I had bought for precisely such an occasion and which held up me, the bard and the wizard we'd met very well. The only one who wasn't protected was our wizard. He plummeted right into the debris of the tower's tip, which had by now become a zone of completely wild magic.

Character death #3 right there. A Disintegrate area effect is not to be trifled with.

So we made our way down and were greeted by a curious sight. In a bed of flowers, there was an elf, alive but unconscious, and wearing, or much rather not wearing, what had once been our halfling's robes. Apparently, when a wizard academy gets destroyed, Reincarnation is on the list of random magic effects. And the only thing heard was the voice of a swashbuckler.

"Tell me he didn't survive it! Please! Give me at least that!"

tl;dr: walked into wizard academy, found immeasurably valuable equipment and library, blew it the fuck up

[katiuska]

Years ago, one of my friends played a monk that liked to riverdance on the bodies of the newly fallen; his career came to an abrupt and hilarious end when he tried this on the body of a troll.

Later on, a conversation about hobbit riverdancing led to a conversation about hobbit ballet, and I suddenly got the idea to make a halfling ballerina. Named Tony Danza.

EDIT: There was another time someone decided to solve a problem by repeatedly summoning a low level bird demon and plucking out its eyes, but it was so long ago that I can't remember what he was even trying to accomplish.

[krogothwolf]

This was a comedy of errors. It really was. It all happened in one session. We are a 5 man strong adventuring troop. A Wizard, A cleric, 2 fighters and a thief.

At the start of the session was we had gotten ambushed by Giants( we all failed out spot and listen checks a total of 6 times) and we were fighting pretty well. We had our wizard fall fighting the last giant and hits -2 HP. Our cleric was up next after me and was standing next to the fallen guy. I came in charging at the Gaint and....critically failed.....and failed so bad I threw my sword 20 feet in past the giant....and skewered the fallen wizard with my sword. The rest of the party finished off the giant. Guy rolls up a new character fairly quickly and we get to the point were we are suppose to meet him and the bottom of a cliff. We couldn't find a way down so were were going to climb down using a rope. The rope snaps and he falls to his death while holding a device that should it break it'll cause a massive explosion. In the fall...it breaks...causing a massive explosion. The explosion takes out the entrance to the dwarf hold we were suppose to go through. That's all right...there is another way in. We search and find our way in. Our thief goes in first and usually checks for traps before entering such things, he forgets to. Triggers a trap and gets killed by falling rock. Just me and the cleric left. Not to bad, we can make it easily enough all we have to do is make it to the dwarf hold and we'd be able to rest in piece. We head off down the tunnel and come across a battle site. Cleric decides we should investigate, we find some goblins and we fight them. Cleric trys to smack a goblin with the torch. Critically fails, torch gets thrown across the room. We our now fighting blind, in a tunnel, with holes around the area. We killed most of the goblins and then the cleric 5 foot steps away from one to heal...only to fall down a hole to his death, with the map. Alright, so now it's just me. I light a new torch and head off. I get lost. I find a whole smack load of orcs. I didn't survive the encounter.

Game Over

[Aerozord]

We were playing an Alchemic Exalted game, our mission was to rescue a captured oricalcum class and stop whatever plans the apostate has. After an extensive plan they hit the climax with the apostate, whom I think was a collosus judging by his size.

Anyways everyone else was inside the factory organ, while I was keeping an eye on things with my mobile eye drone. I was the one that infiltrated the place so I didn't have any combat charms to fight with. Forcing me to stay back on our flying skiff to handle extraction. Turns out their plans were to escapte the machine god we lived in by punching a hole in him, which would probably kill everyone still inside. So he blasts a hole in the roof and starts flying away.

I think, we cant let him get away with those plans. So I rev up the skiff and fly over there at top speed. I time it so just as he gets out BAM rams right into him. A split second before "FOR THE COLONY" I jump off and grab the plans just as he loosens his grip. Problem was I was a good 100ft in the air, and to be honest a few good rolls are the only reason I got this far. He shoots me and my determination to hold onto those plans is all that keep them in hand as my nearly dead body falls. Luckily my team has my back and catches me and we all escape.

Not bad for a starting character

[DarkDrgon]

the newest in my trend of Nintendo-themed games features pokemon.

In a world, where immeasurably strong creatures follow fleshy bags of meat, 2 cultures war for dominance!

The party is mostly non-gamers, so its starting off fairly simple. start in Johto, stiop team rocket. once they hit level 2..... Invaders from across the sea come, bringing more actual D&D into the game.

[wx4caster]

ok, so i havent played much d&d since 2nd addition, and i was nearly always the DM (i was the only one who would take the time to prepare shit... so yeah)

anyway i was running a party of 4 through a home made side quest to level them a notch or two so that i could run them through a forgotten realms campaign withouth them being too squishy. i was being fairly generous, knowing they would be a little under manned and under leveld for the biggun, and i happened to make an awful oopsie!

i let the halfling have a ring of wishes, with 6 wishes stored (man he had the luckiest rolls, and if i remember right it was more and i said no... anyhoo) this guy was always a pain in the royal ass to have in a campaign as he always had to fight the system, and for him to have this ring was even worse. in the first hour of getting the ring (and it came with directions, loooonger story there) he managed to conjur more gold than the party could carry (i am ashamed to tell you how much) summoned a frick load of nasties which nearly killed the entire party (oh how i should have killed his ass, but i get mine in the end) and turn the entire party against his characters to the point that they are plotting his death in secret.

so they get him to chill out with the ring ( or be skinned alive and dipped in salt) and the manage to the lake with the city they are trying to reach (shich is floating above the center and unreachable by general means... he he he)

they set up camp, and begin to plan and dig through what they have to find a way in. (now mind you i have been trying everything short of simply taking this ring to get it to become "lost") and the most wonderful thing happens.

Halfling: "ok, i wish myself into the city"
Me: "you wish yourself in? just you?"
Him: "yeah i wanna see if theres a ferry or something, if not ill just come back."
me: "you feel a strange sensation as your material being suddenly shifts from here to there. initially there is a blurred look to everything, and it crisps to give way to many people standing in awe at you. You notice it seems a bit chilly.... and perhaps breezy.... in the crowded market place."
him: "you mean its windy? liek how so?"
me: "no i mean its breezy because you only wished yourself and every single article of clothing and every single belonging you have is still back at the beach... including your ring."

he was so mad he got up, got his stuff, left the session, and didnt come back for over a week. needlessly to say the rest of us were mildly amused...