An Awesome Moment

Ravingdork

Explorer
In a recent game our party was in full retreat through the jungle after having been beaten to a pulp by a band of bounty hunters and their brutish monster (a macetail behemoth I think) that bore them about via an oversized war chariot. The second cleric in our party, the child Cala, was unconscious and being carried by the fighter. Quite simply, they overwhelmed us with brute strength, better mobility, and superior tactics.

We fled from the battlefield into the jungle hoping that their large steed would be unable to fit through the trees. To our dismay, the beast was apparently able to smash his way through the trees, though it did slow their progress substantially allowing us to gain some ground. Finally, our characters made their way into a clearing to find that there was only an open cliff trapping us between certain doom and inevitable doom.

Luckily, my cleric's overpowered perception allowed him to detect a kind of "land bridge" a short ways off. We made our way there as the enemies finally began catching up to us again.

As we crossed the land bridge, the enemies hot on our heels, my cleric stopped dead in the middle of the bridge.

FIGHTER: What are you doing!? We are no match for them, even here!

CLERIC: They are too fast! We will never outrun them on foot wounded as we are. You continue on to protect the others! I will hold them here as long as I can.

FIGHTER: Let me stay then!

CLERIC: Nay! You need to save little Cala! Besides, I am old and my time is nearly up, you are still young and full of potential.

FIGHTER: But...

CLERIC: Don't argue! Just go! It's too late to decide now anyways! GO! *turns to face the approaching enemies*

*Party flees onward while the bounty hunters stop on the start of the bridge in mild confusion at the venerably aged man now feebly attempting to block their path*

CLERIC: You'll not catch them! You'll go no further!

BOUNTY HUNTER: Foolish priest! We will crush you into paste and not even be slowed in our pursuit of your friends!

CLERIC: Then may you trip o'er my corpse and plummet to your doom! *readies iron staff for battle*

*Behemoth and bounty hunters charge forward*

At the final moment before the beast ran my cleric down my prepared action went off and I cast Command on the charging mount.

CLERIC: STUMBLE AFORE' ME AND PERISH!
BOUNTY HUNTERS: Aaaagh!

*The beast mount stumbles violently, veers to the side, and plummets over the edge, dragging its entourage with it.*

Reminiscent of other heroic scenes in movies and mythology this was one of the cooler moments we'v had in our games. :D

I just LOVE playing high wisdom characters wisely! :p
 

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Badwe

First Post
Great Story! It's interesting to see when things take a diversion from your standard combat encounter. And it worked out so epicly too. I'm glad the DM had the good sense to allow such a thrashing.

Crunch-wise, was the encounter balanced for your level? Were you outmatched or did you just have bad luck/a tactical DM?
 

ricardo440

First Post
that is a cool story.

It makes me feel better after reading the "thoughts about 4e" thread.

4e doesn't take cool stuff out of the game.
 

Ravingdork

Explorer
Great Story! It's interesting to see when things take a diversion from your standard combat encounter. And it worked out so epicly too. I'm glad the DM had the good sense to allow such a thrashing.

Crunch-wise, was the encounter balanced for your level? Were you outmatched or did you just have bad luck/a tactical DM?

I'm pretty certain the mount was some kind of elite, likely a couple levels higher than we were. By itself it would have been a hard fight, but with two powerful bounty hunters along for the ride (likely a few levels higher than us in their own right) it was just plain nasty. It didn't help that the GM was playing them cleverly for the most part.

That's a big part of what made it so exciting for us all though. We all figured the beast was an elite and we weren't at all sure that it was going to fail its save to go over the edge. It was a tense moment, that die roll, as we all wondered excitedly if my cleric was going to be turned to paste or become heroically victorious. :D
 






El Mahdi

Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
That sounded really awesome. Even though I haven't switched to 4E, a lot of what I've read in the core books, and especially the DMG, does seem to make doing stuff like this a lot easier to adjudicate. Not that you couldn't do stuff like this in any game or system, but it does seem to give a lot more help to players and DMs to do this. Truly awesome scene. I'm sure your entire group will remember it for a long time.
 

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