D&D 5E It was almost epic when...

[toucanbuzz]

...in our last Dragonlance (5E converted) session, the party brought a Dragon Orb into the heart of Sanction, epicenter for the Dark Queen's armies...and when things were looking really bad, almost used it, then chickened out (because they know the orbs are insanely crazy to control, having used them once).

For those who know what Dragon Orbs do in the Dragonlance setting,

Spoiler: What the orbs do

They were designed to summon all evil dragons within roughly a 40-mile radius to the orb, where they would go berserk; archmages of old made the orbs so only the most powerful of them could use them safely and would destroy the evil dragons with powerful spells. They also make Draconians go "confused" for an hour.

would have been something epic that in no way, shape, or form I would have been prepared to DM given the draconian and dragon presence in Sanction. The thought of the campaign going on an epic curve, though, would've been cool.

Spoiler: My 5E Dragon Orbs

My 5E converted Dragon Orbs require 3 opposed checks of INT, WIS, and CHA versus the ancient dragon within (white, green, red, blue, or black), taking 1 minute. If you win 2/3, you can make the Orb work for that encounter. If you fail, the Orb tries to take you over, requiring three more opposed checks to escape it, 2/3 to succeed.

 

[aco175]

My friend back in 2e days was playing a mage and decided to break his staff of the magi. He was going to save the rest of the party from the evil lich completing his spell of doom and taking out the village. His plan was to break the staff exploding all the liches allies and the lich himself, while leaving the rest of the party just outside of the blast. He was slightly off and also killed most of the party.

 

[Parmandur]

My friend back in 2e days was playing a mage and decided to break his staff of the magi. He was going to save the rest of the party from the evil lich completing his spell of doom and taking out the village. His plan was to break the staff exploding all the liches allies and the lich himself, while leaving the rest of the party just outside of the blast. He was slightly off and also killed most of the party.

I mean, that's still pretty epic.

 

[ECMO3]

My party of 5 3rd level PCs went against a Stone Golem and were going to win when one of them unleashed a Crystal Golem at the same time. We did kill the Stone Golem and the Crystal Golem downed 4 of the 5 and two of them died.

The Ogre Barbarian was the sole guy remaining, grabbed two moved them out of the tower then grabbed another two and got them out of the tower too. The Ogre failed two medicine checks. Two PCs failed their death saves and died, two made them and stabilized. One of the dead two was carried back to town and raised with a looted raise dead scroll and a town cleric who was paid to use the scroll.

We recharged, changed out spell preparations, mourned the lost PC, welcomed the new PC, bought some gear went back and took care of the Crystal Golem.

 

[aco175]

I mean, that's still pretty epic.

We did hide under the table whenever he would play a caster and go to cast something more dramatic for years.

Another story which is old enough to be confused with something I read or heard about and not from a table I gamed with. A magic user was first starting out and the DM talked up getting a familiar and how cool it was. The player got on board and cast the spell only to get a toad. The player wanting a cat or raven said, "This sucks." and stepped on the toad, killing both the toad and himself since the caster took half the damage the familiar takes and the magic user had only a couple HP.