(If this sounds strangely familiar, you may be one of my players. In that case, spoilers!)
Waterdeep, 1390 DR
The junior members of the Gray Hands are on a quest to root out the source of the trade of corpses, undead and necromancy after their previous adventure. An encounter with a golem-building scientist/Frankenstein analogue leads them to an underground arena run by a vampire lord, who uses various undead for combat.
After said vampire slighted the PCs (they agreed to 2 fights in exchange for information, he threw in an extra fight in response to the crowd) they decide to take him out in true murderhobo fashion. After rounding up a posse consisting of paladins and clerics with the church of Lathander, they defeat the vampire and a horde of vampire spawn and drive him towards the safety of his hidden coffin.
The PCs delve into the depths of the arena, fighting off a group of chimera + manticores, some additional vampire spawn and eventually locate his inner sanctum, guarded by at least 10 spawn and a heavily armored lieutenant. Even with reinforcements, there's a casualty -- the tiefling monk member of the party pressed her luck too hard in trying to push through to the coffin and fails her death saving throws. One of the clerics attempts to reach her in time to cast revivify.
At this point, the dragonborn paladin of Bahamut PC has been carrying around a +1 greataxe I'd intended for a dwarf player who quit on the session it was supposed to be awarded. He asks if in his grief he can take the greataxe and throw it at the lieutenant. In this case I say sure, make a strength check to see if it goes far enough to actually hit.
We're playing on roll20, so the character sheets automatically roll an extra die for advantage/disadvantage even if its not needed at the time. He rolls the check -- DOUBLE Nat 20s. My players go crazy.
Not being one to deny the will of the dice gods (and the fight is already turning in their favor anyway) I decree that in flight, the axe begins to glow and transforms briefly into a holy razor-edged disc. The lieutenant is cleaved in half and the axe embeds itself in the far wall.
We end session after the fight concludes and I decide they're do up for some treasure. When he tries to retrieve the axe, the haft is going to snap in half, leaving something closer to a hand axe. Thanks to briefly channeling Bahamut's holy vengeance it's also now taken on the following properties:
??????? - (Dragon's Revenge?)
Weapon (handaxe), rare
You gain +1 to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. In addition, you can expend one spell slot to use your Divine Smite class feature on a ranged weapon attack made with this weapon. You can't use this property again until you've completed a short rest.
I try to stick with snappy, one word names for magic items I reward but so far I haven't been able to adequately capture the energy of the evening. Thoughts?
While we're on the subject, how do you like to adjudicate somewhat absurd player requests?
