RangerWickett
Legend
This is a little long.
In a campaign I play in, our group is part of the standard "Prophecy to Save the World." We are destined to defeat this major villain who is trying to summon the spirit of the world into an incarnate form. When so birthed, it will be enraged and unable to control it's power, and will destroy all life on the planet. This has happened once or twice in the past, it is said, so we'd like to stop it from happening again.
The main villain, or at least the point man for the group of main villains known as the Order of the Black Phoenix, is a powerful warrior, Donovan. We've recently made great headway toward stopping the evil order's plans, so Donovan sent lackeys to tell us to surrender and be taken away for interrogation, or to be prepared to die (since our corpses can always be interrogated after we're dead).
We're only 7th level, and we've heard about Donovan doing incredible deeds that make us rightly afraid. But heedless, we kill his lackeys and use a communication bracelet to taunt him. He replies, "I'll be teleporting in to accept your surrender tomorrow morning. You have until then to decide whether you value your lives."
So there we are, out in the wilderness, having just found the location of an artifact that will help us save the world. Unfortunately, it's useless until the day the world's about to be destroyed. We're dozens of miles from any civilized land, pretty much in the middle of a wide field with no defensible positions. Facing death or capture the next morning, we make our peace, and decide that if we're captured, the world will end anyway and we'll still die, so if we want to not just save our lives but save those of everyone in the world, we have to fight.
There's only five of us (please forgive the names; the game started sillier than it has since ended up).
We wait for first light, staying spread out enough to avoid fireball blasts, but close enough to help each other in a fight. We spot Donovan as he appears less than a hundred feet away, surprisingly alone. When he sees that we are armed and preparing to attack, he realizes we decided not to surrender, so he charges, holding his finely crafted glaive at ready.
The blind Adjustments starts with a darkness spell centered on himself, but Donovan just takes that as a boon, since he has trained for fighting blind better than any of us (except the blind guy). So we already start on a bad note, when for the first round of combat none of us can find Donovan. When Adjustments gets a chance to dispel his own darkness, we see he's on the ground, with a Donovan using a backhook on his glaive to exotically both pin the bard to the ground and rip through his chain armor. The bard is nearly out already, having suffered something like 100 points of subdual damage in a single volley of attacks. Yay for villains wanting to deal subdual damage! Apparently Donovan still harbored the notion that he could take us alive.
Before he went down, though, Adjustments managed to cut several fierce gashes in Donovan's armor. I realize that within a few seconds, Donovan will have disentangled his glaive from Adjustments' chain shirt, so I take what I see as my one chance, charging in and swinging my Dwarven war axe for the shaft of his glaive. With amazingly luck, I chop down through it, snapping it in twain. Donovan looks at me in a moment's shock (I just killed his +5 magic weapon!), and then he shows how much infinitely stronger he is than me as he uses both the ends of his glaive as clubs, and starts beating on me like a drummer with drumsticks.
The paladin on her worg, and the orc with his rock, help surround Donovan and we beat on him for a moment, while our mage Hradwick flies overhead (using winged boots to fly) and drops a lightning bolt straight down on him. In my attempt to dodge the blast, however, I trip over Adjustments' unconscious body, and take a continued whacking from Donovan. When I push myself to my feet, though, I ram into Donovan's legs and knock him over, where the orc drops a rock on him, and the worg tries to pin him.
Donovan manages to roll out from under the worg, and flips to his feet, bruised but still strong. I go down a few seconds later, but then the barrage of magic missiles start blasting Donovan from the sky, and the worg, paladin, and orc continue to harry him. Donovan, still not having a chance yet to retrieve a fresh weapon, uses his broken glaive to take down the paladin only moments later, which takes the worg out of the fight as well, since it stays to defend her body.
The orc flees (following earlier commands from our mage) in an attempt to lure Donovan into the open so Hradwick can blast him with a fireball without hitting us. Since Hradwick is flying, he's confident he can just pepper Donovan with whatever spells he needs until the man goes down.
Donovan doesn't fall for it, though, and drops his broken weapon, draws a vicious-looking dagger, and grabs Adjustments' unconscious body. Holding a knife to the bard's throat, Donovan pulls out a couple of potion vials and tosses them halfway to Hradwick. They're tranquilizers, which he'd brought along so we'd be able to go peacefully without having to get beaten up. If Hradwick and the orc both drink one, Donovan won't kill Adjustments.
Again, we'd already figured out that surrender probably meant death. (Of course, meta-gaming, we figured the DM wouldn't toss us against a 20th level fighter without giving us some sort of way out, but we were roleplaying fatalistically). So Hradwick shakes his head and fireballs Donovan, catching all of our unconscious bodies at the same time. Donovan looks like he's about to sag, but he quaffs a healing potion, then reaches for a bracelet on his wrist. When he touches it, he vanishes, and then a moment later falls from above Hradwick. Yes, the man has a teleportation bracelet, and he used it to make a death from above attack against Hradwick.
The villain collides with the mage and grapples him, stabbing repeatedly with his dagger, which Hradwick only survives because of Stoneskin. Knowing he can't fend off Donovan for long, and that he has no chance of getting off a spell with somatic components, Hradwick casts the only verbal-only spell he has: dimension door. And he dimension doors 680 feet straight into the air, taking Donovan with him, then cancels his boots' flight ability.
The two plummet downward, and Donovan kicks away, again activating his teleportation bracelet, realizing at the last moment that even if he teleports to the ground, he'll still arrive with the momentum of at least a 50 ft. fall, more than enough to either kill or cripple him. So he teleports higher into the air.
And then he teleports higher again.
And again.
And again.
Meanwhile, Hradwick has reactivated his boots of flying and swoops down to help the orc administer healing potions to the rest of us. When we come to and hear what happened, we look up, and Donovan is nowhere to be seen. Apparently after he got a rhythm down, he teleported high into the sky over his home base, where I guess he hopes someone will notice the eternally falling villain, and figure out a way to keep him from splattering to death.
So we didn't quite kill him, but we still won a victory. Our first order of business now is to get anti-scrying magic to make sure he doesn't come after us again (assuming he actually did survive; damned infinite teleportation bracelet), and in-game we're all very thankful to be alive. Out-of-game, though, we're whooting and hollering and cheering our bad-assitudiness.
Huzzah.
In a campaign I play in, our group is part of the standard "Prophecy to Save the World." We are destined to defeat this major villain who is trying to summon the spirit of the world into an incarnate form. When so birthed, it will be enraged and unable to control it's power, and will destroy all life on the planet. This has happened once or twice in the past, it is said, so we'd like to stop it from happening again.
The main villain, or at least the point man for the group of main villains known as the Order of the Black Phoenix, is a powerful warrior, Donovan. We've recently made great headway toward stopping the evil order's plans, so Donovan sent lackeys to tell us to surrender and be taken away for interrogation, or to be prepared to die (since our corpses can always be interrogated after we're dead).
We're only 7th level, and we've heard about Donovan doing incredible deeds that make us rightly afraid. But heedless, we kill his lackeys and use a communication bracelet to taunt him. He replies, "I'll be teleporting in to accept your surrender tomorrow morning. You have until then to decide whether you value your lives."
So there we are, out in the wilderness, having just found the location of an artifact that will help us save the world. Unfortunately, it's useless until the day the world's about to be destroyed. We're dozens of miles from any civilized land, pretty much in the middle of a wide field with no defensible positions. Facing death or capture the next morning, we make our peace, and decide that if we're captured, the world will end anyway and we'll still die, so if we want to not just save our lives but save those of everyone in the world, we have to fight.
There's only five of us (please forgive the names; the game started sillier than it has since ended up).
- Hradwick, a powerful wizard specializing in evocations.
- Adjustments, a blind barbarian-bard who wields a powerful magical scythe.
- Tiamat, a paladin of the god of the downtrodden. She rides a tamed Worg named Garuuf.
- An orc NPC whose name I've sadly forgotten. He's completely loyal, and dumb as a rock, which, coincidentally, is his weapon of choice.
- And me, Argent Kantor, honorable Dwarven warrior who looks like a frikkin' turtle in all his full plate and heavy shield.
We wait for first light, staying spread out enough to avoid fireball blasts, but close enough to help each other in a fight. We spot Donovan as he appears less than a hundred feet away, surprisingly alone. When he sees that we are armed and preparing to attack, he realizes we decided not to surrender, so he charges, holding his finely crafted glaive at ready.
The blind Adjustments starts with a darkness spell centered on himself, but Donovan just takes that as a boon, since he has trained for fighting blind better than any of us (except the blind guy). So we already start on a bad note, when for the first round of combat none of us can find Donovan. When Adjustments gets a chance to dispel his own darkness, we see he's on the ground, with a Donovan using a backhook on his glaive to exotically both pin the bard to the ground and rip through his chain armor. The bard is nearly out already, having suffered something like 100 points of subdual damage in a single volley of attacks. Yay for villains wanting to deal subdual damage! Apparently Donovan still harbored the notion that he could take us alive.
Before he went down, though, Adjustments managed to cut several fierce gashes in Donovan's armor. I realize that within a few seconds, Donovan will have disentangled his glaive from Adjustments' chain shirt, so I take what I see as my one chance, charging in and swinging my Dwarven war axe for the shaft of his glaive. With amazingly luck, I chop down through it, snapping it in twain. Donovan looks at me in a moment's shock (I just killed his +5 magic weapon!), and then he shows how much infinitely stronger he is than me as he uses both the ends of his glaive as clubs, and starts beating on me like a drummer with drumsticks.
The paladin on her worg, and the orc with his rock, help surround Donovan and we beat on him for a moment, while our mage Hradwick flies overhead (using winged boots to fly) and drops a lightning bolt straight down on him. In my attempt to dodge the blast, however, I trip over Adjustments' unconscious body, and take a continued whacking from Donovan. When I push myself to my feet, though, I ram into Donovan's legs and knock him over, where the orc drops a rock on him, and the worg tries to pin him.
Donovan manages to roll out from under the worg, and flips to his feet, bruised but still strong. I go down a few seconds later, but then the barrage of magic missiles start blasting Donovan from the sky, and the worg, paladin, and orc continue to harry him. Donovan, still not having a chance yet to retrieve a fresh weapon, uses his broken glaive to take down the paladin only moments later, which takes the worg out of the fight as well, since it stays to defend her body.
The orc flees (following earlier commands from our mage) in an attempt to lure Donovan into the open so Hradwick can blast him with a fireball without hitting us. Since Hradwick is flying, he's confident he can just pepper Donovan with whatever spells he needs until the man goes down.
Donovan doesn't fall for it, though, and drops his broken weapon, draws a vicious-looking dagger, and grabs Adjustments' unconscious body. Holding a knife to the bard's throat, Donovan pulls out a couple of potion vials and tosses them halfway to Hradwick. They're tranquilizers, which he'd brought along so we'd be able to go peacefully without having to get beaten up. If Hradwick and the orc both drink one, Donovan won't kill Adjustments.
Again, we'd already figured out that surrender probably meant death. (Of course, meta-gaming, we figured the DM wouldn't toss us against a 20th level fighter without giving us some sort of way out, but we were roleplaying fatalistically). So Hradwick shakes his head and fireballs Donovan, catching all of our unconscious bodies at the same time. Donovan looks like he's about to sag, but he quaffs a healing potion, then reaches for a bracelet on his wrist. When he touches it, he vanishes, and then a moment later falls from above Hradwick. Yes, the man has a teleportation bracelet, and he used it to make a death from above attack against Hradwick.
The villain collides with the mage and grapples him, stabbing repeatedly with his dagger, which Hradwick only survives because of Stoneskin. Knowing he can't fend off Donovan for long, and that he has no chance of getting off a spell with somatic components, Hradwick casts the only verbal-only spell he has: dimension door. And he dimension doors 680 feet straight into the air, taking Donovan with him, then cancels his boots' flight ability.
The two plummet downward, and Donovan kicks away, again activating his teleportation bracelet, realizing at the last moment that even if he teleports to the ground, he'll still arrive with the momentum of at least a 50 ft. fall, more than enough to either kill or cripple him. So he teleports higher into the air.
And then he teleports higher again.
And again.
And again.
Meanwhile, Hradwick has reactivated his boots of flying and swoops down to help the orc administer healing potions to the rest of us. When we come to and hear what happened, we look up, and Donovan is nowhere to be seen. Apparently after he got a rhythm down, he teleported high into the sky over his home base, where I guess he hopes someone will notice the eternally falling villain, and figure out a way to keep him from splattering to death.
So we didn't quite kill him, but we still won a victory. Our first order of business now is to get anti-scrying magic to make sure he doesn't come after us again (assuming he actually did survive; damned infinite teleportation bracelet), and in-game we're all very thankful to be alive. Out-of-game, though, we're whooting and hollering and cheering our bad-assitudiness.
Huzzah.
