DMs, Tell about the shortest encounter ever because of players luck and actions

[Dr Midnight]

I'll just C&P this up from my story hour... short version is big, much-hyped titan goes down to first spell cast.

--------------------------

Then, the rock shuddered. The screams of something shattering and men screaming could be very distantly heard. Evenly spaced, deep vibrations shook the crag.

Vek readied his favorite spell. Nanny prepared his battleaxe. Orthos said a prayer to Moradin: “May I smite the beast, and die well, or be stricken by your hammer.”

A hand roughly twenty feet wide rose up from the sharp drop-off where the crag began its almost thousand-foot descent. It slammed to the ground before them and pulled the rest of the creature up. Gangizth the Titan was a monstrous green scaled creature with yellow eyes the size of wagon wheels. Its maw was filled with hundreds of tiny, glittering teeth. In its other hand it clutched a spear, that could only have been the mast of a sunken galleon. It roared, and the sound filled the world.

Everyone readied for battle. Kizzlorn was first to strike, and she said one word and made one gesture. The creature stopped. Its skin turned a mottled grey-green. Its roar died in its throat as it turned all to stone. Cracks and pits ran down its surface, and then, it was all solid rock. The other Knights looked at Kizzlorn with a wide-eyed stare. She stared back at them, just as unbelieving. The titan had been defeated by one simple spell of FLESH TO STONE?

The weight of the creature couldn’t be supported by its brittle stone arms. It began crumbling. Its pieces fell into the sea below in a shower of rock and dust. Only its colossal clawed hand remained at the top of the crag, flattened against the rock like a squashed spider.

“Is it over,” Jamison asked.

Orthos shrugged. “Uh… certainly looks like it.”

“Was it really weak, do you think?”

Kizzlorn said “I think I just got lucky, and happened upon something it had little or no defense against right away. Everything has a weakness.”

Jamison paused then said “Yeah, but… but it was a TITAN.”

No one could do anything but shrug and wonder at it all.

 

[Moleculo]

while i wasn't running the adventure, i was participating. It was Sunless Citadel i think, and its the last big boss guy. Toss a sleep in, almost everyone but the toad or whatever small thing was there fails the save, it is quickly dispatched, coup de gras are dispensed, and it was over in about one minute.

 

[Black Omega]

I've not had quite that sort of thing happen, but did have a battle recently with something close.

Bad guy wizard is using the cover from a stone wall the PC wizard created to pop up now and then and fire off spells. The PC wizard hits him with a Bolt of Conjuring, which leaves a celestial hawk attacking the bad guy. The hawk needs like a 19 or 20 to hit, but the wizard rolls well and the hawk twice hits the bad guy for one point of damage. No big deal, I'm thinking, what difference can that make?

Battle goes badly and the wizard starts to flee. The PC Mystic Wanderer rolls a critical on a bow attack that brings the wizard to -1. If not for that damned lucky hawk...

 

[Tom Cashel]

This is back in 2e, and I was a player...

We were playing a very high-level Spelljammer trek to a barren and remote world, tracking some hideous evil that guarded the secret to becoming gods (hey...I said it was 2e).

Anyway, we got into the crypt and immediately found ourselves facing a lich. Little did we know, there was also a psionic lich phased into the stone wall right behind it. The first round of combat began, and my wizard started casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction...with a casting time of 9 segments. The round goes on, and on, and I'm still casting...still casting...needless to say, I went last. But I managed to get the spell off--somehow--and caught both baddies in the area of effect. The lich was disjoined, which is what I was intending, but we also heard a "GAKHH--!!" from within the wall.

Oh, and then we ran into the other room, found the demilich overlord; I turned ethereal and cast power word: kill.

A lich, a psionic lich, and a demilich in three rounds. The build-up was great...the resolution was swift.

 

[Foundry of Decay]

I have 2:

One was in a homebrew D&D game I run. Two of the party were to meet up with a corrupted farmer's son who found a bleak tome that allowed him to tear the living force from nearby people and use it to fuel spells with.

They came across him, exchanged words, and the madman started to cast. The party had readied themselves in case the mage began to cast, and the Elf in the duo got initiative, fired an arrow at the corrupt mage, rolled a 20, then another natural 20.. We use a variant rule stating that if if 2 20's are rolled, a third check is made, and if it hits, the victim of the attack goes to -1 and dying instantly..

He rolled an 18

Instant baddie kaput.
(Incedentally, he didn't die, as he was healed, and brought to the temple to stay, later escaped, and was blasted to dust by the mage in much the same way! Just wasn't cut out to be a villain I guess).

The second was a game a short while ago that when I was planning the encounter, I didn't have my thinking cap on (I likely had a lobotomy at that point).

The party was to cross a large rope bridge across a chasm, with a rusted metal carcass of a knight standing in the middle of it.

One PC simply cut the rope. Down goes knight, clackity-clackity-KLUNK, and party simply teleports over to other side. My brain falls out of my ear to mocking laughter and warm applause.

 

[drnuncheon]

I recently got to observe a 14th-level smackdown - the first time any of us had used characters that powerful.

The fight lasted two and a half rounds. The only reasons it lasted past the first were the opponent's stoneskin and the fact that the monk didn't realize it was a construct and kept doing subdual damage in an attempt to capture it.

Between a pitiful roll on its Combat Casting (it needed a 4, it got a 2) and the sorcerer's counterspell, it didn't even get a spell off.

It was rather sad, really.

J

 

[Murrdox]

I gave my party a Horn of Blasting as a quest reward fairly early in the game. Little did I know how much PAIN this would cause.

All my best-laid encounters were destroyed by the Horn. They'd blow it, most, if not all, of my monsters would be stunned, they'd run in, and usually gain enough of an advantage in that first round that it was clear they would wipe the floor with the monsters.

My favorite one was where I had the PCs in an unfamiliar forest running into a Wild Elf Ranger. The Ranger, currently being chased by an Ogre Mage and 4 Ogres, asks for the party's help defeating them. The party was only level 4 or 5, so this should have been a pretty hard encounter... Ogre Mages are nasty.

Horn of Blasting, and one round later all the Ogres are dead, and the Ogre Mage has less than 10 HP. To save itself, it tried to turn invisible and escape, but a rogue made a great listen check, pinpointed his location, and shot an arrow that brought him down.


Horns of Blasting no longer exist in the world. We all agree that the current rules for stunning are too disgusting.

 

[aliensex]

Lets see...

(2e, player at the time) we just had our party's butts handed to us, only two people (me and another character out of 6) are now concious. We drag out the others, strap them to horses, and proceed to flee back to town to heal up. On the way, we encounter 10 bandits. Me and my freind are both sitting at LOW single digit hit points, so we would be slaughtered fast in a fight. My solution? Well, since they are bandits, I grab a small chest full of silver peices we looted, and unlatch it and fling it at them. All the bandits dive on the scattered silver, and we go racing by

(3e, player at the time) In our monster campaign, I am a Blue dragon, currently polymorphed into a Gold dragon, and my freind, a Troll fighter, currently polymorphed into a Storm giant, are celebrating on a beach after destroying a city. Along comes a local REAL gold dragon who doesn't like what we have done. So, our DM is putting down his stats (we were just winging things), My freind rolls to hit with his Keen, Vorpal, +3 iron claw (demi-artifact) and gets a 19, and another 19. The DM didn't even finish writing the stats down, and there is one decapitated Gold dragon lying on the beach.

 

[incognito]

In this great moment, almost an entire thieves guild is undone.

The cleric in the party goes tromping off by himself try and get a little roleplaying done (nothing wrong with that).

What he didn't know is that he was being stalked by a very prominent rogue in the city - who saw his chance!

He snuck up invisibily and snuck attack the cleric! - which turned him visible....He knew that was going to happen.

What he didn't know was that our pal the cleric had activated a
Bead of Karma and had a searing light prepared.

After the attack (the suprise round)...the Rogue moved away 5' and drank a potion of invisibility. The Cleric knew the square he was in, and said I'll take the 50% miss chance on an invisible creature.

He did not miss.

The to hit roll: natural 20. The 5d8 (bead of karma) and +1, (Point Blank shot), was 37 points of damage. The rouge, a full 3 levels higher than the cleric, had only 36 hp. He fell down, stone dead.

 

[Voadam]

In a 2e game when I was about 7th or 8th level as a wizard we tore across the realms to get to recently unearthed liches trap filled temple that held an artefact horn of peace a city that was under attack from a red wizard invasion needed. There were at least 5 power groups going after the artefact and by the time we had gotten to the temple we had fought summoned demons and devils and had an npc revealed as a red wizard spy/traitor. The traitor headed into the temple while we had to rest after our fight with the ice devil.

The DM had made a huge multi level dungeon with curses, monsters, traps, etc. and timetables for when the other groups had gone in or would come in after us as well as the traitor in front of us.

I walked inside the door once we got that opened and used a scroll I had gained a long time ago that I was saving until I was high enough level to learn the spell. I cast invisible stalker, sent it off to get the horn and waited. The DM looked over his notes and kept muttering, "it can get past that, it can get past that," as he flipped through his dungeon. Finally he said "Wow, that'll work." and within the hour the stalker came back bearing the horn. After we confirmed it was the horn I wizard locked the temple entrance locking in the traitor. The npc high priestess used word of recall to bring it back to her temple in the city.