Liolel said:
Well just finished up tonights setting, and it had what was probbaly the most crazy, insane combat I've played, and also had the most rules looking up of any combat I've played. Don't point out any rules used wrong, my description may have been inaccurate and the battle was so complicated that rules errors were easy to make.
It started as an ambush, the party was riding back to town, and a flying mage cast everad's black tenticals. End of surprise round.
Several characters tried to shoot at the mage flying 200 feet in the air and missed. Then my paladin's mount, a pegaus called sunwing broke free and I started flying towards the mage. The mage let loose a fire ball but at this point it was a fairly normal battle.
At this point I reached the mage on sunwing who had the hover feat from hit dice advancement. The mage summoned a giant wasp. Everyone else couldn't effect the battle as it was too high.
The mage went invisable and flew away, and I chased with sunwing. The mage summoned a dire bat, and now up in the air was a giant wasp, a dire bat, a paladin on a pegaus and an ivisable mage.
But it got more complicated. Two of the party members summoned flying creatures, and a complicated battle was going on in the air, with the evil summoned creatures attacking sunwing, and my paladin trying to kill the summoned creatures while the mage still invisable flew away. With the mage gone the battle ended shortly but it was just complety insane.
So now that I've told my story I would like to hear if any of you have fought such insane and crazy battles.
Yes, sort of. It was about ten years ago. When our group of players got bored with conventional adventuring, we decided to have a *mock* (meaning that after everything was done, stats would go back to normal for the REAL adventuring) tournament involving all of our best characters.
So I designed a circular dungeon-arena with several hall-ways, large doors, places you could only get to through flight or climbing, rope webbing (dunno why.....or maybe they were chains?), and a bottomless pit in the center.
There were six players and the rules were:
1. Each player chooses their five best characters.
2. No joining forces (i.e., the player's characters *could* join forces, but two players weren't allowed to join against another player).
3. All the names of the 30 characters were put in a hat (literally) and then drawn. This would be the order of entering the arena.
4. Characters would enter the arena (IIRC) every 10 rounds. Obviously, being selected first was advantageous as that character had ten rounds (then minutes) to set traps and so forth.
5. The bottomless pit really was bottomless!
6. I think that's all the rules, but I'll let you know it others come to me.
I really can't say all of what went on as it's been 10 years, but I will recount the interesting bits regarding MY characters.
First off, one of my characters drew the #1 slot, so I had the advantage until the next participant arrived. It was my Elven Fighter/Thief who had specialization in the long bow and was in training to become a Fighter/Thief-Acrobat.
There were four possible entrances to the arena, so I (he) set out to booby trap as many as he could in ten minutes. Actually, I believe he only had the time to booby trap one of the four, and then get to a high place and set up his long bow in case the next character came in one of the un-trapped entrances.
I got lucky! The next dude walked directly into my trap!
Ah, now I remember why it took so long to set up: Caltrops....coated with poison.....covered with dust of dissapearance! My bro's character stepped on one, died, and I then proceeded to throw him into the bottomless pit. Pretty funny stuff, eh? I didn't laugh long.
Remember the rule about no joining forces? It was pretty much boycotted by three of the six players involved and those three did so just to defeat me! LoL! So it was basically my 5 characters versus their fifteen characters.
My second character wasn't due in until, like, 8th, so I was screwed for an ally before that.
To make a long story short, my first dude in saw what "looked like" the most powerful character amongst all of the fifteen opposing characters. He had 2 or 3 special arrows that would explode on contact (ah yes, the orange arrows!) and so used ALL of them against this dude. IIRC, the arrows did something like 2-20 damage per hit. Well, it WASN'T the main "bad guy" but one of the weakest bad guys disguised with a clever illusion. In short, the main bad guy popped up with three other dudes and (quite literally) cut my guy up into little pieces and burned all the pieces just for good measure. To make it worse, I didn't end up killing that one guy with the arrows, only wounding him severely. They healed him after the encounter.
Score: (counting the guy I threw into the pit) Me, four dudes left. Them, fourteen dudes left.
More pain to follow..........
So then my best dude comes into the arena. He was part Illusionist, part Cavalier, part Bard. He had 118 hit points, because back then we'd actually assign bonus hit points at the end of adventures for killing really hard monsters. So despite the fact that his highest class level was 7, he had mondo HP.
In contrast, the "bad guys" I was facing had 120, 112, 90, and I'm not sure after that. It's mostly irrelevant, except in explaining the next bit:
My Cavalier/Bard/Illusionist waltzed into the WRONG part of the arena! I thought it was going to be an empty hallway, perhaps a place where my remaining four characters could meet up and plan stuff. Strength in numbers, you know? IT WAS NOT TO BE! LOL!!!
It turns out that as soon as my mighty hero entered on his warhorse (who he had the foresight to bring with him) the doors slammed shut behind him. All of a sudden, there were four enemies behind him and four in front of him! SURROUNDED!!! LoL!
To make it worse, most (if not all) of the spells my dude had memorized were of the defensive/rejuvenative nature.
Oh yeah, the head bad guy wielded a wand of frost with about 80 charges left. Did I have a chance, I mean really?
To the best of my knowledge and memory, here's what went down:
1. As all parties were in missile range and not melee range (and I was surprised, BTW), it was determined that persons with missile weapons got to go first. FLING!
Cone of Cold (via wand of frost) delivered right onto me. Can't say I saved, can't say I didn't. Can say that I no longer had 118 HP. It was now 100.
OK. I've just now dug out my original charater sheet. Can you believe I still even have it? All these years later? Here are the HP breakdowns, as I never erased the original pencil scrawls and notes:
118
114
100
98
62
51
39
Hence, somebody must have hit me before I was hit with the wand as my 118 dropped to 114 before it went to 100. An arrow? Dunno.......
To say that I was ill-prepared for this encounter would be an understatement. What the hell was I supposed to do? I was really nervous and wasn't thinking clearly. Eight PCs versus one? No chance, right?
So I remembered that my character possessed the boots of levitation. LoL! What were they gunna do, right?
So with my next turn, I levitated to the ceiling!
FLING! Another Cone of Cold! Not to mention another arrow from some bastard. All of a sudden, 62 HP.
Here's where I turned the tables on 'em!
During the first 2 rounds, the four guys out of melee distance behind me were closing in for the kill. This I knew to use to my advantage.
Was my hopelessness all a ploy? Really, who levitates to the ceiling? At first, yes, it was nervousness of the situation. But after I got hit that second time (via wand) I began to use my brain.
I knew those a-holes from behind were closing the gap and this time feigned fear. "Crap, there's not a lot I can really do, is there?" I pretended to them. "Fine", I said through a sigh, "I'll levitate downwards again". This whole time I acted as though I was depressed. It worked!
"You wanna levitate back down, huh? FINE!"
FLING! .......went the wand.......
"AHA!" I yelled. You just frosted your own goons!
And they were like, "Huh?"
But 'twas true. AND TOO LATE! You see, the four baddies to my rear had come within melee striking distance of me, and given the narrowness of the corridor (only about 20 feet wide) and the angle of the wand wielder and all that, it was determined that my adversaries had, indeed, just inflicted heavy damage upon their own party. And even more lucky was the fact that those four were relativley low level----not one of them had more than 20 HP.
The result? I now had 51 HP but three of the four guys within melee strike of me were now effectivley dead! Ha!
Now the odds were no longer 8 to 1, but 5 to 1 with momentum on my side.
Just then two things happened:
1. I remembered that I was a Cavalier and wasn't supposed to fear anything.
2. My ambidextrous Drow Cleric/Fighter/Magic-User (with 2 +2 long swords, nonetheless!) entered the arena and would soon join the fray.
And so my Cavalier, being not afraid of anything, charged the wand wielder and his minions.
AH! Now I remember why I levitated! I was thinking of my poor warhorse, just trying to protect him! ROTFLMAO!!!!!
Anyway, when I descended, my horse ate it. It didn't stop me from charging on foot, though.
FLING!
Now down to a measily 39 HP, but that didn't stop me.
At this point, my Drow is entering from behind the wand wielder and his 3 minions. As this happens, thier Gnome Cleric/Illusinionst (named Oon Skullingsworth of all things!) casts Blade Barrier (which he apparently had been saving from a scroll for just this moment!) upon my Drow. Bad move! For in D&D 1E, Drows can levitate once per day! Also, the Drow had a scroll with Fly upon it if all else failed. In short, a circular field of magical blades was created which my Drow simply leviated out of.
Still charging the wand wielder, a foolish move by my opponent ensues. He felt trapped between my Cavalier and my Drow and so decided to climb the nearest wall to him! I guess this move was like unto what I did when I levitated initially. However.....
See, most people, when they set out to climb a wall, do so with two hands. "Where'd the wand go?" is what I wanted to know. "I quickly slip it in my belt" came the response. "OK", says me, "As you've basically broken off combat in an effort to climb the wall, I reach up an nonchalantly take the wand from your belt!"
And so, I now was the proud owner of the Wand Of Frost!
They had reinforcements on the way so my Cavalier and Drow split to find my other two characters. And for some strange reason, that gaming group never played since then so there was no clear cut winner of "The Arena Of Death". But.............
That's my example of crazy combat, FWIW.
Somewhere there's a poisoned character by the name of Spaz Bobson (Or was it Dribbon Jans?) who's been falling for almost a complete decade. I wonder what sort of velocity he's reached?
