I Will Not Die!

[Taloras]

Hmmm...our hardest fight so far....should have been this last one. we are all around level 10....and going into the giant series. the main fight was somewhere around 20+ hill giants, 3 or 4 stone giants, and a cloud giant. we won without anyone getting to 0 hp. the cloud giant alone was a cr 17 i believe.

 

[Zappo]

Meh. I usually run from fights where I'm likely to die (haven't been a player in a heroic-style game for ages).

I could say what happened to me this evening, though. We played Vampire, and we had to get rid a small village of a supposed rebellious vampire who hid in a factory and preyed on the townsfolk. Well, for the whole session both of us players have rolled at least one '1' in almost every single important roll, and had something like ten botches, between the two of us. I even had a double botch on a difficulty 4 roll. With three or four d10 to roll and a target number of '6', we scored no successes about half the time. Eventually, I started spending willpower points just to cancel out the botches which I knew I would roll - that way, I managed to do some successes. Oh, and I'm not talking about a small number of rolls - we made dozens and dozens of rolls this evening. Changing dice didn't work.

The one and only time a very good (four successes) roll appeared, it was for the other player attacking me because his character had gone insane (due to the DM scoring seven successes on a nasty dark thaumaturgy thingy which throws you into paranoia so much that you have to roll courage for any action - hence the huge number of rolls made this session).

That stupid dark thaumaturgy power was the one and only thing the villain did to us, and through our incredible series of botches and normal fails in every action, it ended up with my character spending almost all blood, running out of Willpower, taking aggravated damage, and running out of money, and the other player's character reduced to a paranoid wreck for an unknown amount of time.

We had to flee the town and report a complete defeat. We didn't even manage to see the enemy.

Well, from the friggin' sabbat vampire's POV, that was an incredible victory, I reckon.

 

[Umbran]

Hmm...

Long time ago, back in 2E rules, I was playing an elven ranger. The rest of the party was busy with a problem in one room of an underground complex. I had little I could do about that problem, so I moved into the next room to cover the entry.

Down the hall came 8 drow in a double column. Four fighters ahead of 4 priests.

From what we had seen before in the dungeon, these would have toasted the party had they caught us unawares. If I try to call out, or retreat, I will be noticed and toasted right quick, as they'll concentrate on me. If I don't do something, within seconds, everyone will be toasted...

So, I make like a dual-sword wielding kzinti - I scream and leap...

The other players moan, realizing that my delaying the enemy probably saves their butts, but they'll be scraping me off the floor when they do arrive....

...and I manage to get surprise. A full two rounds of surprise. I manage to get multiple criticals in the next three rounds of attacks - my dice refuse to roll anything below a 17 on a to-hit. By the time the party arrives, two fighters and two priests are dead. Two other fighters were wounded, and I was working on the remaining two priests....

It was a darned good day to be me, let me tell you...

[edit: Oh, and I still have those dice. They're my babies ]

 

[spunky_mutters]

As a ref I had players pull a couple on me.

There was the guy with 2hp left taking 11 damage from a 9d6 lightning bolt. Luckily someone was close enough to heal him before he went to -10.

There was a player in a Runequest game who, after being stripped of his equipment and left to wait being sacrificed in a cell had managed to pick his way out and grab a poker in the torture chamber. He came upon a balcony overlooking the chamber where the cultists were preparing the ritual. I had figured that even if they escaped, they wouldn't have any weapons, and so this would give them a good scare before they high-tailed it back to town for more stuff. The idiot throws the poker. I gave him a very low chance to hit, but he crits the high priest with it, and even hits him in the head. He killed my high priest with a poker from pretty much maximum range for a weapon like that. Oh well, live by gritty combat rules, die by gritty combat rules.

As a player I had a Paranoia character who refused to move past his 2nd clone. It became a running joke where the ref would give everyone else secret society missions to kill my character, and give them all kinds of weapons and mutant powers, but there would always be a fumble or something that would result in my survival. He didn't want to cheap out and just kill me, he wanted it to be 'fair.' Eventually I ended up retiring him, as he was trapped in a cave complex on the surface. His fantastic string of luck never actually came to a close, though.

 

[Ravellion]

I DMed the following:

Evil bad guy hasted 12th level cleric cast harm on 10th level paladin, who is then down to 3 hp. Proceeded with a move back and a flame strike. 12d6. After saving, the paladin takes only 12 damage, bringing him to -9. Next initiative was the druid's and he cast cure serious and rolls really well. The paladin then proceeded to open up a can of whupass on the cleric on the next initiative. Next round: The cleric casts ethereal jaunt defensively, makes it, moves towards the wall, has to go through the paladin's threatened area. Paladins gets on attack against an Insane AC, and a 50% miss chance. Of course: One dead cleric.

Rav

 

[Upper_Krust]

S'mon using U_K's login:
Well, my PC Parrax the Potentially Powerful once killed the Dark God Thanatos (Basic/Immortals D&D deity) on his home plane with one shot from an Arrow of Undead Slaying - critical hit '20', he got a save but rolled a '1', scratch one deity.

OK, the DM was a bit lenient...

-Simon

 

[Sir Trent]

Way back in 1e

A party I was DMing stumbled into an underground complex of goblins and hobgoblins. They made a few mistakes and alerted the whole tribe, trying to flee down a tunnel they had not yet explored. You guessed it: dead end. The party fought like crazed demons, but were slowly forced down the hallway. Due to the curve of the tunnel, arrows were of little consequence. The larger hobs forced the smaller gobs into the fray first. When the 'party' reached the end of the tunnel they were in a room just bigger than broom closet size. Only two characters still lived at that point, a Cleric of Balder and a Fighter named Groo (lived up to his name that day). The hobs and gobs kept passing their group morale checks, so they just kept coming. The doorway was small, so only one front line gob could fight at a time, with a little support from any great weapons in the second row. The fighter fought while the cleric healed him. Once out of spells, the cleric used a cursed staff of healing that would explode upon running out of charges (they had figured out the curse already, but weren't exactly sure of the number of charges left). To make a long story not much longer when the last hobs broke and ran, the fighter was down to zero hit points, the cleric to three, the staff was gone, all the clerics spells were gone, every consumable magic item the party had was exhuasted, and the bodies in the hallway were so deep it would've taken days to get them all out.

 

[Ferret]

I have not played muchbut one timed my Ranger/cleric single handedly disables a group of 6 skeleton, he turns them all and then casts create water!

Then another time he charges into a magical dark room with a shadow, he turns him and lasts a few rounds, in there with out being hit though I had no +1 weapons. I steped out after cooling down.(He hates undead)

 

[Dark Dragon]

I DMed the following recently:

The party (a pal/ftr, bbn/drd, brd/wiz, rog/ftr, all of char level 5) just entered the dungeons of an evil temple. In a large chamber, they encountered two harpies and six ghouls. Shortly after the harpies were dead, the rogue, the bard and the druid were paralyzed, but before, they managed to bring down two ghouls. So, the paladin was left, flanked by four ghouls, and hit several times. But she made her saves, and chopped to ghouls into pieces with her greatsword. The paladin had to fight three or four rounds alone, if she would have failed her save, the party would have perished.