The campaign highlight this year

[Kid Charlemagne]

I think my highlight was during the Longest Night adventure... we were defending the city of Corvis from an onslaught of moderately intelligent skeletons and zombies, and we were holding the bridge that led to the main Church in town.

Angrimir, my elven wizard, had just gotten 2nd level spells, and hadn't had time to pick up many to prepare. I had taken Power Craft from the Complete Book of Eldritch Might - not because it was powerful, but because it seemed cool, and I knew I wouldn't be finding it in too many random spellbooks.

I had all kinds of spell slots available, and how many times can you take Glitterdust, anyway? So I had memorized Power Craft. I figured I might use to commandeer a small sailboat or something.

So the undead start marching up on our position at the bridge. We're feeling pretty good - until we see that reinforcements are on the way, with a mobile artillery cannon! Everyone freaks, but Angrimir just smiles, and casts his spell. However, it's a touch spell, and the bridge is now full of skeletons. So Angrimir's familiar, a chihuahua named Pepe - able to deliver touch spells - darts off into the crowd, ably manouvreing away from the undead until he leaps up on the cannon, delivering the spell just as the undead minions finish loading it.

The skeletons don't know what to do as their cannon suddenly lurches forward, speeding off across the bridge, with a tiny hairless dog proudly perched on the barrel of the cannon. Angrimir directs the cannon to his side, just as the evil sorceror who summoned all the undead shows up, to gloat and so on from the top of a tomb in the Church's cemetary.

Angrimir fires the cannon.

And rolls a 19.

No crit, but she's knocked right off the tomb, seriously hurt, and that turns the tide of battle in our favor.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I was playing a 7th level monk in a friend's SL campaign. A monk of Corean who has the Adamant style. Others are about 7th level as well.

We're looting a dungeon and discover that the BBEG is also here looting.

We're thinking of making a run for it, but due to our own poor planning, get trapped. Looks like a TPK but when I flurry, I critical hit the guy twice, and another PC criticals him once. We turn some of the traps in the place against him and narrowly pull out a victory with only one PC biting the dust.

 

[Lord Judas]

We just finished my year long campaign. Its hard to narrow it down to just one, but these are the top few:

The party monk grapples and wrestles a shark to death in an underwater adventure (I kept blowing the opposed roll). For the remainder of the campaign if he ever hesitated to do something the other PC's would go "What are you worried about? You wrestled a shark to death!". When his soul was annihilated at the end fighting the BBEG, the party had a statue errected of him with a look of peace and calm on his face...while holding a shark in a head lock.

The rogue being sent to Acheron by Prismatic Spray. A nice story arc, but it was made funny cause me and one PC were talking about how messed some of the outer planes are and that Acheron was probably one of the most bizzare. We must have forseen the future. For the rest of the campaign their rally cry was "Hey, we survived Acheron, how bad could this be?". Also, while in Acheron, the actual players started to behave like they were in Acheron for some reason, buying into the philosphy of "Fighting for the sake of Fighting". My Sig is actually taken from that arc. Classic stuff.

Finally, for me (and this is purely ego), the end of the game involved going back in time and saving Acererak's Mom from being slain and altering Acererak's thinking as he was already a God (the players totally failed my last campaign, Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Acererak ascended). Its a long story, but when it came time to return to their "time" they found out the gate was one-way. There was a Devil who was guiding them (long story) and he had an idea... he took them back to a non-evil lich the party had ecountered *10 months of Real time* prior. The Lich was still a wizard at this point in the past, he offered to turn them to stone for 3000 years. He said he would break the spell or...if he died the spell would break a eventually as well. 10 months ago, he asked to be killed to "go home" Then one of the players said..."Wait!! When we came here before...weren't there statues in this hall? (Lich's underground hall)". I just smiled and nodded. The players spontaneously gave me a round of applause.

 

[Greylock]

Dramatic- An ogre champion bullrushing a party tank into an underground river. Very dramatic, and I handle the rules properly.

Funny- Same players mount biting an ogre to death OR the DJ in our group doing a remix of some NPC voices.

Sad- Same mount getting killed with 1 blow form a mechanical undead.

Out of bounds- The whole party killng some drakes in a cave complex. They then flooded the cave complex by stoppering an undegroudn river to kill the momma drake below and her babies. They didn't realize what that woudl do to the town below the complex until water started rushing down the hill.

Of course, I would love to hear what my players think...

It's very hard for me to pick a single most dramatic moment. This has been a very dramatic campaign. Almost every session has had something that qualified. The last two sessions were very satisfying though. I'd add the entire mission in the Drake Temple, although the unintentional drowning of the village took the edge off the victory. And the battle at the Temple of Crows where we felled the manticore was right up there.

I'd add to the funny list, every time Dumb Bear opens his mouth. Ash has had me in stitches over and over again.

To the sad list, I have to add losing two party members in one encounter. And ya know, although the loss of the mount felt like losing a pc, it was another of the great dramatic moments. Every move my character made was intentional, and probably the most paladin-like self sacrificing he has been in the game thus far [note: not playing a Pally]. I expected him to die right then and there along with the mount. Ren swooping in was the only thing that kept the party from losing both the mount and the pc.

 

[barsoomcore]

Barsoom's highlight has to be the Vampire moment.

Our heroes venture into the frozen mountains of Yu Lan, seeking the abandoned laboratory of a vanquished sorcerer in hopes of finding the key to destroying vampires (not a straightforward task on Barsoom). It turned as a fortunately/unfortunately sort of tale:

• Fortunately, they found the secret to destroying vampires.
• Unfortunately, the vampire needing destroying was several thousand miles away from them, and only a few miles away from her ultimate destination -- the tomb of her former master, where she intended to restore him to bad-guy life.
• Fortunately, the party includes a sorcerer who can get them there in time.
• Unfortunately, the sorcerer fails his spellcasting roll (magic on Barsoom is special).
• Fortunately, the sorcerer makes his saving roll against the Constitution damage.
• Unfortunately, the Constitution damage (even after his successful save) is sufficient to kill him.
• Fortunately, the abandoned laboratory includes a variety of devices for restoring animation to the deceased.
• Unfortunately, these devices will turn our brave PC into a ravening undead monster.
• Fortunately, our heroes are unfazed, since they're just loaded up on ravening-undead-monster-killing hardware, and go ahead with the process.
• Unfortunately, their friend wakes up with a thirst for human souls.
• Fortunately, he's just rational enough to be able to control his raveningness and get our heroes to where they need to be to stop the lone vampire in her evil quest.
• Unfortunately, she's not quite as lone as they thought...

It's always fun when your PCs are MORE devious and twisted than you are.

 

[scourger]

2004 campaign highlights

As a player, the highlight was the escape of Bjorn in the second quarter of this year. Bjorn, a cleric of Boccob, went unarmored and lightly armed with the halfling thief to scout a barn in which we thought was trouble. We were right. The rest of the party was slightly wounded by paper cuts and wanted to rest at the inn. So, Bjorn watched the halfling thief from a treeline. The other player thought that having a few ranks in hide and being a halfling equals invisibility. When the worg riders descended on his secret location, he was quickly overmatched, despite Bjorn's wild crossbow fire support (bad rolls by me). As Bjorn approached the side of the house to get a look at the battle behind, the halfling took more damage and announced he was down. Ready to pull out all the stops, Bjorn drank an old-school potion of fire breath. Thinking to take out one or two baddies, Bjorn revealed himself and loosed the dragon's breath. Shockingly, it got most of the baddies and the halfling who announced he wasn't down after all--just at zero hit points. Sadly, the half pint failed his save. Bjorn retreated around a corner. Just before reinforcements burst from the barn, Bjorn used a domain spell to show the squirt the true meaning of invisibility. He slipped off unseen to witness the party's reinforcement get taken down in single combat by the pursuing baddies but eventually saved that guy and scooped up all the magic from the hobbit.

As a DM, the highlight was last night. At the climax of Life's Bazaar, the first adventure of the Shackled City, four of six PCs died: a jedi consular; a halfling cleric/thief; an aasimar paladin; and a big, strong, one-armed mutant. The jedi guardian stabilized at -9 hit points by using a luck chip to reroll. Left standing was the street judge who prevailed by fragging all the bad guys and himself with a high-ex round from his lawgiver and then using AP rounds to defeat the big, armored foe. The highlight was that the players immediately rolled new stats for their replacement characters. I had visions of the campaign ending, but we'll be ringing in the New Year with it next week.

 

[RangerWickett]

As a player, the highlight was our Halloween Call of Cthulhu game, where we faced an ancient Aztec evil that had been unleashed in a desolate Mexican town. We called it 'El Diablo.' There was a whole stack of characters available, so after one died the next could show up, and we'd keep playing until sunrise, or until the game had been resolved. I was one of two players who came so close to lasting the whole night. But sadly I was shot at the last moment by the Mexican priest who had been possessed by El Diablo when we accidentally killed the body he had previously been trapped in. Very appropriate death, I thought.

As a DM, it was actually very early in the year. One villain had spanned two campaigns, and the party desperately wanted to defeat him. One of the PCs (a human) was going to marry his beautiful Elvish daughter, the sorceress Shalosha. Even Shalosha admitted that her father was going to ruin the world if he could conquer it. So many other stronger villains had fallen, battling against each other, but Shaaladel, the Shining Emperor, was the most cunning, and in the aftermath of all these wars, he stood ready to sieze control of the world. The battles had been fast and intense, with every side having access to powerful teleportation magic, but now teleportation had been disrupted, so that anyone teleporting would briefly pass through the plane of fire, taking serious damage unless they had the proper magical protection. Shaaladel's armies were all in place. All that stood in his way were the PCs, perhaps the only people powerful enough to threaten him.

Though he tried to make them his allies, he made the critical mistake of letting his bigotry of non-Elves get in the way of him conquering the world. Unconvinced by his offer of friendship, Rantle, the PC who was to wed Shaaladel's daughter Shalosha, decided to make a bid for power himself, planning to rule with generosity and peace. Shaaladel got word of this, and tried to trap the PCs in a psychic nightmare.

They escaped, but Shalosha was captured, and they teleported in to save her. A grand fight took place between Shaaladel with his elite bodyguards, and the PCs, who were injured from having to teleport through the flames. In the fray, the party barbarian grappled Shaaladel and was slowly crushing him to death while the rest of the group faced off against his bodyguards. The party was winning despite the greater odds, but Shalosha saw that her father was about to die. Even though he had betrayed her and tried to kill her, she still loved him, and could not let him be killed. Unthinking, she did the only thing she could to try to save him: hoping to free him from the murderous barbarian, she leapt forward, grabbed her father, and teleported to safety.

Fires flared across them, and when they emerged from the teleport, Shalosha collapsed, weeping, holding the incinerated corpse of her father.

And, I swear it wasn't intentional, but the name "Shalosha" was supposed to mean 'bright one,' or 'shining light.' Which is just about the same as what the name Electra means.