I Will Not Die!

[Mortaneus]

Everyone, at one time or another, has had or seen one.

Wins that defy description.

Victories where your character should have been charcoal/spackle/gibbits/dust/etc, but somehow, either through luck, unbelievable cunning, or sheer determination you not only managed to survive, but to come out victorious.

What is the most difficult battle you ever fought in a game, and won?

 

[Cedric]

D&D 2nd edition...party is around 8-11th level. The rest of the party is laying on the ground bleeding to death. All of them are at around -4 to -7 hit points.

My 10th level thief, Kevin, is the last man standing. I am facing off against the last of the Vrock's which is also wounded.

My weapons are only +1's so they won't hit the Vrock. So I picked up a few weapons my teammates had dropped that would hurt it...of course, I am non-proficient.

I need a 20 to hit this thing...it doesn't have many hps left, neither do I.

It wins initiative, it hits me, I go down to 1 hit point, the lowest team member is at -8 hp's.

My turn...I roll a 20 (can't crit, need 20's to hit), do damage, it's hurt, but not dead...but I have an offhand weapon...and yes, I rolled a 20 again! It had 1 hit point left, I had 1 hit point left, and I dropped it.

Bandaged up the rest of the party and smeared some kheogtim's ointment on the cleric, we were good to go.

Cedric

 

[Xeriar]

Our party consisted of five level eleven characters. My character was one of six wizards cursed to have our wills being implanted in golems while we slept, two others of these wizards came with us to the city where we were being 'controlled' from...

We got ambushed inside the city, then had one hour to devise and enact a plan to assault the Tower of High Sorcery, break whatever was controlling us and get out alive. No time to rememorize spells, the two other wizards were out of the fight, my character helped enact a bit of treachery, since one of the ambushers 'turned' after their ambush failed (long story, good story too...) and we had a slim chance.

Our main opponent was a powerful Archmage named Konstantine, who turned out to be a CR 24 vampire. Do to a serious combination of luck, cunning and a case of the big bad guy's own schemes working against him (no teleportation possible, the only exit from the room, even for a gas cloud, was the door the warpriest was standing in front of, no sound escaping the room, etc. etc.) we managed to off him -FOR GOOD-.

Got no experience from him, obviously, by the tables, that's 80,000 XP (one character was an idiot and did nothing for the fight...) Still don't know what reward we really got for that one. Maybe our souls can be ressurected now, heh.

We got ambushed on our way out too. One very, very painful little adventure...

 

[Vargo]

My first favorite "It Just Wouldn't Die" - Halma's mad dash around behind the orcs in The Forge of Fury from Wulf's Story Hour. Honorable mention: Wulf pressing a scroll of Teleport into Shorty's hands and gasping "REEEEEAAAAAAD!" at him...

My second favorite:

I was starting off in a long-running campaign (1st edition) where the rest of the group was around 9 - 11th level. I decided to play a Druid, and I seem to remember being 5-6th level, although I could be wrong. This was about 14 years ago.

Well, we were crossing an underground river on a narrow rock "bridge" when guess who should fail his Dex check and fall into the water? That's right, me. Guess who failed his Dex check to grab the rope thrown to him? That's right, me.

So I get swept off downriver, around the corner, and the party begins preparations to come after me. Me, I get around the corner and look into a large lake with a distant shore - and on that shore was a Drow female conversing with a Beholder.

Now, by all rights, I should have just said "**** that" and waited for the party to come after me. However, I wasn't feeling too attached to the character, since I was new and feeling pretty useless amongst the group, who definitely outpowered me a bit. So, I swam to the bottom of the lake and cast "Stone Shape."

And dropped a gigantic mass of rock on the Beholder and the Drow.

The way I described it was thus: "I 'dig' a very narrow channel in the shape of a pyramid in the rock above the Beholder, with only the apex of the pyramid still connecting to the rest of the rock, so that when the spell ends, the entire mass will snap and drop on the Beholder and Drow."

The Drow managed to dive out from underneath the falling rock, but the Beholder took a quick trip to pancake land. Score one for the Druid.

I popped up on land and won the initiative. Tossed off a Heat Metal as that was probably the only way I had a snowball's chance in Hell against a female Drow. We started pounding on each other, and I was down to 2 hp when she finally dropped - and due to the Heat Metal, she had been unable to cast spells the whole time.

So anyways, the party comes around the corner, and there I am, bandaging my wounds, next to the body of a Drow and a gigantic pile of rubble with a couple eyestalks sticking out from underneath, and said "What took you guys so long?"

Note that all the previous occurred with me 'n the DM outside of the room, so they had no idea what I pulled off. After that, the word was "Don't piss off the Druid."

 

[Crothian]

Second edition solo game. Wizard encounters a dragon the he is not suppossed to fight, but does anyone. The Wizard dies, but his familiar spider goes to bite the dragon. Needs a nat 20, and rolls it. Dragon fails his saving throw only on a natural one, that is rolled. So, the dragon does by a spider bite.

 

[Wikidogre]

This is for the B.A.D.D, 2nd ed.

1 17th level Ranger, 1 18th level Cleric, 1 16th level Thief, and 2 17th level Fighters. we where just comin back from a massive campaign in the spine of the world trying to track down a Lich, to his layer. anyways, we where all sitting in the local tavern licking our wounds mourning the loss of our Wizard (Long Story), and trying to settle down for the night. For starters the Cleric had not been able to rest and pray for spells so all he had left was low-level 1st and 2nd level spells left. then suddenly the roof of the tavern rips off, and this big bad mofo, 2 headed red dragon starts tearing up the place. Well he was sent to destroy us, because we were close to finding the Lich's layer, well it started with the 17th level ranger, he takes the first of many mortal blows, as he gets bit, and the one dragon head holds on, and then uses his breath weapon as a propelant and fires his flamming butt across town (Ironicaly, landing on the step of the parties Clerics church) 1 gone!

Next comes one of our fighters, first he gets blow tourched by the 2nd head forcing him to rip his armor off, and then ouch 2 claws and a bite, 2 of which where natural 20's! 2 down. well we as players could see this was it, we where all going to meet our demise, so we charge in and start whooping on this beast like no other. But little did we no it regenerated too!! so all badly wounded, 2 dead, we needed a plan, but that failed too when we where trying to set it up and our thief got swollowed hole...... , 3 down, and 2 to go, is what the Dm said,

Now we where giving him crap that he just wanted to kill us off. but 1 fighter and the cleric left...my character was the fighter....bleeding, armor crushed to my body from being stepped on, wondering what to do next, i think i had 21 hps left out of like 209...well as a last ditch effort the cleric, down to 3 Hps runs up and casts his last high level spell (which we or he did not know he had), and happened to be heal, so he runs over and heals me, just b4 the dragon rocks him by scoring a crit on a bite and bites him in half. 1 left and he is still hungery says the Dm...........well like a hydra, seeing it has 2 heads, my character gets this idea, since they have fought one b4, it has to be the same.....so i get by the attacks, suffering like 40 points of damage. and using 2 hand axes i climb up on the dragon, well this really pissed it off, and he starts trying to roll around, but he cannot, he is caught by the walls of the tavern for right now. then as fate would play in my favor, i scored 2 crits on 2 hits, one with a vorpal sword severing one of the heads...., then the dragon started breaking free and flying up to take me for a ride, well on my next attack i rolled a damn 1 and dropped my vorpal sword , crap i said.

Well the Dm then had this evil smile, the dragon started dive bombing the forrest outside the town to try and use the trees, to knock me off.........but i turned it against him, just as we hit the tree line, i pulled out 2 fire bombs, made by our Wizard, that had a couple of beads of force with smoke powder in them and would explode on impact...he he he...the look on the Dm's face was priceless, as the dragon hit just inside of the tree line, he impailed him self on large broken trees, stopping on a dime...this is where it gets good, launching me 745 ft into the forrest, landing in a stream on rocks (ouch!), laughing the Dm said alright, i rolled a little low but you take 168 point sof damage.......as i giggled, well since i was healed by our cleric b4 he died, and i had only taken 40 points of damage b4 i got on the dragons back, now with your 168 points of damage, that means i have 1 Hp left! Well because he started to be a jerk and did not believe me, he pulled the ever famous Dm is always right crap and said well ok, but you die in the stream from blood loss.....knowing he just wanted to kill us all off, we agreed, but till this day we all bring this story up over and over again.

*ok so by a bad call, i did not live, but dammit it was fun, 3 1/1 hours on one encounter!!

 

[The Forsaken One]

11th level elf archer vs CR 13 devil (dunno which one) in a antimagiczone with just a bow)

The dice were VERY kind to me (understatement understatement ect)

 

[Tiefling]

Grammar... spelling.. paragraphs... MY EYES! NOOOOO!!!

 

[Wikidogre]

by popular demand, i have put my previous post into paragraphs and corrected my spelling.........sorry Tief, i was writting in between phone calls here at work!

 

[DM with a vengence]

I was just fooling around with a friend, running an entire party of 4th level characters.

We go into a large room, with a Great Red Wyrm in it, and the door locks.


Knowing we have no chance in hell with a conventional battle, and that the dragon will roast us and add our charred bones to his horde in one round, we all charge.

Fighter-miss
Rogue-miss
Cleric-miss
Sorcerer-Nat 20, Nat 20, 17.

The sorcerer insta-kills the dragon with a shortspear.

we spent the rest of the evening rolling up treasure and XP.