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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 1437208" data-attributes="member: 198">A few sessions ago, the group (who were on a diplomatic mission to a number of orc tribes) found themselves suckered into putting up two of their members to take part in simultaneous one-on-one duels vs. the orc chief and the shaman who were trying to forge the orcs into a horde. The two combatants chosen were the party half-orc fighter/barbarian (vs. the chief) and the diplomat paladin, who is not optimized for combat (vs. the shaman).Before the fight the group retired into a tent as did their opponents and just layered the two with all kinds of buff spells. And then they stepped out, and the other tent fell over and a twelve-foot tall orc emerged. I've never seen people as shocked at a simple enlarge person spell <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Then the fight began, and I had a stroke of genius. I got the players of the two non-fghting PCs to roll the dice for the orcs, and I think they were even more stressed about the battle than the involved PCs' players, praying for low rolls and apologizing profusely when they didn't get them.The chief and the half-orc PC ended their fight in 2 rds. inflicting horrible damage to each other. The chief, on something like 5 hit points, landed a couple of hits that took the PC to exactly 0 hp. Able to make a single attack that would automatically take himself to negatives, the half-orc connected, beheading his opponent and collapsing on him. Everybody cheered (in and out-of-character).And then they realised that by the rules of the duel, they couldn't heal him till the duel was over. Round by round would go by, with his already negative hp total going lower, and the poor paladin desperately trying to defeat his opponent (the enlarged shaman), who was beating the heck out of him. Finally, at -9 hp, the half-orc stabilized, to another round of celebration.And finally, down to single digits in hp, the paladin brought down his opponent and collapsed to his knees, thanking his deity.I don't think I've ever seen the entire group as stressed during a single combat, not even when they were TPKed.</blockquote>

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