Humbling defeats

[Mark]

I (as a DM) had a bunch of halfling war veterens, older, some senile, and many of them missing body parts, grapple and beat up a paladin who was mocking the legendary fighting prowess of a hero of their community.

 

[Charles Rampant]

20 minutes. Four out of six deaths. It's like Monte Cooke broke down the door of the game room and screamed "WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON, MEAT!!!!!"

/me dies laughing

 

[Erratic K]

Brown Bear eats adventurers

In Forge of Fury
<snip>
In the same adventure there is a brown bear. Just an ordinary, run of the mill, lone brown bear. We went swaggering up to it thinking "It's just a bear, how tough could it be?"

We ended up running like crazy crying every step of the way with our hit points at dangerously low levels across half the dungeon level to escape a TPK from an ordinary brown bear.

Ahhh yesteryear.... My group playtested 3E, Forgotten Realms and Forge of Fury (and a few other things).

Forge was their first expeditition into 3E besides some scratch paper vs fights for CR (like pitting a regular 1st level party against a CR 1 for testing the creatures CR assessment).

The party was rocking that dungeon, dropping in through the chimney, attacking the orcs from the "inside" etc. They were ruthless powergamers. 1/2 Orc Barbarian, Dwarven Cleric, Human invocation Mage and a rogue/ranger... They were pounding that dungeon and then they ran into the bear.

The party had already run into one encounter since resting. They saw the bear and decided based on 1st and 2nd edition thinking that the bear was no match for a fearsome group of adventures such as them. The 1/2 Orc Barbarian charged ahead of the group with his movement and missed the bear on a charge. The rest of the group closed to withing 30-40ft, but couldn't get to melee and didn't think the bear was enough of a threat to missile or spell. Then the bear went- 3 attacks on the barbarian- hit, hit, and a crit. Barbarian to -9 and bleeding out. Cleric rushes in with a CLW or CMW to stabilize the barb, rogue and MU unload arrows and missile weapons. Next round- Bear only hits heavily armored cleric once and adjusts 5 foot step toward rogue. Rogue prepares for melee and sets up for sneak attack but can't quite get the move and attack. Mage magic missiles again. Bear crits cleric, putting him unconcious, rogue no longer has flank and gets attacked by bear. Bear mops up remaining non-melee victims. It was TPK (the mage could have gotten away, but chose to go down with the ship). Brutal...

from then on the watch word was..."look out for bears".

Much later they ran into a dire bear again with a barbarian, it nearly took the barbarian out, but the party opened with their strongest gambits. They take no prisoners against bears now.

-E

 

[arwink]

A dungeon adventure called Dovedale, in which the party barbarian was beaten to a bloody pulp by a goblin who was busy making a fishing lure when the attack started. The barbarian had a two-handed sword, the goblin was unarmed.

After the barbarian was a concussed mess, the goblin was promptly befriended by the party halfling.

 

[Orius]

There was something shiny at the bottom of the pond. The PCs wanted it. One dove in - critical failure on her swim roll (in Grim Tales, the DM can award an action point by inflicting a crit failure on "natural 1"). Starts drowning.

She is followed by another...and another...and yet another. I don't think I have ever seen such a series of poor rolls (followed by even more poor rolls). I think 2/3's of the party end up tangling with the "Tranquil Pond of Doom". They eventually haul everyone out and the healer PC manages to revive the 95% dead first victim.

I nearly killed most of my group with a pool of water too. This was a nearly freezing pool that had a round white orb at the bottom that the party was trying to retrieve. They'd heard rumors that it was a powerful magical artifact, and they thought they could use it to cure the dwarf fighter of being possessed by a strange but non-malevolent entity. Anyway, they go into the pool and fumble their swim checks, and nearly drowned. They later found out the rumor was a bust and that the orb was actually a white dragon egg when it hatched on them.

Hmm, I think that was the same dungeon where the fighter was searching under a bed for treasure when the dwarf decided to get up on the bed and start jumping up and down on it. Course, since the bed was there for about a hundred years or so, it was nice and dry rotted, and the dwarf very nearly landed on the fighter's head when he crashed through the wreakage of the bed. The fighter was not at all amused, though I was.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Not actually DnD, but all the same embarrassing. Playing Warhammer Fantasy with my Betonnians, I often find that the Knights are much worse than their horses. When I'm rolling dice for 7 Brets, 2 hit and neither wound. When I roll dice for their horses, they all hit and all wound. Then of course I'm wondering why I paid 23 points for a horse.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

"I'll bet you ten gold I won't get thrown out of the ring"

So said the Wizard rogue to the Innkeeper in the "Wrassling with Bertnam" adventure in a Dungeon Mag long ago. Well, he gets in the ring and as a first act casts mirror image on himself as the troll rushes across the ring to grab him. And scenting the correct image, he snatches up the wizard and throws him and his seven images straight out of the ring, through the window and out into the street. Let me tell you, the sight of eight wizards getting tossed outthe window nas rolling in the street is a streoy that will be told for a looooooong time.

Upon climbing back intothe ring for the next round. the troll immediately snatche him again, and this time threw him int\o the crowd where a table met its end under the weight of one real and seven false images. Barely gettiung to his feeth the wizard shakily got up to meet his fate once again, this time landing unconciuous in the middle of the inn, his seven images peacefully slumbering onthe floor beside him.

It was quite embarressing, in addition to losingthe ten gold coins.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Ah, the common woe of any brettonian player. In my gaming club we referred to them as ninja horses. Because they were. No chaos warrior, chariot, undead infantry or darkelf cold-one-knight could stand up to their righteous fury.

Fear the neigh.

 

[toberane]

<SNIP>

from then on the watch word was..."look out for bears".

<SNIP>

-E

Wow. If I didn't know better I'd think you were a part of the same group I was in. Played Forge of Fury while playtesting 3E and everything. Spooky.

Truth is, that is the exact same thing that happened to us. Only in our party the mage (just like yours, he was the only one who was still standing) was the one that ran away, and led the bear away from our unconscious bodies. When he had lost the bear, he came back, tended wounds as best he could, until the cleric was conscious and could do some real healing. Otherwise, that bear would have TPKed us, too.

Geez, I'm glad I'm not the only one that this happened to.

 

[Liolel]

Let me add to the growing number of people here who has seen a party almost get wiped out by the bear in the forge of fury. What happened was the party saw the two troglydtes in the room first, as the bears cage was at a bad angle to see from the corrider they entered the room in. Being only a party of three, and not wanting to get flanked the party decided to fight in the corrider. When the bear came unto the seen, it devestated the fighter, mauled the sorcercer who was right behind him, and the cleric nearly died. However the cleric did kill the bear and save the day.