Your Crowning Moments of Awesome

[Nellisir]

Hrm. Here's two quick ones. My memory's a little fuzzy, so pardon the lack of details.

I was playing a M&M oneshot at a gameday - I was Creepy Psychic TK Girl. Typical poor sense of right and wrong, no sneakiness to speak of, blew all my points on TK. We were supposed to be infiltrating a building to find the Macguffin Machine. The doors - a large set of double doors - were locked. So, knowing full well what was within my character's capabilities, I hit them. With a car. When the goons inside opened fire, I grabbed another car and smashed it through the wall into the room they were in. That, I'm delighted to say, set the tone for the rest of the game. I failed at lifting a building, but succeeded in ripping out the giant spherical crackling MacGuffin Machine from its cradle and tossing it around until it turned into junk.

My most recent D&D character was Toad, a seven-veils wizard, with the ability to raise magical shields similar to the layers of a prismatic sphere. He functioned on the basic premise that if he was in melee combat, something was very, very wrong anyways. Naturally, in the tide of battle, he ended up toe-to-toe with a marilith, with most of his defenses momentarily down. His AC was, at best, a 19. The marilith took a few preliminary swings and, miraculously, missed nearly all of them - the few that connected, though, nearly knocked Toad down. The rest of the party, locked in combat and unable to reach the wizard, could only watch as she apparently shrugged off Toad's spells and then closed in for her final attacks - at which point his new ability to raise multiple veils as a defensive action came to the fore, and the marilith, her resistances weakened by Toad's (successful, but not flashy) spells, turned to stone and crashed to the floor. (I could probably reconstruct this better with access to the class and the character - I know Toad was down to single hit points, and it was a gamble - I did something to weaken her saves, and then raised the veils as a free action when she attacked.) Toad had many awesome moments, but that was the most suspenseful.

 

[GSHamster]

This is from one of my players in an old Planescape campaign. His character belonged to the Transcendent Order faction (the Ciphers) who believe that "for a body to become one with the multiverse, he's got to stop thinking and act. Action without thought is the purest form of thought. When a cutter can know what to do without even thinking about it, then he's become one with the multiverse."

They suffer a unique drawback:

Restrictions. Because Ciphers act unhesitatingly, they suffer a unique restriction: In play, as soon as an action is stated for a Cipher player character, that cutter is committed to the action. The player can't say, "Oh, wait, I changed my mind!" Bashers who pause to consider or debate pending actions are failing to adhere to the philosophy.

Anyways, the party is working through a tower on the first layer of the Abyss. I believe it was a published adventure. They're going through the tower in their usual fashion, kicking down doors and fighting the various combatants.

Anyways, as the DM, I was getting a little frustrated at how easy the party was taking this Abyssal tower. Then I saw the description for the next door. It was trapped for serious amounts of damage, and the only way the trap could be disarmed was if someone knocked on the door, which my PCs never ever did.

The party came to the door, and on a whim, the Cipher announced, "I knock on the door." Completely random and out of the blue. I was so shocked I almost suspected him of cheating.

What could I do? I promoted him in his faction. Action without thought is the purest form of thought.

 

[blargney the second]

I was DMing Chimes at Midnight and my party was getting trashed by my spiked chain-wielding Raven. The crusader is down to half hit points by the time he finally manages to end one of his turns toe-to-toe with the villain.

On his turn, the Raven does his biggest attack on the crusader and as I'm describing the >30 weapon damage plus 20 electricity, the player's grin gets bigger and bigger. His character was a glutton for punishment, so I figured he was just happy his delayed damage pool was keeping him alive.

That's when he said, "Right back at you" and activated a magic item that inflicted the same damage back on his attacker. The Raven goes down amidst cheers around the table.
-blarg

 

[That One Guy]

If I may use a V:tM character, [sblock]I would use Joseph Umberlin, the Ventrue. A self-styled 'knight', he was early on fooled into believing that his clan actually worked for the best of mankind and kindred (He eventually wizened up).

Point being, he cut THE Tzimisce flesh monster in half. He also cut an antediluvian (which one I cannot recall) open and threw a grenade INTO him - thus ending its existence. I rolled an ungodly number of 10's in all the right moments. But, it was Joseph's sheer audacity in attempting truly suicidal actions - and coming out on top - that made him my crowning moment of awesome character.[/sblock]

As far as D&D goes... I can recall a lot of my players'.

[sblock]A paladin of a friend who really liked the Baldur's Gate games, ran off of some walled city I had made up screaming, "I serve the flaming fist!" and impaled the drow spider-climbing down the side of the city. Another player reconnected a plane to the astral sea so the gods could influence the world again. One character pretty much rolled a mix of 20's and high dice rolls in an attempt at throwing a rock concert of sorts... and it worked really well. My girlfriend has this habit of one-shotting w/ critical hits or amazing dice rolls my big bad bosses (which leads to me sometimes boosting their life spans and doing dm magic). I've had players who critically achieve by role-playing in character debates and performing with excellence. Oh man... and then there was the one time that one player went Zulo Shape on the highway in the middle of traffic. Hehe... old vampires don't care about your silly masquerades.
[/sblock]

Just remembered a moment for a PC of mine...
[sblock]D&D game set in a middle piece of table top games ran by a friend. They always work around sabotage, demons destroying everything, and deicide - unbeknownst to most people. So, the dm and I worked out my character before the game started. He is one of the few who survives from the OLD times and is aware of how reality works. He originally made a deal w/ an evil entity for power & immortality. He meets up w/ another entity who teaches him how to slip by the Evil's notice. But, the world is coming to an end and demons are razing the world. So, we all meet up w/ the goddess of the world. She sends us to Hell to challenge the Evil who is the source of my character's power. We actually managed to SOMEHOW beat him. Thing is, there are hundreds of devils lurking near our battlefield just waiting to rip our bodies and souls asunder. So, we grouped up to face the oncoming slaughter.

I still like to think that those characters are forever in Hell, fighting with everything that they are.[/sblock]

 

[Storminator]

A GM moment:

Mutants and Masterminds game, Golden Age. Johnny Danger, a fistfighting, utility belt hero, has traded in his sidekick DangerBoy! for a new sidekick, DangerDog! When the League of Infinite Crime attacks Freedom City, the estranged DangerBoy! has joined them, and participates in the opening monologue, so our heroes know he's there.

At City Hall, DangerBoy! and his sidekick DangerGirl! are abducting the mayor. Johnny Danger and DangerDog! confront them. DangerBoy! defeats DangerDog!, then Johnny and his former sidekick duke it out. Just as Johny gets the upper hand and is about to finish off DangerBoy! DangerGirl! leaps in the way and says "you wouldn't hit a girl, would you?" Johnny's player stands stunned for a moment, looks down at his character sheet, looks up and says "of course not..." and DangerBoy! coldcocks him with a power gauntlet and a Sneak Attack damage.

C...M...O...A!

PS

 

[Atlatl Jones]

I'll have to think on that... certainly some of Atlatl's recent imperiling of the cosmos just by being Atlatl.

As for Rackhir, feeding an elixir of swimming to his armor-plated construct gryphon and then riding it in pursuit of enemies who were escaping underwater in their submarine was pretty awesome, even though he only managed to badly damage their control fins...

Meiji saving the entire party a few sessions ago by doing absolutely nothing during the entire fight except activating an antimagic field once certainly qualifies as his CMOA.

 

[demiurge1138]

The campaign: A modified version of Whispers of the Vampire's Blade that would have turned into Castle Ravenloft if it ever got a second session.

The character: Claymore, a warforged fighter.

The scene: So our party is chasing a vampire from set-piece to set-piece, and we manage to successfully waylay his carriage. The vampire escapes, but we grab his coffin. An advantage. We make it to the city he was heading to and discover that he's in attendance at a costume ball. My idea of a costume is to polish myself up so my body is very shiny and paint my ghulra (the little insignia on a warforged's head that acts like a fingerprint) to that of the Lord of Blades. Nobody gets it. I am still, I should point out, carrying the coffin strapped to my back.

At the costume ball, we find, much to our chagrin, that there's multiple people wearing the same mask. So the vampire could be anyone of these poor saps. Not trying to draw too much attention, we start mingling, and I begin dancing with the shifter ranger, sweeping across the dance floor. She, on the other hand, is watching my shiny metal chest very carefully, trying to find which one of the party-goers isn't casting a reflection.

We find the vampire, and dance right up next to him. The shifter taps him on the shoulder. He turns his head. I say, "I am looking for a man"... then slam him upside the head with his own coffin.

 

[phoenixgod2000]

So I will give you two CMOA. One based around combat and the other based around roleplaying.

Combat One: I was running a 3.o modified version of the adventure 4 from Cormyr and it was down to the final battle. The group was on the run from an army led by several high level characters. They were hours ahead of a massive rebel army and they decided to hole up in a old ghost town for their last stand. They knew they were about to die and that was when Kenju, a small ninja boy from Shou came up with his great idea. He had a Talisman of Zagyig and used his one wish in a very unique way. He said, "I wish that every former member of this adventuring party that had died came to life right now ready to fight."

Did I mention that this was a high lethality campagain and almost every player was on their third character and one guy was one his fourth? And there were six players!

The wish went through and the group went from a small six person band of brothers to one twenty four strong (at the low low price of 1 thousand exp per person). The group quickly introduced the formerly fallen members to the situation at hand and they got down to the brass tacks of holding off an army.

I ran the fight almost like a WFB game. There were dozens of minatures on the table and we had buildings and terrain and the battle itself took almost 10 hours to fight. One of the most rewarding combats we ever had in D&D. It was epic, nailbiting, and even with the extra help hardly a sure thing.

After the battle we decided they were going to keep everyone togther as sort of a supergroup Justice-League sort of thing. They would have a shared base of operations, share treasure and that sort of thing but they would go on adventures based on their level. So out of that one adventure I ended up running three different games.

Low Level game: Saved a city in the heartlands from the dreaded Night Below.

Mid Group: Discovered the Rod of Seven parts, saved FR and followed that up by assassinating Lolths daughter in the adventure The Harrowing.

High Group: Went on several more adventures before saving their base of operations from the City of the Spider Queen and the Chosen of Kirinsaenlee. Cleared out the city, sealed it off from the underdark and converted it to an extensive secret base of operations connected via teleport circle to their surface bases/homes.

Currently the group is deciding what they want to do about Myth Drannor.

(Is it any wonder I hate the new FR with history like that)

Roleplaying CMOA: The group was in a seperate game and they were playing legendary heroes who had been stripped of their levels, powers, and Equipment and then eternally sealed into stasis tombs. They were set free and forced to make their way into a world were they lacked their former might.

That peeved off the group and each and every one of the characters went evil indpendantly of the others and made an effort to hid it from the group. One night during an adventure the walls of lies came crumbling down and in the best roleplaying I have every seen this combat happy group do, bare their characters souls about why they changed and how they had sullied their souls. The looks on the players faces when they finally realized that absolutely everyone else in the group made the same choice they had was something to behold. Perhaps the most honest and geninue emotions I have ever seen in my years of gaming.

Honorable mention: We're playing Hackmaster and one guy is playing a wild Mage. A wild surge goes off and nothing happens. The mage sarcastically exclaims I am the best wizard ever!

The wild surge said that the next thing the wizard said came true. for the next 5d4 minutes every wizard on the face of the planet became exactly one level lower than the Wild Mage.

He was level 3.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

In a Birthright game, the paladin-priest, rogue, and wizard were taking ship to the Khinasi lands for some reason or other. We run across an abandoned ship with signs that it'd been ransacked by undead pirates. Sail on...and at sunset the undead pirate ship shows up from the Shadow World.

We're getting our tails kicked. The wizard is being completely useless and sitting on the deck in an anti-magic field. The paladin-priest has dragged the paralyzed rogue into the aftcastle. The vampire captain walks in, and the rogue gets a plan.

The vampire walks into the aftcastle, and the wizard follws and casts another antimagic field. The paladin-priest throws the rogue at the vampire...unparalyzing the rogue once he enters the antimagic field. The rogue grapples the vampire until the paladin priest can finally unload on it.

Brad

 

[the Jester]

Ooh, I am going to go waaay back to the early 90s for two. Both involve pc deaths. I was a player in one of the events, dm for another; but for the record, even in the Thorn story, I was the regular dm, but was playing while a guest dm ran our group through a series of adventures in his campaign (the party had been plane shifted to his world, and our campaigns were very closely linked together).

Interestingly, Thorn's Tale also led directly to the Tragedy of Egypt and Carrion.

Thorn's Tale:
[sblock]The first one involved a pc who was a specialty priest of a god of humor and eccentricity and rebirth. This pc- Thorn, by name- was totally devoted, but because of the party's actions, they had put his god (Carella) at the top of the hit-list of the Big Bad Evil God that the bad guys were trying to release. This BBEGod was strong enough to overwhelm pretty much all the other gods without trying, and Carella was gonna be first.

At one point, when the party transitioned into another plane to fight against the BBEGod and his servants where they were closest to breaking him free, we got handed a deck of many things. Thorn, as a chaotic neutral character, took a bunch of cards, one of which was "change alignment or be judged."

This was back in the days where "or be judged" was not defined, mind you.

For the first time, I saw a pc choose judgment. The dm and pc went into the other room for a long few moments, then came back. We didn't know it at the time, but the gods' judgment had involved implanting a priest of Tesseract into Thorn's mind. Tesseract was the god of space itself, planar gates and portals, etc. Very weird and abstract. One of the powers its priests got was the ability to create extradimensional spaces, and the priest had done that- inside Thorn's head.

Well, when Thorn drew the "small keep" card, it appeared inside his head, too, in that extradimensional space. Funny, but useless- or so we thought.

Fast forward about four game sessions. Things were looking grim. The party was storming the stronghold of the Necromancer, who was the main servant summoner-lich of the BBEGod (summoners adapted from Palladium; circle magic, basically). We were in trouble; we could fight his Knights of Remorse and his death knight and lich lackeys, but the Necromancer was going to be untouchable because of his circle protections.

Then Thorn heard a voice in his head. It was Carella, telling him that she was sorry- and good-bye.

The player's eyes widened, and the most profound look of acceptance came over him- this fellow was perhaps the best roleplayer I have ever had the pleasure to dm for or play beside. He just nodded.

The extradimensional space was suddenly dispelled, and a small keep exploded out of his head, destroying the Necromancer's citadel as it intersected with it. Thanks to his sacrifice, the Necromancer's wards and defenses were destroyed. As it was, we barely managed to defeat him, and we lost several pcs in the battle. But we won!

This led to its own problems, though; the Tragedy of Egypt and Carrion arose from our rewards...[/sblock]

The Tragedy of Egypt and Carrion:
[sblock]
Egypt and Carrion were two members of the party that defeated the Necromancer in Thorn's Tale, above. Once they had done so, they were given boons by the gods, and they were allowed to ask for what they wished.

Egypt was a ranger, fiery and bold. She was vivacious and full of life. Carrion was a priest of Nerull, the Reaper, the grim god of death. Nerull's priests were sworn to extinguish all life in the end, even their own. They were forbidden to accept healing, even to save their lives. When their time came, they were expected to go.

Strangely, Egypt and Carrion were lovers. They loved each other deeply, and so when the time came to ask for a boon, Egypt asked to bear Carrion's child, knowing that he would be irretrievably lost to her at some point.

This boon was granted, and Egypt and Carrion took a vacation far away from the rest of the party. They camped out in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks, enjoying each others' company.

One day, towards the end of their vacation, Carrion walked up to Egypt. "Egypt," he said, "I love you." And then he drew his scythe and attacked her, trying to kill her.

She cried out in surprise. She drew her weapons to defend herself, but did not want to harm her lover. "What are you doing?" she cried, but he would not answer, pressing her relentlessly until she began to fight back- but she would only strike the most minimal blows, while he brought her closer and closer to death.

Finally, he threw down his weapon. "Kill me!" he roared.

Utterly confused, she broke down into tears. "No!" she cried. "Why? I don't understand! Why are you doing this?"

Carrion's eyes smoldered. "Don't you see?" he groaned. "I have no choice! You have asked me to commit the ultimate sin. To give life. I must kill you, so that does not happen. Or you must kill me."

"No!"

"There is no other choice," Carrion said. "It is too late to avoid the sin. You are already pregnant. You must kill me to save our child."

She wept. She argued. But he could not be swayed. It was the only way.

She killed him, her lover, her love, the father of her child. She killed him. It was the only way.[/sblock]