D&D 5E What awesome thing happened in your game recently?

[Reynard]

I think that it is good to break up the more acrimonious threads where we tell each other how the other is not having fun the right way with a thread here and there to celebrate the fun we ourselves are having.

This is supposed to be fun, right?

During my Valley of Tombs adventures at TotalCon, things were looking desperate for a couple of the adventurers. In a tomb dedicated to some scarab worshiping cult of ages long past, two characters were trapped in an airtight chamber looking forward to a slow death by asphyxiation while their companions tried everything to move the 20 ton block that had trapped them inside -- to no avail. Finally, in one last desperate gambit, they drilled a hole in the block, stuffed it with dirt from outside the dungeon and planted a bean from their Bag of Beans in the hole.

One random die roll later, a huge pyramid burst forth, shatter the dungeon walls and freeing the trapped adventurers, but also introducing a powerful mummy lord into the setting by pure chance. It was glorious.

 

[MasterTrancer]

We started playing! Yay!

 

[meomwt]

I used the Goblin Arrows section of Lost Mine of Phandelver as the intro to the 5E conversion of The Temple of Elemental Evil we just started playing.

The PC's beat the ambushing Goblins, and managed to get a survivor to lead them to the Cragmaw hideout. In a fit of inspiration, the Gnome Wizard used a Minor Illusion to disguise most of the party as Goblins, so that as they approached the lookouts, it didn't look suspicious.

The Elf Rogue rolled high on Stealth and took out the first lookout before he could draw breath...

Great bit of inspiration from the mage!

 

[Cernor]

I'm running my party through LMoP (albeit with a lot of changes), and when my party got to Cragmaw Castle they saw it was perched on top of a cliff with three ways in: Up a stone bridge which was 200 feet of open terrain (with a barricade 2/3 of the way along to make things even more difficult), a winding path along a cliff (with a barn at the bottom with wolves inside), and up the pit where the hobgoblin residents dumped their waste. Needless to say, they decided to charge straight up the bridge and bust down the front door.

Somehow, due to sheer dumb luck, the party survived. And killed all but one of their foes (easily 3/4 of the dungeon) without anyone dropping to 0 hit points.

 

[eMalc]

In the last session I played in, the party was fighting off this huge kraken as it attempted to destroy a frontier town. My character, the rogue, teamed up with the barbarian to load a ballista and shoot at the creature. In order to get a better shot at it we needed to move the ballista however, a few good strength rolls later we're standing in the middle of the street, the ballista braced on the back of the barbarian and my rogue shooting with a critical hit directly in it's eye (which only angered it greatly, but still). That was the first incarnation of the Barballista. We're currently scheming ways to invent the Barbapult and the Barbuchet in the game.

 

[iserith]

The 10th-level adventurers split up in the dungeon - the paladin was upstairs fighting a vrock solo while the barbarian, wizard, and rogue fought another vrock downstairs. When the vrock downstairs was vanquished, the rogue rushed upstairs to assist the paladin while the barbarian inexplicably charged deeper into the dungeon. The wizard followed him. The rogue shouted that he and the paladin would find another way to meet up with them after dealing with the vrock.

The barbarian and wizard ran afoul of a glabrezu (demon) and battle ensued, despite the demon's desire to parley and make a deal. The barbarian was power word: stunned and dragged over to a prismatic wall. The wizard did what he could to try and get his friend freed as the demon walked slowly to the coruscating death-curtain. As the demon shoved the barbarian toward it, the barbarian resisted, the effects of the stun wearing off, then turned the table on the demon, pushing it closer to the prismatic wall. An epic struggle ensued as they both tried to maneuver the other to be pushed through.

The demon got a couple of lucky blows in and took the barbarian down and tossed his body aside, however, just as the rogue finally made his way down to where the battle was taking place. Enraged, the halfling rogue launched himself at the demon and engaged in melee while the wizard was under the effects of the demon's confusion...

We'll see how this works out for them on Thursday.

 

[Capn Charlie]

A routine teleportation circle activation went horribly wrong for the person using it, thanks to some PC tampering. The NPC's final destination is unknown at this time, but they left behind their skin, lungs, all the bones of their legs, and all their bone marrow.

It is the general consensus of the party that teleportation magic is not to be trusted.

 

[wedgeski]

Through a combination of excellent planning, subterfuge (assuming the mantle of the local Cult of the Dragon cell), a surprise round, high Initiatives, and a couple of high-damage critical hits, my party of four 3rd-level PC's didn't just drive the green dragon in Thundertree away, they killed it outright, before it even got to act. Couldn't believe my eyes. Glorious.

 

[Malovaan]

Our low level party (3 3rd level PCs) ran a-foul of some cultists worshiping a blood god a little while ago and since then we've been carrying around a book which seems to contain some sort of power from that god, or some link to them. Needless to say, carrying it around appears to be causing us troubles.

Most recently on our way between towns we were caught un-awares in a forest by a massive over-sized boar covered in blood. After some nifty spell-casting and a good thwack from the barbarians axe we finally killed the beast. Or so we thought.... as the blood congealed on the ground and ran back into the boar raising it up to fight us again! Until the barbarian chopped it in half with his axe to finally end the thing.

We're all new to the game, hadn't read the monster manual fully to know that a giant boar was "relentless" and wouldn't die the first time around. Good work on our DMs part for making this standard monster really fit the flavour of being some creation summoned up by the presence of this blood god's book. We really need to find out some more about that bloody book...

 

[Rhenny]

The party (5th level) in one of my sessions a few months ago fought their way into Ironaxe Hall killing nearly 20 orcs and half orcs. Then they were assailed by the Ettin leader and his guards. Eventually they took down the Ettin and the remaining orcs offered to surrender and allow the party to stealthfully continue infiltrating the keep seeking a powerful relic and targeting red wizards that had taken over the keep. Unfortunately, an Orc shaman was still suspicious of the party and she nearly convinced the remaining orcs to kill the intruders. That's when the party cleric did some fast talking, and he used a precious 3rd level spell slot to cast revivification on a freshly dead Orc. When the Orc came back to life, the Orc tribe was putty in the cleric's hands.

 

[Nebulous]

In LMoP two events come to mind:

The party convinced Venomfang to annihilate the cultists in a poisonous blast of death and she slowly tortured the last one left alive.

The party tricked all of the orcs of Wyvern Tor to drink poisoned beer, then webbed them and burned them and poked them full of holes at their leisure.

 

[Shiroiken]

Two Sessions ago:
While exploring the 3rd level of the Temple of Elemental Evil, the party face a pair of Chuul (replacing a monster who wasn't updated). While grappling the Avenger Paladin, the Bard casts Dissonant Whispers on the Chuul, forcing it to use it's reaction to move away from her. The Chuul moved back to it's underwater lair... taking the Paladin with it! Fortunately for him, he was still able to see the small surface entrance and cast Misty Step to teleport back. The Bard was very apologetic

Last Session:
I've deleted what I wrote, for two reasons. One of my players sometimes checks out this forum, and I don't want to spoil anything. Also, I don't know how to hide spoilers yet, so I don't want to spoil anything for anyone else either. All I can say is that they found the hidden shrine to Pholtus and the hidden crypt

 

[TarionzCousin]

In our latest 5E session, we finally found the Temple of the Frog and fought our way in to attempt to stop the nefarious ritual in progress. After many setbacks, we entered the temple proper and hacked and slashed our way to the altar. The swashbuckling duelist romantic fighter lead the charge, cutting viciously through foe after foe while my character lurked behind, lobbing energy blasts without risking his own hide.

Finally, the duelist punched through the enemy minions' lines. He ran without a thought for his own safety (provoking several AoO's)and leapt over the horde of oozing frogs to save the helpless female victim from being stabbed to complete the ritual. He reached to grab her away from the evil lieutenant before the knife plunged down.

Instead, he flubbed his Acrobatics roll and pulled the woman down into the slimy frogs--a "success with a complication" if ever there was one.

My character rushed in and rescued the damsel in distress just as she awoke. I gave her a winning smile as her eyes fluttered open. "My hero," she said to me--and the duelist cried out in existential agony "Nooooooooooooooo!!!"

Well, I thought it was awesome.

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Waterdeep was completely and utterly sacked by Chromatic Dragons just as the PCs completed a 40 day trek back after helping the Cloud Giant make off with the hoard at the end of The Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Blackstaff Tower has been demolished, whole city blocks have sunken into Undermountain and the City of the Dead has been laid wide open.

Let The Rise of Tiamat begin.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Background: The party recently assassinated a Hierarch of the Horned Society. This event lead to a power vacuum in the western Fellreev Forest that Iuz was ready to fill. In order to avoid fighting a two-fronted war, the party decided to travel to Eru-Tovar to enlist the support of the Khans of the Wolf Nomads. The party reasoned that if the Wolf Nomads assaulted Iuz's northern and western borders, then Iuz would be unable to take advantage of the PCs' continued harassment of the Hierarchs.

Session: The scene in Eru-Tovar was chaotic. Winter was giving way to spring and the tribes were growing restless from their long winter slumber. The PCs decided to take a dual approach to convincing the nomads to assault Iuz. The barbarian and the bard were going to mingle amongst the masses and attempt to create a groundswell of support for assaulting Iuz, while the cleric, paladin, and wizard were going to meet directly with the numerous khans and, most importantly, the Tarkhan.

While mingling amongst the masses and telling tales of Iuz's minions desecrating the burial sites of the nomad's honored dead, the barbarian and bard came across an agent of Kermin Mind-Bender (Kermin is one of Iuz's most powerful servants). After a brief combat, the two PCs captured the agent only to realize that the horde wants blood and wants it now. Assuming that the rest of the party would like to interrogate the agent, the barbarian and bard began trying to calm the masses. Some parts of the horde then accused them of being servants of Iuz!

Meanwhile, the cleric, paladin, and wizard assemble the khans and layout their proposal. What they discover is that the khans are anything but a united front. Rivalries between the khans must be alleviated and just when one set of rivals is quelled another set erupts! After a long and tense negotiation, the PCs finally achieve an agreement that the khans will raid Iuz this summer. It was at this moment that the negotiations were interrupted with word that minions of Iuz have been discovered in the city. The three PCs head out to investigate and discover their two companions, holding onto some other individual, and surrounded by the sword-wielding masses.

It was here that I ended the session. With a fragile agreement and an angry mob! We'll see what happens next month.

 

[Ricochet]

Pathfinder, I'm the GM. 1½ years of playing a large portion of a bi-weekly campaign just wrapped up with the group's first true dragon showdown (a great wyrm). After defeating three liches, the group came out of a cave having spent quite a few resources but ready to face the dragon. The dragon predictably shot breath weapon into the cave before the group got out, but lingered in the cave opening in order to smack the group's front-line people around a bit. I opted for an attack and a move, opening it up for two attacks of opportunity in an arrogant manner. Well, our fighter rolled a 20, and then confirmed it with another 20. We have a house rule: 2 x 20 = possibility for a lethal blow if a THIRD roll confirms the hit once more. Well, he rolled a 19 and the dragon died. Turns out they needed the beast alive though, so his epic jubilations was quickly brought down to earth, and he had to use a Hero Point (very rarely obtainable points I give out that allow rerolls) to try and force a MISS on that final blow. He missed, and the dragon was merely knocked out instead of being outright killed.

It was a great session all in all, and holy crap can a group of 18th level characters be unstoppable! After the three liches (one a 20th level caster) encounter, our druid asked if anyone needed healing, but everyone was good to go since the cleric used "Mass Heal" during the battle (which also took out one of the lesser liches).

*****************************

Updated with more info about the circumstances: The short version is: The dragon was a silver dragon - the king of dragons, in fact - which had been possessed by an evil bastard. Dragons vanished from the players' own world a long time ago, so they are in this parallel world to save the last echoes of the great creatures, and hope to bring the last dragons back over to their own native world in order to stop an even bigger threat. Finding the last dragons, sheltered by failing magics, has been the main plot of the last 1½ years playtime, and for the groups level 15-18 efforts. Having finally found them, they had to strike a deal with an evil bastard (immortal lichlike archwizard) in order to cleanse them of the disease HE inflicted the dragons with initially, or they would die the instant they left their stasis-like chamber.

Only six dragons yet live in this altered world they are in, and although they could bring less than all six over, they wanted them all. So they struck a deal with the bad guy, and he got control of one of the dragons for the life of the others. The group wanted to undo the damage, which was why they needed the dragon downed but not dead in order to "excorcise" the evil bastard from it. They had to do so by alchemically infusing it with the blood of the evil bastard's own kin in order to break the link (since he was a bloodmage and had tainted his own blood, the "pure" bloodline of his own would effectively kill him). His kin was an ally of the party, who sacrificed herself in order to finally kill the evil bastard once the dragon was unconscious (yet another note: she had turned on the party at one point in dramatic revelation fashion, but turned back to the good guys through their valiant efforts in the fight with the liches - for once seeing reason winning out over wanton desires of vengeance).

So they saved the dragon and killed the evil bastard, and are now inbound to their own world with all six dragons as allies for the final part of the campaign. They brought the woman who sacrificed herself with them too, planning to ressurrect her if possible.

I hope it doesn't read completely like a mess. I omitted a lot of detail, but the story is actually quite engrossing (or so my players tell me).

I am closing shop on the campaign soon, but it's also been going since the summer of 2008.

*****************************

 

[TarionzCousin]

Turns out they needed the beast alive though,

Why?

so his epic jubilations was quickly brought down to earth, and he had to use a Hero Point (very rarely obtainable points I give out that allow rerolls) to try and force a MISS on that final blow. He missed, and the dragon was merely knocked out instead of being outright killed.

Nice. Your players will always remember the day they had to spend a hero point to avoid killing a dragon.

 

[Ricochet]

Why?

Nice. Your players will always remember the day they had to spend a hero point to avoid killing a dragon.

This is a follow up, which I edited into the original post afterwards for clarity.

A very long story, but the short version is: The dragon was a silver dragon - the king of dragons, in fact - which had been possessed by an evil bastard. Dragons vanished from the players' own world a long time ago, so they are in this parallel world to save the last echoes of the great creatures, and hope to bring the last dragons back over to their own native world in order to stop an even bigger threat. Finding the last dragons, sheltered by failing magics, has been the main plot of the last 1½ years playtime, and for the groups level 15-18 efforts. Having finally found them, they had to strike a deal with an evil bastard (immortal lichlike archwizard) in order to cleanse them of the disease HE inflicted the dragons with initially, or they would die the instant they left their stasis-like chamber.

Only six dragons yet live in this altered world they are in, and although they could bring less than all six over, they wanted them all. So they struck a deal with the bad guy, and he got control of one of the dragons for the life of the others. The group wanted to undo the damage, which was why they needed the dragon downed but not dead in order to "excorcise" the evil bastard from it. They had to do so by alchemically infusing it with the blood of the evil bastard's own kin in order to break the link (since he was a bloodmage and had tainted his own blood, the "pure" bloodline of his own would effectively kill him). His kin was an ally of the party, who sacrificed herself in order to finally kill the evil bastard once the dragon was unconscious (yet another note: she had turned on the party at one point in dramatic revelation fashion, but turned back to the good guys through their valiant efforts in the fight with the liches - for once seeing reason winning out over wanton desires of vengeance).

So they saved the dragon and killed the evil bastard, and are now inbound to their own world with all six dragons as allies for the final part of the campaign. They brought the woman who sacrificed herself with them too, planning to ressurrect her if possible.

I hope it doesn't read completely like a mess. I omitted a lot of detail, but the story is actually quite engrossing (or so my players tell me).

I am closing shop on the campaign soon, but it's also been going since the summer of 2008.

 

[wedgeski]

Well, he rolled a 19 and the dragon died. Turns out they needed the beast alive though, so his epic jubilations was quickly brought down to earth, and he had to use a Hero Point (very rarely obtainable points I give out that allow rerolls) to try and force a MISS on that final blow. He missed, and the dragon was merely knocked out instead of being outright killed.

Ha! Hero points indeed!

 

[Valus]

HA! Good call deleting that spoiler, Shiroiken. It's me, the Vengeance Paladin from the first story, and I happened to search for your posts this afternoon while waiting for code to compile.

Two Sessions ago:
While exploring the 3rd level of the Temple of Elemental Evil, the party face a pair of Chuul (replacing a monster who wasn't updated). While grappling the Avenger Paladin, the Bard casts Dissonant Whispers on the Chuul, forcing it to use it's reaction to move away from her. The Chuul moved back to it's underwater lair... taking the Paladin with it! Fortunately for him, he was still able to see the small surface entrance and cast Misty Step to teleport back. The Bard was very apologetic

Last Session:
I've deleted what I wrote, for two reasons. One of my players sometimes checks out this forum, and I don't want to spoil anything. Also, I don't know how to hide spoilers yet, so I don't want to spoil anything for anyone else either. All I can say is that they found the hidden shrine to Pholtus and the hidden crypt